Note: La Clojure currently has a show-stopping Windows bug – I’ll remove this note when it has been fixed.

If emacs isn’t your thing, or you prefer a modern IDE (read: GUI) for development, I recommend IntelliJ IDEA.  An open-source, community edition was just released, and it is definitely worth giving a spin – I’ve been a fan since I first tried it a couple of years ago.

Being at a university where the first language taught is Java, but transferring from an institution where C++ was dominant was a bit of a pain.  IntelliJ got me through my Java-based courses.  I tried and managed with Eclipse and NetBeans for the first semester – but we were given a significant initial framework.

Enough of my praise for IntelliJ.  Let’s get started!

• 1. Download IntelliJ

• 2. Install IntelliJ

• 3. Let IntelliJ know where the JDK is (Linux only)

Assuming that a JDK is already installed, run
updatedb; locate jdk | grep jre$
Do something like the following based on those results
echo "export JDK_HOME=\"/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre\"" >> ~/.bashrc

• 4. Install ‘La Clojure’ Plugin

Run IntelliJ, open the plugin manager, and search for ‘la clojure’.   Select it for installation, and click OK.

• 5. Create a Clojure Project

Click ‘Create New Project’, select ‘Create project from scratch’, give it a descriptive name, and select ‘Clojure’ as a desired technology.

• Start a REPL!

Tools -> Clojure REPL Actions -> Add new Clojure REPL

I’m in an Italian diction class (for singing), and as part of that I get to translate texts sometimes.

Having Spanish at my disposal is quite useful, as I can guess most things, and most things I’m not so sure about can readily be translated into Spanish.

As such, I’m not so sure that these will be useful to many, but they are useful to me.

So, first, an italian-spanish dictionary
next, the drae (Diccionario Real Academia Española)
and an old spanish-english dictionary for those words not found in the italian-spanish dictionary (deh and fida come to mind).

More than anything, this post succinctly describes how to get up and running with Clojure + Emacs. Virtually no thinking is required if you are working from a default install of Ubuntu, and not much more is required for any linux distro – you just need to know how to use your package manager.

Furthermore, if any of these steps would cause you trouble (deleting .emacs* comes to mind), you probably already know how to handle it.

Ubuntu: sudo aptitude install emacs git-core ant openjdk-6-jdk

- Evaluate the install code
- OR evaluate at the cli (warning: rm -Rf ~/.emacs* might not do what you want)
rm -Rf ~/.emacs*
git clone git://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit.git ~/.emacs.d

emacs
M-x package-install (M-x corresponds to ALT-x in emacs)

M-x clojure-install

echo "(eval-after-load 'clojure-mode '(clojure-slime-config))" >> ~/.emacs.d/user'name.el

emacs foo.clj
M-x slime

Other notes:
- For cli setup, see Tim Riddell’s tutorials – I recommend the bash startup alias, in particular.
- For a longer explanation, see Phil Hagelberg’s post.

Emacs starter kit:
improves advanced configuration of emacs

OpenDNS:
basic web filtering

Gizmo:
make and receive online calls

Google Voice:
very nifty phone enhancements

(the above two can be combined to give free skype-in/out type service)

WARNING: This blog post was posted at approximately 3 AM. As a result, it is not very well defined. Had I been thinking, I would have been more to the point. As it is, I may repost more info about the Seagate HD when it is successfully RMAd.

One of my hard drives is making sounds that indicate that it could fail at any time; In order to prevent any losses, I ordered a new drive. I spent a while copying all of my data from one drive to the next (I generally have 2 drives in my computer at a given time; the drive closer to failure contains data that is broadly available online, so losses should be minimal if anything happens, while my personal data is semiannually burned to disc and regularly synced to my brother’s computer). At any rate, I finished the migration, and started updating my install on the new drive.

The next morning I got up and found that my computer was making a horribly disturbing sound. The update process had blocked on a prompt for my acceptance of a license agreement. Gkrellm told me that data was not being transfered, so the sound was simply the spinning of the platters. I ran “hdparm -y /dev/olddrive” and “hdparm -C /dev/olddrive” to stop my old drive to make sure it wasn’t responsible for the sound, and then recorded the sound for documentation purposes.

I have a pretty good recording setup, so the recording is probably about as good quality as is practical – or even better. I heard it as soon as I entered the room, so it was fairly loud – but my system is also fairly quiet. The sound at the very end is the sound of me clicking a (fairly loud) mouse from a foot away from the mic – which is about the same distance as the mic was from the disk.

At any rate, I’m in the habit of keeping multiple copies of my data around until I trust my drives and I need more space, so I was able to undo a few changes I had made to my older drive to make it usable as the master – so I should have a marginally useful system until the real replacement is mailed to me.

Wiping the Disk for RMA
As I had put nearly all of my data on the new drive, I want to wipe it before returning it – but I also want to return the drive asap. I had always used DBAN to wipe drives, but I figured I should be able to do it from my normal install.

I first found shred, which seemed like it should be quite effective (and useful for shredding specific files, depending on the file system). It puts random data over the drive in several passes, and it optionally zeros the drive on the final pass. Unfortunately, I noticed that it was taking a long time – it uses data from /dev/urandom, which means that the random number generator was cranking like mad. To sum it up, the bottleneck was the CPU, not the hard disk.

I next tried dding data from /dev/urandom over the file (this was before I completely understood how shred works). Not surprisingly, it was CPU bound as well (I’m guessing that disk throughput was at about 10% of its capacity).

Finally, I found wipe, which uses special patterns, much like DBAN, as opposed to pseudorandom data like shred. As a result, the data is probably slightly less securely wiped (although it should also be more consistent in its results), but the bottleneck is now the disk. I expect that it will take 3-4 hours per pass, as opposed to 30-40 hours per pass.

New Seagate Barracudas (.12)
This reminds me, the new barracudas seem to be getting great throughput, at least – though I can’t speak for their reliability. However, I should mention that the packing job was not as good as it could have been, so my issues should probably not be blamed on Seagate, at least not in their entirety. I bought the OEM drive from Newegg, but the bubble wrap they used has perforations so it can be torn easily. Unfortunately, one of the perforated lines lined up perfectly with the edge of the disk – not a good thing, as the perforations pop the bubbles along the line.

I actually took the bubble wrap and tested it to see how much room for error they had in packing. As it turns out, they have about 1.25 inches of give on either side before one of the corners will not be protected by the bubble wrap. It’s enough allowance so that it’s not generally a problem, but just the same, it may easily have been a factor in my experience.

I’ve been using fluxbox for a year or two, but I’ve decided to give another WM a shot for a while.  However, just because I am trying something out doesn’t mean that I want to change my usual bindings.

I’ve been using gnome for a day or so now.  Instead of rebinding all of my application startup keys, I’ve mostly been using ALT+F2 to launch whatever I want, which is pretty effective.

Anyway, to get to the point, Gnome’s default resizing operation is ALT+Middle click as opposed to ALT+Right click (ALT+Left click is move, which is pretty standard).  In order to switch the behavior to standard, open gconf, go to apps->metacity->general and check “resize with right button.”

Unfortunately, that only works if you are using metacity instead of compiz (ie. you don’t have any fancy visual effects enabled).

First off, the compiz fix requires a slight workaround, due to a bug.  However, doing so will disable some other fairly important things (well, at least to me).  For example, ALT+F2 doesn’t work.  But, if you don’t care about that (and a few other things), here’s what you’ll need to do.

Run compizconfig-settings-manager (ccsm).  First, disable “Gnome Compatibility”.  Next, open “General Options”, click on “Key Bindings”, scroll down to “Window Menu” and change it to ALT+Button 2.  Now go to the initial screen and open “Resize Window” under “Window Management”.  On the Bindings tab, set “Initiate Window Resize” to ALT+Button 3 (if you don’t disable gnome compatibility, you can change what the fields say, but the field doesn’t permanently change, and the behavior doesn’t change at all).

Not many people know that I run Gentoo (a source-based linux distribution) at home. Largely this is because most people don’t care. But for those who may care, I’ve decided to explain how Gentoo is better, at least for me.

Gentoo is known for taking a lot of time to set up – which is well deserved. Gentoo typically takes 1-3 days to complete a full install, and requires more work in maintenance than most other distros.

However, as I developer, I find that it is quite nice.

I have scripts that perform most day-to-day maintenance, and I receive an email if my scripts can’t handle things (which seems to happen every couple of months). Sometimes packages have problems, due to incomplete ebuild files (the files that manage compilation and installation) or boneheaded misconfiguration on my part.

Despite these problems, I enjoy being able to grab any of the source I want from disk and examine it/modify it without a hassle. Not only that, but I have debug information included throughout my system (using splitdebug).

Some people use Gentoo because they want better performance – and I must admit that that is what brought me to it, along with a desire to know more about linux. However, now that I have a modern system, what I enjoy most about Gentoo is having the source at my fingertips.

Interestingly enough, I recently upgraded to xorg-server 1.5 from 1.3. I removed my xorg file, and it works passably. It’s choice of graphics drivers is a little annoying – I’ve been using radeonhd and getting 3-5000 frames in glxgears. Now I’m getting about 1000, and it pegs my cpu.

However, all functionality on my mouse is auto detected – horizontal and vertical scrolling, backwards and forwards buttons. This means that my previous posts on scrolling are now obsolete – but that is life.

It has done a lousy job at guessing a good video card driver, though – at least from a performance perspective. I was using radeonhd and getting 3-5000 frames in glxgears. Now I’m getting about 1000, and it pegs my cpu.

I will admit that the regular ati driver does a better job at device detection, though – it’s just that I like actually using my graphics card – not that it’s anything spiffy as anyone familiar with glxgears can attest, but something is better than nothing.

I don’t think that I’m quite ready for an xorg.conf-less system just yet, but X is getting there.

Well, I recently decided to taste some aloe (vera, not any of the more toxic species). I found it to be quite bitter. However, upon further experimentation, I discovered a few things… but first, I’ll describe the 4 main components, from my perspective.

Components
First off, we have the exterior (just in case you have trouble identifying this, I’ll give you a hint: it’s the green stuff).
Next, we have the gel (get this by slicing open a leaf and note the clear mucus-like substance).
Third, we have the body (this is the core of the leaf that gives it volume).
Fourth, we have aloin. I did not know about this until I tasted it – to know what I’m talking about, cut the end of a leaf and let it sit for a few minutes. A brownish-yellow liquid (much less viscous than the gel) will coalesce. If you taste this, you will discover that it is quite bitter.

Not surprisingly, and quite encouragingly, we do not want to consume the aloin – it has a really nasty taste, and is actually a laxative (see below for more on the possible negative effects of aloin). It’s mostly found in the exterior, with some in the gel.

So, it comes down to this – if you want to eat it, just eat the body, and in moderation. Peel the leaf, and remove as much gel as possible. The body will still contain plenty of gel, but removing the gel on the exterior will help remove more aloin.

As for why you might want to eat aloe, lots of people have differing ideas (helping with complexion, healing, etc.). I know that people drink it in Korea. Mostly I thought it would be interesting to do.

Other random things I learned about aloe while writing this:
Topical Use – “In a review of the scientific literature, researchers found that patients who were treated with aloe vera healed an average of almost 9 days sooner than those who weren’t treated with the medicinal plant… (Aloe is best used for minor burns and skin irritations, and should never be applied to an open wound.)” [link]

Ingestion – A study found that rats that consumed liquid aloe extract had (among other things) a decrease in red blood cell count (bad), low protein levels in blood (bad), high AST levels (bad), low cholesterol levels (good), low triglyceride levels (good).

This is the most negative study I have seen, but as I discovered after reading it, they did not separate aloin from the aloe, which could easily be very significant. Many positive studies on aloe gel can be found, and I feel confident saying that in general, aloe gel is good, aloin is bad.