Manchester United Champion!!!

Yes, they did it tonight in Moscow. The game was beautiful, maybe better say, wonderful. Two commands gave us the atmosphere, which we don't have for a long time. Thanks them for that. And thanks MU for their play, their victory.

Friends, wait for another game, European Football Championship 2008!

My first TV interview

The interview was taken at photo exhibition in Voronezh city, Russia, where I'm living now. Edited a bit (trim) by Kino. I put it on video.google.com. Audio is in Russian.

A successful history with Creative Sound Blaster Connect

Yesterday I purchased a new external (USB) sound card from Creative - Sound Blaster Connect (SB Connect). I didn't get it work immediately and search on Google about its supporting under Linux. ALSA project site showed that it seems not have driver for SB Connect although the card is there in the list.



But today I have other working sound system just after ...reboot. My Debian unstable with ALSA v1.0.13 recognized sound card as SB MP3+. In this case we have so call Plug-and-Play device under Linux :). I don't know if other features like recording are working or not. For now I just have no need of them.

See more pictures and info about card from creative site.

Extraction with freezing-out - new techniques and application

Extraction with freezing-out was used in the past in analytical chemistry for sample preparations. Not long ago, in 2007, a Russian scientist-chemist Victor N. Bekhterev published new techniques of this method, which resolved many problems of the old usage and as the result, extraction with freezing-out is renew. It is a genius idea.

In the new techniques, solvable in matrix solution solvents are used instead of insolvable (the old technique). For example, acetonitrile is added to extract organic compounds from aqueous samples. The mixture then freeze in a normal fridge under temperature -15 degree Celsius. In this condition a liquid phase is located on surface of solid water - ice. The acetonitrile liquid phase then separate from solid by decantation and can be analyzed.

Read more about these techniques in Victor Bekhterev's publication and patent (Russian Federation):

1. Bekhterev V.N. // Mendeleev Communication. 2007. V. 17. p.241. Doi: 10.1016/j.mencom.2007.06.021
   Theory and compare with other separation techniques (in English).
2. Patent Russian Federation N2303476 Method of isolating from aqueous media via extraction combined with freezing.
   Details of techniques (in Russian).

MC get a transparent background with GNOME Terminal

Quiet right answer to the question "What is the most popular file manager on Linux system?" is mc -- Midnight Commander (one of my friend gave another name Midnight Condom :) ). mc is powerful tool for users, works both in console and graphical user interface. mc supports transparent effect in GNOME Terminal. See screenshot bellow (click on image to see it in full size):

Just add the [Colors] code section in my ini to your $HOME$/.mc/ini and be aware that text is on only one line. Also change GNOME-Terminal's profile to have transparent background. You may can (need) to correct the values to fit your desktop appearance. From mc(1):

In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the base_color variable. You can specify an alternate color map for a terminal by using the terminal name as the key in this section. Example:

[Colors]
base_color=
xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red

The format for the color definition is:

keyword=foregroundcolor,backgroundcolor:keyword= ...

The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal, selected,marked, markselect, errors, input, reverse, gauge. Menu colors are: menu, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus, dhotnormal, dhotfocus. Help colors are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold, helplink, helpslink. Viewer color is: viewunderline. Special highlighting colors are: executable, directory, link, stalelink, device, special, core. Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked.

The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green, brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta, cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a special keyword for transparent background. It is ’default’. The ’default’ can only be used for background color. Example:

[Colors]
base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default

Here is full view of my Debian desktop with Ubuntu background image :). Thanks Ubuntu community for that beautiful and other images.

Some, maybe useful, information about this GNOME theme:

• gdesklets applets
• Controls = Clearlooks
• Colors: Windows = 787878, ffffff
  
• Window Border = Correcamins
• Icons = Rodent
  

Secret Maryo Chronicles - the game for your kids and not only :)

Secret Maryo Chronicles is an Open Source two-dimensional platform game with a style designed similar to classic sidescroller games - Super Mario. Any one of us can't forget this wonderful game with perfect game atmosphere, which won popular in the last (but not very far) century.

Try Secret Maryo Chronicles!

"Fatal error: can't create i686/soundtest.o: Not a directory" fix while compiling Cinelerra

Yes, I searched everywhere by Google how to fix this error. In fact, many people got this error while compiling Cinelerra version 2. Some asked on the forums, some even went to official #cinelerra IRC chanel. But as I see they did not get the answer. Me too. Installation some dev packages as suggested did not help. And then I found the solution myself. Very simple :).

$ mkdir i868

That all!

P.S. 1. Interesting that my search results on Google show the ubuntuforum.org first. And almost questions are from this forum. This show that Ubuntu is (or was) becoming the most popular Linux distribution. I am using Debian at now. But certainly will take a look at Hardy Heron (8.04) when I'll receive the disks from shipit.ubuntu.com.

2. When compiling you can see the same errors' messages. For me, I got "Fatal error: can't create i686/encore50/bitstream.o: No such file or directory". Solve problem the same way!

Linux distribution for LPI exams' preparation

From distrowatch.com: "The elpicx live DVD is a Knoppix and Centos-based live Linux system with a single goal - to help students to prepare for the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certification exam by providing several test emulators as well as a number of LPI reference cards, study notes, preparation guides and exercises. Available in English and German."

Download and read more about this distro at elearnit.de.

Are you Google user? Try gOS then...

gOS is based on Linux, uses Enlightenment or Gnome as desktop. The main goal is support for Google services, like Google Docs, MySpace, etc. Interesting is that, PCs with gOS can be purchased at Walmart.com. The first party of these PCs was sold out after one week.

gOS Enlightenment desktop

Lomonosov-2008 finished successfully!

It was very pleasure for me to participate in this conference. I met many interesting people - scientists from other cities, even from other countries outside Russia. Also got a diploma for the oral contribution in subsection analytical chemistry.

The illustration material can be found in LaTeX Beamer file archives with 3 themes files (in a tar ball).

Fig. 1. Title page of the presentation.


Fig. 2. Three fields theme.