Started up my computer this morning and found I lost Unity. While scratching my head trying to figure out what went horribly wrong I remembered the night before there were some updates that I had apply before going to bed. So I fired up chrome and started my search for Unity. Well after I figured out how to fire up chrome from the terminal after figuring out how to fire up the terminal without icons. Seriously, icons are very useful.

After a few searches I found a few things to try and learned a bit more. Like how to test if your system works with unity — just run this in the terminal

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

Seeing that I needed some way of making my system sort of usable I started downloaded alternative windowing systems like kde, lxde, cinnamon, and so on.

Many frustrating dead ends later, it turns out that an update to VirtualBox 4.2 also changed my nvidia-settings and nvidia-current programs but did not install them correctly. So I uninstalled nvidia-settings and nvidia-current from the terminal and rebooted:

apt-get remove nvidia-settings nvidia-current

Yay, I see Unity again! But wait, now VirtualBox has been removed and I can’t use vagrant, awwwww. So I tried the default install of VirtualBox (which for me is 4.1.18). Yay, vagrant works again! But wait, vagrant can’t reach the internet which still kind of makes it unusable for setting up new environments.

Finally, after a plethora of google searches on nvidia ubuntu and virtualbox I came across this ticket talking about my missing internet on virtualbox: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10864. Turns out that I had to install 4.1.20+ in order to restore order and LiberianGeek had a good how to on that. So while only half understanding what these commands did I pasted each one into my termainal:

wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian precise contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.1

Then restarted and yay all the things work! So now I am happy for now, sure I blew about a days work trying to get this all put back together but at least it is done and hopefully wont break again any time soon.

A story about: Ubuntu 12.10, VirtualBox 4.1.10 and Unity.

The basic concept is to create a web application that uses a Genetic Algorithm to approximate a target image using SVG vector shapes. My inspiration is from Roger Alsing’s post on Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa. I thought it would be fun to see how well it works as a web application. This project gives me an excuse to play around with HTML5 SASS + Compass, and responsive design concepts.

To follow my progress see my github project.

I recently added clamav to my Ubuntu system. The next time I received a notice from the software center to update my system there were some updates from clamav. When trying to update this error message was returned:

The action would require the installation of packages from not authenticated sources.

What this means is that Ubuntu was unable to find a public key to authenticate against the code being requested making it an untrustworthy source.

Is this solution for you?

To determine if this solution will work for you fire up a terminal (“Applications > Accessories > Terminal”) and run:

sudo apt-get update

Among the messages outputted on the terminal, you will be looking for a message at the end with similar wording:

W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net natty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 8AB767895ADC2037

Notice the hexadecimal number at the end (8AB767895ADC2037), this is the public key that is missing.

The fix

To fix this I ran the following command:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8AB767895ADC2037

NOTICE: Your key(s) will most likely be different from mine. Use your key(s) not mine.

Other reading

As with most problems in life, this one can be solved through Googling. Here are the resources that I used:

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1221323
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/69285/software-center-errors-and-doesnt-update-any-more

This is a good intermediate tutorial. I was able to practice working with mesh manipulation, materials, uv wrapping in the new Blender interface and learning about the render node editor capabilities. Made lots of mistakes along the way (always due to my lack of understanding how Blender works) but all in all was able to follow along with the tutorial with out getting lost. The number of balloons is homage to twentysixcats.com. Technically you can see all 26 balloons but a few of them are almost completely hidden from view. Here are the blend file for anyone interested.

* Transparency controls
* Can measure in Inches, Centimeters, Pica and Pixels
* Custom measurements can be created
* The new Preference dialog allows you to customize the functionality and look of the ruler
* The tick leader line — a small line that hangs off the ruler — helps you keep track of where your mouse is on the ruler
* The ruler can be nudged by one pixel using the arrow keys and moved by 10 pixels by holding down the control key and using the arrow keys
* New about information
* Pressing F1 takes you to the user guide page
* Window and Mac executable are available

This is a reposting from theborregos.org — 2 May 2007

Update: It appears that the onion removed the video but you can still see it here courtesy of AbsZero of http://fliiby.com – 5 Dec 2011

Since today is Earth day CNN has been touting many different events and activities. One such activity that I found was from Earth Day Network. They have a Footprint Calculator where the user answers a series of questions about their lifestyle. At the end of the questions a score is calculated in the form of how many Earths would be needed if the rest of the world lived the same lifestyle as the user. After completing the calculator my score read 4.8 Earths. I was thinking to myself, “wow I am completely trashing the Earth!” Out of curiosity I wanted to see what it looks like to score just 1 Earth. After all that’s where I should be. Well after much tweaking of my answers the lowest score I could get was 2.4 Earths. Does this mean anything I do is dooming the Earth? I mean come on Earth Day Network give me some hope! This makes me wonder, is this just a tool to shame people into being more Earth friendly?

haiku logo

haiku logo by leadiv is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

This is a reposting from theborregos.org — 9 April 2007