Major update!
It has been over a year since my last post. For this reason, I have finally figured out that I have to switch to a mainstream CMS that makes it easier for me to publish updates.
During the last few years, I have tried keeping my old CMS, mbmCMS (or madebymyselfCMS) updated, but I had to throw in the towel in the end. Maintaining a CMS is a lot of work, and I really didn't enjoy (or have the time) working on it anymore. Over the years, the code base had become quite bad, as I really didn't organize the code very well.
WordPress on the other hand looks like its up for the task. The admin dashboard is a dream to work with, and I don't have to make my own plug-ins. Hopefully, this will make it easier to keep the site updated.
I have already moved over the articles I found relevant from the old site, and I will possibly add a few more over the next days.
Remember to check out my other sites!
Vegard
Using Dropbox on Slackware
This guide will show you how to install Droxbox on a system that doesn't have Nautilus installed. This is especially useful to people who use Slackware, because GNOME is not installed by default. You still need a file manager though, so in this example, we'll use Thunar.
In order to get Dropbox to work, we have to trick Dropbox into thinking that Nautilus is already installed. The easiest way to accomplish this, is by creating a script in /usr/bin called nautilus, which basically is a link to Thunar. To get started, download a precompiled binary from getdropbox.com. I used a binary compiled for Fedora 10 called nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm.
$ wget http://linux.getdropbox.com/packages/nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm
What we now are going to do is to run rpm2tgz on this package so that we can explode the package using explodepkg. We do so because we want to create a slackware-package, where we also include our little workaround. First, log in as root.
$ su - $ mkdir /tmp/dropbox $ mv nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm /tmp/dropbox $ rpm2tgz nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm $ explodepkg nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.tgz
Now, go to /tmp/dropbox/usr/bin, fire up your favorite text-editor and write the following:
#!/bin/bash thunar $@ exit 0
When you're done, save the file as "nautilus". Now, go back to /tmp/dropbox, create a folder called install, touch a file called "slack-desc" and run makepkg to create a slackware-package.
$ mkdir install $ touch install/slack-desc $ makepkg dropbox-0.6.1-i386-1vh.tgz
The only thing that has to be done now, is to install the package.
$ installpkg dropbox-0.6.1-i386-1vh.tgz
Working on my bachelor thesis
At the moment, most of my time is spent working on my Bachelor Thesis at the University of Agder.
In the thesis, a friend of mine and I are working on implementing VPN for a company in Grimstad, Norway. We've settled for OpenVPN, so during the next weeks, we'll study OpenVPN to the last detail, and figure out a way to implement it sufficiently.
Besides school, I'm working on a project called VWS - Vegard's Web Services. This is an application programmed in html, php, mysql. What makes it special is the AJAX-functionality that I recently learned implementing. Basically, VWS is a portal for the other web-based applications I've made or will make in the future. I'm planning on releasing this project under the GPL when it's less buggy and has more functionality 
Special keys stops working while using VMware
Has it occured to you that when you're using VMware Workstation or Server that CTRL, ALT and SHIFT stops working? When this first started happening to me, I just restarted X to fix the problem. As you probably know, this is not a good solution
If you however try executing setxkbmap once this problem occurs, you should gain control over the keys again. This did at least work for me
Making your Logitech MX500 work in GNU/Linux
Configuring your Logitech MX500 mouse in Linux so that all the buttons work properly can be a real pain in the ass if you don't know how to do it.
I've done this a few times myself now, and since there isn't much info regarding this on the net - I'll just add it myself.
Ok, so how do we actually make the mouse work? This can be solved fairly in your xorg.conf file, located at /etc/X11/xorg.conf (in Slackware at least). Once you've located the file, fire up your favorite text editor (I prefer vim), and find the section called "InputDevice".
Once that is done, change whatever values you have there so that it fits the example provided:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
Option "Resolution" "800"
EndSection
Best animation I’ve ever seen
This video is one of the most brilliant animations I have ever seen.
If you haven't heard about the bird Kiwi yet, you had better check this one out.
New kernel resulted in massive audio problems
Today I upgraded my current kernel (2.6.24) to the newest, 2.6.25 and also made some minor changes to the config-file. I added some new options, and removed a few I thought was unnecessary.
After the new kernel compiled successfully, I moved the image to /boot and configured lilo. Then, I did a quick reboot and everything worked fine, or so I thought.
I compiled the kernel while I was attending a rather boring lecture at school, and I didn't have the opportunity to check how the whole system worked until I got home. When I finally got home, I had to relax a bit so I put on some music. To my surprise, Audacious returned an error saying it couldn't access the sound-device. I then checked the rights on every file related to sound in /dev, and everything seemed to be in order. Then, I tried reconfiguring ALSA by running alsa-conf, but neither that seemed to do the trick.
My last resort before googling for an answer was checking the audio-tab under preferences in Audacious. Making sure that "Current output plug-in" was set to ALSA 1.3.5, I clicked the button "Output Plugin Preferences" and noticed that the current audio-device was set to "default". I tried switching to one of the other fields in the combobox (Intel ICH6: xxx), and guess what. Audacious finally worked again.
Since I now was able to play audio without problems, I settled for using this workaround - at least until I tried playing a movie through MPlayer. When I attemped to watch a movie, I got the error-message "X11 error: BadAccess (attempt to access private resource denied)" slammed in my face. I also tried running gmplayer - which refused to start and returned the error-message "Fatal Error! - [ws] shared memory extension error.". Now I realized that something was very wrong. Using my wits, I determined that the issue had to be with the newly compiled kernel. I ran a "make menuconfig" and tried to locate any misconfigurations.. ..although without results.
I was now out of ideas and went on to the last resort and googled the error-message outputted by gmplayer along with "kernel". A few minutes and 4 webpages later, I found the solution to the problem.
While I was configuring the new kernel, I had disabled "System V IPC" (CONFIG_SYSVIPC), which is located under "General Setup". I remember reading the help-message before I disabled this option and it didn't look very important. It stated that some programs, like "dosemu" wouldn't work unless this was turned on. Since I don't use dosemu, but dosbox instead, I thought I wouldn't be needing it and therefore left it out.
However, I was very wrong and from now on, I will always compile my new kernels where I'll include CONFIG_SYSVIPC. And yes, when the new kernel was compiled yet again, I booted it and everything worked like it used to.