Berkeley Logo and the Turtle on Ubuntu Linux

Berkeley Logo drawing with the Turtle on Ubuntu

As a kid, the first programming language I ever saw was a variant of Logo on an Amstrad PC/M system. I discovered its graphic system, the "Turtle" and how it could be used to create Spirograph-like images in a totally different environment from the word processing application or the file manager (which resembled Midnight Commander!)

So naturally I have to see what it looks like now:

sudo aptitude install ucblogo

According to the user manual (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/usermanual) "Berkeley Logo provides traditional Logo turtle graphics with one turtle. Multiple turtles, dynamic turtles, and collision detection are not supported."

I start the interpreter with 'logo' in a Terminal.

I put my pen down:

pd

Hide the turtle:

ht

And draw a fancy shape!

repeat 65 [fd 300 rt 165]

I was very pleased to get back up and running with Logo. However, I doubt I'll truly be satisfied until I can run an emulated version of the entire Amstrad PC/M system!

Edit: This post was originally published for Ubuntu 8.10. Tested working OK with identical commands in Ubuntu 12.10. Happy turtling!

A 3d File System Viewer: Building FSV on Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid"

FSV is a 3d file system viewer which reimplements FSN, memorable for its appearance in Jurassic Park. You can read about FSN here:

http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool-from-jurassic-park/

The FSV website at http://fsv.sourceforge.net/ provides the downloadable source code for FSV, and here is how to build it:

Linux Audio and Music blog talks about Hydrogen

Just found a blog called Linux Audio and Music which briefly mentions Hydrogen, one of my favorite apps:

Linux Audio and Music: Hydrogen drum sequencer

Three free Hydrogen drumkits to download

Hydrogen drumkits are fairly easy to make and distribute, so I'm always on the lookout for new ones.

Here's a link to download three free kits from Zeta Centauri: Kawai XD-5, Roland JD-990, and Yamaha TG-55:

Music and Photos on the Golden Section theme.

So, it turns out that there is a band named Sectio Aurea. Here is their MySpace page:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=191837341

And their last.fm page:
http://www.last.fm/music/Sectio+Aurea

Visually, this Flickr group has some splendid photographs illustrating the golden section:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sectio_aurea/

Building Hydrogen drum machine from SVN on Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid"

The SVN repository for the Linux drum machine software, Hydrogen has recently moved. You can read today's hydrogen-devel post about it here:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=4941A8C4.7070206%40smoors.de&forum_name=hydrogen-devel

Here is how I installed Hydrogen from the new repository today on my 8.10 Intrepid system (you'll need the QT libraries, libqt4-dev if you don't already have them, as well as build-essential and probably a few others I'm forgetting):

Introduction

Welcome to Sectio Aurea, a blog devoted to Linux related articles and news with a focus on the Ubuntu platform.

Sectio Aurea is Latin for "Golden Section". In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller.