Nasser's Blog

Elm Koans

Nasser Alshammari — Sat, 22 Sep 2018 20:52:46 GMT

A while ago I made a video series on YouTube of me solving Elm-Koans. I was using Elm version 0.18 but recently Elm got a new release, Elm version 0.19.

You can watch this video series Here.

Arabic Fonts in Emacs

Nasser Alshammari — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 20:44:45 GMT

If you are like Ammar or me and use Emacs to write in both Arabic and English, you might have encountered the problem of using some Arabic font in Emacs and wished that you could use that font but you can't because the English text looks terrible, or vice versa. Well, I found a little trick in Emacs that allows you to assign a font for Arabic text and another font for English text.

There's a function in Emacs called set-fontset-font that allows us to specify a range of characters to have a specific font. To assign the Arabic range to have Noto Sans Arabic UI font, for example. All you have to do is to add the following somewhere in your init.el if you are using Emacs, or in dotspacemacs/user-init in your .spacemacs file if you are using spacemacs:

(let ((ar-font "Noto Sans Arabic UI")
      (range '(#x000600 . #x0006FF)))
  (set-fontset-font "fontset-startup"  range ar-font)
  (set-fontset-font "fontset-default"  range ar-font)
  (set-fontset-font "fontset-standard" range ar-font))

or for a shorter solution:

(set-fontset-font t 'arabic "Noto Sans Arabic UI")

Site Update

Nasser Alshammari — Sun, 13 May 2018 22:08:13 GMT

It has been almost three years since I posted anything here. I've decided to revive my blog and do some updates here and there. I got a new domain instead of the old one and now the site supports the https protocol (thanks to Let's Encrypt). I was using Pelican to generate my blog. However, this time I've decided to go with Nikola, mainly for two reasons:

Nikola has good Org mode support,
Nikola has good multilingual support.

I've been using Spacemacs (An Emacs distribution) to do most of my work for the past two to three years now and I wanted to make publishing new posts as easy as possible. So after trying some ideas and workflows, I've settled on using Nikola with Org mode. Also, I'm planning to publish (hopefully) every post in English and Arabic, so Nikola support for multilingual blogs was a must for me.

Computer Science?

Nasser Alshammari — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 06:44:00 GMT

Date:: 2014-12-06 6:44
category:
slug:: computer-science
tags:: computer science, art, engineering

What is computer science? is it a scientific discipline? or an engineering discipline? or is it a form of Art? I tried to answer these questions with a small presentation that I gave at the university and I thought should share the slides of that presentation. So, grab it from here.

Docker NuPIC

Nasser Alshammari — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 08:38:00 GMT

Date:: 2014-10-10 9:38
category:: Linux
slug:: docker-nupic
tags:: linux, arch, docker, nupic, ipython, python, notebook, nupic studio, X11, SSH, VNC, numenta, Dockerfile, image

UPDATE Right now nupic is available at PyPi and can be simply installed by:

pip install nupic

I just set up a docker image that will provide an easy development environment for the NuPIC project. The image comes with the following:

NuPIC
NuPIC Studio
iPython notebook
Matplotlib
MySQL server

The docker image is available at the docker hub here. And the Dockerfile is at github with all the instructions to use.

Wacom Intuos Pro and Linux

Nasser Alshammari — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 14:58:00 GMT

Date:: 2014-01-01 14:58
category:: Paintings
slug:: wacom-intuos
tags:: krita, mypaint, paintings, linux, arch, wacom, intuos pro, review, installation, configuration

Intuos Pro

So a new year and I got my self a little gift, a Wacom Intuos pro. I'm upgrading from an Intuos 3 so my opinions could be a little out of date.

Here is a couple of pictures of the pen and the pen holder.

The cool thing about the pen is the different nibs that you can use. As you can see in the picture below, the nibs are stored in the pen holder and you can choose the one that best suits your style.

The Intuos pro comes in three different sized. I got the small one because it's cheaper :P and I wanted a compact tablet that I can easily carry with me if I want to. The tablet surface feels like paper and It's definitely an improvement over the Intuos 3.

Another thing that I really like about the Intuos pro is the ability to have it work wirelessly. Underneath the tablet there is a removable battery and a compartment for the wireless dongle. You can remove the battery and the wireless dongle if you want to work in wired mode. The battery is charged via the USB cable in wired mode.

Here are closer pictures of the wireless and USB dongle.

Installation and Configuration

The main purpose of this blog post is to show how I got the tablet to work under Linux. I'm using Arch at the moment and when I plugged the tablet in, it did't work. I had to mess with it a bit to get it working.

Driver installation

First off, you need to install the wacom drivers. So run the following command which will install the drivers form the main repos.

sudo pacman -S xf86-input-wacom

Kernel module installation

Then you have to install this kernel module. Thanks to apicici for maintaining this. It's not in the official repos but you can get it from AUR. I'm using yaourt here, but you can use whatever AUR manager you have. Also, you have to have the kernel headers installed before this step, if you don't have them already.

sudo pacman -S linux-headers
sudo yaourt -S input-wacom-dkms

Desktop environment configuration

I use KDE now and there's a cool KCM (KConfig Modules) for the wacom tablet in the AUR. To get it run the following:

sudo yaourt -S kcm-wacomtablet

Here is a screen shot of it:

The tablet could be used as a big touchpad. While it's good to have the option, it's not really practical because the palm rejection isn't working. So I think disabling the touchpad is better, for now at least. You can do so as shown in the screen shot below:

One awesome feature of this KCS, is the ability to have profiles. Here I have some shortcuts for MyPaint.

So this is it, have fun!

UPDATES

Thanks to Vasco Alexander Basqué for pointing out that the Intuos pro needs xf86-input-wacom version 0.23 or newer. It won't work with older drivers.

Android Storage Space Running Out!

Nasser Alshammari — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:37:00 GMT

Date:: 2013-03-28 14:37
category:: Android
slug:: android-storage-space-running-out
tags:: android, storage space

I have my galaxy SII with Cyanogenmod 10.1 and I got this message "Storage space running out some system functions may not work". I tried to uninstall some applications but that didn't do the trick. I only had like 100MB of free space. Then I found that there are like 1.8Gigs of log files stored in the /data/log directory which I don't really care about.

So in order to free some space, I ran the following commands from the terminal:

$ su -
$ cd /data/log
$ rm *.log

It'll ask for root permissions when u run the first line. Hope this helps!

Arabic in Vim

Nasser Alshammari — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:52:00 GMT

Date:: 2012-12-12 19:52
category:: Linux
slug:: arabic-in-vim
tags:: vim, arabic, linux

If you want to write Arabic in vim, there's a small option that sets the direction of the page to right-to-left and lets you write Arabic with no problems :D

The option is:

:set arabic

And to turn it off, type:

:set noarabic

Here's a small screenshot of vim with Arabic working just fine!

Tips and Tricks for Elementary OS Luna

Nasser Alshammari — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:19:00 GMT

Date:: 2012-12-11 19:19
category:: Linux
slug:: tips-and-tricks-for-elementary-os-luna
tags:: elementary OS, linux, tips and tricks

After using Elementary OS as my main distro on my Desktop and my laptop for sometime, Here are some tips and tricks and small modifications that I have right now:

Make sure you have dconf-editor installed you can do so by running this command:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Remove ubuntu overlay scroll bars:

open dconf-editor then go to this path:

org.gnome.desktop.interface

And uncheck the ubuntu-overlay-scrollbars entry.

Silencing the bell:

This for muting that annoying sound when you try to auto-complete something in the terminal and nothing matches. Go to this path with dconf-editor:

org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences

And uncheck the audible-bell entry.

Modify the dock:

I like to have the indicators on so I can know whether a program is running or not. To do so, open up this file with your favorite text editor:

~/.config/plank/theme/dock.theme

And change this line:

IndicatorSize=5

Its default value was zero on my installation, it might be different on yours. You can change a lot of stuff in here, like the color of the dock, the padding of the items, etc. Each entry is commented with a small description.

On my laptop I have a limited vertical space, so having the dock on the bottom wasn't the best idea in my opinion. So to change the position of the dock, open up this file

~/.config/plank/dock1/settings

And change the value of the "Position" variable to either 0,1,2,3.

0 to move it to the left.

1 to move it to the right.

2 to move it to the top (doesn't work since we have the top bar).

3 to move it to the bottom (the default value).

That's it for now, hope you like it and to the elementary devs and designers, you guys rock! \m/,

Math Puzzle

Nasser Alshammari — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 21:48:00 GMT

Date:: 2012-12-04 21:48
category:: Programming
slug:: math-puzzle-4

Yesterday, I was asked to solve a math puzzle that goes like this:

You have a 3x3 matrix where you have to fill it with the numbers 1-9, as follows:

N1

N2

N3

N4

N5

N6

N7

N8

N9

Where:

N1 + N4 = N7,

N2 + N5 = N8,

N3 + N6 = N9

and no repetition is allowed!

So I spent sometime trying to solve it. Then I wrote a little Python script to help me solve it, but it too didn't work. It was a bit frustrating, to be honest. So I thought about it differently. We know that an Even number + another Even number will yield an Even number. and an Odd number + an Odd number will also yield an Even number. The only case where we can get an Odd number is when we add an Even number with an Odd number. Let me state these in a clear way.

O + O = E

E + E = E

O + E = O

So I counted the Odds and Evens in the list, which are:

1 -- O
2 -- E
3 -- O
4 -- E
5 -- O
6 -- E
7 -- O
8 -- E
9 -- O

5 Odds 4 Evens

Now, no matter how you arrange the first two rows of the matrix, you can't come up with a formation that will satisfy these constraints :)

Here are some illustrations:

O	O	O
O	O	E
E	E	O

An Even number remains.

O	O	O
O	E	E
E	O	O

An Even number remains.

O	O	O
E	E	E
O	O	O

An Even number remains.

E	O	O
E	E	O
E	O	E

An Odd number remains.

E	E	O
E	O	O
E	O	E

An Odd number remains

etc...

Thus! (I've always liked to say THUS! :D) no solution is valid! and this is the Python script that I wrote:

from itertools import product

x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

pro = [x for x in product(x, repeat=3)]

def matSum(c1, c2):
    return (c1[0] + c2[0], c1[1] + c2[1], c1[2] + c2[2])

def check(x, y, z):
    if len(set(x + y + z)) == 9:
        return x, y, z

for i in pro:
    for j in pro:
        s = matSum(i, j)
        print check(i, j, s)

So, my dear reader, if you see any flaw in my mathematical reasoning, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks!