Installing Themes on Emacs (nox)

Piece of cake, at least, on my experience...

Emacs 23:
(Tested on "GNU Emacs 23.4.1" (nox) - Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS and on "GNU Emacs 23.3.1" - Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS)
Get the theme file and copy/ upload it to the box, and then add this to your ~/.emacs file:

(load-file "~/emacs/lisp/zenburn-theme.el")

Pointing -obviously- to the theme file.
Start Emacs, enjoy.

Emacs 24:
(Tested on "GNU Emacs 24.5.1" (nox) - Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS)
Get the theme file and copy/ upload it to the box, and then add this to your ~/.emacs file:


(setq load-path (cons  "~/emacs/lisp/" load-path))
(require 'labburn-theme)

I've placed the *-theme.el file on the directory listed above.

Xenial Wallpapers

Guess I could say that any of those, I mean the stock ones, are my cup of tea...
On Trusty at least, there was one wallpaper (see screenshot) that IMHO was rather good, and I've used it a lot.
Now on Xenial I don't get to stay on any of the stock wallpapers, all of them are sort of boring.

The Unity Desktop

Well, a modern one, I guess...
Sort of a solarized palette... Seems like the cool kids nowadays replaced their Fuzzy Eco desktop backgrounds for these solarized, sometimes flat, images.
I'm Ok with that.
The image is, for what I Googled, from an upcoming video game or similar.

In Praise of Trusty Tahr

Guess that I'll maintain my main rig (my beloved W530) running Trusty for a little longer...
I've tested Xenial on the X140E, and even tho it does work Ok, and looks quite well, there are few glitches here and there that might become a show-stopper, so, keep it simple stupid and all that...

Got Clima?

Got a nice little script to pull weather info:

clima()
{
wget -q -O- http://www.accuweather.com/en/ar/buenos-aires/7894/weather-forecast/7894 | \
awk -F\' '/acm_RecentLocationsCarousel\.push/{print  "Buenos Aires" " - " $14 " - " "Temperatura: " $10"°"" - " "Sensacion Termica: " $12"°"}'| head -1;
}

Mostly because, like I said, I'm fed up of posting screenshots without weather info on them.
So, here is a little screenshot using it:

The idea came, originally from this post: Weather from terminal

Last.FM (Thru Rhythmbox) Is Alive And Kicking!!!

And so, one day, Rhythmbox starts working with Last.FM once again...
Don't ask me why, as I found out, just by accident, yesterday.
This is on the stock Rhythmbox that ships with Ubuntu 14.04.
Of course, as I noted before, since I'm using Numix Touch Flat, there a few thick (and some huge) black spaces to deal with...

The Unity Desktop

I've mentioned this theme before:

Numix Touch Flat

I love it a lot, but, there are two things that don't make this an amazing theme (for me, of course)...
It doesn't have top rounded corner windows, and it has the damn "black spaces" plaguing, most of all, Gedit.

My Weather Indicator Story

So, the other day I was looking for something here on OE10, and I've noticed some of the old screenshots, most of those had an applet to show the temperature around here. I really miss those... Is nice to go back and be able not only to see an old screenshot of a desktop from halcyon days, but also get to know the temperature at that moment.
Getting one up & working became a necessity!
After a bit of Googling and after adding it repository, installed "My Weather Indicator":

colossus > sudo apt-get install my-weather-indicator
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  account-plugin-windows-live empathy-common folks-common gnome-contacts
  gstreamer0.10-nice gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-x
  gstreamer1.0-nice guile-2.0-libs libavahi-gobject0 libfarstream-0.1-0
  libfarstream-0.2-2 libfolks-eds25 libfolks-telepathy25 libfolks25 libgc1c2
  libgupnp-igd-1.0-4 libhdb9-heimdal libkdc2-heimdal libmeanwhile1
  libmission-control-plugins0 libnice10 libntdb1 libpurple-bin libpurple0
  libtelepathy-farstream3 libtelepathy-logger3 libupstart1 libzephyr4
  linux-headers-3.16.0-30 linux-headers-3.16.0-30-generic
  linux-image-3.16.0-30-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-30-generic
  python-ntdb signon-plugin-password telepathy-gabble telepathy-haze
  telepathy-logger telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  geoclue-hostip gir1.2-geocodeglib-1.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 libgeocode-glib0
  python3-dateutil python3-requests-oauthlib python3-tz
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  geoclue-hostip gir1.2-geocodeglib-1.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 libgeocode-glib0
  my-weather-indicator python3-dateutil python3-requests-oauthlib python3-tz
0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 14 not upgraded.
Need to get 4,269 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Ok, so, 17 MB... What a hell!! But...
Anyway, installed it, and then problems started for good.

It crashed upon starting it a couple of times, not the best way of starting things...
In the end, it did started, but didn't update any weather at all, so changed the source of weather info to Weather Underground, and restarted the program... well restarted is just a saying... After that My Weather Indicator refused to start at all.
Digging a bit, I found this:

colossus > ./my-weather-indicator
(my-weather-indicator:12951): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: unity.css:29:40: Missing opening bracket in color definition

#####################################################
System: Linux
Machine: x86_64
Node: colossus
Release: 3.16.0-76-generic
Version: #98~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jun 24 17:04:54 UTC 2016
Platform: Linux-3.16.0-76-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-14.04-trusty
My-Weather-Indicator version: 0.8.1-0extras16.04.1
#####################################################

****** Requesting timezone identificacion
1
***** refreshing weather *****
--- Updating data in location 0 ---
****** Updating weather
****** Calculating rawOffset
-------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------
Underground Weather Service url: http://api.wunderground.com/api/87582/conditions/forecast/lang:EN/pws:1/q/-34.5873579,-58.3915699.json
-------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./my-weather-indicator", line 69, in
    mwi = MWI()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/myweatherindicator.py", line 143, in __init__
    self.load_preferences()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/myweatherindicator.py", line 369, in load_preferences
    self.update_weather()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/myweatherindicator.py", line 158, in update_weather
    self.update_menu(i)
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/myweatherindicator.py", line 682, in update_menu
    weather = self.weatherservices[index].get_weather()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/wundergroundapi.py", line 225, in get_weather
    weather_data = self._get_weather()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/wundergroundapi.py", line 165, in _get_weather
    gvff('low', i, parsed_json)['fahrenheit'],
TypeError: string indices must be integers
And that's when I gave up on it:

colossus > sudo apt-get remove my-weather-indicator
[sudo] password for esteban:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  account-plugin-windows-live empathy-common folks-common
  gir1.2-geocodeglib-1.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 gnome-contacts gstreamer0.10-nice
  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-x gstreamer1.0-nice guile-2.0-libs
  libavahi-gobject0 libfarstream-0.1-0 libfarstream-0.2-2 libfolks-eds25
  libfolks-telepathy25 libfolks25 libgc1c2 libgeocode-glib0 libgupnp-igd-1.0-4
  libhdb9-heimdal libkdc2-heimdal libmeanwhile1 libmission-control-plugins0
  libnice10 libntdb1 libpurple-bin libpurple0 libtelepathy-farstream3
  libtelepathy-logger3 libupstart1 libzephyr4 linux-headers-3.16.0-30
  linux-headers-3.16.0-30-generic linux-image-3.16.0-30-generic
  linux-image-extra-3.16.0-30-generic python-ntdb python3-dateutil
  python3-requests-oauthlib python3-tz signon-plugin-password telepathy-gabble
  telepathy-haze telepathy-logger telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  my-weather-indicator
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 14 not upgraded.
After this operation, 16.3 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

And then the repo:

colossus > sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:atareao/atareao
 Applications from atareao
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~atareao/+archive/ubuntu/atareao
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel removing it

Theming Evolution

Well... It looks like nobody does it..
I'm actually pretty sure nobody uses Evolution any more, since just about every single theme I've tested fails miserably with the email client.
Problems with Evolution and some themes aren't new around here (Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5 & Link 6).
Is getting hard to get a Unity theme that works Ok, on every single place, on Evolution.

Evolution: Black Sections Galore!

And yet another problem on Evolution.
One of those pesky black sections shows up once again...
This is while running the plain vanilla Ambiance theme...
I've seen this problem before (Link 1, Link 2 & Link 3)

The Unity Desktop

It's been a while since the last Unity desktop post around here...
Right now playing a bit with the Yosembiance theme, specifically, with the "Yosembiance-Ubuntu-Orange" variant.
This is hardly news worthy, but, once again, there are problems with Evolution.& Gedit's upper tab.

15 Days With The X140e

During the last holidays I took with me the Thinkpad X140e as "the machine".
Even tho I had used extensively since I got it in mid 2015, I've never used it day in day out as the main rig for such a long time.
I have to say that, except for a couple of times when the little lappie chocked for a while loading on a website or two, it performed like a champ.
The damn thing is tough, really built like like a tank, typing on it is pure pleasure.
There are a couple of -I'm pretty sure- software related bugs that pop-up pretty often, sometimes the Unity launcher refuses to execute a Nautilus instance, pretty, pretty annoying.
There other one involves hardware, but I'm not sure it is a total failure, sometimes, after a booting, the the clit mouse and the upper two buttons doesn't work, but the track-pad and the two lower buttons work A Ok.

The Unity Desktop

It's been a while since I've posted about a theme around here...
The last couple of days I've been playing a bit with a light theme on my Unity setup on the Thinkpad W530.
The Irradiance-X theme looks really cool, so far, the only drawback I've found, the only usability problem, is that the the un-maximized windows merge way too easily with a maximized window in the background, making it pretty difficult to grab the un-maximized window.
This has been a PITA too many couple of times while using it.

Loli-Papelk Icons: HUGE Calendar

 Well, I would say that the issues with theming Evolution seems to goes on ;) ...
This is the preference on Evolution, with (obviously) the Loli-Papelk icon set.

Themed Evolution: Coarse Results...

I found another one of those pesky Evolution problems with the theme that I mentioned before.
This time not while using some strange theme, but using Ubuntu's own "Ambiance" theme...

In Praise of Defaults

That is, regarding themes...
Simply put, the more I test and test different Unity themes (mostly flat ones), the more I like the default "Radiance".
Right now, along with that theme, the other two I'm using are:

• Yosembiance

• Yosembiance-Atomic

Like I said "Radiance" is great, an amazing theme, except for two small things, that I find annoying...

Not completely flat:
Something that I find strange, to say the least, since the unfocused windows are totally flat and look great.

Launcher "Pills":
The launcher has a thin, small rectangle around the icons, a so called "pill".
Even tho the default icon theme (ubuntu-mono-dark) looks rather nice, those god damned pills make then look ugly.

Despite those two things, I think that the default (once again) look of the Terminal on "Radiance" is pure gold.

Monit & Ruby: What a (Environment) Hell!!

These last couple of days I've been dealing with Monit and a Linux box running a bunch of Ruby stuff...
What a freakin' fucking nightmare is to setup Monit to start those damn processes, by Jeebus!
It took me a lot of fumblin' and testing to get those fuckers up & running thru Monit.
The whole thing remind me of those halcyon days of setting up Oracle on a Red Hat 6.2 box, the only difference was that getting Oracle installed and running on those boxes was a pain, and getting this hipster crap is a piece of cake, the hard part was getting it to start using a different user.

A Coarse, Ugly Theme Killer

Even tho this isn't the Flatabulous theme -it is actually the Ambiance Touch for Willy theme- this is exactly the same problem on Evolution that I mentioned on my previous post.
Maybe it isn’t a theme problem but an NVIDIA/ Nouveau one...

The Unity Desktop

Installed the Ambiance Touch for Willy theme on my Thinkpad W530.
 I like it, it is flat, the decorations and the windows are tiny, and it looks rather nice, spiffy and modern.

One thing tho, by default, the theme is called "Ambiance", and since I don't like to install themes under "~/.themes", I have renamed it as "Ambiance-Touch" and installed it on the global/ for all users location, on "/usr/share/themes/".
I d'loaded and extracted the tgz file on "~/Downloads", renamed the original directory "Ambiance" to "Ambiance-Touch" and then cd onto it, and edited the files:

• Ambiance-Touch/index.theme
• Ambiance-Touch/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml

The index.theme file looks like this: (using my custom cursor!)

[Desktop Entry]
Type=X-GNOME-Metatheme
Name=Ambiance-Touch
Comment=Ubuntu Ambiance Touch theme
Encoding=UTF-8

[X-GNOME-Metatheme]
GtkTheme=Ambiance-Touch
MetacityTheme=Ambiance-Touch
IconTheme=ubuntu-mono-dark
CursorTheme=basic-goofy-black+
ButtonLayout=close,minimize,maximize:
X-Ubuntu-UseOverlayScrollbars=true

INTOH, on the metacity-theme-1.xml file, all I did was simply changing the name on the name tag, line 5.

Monit: Apache returns "Execution Failed" status

Got a gig to administer a couple of servers on the Google Cloud Platform the other day.
So I got a few Ubuntu Servers 14.04 up & running and installed all the crap I usually need/ run on the boxes I get my hands on...

Now, after setting up Monit a bit, and starting it up, I've noticed that the Apache process was in problems.
No matter what I did, I got the same status... In the end, the problem was really, really stupid to fix...

Check the path to the pid file on the /etc/monit/conf.d/apache2 file:
Change the pid from /var/run/apache2.pid to /var/run/apache2/apache2.pid and restart the Monit service.
Of course, you already have copied the file /etc/monit/monitrc.d/apache2 to /etc/monit/conf.d/apache2, right?