Technology and Art

The first sub-$400 3D printer, The Buccaneer, passes $500,000 on Kickstarter in just 4 days !

Via The Next Web ; Via KickStarter ;

Screen is a screen manager with VT100/ANSI terminal emulation. It offers the ability to detach a long running process (or program, or shell-script) from a session and then attach it back at a later time.
When the session is detached, the process that was originally started from the screen is still running and managed by the screen. You can re-attach the session at a later time and your terminals are still there, the way you left them.

So, for example, if you want to start top command, instead of simply running: “$ top”, you type: “$ screen top”.

While the newly opened program is running, you can send it in background, using “Ctrl + A”, followed by “d”. There are a lot of commands starting with “Ctrl + A”, as you will see in the table below.

Also, when the command is running in another terminal, you can type the command: “$ screen -d ScreenID” to detach it remotely. You can see a list of screen IDs with: “$ screen -ls”.

Commands and Keys
Ctrl+a c -> new window
Ctrl+a n -> next window
Ctrl+a p -> previous window
Ctrl+a ” -> select window from list
Ctrl+a Ctrl+a -> previous window viewed
Ctrl+a d -> detach screen from terminal
Ctrl+a A -> set window title
Ctrl+a x -> lock session
Ctrl+a [ -> enter scrollback/copy mode
Ctrl+a ] -> paste buffer
Ctrl+a > -> write paste buffer to file
Ctrl+a < -> read paste buffer from file
Ctrl+a  ? ->show key bindings/command names
Ctrl+a  : -> goto screen command prompt

There are more, but those are the most popular.

Screen can be easily customized by editing ~/.screenrc file. You can set new keys, colors and the default tabs that open when you open a new screen.

# .screenrc
defscrollback   5000

startup_message off
autodetach      on
crlf            off
deflogin        off
hardcopy_append on
vbell           off
vbell_msg "[[[ ding ]]]"
nonblock        on
altscreen       on
defutf8         on
msgwait         3

# Bind F11 and F12 (NOT F1 and F2) to previous and next screen window
bindkey -k F1 prev
bindkey -k F2 next

hardstatus on
hardstatus alwayslastline

hardstatus string '%{= kW}[ %{m}%H %{W}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{g}%n*%f%t%?(%u)
%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{W}][%{Y} %d-%M %{Y}%c %{W}]'

# Colors... and some useful terminfo
term screen-256color
terminfo rxvt-unicode 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm'

# Programs to autostart on screen startup
screen -t Procs  0 htop
screen -t Python 1 python
screen -t Bash   2 bash

I hope you find this useful.

Official page : http://www.gnu.org/software/screen.
Also check : http://www.computerhope.com/unix/screen.htm and http://linux.die.net/man/1/screen.

What if there is a density of reality in which time is 3 dimensional? According to some types of String Theory, what you do right NOW can potentially cause what happened 5000 years ago in our interaction with linear time, because what we do to an electron effects both its past and its future according to string theory. We experience linearity, but what if time progression was nothing more than a series of universal cause-effect relationships randomly interconnected throughout time as a whole?

Via Spirit Science ;

CentOS doesn’t have Python 2.7 by default, so if you want/ need to install it, this is what you do:

su

yum install tk-devel tcl-devel 
yum install expat-devel db4-devel gdbm-devel sqlite-devel zlib-devel bzip2-devel
yum install openssl-devel ncurses-devel readline-devel
yum install git gcc

wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.7.5/Python-2.7.5.tar.bz2
tar xf Python-2.7.5.tar.bz2
cd Python-2.7.5
./configure --prefix=/usr/local

# Always use Alt-Install !
# otherwise, you will overwrite Python 2.6 installation and your system WILL crash
make && make altinstall
# This will take some time...

# Test python 2.7
python2.7

Python 2.7.5 (default, May 31 2013, 14:00:00)
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> exit()

Ok, now installing Distribute, the main Python package manager. It’s very important to have!

wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/distribute/distribute-0.6.tar.gz
tar xf distribute-0.6.tar.gz
cd distribute-0.6
python2.7 setup.py install

# You could also install PIP, but current version (1.3) doesn't work at all.
# So you can either install version 1.2 manually, or wait for a bug fix.

If you need to install Python compiled libraries, this is how you do:

# Install LXML parser
yum install libxslt-devel libxml2-devel
easy_install Cython
git clone git://github.com/lxml/lxml.git lxml
cd lxml
python2.7 setup.py build --with-cython install
python2.7 -c "import lxml"


# Install My Sql Python client
yum install mysql-devel
curl http://superb-sea2.dl.sourceforge.net/project/mysql-python/mysql-python/1.2.3/MySQL-python-1.2.3.tar.gz | tar zxv
cd MySQL-python-1.2.3
python2.7 setup.py build
python2.7 setup.py install
python2.7 -c "import MySQLdb"

Alternatively, you can try to install Python from a repository:

# Download and import the rpm gpg key
cd /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/
wget -q http://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/6/x86_64/os/RPM-GPG-KEY-puias
rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-puias


# Create the repository file as /etc/yum.repos.d/puias-computational.repo
vim /etc/yum.repos.d/puias-computational.repo

# :: Paste this ::
[PUIAS_6_computational]
name=PUIAS computational Base $releasever - $basearch
mirrorlist=http://puias.math.ias.edu/data/puias/computational/$releasever/$basearch/mirrorlist
#baseurl=http://puias.math.ias.edu/data/puias/computational/$releasever/$basearch
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-puias


# Confirm the repo is functional
yum repolist | grep -i puias
# * PUIAS_6_computational: puias.math.ias.edu
# * PUIAS_6_computational   PUIAS computational Base 6 - x86_64


# Check Python 2.7
yum search python27

Hope this helps!

Ubuntu 13.04 is launched ! Wheee !
See what’s new, via Ubuntu release notes and webupd8.org.

Ionic thrusters could power the ultra-efficient, stealth drones of the future.

Via Theverge ;

Please support PyDev, or help spread the word!

PyDev blog ; Indiegogo campaign ;

Full specs ;
Via go4it.ro ; Via mobilissimo.ro ;
Via Thenextweb ;
My post about Galaxy S3, for comparison ;

Quick, efficient chip cleans up common flaws in amateur photographs.

The chip, built by a team at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory, can perform tasks such as creating more realistic or enhanced lighting in a shot without destroying the scene’s ambience, in just a fraction of a second. The technology could be integrated with any smartphone, tablet computer or digital camera.

Via Gizmag ;

Ubuntu will use its own Display Server called Mir.
and
Unity will be ported to Qt/QML.

This is really great news!

Via UnityNextSpec ;

Today was released a new HTC phone. The specs are amazing:
- Chipset Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600 ;
- CPU Quad-core 1.7 GHz Krait 300 ;
- GPU Adreno 320 ;
- 2 GB RAM ;
- running Android 4.1, upgradable to 4.2 ;
- Screen size 4.7 inches, 1080 x 1920 pixels ;
- Corning Gorilla Glass 2 display ;
- Camera 4 MP, 2688 x 1520 pixels ;
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot ;
- Li-Po 2300 mAh battery.

Full specs ;
Via Thenextweb ;

Via Ultralinx ;

“One thing that separates the great innovators from everyone else is that they seem to know a lot about a wide variety of topics. They are expert generalists. Their wide knowledge base supports their creativity.

As it turns out, there are two personality traits that are key for expert generalists: Openness to Experience and Need for Cognition.”

“If you are not willing to do something new, then it’s hard to be creative.”

“Creativity often requires drawing analogies between one body of knowledge and another.”

Via 99u.com ;