I use CUPS-PDF to print all documents as PDF files. Mac OS X allows user to save documents as PDF without additional software, but I prefer to use CUPS-PDF instead.

Reasons for choosing CUPS-PDF:

• I’m too lazy to choose ‘Save as PDF’ from print dialog
• You can also share this CUPS-PDF with virtual machines so that documents printed under Windows or Linux VMs will print to the same folder.
• My main (and only) computer is a MacBook Pro so I do not always have access to a printer. CUPS-PDF goes wherever my MacBook Pro is.

I used MacPorts to install CUPS-PDF. With MacPorts, it’s as simple as:

sudo port install cups-pdf

And a few more additional instructions:

sudo /opt/local/libexec/cups-pdf_link.sh

Optionally, edit the /opt/local/etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf.

And finally:

sudo killall -1 cupsd

Once this is done, add a new printer from System Preferences.

All your printed documents will be stored at /opt/local/var/spool/cups-pdf/${USER}, where ${USER} is your username.

The path is little troublesome to access if you print very often. So, create a symbolic link at your desktop.

ln -s /opt/local/var/spool/cups-pdf/${USER} ~/Desktop/CUPS-PDF

This creates a shortcut (CUPS-PDF) to your printouts at your Desktop. Now, this shortcut looks like a normal folder and I want this folder to look like a printer so I can tell all my printouts are there.

I looked around for a nice printer icon at Iconfactory (and a few other places) but I could not find any that I liked.

Actually, nice looking printer icons are already installed. Go to /Library/Printers. Installed printer drivers are kept at this folder. Look around and find the printer icon you like.

I recently came across an open source project called Gource through Gizmodo. Gource allows you to visualize commit history of software projects hosted by Git and Mercurial. It is maintained by Andrew Caudwell.

When I found out about Gource, I only knew it supported Git and Mercurial repositories. I later found out about support for Subversion and CVS through scripts, but I was not sure if it supported projects hosted by TFS at all. I thought I might be able to get Gource to work with TFS commit logs if I wrote a script for it.

Luckily for me, Mike Ashley has already developed an application that does just that. TFSConverter takes a few parameters from command line and spits out log files that Gource understands. I could not get TFSConverter to work with all projects initially, but I modified TFSConverter a bit and got it to work with all projects.

Now that I have Gource working with TFS commit logs, I am happily generating video files from the log files. I stumbled a little with FFmpeg and x264 encoding at first, but once I learned about -vpre option from robert.swain‘ blog, I got the ffmpeg to generate video from Gource’s output nicely.

gource --disable-progress --stop-at-end --output-ppm-stream - <project.log> | ffmpeg -y -b 3000K -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec libx264 -vpre libx264-default <project.mp4>

You can replace -vpre option that suits your purpose better. You can see the available options at ${prefix}/share/ffmpeg. Mine is at /opt/local/share/ffmpeg. Yours might be somewhere else.

Google Web Toolkit team used Jake2, Google Web Toolkit, WebGL and WebSocket to run Quake 2 on web browsers. The project has comprehensive instructions on how you can get started, but I found out that some instructions are missing so it was not possible to build and play Quake 2 immediately.

I hope this post will help you to clear obstacles and start playing Quake 2 on a web browser.

This post assumes that you are running Mac OS X (10.6.x). It might also work on older Mac OS X, but I do not have any way to verify this.

Prerequisite

• Xcode
• MacPorts

You need the following tools to get started. Your should already have Xcode on the Mac OS X installation DVD. If you cannot find it, you can also download it from Apple.

You can download MacPorts from MacPorts‘ web page. Be sure to download the correct version if you install from a disk image.

After installing Xcode and MacPorts, follow the rest of the instructions.

Rest of the Instructions

Launch Terminal and install mercurial, vorbis-tools and lame.

port install mercurial
port install vorbis-tools
port install lame

Clone the quake2-gwt-port repository

hg clone https://quake2-gwt-port.googlecode.com/hg/ quake2-gwt-port

Go to quake2-gwt-port directory.

cd quake2-gwt-port

You need to specify an additional parameter for maven. Otherwise, you may run out of memory during the build process.

export MAVEN_OPTS=-Xmx512m

Run build-dedicated-server.

./build-dedicated-server

Run install-resources.

./install-resources

According to Google, there is an issue with maven build files, so you need to copy some files into war directory. If you do not do this, the browser may display a blank (black) window when you connect to the server.

cp -r maven-build/server/target/gwtquake/r/gwtquake war

Start the server.

./run-dedicated-server

You need the latest nightly build of WebKit. Go to WebKit and download the latest nightly build.

Enable WebGL.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitWebGLEnabled -bool YES

Launch WebKit. Navigate to your server: http://localhost:8080/GwtQuake.html

Have a blast!

So I built a SIM card reader. What’s next? Obviously, I want to test it by reading my SIM card. For Mac (and Linux), you can download PySimReader. It requires pySerial and wxPython to run. Unfortunately, I could not get wxPython to build and install via MacPorts (ticket 20952).

It did not look like there was a quick and easy fix for this issue. I decided to install Windows version of pySimReader. It is a standalone package (no additional software is required). I installed a driver for Trip Lite (formerly) USB Serial Adapter but that was all I needed to do.

Here’s a screenshot of pySimReader getting information from my SIM card reader.

I will look into getting the PySimReader working on my Mac soon.

This afternoon, I spent a few hours to build a SIM card reader. I bought this kit from Adafruit Industries awhile ago. It came with a good looking comic book.

I cannot remember when was the last time I actually soldered anything together but I found it rather easy. It was little difficult to solder a SIM card holder onto a PCB, but everything else went well.

Here is a picture of my new creation.

Today, I received Arduino-based microcontroller and other components from Carancho Engineering LLC. I am very excited to get started but I still need to buy more components and also some tools.

Just for a record, I bought these items from them.

Arduino MEGA w/Atmega 1280      ARDUINO-02  USD64.95
AeroQuad Shield v1.6            AQ1-006     USD24.95
IMU 5 Degrees of Freedom        SEN-09268   USD74.95
Dual Axis Gyro Breakout IXZ500  SEN-09510   USD39.95
Receiver Cables                 RCVR-001    USD 7.95
2 x Stackable Headers           CONN-001    USD 9.90

The components will be used as a flight controller for a quad-rotor helicopter. Receiver cables will link the flight controller and a receiver. I will be getting a set of transmitter and a receiver soon.

Here are some photos of flying display on last Saturday morning and afternoon. This was my first time taking photos of aircrafts and I wish I studied the techniques a bit more before this event.

I do not know if I am attending another one in 2012 but if I am, I’m going to take lots of sunblock cream. I got sunburned pretty bad last Saturday.

There are more aircraft photos at my Flickr photo set.

Actually, it’s not my bag (yet). I am seriously thinking about ordering a MacBook Pro 13″ and I thought it might be nice to get a bag to go with it. New fabrics from Timbuk2 are really nice and I just love trying different combinations of fabrics and customizing “my” bag.

This is my current design that I really like. Maybe I will place an order for it after I get my MacBook Pro. Until then, I will playing around with the customization options.

I recently got a new slice (512MB RAM, 20GB disk, 200GB bandwidth) from Slicehost. With the new slice, I decided to start from scratch and I am now in the process of importing my old blog posts.

Yes, I know I can do dump or import of old posts, but I want to start fresh so I will be uploading posts individually. You will see them by the end of this month.

This is just a note on installing/testing the Go Programming Language from Google.

I followed the instructions from IT戦記 (in Japanese). According to the article, 早速 Go 言語を試してみる！, amachang reported that HTTP test failed. I also had the same test failure, but after I disabled the firewall temporarily and ran the test again, HTTP test passed fine.