Data types in Perl

Perl interpreter can handle 3 basic data types :

• Scalar - it stores single values. It must have the $ prefix sign Eg: $myvar

• Array - it is used to multiple scalar values. It must have the @ prefix sign Eg: @my_array

• Hash - it uses associate arrays which has key-value pairs. It must have the % prefix sign Eg: %my_hash

Check if a user has root access in Mac OSX

On Mac OSX or any other unix flavor, you can find if a user has root access i.e superuser privileges or not. Open terminal and type the following

Eg:

sudo -l -U ironcladWriter

where the -U switch stands for user name.

If you have root access, you will see the following in the output :

User ironcladWriter may run the following commands on this host:
    (ALL) ALL

If by any chance, you don't know your username, type the following in Terminal :

whoami

Boxer - DOS games emulator for Mac OSX

Ever miss the classic DOS games of the 90's in the Windows era? Well, if you own a Mac, you can still play those classics on your machine.

Remember the first person shooters like Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D or the side strollers like Bio Menace, Dangerous Dave, Prince of Persia, Aladdin or Lion King?

Well if you loved playing the above games, then BOXER is definitely the app for you. Period. Oh and by the way, it has nothing to do with boxing :)

Boxer is a beautiful DOS games emulator for Macs which is basically powered by the DosBox's emulation at its core.

DosBox can be separately installed on Mac, but many users might find it confusing and tricky to install it through Terminal. Boxer saves you those hassles. You don't need the technical expertise to run commands on the command line. All you have to do is download Boxer and the DOS games.

Now, if you're wondering where to find good old DOS games, please check out the following links :

DOS Games Archive

Liberated Games

Good Old Games

DosGames

Here's a quick simple walkthrough to use Boxer :

Once, downloaded simply open it to view the welcome screen.

Then go to any of the above DOS games sites and download the game. It usually might be a zip file.

Unzip it and click "Import a new game".

Now, all you have to do drag and drop the unzipped game folder into the dotted square as seen above. This will initiate the importing process. If the game has Install.exe as its installation program, it will be automatically selected at this stage.

Let's take an example of the Apogee Software's Bio Menace. You'll see the following screen once you drag-n-drop the unzipped folder. 

It will automatically select the Install.exe. You just have to click "Launch Installer". In the next screen you'll see the actual installation process, as it would have happened on a DOS prompt.

In most cases, you just have to follow the default steps in general, to proceed with the installation.

The screen below shows that the games has been imported successfully and is ready to be played on your Mac.

At this stage, you can drag and drop any image or cover art for the game, to make it look attractive and identifiable on your game shelf. 

Now, click "Launch Game". Sit back, relax and start playing :)

This emulator is similar to the Wine wrapper used to play Windows games on Mac OSX or Linux. 

Also, if you click the Display tab in Boxer's preferences, you choose the type of rendering style as seen below. 

Ok guys, am sipping on some Pepsi before the action begins. It's time to play Snake Logan and start shooting the dirty filthy alien monsters. Aaaaah I so feel like it's the 90's again :)

Bbye !

Ektoplazm - Psychedelic Music Supersite

Hello fellas! When it comes to music, am a huge fan of electronic music and especially the psychedelic trance genre. Well, if you're like me, you would want to check out this wonderful awesome site : Ektoplazm.

This website is purely dedicated to psychedelic music and it's sub-genres like Goa trance, Dark psytrance, Psycore, Progressive, Ambient and also speciality niche sub-genres like Downtempo, Suomi, Forest, IDM, Experimental.

Oh boy, I listened to a few albums and I just couldn't put my headphones down :) I especially relished the great taste of Dark psytance and Forest tracks. The music was so effective in creating a dark ambient mood.

The melodies composed using the strange ethereal sounding sounds coupled with techno elements totally created a wonderful dark atmospheric texture, perfectly capable of recreating the human emotion of fear, anxiety of treading the uncharted territory.

In a few days from now, I'll post a list of the fresh tracks that got a place on my iPod. In the meantime, do explore the website and sample the music to identify which styles suit your tastes.

Mexicue - Food Truck, New York City

Just the other day while watching Eat Street, I was reminded of a food truck that I bumped into somewhere in Brooklyn some time back. The name is Mexicue.

It has a cute little orange truck which serves some great tasting burritos, enchiladas, tacos, nachos and the typical mexican fare, which is much much better than Taco Bell. Check out Mexicue's menu here. It's most popular dishes are the Brisket slider, Rice bowls, Alabama Chicken taco. It does offer classic beers like Tecate & Pork Slap.

And well, just like many other food trucks, it travels across Manhattan and Brooklyn. The truck locations can be found through Twitter updates. Checkout it's official twitter handle here.

Check out Sharon L's review and rating on Yelp.

FYI : Eat Street is a popular canadian street food based reality show, which airs on Food Network in Canada, Cooking Channel in USA and Fox Traveller in Asian regions.

Changing default connector port in Tomcat

In my previous post about Tomcat manager, I said about changing the default port in Tomcat. So here's a quick small post about how we can change the default connector port 8080 in Tomcat.

Browse the apache installation folder and check for the file - server.xml. It's usually located under the conf folder.

By making a small edit in this file - server.xml, we can change the default port 8080 to some other port eg: 8081 or 8085. Scroll down till you find the tag for connector port. Check the screenshot below for reference.

Now all you have to do is modify the Connector port from default 8080 to any number like 8081, 8082, 8085 as you wish to. This is especially useful if you use any other application or web application server or service (eg: Hudson for continuous builds) which also uses port 8080.

Taskdef in Apache Ant

The 'taskdef' attribute can be used to add a task definition which would then be used in the existing project.

The taskdef tag is an important step you need to know, before I compose a post about automating deployments to tomcat.

It's syntax is similar to the typedef attribute.

Eg:

<taskdef name="start-tomcat" classname="org.apache.catalina.ant.StartTask" />

Observe how we set the classname attribute above.

Official information about Taskdef can be read here.