Posts tagged computing

MIT/GNU Scheme in OS X

0
52 days
by in General Posts

ИконописikoniI’ve not mentioned this previously, but I bought a Macbook Air a few months back and it’s one of the greatest purchases I have ever made. I love this thing! It is so damned sexy (observing both its hardware and software), and so damned fast. I picked-up the baller, 13″ model with the Core i7 processor and 256 GB solid-state drive … it’s portable personal computing perfection! The more Apple products I buy (and, I’ve now accumulated quite a few), the fewer reasons I can produce to not dedicate future technology spend to Cupertino. </rant>

Macbook Air in-hand (or, more appropriately, surgically fused to my hands!) and pursuing Lisp (and Scheme) as a new programming language (dialect), I needed to install MIT/GNU Scheme on my constant companion — more specifically, I wanted to install it in such a way that I can run Scheme / Lisp programs from the shell without having to fire-up the X-Windows application that is installed by the package by default (“Edwin”). A relatively straightforward process, although not particularly well-documented.

Steps to complete are below:

  • Download the OS X binary for MIT/GNU Scheme from the GNU site here.
  • Mount the binary disk image and copy the appropriate files from the disk image to /usr/local/lib

It is worth pausing here to note that one may have to create this path, as I did.  Commands to create and then copy the files are below:

$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/mit-scheme-x86-64
$ sudo cp -R /Volumes/MIT\:GNU\ Scheme/MIT\:GNU\ Scheme.app/Contents/Resources/ /usr/local/lib/mit-scheme-x86-64/
  • Create a symbolic link — scheme – to the newly installed mit-scheme binary
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/mit-scheme-x86-64/mit-scheme /usr/bin/scheme

This last step is critical in fully integrating Scheme into the shell, as one would expect it to be after installing it in a Unix environment.

Onward to Lisp hacking greatness!

Postscript:  I’m using the Lisp-in-a-Box IDE distributed by the Common Lisp software repository in OS X as my platform for development in Common Lisp in parallel … learn both dialects simultaneously — seems prudent!

Netflix “Error N8156-6013″ Resolution

17
480 days
by in linux

A seemingly pervasive problem purportedly caused by a recent update to Silverlight, the Netflix streaming player bombed-out on me this evening, whinging about “Error N8156-6013″ and complaining that it had issues both with playing DRM content and — for reasons which transcend reason — the date on my (virtual) computer. The solution was simple enough. Delete the following small file:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\PlayReady\mspr.hds

I was back to cackling irreverently at Archer in no time.

Virtualbox + XP + Firefox = Netflix in GNU/Linux

4
480 days
by in linux

Having recently wrested control of my machine from Windows Vista, I’ve had to implement a workaround for Netflix streaming media. Netflix, unfortunately, has yet to see the mistake in building their streaming architecture on Microsoft’s near-dead Silverlight platform. Until they recognize the error of their ways, I need a workaround. I’ve settled on virtualizing XP, as Silverlight (and Moonlight, for that matter) will not successfully run Netflix in WINE. (As a side note, WINE runs Excel 2007 — one of my must-have Windows apps — flawlessly and, ironically, faster than my Windows installation used to.)

So, I installed VirtualBox OSE from the Lucid repo (a few versions behind current, but no worries) and installed my XP Pro SP3 image on a small virtual hard disk. It took entirely too long, although I had shortcut the process by ripping the CD to my hard disk using dd (+1 for GNU!):

$ dd if=/dev/cdrom of=~/home/captivus/win_xp.iso

(Seriously … dd is bloody brilliant. One of the most useful tools in the GNU suite.) Anyway, it works like a charm and I’m not without my new love, Archer, despite no longer running Windows.

The Liberation of My Workstation

1
487 days
by in linux

“DAMN you, Vista! I shall liberate my workstation from your death-grip forthwith!”

With this clarion declaration which, in my oppression-stoked rage, was made with all of the sentiment and perturbation of rebels and patriots gone before me, (is the analogy a bit Philistine? Certainly …) I threw off the chains of The Beast and replaced Windows forever with my favorite Linux distribution.

I’ve long since made Linux my sole operating system on nearly every box on my network. To date, though, I have retained Windows on my primary workstation, running both Debian and Ubuntu in virtual machines, due to my dependence on several software packages which are not available (either to me or at all) for Linux. I was determined this evening, however, to inch away from this by dual-booting Linux with Vista. Several hours later, to my fury, my plans were thwarted when, twice, the NTFS partition would not resize with gparted! This was particularly frustrating as I waited nearly 2 hours each time for gparted to fail on the resize operation. Bloody NTFS!

So, with Eddie Izzard’s beguiling comedy as a soundtrack, I dumped a back-up of my files onto my archive hard drive on the workstation, and deleted that bloody NTFS partition once and for all! Let the death knell for Windows ring out! I’d rather virtualize Windows on an as-needed basis than be strong-armed into what I can and cannot install on my own hardware.

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