Eclipse buttons not working?
Posted by Robbie Scourou on February 21st, 2010. Topics: of interest
This had me banging my head against a brick wall – in Ubuntu Karmic, if you use Eclipse and your buttons stop working, create a shell script to launch Eclipse and do the following in it before you run the Eclipse binary:
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
From http://www.ubun2.com/question/334/clicking_eclipse_buttons_not_working_or_does_nothing
Lost your mysql root password?
Posted by Robbie Scourou on February 3rd, 2010. Topics: of interest
Thought I would make a short instructive post as twice in the last month or so I’ve seen people come across this problem and not know how to resolve it. In one instance, the user had re-installed mysql and stuffed the server slightly.
If you have command line access to the server, and can login as a root user (or use sudo), do the following to reset your mysql root password.
- Stop the mysql server, either by directly killing it, or using a startup script (recommended).
- Create a text file on the server with the following in it (replace “somepassword” with your new password):
UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('somepassword') WHERE User='root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; - Start the mysql server manually, using the –init-file switch:
mysqld_safe --init-file=/path/to/file/created/above &
- Your mysql root password should now be reset, test it out.
- If you can connect using the new authentication details, delete the created file, and then stop the mysqld service and start again using the correct startup scripts for your system
Simple as that. No need to re-install any software, nuke your data, or spend longer then 15 mins fixing the problem.
Open Source and Gaming
Posted by Robbie Scourou on January 22nd, 2010. Topics: of interest
I love computer games. I have done ever since playing the isometric Batman adventure game for my first computer, an Amstrad 6128K, on a green monochrome monitor. My current platform of choice is a playstation 3. I used to be a big windows gamer, but have since switched all my computers over to running Ubuntu Linux (mainly due to exasperation with Windows).
Now the playstation is great for gaming, buy isn’t really suitable for casual play, not to mention the fact that as its plugged into the big tv downstairs, I have to make sure I don’t monopolise use of the living room.
All this has driven me to explore the current state of gaming on linux. To my surprise I found quite a few games in the Ubuntu repositories. A few of the picks are listed below.
- Battle for Wesnoth – an excellent turn based strategy game.
- Tux Racer – a classic. Simple but addictive.
- Aleph One – the open source Marathon engine. Marathon was the FPS game series released by Bungie studios before their Halo success. Great story line and world creation in this game.
- Frets on Fire – a guitar hero clone that is surprisingly as addictive as the real thing.
- Nethack – gets a special mention. No fancy graphics, bloody confusing at first and huge learning curve, but once you grasp it – surprisingly addictive and very fun . Play on the public nethack server on alt.org.
Freenet, Darknets, the hidden web
Posted by Robbie Scourou on November 26th, 2009. Topics: of interest
Well. I was halfway through writing up a few thoughts on private p2p networks like Freenet, then the Guardian published this piece (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet) – followed by Freenet’s creator posting this slight rebuttal (http://blog.locut.us/main/2009/11/25/the-guardian-writes-about-freenet.html).
So I guess I’ll let them fill you in! 
Suffice to say that the Guardian article should be taken with a healthy dose of NaCl. It reads like quite a sensationalist piece. Much of the “Dark Web” they talk about are things like company Intranets and non-public social networking sites (your facebook profile for non friends for instance). It’s not all scary Russians and kiddie fiddlers. The readers that are shocked by the ‘hidden’ Internet tend to be those that don’t really know what the Internet comprises in the first place.
Still, if you want to see what the Internet looked like 10-15 years ago – fire up a copy of Freenet and browse around. It’s a good project that deserves a little more positive publicity.
Overthink: Targets, targets and targets.
Posted by Robbie Scourou on October 17th, 2009. Topics: Overthink business
I was recently asked how I measure success in what I am doing. How do I know what is enough?
Quick Links: Ted talks
Posted by Robbie Scourou on September 25th, 2009. Topics: of interest
I find the ted talks quite inspiring, and try to keep up with them as they are posted. Here are a few picks.
Overthink: Short lessons…
Posted by Robbie Scourou on September 24th, 2009. Topics: Overthink business
It’s been a busy couple of months. I would hesitate to say maybe too busy, because all work is good work, but a few breaks in the schedule would have been nice.
It’s easy to book in a full month or two of work, and it feels good to be able to say to yourself “I’m on target”. Remember though, if you book a full 5 days to your clients, when do you do your admin? If you book out a full month, when do you sort out your invoicing. You need to be careful with it otherwise you’ll soon be doing 10 hr days to keep up with it all.
I’ve found that so far, running my own company (of one person) is quite easy once I got things off the ground, but there is a constant admin cost associated with it – small, but it’s there. Make sure you keep room in your schedule for it.
Beyond that, when you do get your down time, make sure you enjoy it and step completely away from the work. Working for yourself so you can work in a flexible manner is great, but not if that’s all you do.
Overthink: In the event of an emergency… (the disaster recovery post)
Posted by Robbie Scourou on August 1st, 2009. Topics: Overthink business
I’ve asked around and there are three camps when it comes to backups and disaster recovery:
- Even my bookmarks are on a RAID with off-site backup
- Yeah I keep meaning to get around to that
- What’s disaster recovery?
Most people coming to freelance/self employment will be coming from an employed background. I.e. They’ve had a company surrounding them which provides more then a few creature comforts, one of which was most probably an IT department which looked after things such as network file stores, Internet access and backups.
However now you are on your own.
If you fall into camp 1 in the list above, then pat yourself on the back and go take a look at something else for a bit. If you don’t fall into camp 1, then read on, as you need to get seriously worried about your recovery plans.
Overthink: First steps in starting a ltd company.
Posted by Robbie Scourou on July 12th, 2009. Topics: Overthink business
I like to think I know a lot about my chosen profession. In the last 11 years I’ve worked in Web/IT I’ve had many different job descriptions and worn many different hats. From management to client liaison and of course my favourite, coding. So when I made the decision to go into business for myself, I wasn’t worried about having too narrow a skill set or doing the work I could get in.
Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity
Posted by Robbie Scourou on July 2nd, 2009. Topics: of interest
Via TED talks: