You will need:

• WSL2 setup with Firefox installed (mine uses Ubuntu 20.04)
• VcXsrv
• geckodriver

How it works

VcXsrv starts up an X server on the Windows host machine, and what WSL will do is connect to this server to pass on the details of what programs need to be displayed (in this case, the browser window). Geckodriver is there purely as a middle layer for Selenium to be able to interact with Firefox.

VcXsrv setup

This setups the X server so that Windows can display graphical data coming from the Ubuntu instance.

1. Download and install
2. Start it up with the the command line parameter “-ac”. This flag removes access control restrictions for connecting clients (which is okay as long as this server isn’t exposed on the open Internet and that the only client connecting is the Ubuntu instance)
3. Allow connections to VcXsrv on Windows Firewall

The “-ac” flag and allowing the program through Windows Firewall is pretty important. When I didn’t do this, Ubuntu would give me cryptic error messages like “Broadway display type not supported”, but once I set up these access controls, everything was fine.

Bash setup

Install firefox

sudo apt install firefox

Export DISPLAY variable in .bashrc (or for whatever terminal you use, maybe .zshrc, etc.)

export DISPLAY=$(ip route | awk '{print $3; exit}'):0

This will configure your DISPLAY variable to use the IP address listed in the resolv.conf file. The IP address listed there is the IP address of the X server that will be used for displaying the browser window.

Start up VcXsrv as described in the above and then try to open Firefox. The Firefox window should open.

Geckodriver setup

This acts purely as the API interface that allows Selenium to interact with Firefox. Selenium looks for this executable when controlling the web browser.

1. Download geckodriver (make sure to get the Linux one and not the Windows one)
2. Put it in /usr/bin (or alternatively some other folder in your PATH)

Selenium sample on Python

I tend to use Python when running Selenium code, and I haven’t tried it on another language (I imagine the principles are similar). Here is a piece of sample code for starting up the browser and opening up a website, but really any Selenium code can be used.

import time

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver import DesiredCapabilities

def execute_with_retry(method, max_attempts):
    e = None
    for i in range(0, max_attempts):
        try:
            return method()
        except Exception as e:
            print(e)
            time.sleep(1)
    if e is not None:
        raise e

capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX
capabilities["marionette"] = True
firefox_bin = "/usr/bin/firefox"
browser = execute_with_retry(lambda: webdriver.Firefox(
    firefox_binary=firefox_bin, capabilities=capabilities), 10)

browser.get("https://www.google.com")

time.sleep(10)

browser.close()

Originally, we had planned on visiting Sedan too. This was where the Germans made their initial breakthrough into France that eventually led to the French surrender. We intended to go to the Museum of the Last Cartridge, the local museum there, thinking that it was about the World War II battle, but actually it was about the Battle of Bazeilles during the Franco Prussian War (which I had never heard of before). In the end, we didn’t have time for it anyway so it was okay that we didn’t go.

The Maginot Line

Not far from Sedan, was a preserved portion of the Maginot Line in northeastern France, known as the Ouvrage La Ferté. The Maginot Line was a series of defensive fortifications stretching along the French border from Luxembourg to Italy built after World War I to protect France from a future German invasion. The location at the Ouvrage La Ferté saw the heaviest fighting during the Battle of France in World War II. It eventually was overwhelmed by German forces and its entire garrison was killed.

It’s exterior still shows the damage from the battle and grass has grown over the craters that were once there. It is possible to tour the inside of the bunker, but it is only available to large group tours.

Driving through the area, it’s pretty common to still see bunkers on the side of the road.

The Ouvrage La Ferté is in a pretty remote location, which makes sense considering it’s a defensive fortification, and because of the rain the night before, we ended up driving on some flooded roads, and even narrow farm roads that even Google Maps didn’t have a name for.

Verdun

From Ouvrage La Ferté, we drove to Verdun. Verdun was the site of another major battle in World War I, and to remember the fallen soldiers, a memorial containing their skeletal remains was constructed.

Unbeknownst to us, the ossuary was actually closed when we arrived, so we never got to go inside. We could only peek through the windows and see was a blurry view of stacks of bones. In front of the monument lies a military cemetery.

Nearby the ossuary is the actual fort that played a role in the Battle of Verdun. The fort fell to the Germans without a fight since the French had abandoned the fort thinking that the fort would have been ineffective against the heavy artillery that the Germans were using. Eventually, the fort was recaptured.

The road leading up to the fort was interesting too because some of the old trenches were preserved. The zig zag of the trenches can still be seen. Its purpose was to ensure that shrapnel exploding inside the trench would be contained. A straight trench would have allowed a clear path for the shrapnel to fly through more of the trench.

From there we drove three and a half hours to Strasbourg, where we’d start our fourth day of our road trip. That’s all for now!

• Maginot Line
• Verdun

It’s reminiscent of other developing Asian nations. People are riding around in motorbikes, pedestrians cross the street by weaving through vehicles, and there’s so much traffic that it kicks up a ton of dust. Cars here often don’t have AC and more often than not have hand cranked windows. The official language is Nepali, but many people speak Hindi or at least know some words. It’s timezone is also quite interesting… Its offset is 5:45 from UTC meaning it’s got a timezone that shifts in 15 minutes instead of a whole hour. And I thought India’s 30 minute shift was annoying.

Durbar Square once held the palaces over the kings that ruled over the city. In the surrounding area, there are also some courtyards and temples. The architecture of the temples is reminiscent of temples in China, which makes sense since Buddhism is quite prevalent in both countries.

In the center of the square, masses of street vendors sell trinkets to visitors. The trinkets are mainly Buddhist prayer bowls, and other religious paraphernalia.

The most shocking thing to me in Nepal, is that as a part of their Hindu and Buddhist traditions, people worship “kumari“, young prepubescent girls that represent the manifestation of divine female energy.

The worship of the goddess in a young girl represents the worship of divine consciousness spread all over the creation. As the supreme goddess is thought to have manifested this entire cosmos out of her womb, she exists equally in animate as well as inanimate objects

Wikipedia

Within Durbar Square, in an almost non-descript brick building, the kumari appears from time to time within the windows that look into the courtyard of the building, but no photography is allowed. I had randomly stumbled upon this building only because there were so many people around it.

The Boudhanath is one of the largest Buddhist stupas Nepal, and it’s architecture is unlike anything in the city, so it’s quite prominent. The prayer flags have five colours, which represent different “elements”: earth, water, fire, air, and space. The elements are also represented as a part of the structure with the base as earth, the dome as water, the square platform as fire, the spire as air, and the umbrella as space.

The Pashupatinath Temple is situated on the banks of the Bagmati River, and is a Hindu religious place. Where the fires burning in the picture is the actual place where cremations happen. Within the area are a collection of different temples, but I wasn’t allowed to visit them because I’m not a Hindu. I never thought I’d ever be discriminated for my religion (or lack thereof)!

See more pictures of my trip to Kathmandu here

Stockholm used to be just an island, and since Stockholm has expanded outside of the island, the island portion has become the old town, known as Gamla Stan.

Some buildings in the old town have fake windows, because glass was expensive back then (3rd floor middle window).

There’s a random piece of Viking runestone on the corner of a building. And it’s protected by a cannon barrel on the street corner…

The Scandanavian countries really like their royal guards…

H&M sells home products in Sweden! I haven’t seen that anywhere else.

At our hostel, we met some awesome people and went on a bike tour with some of them, guided by a local Swedish fellow. He took us to the top of a hill overlooking the river and Gamla Stan.

Welcome to Earth!!

Our guide showed us this cool snack. It’s herring with cucumber and onions on flatbread.

This is an indoor bike tunnel going under a bridge!!

This was part of the common area at our hostel. They did a good job with that antique look and they even made us take our shoes off when inside.

At the Stockholm Royal Armoury, they showed off a bunch of carriages. Since we are nerdy engineers, we spent a while analyzing how its suspensions worked.

I heard Swedish meatballs are famous.

The Vasa Museum was probably the most incredible attraction. The Vasa was a Swedish warship that sank on its maiden voyage. It was supposed to be a symbol of Swedish military might at the time, but it sank because it was too top-heavy due to the many cannons it had on board and not enough width to counter the tipping of the ship from its weight. It was later discovered that the ship was very well preserved and now it is on display.

What is more Swedish than going to Ikea and eating meatballs? There is a free shuttle that goes to Ikea too!

The best part of the trip was meeting a bunch of cool people in our hostel room! We had a room of 8 and every single person was fun to hang out with as opposed to normally I don’t get to talk to everybody. This time, the 8 of us got to chill in the room having beers and stuff. One of them was from Kentucky who was currently living in Alabama – of course all the America jokes were directed at her. Another was from Australia who had just finished his contract with the ANZAC navy after serving in Afghanistan and Iraq – he was quite open in talking about his experiences and I learned a ton from him! I also learned a nice trick to cooking pasta from one of the Italians: always salt the water before cooking the pasta! He even said that people thought he was crazy when they saw him salting the water. I also got some good hookups in Shanghai from our Chinese roommate – awesome when I decide to go there! It was amazing how well we all clicked and definitely an unforgettable experience in my travels.

That’s it for Stockholm!

Photo album: Stockholm

Bash for Windows has been working pretty great for me until I needed to run Selenium Webdriver on it. I quickly learned that it wouldn’t work just work right out of the box, and the set up for it is quite convoluted.

You will need

• Bash for Windows
• Xming – This will actually allow the Window to appear on the screen
• geckodriver – Selenium now needs this to run Firefox

Bash setup

Install Firefox:

sudo apt-get install firefox

Export DISPLAY variable in ~/.bashrc. Just add this to the ~/.bashrc:

export DISPLAY=:0

Xming setup

Just download it from the link above and run it.

Download geckodriver

Download geckodriver from the link above and put in the /usr/bin/ folder in Bash for Windows.

Running Selenium

Here is a piece of sample Python code I used to setup the web browser. It will setup the browser, open Google, sit there for 10 seconds and then quit.  Make sure to have Xming running otherwise the browser isn’t going to start.

import time

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver import DesiredCapabilities

def execute_with_retry(method, max_attempts):
    e = None
    for i in range(0, max_attempts):
        try:
            return method()
        except Exception as e:
            print(e)
            time.sleep(1)
    if e is not None:
        raise e

capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX
capabilities["marionette"] = True
firefox_bin = "/usr/bin/firefox"
browser = execute_with_retry(lambda: webdriver.Firefox(
    firefox_binary=firefox_bin, capabilities=capabilities), 10)

browser.get("https://www.google.com")

time.sleep(10)

browser.close()

I already have Ubuntu as my main OS, so copying the disk was easy using dd, which allows copying all the contents of one disk to another. This works well when the new hard drive is greater than or the same size as the current hard drive (I upgraded from a 80GB HDD to a 128GB SSD).

First I run this to see which disk I am copying from and to

fdisk -l

Then I run dd. If I am copying from /dev/sda to /dev/sda, then it’s:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

But sometimes the disks don’t have the same size, so I used gparted to move/resize the partitions to make use of the extra space on the new disk. gparted complained that it might make my disk no bootable, but the disk was still bootable for me nonetheless. I didn’t even have to mess with any grub bootloader settings either. I simply unplugged the old disk, and left the new disk plugged in and booted into the new disk no problem.

CAVEAT: NETFILE did not work for me.  I had to submit my taxes through an installation done on Windows

1. Install PlayOnLinux and then run it (e.g. starting it through the Terminal)

sudo apt-get install playonlinux

2. Click “Tools” > “Manage wine versions”
3. Choose 1.7.27 under “Available Wine versions” and then click the right arrow “>”
4. Go through the steps in the installer and let it finish
5. Back in the PlayOnLinux main screen, click “Install” in the menu, and then click “Install a non-listed program” on the bottom left
6. Choose “Use another version of Wine”, when asked, and then choose 1.7.27
7. Choose “Install a program in a new virtual drive”, when asked
8. Choose “32 bits windows installation”, when asked
9. Find the location of setup.exe for the TurboTax installer (I copied the files off of the disc to a place on my hard drive)
10. Ignore the message “Error in FS_Check” if it appears
11. Let the install complete, but do not launch TurboTax right away
12. Choose “tt2014.exe”, if asked to create a shortcut
13. Back in the PlayOnLinux main screen, select entry for TurboTax and click “Configure” in the menu
14. Make sure the “Wine version” is set to 1.7.27
15. Under “Install components”, install the following in this order (some of these may not be required, but I don’t know which since this is the configuration that worked for me):
    • vcrun2012
    • Microsoft Core Fonts
    • msvc100
    • RegisterFonts
    • vcrun2010
    • dotnet40
    • d3dx9
    • mono28
    • Internet Explorer 8 (click “Restart” in the installer)
    • crypt32
16. Back in the PlayOnLinux main screen, clicking “Run” for TurboTax 2014 should now work!

This is what worked for me, so hopefully this will work for others.

UPDATE 7. JULY 2015: Since this post, my version of LINE has been updated to 4.0.3.367, and it looks like stickers work now!

UPDATE 31. JULY 2016: Looks like in July 2015, LINE released a Chrome app.  Users of Chrome can just use that extension instead of using this method: Link

Running LINE in Ubuntu 14.04

1. Install Wine

sudo apt-get install wine

2. Install VC++ 2008 Redistributable

winetricks vcrun2008

3. Download and install LINE for Windows

Without installing the VC++ 2008 Redistributable, LINE would intermittently crash (even though it was able to start correctly).  This worked on my Ubuntu 14.04 x64 system.

LINE Version: 3.9.1.188
Wine Version: 1.6.2

Script

I’ve managed to produce a script to disable mouse acceleration (works for me on Ubuntu 14.04).  However, this script needs to be run every time the computer boots because the settings don’t stay.  Here is the script:

#wait for the desktop to settle
sleep 5

#gets the hardware id's of all mice plugged into the system
hardwareIds=$(xinput | grep -i mouse | awk '{print substr($(NF-3),4)}')

#turn off mouse acceleration
for i in $hardwareIds
do
xinput set-prop ${i} 'Device Accel Profile' -1
xinput set-prop ${i} 'Device Accel Velocity Scaling' 1
done

Explanation

The script works by extracting the hardware id’s of the mice that are connected to the system and then applying properties to them that disable mouse acceleration for that device.  The extraction of the mouse hardware id’s are done with this:

#gets the hardware id's of all mice plugged into the system
hardwareIds=$(xinput | grep -i mouse | awk '{print substr($(NF-3),4)}')

Calling xinput in the Terminal will list all the connected input devices, which is grepped (case insensitively) for the word “mouse”, which gives something like this on my machine:

⎜ ↳ Logitech G500s Laser Gaming Mouse id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech G500s Laser Gaming Mouse id=15 [slave pointer (2)]

The call to awk extracts the hardware id from those two lines (14, 15 in the above case) and stores them in an array that is iterated through when setting the mouse properties.

Reference

This is the website that showed me how to disable mouse acceleration to begin with: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1734400

Setup

I pretty much used the instructions here: http://www.visualsvn.com/server/trac/.  I didn’t do step 8 written in the instructions, and it still worked for me.  However, what’s not setup is the Trac administrator account.  After the setup, I was able to access the Trac webapp and was also able to view the SVN logs, revisions, etc.  I initially got a message about “no changesets”, but after a commit to the repo, everything showed up on the webapp.

Setting up the admin account

While the above instructions allow you to login to Trac using the existing SVN credentials, that user is not considered an admin user.  All I had to do was run this command:

trac-admin /path/to/projenv permission add bob TRAC_ADMIN

After restarting the server, the admin tab was available in Trac.  Now Trac is available for use for bug tracking with an existing SVN repo!