Archive for March, 2011

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My 17 years old, first in line Cousin Stanislav died in a motorcycle accident :(

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Stanislav Valentinov Velikov, my beloved first in line cousin
Yesterday about 14:08, my beloved cousin Stanislav Valentinov Velikov has passed a way silently in a motorcycle accident.
It’s really terrible, I’ve been told today by my relatives and it was quite hard to believe it.
My impressions from Stanislav was that he was a very kind good and shiny boy. Like most of us the sinners he had a deadly passion Motorcycles
I haven’t seen Stanislav for already about 2.5 years, which was my personal fault not to keep a close contact with such a close relative.
Last time I saw him, he was almost a child and now just few years later he is gone. I’ve just came by from his home, where all the relatives friends, grandfathers, grandmathers and all that loved him and know him when he was still among the living were gathered to say a last goodbye

What is even more painful is the ridiculous way he has passed away. Stani as we used to call him was driving his new Honda motorcycle and was driving nearby a traffic lights on a street “San Stefano” here in Dobrich, a taxi driver was trying to do a manoeuvre right after he had left his last customers.
Of course as it often happens in Bulgaria the taxi driver was doing the manouver against the set driving rules, (he was doing a backward maneuver) on a street crossroad (located nearby the big supermarket Billa).

Stanislav was coming through the traffic lights in a high speed (it’s not clearly known what speed).He was driving the professional motorcycle without a a proper driving license, as he was 17 he only had a driving license for moped vehicle.

It appears the stupid taxi driver was doing his irresponsible law breaking maneuver right in the moment when Stanislav was riding on the road before the traffic lights.
As my cousin saw the taxi driver he got probably scared (presumably) tried to use the breaks to prevent crashing the taxi driver possibly loose the motorcycle holders.
He jumped over the motorcycle and hit and broke his neck 😐 It’s a terrible story really. What is even more terrible that the taxi driver was an ex-policeman and was one of the responsible sides for the deadly accident which costed the life of my cousin.

What can I say Bulgaria is really an insane country, even though I’m not a big wester fan I should say such an accidents are not that common in the Western World as the law is more observed there.

I’ve heard from my grandfather and grandmother that Stanislav was really gifted in technics especially in repairing motorcycles, moped vehicles etc.

Stanislav is still a pupil in the nearby Mathematics High School “Ivan Vazov”. Before his unexpected death my cousin was planning to get her girlfriend and get a ride to Varna where he was supposedly going to spend the school break and see my other cousin Desislav …
I’ve been to Stani’s home and saw his lifeless body and it’s really striking, he is so young his death is causing an enormous trace and pain in me and my family.

Now my family is lessing itself with a one more good and decent person. Stanislav is a victim of this cruel age. I remember since his childhood that he was very pationate about computer games with motorcycles and cars.
His deadly passion then went on into the real world, he first got a moped, then a professional motorcycle. He violated the law taking the bad example of the many computer games which preach uncontrolled high speed, adrenalin and living on the edge.

But my beloved cousin Stanislav as he was still a teen was not the one to be blamed, the real responsible ones are our parents who doesn’t educate is in the tradition and spirit of the faith of our fathers Orthodox Christianity

I’ve heard from my relatives that now the taxi driver probably want even be hold responsible, as he is an ex-cop and he has many friends still working in the police. Friends who would proof the taxi driver innocent!

We had a small talk with my sister today about the direct influence of the movies and the computer games on the computer psyche.
I believe my cousin is not responsibe for his tragedic death as he was just following an implanted route in his mind by the multiple games and violent movies he has been a fan of.
Stani is just another victim of this cruel age … As I saw him laying in the coffin I was thinking how short our live is. We work we bye we sell but we never know when our time will come.

What makes my cousin’s death even bigger trady is my uncle’s death (his father) who died just a few years ago after a severe sickness …

It’s a sad day today, it’s, also a clear example that we who are still living should come again to the mindset that we’re here for a short time.
We should day by day think of what we have done wrongly (our sins), we should try to live better and love more as our saviour Christ has instructed us “If you’re my pupils, love each other”.
It’s sad that we’re so hard-hearted that we don’t realize that what happened is a God’s warning not only to my family but to everybody out there.

If we don’t repent our sins and start living as God instructed us, our pains would multiple and our days will be living in sorrows …
I pray that our merciful God the Holy Trinity has mercy on Stanislav’s (newly presented) soul and be merciful on him and receive him in paradise …

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Posted in Various | 37 Comments »

How to list and exclude table names from a database in MySQL (exclude table names from an show tables in MySQL) by using information_schema

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Listing all table names from a MySQL database is a very easy and trivial task that every sql or system administrator out there is aware of.

However excluding certain table names from a whole list of tables belonging to a database is not that commonly used and therefore I believe many people have no clue how to do it when they have to.

Today for one of my sql backup scripts it was necessary that certain tables from a database to be excluded from the whole list of tables for a database I’m backupping.
My example database has the sample name exampledatabase and usually I do list all the table contents from that database with the well known command:

mysql> SHOW tables from exampledatabase;

However as my desire was to exclude certain tables from the list (preferrably with a certain SQL query) I had to ask around in irc.freenode.net for some hints on a ways to achieve my exclude table goals.

I was adviced by some people in #mysql that what I need to achieve my goal is the information_schema mysql structure, which is available since MySQL version 5.0.

After a bit of look around in the information_schema and the respective documentation on mysql.com, thanksfully I could comprehend the idea behind the information_schema, though to be honest the first time I saw the documentation it was completly foggy on how to use this information_schema;
It seems using the information_schema is very easy and is not much different from your normal queries syntax used to do trivial operations in the mysql server.

If you wonder just like I did what is mysql’s information_schema go and use the information_schema database (which I believe is a virtual database that is stored in the system memory).

For instance:

mysql> use information_schema;
Database changed
mysql> show tables
+---------------------------------------+
| Tables_in_information_schema |
+---------------------------------------+
| CHARACTER_SETS |
| COLLATIONS |
| COLLATION_CHARACTER_SET_APPLICABILITY |
| COLUMNS |
| COLUMN_PRIVILEGES |
| KEY_COLUMN_USAGE |
| PROFILING |
| ROUTINES |
| SCHEMATA |
| SCHEMA_PRIVILEGES |
| STATISTICS |
| TABLES |
| TABLE_CONSTRAINTS |
| TABLE_PRIVILEGES |
| TRIGGERS |
| USER_PRIVILEGES |
| VIEWS |
+---------------------------------------+
17 rows in set (0.00 sec)

To get a general view on what each of the tables in the information_schema database contains I used the normal SELECT command for example

mysql> select * from TABLES limit 10;

I used the limit clause in order to prevent being overfilled with data, where I could still see the table fields name to get general and few lines of the table to get an idea what kind of information the TABLES table contains.

If you haven’t got any ecperience with using the information_schema I would advice you do follow my example select and look around through all the listed tables in the information_schema database

That will also give you a few hints about the exact way the MySQL works and comprehends it’s contained data structures.

In short information_schema virtual database and it’s existing tables provides a very thorough information and if you’re an SQL admin you certainly want to look over it every now and then.

A bit of playing with it lead me to a command which is actually a good substitute for the normal SHOW TABLES; mysql command.
To achieve a SHOW TABLES from exampledatabase via the information_schema info structure you can for example issue:

select TABLE_NAME from TABLES where TABLE_SCHEMA='exampledatabase';

Now as I’ve said a few words about information_schema let me go back to the main topic of this small article, which is How to exclude table names from a SHOW tables list

Here is how exclude a number of tables from a complete list of tables belonging to a database:

select TABLE_NAME from TABLES where TABLE_SCHEMA='exampledatabase'
AND TABLE_NAME not in
('mysql_table1_to_exlude_from_list', 'mysql_table2_to_exclude_from_list', 'table3_to_exclude');

In this example the above mysql command will list all the tables content belonging to exampledatabase and instruct the MySQL server not to list the table names with names mysql_table1_to_exlude_from_list, mysql_table2_to_exclude_from_list, table3_to_exclude

If you need to exclude more tables from your mysql table listing just add some more tables after the …’table3_to_exclude’, ‘new_table4_to_exclude’,’etc..’);

Of course this example can easily be adopted to a MySQL backup script which requires the exclusion of certain tables from a backed up database.

An example on how you can use the above table exclude command straight from the bash shell would be:

debian:~# echo "use information_schema; select TABLE_NAME from TABLES where
TABLE_SCHEMA='exampledatabase' AND TABLE_NAME not in
('mysql_table1_to_exlude_from_list', 'mysql_table2_to_exclude_from_list', 'table3_to_exclude',);"
| mysql -u root -p

Now this little bash one-liner can easily be customized to a backup script to create backups of a certain databases with a certain tables (e.g. with excluded number of tables) from the backup.

It’s seriously a pity that by default the mysqldump command does not have an option for a certain tables exclude while making a database dump.
I’ve saw the mysqldump exclude option, being suggested somewhere online as a future feature of mysqldump, I’ve also seen it being reported in the mysql.com’s bug database, I truly hope in the upcoming releases we will see the exclude option to appear as a possible mysqldump argument.
 

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Posted in Linux, MySQL, Programming, System Administration | 2 Comments »

Speed up your DNS resolve if your Internet Service Provider DNS servers fail or resolve slowly / Privacy concerns of public DNS services use

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

In my experience with many network Internet Service Providers by so far I’ve encountered a lot of DNS oddities and therefore surfing (web) and mail slowness.

It’s sometimes very irritating especially in cases, when I use my internet over Wireless public or university wireless networks.
In principle many of the Wireless routers which distribute the internet especially in organizations are badly configured and the slowness with DNS resolvings is an absolute classic.
If you haven’t encountered that slowness in opening web pages when connected from your University’s canteen, whether it’s fill with people for the lunch break, then I should say you’re really lucky!

My personal experience with this bad configured devices DNS services has been quite negative and every now and then I use to set and use public DNS servers like OpenDNS and Google DNS

Very often when I connect to a wireless network with my notebook running Debian Linux and the internet is too slow in opening pages I automatically set the Google or OpenDNS servers as a default DNS IP resolving servers.

1. DNS IP addresses of Google Public DNS are:

8.8.8.7
and
8.8.8.8

2. OpenDNS Public DNS servers has the IP addresses of:

208.67.222.222
208.67.222.220

I do set up and use the upper public DNS services addresses via the commands:

3. Set and use Google Public DNS services on my Linux debian:~# cp -rpf /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.orig
debian:~# echo "nameserver 8.8.8.7n nameserver 8.8.8.8 n" > /etc/resolv.conf;

I first create backu pof my resolv.conf under the name resolv.conf.orig just to make sure I can revert back to my old DNSes if I need them at some point.

If you prefer to use the OpenDNS services for some let’s say privacy reasons, you do it in the same manner as in the above commands, you only change the IP addresses. 4. Configure and use the OpenDNS public DNS services

debian:~# cp -rpf /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.orig
debian:~# echo "nameserver 208.67.222.222n nameserver 208.67.222.220 n" > /etc/resolv.conf;

Of course using Public DNS services has it’s disadvantages over the domain resolving speed up advantage.
One major issue is that Public DNS services are running on a top of a cloud and if you have red my previous article Cloud Computing a possible threat to users privacy and system administrator employment you might be agaist the idea of using a services which are powered by cloud.

The other primary concern is related to your SECURITY and a PRIVACY by using Public DNS networks, you risk that your Public DNS provider might use some DNS spoof techniques to mislead you and resolve you common domain names which usually resolve to let’s say 1.1.1.1 to let’s say 1.5.5.10

Even though this kind of practices on a side of a public DNS provider is not a likely scenario the possible implications of Public DNS providers using DNS forgery to fool you about domain names locations is a very serious issue.

As public DNS providers does contain again the good old philosophy of cloud computing embedded in themselves and they strive to become some kind of a standard which people might vote to adopt and use, the future implications of a wide adoption of Public DNS servers might be a terrible thing on internet users privacy!!!

Just think about a future scenario where we users of the Internet are forced to use a number of public DNS servers in order to use the Internet!
Usually a very huge companies are possessing the Public DNS services and do pay for the tech equipment required for building up the cluster clouds which provide the DNS services and therefore, if in the short future public DNS becomes a fashion and (God forbid!) a standard which shifts up the regular ISP DNS servers to resolve domains to IPs then it will be terrible.

The corporations which does own the Public DNS service/s might have a direct control over filtering and censoling information posted on any website on the internet.
Even worser if the world decides to adopt public DNS services somewhere in the future this means that large corporations owning the open dns cluster or clusters will be able to check each and every resolving made by any user on the net.
If you think closely such an information possessed by a company is not the best thing we want.

So let me close up this article, I’m not a fan and an evangelist who preaches the use of Public DNS services. Right on Contrary I do honestly hate the idea behind public DNS.
Nevertheless apart from my personal opinion I’m a practical person and using the public DNS servers every now and then when this will accelerate my access to the internet is still an option I do enjoy.

Maybe it’s time for a free software project (a tor like), which will provide users with an OpenDNS alternative which will run on hobbyist computers around the globe (just like with tor).

What’s rather funny is that the loud name OpenDNS is a big lie in reality OpenDNS is not opened it’s a company owned closed source service 😉

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Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration | 1 Comment »

How to install and configure Canon Pixma iP3300 printer for color printing on Ubuntu and Debian Linux

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

I’ve recently was asked by my cousin to install and configure her Canon Pixma iP3300 on Ubuntu Linux version 9.10 (Karmic) since the printer was not initialized properly by default.

After a bit of investigation and experimentation, I finally found the way to install and configure the Canon Pixma iP3300

Here is a step by step howto for all those who are suffering with the same annoying issue:

1. Install some preliminary deb packages

ubuntu:~# apt-get update
ubuntu:~# apt-get install alien libxml++1.0-dev libpng12-0 libpng12-dev libgtk1.2 libgtk1.2-common

2. Create a new canon directory

ubuntu:~# mkdir canon

3. Download the libraries and printer drivers in rpm (required by linux’s cups printing system

I’ve made a mirror of the packages, as it was a bit hard to find the packages, i hope mirroring them will guarantee the packages won’t suddenly disappear from the net.

I’ve mirrored a whole bunch of linux drivers which are for various Canon printers
However the files which are necessary for making the Pixma ip3300 to work out on Ubuntu or Debian are:

  • cnijfilter-common-2.70-1.i386.rpm
  • cnijfilter-ip3300-2.70-1.i386.rpm

In some cases on an AMD64 (64 bit Linux architecture), you might also need the file:

  • cnijfilter-common-2.70-1.src.rpm

  • To straight download the ip3300 necessary files in the just created directory canon in step 2 issue the cmd:

    ubuntu:~# cd canon
    ubuntu:/canon# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/canon-linux-drivers/cnijfilter-common-2.70-1.i386.rpm
    ...
    ubuntu:/canon# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/canon-linux-drivers/cnijfilter-common-2.70-1.src.rpm
    ...
    ubuntu:/canon# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/canon-linux-drivers/cnijfilter-ip3300-2.70-1.i386.rpm
    ...

    As you have seen in step 1, we have installed the alien tool which will be used to convert the rpm packages to .tgz (tar.gz) files.

    The reason why I’m converting to .tgz instead of directly converting to .deb package is that two of the files are built for the i386 architecture, the ubuntu where I wanted to install them has installed an amd64 version of Ubuntu (a 64bit release of Ubuntu).

    As the Ubuntu is amd64 version whether I try to convert the .rpm files to .deb packages like so:

    ubuntu:/canon# alien --to-deb cnijfilter-common-2.70-1.i386.rpm

    I got the error:

    cnijfilter-common-2.70-1.i386.rpm is for architecture i386 ; the package cannot be built on this system

    As I said earlier to get around this issue, 4. Use alien to convert my .rpm to .tgz :

    ubuntu:~# alien --to-tgz cnijfilter-common-2.70-1.i386.rpm
    cnijfilter-common-2.70.tgz generated
    ubuntu:~# alien --to-tgz cnijfilter-ip3300-2.70-1.i386.rpm
    cnijfilter-ip3300-2.70.tgz generated

    5. Untar the .tgz cnijfilter archives

    ubuntu:/canon# tar -zxvf cnijfilter-ip3300-2.70.tgz
    ...
    ubuntu:/canon# tar -zxvvf cnijfilter-common-2.70.tgz
    ....

    The above files unarchive will extract you a directory called usr/ , now you will need to manually copy the files from this directory to the correct locations, here are the commands to issue to do that:

    6. Copy extracted drivers to correct locations

    ubuntu:/canon# cd usr
    ubuntu:/canon/usr# cp -rpf lib/* /usr/lib
    ubuntu:/canon/usr# cp -rpf local/* /usr/local/
    ubuntu:/canon/usr# cp -rpf local/bin/* /usr/bin/
    ubuntu:/canon/usr# cp -rpf local/share/* /usr/share/

    7. Create symbolink links to libtiff and libpng as a fix up

    ubuntu:/canon/usr# ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4 /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3
    ubuntu:/canon/usr# ln -s /usr/lib/libpng.so /usr/lib/libpng.so.3
    ubuntu:/canon/usr# ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so.2 /usr/lib/libtiff.so.1     8. Make the Ubuntu be aware of the newly installed libraries

    ubuntu:/canon/usr# ldconfig

    9. Restart the cups printing server

    ubuntu:/canon/usr# /etc/init.d/cups restart
    * Restarting Common Unix Printing System: cupsd

    So far so good by now, your Ubuntu or Debian system should be able to initilize your Canon Pixma iP3300 , next step is to configure your printer to be able to print correctly in color mode.

    What I did straight after my correct installation was to test the printer. The tests went fine with printing black and white or (Greyscale), however whether I tried to test printing in color mode, my printed images and colors were completely distorted!

    It took me a bit of try/fails until I succeeded with the printer to print in colors.

    There are few settings which has to be tuned right after install to make the Pixma iP3300 print in color on Linux

    Here are the few things which I had to tune from System -> Administration > Printing

    10. Configure in Administration -> Printing the following options

    Change the default set resolution for the printer from Automatic which is the printer default to:

    Resolution: 300x300DPI

    By the default the Pixma ip3300 will try to print out with the highest resolution possible 600x600DPI, however the Linux drivers doesn’t seem to support this resolution, if the 600x600DPI resolution is used the result is the distorted color picture print outs.

    Further on configure the Color Model option:

    Color Model: RGB Color or
    Color Model: CMYK

    Now your Canon Pixma iP3300 printer should be printing fine both in black and white and in color on your Ubuntu/Debian Linux.

    I believe this little install tutorial should be working just fine for all kind of Debian Linux direvatives 😉
    Enjoy printing and don’t forget Print as less as possible, Save a Tree! 😉

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Posted in Everyday Life, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Various | 4 Comments »

Cloud Computing a possible threat to users privacy and system administrator employment

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Cloud Computing screenshot

If you’re employed into an IT branch an IT hobbyist or a tech, geek you should have certainly heard about the latest trend in Internet and Networking technologies the so called Cloud Computing

Most of the articles available in newspapers and online have seriously praised and put the hopes for a better future through cloud computing.
But is really the cloud computing as good as promised? I seriously doubt that.
Let’s think about it what is a cloud? It’s a cluster of computers which are connected to work as one.
No person can precisely say where exactly on the cluster cloud a stored information is located (even the administrator!)

The data stored on the cluster is a property of a few single organizations let’s say microsoft, amazon etc., so we as users no longer have a physical possession of our data (in case if we use the cloud).

On the other hand the number of system administrators that are needed for an administration of a huge cluster is dramatically decreased, the every day system administrator, who needs to check a few webservers and a mail server on daily basis, cache web data with a squid proxy cache or just restart a server will be no longer necessary.

Therefore about few million of peoples would have to loose their jobs, the people necessary to administrate a cluster will be probably no more than few thousands as the clouds are so high that no more than few clouds will exist on the net.

The idea behind the cluster is that we the users store retrieve our desktops and boot our operating system from the cluster.
Even loading a simple webpage will have to retrieve it’s data from the cluster.

Therefore it looks like in the future the cloud computing and the internet are about to become one and the same thing. The internet might become a single super cluster where all users would connect with their user ids and do have full access to the information inside.

Technologies like OpenID are trying to make the user identification uniform, I assume a similar uniform user identication will be used in the future in a super cloud where everybody, where entering inside will have access to his/her data and will have the option to access any other data online.

The desire of humans and business for transperancy would probably end up in one day, where people will want to share every single bit of information.
Even though it looks very cool for a sci-fi movie, it’s seriously scary!

Cloud computing expenses as they’re really high would be affordable only for a multi-national corporations like Google and Microsoft

Therefore small and middle IT business (network building, expanding, network and server system integration etc.) would gradually collapse and die.

This are only a few small tiny bit of concerns but in reality the problems that cloud computing might create are a way more severe.
We the people should think seriously and try to oppose cloud computing, while we still can! It might be even a good idea if a special legislation that is aming at limiting cloud computing can be integrated and used only inside the boundary of a prescribed limitations.

Institutions like the European Parliament should be more concerned about the issues which the use of cloud computing will bring, EU legislation should very soon be voted and bounding contracts stop clouds from expanding and taking over the middle size IT business.

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Posted in Everyday Life, Various | 2 Comments »

How to set password on a mysql server with no password via mysql command line interface

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Many Linux distributions’s offered MySQL server comes without a set default password, in practice you can freely login to the mysql server on a plain mysql server installation on Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora by simply issuing:

linux:~# mysql -u root
Enter password:

Pressing enter will straight let you in the mysql server. The same kind of behaviour is also probably true on BSD based and many other Unixes which have pre-installed or the option to install a new mysql server.

I remember in my past that I’ve even seen a productive mysql servers on a servers running CMS based websites which doesn’t have a root password set.

Some administrators doesn’t take the time to think about the implications of the no password mysql installation and therefore being in a hurry simply let the server without an administrator password.
This is very common for the most lame and uneducated ones. Many novice system administrators think that by installing a phpmyadmin and configuring a password on it’s web interface is equal to setting up the mysql server (daemon) a password.

Thus for all this the uneducated ones and for all those who already have noticed that their newly installed mysql server doesn’t have a password set I’ve decided to give an example how a new mysql server password can be set or how an existing mysql server pass can be changed to a new one

To make any password manipulations usually the mysql-client package does provide a very handy instrument called mysqladmin , mysqladmin has many possibilities among which is creating a new mysql server admin (root) password or changing a previously set mysql server password to a new one

1. Here is how you can set a new MySQL server password:

mysqladmin -u root 'password' YOURasddsaPASSWORDjqweHERE

2. If you need to change an already existing mysql password you need to provide just one more argument to mysqladmin:

mysqladmin -u root 'password' YOURasdfdsaNEWasddsaPASSWORD_HERE -pEnter password:

Whether the Enter password: field appears you will be required to fill in the original mysql server root password after which the password will be changed to the above string passed in to the mysqladmin command line ‘YOURasdfdsaNEWasddsaPASSWORD_HERE’

That’s all now you have either set a new password for the mysql server or have already changed your previous one.

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Posted in MySQL, System Administration | No Comments »

The Exaltation of the Precious and Life-creating Cross day in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

exaltation of the precious and life giving cross orthodox icon

Today, we celebrate the exaltation of the precious and life-creating(giving) Cross day in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church

The feast is extraordinary holy and beautiful, the priest brings the life-giving cross from the Altar and brings the Crucifixion cross on a table in the center of the Church.

While the priest’s crossing the temple with the precious life-giving cross in a small metal dish raising the cross over his heads, he sing the so called Troparion of the cross as you can read below:

Save, O Lord, Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance, granting unto the faithful victory over adversaries, and by the power of Thy Cross, do Thou preserve Thy commonwealth

Further on is the song,

"Before Thy Cross, we bow down in worship, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection we glorify" is sang three times.

The priest blesses all the present clergy and layman in the the Church and leaves the life-giving cross for veneration.
Then we all the layman do line-up kiss and bow infront of the cross which brought salvation to us Christians and opened us the doors Christ.

As far as my understanding goes (though I’m not a competent person), today’s exaltation of the cross is minor feast and is different from the day of the so called Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-creating cross

The feast by God’s grace is one of the very blessed ones in the orthodox church and thus is an enormous joy for all us the orthodox christians.
Next to kissing the layman in the church are also offered to take a small branch of basil (a symbol of royalty) and better said as another blessing.

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Posted in Christianity | 1 Comment »

Why Open Social Networks like facebook and twitter are a big EVIL!

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

We all have seen the boom in the social networking in the last years.
Friend’s (find a person to fuck networks) like facebook has been booming for already 5+ years, professional business networks like Linkedin and xing are becoming an absolute requirement for everybody that has to be a player in the business realm.

Moving forward the list is endless orkut , my opera , twitter , flickr you name it ..

What is the big lie about social networks? The Social word.
There is anything else but social in this networks.
You make an account join a network and start exploring a dead binary data in form of picture music, irc chat, or play games alone or with others. The amount of time you spend in front of a computer screen an ipod, iphone, ipad or IFUCK! 🙂 gradually increases.
People are starting to become an electronic zoombies, live interactions like a simple game of football outside, chess tournament a simple coffee or tea with friends is starting to become an extraordinary thing.

People share more and more, it’s important to share the best of you it’s important to create a false image of yourself in let’s say facebook , it’s generally important for most people to look good on their uploaded pics to smile and share everything they do in real life.

In practice if you have signed up in any social network and do actively post your information you’re building an online very thorough dossier (record) of everything you do.
Your online record that large computer software and manifacturers like Microsoft and Google does most probably already own a tremendous record of who you’re what you do, why you do it and how you do it!

What makes it even worse it’s voluntary you’re transperant, you share your thoughts you create new identity, you hide under a new avatar to build just one big lie identity.

How it comes that people knows each other that well that they could share themselves that much? Maybe I ask too much, but it’s a fact.
How can go into creating new identities, if are not even aware of what our own identity is.
Have you felt that bad feeling, when you see a lot of morons in facebook posing like a great and glorious people?
The rule in the social networks is the more dumb you’re the better, be opened, share everything, share your soul …

All I describe is a enormous breach of privacy and the consequences for the real life interactions of people are really destructive.
We are so social on the internet today, that the internet has become our second home, maybe our first one? Maybe we live in the virtual reality? Where all this meaningless insanity would end up?

And what is even worser about social networks is that they’re all about money, it’s also true for the internet, even though it started as a promising and good intention, when business entered they turned it into a dead place for business.

The fun of the old computer glorious days is no more. Computers and the coproduced technologies are being used inefficient increative and binding.

We don’t even have control over the social networks, it’s all a large database filled with information about millions of people around the globe owned by a business company.

The more people interact with technology and the more pseudo social they become, they’re all becoming in an inexistent imaginary place that constantly reshapes and takes forms.
The old sanity we all had is lost somewhere in the days …

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Posted in Everyday Life, Various | 8 Comments »

Setting script to be executed before and after (suspend and resume) in hibernate on Debian Squeeze

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

I’m using a script called /usr/sbin/restart_trackpoint.sh to restart periodically my R61 Thinkpad trackpoint device.
Without this script my trackpoint often hanges and as a side effect causes my whole Gnome desktop to disfunction.
This happens every now and then and it’s deadly irritating …

I’ve noticed that the problem where my thinkpad trackpoint breaks happens most often after my notebook system resume/suspend hibernate functions are in use

I do use the linux hibernate via /usr/sbin/hibernate almost every time I decide to stop my laptop and therefore the hibernate function is something I do use on daily basis.
When suddenly as a consequence of the hibernations the trackpoint problems appeared, I’ve realized that I need a way to place my /usr/sbin/restart_trackpoint.sh script to be executed everytime my system comes from a previous hibernate (e.g. restores).

The documentation of hibernate was not too much clear to me but after some experiments and thanks to something I read on help.ubuntu.com I finally found how to achieve my desired task.

For other people which might have a requirement to set a script to be issued on hibernate suspend or hibernate restore here is how it can be done on Debian Squeeze and in testing/untsable

1. Create new file in /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/100resume

debian:~# vim /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/100resume

2.Place in it for instance the script:

#!/bin/sh
##
## 100resume
##

case $1 in
suspend)
## COMMANDS THAT YOU WISH TO RUN BEFORE SUSPEND
#COMMAND1
echo “Suspeding …”;
;;
resume)
## COMMANDS THAT YOU WISH TO RUN AFTER RESUME
/usr/sbin/restart_trackpoint.sh
;;
hibernate)
## COMMANDS THAT YOU WISH TO RUN BEFORE HIBERNATE
#COMMAND3
echo “Hibernating …”;
;;
thaw)
## COMMANDS THAT YOU WISH TO RUN AFTER RESUME FROM SUSPEND TO DISK
#COMMAND4
;;
esac

Now you might need to modify the above script’s each of the sections to determine what kind of commands you would like to execute before resume) and hibernate)
When you’re done with the file, 3.make it executable

debian:~# chmod +x /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/100resume

4. Test if your script works with hibernate’s resume and restore

debian:~# /usr/sbin/hibernate

After the hibernate completes, launch the power on pc button and checkout if the system instructions defined in 100resume are being applied.

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Posted in Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »

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