Saturday, July 16. 2011
Changing Again the Way I Listen to Music
I have just requested my Spotify free account to be deleted (it is done via email). I had this account since nearly the beginning cos I was moved from LastFM. It seems the story repeats again and, much to my sorrow, it will not be my last time. I was a loyal user of LastFM for years (besides there was a plugin for rhythmbox which I loved) but in 2009 they decided I needed a subscription. I changed to Spotify which impressed me. It was not a radio, it was your personal music device but with almost all the songs of the world. Of course the snag was that there was no native Linux application, but wine worked well enough for me. Sadly Spotify changed free account access some months ago, since then I could only listen to music ten hours per month, and they are very few! So I needed to change again. I decided to use Grooveshark. It is just a web page where you can also select the songs you like to listen. When I discovered you can drag some songs, turn on the radio and it keeps playing forever choosing similar songs, I decided it would be my first choice. Here the problems are that the page uses the annoying flash player and there are no songs of The Chemical Brothers (not even The Test, a glaring error as my brother says ). But, again, it is good enough for me (dammit! I just want to listen to music!). I am going to use the chromium application shortcut feature, I prefer it in a separate and clear window.
This week I found that Grooveshark sometimes stops playing and asks if you are still there (obviously it happens when you let it playing for a long time). It is really a pain in the ass, you have to stop what you are doing and click that yes, I am fucking here. Please take this into account. I am not sure what I hate more, this or Spotify ads (they were annoying but the music was never stopped).
Well, Grooveshark is my new way to listen to music... How long will it last this time?
Saturday, March 19. 2011
Friday Night Fever (or How a Computer Guy Spends the Friday Night)
For some strange reasons this week I needed to use my Spanish eID (DNIe) again and, sometimes these things happen, firefox hanged like crazy. Finally I had to reboot my system to use the platform pre-installed windows to complete the formality. Yesterday night I decided to find out what the hell was going on here.
As always I put opensc in debug mode (setting debug to 10 in /etc/opensc/opensc.conf) and what I saw was really amazing. Starting firefox (iceweasel) inside a terminal the debug dumped like crazy but it sometimes hanged for exactly 60 seconds. So it was not totally frozen, it worked quite well but sometimes it was waiting for something one minute. The problem is opensc calls a lot to the card and firefox hangs at least two or three times every startup (which means more than two or three minutes waiting firefox to come up).
First thing to always check in these situations is what has been changed (I have a thing about upgrading my Debian laptop). Since the time I wrote the DNIe entry the opensc packages (the project that deals with PKCS#11 and PKCS#15) remain the same, PC/SC lite (the project for communicating with smartcards and readers) has been upgraded from 1.5.5 to 1.6.6 and libccid (the handler library for my reader) from 1.3.11 to 1.4.2. I decided to come back to original packages (uninstalling and installing the old ones) to see what happened and, voilĂ , it started to work as before, no watings.
At that moment I was not totally happy cos I do not feel comfortable when I do not know what really happens and, even less, holding packages. So I started compiling by myself the complete software stack, first PC/SC lite 1.7.0, then libccid 1.4.2 and then opensc 0.12.1. But with opensc I changed my mind and I compiled it twice. First the old source from DNIe official page (opensc-dnie), the external library I talked about in the old entry, and opendnie (see this mail and this spanish blog), the effort of a Spanish guy to re-implement all the stuff to include Spanish eID into opensc without legal issues (maybe this work deserves a new entry). I had been thinking about opendnie for some time but I had never had the time to test it. The old source code for opensc-dnie now does not compile, the problem is libassuan (the little window the library shows when you are about to sign something) has changed its api. But checking opensc patch the modification of dialog.c was easy (here it is the patch if you want to use it). Opendnie compiled with no issues.
Testing and debugging I realized the problem was not in any of these packages but in libusb (the spurious hang also happened in my compiled versions and it did not matter you use opendnie or opensc-dnie). Now libccid 1.4.x is linked against libusb-1.0 (thing that did not happen with 1.3.x) and this is the reason the bug came out after the upgrade. So I also compiled libusb 1.0.8 and I saw the problem was inside libusb_control_transfer function. This function sends the transfer to the usb device and then waits for the response with a 60 seconds timeout. Finally I changed the fixed 60 seconds and tried again. And it worked, both solutions (opendnie and opensc-dnie) hanged no more. My patch was very crappy and straight forward but I opened a bug against libusb. At that time it was around 2 am at night and I had not even dinner. You know... it was a computering Friday night fever!
Today in the morning Ludovic Rousseau (the PC/SC and CCID guy) answered me saying this bug was known. He opened a ticket six months ago with a resolution patch inside but it is not closed yet (and Ludovic seems not very happy with that). I sent another post saying my issue can therefore be closed and then I tested Ludovic's patch. The patched libusb also worked correctly so I sent a final comment to Ludovic's ticket saying his patch fixed my issue (at this moment both posts are not displayed cos libusb moderates the comments). And that is all. I do not know how other jobs are but we are masochists and (worst of all) we enjoy it.
See you next time!
Tuesday, January 4. 2011
Decision Taken
Finally I decided to leave nologin. It has been a fabulous nine years here but I feel now it is time for a change. Our paths have been diverging for some time and now I think it is the correct time to walk separately. I will really miss you all but we will surely keep in touch.
Now I have to realize I am not here and I am working at other place. I am putting my new helmet on...
“Maybe you can finally understand that it is possible to be true to your goal and still pursue your own personal happiness. The two are not mutually exclusive.”
- Magneto to Professor Charles Xavier in Uncanny X-Men Vol 1 #309 (Scott Lobdell - John Romita Jr)
I think nologin let me continue this blog right here. But stay calm if entries are less frequent, my life is changing in these moments and maybe I need some time to get used to it.
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