Posts Tagged ‘right’

A Sunday in the Netherlands

Monday, September 1st, 2008

I woke up, washed my teeth, did my regular morning excersises then Ina came my room and we went out shopping. In Sunday all shopsare closed in the netherlands thus the near food store we usually shop from Alberheim is closed too. That’s why we moved to the center.We first ate in a place called “Subway”, the vegetarenian sort of hamburger costed 2 EU, then we walked through the shops in the center andresearched where is what and how the prices vary in the different stores. Ina bought sunglasses, a blouse and ear-rings. We were also happyto find 24 hours opened shop right in the center. It seems that usually in Sunday the only place where the shops are opened is the center.We took some beer and went and stood along a little lake enjoying the swan and the ducks and crows which moved and flewer aroud. Then we catched the way for home looking around for unlocked bikes which we may take (it’s common here in the Netherlands to just take unlocked bikes and make them yours even I heard a lot of people leave the old unusused bikes on the street unlocked so you can just take it and use it.On our way home Ina saw left old Zanussi fridge next to a trash bin with a note on it saying something in Dutch containing the Dutch word “wekrt” which literally translated means works. So we hoped the fridge is a working one. We called Koko and Sali to come end help us with the fridge. Then Koko and Sali came and helped us move the fridge to the Honigkamp 2 which is the building of the dormitory I live in. LaterI collected the dry laundry and went to take a shower, then I moved to the 5th floor’s kitchen (My room is in the 1st floor). Wherewe gather with Ina for breakfasts, lunch or dinner. It’s a common thing the last few days that all the Bulgarians that we live in Honigkamp just gather together with the laptops and listen to a different kinds of music and talking about stuff. Although is’s so nice in the Netherlands I’m homesick a little. I also feel like going in no concrete direction. It’s a common thing temptations come that tempt me to smoke again. Also a really terrible temptation I face is a one I faced a dozen of times. You know there are some girls that really are my type of girls unfortunately every time I look at that girls I start falling in love. This is just fine the bad thing is that I’m usually too “different”, unconventional etc. to fit nice with the girls I like. Day by day I search for truths and I’m not sure I’m able to reach them .. the poor man I’m ehh…END—–

Beside myself

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

There is not much to say, Recently I’m experiencing mix of spiritual and emotional fluctuations ups and downs.I feel so alone quite often. There are not many valuable people (considering my interests).Day by day I’m asking myself the question “Hey man , why are you studying HRQM this stupid secreatary stuff.”I’m confused quite a lot and in a state of a denial, or better to say I feel a kind of lost because I’m out of my confortzone .. The teachers here in the HRQM stream claim that when a man is frightened and out of his confort zone,then he is learning a lot. They might be true about that, I don’t know. At Friday we had that Business Ethics test.Before the test we watched the movie “The Wizard of Oz” a movie from the distant year 1939. Right after the class wasover I went home and laundered my clothes. Then we had a dinner. Today I woke up around 11:00, had my breakfastat around 13:00 and near 13:30 I went out for a walk. I went to the city center and walked around the river Netherlands Rijn.A little later I walked through the city center around the open market which was located right before The St. Eusibeus Chapel.I went through a waggon which sells bibles in different languages and tried to draw people back close to God andspoke for a while with one nice old man who said used to be a Christian for 40 years already.Then I went for shopping to the grocy stores Aldi and Albertheijn and went back “home” to Honigkamp… That’s mostlyhow my day passed … I should thank to God for still caring for me and providing me with all necessary for my daily living.Thanks Lord! END—–

What is the Pirate Party / Interview with Peter Sunde – The co-founder of ThePirateBay on CeBIT 2011

Monday, February 20th, 2012

The Piratebay website logo

Many people are using ThePiratebay to get all kind of data and share Movies, Games, Programs etc.)

ThePirateBay has become like a standard media for file sharing and still not many people are aware of who is behind ThePirateBay.
This is why I thought, by posting this article I can "rant" on the existence of the Swedish Pirate Party
The Pirate Party – Is a party fighting on behalf of information sharing freedom (or in other words a party fighting for our freedom as individuals in the digital era).

Swedish Pirate Party Official Party mascot
Pirate Party (Sweden) party official mascot

The Pirate party are swedish political party established in 2006, its members are activists lobbying on freedom of information as well as pointing at threats to our human freedoms imposed by new legislations and anti-freedom agreements like the recent ACTA treaty.

Since there creation in 2006, they have grown from a local Swedish party to an international party, locally existing in 33 countries arount the world.The ideology behind the Swedish PirateParty as well as the rest of existing Pirate Parties international is as I prior said Freedom of Information on the internet. PP is a party phenomenon, as they are neither a left or a right oriented party (on the traditional left-right scale). PP are independent bloc pursuing their political agenda colabborating with all mainstream parties, which stand behind the ideologies the party fights for.

After last European Parliament elections, PP received 7% of all Swedish votes for a country EU representative.
As of today according to Wikipedia , the party holds 2 EU deputee seats in EU parliament.

I've a friend who is taking membership in the Pirate Party and from him I know the PP party are big supporters of Free Software.

One major key figure part of Pirate Party is the swedish Peter Sunde. He is a front person who is behind ThePirateBay project as well as holds a very interesting revolutionary ideas. Many of his ideas are close to "the father of all free software" – Richard Mathew Stallman (RMS). Therefore the PP would be probably of interest to anyone who is interested in Free Software. Here is an interview with Peter Sunde's taken in Cebit 2011:

As long as I know the Pirate Party are along the only few organizations in the whole world, who are trying to fight on behalf of human freedom.I'll be glad to hear if someone know about other ornigazations apart from Pirate Party the Free Software Foundation – (FSF) lobbying on present worsening conditions of invidual human freedom.

Here is few curious facts proving how BIG and important thepiratebay.org is, the text below is again quote from Wikipedia

Currently ThePirateBay.org is ranked as the 80th most visited website in the world and 20th in Sweden by Alexa Internet, has over 5.5 million registered users and, as of February 2012, hosts more than 4 million torrent files.

According to the Los Angeles Times, The Pirate Bay is "one of the world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading" and "the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright or pro-piracy movement"

If you want to further check on what is today the Pirate Party standing for be sure to check ThePirateParty.Com – PP’s official website .

How to change default Comments and No Comments location in WordPress in wordpress default theme

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

For a number of time I’ve been planning to change my blog comments placement. Until this very day however I’ve kept the default wordpress theme’s Comments button placement.

I realize the default Comments button placement is a bit hard to see and not that much intuitive for the user that enters my blog for a first time.

My first guess was that there might be somewhere a wordpress plugin which will allow me to adjust my comments button placement.
After some research online and a realization that probably there is no such plugin existing yet. I’ve forced myself to tune it up myself.

It was clear to me that in order to change the it will be necessery to edit the WordPress templates files. I’m not a designer and when I hear about templates I usually get scared, however I took the time to take a look at the default wordpress template and find out actually that template modifications is actually rather easier than I thought.

My previous idea was that in order to edit templates you have to be some kind of CSS and HTML guru (which I’m not). Nevertheless it seems that in order to play and adjust in a good way the templates you don’t need ot be a pro.
Even an uneducated fool like myself can easily do almost everything he thinks of throughout few lines of code in the wp templates.

To get back to the major topic thanks God after a bit of review and reading of wordpress.org documentation and some user forums. I’ve figured out that in order to change my Comments placement you need to modify the file:
 

  • blog/wp-content/themes/default/index.php

In index.php find the line starting with:

You will notice within this opened paragraph the php code:

<?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '
'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?>
| <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>
<?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?>

This is the actual default theme php code that makes the wordpress Comments or No Comments that maes the comments appear on the blog.

Now I’ve decided to let this be as it is but add one more Comment button to wordpress on a different location that is more appealing to my blog visitors

After quick evaluation I’ve determined that probably the best location that the Comments button should have is right after the end of the post text

If you think my idea for button placement is appropriate, to set this location for the Comments button, you will have to find the follwoing code in index.php:

<div class="entry">
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>
</div>

Right after the end of this code place the following code:

<?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?>
</div>

How to add manually adsense code to your wordpress blog in blog index and single page posts

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

I’ve recently realized that the Easy Adsenser plugin which I used to place google adsense advertisements on my blog, is probably stealing some portion of my clicks.

There were some fraud reports on wordpress.org by people who have found out the author of Easy Adsenser rips clicks, by showing sometimes his own ad code even if the plugin is configured to not grant any clicks as a donation to the plugin author.
I don’t know how true this story is and I don’t have the time to observe the whole plugin code to say for sure if the rumors about clicks stealing are true.

However as I’m paying my internet access (that guarantees) by blog to stay online with some adsense advertisements and the adsense revenues are either equal to my internet tax or a bit higher (depending on the month), it’s quite unpleasent to hear someone is stealing from the ads clicks which still generate very low revenue.

Thus I took the time to read some blog posts online which gave me some hints on how can I directly place the google adsense advertisement code into the theme template files

My goal was to place one google adsense ad to appear right after the title of each article and one to appear as a vertical bar in the end of my sidebar.

In this article in short I’ll explain how I achieved this banner placement via the default wordpress template which obviously I use on my blog.

Let’s start:

1. Add adsense to the index page of the blog

Edit your blog/wp-content/themes/default/index.php file

Therein find the code:

<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn" role="main">

and right after this line put the following php code:

<?php
$postnum = 1;
$showadsense1 = 1;
?>

This code is necessery to assure the adsense code only appears on the first blog post from the blog index page

2. Find the code:

<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by

Immediately after the code place the php code:

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) {
echo '<div class="adsense" style="float:right;margin:12px;">;paste here your adsense code ...</div>';
} ?>

<?php $postnum++; ?>

Now with this changes, 1 adsense advertisements should start appearing right after your first and only on your blog post, next step is to place manually one more vertical adsense banner.

2. Place adsense vertical bannre in wordpress blog sidebar

Login with admin user to wordpress and navigate to:

Appearance -> Widgets

Among the available widgets you will notice the widget called Text click over: Add to add this widget to the list of widgets to appear on your blog sidebar.

Afterwards look up over the Sidebar list of widgets find the newly added Text widget and click over Edit to modify it’s content.

Further on put a Title for the widget or choose to leave the title field as blank if you don’t want a name to appear.
On the next textbox just paste your adsense code and you’re done. A simple refresh of your wordpress blog index page should show you a vertical banner with your adsense code.
! Note that if you have recently issued the adsense code it will take about 10-20 minutes until the banner starts showing up.

Until now wordpress is configured to show adsense adverts on the blog main page, as a next step we need to place the same adsense adverts to appear whether a single blog post is reviewed (opened).

Place an adsense advertisements to single posts opened

For that purpose it’s necessery to edit the file single.php it’s again located in blog/wp-content/themes/default

Once again you will first need to find the code:

if (have_posts())

Put the code after the end of the line on a new line:

<?php
// below code is for adsense
$postnum = 1;
$showadsense1 = 1;
?>

Next lookup in the file for the code:

<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

On a new line after it place:

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) { echo '<div class="adsense" style="float:right;margin:12px;"><script type="text/javascript"> place here your adsense code </div>';
} ?>

<?php $postnum++; ?>

That’s all now the adsense advertisements will be also showing on the single blog posts reviews found via some search engine (google, yahoo etc.).

Hope this article will be helpful to somebody, if so drop me a thanks line in comments 😉

How to solve ALSA sound problems with old Linux programs and games depending on (OSS)’s /dev/dsp / fix wine games and pulseaudio problems – My few thoughts on OSS and ALSA

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

 

ALSA OSS Pulseaudio ESD Some fixes workaround to gnu linux audio messI remember GNU / Linux, 11 years from now, times when ALSA was not standardly shipped with Linux.
Back then ALSA still lacked good support for many SoundCards and was still a "baby project".
In that time what we used to have sound on Linux was OSSOpen Sound System. OSS emerged right after the first ever Linux sound system VoxWare (formerly known as the Linux Sound Driver).

Back in those days OSS was used for multimedia support on both GNU / Linux and BSD based free OSes. It was few years later when I heard and used ALSA for a fist time and it wasn't really a love from first sigth.

One can easily find out by the name ALSA it is a system especially built for the Linux kernel and that's one of the reasosn why *BSD systems has their custom separate sound system.
There is plenty of reasons why OSS was substituted with ALSA. Main reason was its commercial like license, OSS wasn't completely "open source" GPLed (free software), there was resctions on use of OSS for commercial goals.

With its emerge ALSA started to push away OSS slowly. Somewhere in 2003, alsa has officially entered the Linux kernel source and until 2005 it was the default standard for all GNU / Linux operating systems.

As of time of writting ALSA has become the only sound system to have support for multiple sound card devices for Linux.
My experiences with ALSA, however ain't so nice if I take a look in my past experiences.
Since the very beginning of using ALSA, I had plenty of troubles with configuring properly my sound card not to mention, even after configuring it the MIDI support was not there.
Besides all the troubles main problems were stemming from the many applications still written to use OSS as sound system and hence with those sound was impossible with ALSA.The most problematic thing about apps written with OSS in mind was all of them tried to stream sound via /dev/dsp (OSS Digital Sound Processor), since alsa did not used /dev/dsp those programs was soundless.

On the other hand OSS was creating issues as well, one severe problem with OSS was the inability to stream multiple sounds simultaneously, because each sound stream required to pass voice through /dev/dsp and usually there was only one /dev/dsp.

The message;

/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
and the proceeding irritation that used to annoy us in the early GNU / Linux days had of course some raw workarounds hacks but generally the workaround did not fix problems always.

Introduction of alsa free us from /dev/dsp issues but on the other handy has created a whole ocean of new BIG problems …
ALSA has modular structure and this imposes a great problem nowdays. The modular architecture is generally a good idea, however the way this was implemented within ALSA is far away from clear and easy to understand by the end user and therefore makes it very unintuitive and obscure.
Alsa misses simplicity which somehow was partially in the days of OSS. Thinking over the general situation with Linux multimedia nowdays, I believe it was exactly ALSA Project responsible for the so delayed mass Desktop Linux adoption.

Many long year standing Linux users had certainly had the alsa troubles during new system installs (correct me if I'm wrong).
The only fix to multiple soundcard initialization problems was to download alsa source and compile from source and hence made it hard and discouraging for people giving Linux a try.
This kind of ALSA "brokenness" pattern continues even to this very day (in Debian) Linux and probably building the alsa system from source is among the good practices to have a functional Linux sound system…

With all said the historic reason why ALSA was not quickly adopted and still is not a preferred default system for many applications ported to Free Software OSes by commercial company vendors is clear. Its simply not working out of the box …

Hope some ALSA developers will read this post work on changing the crazy structure of ALSA over complexity. ALSA needs automate way to solve issues with itself, the configuration should be more trivial and unified if Linux has to become more attractive for Desktop adoption.

Anyways, after the few words of history and indicating my pesonal observations on ALSA. I will proceed and explain few things on how ALSA can be configured to support and play nice with OSS dependant programs as well some basic explanations on common incompatibility between esd and pulseaudio and how this can be fixed;.

To assure nowdays OSS API built programs and games would work with Alsa its necessery to have installed;

ALSA wrapper for OSS applications

On Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and most Linux distributions the Alsa OSS compatability layer comes under a (deb / rpm) package named alsa-oss

To install OSS compatability on Debian, Ubuntu and the like Debian based distributions issue:

debian:~# apt-get install alsa-oss alsaplayer-oss
...

On Fedora and other rpm based distributions install is with:

[root@fedora ~]# yum install alsa-oss alsaplayer-oss
...

alsa-oss provides with a command called aoss that should be used to work around some issues with old applications still depending on OSS:

hipo@debian:~$ aoss programName

Using aoss is helpful especially in situations if you have to run programs which deal with MIDI and others which somehow want to use /dev/dsp

There is also alternative way to enable alsa native support for MIDI and OSS by loading 3 kernel modules:

debian:~# modprobe snd-seq-oss
debian:~# modprobe snd-pcm-oss
debian:~# modprobe snd-mixer-oss

Note! The three modules has to be separately build using kernel source at most cases and does not come with most Linux distributions, so on many installations (including my current), they will be missing. If for you they load properly or you have customly build them add them also to load on system boot, like so:

echo 'snd-seq-oss' >> /etc/modules
echo 'snd-pcm-oss' >> /etc/modules
echo 'snd-mixer-oss' >> /etc/modules

The Linux sound situation becomes even more messy when ESD enters the scene. Many of the novice new Linux users certainly don't remember (Enlightened Sound Daemon) . ESD historically preceded PulseAudio . Hence it will be good to mention ESD was used for few years in GNOME and in around 2006-2007 it was substituted by PulseAudio.
Many applications, however who was ported or written for Linux especially (the proprietary ported ones) was already built to work with ESD and even though newer GNOME releases was fully using pulseaudio, this (non free software apps and games) were still depending on ESD.

The situation was partially fixed by creation of module for pulseaudio which added emulation support for esd . This was done by a module library for pulseaudio called libprotocol-esound.so
The package for almost all Linux distributions which does the esd emulation via pulse is pulseaudio-esound-compat . In latest Fedora Linux pulseaudio-esound-compat is installed by default.
In Debian and other Linux distributions it might need to be installed via apt with;

debian:~# apt-get install pulseaudio-esound-compat
...

pulseaudio-esound-compat solves some of the ESD app incompability but not always …
Handy tool also worthy to mention in solving PulseAudio, OSS incompatibility issues is padsp

padsp is helpful in solving obsolete issues with OSS applications (trying to access /dev/dsp) and therefore unable to communicate with Pulseaudio
padsp – is a PulseAudio OSS Wrapper.

An example where padsp is helpful is in case of /dev/dsp errors like:

/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
Could not open /dev/dsp

Another common problem with sound on Linux is when running windows applications (running windows games with wine).
Quite often sound fails to work since wine tries to directly communicate with alsa and fails because alsa sound channel is taken by pulseaudio.

To workaround wine issues with pulseaudio, one of the solutions is to temporary stop pulseaudio, before running the wine emulated application:

hipo@debian:~$ pulseaudio --kill

Later on when the windows wine emulation is completed, pulseaudio has to be started once again in order to make Pulseaudio applications produce sound again, e.g. one has to issue:

hipo@debian:~$ pulseaudio --start
Alternative way to workaround wine sound issues is by using a script to kill pulseaudio every second. Here is fix_pulseaudio_wine_sound_probs.sh script

This script was reported by many people as fix to problems with wine games failing to play sounds and music, anyhow I personally prefer using the stop / start pulseaudio method.

The picture below is taken from Wikipedia and illustrates, clearly the intergalactical complexity of sound systems on Gnu / Linux and BSD

I just hope one day this (OSS, ALSA, esd, Pulseaudio) mess will be over! In the mean time I hope my suggested work arounds helps someone. If someone has a better more unified script or solution please share in comments

How to change GNOME Resolution with a command using terminal or console on Debian GNU / Linux and FreeBSD

Friday, January 6th, 2012

I'm testing some old school arcade games, available from Debian's package repositories and quitting one of the games ended me up with a GNOME Screen Resolution of 640×480 pixels.

I wanted to revert back to the Classics resolution, so what I would normally do to do that is use >GNOME menus:

System -> Preferences -> Monitors

In that huge screen resolution on my 14 inch lenovo notebook screen, however the System menu cannot fit in 640×480 resolution. You can see the non-screen fitting System on the screenshot below:

Screenshot Debian GNU / Linux Squeeze GNOME Desktop 640x480

Having this situation, I needed a way to change back to my normal daily used 1024x768px screen resolution to continue my daily work by some other way.
One possible solution I thought of was Logging Off Gnome and logging again. Loggig off and log on again would usually restart the initiated GNOME session and therefore will reset the screen resolution to my default 1024×768 / 32 bit color.

Having the unobservable System gnome panel menu on my screen however made using the usual Log off procedure via System -> Log Out myusername impossible…

Another possible way to actually restart my screen and hence revert back to my original resolution is achiavable using the classical restart X server key switch CTRL + ALT + backspace (bckspc) . Though this was a possible approach to the situation, I had a bunch of programs already running on my desktop and I did not wanted to interrupt my desktop session, what I was looking for is simply change the screen resolution size .

With all said I had to look up for alternative way (preferably easy) way, to revert back my screen resolution to my desired 1024×768.

As a console guy, I was interested if there is some kind of possibility to change my GNOME resolution directly using xterm or gnome-terminal , after a bit of check up online, I've found few threads started by people who were looking just like me for a way to change GNOME / KDE screen resolution size on various distributions Linux desktops as well on Free/Net/Open/BSDs. The answer to the question on few places was the command xrandr which I had used some few years ago to initiate remote X server connections via SSH

xrandr is actually a great tool part of the x11-xserver-utils

Actually xrandr is capable of doing a few things besides setting the screen resolution size, just to name a few it supports change the screen orientation, reflection of the output of the screen, adjust brightness, set color gamma etc. etc.

It is good to mention that xrandr changes the resolution not on a GNOME level but on Xorg server level.

Using xrandr to change the screen resolution appeared to be very easy.

1. First I issued xrandr to check all the supported xrandr resolutions by my X server hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ xrandr Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)LVDS1 connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 304mm x 228mm 1024x768 60.0*+ 50.0 800x600 60.3 56.2 640x480 60.0 59.9 TV1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)hipo@noah:~/Desktop$

From the output you can see I have 3 basic resolutions configured in my Xorg, I can switch between.

2. To switch to my previous default screen resolution

hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ xrandr -s 1024x768

After using xrandr command to revert back to my default screen size, I realized there is two other (partially command line partially gui) way to change to 1024×768 pixels.3. Through launching gnome Control Center and searching for Monitors menu.

If one prefers this way he can;

i) press ALT+F2 to invoke Gnome's Run Application dialog

ii) issue gnome-control-center command:

GNOME run application Dialog GNOME Control Center cmd debian GNU / Linux

GNOME Control Center search Monitors menu debian GNU / Linux

4. By invoking gnome's Control Panel -> Monitors settings window by a command

hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ gnome-display-properties

GNOME display properties command to launch monitors screen resolution settings
 

GPL Arcade Volleyball – DOS Volleyball oldschool game remake for GNU / Linux

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Do you remember that oldschool Arcade VolleyBall game which was so popular on 16 bit (8086 XT) computers.
I remember this game from the years I was 12 years old, back in the days where we the gamers distributed all the DOS games on 360 KB 5.25" diskettes

I was looking over the games available to install on my Debian GNU / Linux today just to be happily suprised to find GPL Arcade Volleyball an identical game remake of the old Arcade Volleyball 8086 classic freeware game.

I remember we spend many hours with friends playing on the old Manifactured in Bulgaria Pravetz 16! computers
During communism and post communism Pravetz was the only computer brand we could buy from the market, as there was limitations on the exported and imported tech equipment within the USSR union.
Pravetz computers are a literal remake of 16 bit IBM 8086 computers and the computer design and integrals was stolen from IBM 16 bit 8086 / 8088 PC architecture

Arcade Volleyball has set a mark on my generation and I believe many people will remember the times this game was a hit with a bit of Nostalgia 😉
In the Game GPL Arcade Volleyball Debian GNU / Linux

Besides being an identical remake of PC Arcade Volleyball , GPL Arcade Volleyball is even expanded as it includes extra features which the original game lacked. Game includes:

  • Network Volleyball client / server Game (up to 4 players)
  • 6 Game Themes which completely change the game look & feel to be modernistic

Here are few GAV screenshots of the different existing game Themes:

Screenshot GPL Arcade VolleyBall Yisus

GPL Arcade Volleyball Yisus theme gameplay GNU / Linux
Yisus GAV Theme gameplay screenshot

GPL Arcade Volleyball Unnamed Theme Screenshot

GPL Arcade Volleyball unnamed Gameplay Theme Debian
GAV – Unnamed Theme Gameplay

Screenshot GAV FABeach gameplay
GAV – FaBeach Theme Gameplay

GAV supports both Window and fullscreen modes. To enable Fullscreen mode, while inside the game use:

Extra -> Fullscreen (Yes)

Saving preferences is also something which I if I recall correctly the original game lacked. This is done by navigating to:

Extra -> Save Preferences

GAV is said to support Joystick in resemblance to the original DOS game, though I've never tested it with a joy.

One of the greatest GAV game (hacks) is the Inverted Theme. Selecting it inverts the order in the game, where the game player becomes the volleyball ball and the ball becomes the player 😉

GPL Arcade Volleyball Arcade Inverted Theme - remake of DOS Volleyball Arcade
GAV does not yet not have a Free / Open / Net BSD port as far as I currently see, anyways since the game is Free Software probably soon a port will be available for BSDs as well.
The default GAV game controls are a bit untraditional. By default the one player game starts you play Volleyball game player positioned on the left.

For left player the default control keys are:
 

  • z – move player left
  • c – move player right
  • left shift – jump

Right player controls are:
 

  • Left – left (arrow key)
  • right – right (arrow key)
  • jump – up cursor key

GAV supports also a shortcut key for switching between windowed and full screen game mode by pressing F10
Installing the game on Debian and Ubuntu Linuces is done with:

linux:~# apt-get --yes install gav

Unfortunately gav does not have a definition to be added to GNOME or KDE Applications menus, thus to start the game after installed one has to do it manually by typing either in gnome RUN (Alt+F2) or on command line:

linux:~$ gav

Happy playing 😉