physos.org

Konstantin started his adventures

[KDE Books] So it finally happened, my first bigger KDE development project started and I have a lot of learning to do. I did start to dive into KDE development several times already, but now I have a project I am passionate about enough to put all my energy into. I was very surprised how much I could take out of these rather “old” books. KDEs development platform is very stable compared to the webplatforms I programmed so far. The architects of the KDE 2.0 platform sure built something to last.

Thanks to the help from all the nice KDE people on IRC. (Hi tackat :) ) I overcome the initial obstacles quite fast and KDE is really as much fun to program as everybody told me all the years. :)

[C++ Books] Since C++, despite the good bindings for Qt and KDE, is still the major language to program KDE in, there is much learning going on in this area, too. ATM I am still learning something new with almost every line of code and it feels like rediscovering my computer again. It is years since I last programmed a larger project from scratch instead of correcting and modifying code. Programming something for real users instead of server is real fun :)

So my first prototype for my SoC project is in the Subversion repository and development is speeding up. I will write a longer blog entry with more details about the project over the weekend. So stay tuned. :)

Posted in kde| 3 Comments »
July 14th, 2006 by physos

Dublin, here I come (73 days until aKademy)

I registered for aKademy yesterday and payed the hostel today. I hope the bank transfer is processed in time.

Bash Prompting

I pasted my bash prompt some months ago on a KDE channel on IRC. Today I got a nice e-mail, asking for it, since it was lost in a hard disk format.

This made me realize how much I like that prompt and how used to it, I am. So i decided to put it here, to have a backup. :)

\[\e[32m\][\u@\h]\[\e[0m\]\[\e[37m\][\t]\[\e[0m\]\n\[\e[34m\][\w]\[\e[0m\]>

Obviously thats very bash.

Short explanation:

\[\e[32m\]

This turns on the green pen, everything is now in green ( Numerical code: 32 )

[\u@\h]

The user (\u) and host (\h) with some eyecandy provided by @ and square brackets. This resolves on my laptop to:

[physos@davinci]

\[\e[0m\]

turning off the green pen

\[\e[37m\]

turning on the grey pen

[\t]

printing the current time in square brackets

\n

adding a newline character which does what it says

\[\e[34m\]

turning on the blue pen

[\w]

current working directory

and a nice little bracket to sum it up (change that to $ to be more compatible with textbooks about Linux)

When you do not get lost in square brackets and backslashs, you get something like this.

screenshot of the described bash prompt

Write a export PS1= in front of it and put it into your ~/.bashrc. Voila, bash glamour.

If you want to experiment with colors, i.e. red for root (31), I have here a list of codes.

screenshot of a colored list

This is just a short glimpse into the world of the Bash Prompt. I learned all I know from the excellent Bash Prompt HowTo in the Linux Documentation Project repository of Linux wisdom. You can find floating clocks, bold text and other miracles inside an environment variable named $PS1 there. Thanks to Giles Orr for providing this nice HowTo and the bash authors for allowing to adjust my environment to my needs, not the other way around.

Posted in kde, unix| 6 Comments »
July 12th, 2006 by physos

SBB

Switzerland train.

Posted in travel| Comments Off
January 19th, 2006 by physos

On the Rail again

I am on my way to Switzerland again. Looking forward to 2 days of teaching Linux to some very good administrators. I like Switzerland and I love my job for allowing me to go there and spread Linux. The 6 hours in trains and stations I am less enthusiastic about. Lets see if all connections work out.