[micah@octopus ~]$

• No Package Error with Jhbuild in Ubuntu 12.10 64

  Jan 25, 2013

  While building GTK+ with jhbuild on 64-bit Ubuntu 12.10 I encountered an issue in which the pkgconfig files are not found and thus you get a bunch of errors along the lines of:

  No package 'libxml-2.0' found
  

  If the corresponding -dev package is installed the missing .pc files are in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/ then the fix is to simply specify that directory in the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable:

  export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/
  

• Show git Branch in Shell Prompt

  Jan 20, 2013

  Being able to see which git branch you are working on right in your bash prompt is extremely helpful!

  

• JSON Validation and Formatting in Gedit

  Dec 26, 2012

  Here are a couple of scripts for use with the External Tools plugin in Gedit that allow you to validate and format your JSON files using Python's json module. Simply copy each of these to ~/.config/gedit/tools, make sure they are executable, and then restart Gedit.

• Raspberry Pi WiFi

  Nov 14, 2012

  The Raspberry Pi is a $35 single-board ARM computer that runs Linux. If you don't yet have a Raspberry Pi, you can either order Raspberry Pi from Newark/Element 14 and get on in line waiting for the next batch or pay way too much for a Raspberry Pi from Amazon.com.

  Here are two nano-sized, low-cost, USB WiFi adapters that I have verified work on a Raspberry Pi ("Wheezy") right out of the box.

  

  The AirLink101 AWLL5088 Wireless N (0bda:8176 RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter) is shown on the left and the Edimax EW-7811Un Wireless N (7392:7811 EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter Realtek RTL8188CUS) is shown on the right.

  Both of these WiFi adapters are based on the Realtek RTL8188CUS chipset. Drivers are built-in with Raspberry Pi Raspbian ("Wheezy"), the debian-based distro used by most beginners.

  Not only are they based on the same WiFi chipset, they are virtually identical in size too. These are "nano" sized which means they're not much larger than the USB connection itself.

  Since the Raspberry Pi only has 2 USB ports, you're most likely going to want to get a powered USB hub as well. That will allow for a mouse, keyboard, and the WiFi adapter with additional ports available for more devices.

• Django 1.5, Python 3.3, and Virtual Environments

  Nov 11, 2012

  Today I wanted to tinker around with the experimental support for Python 3 in Django 1.5 (alpha). So, my first question was, how well does virtualenv play with Python 3? And that's when I learned about the new(ish) venv module available in Python 3.3.