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Showing posts from 2013

Chrome Packaged Apps

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For a few years now I use Windows, Linux, OS X daily. For years, I've been looking into a language/framework/product that will allow me to build (desktop) applications that can run on all of these OS's. I've looked into QT , PyQT , Java Swing and others. I've looked into the cloud , PaaS , web applications but I couldn't find something that I liked. Of course, HTML5 has gained a lot of momentum and I've been following it from the very first day, so I was "double" happy when I found out about the Chrome Packaged Apps that look and behave like desktop apps, they can however live perfectly in the cloud and are built purely with web technologies. The fact they can run on my Chromebook too, is the cherry on top. Hello World! No time to lose, I jumped into the proverbial Hello World app, which run on my stable Chrome 27.0.1448.0 without a glitch. You have to follow instructions on the previous link to enable the Experimental Extension APIs on chro

CyLog Raster Fonts for Linux

Some of you may be familiar with the bitmap (raster) fonts that I have created a few years back or the Raster Font Editor software that I've written for MS Windows. I've been using Linux quite a lot recently so I decided at some point to convert them to BDF (Binary distribution format) files. Here's a quick guide on how to download them and install them: Download Fonts You can either download from here or type this from a terminal window: wget http://www.cylog.org/files/fonts/cylog_fonts_bdf.zip Unzip and Copy fonts In a terminal window type the following: unzip cylog_fonts_bdf.zip mkdir ~/.fonts mv *.bdf ~/.fonts cd ~/.fonts ls ...and ensure you can see the *.bdf files listed. Convert the BDF files to PCF To do the conversion we use the command line utility bdftocpf , and then we remove the BDF files: bdftopcf -o leros10.pcf leros10.bdf bdftopcf -o leros.pcf leros.bdf bdftopcf -o lini.pcf lini.bdf bdftopcf -o yamahana.pcf yamahana.bdf bdftopcf -o ya

Exactly how big is...

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I always knew of the Mercator Projection and how it makes things (errm land) at high latitudes appear larger than they are, so I decided today to give it a shot and try some comparisons using essential tools like Google Earth , Google Maps , Alt-PrtSc and... Photoshop . Comparisons always need to be made against a known measure (to me) which of course had to be my native Greece, therefore I decided to bring some northern countries to the... Mediterranean Sea . Britain I've been living in ye olde Albion for quite some time now, so first things first; Great Britain to the Med: Mercator Projection: Actual Size: Denmark I've got something with Denmark, maybe because I have a few friends living there, maybe because my wife has a vein of Danish blood. Whatever, Denmark is up North so it's a good test! :-) Mercator Projection: Actual Size: Further North - Iceland Well Iceland is bloody North and its an island too, therefore it should really prove my p