Tag Archives: tutorials

JavaScript Classes: A primer focusing on encapsulation

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Preface on target audience:
This post is intended for someone who is mostly comfortable with JavaScript and is familiar, at a basic level, with object-oriented-programming principles. If you can create functions and arrays in JavaScript, and know what “this” means in the context of classes, then that should be adequate.

For several months, I had been searching for a good guide on writing JavaScript classes; something that started very basically and used lots of examples. What I found were guides on writing plugins in jQuery, doing inheritance with JavaScript, overly technical articles about the underlying framework behind JavaScript’s prototype method (lots of discussion about the prototype property — which was confusing for a hot minute since there is also a framework named Prototype.)

I know they’re out there, but I’ve had a hard time finding them. All I really wanted was a guide on basic encapsulation to make my code cleaner, but so many of the guides focused instead on the Inheritance aspect (which is arguably flashier / sexier).

With the caveat that I would never claim to be a JavaScript expert, and also that I have only just recently figured this out in detail, I’d like to share my findings and process. My hope is that this can be a stepping stone for some others out there like me. I’m open to feedback on this, but want the focus to be on both encapsulation and keeping it basic.

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Synaesthesia, also known as “Piano Hero” [Linux FTW]

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Last year, a friend of mine showed me this cool program he found called “Synaesthesia.” It is, as the title reads, “Piano Hero.” Notes fall from the top to the bottom of the screen and when they collide with the bottom, you must hit the appropriate  key on your piano / keyboard / MIDI controller. It is a VERY cool tool for training, practicing, and learning new songs. As someone that is not particularly skilled at sight-reading music (I do better learning aurally), any way to get new songs loaded into my brain is welcome.

We inherited a Yamaha Clavinova 350 last year as well, which has been really terrific for practicing; I was previously using a 2/3 size electric piano that was showing its age. I picked up an M-Audio Fast Track Pro interface off of eBay for about  $50, and so I can now use the Clavinova as a MIDI controller!

My big Win last week, though, which happens to be what this post is about, is getting it to not only work in Linux (not so hard) but getting the Clavinova to function as the MIDI controller for it (somewhat challenging). Continue reading →

Making the Switch [Linux FTW]

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Since January of this year (2010), I have helped 3 separate people make the switch over to Linux from Windows. Last year I helped two people do it, and I am currently in the process of converting our desktop (used primarily by Melissa) over to Ubuntu as well. In 2011, I helped 3 other people convert, and also all 3 of my coworkers at my new job.

To date, only one of them went back, but to be fair, I wasn’t able to help him in person, only over the Internet (and being able to play World of Warcraft was a dealbreaker for him — WoW does work, you just have to hoop-jump a bit to do it). UPDATE: I play Skyrim on a regular basis via Wine with little to no difficulty.

My distro of choice, of course, is Ubuntu. The latest release as of this post, Karmic Koala, offers many really awesome features, some of which aren’t even offered on Windows.

The key factor for conversion is quite simple: most people only need some really basic features to be satisfied. If anyone has ever asked you for advice about what computer to buy, if you ask them what they plan on doing it, the answer is often “Oh, you know… email, Internet, pictures, word processing; nothing fancy, I don’t need a gaming computer.”

For the scope of this post, I’ll be discussing Ubuntu exclusively (I’ve found it to be the most accessible for new Linux users and it has a good online community base for support), though many of my sentiments will also apply to other distros (Fedora, Mint, SuSe, Debian, etc).

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Using Virtualbox with an Existing Windows Partition [Linux FTW]

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The recursion might blow your mind.

UPDATE: I am not able to help troubleshoot this anymore, as I have switched over to VMWare Player (post coming soon!); However, if you happen to discover anything about making it work, please post in the comments below and I will update the post text with your findings and credit you.

Last week, a friend of mine needed me to do an audio file conversion, but the app that I use is installed on my windows partition. I really don’t ever boot into Windows unless I have a good reason for it — I’m much happier tooling around in Linux — there’s just something satisfying and comfortable about being able to pop open a shell at any time.

Anyways – it got me thinking: I’ve booted into a Windows XP image,  why can’t I use VirtualBox to boot from a whole partition? Surely that is possible…

Tonight I finally got to play with it. And as you can see from the image here, I got success. :)

It’s a little challenging, but it’s doable. I had to spend some time to iron out the kinks, but you can reap the benefits!

UPDATE: Sandeep has submitted screenshots with instructions on getting this to work with Windows 7, see below, at the very end.

UPDATE: If you are getting the error message: Offset must be a number: rce
I have found the fix for it. See the instructions below.

UPDATE: Bogdan (see comments) was able to get Windows Vista working under Virtualbox OSE, using the method below. See his comments for specifics on Windows Vista.

UPDATE: Dan has found some tricks for getting this to work with Win7 if you are getting a BSOD on bootup.

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Quake-style terminal window [Linux FTW]

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Updated: Aug 28 2012

Long ago (mid-90′s), there was a revolutionary 3-d first-person-shooter game called “Quake”, made by id Software, the same people that made DooM a few years before.

Quake had this really cool feature where you could press the ~ key at anytime during the game and a terminal window would drop down from the top of the screen. This terminal screen could be used for anything from chatting to changing maps and more. It was sweet.

Since then, there have been many attempts at replicating the functionality in both Mac and Linux environments, where it is still common to use a terminal window with some regularity.

One such software package, Guake, has become a personal favorite of mine. It’s very simple; no bells or whistles other than the ability to adjust the Opacity. My only beef with it was simply that the terminal would just pop up on the screen rather than drop down from the top. Totally superficial — but what’s the point of using an open-source OS if you can’t customize it to do exactly what you want?

Last night, I figured out how to do it. And it’s glorious (video demo after the jump). Continue reading →

Karmic Win pt. 7, Wine, DirectX, and Games [Linux FTW]

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In the last post, we discussed using Gnome Do to do awesome things such as maintaining Twitter easily.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (in Wine)One of the key factors in finally making the switch over to Linux completely was when I learned that Windows Emulation had progressed far enough that I’d be able to play modern games on it successfully. I hate to seem so shallow that video games would make or break the decision, but I just know that if I can’t do pretty much EVERYTHING I like to do while on Linux, the likelihood of its endurance is far less.

Counter Strike: Source (in Wine)In any case — with a few simple steps, a few downloaded files, and some patience, you can easily setup DirectX 9 in WinE and play many modern games including Civilization IV, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Counterstrike: Source, and many others. NVidia cards tend to have much better success than ATI, but there area workarounds for ATI users.

Wine’s official website maintains a very comprehensive database of applications that have been tested under Wine. The list is intimidatingly long, and contains both popular and esoteric gmes; old and new. The “Platinum Top 10″ (top 10 most popular games, raked by popularity, that work perfectly in Wine without any modification) are:

  1. Guild Wars
  2. Photoshop CS2 (CS3 and CS4 have not bee fully emulated yet)
  3. Supreme Commander
  4. Watchtower Library 2008 (yes, as in the Jehova’s Witnesses… strange that it’s a top 10 app)
  5. Half-life 2 Retail
  6. Silkroad Online
  7. Spore
  8. Day of Defeat: Source (via Steam)
  9. Star Wars: Jedi Knight – Jedi Academy
  10. Call of Duty 2

see more games/apps from the Platinum list

The Gold list, games that require a few tweaks but work perfectly once fixed. The tweaks are almost always in the AppDB profile, but if not, it’s just a google search away. :) The Top 10 list has some high profile games, and so it’s worth mentioning:

  1. Final Fantasy XI
  2. Warhammer Online Live
  3. World of Warcraft (The profile explains that the only reason “Platinum” wasn’t chosen is because the Installation wasn’t tested — they likely just copied it over from a Windows computer; full installation instructions are available on the Wine Profile though.)
  4. EVE Online
  5. StarCraft Brood War
  6. Steam (the distribution platform for games from the “Valve” distributor — there may be some issues with “purchasing” games on Steam, but any games that you have already purchased on your account should be downloadable just fine)
  7. Team Fortress 2 (Steam)
  8. Aion: The Tower of Eternity
  9. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
  10. Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (Battle.net play was not officially tested, but may work)

Not every game works just yet, but the list is growing. See the Wine ApplicationDB for info about whether or not your favorite apps will work, and how well they work.

Pretty much every modern game (made for windows) requires DirectX, but fortunately setting up DirectX is pretty easy and can be done in less than 30 minutes (assuming a broadband Internet connection). Below is all the files, and instructions, to getting set up with DirectX in Wine.

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