Abqorian Planet

I got this task from my friend. She needs the image for her journal publication, but the committee want a more 'clear' picture instead of the actual picture taken from her lab's machine (dunno the name, she's studying some chemical thing).

At the end I agree to help, but I didn't promise I could clean it up because the background seem very mesh-up! With gradation of color there and here, it looks very hard to clean.

Well, after several trial I finally able to clean it. In case I would forget how to do it, here are the documentation.

1) Open the picture in Photoshop; here is the original

Installing Player/Stage on a computer with OpenSuSE was the easiest and funnest installation I've ever done. Why?

Because by default, many of Player/Stage dependency packages are already installed by OpenSuSE. So you don't have to install a new ones. And to be honest, personally I still think OpenSuSE installation manager is the best and the easiest installation manager ever compared to others. Note: I was using OpenSuSE 10.3 when writing this post.

Anyway, how to install Player/Stage on OpenSuSE, then?
Well, let's first check the dependency packages required by OpenSuSE. For the general requirement, read this post.

The dependencies available by-default are:

• gcc-fortran or related;
• libgnomecanvas;
• imagemagick;
• openssl;
• libjpeg, libusb;
• libdc1394 and libraw1394;
• sed, gsl, statgrab;
• libtool, libltdl;
• swig, gawk, gtk;
• freeglut;
• cmake, and
• boost

The complete list was uploaded here. The rest is still need to be installed. If you can't find the package in your DVD repository, you can always check OpenSuSE's website and search the package there.

The next step is the same as installing Player/Stage on PCLinuxOS, though Player was not in OpenSuSE's repository.
So, the same first step is to compile Player from its source.

cd ~/player-<version>
make uninstall
make clean
./configure --prefix=/home/$USER/playerstage

make
make install
export PATH=$PATH:/home/$USER/playerstage/bin/
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/home/$USER/playerstage/lib/pkgconfig
export PLAYERPATH=$PLAYERPATH:/home/$USER/playerstage/share/stage/worlds:/home/$USER/playerstage/lib/
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/home/$USER/playerstage/include:/home/$USER/playerstage/lib:/home/$USER/playerstage/share/player/examples/plugins/logplugin

Next step is to add these lines into /etc/ld.so.conf.

/home/$USER/playerstage/lib/
/usr/local/lib

Then, test the installation using pkg-config:

pkg-config --libs playercore
pkg-config --cflags playercore
player ~/playerstage/share/stage/worlds/simple.cfg &
cd ~/stage-<version>
make uninstall
make clean
./configure --prefix=/home/$USER/playerstage
sudo make
sudo make install
pkg-config --libs stage
pkg-config --cflags stage

That would be all.

It's been quite easy and simple to add an application onto Linux distribution these days. Since most of Linux distribution has what they call repository to provide support for its distribution. It's even more easier with the graphical package manager included in its distribution.

Some of them even have mirrored their repository to local website on certain region. And some of them provide a limited repository during their distribution release in a form of DVD or extra CD companion.

In this post, I'd like to share my experience on updating repository in PCLinuxOS. Let's get started step-by-step.

1. Make sure you are connected to the internet before going on to the next step. Otherwise, it won't work.
   
2. Open your Synaptics package manager. Click KMenu (or press Windows logo on your keyboard), point to System, Configuration, Packaging, then click on Synaptics Package Manager.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Type in your root password. I'll assume you're the administrator on your Linux machine.
4. After the Synaptic window popped out, click Settings on the menu bar, then click Repositories.

5. Another window will pop up showing you the list of repository mirrors available. Check on the box to enable it. Make sure it is the site closest enough to your local region.
6. A little note. Do not remove the link on the last list, since it is for openoffice related packages.
7. When you finish, click OK to close the window.
8. Then on the main window, click Reload to get any changes you made loaded. Synaptic will download the package lists from the site you've checked before. it might takes several minutes depending on your internet speed.

That's all you need to do. You can install an application as usual, with the latest version of course. :)

There are always several packages required before installing an application on Linux operating system or at least, one. Since an application in Linux environment almost always never embed the dependency packages required upon its release. Take for example, installing Player/Stage. Visit this website for more information about Player/Stage.

Depending on the distribution, each Linux distribution require different packages installed before installing the same application.

I've been wandering the internet to solve the dependency issues while installing Player/Stage on my Linux machine. I've tried installing in onto Mandriva 2008 and 2009, OpenSuSE 9.3 and 10.0, and lastly onto PCLinuxOS.

I couldn't install Player/Stage on Ubuntu, since my machine cannot boot Debian-based Linux distribution. Although, most of the information available on the internet are about installing Player/Stage on Ubuntu.

Hence, I thought I need to write a more general information regarding requirements before installing Player/Stage, regardless of the distribution.
Once again, depending on your distribution, the name of the packages might differ.

gcc42-fortran, gcc-fortran, libgfortran42 (or g77 or any fortran compiler)
gcc, g++
opencv
libusb, -devel
libconfig (install the most recent version)
imagemagick, -devel, (or libmagick10, libmagick++10, libmagick10-devel)
libopenssl, -devel, openssl, -certs
libjpeg, -devel, libpng, -devel, libjasper, -devel, zlib, -devel, libtiff, -devel
libdc1394, -devel, libraw1394, -devel
sed
gsl
libtool (or libltdl3, -devel)
boost, -devel (might be one of these:
    libboost-dev
    libboost-thread1.33.1
    libboost-thread-dev
    libboost-signals1.33.1
    libboost-signals-dev)
swig
gawk
pkg-config
python
gtk, gtk2, -devel and gdk (the gtk is a must before installing stage)
freeglut, -devel (this is the OpenGL library)
cmake
fltk, -devel
geos or libgeos
statgrab
gnomecanvas (or libgnomecanvas)
xmms-config
gtk, -devel, (or gtk+2, -devel, gtk2, -devel)
howl
ffmpeg
ode (this package is a must before installing gazebo)

I've wrote them on a file and uploaded it to my Google Docs. You can read it there.

Write to me if you find an error or there is something needs correction. Happy installing Player/Stage.

How to add unique meta tag to each of your blogger post.

I've been googling around this topic for a while and I found a lot of tips. Some of them you can read on:

1. http://www.jackbook.com/seo-tips/how-to-get-on-the-first-place-on-google-search-engine-result-page
2. http://www.bloggertricks.com/2008/08/how-to-add-different-meta-tags-to.html

In this post, I would like to show you how I implemented it on my blog.

1. Firstly, go to your Blogger dashboard;
2. Go to tab Layout;
3. Click on Edit HTML;
4. Locate this line: <head>;
5. Add these lines below it:
   

   
   <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
   <meta content='SHORT DESCRIPTION' name='description'/>
   <meta content='COMMA-SEPARATED-WORDS' name='keywords'/>
   <meta content='YOUR-NAME' name='author'/>
   <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
   <meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' name='Description'/>
   </b:if>
   <b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http//www.abqorian.co.cc/"'>
   <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title></b:if>
   <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
   <title><data:blog.pageName/> | YOURSITENAME</title>
   </b:if>
   

6. That's all.

Enjoy.