Anil Gulecha's Musings

I’ve decided to post pointless stuff I create on the web. Who knows, I may be the proverbial 3M who does not know the value of the proverbial Post-It note glue I create.

This is an origamical creation that I call “Paper table standing on springy legs”

Paper table standing on springy legs

To put into use my newbie python skills, I wrote a tool that searches the output of apt-cache unmet -i

When populating a newly built repository, I often run into instances where I want to find all the unbuilt packages that depend on kdelibs, or all packages that have openoffice as a dependency. In general I want to know if what packages wont build without X.

So I wrote unmetlist. This will help debian/equivalent and apt developers list out packages that aren’t built, and required in the repository. It can look for (reverse) dependencies, suggests, etc. The difference between apt-cache’s inbuilt search and this tool is that apt-cache searches for the exact package name specified, where as unmetlist searches for the pattern (so kde will match kde-code, kde-libs, etc).

root@oahu:~/src/work3# ./unmetlist
Ver 0.1
Usage
./unmetlist <option>  <package> <unmet_listing_file>
Option can be one of the following
search : search for the <package> in listing and print full listing
depends : find dependencies of <package>
rdepends : find which packages depend on <package>
suggests : find suggested packages for <package>
rsuggests : find which packages suggest <package>
recommends : find recommended packages for <package>
rrecommends : find which packages recommend <package>

To run it first generate the unmet listing using

apt-cache unmet -i > /tmp/unmetfile

and use as follows

./unmetlist rdepends openoffice /tmp/unmetfile

Its still new had edges, but it works.

Get the tool here. (right click>save as..) and be sure to chmod +x the file. Let me know if you find this useful, have suggestions, or want to request a feature.

Oh, and python is a pleasure to work with. String processing has never been easier

So I’ve been learning to play the guitar for around 3 months now.

It’s coming along well

I figured I’d plug Tuxguitar and a few sites/apps I’ve been using.

Windows users might know of Guitar Pro which is a software that allows creation of tabs and plays them back.

However what most users dont know is that a free (gratis) and open source equivalent called tuxguitar exists.

This will be very helpful when viewing the *.gp3, *.gp4 and other files that are available on various guitar tab sites.

(Or view those rumoured hundreds of thousands of tabs I’d heard are available on some peer2peer technologies )

It is written in Java and is thus available on Windows, Linux, Solaris or any architecture with a JVM. Tuxguitar in the Ubuntu 8.04 repository has known sound issues on AMD64.. so you better get the latest version directly from the site.

Also very useful to practice your strumming is GTick (On ubuntu simple apt-get install gtick). One good page to learn strumming is here.

Happy guitaring.

I wrote an article laying out Nexenta’s advantage to Debian/Ubuntu developers.

OSNews has been reporting on the Debian/Ubuntu/GNU/Opensolaris hybrid for several years. But for those of you who’ve never looked more closely at this interesting OS, a Nexenta developer has laid out some of its more noteworthy features and advantages.

Read the whole article on osnews.com.

The comments are pure gold, in their insight and humour. Take a discussion on the oldest skeleton found on earth.

One comment starts off with a comment on the earth being 6000 years old (which is a popular loony creationist belief). Thereafter the comments are as follows

“The Earth *IS* only 6,000 years old. Give or take 4.54 billion years”

–”So…. Within that margin of error, the earth may not have been created yet?”

—-”Scary, but that DOES go along with how I feel some Monday mornings….”

—-”Don’t tell anyone, but we’re doing the public beta stress test, so the publisher can know how many players per server he can expect. There’ve been some bugs and balance problems found, though, so they might push back the actual release for another billion years. Although the publisher is calling it good enough and might shove it out the door as it is.”

——–”A billion year beta? I didn’t realize Google was the creator!”

————”Well, it is called Google Earth”

Follow this thread here.

And start reading Slashdot. IT may be a little US-centric at times, but the insight and rational debates that are a part of discussions always leave you better informed.