RB Source Code Released!

if you are a user of RB/RM2 then you must have noticed that recently there was no updates to RB. unfortunetly i have been too busy with my life. and Ratiomaster seems to busy too. so there was no work done in RB. IMO RM is a really neat piece of S/W. there is nothing really like it over there. I personaly prefer shu mod for cheating. and i think it is the most safe/practical thing left to cheat with. but it can’t really replace the void left by RM. RM still works but its very risky to use it!

So i am releasing the source of RB/RM2. its public now and its licened under GPLv2! so all you hackers out there, who wants your freedom, now you can play and hack around with RB if you like. and make something better. i don’t know… just use your imagination. most prolly there will be some people who fork this code base to create there own clients. like copy paste this code and call it GRM or something like that. that is the nature in the ratio cheating community i guess anyways i hope there will at least someone who will carry this forward and keep it open at the sametime.

Happy Coding!

moofdev post: http://www.moofdev.org/forums/index.php/topic,2762.0.html

Direct Link: http://ratiomaster2.googlecode.com/files/RatioBlaster.source.code.release.1.rar

SVN Repo: https://ratiomaster2.googlecode.com/svn

Google Project: http://code.google.com/p/ratiomaster2

Some Gentoo and a Lot of Time + Compiling ;)

So after all this time sneaking around gentoo i finally got the guts to go ahead and install it. so i did. there was a little problem in the beginning with the installation. which i can’t remember right now. but i was able to fix/work around it by editing some config file. and after wards everything went ok. i was following the official gentoo installation guide. i did a stage3 install. so i didn’t have to compile the compiler and the tool chain. but still it took a LOT of time

the most annoying thing about gentoo is compiling everything lol this is really funny(and ironic to me) because after all this is why gentoo is gentoo. its a source based distro so i have to compile almost everything that i am going to use. compiling takes a lot of time(and some hard disk space too, i ran out of disk space after about one week from the installation. but i think this is kinda obvious because i had a / partition of ~5GBs). and in turn it gives you ultra fast/ultra optimized/less memory hungry binaries. which is simply cool! but i really wish i had a fast possessor there are many ways to speed up the compilation, like distributed compilation… etc etc… but i never went in to any of those as this was my first gentoo installation. i wanted to keep it simple and inline with the official guide so i won’t mess things out too much.

i did the installing in about 3 or 4 days. no! it weren’t taking all that time to compile stuff. but i was working and i didn’t have sshd on ma lap(which resides at ma house btw ). so i put something to compile and leave for work and come back and continue… so sometimes there were some stupid errors(like failed name resolution!!!) that stops the whole emerge process.

there is a HUGE plus for you if you ever choose to go on with gentoo, that is the documentation/support etc etc is excellent! you can almost find a how to or some guide for every major thing that you would want to do to your system. ex installing VLC player…

oh btw i had a major screw up with setting my CHOST variable in make.conf. for some wired reason i had i486 in the place where i expected to see i686(the arch for my installation, this is decided when you download the stage tar ball…). i just changed the CHOST hehe and this is something that i shouldn’t do. the guide has explicitly told not to change it, because if i needed change it that means i have downloaded a wrong stage tar ball… but anyways it worked for me… so far. there is a lil problem with my compiler, its also i486 so sometimes some packages complain about it not been i686. so i downloaded a gcc tar ball(of the arch i686) and extracted it. and now i have two gcc’s… and so far this new gcc seems to work fine. it is the same version as the existing one other than the fact that it’s arch is different.

my lap starts up like lightning and the apps seems to be much faster than a normal distro installation. but the most noticeable is the booting time. its really fast

apart from the speed, the other major advantage of using gentoo is that it makes you learn about your linux system. i have learned a plenty of things about the system’s bare bones thanks to gentoo.

its a cool system, but the only problem is that it take a lot of time to compile… apart from that all the other stuff about the system is pretty nice (oh! i should also not that gentoo have a reputation of been buggy, insecure, and google makes me feel that this is true.. ex:- if you search for some gentoo package, there are some bug reports/security holes/exploits! turning up almost all the time!)

i think i will be using this for some time atleast, after all i have compiled so much! lol i just can’t let it all go to waste. now that i have compile and sort of build my system, the most time taking annoying task would be to update… the system.

if you haven’t given gentoo a try, and if you have enough time, i suggest that you do give it a try, its work it!

flirting with Arch

I recently made the move from ubuntu to arch linux. i kept asking people to sugguest me a good distro. i told em all i want is that to be a simple, well documented… one. i think i asked them for some more things but i don’t recall them right now. anyways, someone recommened me arch. seen my IM client’s banner(asking for a new distro that is simple…). so i though hey why not give it a try. i mean i have heard of arch before this. i remmember reading about arch been put on a usb drive some time back. so that was the first time i heard about it.

i think for me the main reason to try arch was that, it was said to be a simple, fast, documented distro. fair enough after installing it and bringing it to a stage where i can use my it for my daily tasks. i feel that it is indeed a simple and fairly documented system. i know for a fact that there are many people out there who use the word ’simple’ to identify and discribe there distro. but when it comes to arch you feel that it is a bit more simple than most of those. it tries not to change stuff where it is not really needed.

arch have a package managment system called pacman. which is pretty cool. im a big fan of apt. been with ubuntu for about 2 or 3 years. i have grown so found of apt. i always like debain baised distros. i think apt was a main factor that made me like debian baised distros. i mean rpms were so messy… you run in to all sorts of ‘hells’(dependency hell for a example )…

well i really don’t know how rpm is working these days. but when i first tried it, which was like about 3 or 4 years back. it was a pain in the neck. anyways arch is not baised on debian and it does not have apt. but i find pacman to be faily a cool package manager. it is kinda like apt in some ways. it manages dependencies. you can upgrade your system easily.. just like you would have done a distro upgrade in apt. so i think that was a another reason that made me like arch.

arch and all its apps are compiled for i686 arch. so it runs faster in my lap! which is also a grate thing i mean speed is something that will always add value when it comes to computers hehe(i am just speculating… or i am just guessing… so yeah it might not be true in some cases… who knows).

i installed the core packages. and then xorg, gnome… so on. i had a sound problem with ubuntu. but with arch it seems to have gone away. i got the chance to configure more settings in my system when i am installing arch. its basically like i had to get x working, then gnome and then sound… etc etc. but after all if wasn’t that hard. and i found arch wiki and the forums very helpful. i think the wiki is far from compelete but hey i am not complaining! it helped me a lot and i am sure it will be improving a lot in the comming months as more and more people add content to it.

arch also so have something like gentoo’s poratge thing called abs. its simply a pakgbuild file and the sources for some application. when you can’t find a application you want in the arch repos you can always search the commiunity supplied arch builds. but even if you failed to find them you can always get the source and compile it your self! lol. i mean i was thinking… what the heck. just go ahead and compile it your self. you don’t always need to download binaries… this is open source and why the hell aren’t we gaining the real advantages by just compiling it on our mashines. which is will result in a faster working program(given that you have set the correct settings… gcc flags… etc etc).  but of course the binary packages have there own set of merits

all in all arch is a cool system. if you like what systems like gentoo offers. but if you feel that you aren’t ready for gentoo or something like that just yet, or if you are plain lazy! just go with arch. its a do it your self thing(up to a certian extent of cause. they have done a lot of work to make things easier for you… ) + simplicity.

so if you are in search for a new distro give arch a try! you won’t be dissappointed

Debain lenny rocks!

hmmm after some time… back to my blog! this time i have something really refreshing and fun to rant about… i am a long term ubuntu user.. and btw ubuntu is a grate distro, there is no argument about that(i don’t have one… i mean heck… its a really nice distro.. specially if you are lazy ) but i have been experiencing some annoyances with it…

mainly my sound was crashing at random times… like sometimes it works till 2 hours pass ans suddenly… something crashes or messes up… and then the sound it iterating between two points(like if it got stuck when someone was saying “hello!”, i will be hearing hello hello hello…. all the time, until i restart the lap). this was bearable… i mean i was staying with this from the time of ubuntu edgy to ubuntu feisty and finally till gusty came out… i was expecting this will be fixed(i guess this is something with my kernel… some kernel module most probably… this was this issue that i could zero in on.. after all the efforts i have put to it…).

i experienced a huge speed boost after the kernel upgrade(completely fair scheduling…) so actually i was really happy with my ubuntu system until i upgraded to gusty and found out that the sound problem is still there! and its not only that… it have got worse… now it is crashing more often and i really really can’t live with this annoyance… so i backed up my data and did a clean installation of gusty in my lap… still no changes… damn… this sucks….

So i wanted to try something new… well yeah debain is hardly something new for me cause after all ubuntu is based on debian. and i have used debain sometime back… it was one of the first ever distros that i have installed by my self… when i first discovered linux…. in those days there were no “easy to use” ubunut isos around

debian is pretty popular for  been a stable os(linux is in general very stable relative to windows and debain is much more solid… hence it is really popular with sys admins… i guess) . and debain was supposed to be simple… and more ‘raw’(in sense that it had less uneeded stuff and was very simple and basic… so that i can really decide what kind of system i want to get installed in my lap). so i downloaded a debain net installer iso. and booted up my lap. but the first time it didn’t just boot up… it got stuck or something… generally linux kernels hang when i boot them in my lap with pcmcia support… so i turned it off and switched to a much safer video mode. then debain booted up to the setup(wich was really fast!!!). and then i just installed a standard sys + laptop support + desktop env(which was gnome by defult.. which i am used to btw(well i was using ubuntu for nearly two years!))…

the installation took about 4 hours i guess… i had a crappy Internet connection and so if you have a better one this time would go down a lot(u people who live in sweeden are really lucky to have all that nice huge pipes!!!).

what really impressed me was the speed of the system!!! its so freaking fast! when comparing with ubuntu! i guess its a bit bloated now…. which is a bit sad..

the default debain sys had most of the stuff working in my lap… it could hibernate, sound works with no problems!!!(so far )… so it was pretty much all i needed… the wifi support is something that i am not worried about that much although i can use it… so i really didn’t check whether it works or not… i guess i will have to get some ndiswrapper or something working to get the wifi… which i won’t need so… i won’t prolly do it…

and i feel really good that i am using the real FOSS thing now, the big brother of all distros… debian! btw i am using the unstable testing version.. called lenny… if you are out on the look out for a stable less bloated distro, why not give  a try to debain! its really nice… and it will leave a really fresh feeling in your mind after installation

RatioBlaster

after some heavy hacking with RM’s source, i have come up with something called RB take a look!

Release of RatioBlaster 0.15 beta

http://www.moofdev.org/forums/index.php/topic,2395.0.html

Download Links

RB skinned version…(this version is OLD, please consider downloading the clean version till a new skinned version is released)

http://www.moofdev.org/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2395.0;attach=231

RB clean version

http://www.moofdev.org/forums/index.php/topic,2414.0.html

w00t! feel so good to do some programing after all!

Know your ‘enemy’

I have been working in my new workplace for about a week now. and as far as i can say this place is very nice. its a small software company with some history. it have a friendly set of coworkers, the polices are fine(except the fact that the working hours are from 9am – 6pm, i would like it to be 8-5 ratehr), there are so many ‘treats’(where people get to eat stuff that will make em fat ), the salary is fine. and the location is ok too. so this is pretty much the ideal workplace right… hehe you ask me! well there is something that annoys me a lot. its not about the people there or anything like that. its with the way they do ‘work’;)

for whatever things that they do they use microsoft products for that!!!! oh shit! for everything… they blindly use micorsoft products for everything for every purpose. with out considering alternatives. and this is just sooooo annoying for a linux fan like me!(yeah i admit it i am a fan! and hey whats wrong with it? lol i am happy that i am! but don’t get me wrong i am not a ‘fanboy’ rather i am a fan i really really like the idea of FOSS and open source… wow… its one of the best thing ever!)

And i have to learn all that microsoft stuff… i have to learn dot net and not java i have learn sql server and not mysql… oohh… this is bad… but hey i am still learning stuff… and i think i have been away form all this MS stuff for a long time and i have almost forgot how much they suck… and now that i am working with em again i feel what i really have in linux… the way they think is very different… i mean it its so different. when u compare the philosophies they are so far away from each other(but kinda da same too in ways… )

So for now i’ll have to learn dot net + MS SQL server + alll the compact stuff… hmmm not bad i will ‘learn’ anyways… and they do pay me for that. and btw i am getting the feeling of a programmer lol! its nice been one… at least the way you start to think of stuff , is very nice… its logical… and kinda cool. u have a problem n a solution kinda view for most of the stuff that meets your eye when u r a programmer… I am also happy that now i am more aware of ‘time’… as i kinda lack it… after the job there is little time left… so i feel how important time is..

i might just be more ‘activated’… just because i have to work with MS stuff… as i don’t feel so happy about it i can always use that ‘urge’ i get to develop something ‘open’… during the midnight

haaa… god i believe in u