Processing the processing

Me again! (Noooo) 😀

As you might already figured out, I have a custom to write here periodically. As you might also figured out, this is one of those days I’m super inspired to write some super cool extra blog articles! 😀 Wow, cookie for me! 🙂

Having in mind that I had a long working summer and little time to relax, my interests lately are not so miserable. It’s like like a dream, and I don’t know if I’m sleeping or not, coz I’m feeling very tired. Being very tired and bored with everything, I started to read RSS feeds through RSSOwl. Nice thing, all RSS feeds you choose, every day, at any time, for you! Wow 🙂 So, after reading about news in open source world, I stepped over one particular link about open source applications for video editing. Here it is. There was a particular thing that kinda poke my imagination. Yes, program for working with graphics ( and sound, but I’m not into that yet ). It’s called Processing.

There’s one very neat thing with Processing. I don’t know how deep are you in Java programming language, but Processing syntax is very much like Java’s. Great thing for me! Don’t know about you. Being familiar with Java syntax, it’s not going to be very hard to start with it. But, that is not the neat thing I was going to speak about.

I had experience, that I wanted to make some simple pong game in Java, when I started learning it. Buuuut, there was a big problem! So many things to figure out by my self, or to take a books and read. Eventually, books would have give me better understanding and take me a longer time to do it (in right way, of course). Since I’m inpatient, I wanted to make something fast. So, I took Java’s API, and read little about double buffering. I made something, but lost my patience after all that guessing and doing it all wrong. Here comes Processing, winning the day! Processing gives you speed in doing all sweeet graphics programming, without worrying about double buffering or anything else. You just have to learn some basics, get some code dumped in the Processing main window, and press play. If you are lucky, you’ll do some basics very fast, and proceed to 3D graphics with OpenGL. Yes! Processing has libraries for many things, and for OpenGL among all others.

Soooo, go there and do some Processing, and let me know what was your impression! Bye!

Doin’ some OpenLdap research

“All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.” – Carl Sagan

Wise saying, wise man. Go watch a movie, maybe that will be less confusing than this box you are staring at! 😀

Anyway, I have been researching Ldap lately. Of course, in my spare time, coz all obligations about faculty have started once more. Reason of research is centralizing the database of  student users at faculty. The whole idea is part of a bigger picture, which I think I’m still not aware of, but nevertheless I’m still climbing that hill :). Since there is a lot of good books about the subject I’m not going to start a lecture, and get you all bored 🙂 but I’m going to tell you about it in a few words. Again, I’m going to talk about problems I had (or the problem :)).

So, what is OpenLdap? OpenLdap is a open source solution for making active directories using Ldap protocol. In the beginning, it was only a protocol, but during the time it grew up to be the client-server aplication. So, to get it all straight, Ldap is a protocol, OpenLdap is a open source solution for building active directories using Ldap. OpenLdap consists of slapd and slurpd deamons, couple of tools for making entries in active directory, like ldapadd, ldapmodify, ldapdelete, slappasswd, and more. Now, I’m not going to get all “ldap dirty”, and that is the reason why I’m suggesting you to read the book called, “Mastering OpenLdap” from Matt Butcher. In a few words, it uses hierarchical database (hdb, bdb), to store entries if a way that schemes describe, can index fields for fast search and so on.

When you are all done with adding entries in your new Ldap directory, you will now and then have to erase some entries. I had to do that too, so don’t cry or do something silly, like punch monitor 😀 (Wait, what???  I’m not going to punch it, naaah, I don’t want to get my hands dirty, instead I’m gonna get an axe, and split it in half!! :):):)) Anyway, I had a problem when having my administrator password set, I couldn’t delete particular entry.  The error was: Invalid credentials (49). I figured out that it was not the problem in DN of the entry. So, it was something with credentials, maybe password. That was the problem, for those who can’t wait the end of this mysterious story :D. To change pass you can preform couple of steps, that can be different. One of the ways is to use slappasswd, and generate SHA password, and insert it in /etc/ldap/slapd.conf, in the next form:

rootpw {SSHA}blablabla

Then, I guess all will be settled, and you could delete your entries as much as you can 🙂 If this doesn’t fix your problem, than I have to say, you are all alone in this world of misery. Aaam just kidding… but you are 😀 Seriously, if you have any problems, feel free to comment, and I’ll try to help, if I find spare time. Bye!