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Inkscape crashing in Ubuntu 12.04 (on iMac 27")

Just thought I'd document something that was really bothering me a lot lately: Inkscape kept crashing whenever I'd try to use the "generate from path" commands.

I'm pretty good at searching for hours and finding what I need to fix something.  Since Inkscape is one of my main applications, I thought it was deserving of the attention.

After finding surprisingly little about this, I decided to try running the development version of Inkscape.  Here's how I did this.

First, I choose to use synaptic for this:

 sudo apt-get install synaptic 

Then, I had to add the development build to my sources:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:inkscape.dev/trunk

In synaptic, check to confirm that you have the development repository added:

After uninstalling your current Inkscape, use synaptic to install the development version:

Worked like a charm.  I wish I had more to report on what was causing the crashes, but this was a problem that I spent a lot of failed attempts to fix it.  So, I was just happy to have it working again.

Structure Synth for Generative Art

I've been messing around with Structure Synth lately, and it's a lot of fun.  The scripting language it uses is great for most of the things I want to design.  Still, there are a few situations where my students and I have not been able to make Eisen Script do what we require.  For that, what better language to use for "playing nicely" with Structure Synth than Python? 

I'm writing a Python module to help students bridge the gap between their imagination and Eisen Script. 

The image above was made during some rendering experiments I ran today.  Trying to find the right combination of depth of field and reflectivity is more fun than it sounds.

Okay, so maybe I was wrong about Unity

I just spent most of the past weekend installing and configuring Ubuntu Studio 12.04 on my 27" iMac.  The plan was to dual boot (I use REFIT) and be able to use OSX for ... well, a few of my recording studio apps, and Ubuntu for just about everything else. 

I mean, there are sooooo many excellent music production apps on Linux!  The problem, though, has long been the fact that music is the final frontier of Linux--unless you are willing to totally get into the guts of your system and do a ton of work to configure everything correctly.  Which I was willing to try!

Well, after 17 hours, I was pretty happy with my setup.  I had installed the realtime kernel and even put KXStudio on top of everything else.  I was like a kid in a candy store with unlimited funds.  There was so much excellent stuff to try out!

And it worked.  Sort of.  I had to do a bunch of stuff to kill off Pulseaudio [great current poll question: what do you hate more: Unity or Pulseaudio?], and then I had to alter config files to make sure it didn't respawn. 

It was NOT easy, but I was damn happy with the setup in the end.  I had my USB audio interface working, MIDI input was working--I turned it off and told my wife how happy I was and that it was worth it in the end. 

Today I got home from work and decided to record a guitar riff or two....

...crashes galore.  No sound at all.  Couldn't start Jack. 

I gave up. 

Since I had already switched to regular Ubuntu 12.04 (yep, the dreaded Unity desktop interface) on my laptop, I decided to just bite the bullet and go with Ubuntu on the iMac too.

Unity has improved.  Not sure if I'll get sound to work great or not, but I can always use OSX for that.  In the end I learned a LOT more about how Linux works--which is never a bad thing; it's good to become familiar with the future.

CrunchBang on a 27" iMac

I think it's funny how some of the best Linux distros unfortunately gain a reputation for being "a good choice for older hardware."  What, you need a huge bloated distro to make you feel more like you're using sluggish osX or Windows?  Not me!  I like to take a smaller footprint distro, set it up in 64 bit mode, and then watch it smoke the competition.  What better way to run GIMP or Inkscape.  Want to apply a path interpolation with over 20,000 nodes?  No problem....

Now I just need to get the wacom bamboo pen working without throwig segfault errors at me.... :-/

Don't let yourself be hijacked by your ISP

I use Firefox, Chrome, Iceweasel and Chromium as my browsers.  One thing I have really gotten to like is simply typing search words directly into the url field on the browser.  Recently, though, my ISP has started to hijack anything that was not a working url--pushing me over to the CenturyLink Web Helper/ Yahoo page full of spam and ads. 

After trying to opt out of the service via the Web Helper page itself, I finally concluded that you can NOT opt out of the service--even if you connect directly to your modem as per their instructions.

Luckily, I use Linux and it's really easy to use Google's Public DNS service to put an end to the CenturyLink Web Helper nonsense for good.  I just followed the instructions on the Google page itself and had no problems.  Haven't tried this yet on a Mac, but will soon.

Now, when I type "frogs" into the url field on Firefox I get this:

Sooooooo much better!

Think Complexity by Allen B. Downey

 

Yesterday I picked up a physical copy of Allen Downey's new Python book Think Complexity.  Allen does a great job on both fronts in this book, presenting key topics in Complexity Science and also clear Python code.  

Last year some students and I worked on a Genetic Algorithms case study that was inspired by Melanie Mitchell's book Complexity.  Our work on the case study was NOT for any course and NOT for pay or credit in any way.  It was "just for fun", and we learned a lot together.  But... since Allen is looking for Case Study submissions, we just may be resurrecting the Python code we wrote and submitting a new chapter for the next edition of this great little book.

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