John Goerzen: Switching to xmonad + Gnome and ditching a Mac
I have been using XFCE with xmonad for years now. I m not sure exactly how many, but at least 6 years, if not closer to 10. Today I threw in the towel and switched to Gnome.
More recently, at a new job, I was given a Macbook Pro. I wasn t entirely sure what to think of this, but I thought I d give it a try. I found MacOS to be extremely frustrating and confining. It had no real support for a tiling window manager, and although projects like amethyst tried to approximate what xmonad can do on Linux, they were just too limited by the platform and were clunky. Moreover, the entire UI was surprisingly sluggish; maybe that was an induced effect from animations, but I don t think that explains it. A Debisn stretch install, even on inferior hardware, was snappy in a way that MacOS never was. So I have requested to swap for a laptop that will run Debian. The strange use of Command instead of Control for things, combined with the overall lack of configurability of keybindings, meant that I was going to always be fighting muscle memory moving from one platform to another. Not only that, but being back in the world of a Free Software OS means a lot.
Now then, back to xmonad and XFCE situation. XFCE once worked very well with xmonad. Over the years, this got more challenging. Around the jessie (XFCE 4.10) time, I had to be very careful about when I would let it save my session, because it would easily break. With stretch, I had to write custom scripts because the panel wouldn t show up properly, and even some application icons would be invisible, if things were started in a certain order. This took much trial and error and was still cumbersome.
Gnome 3, with its tightly-coupled Gnome Shell, has never been compatible with other window managers at least not directly. A person could have always used MATE with xmonad but a lot of people that run XFCE tend to have some Gnome 3 apps (for instance, evince) anyhow. Cinnamon also wouldn t work with xmonad, because it is simply another tightly-coupled shell instead of Gnome Shell. And then today I discovered gnome-flashback. gnome-flashback is a Gnome 3 environment that uses the traditional X approach with a separate window manager (metacity of yore by default). Sweet.
It turns out that Debian s xmonad has built-in support for it. If you know the secret: apt-get install gnome-session-flashback (OK, it s not so secret; it s even in xmonad s README.Debian these days) Install that, plus gnome and gdm3 and things are nice. Configure xmonad with GNOME support and poof goodness right out of the box, selectable from the gdm sessions list.
I still have some gripes about Gnome s configurability (or lack thereof). But I ve got to say: This environment is the first one I ve ever used that got external display switching very nearly right without any configuration, and I include MacOS in that. Plug in an external display, and poof it s configured and set up. You can hit a toggle key (Windows+P by default) to change the configurations, or use the Display section in gnome-control-center. Unplug it, and it instantly reconfigures itself to put everything back on the laptop screen. Yessss! I used to have scripts to do this in the wheezy/jessie days. XFCE in stretch had numerous annoying failures in this area which rendered the internal display completely dark until the next reboot very frustrating. With Gnome, it just works. And, even if you have suspend on lid closed turned on, if the system is powered up and hooked up to an external display, it will keep running even if the lid is closed, figuring you must be using it on the external screen. Another thing the Mac wouldn t do well.
All in all, some pretty good stuff here. I continue to be impressed by stretch. It is darn impressive to put this OS on generic hardware and have it outshine the closed-ecosystem Mac!
One month ago the Story Mode for 
Over the last few days, 
The code uses a few standard finance packages for R (with most of them maintained by 
Comments and further enhancements welcome!
After the workshop on Saturday, members of the OSCAL team successfully reconstructed the SDR and antenna at the Debian info booth on Sunday and a wide range of shortwave and ham signals were detected:
Here is a close-up look at the laptop, RTL-SDR dongle (above laptop), Ham-It-Up converter (above water bottle) and MFJ-971 ATU (on right):
Buying the parts
Configuring gqrx for the up-converter and shortwave signals
Inspect the up-converter carefully. Look for the crystal and find the frequency written on the side of it. The frequency written on the specification sheet or web site may be wrong so looking at the crystal itself is the best way to be certain. On my Ham It Up, I found a crystal with 125.000 written on it, this is 125 MHz.
Launch gqrx, go to the File menu and select I/O devices. Change the LNB LO value to match the crystal frequency on the up-converter, with a minus sign. For my Ham It Up, I use the LNB LO value -125.000000 MHz.
Click OK to close the I/O devices window.
On the Input Controls tab, make sure Hardware AGC is enabled.
On the Receiver options tab, change the Mode value. Commercial shortwave broadcasts use AM and amateur transmission use single sideband: by convention, LSB is used for signals below 10MHz and USB is used for signals above 10MHz. To start exploring the 20 meter amateur band around 14.2 MHz, for example, use USB.
In the top of the window, enter the frequency, for example, 14.200 000 MHz.
Now choose the FFT Settings tab and adjust the Freq zoom slider. Zoom until the width of the display is about 100 kHZ, for example, from 14.15 on the left to 14.25 on the right.
Click the Play icon at the top left to start receiving. You may hear white noise. If you hear nothing, check the computer's volume controls, move the Gain slider (bottom right) to the maximum position and then lower the Squelch value on the Receiver options tab until you hear the white noise or a transmission.
Adjust the Antenna Tuner knobs
Now that gqrx is running, it is time to adjust the knobs on the antenna tuner (ATU). Reception improves dramatically when it is tuned correctly. Exact instructions depend on the type of ATU you have purchased, here I present instructions for the MFJ-971 that I have been using.
Turn the TRANSMITTER and ANTENNA knobs to the 12 o'clock position and leave them like that. Turn the INDUCTANCE knob while looking at the signals in the gqrx window. When you find the best position, the signal strength displayed on the screen will appear to increase (the animated white line should appear to move upwards and maybe some peaks will appear in the line).
When you feel you have found the best position for the INDUCTANCE knob, leave it in that position and begin turning the ANTENNA knob clockwise looking for any increase in signal strength on the chart. When you feel that is correct, begin turning the TRANSMITTER knob.
Listening to a transmission
At this point, if you are lucky, some transmissions may be visible on the gqrx screen. They will appear as darker colours in the waterfall chart. Try clicking on one of them, the vertical red line will jump to that position. For a USB transmission, try to place the vertical red line at the left hand side of the signal. Try dragging the vertical red line or changing the frequency value at the top of the screen by 100 Hz at a time until the station is tuned as well as possible.
Try and listen to the transmission and identify the station. Commercial shortwave broadcasts will usually identify themselves from time to time. Amateur transmissions will usually include a callsign spoken in the 
Those who have ever played any game from the Myst series (Myst, Riven etc) know what you get: Several worlds/areas to explore, finding clues, solving riddles, lots of reading, leading to a finish where you have to decide between two fates.
The game leads you through a variety of surrounding, from open air with gorgeous views and lovely crafted details, caves with dark corners and hidden chambers, even diving excursions are included, till you reach the final showdown at a huge underground facility. The graphics of the game are extremely beautifully crafted which makes you want to book a trip to this island.
The only thing that had to stop is leaving our users in the dark on what is happening.
Sorry for the long post, but there are some subjects which are worth writing more than 140 characters about 
Apologies the first blog post got sent out by mistake.
Weather comparisons between the two countries
Last year, I had come to know that this year s debconf is happening in Canada, a cold country. Hence, few weeks/month back, I started trying to find information online when I stumbled across few discussion boards where people were discussing about Innerwear and Outerwear and I couldn t understand what that was all about. Then somehow stumbled across this Video, which is of a game called the Long Dark and just seeing couple of episodes it became pretty clear to me why the people there were obsessing with getting the right clothes and everything about it. Couple of Debconf people were talking about the weather in Montreal, and surprise, surprise it was 
Population Density
As well in the game and whatever I could find on the web, Canada seems to be on the lower side as far as population is concerned. 
Rail
This is one thing that is similar in both the great countries. India has Indian Railways and while the Canadians have their own mountain railway called 
Business houses, Political Families
This is again something that is similar in both the countries, it seems (from afar) that its only few business houses and more importantly political families which have governed for years. From what little I could understand, both India and Canada have first past the post system which as shared by its critics is unfair to new and small parties. It would be interesting to see if Canada does a re-think. For India, it would need a massive public education outreach policy and implementation. We just had elections in 5 states of India with U.P. (with respect to area-size and population density) and from the last several years, the EVM s (Electronic Voting Machines) tries to make sure that nobody could know which area which party got the most votes. This is to make sure the winning party is not able to take revenge on people or areas which did not vote for them. Instead you have general region counting of votes with probably even the Election Commission not knowing which EVM went to what area and what results are there in sort of double-blind methodology.
As far as Business houses are concerned, I am guessing it s the same world-over, only certain people hold the wealth while majority of us are in hard-working, non-wealthy status.
Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis
Apart from all the social activities that Montreal is famous for, somebody told/shared with me that it is possible to see the Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis can be seen in Canada. I dunno how true or not it is, while probably in Montreal it isn t possible to see due to light pollution, but maybe around 40-50 kms. from the city ? Can people see it from Canada ? IF yes, how far would you have to go ? Are there any companies or people who take people to see the Northern Lights.
While I still have to apply for bursary, and if that gets ok, then try getting the visa, but if that goes through, apart from debconf and social activities happening in and around Montreal, Museums, Music etc. , this would be something I would like to experience if it s possible. While I certainly would have to be prepared for the cold that would be, if it s possible, no offence to debconf or anybody else but it probably would be the highlight of the entire trip if its possible. This should be called/labelled as the greatest show on earth TM. 
For people who are visually differently-abled, the above reads
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize Voltaire wrote this either in late 16th century or early 17th century and those words were as apt in those times, as it is in these turbulent times as well.
Update 05/03 According to @bla these words are attributable to a neo-nazi and apparently a child abuser. While I don t know the context in which it was shared, it describes the environment in which we are perfectly. Please see his comment for a link and better understanding.
The below topic requires a bit of maturity, so if you are easily offended, feel free not to read further.
While this week-end I was supposed to share about the recent Science Day celebrations that we did last week
Would explore it probably next week.
This week the attempt is to share thoughts which had been simmering at the back of my mind for more than 2 weeks or more and whose answers are not clear to me.
My buttons were pressed when Martin f. Kraft 
From the little sharings and interactions I have been part of, I find people take offence at the most innocuous things. For instance, one of the easy routes of not offending anyone is to use self-deprecating humour (or so I thought) either of my race, caste, class or even my issues with weight and each of the above would offend somebody. Charlie Chaplin didn t have those problems. If somebody is from my caste, I m portraying the caste in a certain light, a certain slant. If I m talking about weight issues, then anybody who is like me (fat) feels that the world is laughing at them rather than at me or they will be discriminated against. While I find the last point a bit valid, it leaves with me no tools and no humour. I neither have the observational powers or the skills that 
This collection of short stories is a consequent deconstruction of happiness, love, everything we believe to make our lives worthwhile. The protagonists are idealistic students loosing their faith, office ladies on aberrations, drunkards, movie directors, the usual mixture. But the topic remains constant the unfulfilled search for happiness and love.