Linux Gazette

   ...making Linux just a little more fun!

August 2005 (#117):

     * [1]The Front Page, by Heather Stern
     * [2]The Mailbag
     * [3]The Answer Gang
     * [4]News Bytes, by Michael Conry
     * [5]Audiobooks Galore, by Anonymous
     * [6]JavaOne turned 10 and they threw a party!, by Howard Dyckoff
     * [7]A Brief Introduction to Network Printing with CUPS, by Edgar Howell
     * [8]Templating in Python, by Mike Orr (Sluggo)
     * [9]PowerPC Assembly Programming on the Mac Mini, by Pramode C.E.
     * [10]Building the HUDMOF, by Dale Raby
     * [11]Snort Inline Part I, by Pete Savage
     * [12]Design Awareness: For Prince Henry and St. Brendan!, by Mark Seymour
     * [13]HelpDex, by Shane Collinge
     * [14]Ecol, by Javier Malonda
     * [15]The Linux Launderette

The Front Page

   By [16]Heather Stern

       [17]Space Shuttle Launch and Landing, xPlanet showing Kennedy 
     _________________________________________________________________

   [BIO]

   NASA is the [18]National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the United
   States  government  space program. The shuttle liftoff picture and the
   Discovery landing picture are from NASA's archives. 

   [BIO] [19]xplanet follows the tradition of xearth but using real imagery.
   I've prepared this picture using the following options: 

     xplanet  -output  lg_cover117.jpg  -geometry  800x560  --background
     /home/heather/xplanet_bg_lg117.jpg -body earth -longitude -20 -north orbit
     -config overlay_clouds.29july05 -center +330+280 -num_times 1

   I  fetched  the  current  cloudcover  imagery  per the instructions in
   /usr/share/xplanet/images/README. I decided the night image was a little too
   dark and made a softer one called [20]night_mode which still shows some of
   the landscape. Most people don't know that you can give it any background
   you like instead of having it speckle the black background. Many people know
   that  you  don't  have to let it pick the origin point. I started with
   -origin=moon which looks great but the moon wasn't visible from Florida
   right then, so I had to move our point of view :)

   The starfield is actually from an ultraviolet study of the Milky Way; read a
   little more about our galaxy at
   [21]www.astro.virginia.edu/~mwk7v/sim/mw.shtml.

   I created a markerfile with only one entry in it, the latitude and longitude
   for [22]Kennedy Space Center, where the current shuttle took off and will
   land. There are a number of groups with custom markerfiles for various
   purposes. If you're putting together your own, you might take a look at
   [23]Dave Pietromonaco's xearth markers page since he has a Gazetteer of
   coordinates for many locations.

   May the shuttles enjoy many more successful flights.

   Heather is Linux Gazette's Technical Editor and The Answer Gang's Editor
   Gal.
     _________________________________________________________________

   [BIO] Heather got started in computing before she quite got started learning
   English. By 8 she was a happy programmer, by 15 the system administrator for
   the home... Dad had finally broken down and gotten one of those personal
   computers, only to find it needed regular care and feeding like any other
   pet.  Except  it wasn't a Pet: it was one of those brands we find most
   everywhere today... 

   Heather  is a hardware agnostic, but has spent more hours as a tech in
   Windows  related  tech  support than most people have spent with their
   computers. (Got the pin, got the Jacket, got about a zillion T-shirts.) When
   she discovered Linux in 1993, it wasn't long before the home systems ran
   Linux regardless of what was in use at work.

   By 1995 she was training others in using Linux - and in charge of all the
   "strange systems" at a (then) 90 million dollar company. Moving onwards,
   it's safe to say, Linux has been an excellent companion and breadwinner...
   She took over the HTML editing for "The Answer Guy" in issue 28, and has
   been slowly improving the preprocessing scripts she uses ever since.

   Here's an autobiographical filksong she wrote called [24]The Programmer's
   Daughter.

   Copyright © 2005, [25]Heather Stern. Released under the [26]Open Publication
   license unless otherwise noted in the body of the article. Linux Gazette is
   not produced, sponsored, or endorsed by its prior host, SSC, Inc.

   Published in Issue 117 of Linux Gazette, August 2005

The Mailbag
     _________________________________________________________________