Bitcoin Mining on Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty" with poclbm and ATI

Updated 6/19/2011 - updated bitcoin app version to 0.3.23, simplified bitcoin setup directions

Updated 6/8/2011 - updated example app versions, clarified use of pools, clarified use of bitcoin standalone app, path cleanup, added link to headless mining guide

1. Introduction

Recently, I got interested in the new peer-to-peer digital currency, Bitcoin (read about it all about it at bitcoin.org if you're not familiar with it yet). Having decided to make use of my idling ATI graphics card for some bitcoin mining, I was able to cobble together a mining setup on Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" without too much trouble. It uses a standard miner app "poclbm", the Python OpenCL Bitminer.

Building TrinityCore 9847 with TrinityDB r34 on Ubuntu 10.04

Well, another TrinityCore/TDB release has arrived (http://forum.trinitycore.org/topic/28139-tdb-3351134-love-hate-and-passion-has-been-released/), so I'm rebuilding my Trinity server from scratch and sharing the process again. Happily, I saw much fewer errors than when I built r33. No errors, in fact!

Accordingly, this guide describes the process of setting up TrinityCore revision 9847 with TrinityDB 335.11.34 (TDB r34) on an Ubuntu 10.04 system. The directions should work on Ubuntu 9.10 but have not been tested there. I got most of my clues from http://www.trinitycore.info/index.php?title=Installing_TrinityCore_on_recent_Linux-based_systems. I highly suggest you keep that document handy while following this guide, as it goes into detail on many explanations which I will be glossing over.

Installing TrinityCore dependencies on Ubuntu 10.04

This guide is meant to accompany my release-specific build guides for TrinityCore/TDB releases on Ubuntu, in order to cut down on duplicate content in those posts since these procedures for brand new installations don't change.

TrinityCore dependency packages in Ubuntu

First, install the Ubuntu packages required for building TrinityCore.

Building TrinityCore with TrinityDB r33 on Ubuntu 10.04

Setting up TrinityCore on Ubuntu 10.04

The awesomeness of 5-boxing localhost

IMPORTANT: USE UPDATED R34 GUIDE AT http://sectio-aurea.blogspot.com/2010/09/trinitycore-9847-tdb-r34-ubuntu-1004.html - THANKS

Building Xnee 3.06 on Ubuntu Lucid 10.04

Recently, I wanted to use Xnee (http://www.sandklef.com/xnee/) to automate some GUI application actions on an Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 installation, but I found that the version of Xnee available from the Lucid repositories still has some problems. Specifically, this older Xnee version, 3.02-2ubuntu2, still contains workarounds for some previously existing Xorg RECORD extension problems which have themselves now been fixed in Lucid. The outcome of this mismatch is that recording fails with any of cnee, gnee or pnee. This is resolved in the next release of Ubuntu, 10.10 "Maverick", which includes Xnee 3.06, but I preferred not to upgrade the entire system to a pre-release state just to get this one application working.

Installing Heroes of Newerth Beta on Ubuntu Linux 9.04 Jaunty

Well, I got my beta key for Heroes of Newerth through the recent Slashdot giveaways. I'm excited as I used to play Starcraft back in the day, but never got into DotA. Here is my experience installing this *early closed beta* version of the game and first playing it.

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:

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:

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):