Posts Tagged ‘someone’

Transactional Analysis Eric Berne – Games people play

Friday, June 8th, 2012

GamesPeoplePlay-eric-bernes-and-the-psychology-without-God-trying-to-explain-us-through-game-raw-models

Dr. Eric Berne is highly regarded as one of the most notable psychology psychiatry scientists of our age.

He developed a theory called Transactional Analysis. That is heavy in use in American companies nowdays.

Berne is also preached by a lot of universities all around the world.
His theory concludes in a claim that each person has three person states embedded and throughout all his life, he jumps to one of these 3 states.

1. Child
2.  Parent
3. Adult

According to berne during daily lives we encounter other people who also have this three "hidden" persons born inside. So if a Child encounters a Parent or Adult encounters a Child a clash often occurs and this results in a lot of misconceptions angry faces, angry talks and hatred.

Therefore Dr. Berne advices, companies and individuals to learn to know in which state they're everytime they speak with someone and to understand in what kind of state the other person is to talk always in between people peers in one and the same state.

Here are few videos of Bernes himself explaining his Theory ,,,

 

Berne Interview on Transactional Analysis chapter I

Berne's Transactional Analysis – Games People Play II

Bernes Transactional Analysis Games People Play III

Bernes Transactional Analysis // Games People Play IV

Now with all my respect to psychology and psychiatry as important science for a functioning society.
I cannot fully accept Berne's idea and it is surely not working full time for the simple reason it is just another theory.
And theory is never fully proven it is a model of how someone sees the world.

From a Christian point of view his theory is rather destructive as it puts everything in a frame of games. If his ideas are continued on this would mean the life is just a game. This is rather untrue if we take all the poor people in Africa all the beggars and everyone who has hardships in life. Berne's theory builds up on the idea of one social benefits backboned society and not on democracy as we know it. The hungry man is hard to play, the people who can't find food and die from hunger don't play either. Another thing I think is very wrong with his theory is teaching people to act like robots and putting everything in some kind of a mathematical like framework.
He says, everyone should think like:

I'M OKAY — YOU'RE OKAY

However it is fact that some people are not OKAY and they just want to use you. Berne's theory obviously is based on imaginative thinking that everyone on society is on the same level and everyone are conditioned in the same way. Is that true?? Will a person raised up in a Christian family told a philosophy to be good with people the same as a people raised up by a kid raised up by parents who has adherence for occult.
Talking about religion, the worst of the guys philosophy is that it rejects faith in God or anything but base the claim on a pure ahteistic world view ,,,

I've been told some of this crazy persons ideas while I was studying in Arnhem Business School. Right then I've rejected the theory told to me in classes exposing Berne's ideas I still reject it and believe Christians should stay away from Berne's psychiatry.

And finally I don't want to be a racist but just like Nitzsche and Freud he is also jew, a strange coincidence

How to take multiple screenshots with scrot and ImageMagick import commands in terminal on GNU / Linux and FreeBSD

Friday, January 13th, 2012

scrot and import are two commands, which can be used to take screenshot in terminal on Linux and FreeBSD:

To use scrot cmd to take screenshots on Ubuntu and Debian the scrot package has to be installed:

noah:~# apt-get install scrot
...

scrot should also be available on most other Linux distributions in the main repositories, I'll be glad to hear if someone has used it on Fedora, SUSE etc.

On FreeBSD, there is a port called scrot , to install on FreeBSD:

freebsd# cd /usr/ports/graphics/scrot
freebsd# make install clean
...

Scrot has plenty of nice arguments one can use to make a screenshot. Maybe the most handy one in my view is after a preliminary set delay before screenshot is taken.

To take screenshot with it after lets say 5 seconds delay before the screenshot:

hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ scrot -t 20 -d 5

Screenshot scrot my debian Linux gnome-termina

To put an year, month and day and year followed by screen resolution with scrot :

hipo@noah:~$ scrot '%Y-%m-%d_$wx$h.png'

Another way to take a screenshot of screen with command is by using ImageMagick'simport image manipulation package.
To take screenshot of the current screen via terminal using import , type in xterm, gnome-termina or Gnome's Run Application (ALT+F2)

hipo@noah:~$ import -window root ScreenShot.png

To make import command to save the taken screenshot in a format (minute:hour:day:month:year)i :

hipo@noah:~$ import -window root $screenshot_dir/screenshot-$(date +%M_%k_%d_%m_%Y|sed -e 's/^ *//').png

Taking a delayed screenshot is also possible via The GIMP via menus File -> Create -> Screenshot

GIMP Screenshot 15 seconds delay GIMP window screenshot

Now here is an interesting question, what if I would like to take periodic screenshots of what I do on my Desktop to take random movie scenes from a movie I watch with totem or vlc??

This task is quite easily achiavable with a little bash shell script, I wrote:

screenshot_dir='Screenshots';
seconds='60';
if [ ! -d "$screenshot_dir" ]; then
mkdir $screenshot_dir;
fi
while [ 1 ]; do
sleep $seconds;
(import -window root $screenshot_dir/screenshot-$(date +%M_%k_%d_%m_%Y|sed -e 's/^ *//').png) &
done

This script will take screenshot automatically to Screenshots/ directory every (1 min – 60 seconds)
You can also my downloads take_screenshot_every_60_secs_import.sh here

To use take_screenshot_every_60_secs_import.sh just issue the script inside xterm or gnome-terminal, after that simply use your computer as you normally would.
The script will take snapshots every minute and store all taken screenshots in Screenshots dir.

If you prefer to use scrot to take automatically the screenshots every lets say 5 minutes, you can use a script like:

screenshot_dir='Screenshots';
# 300 secs (5 mins)seconds='300';
if [ ! -d "$screenshot_dir" ]; then
mkdir $screenshot_dir;
fi
while [ 1 ]; do
sleep $seconds;
(scrot $screenshot_dir/'%Y-%m-%d_$wx$h.png') &
done

You can fetch take_screenshot_every_60_secs_scrot.sh here

The script using scrot is better in terms of efficiency, the system load scrot will put on your machine will be less.
Using some of this scripts will be handy if you need screenshots to Movies, Programs and favourite Free Software games.
Hope this is educative to someone 😉

Quick shortcut to lock your Linux computer desktop (Few words on Linux screensavers)

Thursday, November 20th, 2014

quick-way-to-lock-desktop-linux-howto-key
Locking the PC while going for a coffee break, Lunch or toilet is longly used to secure physically your PC display from spying eyes or prevent you from  someone to install a spying software or leak private data from PC HDD to an USB drive.
People who are coming from the wonderful MS Windows OS   are certainly used to quick shortcut key combination to lock PC screen with:
 

Windows key + L

 

So how to do Lock Screen on Linux?

On Linux locking your Screen the Quick Shortcut is:
 

CTRL + ALT + L.


Locking the screen is done (depending on the Linux distribution) by using by either using historically famous XScreenSaver if non-gnome / KDE graphical environemnt is used or if in Linux Gnome GUI with  gnome-screensaver and on KDE desktop manager with kscreenlocker.

 

Exact command executed on CTRL + ALT + L keypress on GNOME is:
 

gnome-screensaver-command -l


On KDE to manually lock screen command is:

kscreenlocker

Nomatter whether with GNOME or KDE its worthy mention that xscreensaver is more Screensaver rich than kscreenlocker and gnome-screensaver as it includes about 200 different Screensavers making screen nice to watch when you come back from a lunch.

For people with Windows key keyboard who are too used to using Windows XP / 7 lockreen WIN + L key shortcut to make Windows (key) + L keys combination work on Linux with GNOME desktop:
 

System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts

Make Win + L keys combination work on Linux with KDE desktop
 

  1.  "System Settings" (KDE menu).
  2. Choose "Keyboard & mouse" (on "General" tab).
  3. Choose "Global Keyboard Shortcuts" on the left.
  4. Choose "Run Command Interface" from "KDE component" dropdown list.
  5. Choose "Lock session".
  6. Select "Custom".
  7. Click on "None" (button changes to "Input…").
  8. Compose your desired sequence by pressing appropriate buttons on your keyboard.
  9. Click "Apply".

 


For other desktop environments like Window Maker you can use xmodmap command to bind Win + L keys

I work for money if you want loyalty hire a dog – thinking that can solve your internal workplace (dilemmas) issues :)

Wednesday, February 12th, 2014

I-work-for-money-if-you-want-loyalty-hire-a-dog

I WORK FOR MONEY IF YOU WANT LOYALTY – HIRE A DOG!

I was told about those picture few months ago by a friend (Ivan Pushkaroff – Pushi) while we were drinking beer together in  (Delfincheto – a pub more known among people under the name "Ribkata (The Fish)" – A Metal Music pub in Studentski Grad (Sofia's Student City). By the way if you're in Sofia and near "Studentski Grad" be sure to drop by there – they serve great and always fresh fish also for ex-metal heads for me it is always nice to get some memories about  "the good old metal years"

when I tried to complain how difficult it is for me on my job place. I'm a quite sensitive person and a perfectionist and always try to do a great job. Often however there are many obstacles to do your job in right way (as you depend on so many bureaucracy and external people that even if you do your best someone else can mix it up and screw all your effort by not doing his part of the job. The failure of project or Task due to inadeaquacy of someone else involved to do his job right can leave you with a feeling that you have failed even though it is completely not your fault. As these days I'm quite stressed on my job and I have to work on a lot of badly designed projects (and improperly) assigned tasks – yes in big companies it is like these "the right hand doesn't know what the left one is doing". I remembered my dear friend advice to not take it seriously or personally and decided to put these funny picture in hope that these will help me and others to deal with situation of hardships in job in a humorous way After all I'm just a mercenary and I'm doing my best right now in my job at HP … I work for money if they expect higher degree of loyalty let them hire a dog 🙂

How to check MASTER / SLAVE MySQL nodes status – Check MySQL Replication Status

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

I'm doing replication for one server. Its not the first time I do configure replication between two MySQL database nodes, however since I haven't done it for a few years, my "know how" has mostly vanished so I had some troubles in setting it up. Once I followed some steps to configure replication I had to check if the two MASTER / Slave MySQL db nodes communicate properly. Hence I decided to drop a short post on that just in case if someone has to do the same or if I myself forget how I did it so I can check later on:

1. Check if MASTER MySQL server node is configured properly

The standard way to check a MySQL master node status info is with:
 

mysql> show master status;
+——————+———-+———————————————————+——————+
| File | Position | Binlog_Do_DB | Binlog_Ignore_DB |
+——————+———-+———————————————————+——————+
| mysql-bin.000007 | 106 | database1,database2,database3 | |
+——————+———-+———————————————————+——————+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

By putting \G some extra status info is provided:
 

mysql> show master status\G;
*************************** 1. row ***************************
File: mysql-bin.000007
Position: 106
Binlog_Do_DB: database1,database2,database3
Binlog_Ignore_DB:
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

ERROR:
No query specified

2. Check if Slave MySQL node is configured properly

To check status of the slave the cmd is:
 

mysql> show slave status;

The command returns an output like:
 

mysql> show slave status;+———————————-+————-+————-+————-+—————+——————+———————+————————-+—————+———————–+——————+——————-+——————————————————-+———————+——————–+————————+————————-+—————————–+————+————+————–+———————+—————–+—————–+—————-+—————+——————–+——————–+——————–+—————–+——————-+—————-+———————–+——————————-+—————+—————+—————-+—————-+| Slave_IO_State | Master_Host | Master_User | Master_Port | Connect_Retry | Master_Log_File | Read_Master_Log_Pos | Relay_Log_File | Relay_Log_Pos | Relay_Master_Log_File | Slave_IO_Running | Slave_SQL_Running | Replicate_Do_DB | Replicate_Ignore_DB | Replicate_Do_Table | Replicate_Ignore_Table | Replicate_Wild_Do_Table | Replicate_Wild_Ignore_Table | Last_Errno | Last_Error | Skip_Counter | Exec_Master_Log_Pos | Relay_Log_Space | Until_Condition | Until_Log_File | Until_Log_Pos | Master_SSL_Allowed | Master_SSL_CA_File | Master_SSL_CA_Path | Master_SSL_Cert | Master_SSL_Cipher | Master_SSL_Key | Seconds_Behind_Master | Master_SSL_Verify_Server_Cert | Last_IO_Errno | Last_IO_Error | Last_SQL_Errno | Last_SQL_Error |+———————————-+————-+————-+————-+—————+——————+———————+————————-+—————+———————–+——————+——————-+——————————————————-+———————+——————–+————————+————————-+—————————–+————+————+————–+———————+—————–+—————–+—————-+—————+——————–+——————–+——————–+—————–+——————-+—————-+———————–+——————————-+—————+—————+—————-+—————-+| Waiting for master to send event | HOST_NAME.COM | slave_user | 3306 | 10 | mysql-bin.000007 | 106 | mysqld-relay-bin.000002 | 251 | mysql-bin.000007 | Yes | Yes | database1,database2,database3 | | | | | | 0 | | 0 | 106 | 407 | None | | 0 | No | | | | | | 0 | No | 0 | | 0 | |+———————————-+————-+————-+————-+—————+——————+———————+————————-+—————+———————–+——————+——————-+——————————————————-+———————+——————–+————————+————————-+—————————–+————+————+————–+———————+—————–+—————–+—————-+—————+——————–+——————–+——————–+—————–+——————-+—————-+———————–+——————————-+—————+—————+—————-+—————-+

As you can see the output is not too readable, as there are too many columns and data to be displayed and this doesn't fit neither a text console nor a graphical terminal emulator.

To get more readable (more verbose) status for the SQL SLAVE, its better to use command:
 

mysql> show slave status\G;

Here is a sample returned output:
 

mysql> show slave status\G;*************************** 1. row *************************** Slave_IO_State: Waiting for master to send event Master_Host: HOST_NAME.COM Master_User: slave_user Master_Port: 3306 Connect_Retry: 10 Master_Log_File: mysql-bin.000007 Read_Master_Log_Pos: 106 Relay_Log_File: mysqld-relay-bin.000002 Relay_Log_Pos: 251 Relay_Master_Log_File: mysql-bin.000007 Slave_IO_Running: Yes Slave_SQL_Running: Yes Replicate_Do_DB: database1,database2,database3 Replicate_Ignore_DB: Replicate_Do_Table: Replicate_Ignore_Table: Replicate_Wild_Do_Table: Replicate_Wild_Ignore_Table: Last_Errno: 0 Last_Error: Skip_Counter: 0 Exec_Master_Log_Pos: 106 Relay_Log_Space: 407 Until_Condition: None Until_Log_File: Until_Log_Pos: 0 Master_SSL_Allowed: No Master_SSL_CA_File: Master_SSL_CA_Path: Master_SSL_Cert: Master_SSL_Cipher: Master_SSL_Key: Seconds_Behind_Master: 0Master_SSL_Verify_Server_Cert: No Last_IO_Errno: 0 Last_IO_Error: Last_SQL_Errno: 0 Last_SQL_Error: 1 row in set (0.00 sec)ERROR: No query specified

If show master status or shwo slave status commands didn't reveal replication issue, one needs to stare at the mysql log for more info.

Life was easier when Blackberry and Apple were just fruits

Saturday, June 30th, 2012

Life was much easier when blackberry and Apple were just fruits

Sad but true fact Life was much easier when BlackBerry and Apple were just fruits!.

I don’t know about others but I have difficulties to adjust my body to the fast pace life has taken. Life would was easy and more fun without all this technology. Now even going to a pub you can’t escape the “doom” of technology. If the tech hype continues the way it does or something drastic doesn’t happen I guess all people on earth will get completely crazy …

I thougth about how this techno-mambo jumbo can be stopped on a wide scale and the only idea I have is a weapon that blocks all tech equipment world-wide. I hope someone will develop it soon and press the destory button SOON ! 🙂

Three Ways to Reduce Addiction to Mobile Phone ( GSM ) use

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

Mobile Phone Caricature Reduce Mobile Addiction / 3 ways to reduce mobile phone addiction / Use your Mobile less

1.: Don't use a ring tone or use a short landline phone ringtone on incoming calls

In the past, we all had a local stand line phones, most of the landline phones rung using a very specific ring sound which was almost identical on all phones around the world. This ringing tone used was following some telephone standards. The result was everyone could distinguish a ringing phone in a room or closed space and tell for sure, this sound is generated by a phone. Nowdays with the boom of cellular phone ringtones, there is almost noone who uses a standard old-fashioned telephone ringtone as a ring melody.

The consequence of this is in our minds we start loosing the boundary between whether communicating on the phone or communicating without it.
In younger people this boundary between phone line and a physical communication is more evident than in adults (as youngsters has grown in society where mobile was used everywhere). The implication of this is more and more people are starting to perceive mobile communication as so natural as the person to person communication. Spending big part of the day talking over the phone mostly senseless things, not being consciously aware that this is done due to a heavy phone addiction and repeating behaviour trait stored sub-consciously.

Today everyone chooses a custom mobile phone ringtone melody (popular or impopular) song and sets it up to be a standard incoming call signal. As you can guess there are consequences on the mind, as the ringtone set is heard ten times or more a day during each and every phone call. The result is just like with alcoholics or drug addicts, the more you take from a certain "good" the more attached you become to it. Hence the more we listen to a certain song chunk daily on incoming calls, the sub-conscious becomes dependent on hearing this sound at least a number of times daily. If a day passes without no-one calling us and we don't hear the ringtone indicating a call the sub-conscious stored dependency starts popping up and we could start feeling lonely and we feel like calling someone (and we often do). Obviously this is dependency and even if someone might argue me this is a severe addiction which as every other addiction could be very dangerous and hard to fight.

As I prior said due to the fact that the phone use dependency is built in our minds starting with the phone ring melody, we can reduce this dependency by switching off the phone ringtone completely or at least changing it to a unique beep which is not likely to be heard or seen somewhere in your surrounding environment.

By setting the ringtone to some popular song we see on (TV, Radio or Internet on daily basis) this might become a trigger for us to associate hearing this sound with talking on the phone and hence make you increase the time you spend on the phone ,,, so be careful ,,,,

2.:: Stop Mobile Beeps and sounds on menu navigation

All new mobiles sold on the market are configured to have buzzling sounds on events and various beeps on keypad lock / unlock and menu navigation.
This sounds are there mostly to make you more alert and concentrated on using your mobile and often as a consequence whether one uses his mobile his awareness is comletely taken by the phone screen (you're totally "absorbed" by the phone use).
Besides designed to alert you the Managers and CEO's who decided to have a heavy beep sounds on mobiles made it having probably something else on mind? The beeps on keypad navigation makes the user emotionally and sub-consciously attached to the Cell Phone. The idea here is like in popular music streamed on radios and TVs and mostly everywhere …. The more you listen to a song, the higher the mind trait it leaves in you, so later when one hears a music pattern or a whole song, which he / she listened already thousands of times this brings back "good" old memories. It is very simple actually our minds are constructed in a way that the mor certain "information" is heard / saw / smell the bigger the mind influence this leaves on us. Back to the mobile sounds, the more you use the mobile phone with turned on sounds, the more addicted and mind stucked the beep and melodies during use of the cell phone becomes in the mind. For example many people take a look at their mobile automatically (without being consciously aware) and do the activity of (unlock) and (lock) the phone screen not knowing they do it automatic. More or less we all do such an auto-mated learned behaviour because of the subconscious dependency that is built in our minds. Whether we lock and unlock the mobile phone almost robotically, we do it because our sub-conscious mind plays a trick on us and "force" us to do a previous learned activity (association in our mind with the unlock / lock beep sound).

3.::: Use your mobile in different ways

Any modern mobile is quite advanced in functionality and there is more than one way to initiate a phone call. E.g. the mobile has a shortcut buttons assigned to do quick phone calls, quickly evoke SMS menu etc.
Learn them and occasionally use the shortcut buttons instead of the menu navigation. Our minds like changing patterns and doing things different.

Even if you have no chance to do a things via a certain menu, you can always change the position of the phone screen to different distance to eyesight 🙂 You can for example type on the keypad following the menu steps by watching from left or right eye periphery or you can use the menus with your phone screen turned backwards 🙂 If you're used to type on the keypad or touch screen with right hand try doing it with the left hand 🙂

This will take time but the fun worths it. Plus the most valuable thing in using the mobile in different ways each time is there is no specific inflicting pattern associated in your mind and hence the depepdency set in your sub-conscious mind on phone use is lesser.
Actually there are too many various "hacks" one could come up with on how to use mobile as differently as possible. It is up to your imagination. Though using the mobile "each-time-different" can be sometimes more time-consuming it surely makes your phone use amusing.

How to add support for DJVU file format on M$ Windows, Mac, GNU / Linux and FreeBSD

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

Windjview Format paper Clipper logo / support DjView on Windows and Linux

By default there is no way to see what is inside a DJVU formatted document on both Windows and Linux OS platforms. It was just a few months ago I saw on one computer I had to fix up the DJVU format. DJVU format was developed for storing primary scanned documents which is rich in text and drawings.
Many old and ancient documents for example Church books in latin and some older stuff is only to be found online in DJVU format.
The main advantage of DJVU over lets say PDF which is also good for storing text and visual data is that DJVU's data encoding makes the files much more smaller in size, while still the quality of the scanned document is well readable for human eye.

DJVU is a file format alternative to PDF which we all know has been set itself to be one of the major standard formats for distributing electronic documents.

Besides old books there are plenty of old magazines, rare reports, tech reports newspapers from 1st and 2nd World War etc in DJVU.
A typical DJVU document takes a size of only lets say 50 to 100 KBytes of size just for comparison most a typical PDF encoded document is approximately sized 500 KiloBytes.

1.% Reading DJVU's on M$ Windoze and Mac-s (WinDjView)

The program reader for DJVU files in Windows is WinDjView WinDjView official download site is here

WinDjView is licensed under GPLv2 is a free software licensed under GPL2.

WinDjView works fine on all popular Windows versions (7, Vista, 2003, XP, 2000, ME, 98, NT4).

WinDjView with opened old document Sol manual ,,,,

I've made a mirror copy of WinDjView for download here (just in case something happens with the present release and someone needs it in future).

For Mac users there is also a port of WinDjView called MacDjView ;;;,

2.% Reading DJVU files on GNU / Linux

The library capable of rendering DJVUs in both Linux and Windows is djviewlibre again free software (A small note to make here is WinDjView also uses djviewlibre to render DJVU file content).

The program that is capable of viewing DJVU files in Linux is called djview4 I have so far tested it only with Debian GNU / Linux.

To add support to a desktop Debian GNU / Linux rel. (6.0.2) Squeeze, had to install following debs ;;;

debian:~# apt-get install --yes djview4 djvulibre-bin djviewlibre-desktop libdjviewlibre-text pdf2djvu
........
...

pdf2djvu is not really necessery to install but I installed it since I think it is a good idea to have a PDF to DJVU converter on the system in case I somedays need it ;;;

djview4 is based on KDE's QT library, so unfortunately users like me who use GNOME for a desktop environment will have the QT library installed as a requirement of above apt-get ;;;

Here is Djview4 screenshot with one opened old times Bulgarian magazine called Computer – for you

DJVU Pravetz Computer for you old school Bulgarian Pravetz magazine

Though the magazine opens fine, every now and then I got some spit errors whether scrolling the pages, but it could be due to improperly encoded DJVU file and not due to the reader. Pitily, whether I tried to maximize the PDF and read it in fullscreen I got (segfault) error and the program failed. Anyways at least I can read the magazine in non-fullscreen mode ;;; ,,,,

3.% Reading DJVU's on FreeBSD and (other BSDs)

Desktop FreeBSD users and other BSD OS enthusiasts could also use djview4 to view DJVUs as there is a BSD port in the ports tree.
To use it on BSD I had to install port /usr/ports/graphics/djview4:

freebsd# cd /usr/ports/graphics/djview4
freebsd# make install clean
,,,,...

For G / Linux users who has to do stuff with DJVU files, there are two other programs which might be useful:
 

  • a) djvusmooth – graphical editor for DjVu
  • b) gscan2pdf – A GUI to produce PDFs or DjVus from scanned documents

DJVUSmooth Debian GNU / Linux opened prog

I tried djusmooth to edit the same PDF magazine which I prior opened but I got an Unhandled exception: IOError, as you can in below shot:

DJVUSmooth Unhandled Exception IOError

This is probably normal since djvusmooth is in its very early stage of development – current version is 0.2.7-1

Unfortunately I don't have a scanner at home so I can't test if gscan2pdf produces proper DJVUs from scans, anyways I installed it to at least check the program interface which on a first glimpse looks simplistic:

gscan2pdf 0.9.31 Debian Linux Squeeze screenshot
To sum it up obviously DJVU seems like a great alternative to PDF, however its support for Free Software OSes is still lacking behind.
The Current windows DJVU works way better, though hopefully this will change soon.

How to disable PC Spaker on Debian and Ubuntu Linux

Sunday, May 13th, 2012

 

How to disable pc-speaker on Linux / PC-Speaker Old Desktop Computer picture

A PC Speaker is helpful as it could be used as a tool for diagnosing system hardware failures (different systems produce different beep sequences depending on the machine BIOS type).
Using the instructions for the respective BIOS vendor and version one could determine the type of problem experienced by a machine based on the sequence and frequency of sounds produced by the SPEAKER.
Lets say a hardware component on a server is down with no need for a monitor or screen to be attached you can say precisely if it is the hard drive, memory or fan malfunctioning…

Generally speaking historically embedded PC Speaker was inseparatable part of the Personal Computers, preceding the soundblasters, now this is changing but for compitability sake many comp equipment vendors still produce machines with pc-speaker in.
Some newer machines (mostly laptops) are factory produced with no PC-SPEAKER component anymore.
For those who don't know what is PC SPEAKER, it is a hardware device capable of emitting very simple short beep sounds at certain system occasions.

Talking about PC-Speaker, it reminds me of the old computer days, where we used pc-speakers to play music in DOS quite frequently.
It was wide practice across my friends and myself to use the pc-speaker to play Axel Folly and other mod files because we couldn't afford to pay 150$ for a sound cards. Playing a song over pc-speaker is quite a nice thing and it will be a nice thing if someone writes a program to be able to play songs on Linux via the pc-speaker for the sake of experiment.

As of time of writting, I don't know of any application capable of playing music files via the pc-speaker if one knows of something like this please, drop me a comment..

As long as it is used for hardware failure diagnosis the speaker is useful, however there are too many occasions where its just creating useless annoying sounds.
For instance whether one uses a GUI terminal or console typing commands and hits multiple times backspace to delete a mistyped command. The result is just irritating beeps, which could be quite disturbing for other people in the room (for example if you use Linux as Desktop in heterogeneous OS office).
When this "unplanned" glitchering beeps are experienced 100+ times a day you really want to break the computer, as well as your collegues are starting to get mad (if not using their headphones) 🙂

Hence you need sometimes to turn off the pc-speaker to save some nerves.

Here is how this is done on major Linux distros.

On Debian and most other distros, the PC SPEAKER is controlled by a kernel module, so to disable communication with the speaker you have to remove the kernel module.

On Debian and Fedora disabling pcspeaker is done with:

# modprobe -r pcspkr

Then to permanently disable load of the pcspkr module on system boot:

debian:~# echo 'blacklist pcspkr' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

On Ubuntu to disable load on boot /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, file should be used:

ubuntu:~# echo 'blacklist pcspkr' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Well that's all folks …

Why I never liked Mandrake Linux / Mankdrake Linux has took its name from an 1930s comics Mandrake the Magician

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

I never liked Mandrake Linux, since day 1 I saw it.
Historically Mandrake Linux was one of the best Linux distributions available for free download in the "Linux scene" some 10 to 12 years ago.

Mandrake was simple gui oriented and trendy. It also one the Linux distribution with the most simplified installer program and generally a lot of GUI software for easy configuration and use by the end user.

Though it's outside nice look, still for me it was like an "intuition" that Mandrake is not so good as it appeared.

Now many years later I found by chance that Mandrake has been sued to change their Operating System name with another, due to a law suit requit by the copyright holders of Mandrake The Magician comics. "Mandrake the Magician" used to be a very popular before the Second World war in the 1930's.

Mandrake the Magician Comics Magazine from 1930's Cover, Mandrake the Black Magic Magician

It obviously not a co-incidence that the Mandrake names was after this comics and not the mandrake herb plants available in Europe, Africa and Asia. This is clear in Mandrake Linux distro earlier mascot, you see below:

Mandrake Linux old distribution logo, magician penguin

Later on they changed Mandrake's logo to loose the connection with Mandrake The Magician and used another new crafted logo:

Mandrake GNU Linux newer logo
Its quite stunning nowdays magician obsession, has so heavily infiltrated our lives that even something like a Free Softwre Linux distribution might have some kind of reference to magician and occult stuff (I saw this from the position of being Christian) …

Later due to the name copyright infringement Mandrake Linux was renamed first to Mandragora Linux.
Instead of putting some nice name non related to occultism or magic stuff the French commercian company behind Mandrake rename it to another non-Christian name Mandragora.
Interestingly the newer name Mandragora as one can read in wikipedia means:
 

Mandragora (demon), in occultism

Well apparently, someone from the head developers of this Linux distribution has a severe obsession with magic and occultism.

Later MandrakeSoft (The French Company behind Mandrake Linux) renamed finally the distribution to Mandriva under the influence of the merger of Mandrake with the Brazillian company Connectiva this put also an over to the legal dispute copyright infringement dispute with Hearst Corporation (owning the rights of Mandrake the Magician).

Having in mind all fact on current Mandriva "dark names history", I think it is better we Christians avoid it …