Storage B - Page 14

Matrix Template Library

While rewriting some data analysis software I developed many years ago (the original was written in K & R C, the new version will be written in C++), I stumbled upon The Matrix Template Library (MTL). MTL is a library that provides comprehensive linear algebra functionality for a wide variety of matrix formats.

I was researching ways to implement my own matrix template library when I found MTL. After checking it out, I’m thinking of just using MTL since it’s more than adequate for my present needs and the support for a wide variety of matrix formats might be useful for future projects.

The only drawback I see is MTL hasn’t been updated in about three years.

Two Free Computer Algebra Systems

A few months ago I was looking for a free computer algebra system (CAS). For some reason (probably I wasn’t really looking hard enough), I didn’t find anything that the bill.

Yesterday, while updating Cygwin on my Windows box at work, I saw a link to something called Mathomatic.

I turns out that Mathomatic is a nifty console based computer algebra system (follow the link and you can try Mathomatic via telnet).

The Mathomatic page includes a link to Maxima, a descendant of DOE Macsyma. Maxima is a more complete CAS then Mathomatic, but is a little more complicated to install.

slash_amigos Version 0.1 has been Released

slash_amigos is a another stupid little CGI script that extracts links from your (or another user’s) Slashdot Friends’ Journal entries and displays them on a web page. It currently requires some knowledge of Perl to install.

See it in action here.
Download it here.

slash_journal Version 0.2 has been Released

slash_journal is a stupid little CGI script that extracts links from a user’s (hopefully yours) Slashdot Journal entries and displays them on a web page. It currently requires some knowledge of Perl to install.

See it in action here.
Download it here.

Linux on a Toshiba Satellite A45-S130: Part II

Part II – Electric Boogaloo

In Part I, our intrepid hero used Knoppix’s Linux Live CD to determine that the Toshiba Satellite A45-S130 would run Linux without any problems with incompatible hardware. At the end of Part I, we were led to believe our hero would next repartition the hard drive and possibly install Mandrake Linux¹.

First of all, I was unable to get the free partition tools to work. I resorted to using Partition Magic 8.0 to do the job.² Secondly, I decided to just install Knoppix on the hard disk and it was easy enough to make it look more or less like a standard Debian³ installation. The end result is I have a fully functional laptop running Linux which I’ve been using since September 2004

I currently have Mandrake installed on a Pentium 233.
Honestly, I really didn’t spend to much time getting the free partitioning tools to work since I already had Partition Magic. I also wanted to preserve the Windows XP partition because I occasionally have to use Windows for work.
I have Debian installed on a 486 (try installing a recent MS OS on a 486!)

Linux on a Toshiba Satellite A45-S130: Part I

Part I – Will it even work?

I bought this Toshiba laptop back February because it supposedly works well with Linux. After 8 months of muddling along with Windows XP, I decided to get serious and install Linux. Rather than going through the trouble of repartitioning the hard disk and installing Linux only to find some obscure hardware incompatibility, I decided to try Knoppix’s Linux Live CD (basically a Linux distro that runs off a bootable CD).

Booting from the Knoppix CD is painless (hold ESC during boot, then press F1 to get into the BIOS setup to change the boot order). Knoppix boots successfully everything appears to work, including sound.

Getting connected to a wireless network

(more…)

Warning: main(): stream does not support seeking in /pathto/file.php on line XX

Apparently VeoWeb.Net¹ upgraded PHP. This introduced a bug (feature?) which caused the above warning to be displayed even though the php script appears to work correctly.

Here’s the solution:

The offending line looks something like this:
include($URL) ;

Replacing it with this:
@include($URL) ;

fixes this problem.

Now defunct.

Building XEmacs 21.1.14 on a Mandrake Linux 8.2 System

I recently ran in to a couple of problems building XEmacs 21.1.14 under Mandrake Linux 8.2. While running configure, I got the following:

*** PANIC *** The C compiler can no longer build working executables. *** PANIC *** Please examine the tail of config.log for runtime errors. *** PANIC *** The most likely reason for this problem is that configure *** PANIC *** links with shared libraries, but those libraries cannot be *** PANIC *** found at run time. *** PANIC *** *** PANIC *** On a Linux system, edit /etc/ld.so.conf and re-run ldconfig. *** PANIC *** On other systems, try telling configure where to find the *** PANIC *** shared libraries using the --site-runtime-libraries option *** PANIC *** *** PANIC *** Another way to shoot yourself in the foot is to specify *** PANIC *** --with-FEATURE when FEATURE is not actually installed *** PANIC *** on your system. Don't do that.
After a little digging, it was found that the presence of WINE was the culprit. Apparently, configure got fooled into thinking it was running on a Windows machine. The solution was to rename libgdi32.so(in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib) to something like libgdi32.tmp before running configure. After renaming libgdi32.so, configure ran fine and make seemed to work.

Unfortunately xemacs would die horrible death if run under X. The solution to this problem was to rerun configure with following option: ‘–ldflags=-z nocombreloc’ (and of course remaking the whole thing). Now everything works fine.