wordpress, feeds and categories!

I believe that it’s annoying for Planet readers to get once in a while a post that shouldn’t actually be on the Planet. Speaking for myself, it’s something I really want to take a close look and I’m seeking some council!

Considering I’m using WordPress, is there a way to only aggregate to Planet posts in a certain category (ex: Fedora) ? This would make everyone’s experience more pleasant I think.

If you know a workaround, please let me know, be it plugin, patch, weird method, etc.

thanks, nmarques

Faenza – Another great creation of Tiheum!

It’s somehow hard to find an icon set that pleases people… From everything that I’ve seen, I have to consider that the one I liked most was Humanities, and then Echo.

I’ve recently found Faenza from Tiheum which also provides some very nice GTK+ themes. Though this icon set is in development and lacks some icons, I have to say that this concept is the one that most pleases me from everything that I’ve seen in the last 12 years.

I’ve checked them out with a wide variety of GTK themes and they fit well in nearly all, including the old Clearlooks and the new redesigned one.

This iconset also includes nice mono icons for the status bar in dark and light versions (just like ubuntu-mono-* sets).

There is no more need to use Ubuntu branded themes on Fedora when something far nicer is available from what I believe to be an independent 3rd party.

Faenza @ deviantart.com

Google CEO and the 5th column!

This fun article is very enlightening…

[quote]”In a world of asynchronous threats,” said Schmidt, “it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it.”[/quote]

I see the 5th column battering up in underground networks training the terrorist of tomorrow… well I mean… freedom fighters… Terrorists according to the Portuguese dictionary are actually journalists… as by definition, a terrorist is the one who gossips in a alarming way. I’m still wondering why the Portuguese press was so shy in providing news about Google’s doings on the streets and how the Justice stopped them.

As in an answer to Google’s CEO, I only pray for 24 hours with the man and the availability of the goo’old Heretic’s Fork! A supreme tool developed in Iberia during the Holy Inquisition to submit the heretics into “the confession”. That man deserves it!

I wonder why such an educated man as Mr S. can actually place anti-social in the same level as criminal! I’m really wondering who’s the real criminal here!

Grub2 and Fedora…

Fedora Linux  uses still grub legacy as boot loader and I have to say there is no great need to change it as I like it. I’ve also seen a page about Grub2 from Jeremy Katz and his efforts around grub2.

The other day I’ve decided to check grub2 and started with a simple ‘yum install grub2‘… amazing thing is that by default after installing the package it made an entry on the grub legacy from where we could chain load grub2. This is interesting because it provided the opportunity of testing it properly without harming the MBR when experimenting.

By default it doesn’t create a config file with grub2-mkconfig. So this is actually the very first step needed. I’ve also noticed that it didn’t picked up my Windows 7 partitions. I do have the need of Windows 7 to be installed due to some proprietary software I require, and since I have a valid OEM licence for it, I also take the opportunity to use all the Windows fonts in Linux and using msttcorefonts. This was the only flaw I’ve noticed with the grub2 package available for Fedora.

Now… this can be easilly solved. On /etc/grub.d/40_custom users can add custom entries (Windows boot loader is installed on /dev/sda1 on my system), and so I added:

menuentry "Windows 7 Home Premium" {
insmod ntfs
set root='(hd0,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid
chainloader +1 }

The disk partition identifiers have changed in grub2 and no longer they start in 0, instead they start with 1. So /dev/sda1 is actually (hd0,1) is grub2 and would be (hd0,0) in grub legacy.

Grub2 grub2-mkconfig now generates properly the very own basic config for my system.

At this point I’ve found the second flaw in grub2 packaging. Most people want to use grub2 due to the gfxmode. Users need to have a font in pf2 format for this. Grub2 documentation referes often and recomends to use unifont in pf2 format, and also includes a tool to convert the font to the desired format (though virtually grub2 can operate with any font supported by freetype).

I couldn’t find a package with this font, so I needed to download unifont from Unifoundry and convert it with “grub2-mkfont -o /boot/grub2/unifont.pf2 /path/to/font/unifont.pcf“. Permission sanity check so that grub can actually see the font!

At this point, there’s two ways of finishing to configure grub, being the first edit directly the /etc/grub2.cfg config file or eventually tweak the /etc/grub.d/ scripts so that grub2-mkconfig can generate properly the config file for your system tweaked with your options.

I’ve decided to hack the config file I had generated earlier and made the replacements necessary by hand.

I’ve added the following:

# load font module & load unifont.pf2. loadfont can only be used after font module being loaded
# keep in mind that paths on config file refer to /boot/ which is the root of grub2. By using /grub2 we're actually pointing to /boot/grub2 from the filesystem root.
insmod font
loadfont /grub2/unifont.pf2

# load the modules I need
insmod vbe
insmod gfxterm
insmod png

# load the stuff I need
set gfxmode="1366x768x32"
set gfxpayload=keep
terminal_output gfxterm
terminal gfxterm
use_bg=true
background_image /grub2/goddard-1366x768.png

A fun “shutdown now -frn” and everything seemed to work properly.

The scripts from /etc/grub.d are not tweaked for Fedora, and they would actually require some care for the future. Another fun part on grub2 is that the config file can actually run shell script and lots of cool customizations can be done here… The integration of grub2 with Fedora is somehow needed of some tweaking… and I might be submitting soon a small patch for the /etc/grub.d scripts to fix some stuff.

This package is really interesting and except for the lack of unifont (make a dependency on it?) and detection of Windows partition works pretty well giving a nice cool boot menu for people’s systems. The screen does flicker 1 time between grub2 and plymouth loading.

Nice package and I’m looking forward to the day when it gets integrated with Fedora as the default boot loader. For sure something that on a personal level I would love to see happen.

Finally! grub2-install /dev/sda… done.

Another cool alternative as a bootloader is Chameleon developed by the OSX86 community. Though it requires some patching is also offers good functionality and tweaking! but that is a different story and a far more complex boot loader to install.

firefighters, the pride of the nation!

It was around 2AM when I parked my car in the service area on the A1 highway for a quick coffee and bio break. As I entered I’ve found an abnormal concentration of fire fighters. Those brave men and women had traveled over 300Km north to help their comrades up north with the fires that have been burning in Portugal in the past weeks.

I’ve offered myself to pay for their coffee, which they refused at first, but after a bit of chat they ended up by allowing me to buy them the coffee. I’ve also thanked them for their initiative and help. I know how important it is for one that leaves his family behind and takes his free time to accomplish something far greater than most men will ever realize. I saw in their faces the same spirit that built this country and hold it for almost 1000 years, sacrifice and abnegation for something greater than one’s own ambitions.

On my way back, I’ve stopped outside and went for cigarette with my fiancée before heading back to the car, a time when a tourist came by, and in a funny way she said: “looks like there’s going to be a firefighter party”. I’ve turned to her and told her that those men were voluntary firefighters from the south of Portugal and they came up north to help their colleagues fighting the fires that are burning for weeks. Every corporation donates a car and it’s crew of voluntaries and their form large columns from 10 to 20 cars and move north to help on fires.

It’s not everyday that people witness such deeds, and I can’t just explain how emotioned I became when I saw that 17 car long column leave up north to Braga (Bracara Augusta, in latin) to help. For a moment tears came into my eyes.

A very huge thanks to all those volunteers that leave behind their families to help our population and local fight the fires that consume our woods in this troubled times. Their sacrifice and abnegation has not passed unseen, neither it will pass unrecognized.