Display XML/HTML code tags in Blog posts

I had trouble displaying my previous post, containing xml tags. This blog post here helped me get over my difficulty. Basically you need to transcode "<" and ">" with "&lt;" and "&gt;" respectively, or they will be rendered as code tags and your post will not be displayed as expected.

I used centricle's online encode/decode tool to easily convert my code, rather than manually transcode, a rather cumbersome task. I still had to manually convert leading spaces.

#! crunchbang openbox menus

#! default menu opens with a right click on desktop. This menu is static and needs to be maintained by the user. Middle click opens an auto-populated window/desktop menu. Left click has no associated menu.

Debian menu, although installed, is not configured/enabled. This is what I target: Left click -> Debian menu.

I kept the right click and middle click menus undisturbed, but added the debian-menu to the left click.

#! crunchbang 10 statler r20110207

For a while now, I have been hearing and thinking about crunchbang linux, or #! as the community calls it. So finally, I decided to dive in and install crunchbang-10-20110207-openbox-i686 on my spare laptop.

I have been recommending Linux Mint Debian XFCE lately to newbies. I am rethinking that now. It seems LMDX still has a lot of dependencies on Gnome and other bloatwares hanging on from its legacy days. For example, the XFCE Edition uses Gnome-Terminal rather than XFCE-Terminal. IMHO, that defeats the purpose of not wanting to use Gnome.

#! seems to be smoother and slicker at first glance. I like what I see, although the initial install used almost 2G of diskspace. There is a lot of gnome/etc bloatware which shouldn't have made it to this supposedly minimalist openbox distribution. Mint seems not much worse compared to this. (But compare this to my debian-wheezy laptop setup, with everything I need, on about 650M diskspace!!)

dd if=crunchbang-10-20110207-openbox-i686.iso of=/dev/{usb-drive}
was sufficient and simple to make a usb key for testing or install.

For some strange reason, I had trouble booting #! cd/usb. Apparently, it could be due to my screen - max resolution 1024x768. I almost gave up before I understood the issue. Wonder who the #! developers are targetting?

So I edit the grub boot menu, and append vga=773, and only then was I able to boot #! cd/usb to test or install. The install was fairly smooth with no major concerns, except that the drive partitioner seemed to be creating partitions not ending on cylinder boundaries. I reinstalled, after manually partitioning my drive with fdisk.

So, now I have a pristine install of #! waiting to be devoured.

Initial tasks were to update the system:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

#! /etc/apt/sources.list points to German servers, instead of UK ones, which lagged, due to about twice the network distance/time. It was fairly simple to replace de with uk. Since, #! tracks debian-stable (squeeze), and the installer contents are about 8mths old, about ~250M of initial upgrades were waiting. Squeeze is stable and updates shouldn't be frequent, except the security ones.

Then, I installed some of my missing favourites:
- rdate
- localepurge
- ncdu
- tmux
- most

Keep an eye here for my #! adventures... :-)

cyanogenmod 7.1.0

Finally, after a long wait, CM 7.1 has been released for my ZTE Blade. The last (supposedly) stable release CM 7.0.3 wasn't that stable. 7.1.0-RC1, the subsequent Release Candidate was more stable, but still carried over Battery drain issues, Apps leaking, GPS reboots, etc.

Opera cpu/memory leaks and Flash

i have been a long term user of opera, as i like it's light resource demands. one particular concern has been the long running issue of cpu/memory leaks. opera seems to continue consuming cpu/memory as it runs longer. so you need to periodically *restart* it. this problem exacerbates after visiting websites with flash. sometimes, it gets so bad, that i have to kill -9 ... i usually disable plugins, or only enable on-demand. but there are times when i need flash.

$ ps ux | grep opera

gives some clue. seems to me that opera plugin handling is badly written, when I see

.../lib/opera//operapluginwrapper

.../lib/opera//operaplugincleaner

note the double slashes in the path, instead of a single slash.

i found some others having similar problems. perhaps they might help. although, they seem to be historical issues, i still have problems with opera 11.51, the latest release.

>> extremely high CPU usage by opera plugin wrapper process http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1288274

>> build 4464 (intel linux) and operapluginwrapper http://www.archivum.info/opera.beta/2009-07/00030/build-4464-(intel-linux)-and-operapluginwrapper.html