Running Balsamiq on ArchLinux

Finally spent sometime to get balsamiq running on my archlinux today, after referencing this guide, these are the steps i've taken with the downloaded adobeair sdk:

# Unpacking the sdk:
sudo mkdir /opt/AIR-SDK
cd /opt/AIR-SDK
sudo tar jxvf <PATH_TO_DOWNLOADED_ADOBE_AIR_SDK>

# Unpacking the balsamiq package:
sudo mkdir -p /opt/AIR-apps/MockupsForDesktop
sudo unzip <PATH_TO_DOWNLOADED_BALSAMIQ_PKG>

But the above is not enough for my 64bit system, i need to pacman install the following as well:

sudo pacman -S lib32-gtk2 lib32-libxml2

And the very verbose command to launch balsamiq is:

export BALSAMIQ_DIR=/opt/AIR-apps/MockupsForDesktop
/opt/AIR-SDK/bin/adl -nodebug ${BALSAMIQ_DIR}/META-INF/AIR/application.xml $BALSAMIQ_DIR

Of course, i can always throw in an alias (eg. balsamiq) to make everything short & sweet !!

Binding of or/and & ||/&&

Got bitten today by:

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def call_1 ; false ; end def call_2 ; true ; end x = call_1 or call_2 # x => false

Because of binding issue of or, x is assigned to return of call_1 first, prior separated calling of call_2. Since what i actually want is to assign x to whichever valid (non nil/false) value of call_1 or call_2, i should use ||, which as a stronger binding, and code as:

1 2	x = call_1 || call_2 # x => true

The same applies for && & and.

ck-launch-session & wallpaper

In order to allow auto mounting to work in thunar, i have to start my openbox (in ~/.xinitrc) using:

exec ck-launch-session openbox-session

So far, the problem with this approach is that the wallpaper set prior this command is lost. Meaning when launching X, i see the wallpaper for a split second, and then, it disappears altogether, and i get a plain grey background. To work around this, i added a customized X startup script ~/bin/startx:

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#!/bin/bash feh --bg-tile ~/pictures/wallpaper/current.jpg & openbox-session

And amend the line in ~/.xinitrc to:

exec ck-launch-session ~/bin/startx

That's all !!

Concatenating pdf files

Very frequently, i have to scan documents for my family. I do it using xsane, yet i always end up with many separate pdf files, one for each page of the document. A simple and sweet way to concatenate pdf files (assuming they are sequentially named, eg. 01.pdf, 02.pdf, etc) is:

for f in `ls *.pdf` ; do pdf2ps $f ; done
cat `ls *.ps` > final.ps
ps2pdf final.ps

Yeah !!

Scanning for badblocks in a a harddisk

Just bought a new harddisk, did scanning of badblocks with:

sudo badblocks -svwf /dev/sdc1

Amazingly, for 320GB, it takes 30:33:41.35 hrs to complete.

Adding Webrat Matchers to Culerity

If u are using culerity, and somehow u missed the webrat matchers, eg. has_xpath(), here's what u can do:

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require 'webrat/core/xml' require 'webrat/core/matchers' module WebratLike include Webrat::Matchers def response html = $browser.html def html.body ; to_s ; end html end end World(WebratLike) end end

Enjoys !!

Testing of Clicking of Checkbox

We have checkboxes registered for onchange event handler. In testing using blueridge, to simulate checking of a checkbox, the following more ideal approaches, sadly, don't work:

1 2	$("input:checkbox:first").change(); #1 $("input:checkbox:first").click().change(); #2

But the following works:

1	$("input:checkbox:first").attr('checked', true).change();

Bitten once.