Ken's Code Pit » Ken

OpenOffice Calc: Can’t save files

Ken — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:14:43 +0000

I’m having the strangest problem with OpenOffice Calc lately. I can create and a save a new file fine, but I can only save it once. If I then edit that same document and try to save it, I get an error:

Can't save in Calc

I’ve tried running revdep-rebuild but it came back clean. This happens to me on the compiled and -bin versions of openoffice. I really don’t know how to fix this as I’m not sure whats wrong. I really don’t want to remerge all of openoffice’s dependencies manually.

Googling around references this error on network mounted shares, but this is just my local ext3 partition that it’s happening on. KSpread can open and write to the same exact file, so it’s got to be something picky with OpenOffice itself…

Update: Nuking my ~/.ooo3 directory fixed the issue. I’m not really sure why it was broken but I’m glad I can at least use openoffice again

Euler Problem 50

Ken — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:30:01 +0000

Hm, does wasting time doing Project Euler problems count as slacking? I’ve solved yet another problem, this time it was problem 50. At first I was very disappointed that my code was taking over 5 minutes until I realized that if the number of summed primes that overflowed the prime to find was less than that of the currently largest number of summed primes then it should simply abort that prime number and move on to the next, as shifting the sum index would only make the number of summed primes smaller anyway. After that optimization, my program went from 40+ minutes to just 0.6 seconds.

ken@khaos build % bash -c ' time java -cp ../../kenscodepit-javatoolkit/dist/lib/kenscodepit-javatoolkit.jar:. ken.p50'
[...]

real 0m0.661s
user 0m0.642s
sys 0m0.025s

I was pretty satisfied with this result. Please note I use getPrimes(num) from a utility class I wrote, but one can substitute any getPrimes(num) implementation that returns all the primes up to the passed number.

package ken;

import java.util.ArrayList;

import kcp.KMath;

public class p50 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
ArrayList<Integer> primes = KMath.getPrimes(1000000);
System.out.println("prime generation done");
int largest = 0;
int cnum = 0;
// check each prime
for (int prime : primes) {
int target = prime;
boolean found = false;

// check how many additions it will take
for (int dprime : primes) {
int csum = 0;
int tnum = 0;
if (found) { break; }
int index = primes.indexOf(dprime);

// perform the addition from dprime and on
for (int cprime = index; cprime < primes.size(); cprime++) {

// current value
int cval = primes.get(cprime);

csum+=cval;
tnum++;

if (csum == target) {
if (tnum > cnum) {
cnum = tnum;
largest = prime;
}
found = true;
break;
} else if (csum > target) {
// if tnum at this point is shorter than longest, its
// probably best to just die as it will only get
// shorter and thus never be our desired number
// Without this, the time goes from ~.6s to 40m+!
if (tnum < cnum) {
found = true;
}
break; }
}
}
}
System.out.println("The largest was " + largest + " at " + cnum + " primes");
}
}

Euler Problem 23

Ken — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 06:02:04 +0000

Just solved another Euler Problem, this time #23. I’m not really doing them in any kind of order. This code takes about 2 seconds to calculate the answer. Not exactly fast, but acceptable. My main problem was I forgot I needed to use Arrays.copyOf to actually copy an array.

import java.util.Arrays;

public class p23 {
//Find the sum of all the positive integers which cannot be written
//as the sum of two abundant numbers.
public static void main(String[] args) {
final int LARGEST = 28123;
final int[] ints = new int[LARGEST+1];
final boolean[] abundant = new boolean[LARGEST+1];

for (int i = 0; i <= LARGEST; i++) {
ints[i] = i;
if (factorsum(i) > i) {
abundant[i] = true;
} else { abundant[i] = false;}
}

int[] old = Arrays.copyOf(ints, ints.length);
// remove from ints abundant sums
for (int i : old) {
if (abundant[i]) {
for (int x : old) {
if (abundant[x]) {
if ((x+i) <= LARGEST) {
ints[x+i] = 0;
}
}
}
}
}

int sum = 0;
for (int z =0; z<= LARGEST; z++) {
sum+=ints[z];
}
System.out.println("The total is: " + sum);
}

private static int factorsum(int num) {
int sum = 0;
for (int i = 1; i <= num/2.0; i++) {
if ((num % i) == 0) {
sum+=i;
}
}
return sum;
}
}

Euler Problem 28

Ken — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 22:40:16 +0000

Finally got around to solving Problem 28 today in Java. It’s no where near as efficient as it could be but it got the problem done at least.

The size parameter it takes is the total number of elements in the spiral, so for the solution you would pass 1002001 to the program. (as 1001^2 equals 1002001)

Code is below:

// GPLv2
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class p28 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int size = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
// 21 22 23 24 28
// 20 7 8 9 10
// 19 6 1 2 11
// 18 5 4 3 12
// 17 16 15 14 13

// We start at one
int next = 1;
int tinc = 0;
int incrementor = 2;
int sum = 1;
// we don't want to exceed our spiral size
while (next < size) {
if (next == 1) {
next += 2;
sum += next;
} else {
next += incrementor;
sum +=next;
}
// increment times we have used incrementor
tinc++;

// our incrementer increases every 4th time
if (tinc == 4) {
incrementor +=2;
tinc = 0;
}
}
System.out.println("The total is " + sum);
}
}

Fun with eclim

Ken — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:40:29 +0000

So I just recently tried eclim and I have to say I’m loving it for the java work I normally do. The power of vim with eclipse’s autocompletion support, automatic imports, and javadoc search is extremely handy. I had heard of eclim for awhile, but I just never tried it. Now I regret not trying it sooner as its awesome.

I’m still experimenting with it and digging it. Here’s some settings I’ve made for ease of use in my ~/.vimrc:

let g:EclimBrowser='xdg-open'
nnoremap :JavaDocSearch
nnoremap :Ant
nnoremap :JavaImportMissing:JavaImportClean
abbr print System.out.println("");hhi

I also usually use ctags with my projects too. For java I usually use ctags -R --links=yes --java-types=cimp -f tags to generate the tags file and then use in my ~/.vimrc:

map :tab split:exec("tag ".expand(""))
set tags=./tags;$HOME

These settings allow me to hit ctrl-\ and jump to the class/method of the file its defined in and open it in a new tab. If its in the same file, I use the normal ctrl-] tag command. The second line has vim search up from the current directory up to my home directory for a file called “tags” which was generated by the ctags command.

For the time being this is looking like it will replace my old eclipse only java environment, and perhaps this will improve my python and other ones too. The ctags alone have made python a lot easier to work with.

GPytage 0.3.0 RC1 Unleashed

Ken — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:56:07 +0000

Well, after a lot of hacking GPytage 0.3.0 RC1 is finally ready to be released. This version underwent nearly a complete rewrite to make coding it much easier and of course improve the end users experience of editing Portage’s config files. Notable features of this release include:

Supports recursive directory support now, where the old release was limited to one depth of a package.foo directory
Improved creation, deletion, and renaming of files. You can now rightclick in the leftpanel on the desired file and get these options as well
Copy and Paste support now implemented
When editing an entry you can now hit tab to save the change and move to the next editable field.
When adding a new file, reverting, deleting, or a similar operation is executed the folder you were currently in is now reselected after GPytage reloads its database

GPytage should be hitting the Portage tree in the next few hours. A simple

emerge -av =app-portage/gpytage-0.3.0_rc1

should net you package for testing. It will be keyworded ~arch, so stable users will need to add an entry to package.keywords to install it.

While this is a release candidate, there should not be any bugs floating around. If you find any bugs or want to suggest an improvement don’t hesitate to either post it here or at https://gna.org/projects/gpytage/

GPytage-0.3.0 RC1

Looking forward to hearing everyone’s feedback.

Impressions of Google Wave

Ken — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:49:39 +0000

So I’ve been using Google Wave for about 2 weeks now off and on with the few people I know that use wave. My first impression after logging in was that the interface wasn’t exactly that intuitive and friendly. Wave did import all my gmail contacts into wave that had a wave account which was nifty.

Chatting in waves themselves is relatively simple if you know the keyboard shortcuts, but everything is transferred in real time as the draft mode has not been implemented yet. This means you cannot formulate your thoughts before sending it off unless you type it up externally and paste it in. While not normally something I’d care about, there are times I’d like to spent a little time composing and editing my response to such things.

Also, once someone is added to a wave they are there pretty much forever as the remove function is also not implemented yet. So take care in who gets added to a wave if there’s anything in the wave you would prefer to remain private.

The buddy status indication of online/offline is also pretty poor. From what I’ve observed it isn’t entirely accurate yet as I’ve had numerous conversations with people that all showed offline. Not knowing whether someone is online or not is a pretty big deal, I mean whats the point if it doesn’t work. Might as well just check a regular IM or email the person instead.

All these problems aren’t really the biggest problem I have with Wave though. My biggest problem is almost no one I know actually continues to use Wave, and I’m about to throw in the towel for Wave as well. I just don’t see any real point to using Wave right now besides extremely niche uses. It also adds yet another layer of stuff I need to keep track of to keep in contact with various people who don’t desire to use all the same protocol/communication tool which is somewhat annoying. I have enough of those to track already and more keep popping up all the time. Perhaps after a bit of polishing by Google I’ll give Wave another chance.

Keeping up with all those RSS feeds

Ken — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:19:58 +0000

I’m subscribed to a fairly decent amount of RSS feeds that I read daily ranging from technical websites to comics to hulu shows. Recently this list has grown quite large and it became apparent that using Opera as my rss reader was coming to an end. Opera’s rss reader lacks any kind of organizational ability such as folders. For a long time this fact did not bother me at all, but after my feeds list started growing the UI’s weaknesses were starting to surface.

I tried alternative dedicated rss reader applications but they mainly just got annoying as they were practically full blown browsers disguised as an rss reader. The rendering quirks and other minor problems pretty much turned me off to the idea entirely.

Since I have a google account, I decided to try out Google Reader and see if it lived up to its name. Been using for about a day so far and am liking it fairly well. The ability to navigate Google Reader entirely through the use of the keyboard is something that was appealing to me as clicking through all those feeds and entries would be a massive pain. Reader also easily allowed me to add my feeds into folder based categories to help sort out the massive flow of information. Adding a folder was slightly unintuitive but I figured it out in a reasonable amount of time.

I’ll be using Google Reader exclusively this week for reading all my rss stories to see if I find any annoying quirks about it. So far it’s better than what I was currently using, however, so I don’t really foresee switching back to Opera for reading rss any time soon.

GPytage rewrite nearing completion

Ken — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:11:37 +0000

So recently I’ve gotten back into the game on rewriting my application GPytage so it’s a bit easier to work with. For those of you who don’t know what GPytage is, it’s a GTK application for managing Portage’s config files traditionally located in

/etc/portage

written with PyGTK. The application is coming along nicely with its new backend, but still has a bit of a way to go before a rc is released. I’d say the current svn trunk is about beta status at the moment, it’s safe to use but all the features just aren’t implemented yet. Basic editing works right now as does saving and creating new files. It also supports infinitely recursive folders and files which the older version did not.

A quick list of the top of my head that I’ve still got to implement:

Deleting files
Renaming files
Copy, Paste, Cut, etc
Possibly drag and drop support
Figures out sane keybindings for adding and deleting a row. I was thinking ctrl+e for inserting a new row and ctrl+d for deleting a row but I really have no idea, recommendations are welcome
Converting a configuration file into the directory layout like the older GPytage did

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. The svn trunk should be good for testing right now, I promise not to horribly break it. It would be appreciated if people would checkout the current trunk and give it a whirl and comment about how you liked, disliked, hated, loved, or would change about GPytage.

For testing purposes after checking out the svn trunk just cd into the scripts directory and run

./gpytage -l

. Then you should see the application in all its glory. If you feel uneasy about letting GPytage have actual access to your portage files, simply create a /etc/testportage directory that is identical to the old one such as

cp -r /etc/portage /etc/testportage

. This way GPytage can’t cause any harm. If you use the /etc/testportage directory, you would launch GPytage with

./gpytage -lt

Feel free to drop by and say hi in #gpytage on the Freenode irc network.

trunk r230

Quirks with Opera

Ken — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:31:47 +0000

So I’ve been a long time Opera user, but lately some bugs have really started to agitate me and are killing my user experience.

The first bug is Opera is unable to open certain long URL’s from the commandline, approximately if the URL is 86 characters or longer. This was fixed awhile ago in the Windows version of Opera, but it seems it never got corrected in the Linux builds. This causes me to be greatly annoyed as applications can no longer pass long URLs to Opera to be opened. Most notably in my case is links inside my email client. I click those links expecting Opera to happily open them, but all I get is no response. Manually copying and pasting links into Opera from email is a royal pain and has tempted me to try Chromium a bit more full time. I submitted a bug report about it to Opera but we will see if that changes anything. If it doesn’t get fixed soon I’ll have to switch to just maintain my sanity of clicking URLs.

The second bug is flash freezes all the time in Opera. This is incredibly annoying when I’m watching something on Hulu. The show will be playing fine and then suddenly the video will freeze, but the sound will keep playing. This doesn’t seem to occur in other browsers such as chromium or arora. Based on that, I’d assume its an Opera bug but I can’t be sure. Either way it’s quite annoying. I can’t tell if it was a recent Opera update or flash update that introduced this behavior though.

Hoping the next Opera beta/rc fixes at the least my url length problem