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I’m claiming the win on this one… remember that the tinyURL that this bot messages is in fact a link to tubgirl.

15:14 -!- Pats-Sox [~no@fw.mdchomes.com] has joined #asp
15:18 < @lanshark> we dont want any chowda heads in here
15:25 < Pats-Sox> “chowda head”…I don’t know why that just caused a really really bad “yo momma”
         joke to pop in my head
15:28 < Pats-Sox> I just googled “chowda head” for the heck of it.  This site is pretty funny…
         http://www.boston-online.com/glossary/
15:28 < Pats-Sox> Chowdahead
15:32 < myles_> !search Chowdahead
15:32 < Crusher_> myles_ > Your search returned 12 results. Press alt + z to receive a link to them.
15:33 -!- edmundo [~bla@78-0-185-182.adsl.net.t-com.hr] has joined #asp
15:33 -!- myles_ is now known as myles
15:33 < myles> !search Chowdahead
15:33 < Crusher_> myles > Your search returned 12 results. Press alt + z to receive a link to them.
15:35 -!- edmundo [~bla@78-0-185-182.adsl.net.t-com.hr] has left #asp []
15:36 < Pats-Sox> !search chowdahead
15:36 < Crusher_> Pats-Sox > Your search returned 12 results. Press alt + z to receive a link to them.
15:38 < Pats-Sox> it can’t be a coincidence that edmundo left immediately after the post to press alt
         + z….twice
15:39 < Pats-Sox> once is funny, twice is HILARIOUS
15:39 < Pats-Sox> nevermind, one was a join.  jokes on me
15:39 < @morgajel> Pats-Sox: you think it’s funny, but you didn’t even see what happens AFTERwards
15:39 < @morgajel> the bot does send a link.
15:39 < Pats-Sox> do I dare ask to what?
15:40 < @morgajel> only one way to find out.
15:40 < unEZ> lol
15:41 < Pats-Sox> Don’t take it personally, but I’m not trusting you right now
15:42 < unEZ> what? after you’ve known me for 15 years? wait, thats someone else. I see your point
15:42 < Pats-Sox> I’m thinking that a bot can’t process the key combo because the key combo is
        processed by the irc client, therefore exiting the channel before the bot can catch the key press
15:43 < @morgajel> worst case scenario, I’m wrong, you pop out, pop back in, and I laugh like a retard.
15:44 < @morgajel> if I’m right, the bot messages you and gives you the blue pill.
15:44 < Pats-Sox> A normal key, z, could not possible work as well alt-F4.  It just can’t.
15:46 < myles> pornocracy
15:47 < @morgajel> Pats-Sox: only one way to find out
15:48 < @morgajel> my do-not-push-the-red-button sign, let me show you it.
15:48 < Pats-Sox> alright, I’ll take one for the team….
15:48 -!- Pats-Sox [~no@fw.mdchomes.com] has left #asp []
15:48 -!- Pats-Sox [~no@fw.mdchomes.com] has joined #asp
15:49 < Pats-Sox> …and my technical analysis of the situation was absolutely incorrect….
15:49 < Pats-Sox> and the IS THE SINGLE MOST REPULSIVE THING I have ever seen in my life
15:49 < Pats-Sox> and I am a farely demented individual

This happened a month or 3 back and I forgot to post it. we enjoy harassing each other, and I felt the need to share this with the rest of the world…

in #asp:
08:26 < CoolGui> dude
08:26 < CoolGui> I’ve had a fever since saturday
08:26 < CoolGui> Now I have these stomach cramps that won’t go away
08:27 < CoolGui> And all the doctor did was tell me it was probably a virus and call him if I didn’t feel better in a couple of days.
08:27 < morgWork> remember, whatever doesn’t kill you may just make you blind and crazy.
08:27 < morgWork> i.e. it could be siphilus
08:28 < CoolGui> That’s what I wanted to hear.
08:29 < CoolGui> Can you get syphilis without having sexual contact to an infected person?
08:29 < morgWork> yes
08:29 < morgWork> I’m pretty sure
08:30 < CoolGui> google sent me here
08:30 < CoolGui> http://www.cdc.gov/std/Syphilis/STDFact-Syphilis.htm#WhatIs
08:30 < morgWork> you see the part about pustules?
08:36 < CoolGui> sounds nasty. I don’t think I have that.
08:37 < LanShark> dude
08:37 < LanShark> you jsut came back from europe
08:37 < LanShark> thats what you get
08:38 < CoolGui> I was fine over there
08:38 < LanShark> sure you were
08:38 < CoolGui> I think it was because I drank the water on the plane
08:38 < CoolGui> You know, the community water fountain
08:38 < LanShark> let me find the quote
08:38 < CoolGui> I’ve heard bad things about water on planes, now I’m starting to think it got me
08:39 < LanShark> [2006-08-18 15:51:18] <yojimbo |work> CoolGui: Looks like it’s your turn to get baked and wake up naked in an alley with a disease you can’t pronounce
08:39 < LanShark> hahahahahahahahaha
08:40 < CoolGui> haha.. yeah.. well I think it’s just a virus or bacteria or something
08:40 < CoolGui> Hopefully not a parasite
08:41 < CoolGui> I swear I think it came on in 6 hours or so though… so that eliminates most viruses that I know of… A lot of bacterial infections come on that quick though.
08:41 < CoolGui> Fuckin doctor didn’t feel the need to give me antibiotics though.
08:43 < CoolGui> hmm… Honestly it sounds like Staphylococcus aureus
08:43 < CoolGui> Doesn’t say drinking water there
08:43 < CoolGui> But it does have the short incubation period
08:44 < CoolGui> well it says that one usually only lasts up to 24 hours…. so probably not it
08:44 < CoolGui> could be salmonella though
08:44 < morgWork> CoolGui: make sure you’re not going blind…
08:45 < CoolGui> I can see okay
08:47 < morgWork> for now
08:50 < CoolGui> I have some antibiotics laying around I think I’m going to take them anyway
08:51 < morgWork> bad move slick
08:51 < CoolGui> don’t call me slick!
08:51 < morgWork> your syphilis will become resistant because you won’t take enough
08:51 < CoolGui> lol, it’s not syphilis
08:51 < morgWork> then you’ll have resistant syphilis.
08:53 < CoolGui> I have amoxocillin, penicillin and something else
09:00 < CoolGui> This stuff expired almost a year ago
09:01 < CoolGui> I have one digital thermometer that reports 101.2 and another that reports 99.9
09:01 < CoolGui> that’s a big fucking difference if you ask me
09:27 -!- alec_eso [~na@c-66-177-247-68.hsd1.fl.comcast.net] has joined #ASP
09:32 < morgWork> alec_eso: perhaps you can diagnose CoolGui
09:32 < morgWork> he was in amsterdam and now has a fever

I then message alec_eso
09:32 < morgWork > say it’s syphilis
and paste him the conversation up to this point

in #asp:
09:33 < alec_eso> that sounds like syphilis
09:33 -!- CooIGui [~CoolGui@cpe-24-167-19-99.houston.res.rr.com] has joined #ASP
09:34 < morgWork> CooIGui: damnit, you missed it
09:34 < CooIGui> sorry
09:34 < morgWork> CooIGui: please explain your sickness to dr alec_eso
09:35 < CooIGui> Had to reboot ye olde router
09:35 < morgWork> note that he is only a doctor of funk, not a medical doctor
09:35 < CooIGui> fever, headache, abdominal cramps, light sensitivity
09:35 < CooIGui> okay
09:35 < alec_eso> how long?
09:36 < CooIGui> 3 days
09:36 < CooIGui> well I’m on my 3rd day
09:36 < alec_eso> have you had any unprotected sex in the week prior?
09:37 < CooIGui> no
09:37 < alec_eso> have you used public toilets? unfamiliar toilets?
09:37 < CooIGui> yes
09:38 < alec_eso> where?
09:38 < alec_eso> any itching, swelling, painful urination? been going regularly?
09:38 < CooIGui> no
09:39 < CooIGui> er.. no and yes
09:39 < alec_eso> when you used those toilets, you use the paper covers?
09:40 < LanShark> hell no
09:40 < alec_eso> because if not it sounds like you have Capone’s Syndrome
09:41 -!- CoolGui [~CoolGui@coolgui.users.undernet.org] has quit [Read error: Operation timed out]

alec eso then messages me this:
09:41 <alec_eso> I told him Capone’s Syndrome
09:41 </alec_eso><alec_eso> (al capone died of syphilis in prison)
09:44 <morgwork> lol
09:44 </morgwork><morgwork> nice
09:46 <alec_eso> my next step is for me to get him to take a digital picture of his genitals so I can do a visual exam to rule in or out syphilis
09:47 <morgwork> lol

in #asp:
09:47 < alec_eso> well, I gotta go to class
09:48 < alec_eso> if he asks tell him I think it’s syphilis
09:48 < alec_eso> tell him to get a video camera and start documenting his life like michael keaton in my life because he won’t be around for his kids
09:49 < LanShark> wheres yojimbo, he gets the win if youre right
09:49 < morgWork> alec_eso: will do

Well, I’ve got this turd polished well enough to release Ziggy 1.0. There’s still a lot left to do, and a lot more to add, but this is a good place for people to start looking at it.

Feel free to download it and take him apart- I’ve included the very truncated Dribbly.xml profile (dribbly is surly, be forewarned) and kept ziggy’s real config under wraps. enjoy!

11:13 -!- lori [45dddd1f@A3455140.59D83169.126F8B2.IP] has joined #irc
11:13 < lori> jesse are you there?
11:14 < ~ziggy> he might be
11:14 < ~ziggy> want me to go get him?
11:14 < lori> sure why not
11:15  * ziggy runs off with a pickled herring under his arm
11:15 < morgajel> yo
11:16 < lori> what is jackie’s work number?
11:17 < morgajel> *shrug*
11:17 < morgajel> I don’t know.
11:17 < lori> well what good are you?
11:20 < ~ziggy> we’re all wondering that
11:21 < ~ziggy> well, other than sperm donor- he seems to have gotten that
down.

-Ziggy.

ran into a problem with mod_rewrite and IE- a real one this time. IE was choking on files that were being downloaded via mod_rewrite. same script worked without rewrite, died with it.
Did some research and with a lot of help from noodl of #apache figured out it was because mod_rewrite adds a “Vary: Host” line to the header, which apparently IE chokes on. loaded the header module in apache and added “Header unset Vary” after my rewrite and all is good- cvs, pdf, zip all download properly. Hurray.

Something that is really aggrivating the hell out of me is FreeBSD’s package management system. I’ve heard people go on and on about how it’s the best out there, but frankly I’m unimpressed.
The main reason for this is there is no way to determine ALL of the dependencies that are going to be installed when I install a package.
Lets do a comparison of a freeciv install on my workstations vs the freebsd server:

genbox ~ # emerge -tp freeciv

These are the packages that I would merge, in reverse order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild  N    ] games-strategy/freeciv-2.0.8
[ebuild  N    ]  media-libs/sdl-mixer-1.2.6-r1
[ebuild  N    ]   media-libs/smpeg-0.4.4-r7

As you can see, freeciv is dependent on sdl-mixer- not only that, sdl-mixer is dependent on smpeg, meaning for freeciv to be installed, BOTH sdl-mixer and smpeg need to be installed beforehand. you see not only the dependencies, but the dependencies of the dependencies. Fortuately for this example, there were only 2 layers of dependencies and they were fairly small.

Now, lets look at freebsd- to see the dependencies, you can’t actually do it from the command line- you have to visit their website: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=freeciv&stype=all&sektion=all
We can see there are a couple of matching packages, but we’re only interested in

freeciv-2.0.8
A civilisation clone for X11; multiplayer
 Long description : Sources : Changes : Download
 Maintained by: infofarmer@gmail.com
Requires: Xaw3d-1.5E_1, expat-2.0.0_1, fontconfig-2.3.2_4,1,
freetype2-2.1.10_3, gettext-0.14.5_2, jpeg-6b_4,
libdrm-2.0.1_1, libiconv-1.9.2_2, pkgconfig-0.20_2, png-1.2.8_3,
python-2.4.3, tiff-3.8.2, xorg-libraries-6.9.0

This shows all dependencies, not just the ones that need to be installed- but only one layer. What packages will freetype require installed? how about xorg-libraries? The best answer I’ve been able to find as of yet is “look them up for each dependency” and then for their dependencies, and then theirs. All of this manually, all of this through their website. plus, you have to make sure that each package you look up isn’t already installed. How many packages will it take?

I have yet to find a way to show dependencies of dependencies in freebsd, and several very competent BSD admins I know haven’t been able to answer this question.

My question is, WHY!?!? This is entry level base functionality that debian, gentoo, mandriva, suse and even freaking RHEL can do- why can’t BSD, the people behind the ports system, do this?

I’m afraid I know the answer to this question- they’re comfortable with what they have. I truly hope I am wrong. If anyone knows of the proper FreeBSD way to find dependencies of dependencies on the command line, please, let me know.

I’m sure I’m not the only person to notice this, but my spelling and grammar has been getting worse. I don’t think I’m the only one suffering from this problem.

I’m pretty sure I can attribute it to the internet in general, and this blog/irc in particular. Why do I blame them? Because I’ve gotten used to typing as fast as I can and hitting enter without proofreading.

With the blog, I do proofread a bit, but not nearly as much as I should- with IRC, I rarely even think if I *should* say it before hitting enter.

Where’s that leave me? Well, I’ve noticed that I tend to write things phonetically. What’s worse is I don’t even recognize these mistakes anymore. I wonder how many were in this little rant?

For those that are not familiar with Ziggy, he is a character based on a DnD character from a few years back and has taken on a life of his own. He’s made an appearance in my Willis module for Neverwinter Nights (based off the same campaign), a book that I’m writing, several sketches as to what he looks like, and an IRC bot written in perl.

The IRC bot is what has really shaped his personality, and he’s become pretty much another member of the group. The first iteration of ziggy had noticable issues- mainly the instantaneous full sentence reponses.

Fortunately, the initial workaround for this problem was easy- Ziggy is based off the PoCo-IRC module, and there’s an ability to delay() calls to session hooks. This has made ziggy much more realistic and given me the ability to make him… bizarre.

As I’ve added more and more functionality to Ziggy, I’ve had successes and failures. The current code rewrite I’m working on is massive, but well worth the effort. One of the big pushes I’m working on is modularizing his code; that in combination with the personality xml file would allow others to easily create bots and pick and choose features to add. This would also allow me to create an API for modules and let others develop for ziggy.

The problem I’m running into is the code I wrote in the previous version of ziggy is dependent on features available in the PoCo-IRC scripts, but not the plugin class. Lets look at a sample case:

Bar_brawl.pm
Bar_brawl is triggered when someone performs a ctcp action that involves punching ziggy.

* morgajel punches ziggy in the liver
1-3 second delay
[ziggy] BAR BRAAAWL!!!!!
1-5 second delay
*ziggy hits morgajel with a chair

repeat the last two sets 4-8 times, changing the delay, the target, and it’s an action or a battle cry.

In the original version, I created a bar_brawl handler which recursively called itself and decremented a variable. Each round of bar brawl randomly selected a “brawl_option” from the personality xml file, immedately performed a post(’privmsg’) or action to the channel, then performed a delay() on itself for a random 1-5 seconds.

The result was exactly what I was looking for, except that it was a big mass of ugly code in the middle of the program. This, if anything, should be moved to a module. The problem then became, “how do I declare the delays?”

BinGOs, the guy who maintains PoCo-IRC is working on a delay for plugins, which will almost fix my problem- he says that it’ll only work for main session hooks like privmsg, kick, etc- which means no plugin-level delay on a plugin-level bar_brawl hook.

So where should I go from here?
UPDATE

So it looks like the fix was using an internal function in $irc called _send_events
with this I could send a ’say’ event, and had say recursively call itself if an extra parameter was given to it (a delay in seconds). on top of this, delay_add fixed the disappearing delays issue. Moral of the story: it’s all working now.

Midi- oh, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways…

I’ve never liked midi, it’s fabricated, boring, hollow existence bothers me whenever I hear it, yet I am currently at it’s mercy. Linux may be ahead of other operating systems in many respects, but for some reason, midi support seems to have been completely passed over.

One of my side projects right now is writing a CD. a useful tool for writing a CD is a Piano. Since I do not own/have room for a piano, I decided to purchase a midi controller to attach to my computer. After careful research, went down to Guitar Center and picked up the second cheapest one I could find- the M-Audio Oxygen. It only has 25 keys, but I figure, hey I only got 10 digits. Even if I was to get my toes into the act, I’d have 5 keys to spare!

So anyways, I honestly have been planning on getting one for almost a year. I got it home and found the joy of trying to get it to work with Linux. Since my onboard soundcard was a piece of crap, I had problems getting midi to work in general. I got fed up and went and spent ANOTHER $80 to pick up a new sound card- another purchase i’ve been planning on. I got an Creative Soundblaster Audigy 4, which I was told had reasonable recording capabilities, hardware midi sequencer and reasonable linux support…

“Reasonable” is a funny word- it’s completely subjective. If a dung beetle came up and offered you a plate and said “hey man, eat up, this is good shit,” You’d probably realize he meant well, but still decline the plate full of feces. Taste, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So back to my reasonable support. After a bit of battling, I was able to get regular playback working- as an added bonus, I can now turn down the bass on my subwoofer so the neighbors don’t hate me. Midi, however, is still out of my grasp.

“They” were partially right. There’s lots of documentation. on all the various versions of the audigy (except of course mine), on different distributions, some using alsa, some using oss, finding different problems, using different versions of everything. No one person has anything remotely close to my setup from what I can tell- Audigy 4 + Gentoo + M-Audio Oxygen midi controller + ALSA. In other words, hundreds of pages of crap to sort through and very little of it useful by itself. I don’t blame the linux community for this, I blame the lazy manufacturers who refuse to help and make us end up doing it for them. It sucks and it pisses me off.

So anyways, I have three goals-

1. get midi playback working, so I can listen to ff2.mid
2. get my keyboard working so can input into the program called “noteedit”
3. figure out what part, if any, this remote and IR tower have in this.

Getting Midi to Work

Here’s an idea of where I’m at now.

draccus ~ # aconnect -o
client 64: 'Audigy MPU-401 (UART)' [type=kernel]
    0 'Audigy MPU-401 (UART)'
   32 'Audigy MPU-401 #2'
client 65: 'Emu10k1 WaveTable' [type=kernel]
    0 'Emu10k1 Port 0  '
    1 'Emu10k1 Port 1  '
    2 'Emu10k1 Port 2  '
    3 'Emu10k1 Port 3  '

draccus ~ # aconnect -i
client 0: 'System' [type=kernel]
    0 'Timer           '
    1 'Announce        '
client 64: 'Audigy MPU-401 (UART)' [type=kernel]
    0 'Audigy MPU-401 (UART)'
   32 'Audigy MPU-401 #2'

draccus ~ # lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
snd_seq_midi            6752  0
snd_emu10k1_synth       6912  0
snd_emux_synth         35840  1 snd_emu10k1_synth
snd_seq_virmidi         5952  1 snd_emux_synth
snd_seq_midi_emul       6592  1 snd_emux_synth
snd_pcm_oss            47264  0
snd_mixer_oss          16832  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_oss            33920  0
snd_seq_midi_event      5888  3 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                49936  8 snd_seq_midi,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_midi_emul,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_emu10k1           118500  1 snd_emu10k1_synth
snd_rawmidi            20704  3 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_emu10k1
snd_seq_device          7244  7 snd_seq_midi,snd_emu10k1_synth,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi
snd_ac97_codec         92320  1 snd_emu10k1
snd_pcm                80904  3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_emu10k1,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer              21444  3 snd_seq,snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_ac97_bus            1792  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_page_alloc          8456  2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_util_mem            3328  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1
snd_hwdep               7328  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1
snd                    50596  16 snd_seq_midi,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_util_mem,snd_hwdep
audio                  44608  0
quickcam               73316  0
videodev                7360  1 quickcam
wacom                  13632  0
nvidia               4084560  12
usb_midi               22148  0
soundcore               7648  3 snd,audio,usb_midi
usbhid                 31648  0

I’ve used afxload to load my sf2 soundbank. I believe this has worked correctly.

I can open kmid and play ff2.mid, but no sound comes out. the little virtual keyboards flicker and play, but no sound. I’ve doublechecked and the “synth” slider in kmix/alsamixer/etc is at full volume.

Getting the midi Keyboard to Work

I figure this can wait till we get the rest of midi working, but I’ve found when it’s hooked up via usb, /dev/midi and /dev/midi00 will both output characters when catted and the keyboard is pressed. This means usb-linux is working, but it’s still not recognized by alsa. I believe I also have to load some type of firmware into it, but I’m a little fuzzy on that part.

draccus ~ # cat /dev/midi
þþþþþþþþ;2;;B;;B;;?

IR Tower and Remote

The soundcard came with a remote and USB IR tower. the remote is a Creative RM-1500.
One of the posts on this page about ALSA, audigy and emu10k1 seemed to imply midi wouldn’t work until the IR tower was fixed. Check out the ” Sunday, 29 February 2004″ post for more info.

If anyone has any questions/comments/help/ explicit directions, I’d be very greatful. I just checked my history in firefox and I have over 100 articles that I’ve read and 34 google searches. I’m running out of steam.

BTW, big thanks to the guys of #alsa and K_F for helping me get as far as I got- if I seem frustrated, it’s because I am

Update 1

Alright, so after letting my subconcious work on the problem last night, I’ve come up with a plan of attack. what’s really hurting me on this is a lack of knowledge revolving around my hardware and alsa, so I’m going to do a bit of reading up about alsa today. I’ve come up with the following troubleshooting goals:

Identify a path that I can troubleshoot- how can I make sure asfxload is working? How can I verify Synth volume is up? what comes next? what needs to be there?

I should note that Timidity is up and running, and I can use it to verify that yes, synth volume is reasonable.

I guess the next step is to verify that soundfonts are being loaded.

Well, sorta- they’re not new to linux, but they installed Debian on their home machines as part of a 2 month experiment.

Yojimbo is looking for a better job, and I’ve been trying to help him develop some skills that will make it easier. I’ve taught him a little perl in the past and he’s used linux at the college (EOS lab at GVSU), so it wasn’t too big of a jump. I challeneged him to use Linux for 2 months. So far we’ve got debian installed, wrangled the Nvidia drivers into place, installed NWN, and got sound working- basically he’s not far from where he was before.

Krox is Yojimbo’s roommate. He saw the fun of getting debian to work and decided to join in. He spent a lot of time in the EOS lab at GVSU, so he is no stranger to linux. So far, everything is up and running for him- video, audio, and nwn.

Learning Linux is sorta like learning a new language- you’ll learn it faster if you’re immersed. With both of them learning linux and living together, they’ll be able to help each other figure things out if I’m not available. Hopefully these two will get into it and figure out a way to make money off of it.