KStars in dire need of developers

KStars is in dire need of developers. Anybody interested in contributing could let me know by email at akarsh dot simha at kdemail dot net. We could use help from anyone who is able to build KDE 4.x from sources. Most of your help will be used after Jan 27th [KDE 4.2 release].

Starter’s jobs:

• Align images for KStars
• Test KStars thoroughly. We have a lot of bugs as of now

TIA.

Orion, Hyades and Pleiades

Processing Steps:

Raw Image -> Duplicate Layer -> Blur copy to radius 100
-> Subtract Copy -> Merge Layers -> Duplicate Layer
-> Adjust curves to hide faint stars -> Blur to radius 50
-> Adjust curves -> Layer mode to Screen -> Final touches


Quality Assurance checklist for KStars in KDE 4.2

Anybody running KDE 4.2 Beta or trunk can help:

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Edu/KStars/QA_List_4.2

100 Million Star Catalog is now downloadable

While I’m waiting for some changes to make it available via Get Hot New Stuff, the catalog (which contains the first 100e6 stars from the USNO NOMAD Catalog to mag 16.5) is now available from here:

http://download.kde.org/apps/kstars/

Will update my blog when the filename is finalized and it goes onto GHNS.

Switching to Amarok 2.0

Now that Amarok has become stable, I svn up-ped my copy and built
it. It works fine. I’m planning to switch over from the largely
featureless MOC Player to Amarok 2.0.

The only crib I have with it is that it takes too much time to tag
files after some time. The more I tag, the more time it takes for
subsequent taggings, or so it seems. I don’t know how to run GDB on
Amarok, maybe I should spend some time figuring out what’s wrong.

It’s so easy to blog about small things like this, now that EMacs is
my blog-engine

Anyway, it’s now time I went back to “Waves and Oscillations”

Customized my EMacs today

This is going to be my first blog post from within EMacs. Finally, I can escape the web interface of
wordpress.com and use good old EMacs bindings instead, if this
works. I did a good lot of customization to my .emacs today and here’s
what it looks like now (minus the bit that weblogger added):


;; General stuff
(setq inhibit-startup-message t)
(setq make-backup-files nil)
(setq load-path (cons '"/home/akarsh/emacs" load-path))
(setq transient-mark-mode t)
(setq curdir (expand-file-name "."))

;; Make sure color displays properly in shells within EMacs
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'ansi-color-for-comint-mode-on)

;; We want 256 color support!
(load "~/emacs/screen-256color.el")

;; Use my favourite color theme
(require 'color-theme)
(load "~/emacs/color-theme-rlx.el")
(setq color-theme-is-global t)
(color-theme-rlx)

;; Get a quick shell when required
(fset 'pull-shell-out
"\C-[xshell\C-m\C-xb\C-m\C-u-60\C-x3\C-xo\C-xb*shell*\C-mexport COLUMNS=60\C-m")
(global-set-key "\C-t" 'pull-shell-out)

;; Auto fill for E Mail.
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook
'(lambda () (auto-fill-mode nil)
(abbrev-mode t)))
(add-hook 'server-switch-hook
'(lambda () (progn
(auto-fill-mode 1)
(my-mutt-settings))))
(defun my-mutt-settings ()
(if (and
(> (length (buffer-file-name))
(equal "/tmp/mutt" (substring (buffer-file-name) 0 9)))
(progn
(mail-mode)
(mail-text)
(cd curdir))))

;; C++ / C / ObjC mode specifics
(defun setup-ebrowse-bindings ()
;; Faster bindings for frequently used stuff
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c C-f") 'ebrowse-tags-find-definition)
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c C-F") 'ebrowse-tags-find-declaration)
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c -") 'ebrowse-back-in-position-stack)
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c +") 'ebrowse-forward-in-position-stack)
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c =") 'ebrowse-forward-in-position-stack)
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c p") 'ebrowse-electric-position-menu)
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c f") 'ebrowse-tags-find-definition-other-window)
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c F") 'ebrowse-tags-find-declaration-other-window)

;; Get a C++ Tree on the side when required
(fset 'pull-c++-tree-out
"\C-u-60\C-x3\C-xo\C-x\C-f\C-a\C-kBROWSE\C-m")
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c t") 'pull-c++-tree-out)
)

(defun my-c-mode-common-setup ()
(setq c-basic-offset 4) ;; We want to stick to KStars' indentation standards
(setq indent-tabs-mode nil) ;; No TABs for indentation, please!
(setq compile-command "makefromemacs") ;; Change compile command
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "C-c c") 'compile) ;; Bind C-c c to (compile)
(setup-ebrowse-bindings) ;; Set up EBrowse bindings
)

(add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook 'my-c-mode-common-setup)

;; Iswitchb is much nicer for inter-buffer navigation.
(cond ((fboundp 'iswitchb-mode) ; GNU Emacs 21
(iswitchb-mode 1))
((fboundp 'iswitchb-default-keybindings) ; Old-style activation
(iswitchb-default-keybindings))
(t nil)) ; Oh well.
(global-set-key [(control x) (control b)] 'iswitchb-buffer)
(global-set-key [(control x) (f)] 'find-file)

I configured a whole bunch of things – ebrowse
being one of them. Now I can quickly go to the definition of any
function – that’s something that is going to increase my productivity
significantly.

Another thing I did was to bind a whole bunch of keys to complicated
tasks. For instance, I mapped C-t to pull out a small (60 column long)
terminal from the side of the current window, because that appeals to
me a lot more.

It’s so much more easier to blog from EMacs, that (hoping that this
works), I’ll be blogging more frequently!

The heights of g33kl0ve

18:10 < vimzard> neenaoffline: vimzy sounds cool
18:11 -!- kashthealien [n=kashyap@59.92.131.212] has joined #iitm-linux
18:12 < kstar> Amazing thing this: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
18:12 < kstar> vimzard: Re-nick yourself to vimzy!
18:12  * kstar wishes he had put in more interest in his Finite Automata and Formal Languages Course
18:16 < vimzard> kstar: my girlfriend will call me 0×4172756e
18:16 < vimzard> kstar:
18:17 < vimzard> kstar: and when she get’s *really* intimate, she’ll call me: f9d9fa364f2ae75b746f5fe1e5d88da2, so it will only between us both
18:18 < vimzard> kstar: *gawd*-level link….
18:18 < kstar> vimzard: :-O
18:19 < kstar> vimzard: Man, your Significant Other seems to be a ‘Dell’
18:20 < vimzard> kstar: it’s not a “Dell”… it’s *my* laptop. She calls herself “Vimzy”
18:20 < vimzard> neenaoffline: (thanks for the name )
18:21  * kstar pities at vimzard’s future
18:21 < vimzard> kstar: we’ve decided to get married. would you grace our wedding?
18:21 < neenaoffline> np
18:24 < kstar__> vimzard: I wonder if you’ll be able to reproduce laptop-human-crossbreeds
18:24 < neenaoffline> hehe
18:24 -!- kstar [n=kstar@59.96.41.212] has quit [Nick collision from services.]
18:24 < neenaoffline> the more jealous he is the longer his ____ tail
18:24 -!- kstar_ [n=kstar@59.96.37.114] has quit [Nick collision from services.]
18:24 -!- Channel #iitm-linux created Fri Sep  5 09:23:29 2008
18:24 -!- You’re now known as kstar
18:25 < vimzard> kstar: you’d be amazed… .
18:25 < neenaoffline> like pinnochio
18:25 < vimzard> kstar: /we shall name our children, vimeet and vimisha
18:25 -!- Irssi: Join to #iitm-linux was synced in 85 secs
18:26 < kstar> vimzard: OMG! That’s a lot of forethought.
18:26 < vimzard> kstar:
18:30 < kstar> vimzy?
18:30 < kstar> Oops… vimzy is your laptop.
18:30 < kstar> vimzard: ?
18:30 < vimzard> kstar: don’t you dare make passes at my fiance
18:30  * vimzard waves fist
18:31 < kstar> :-O