I think we’ve all committed these small acts of subversion, that of course are utterly, mind-numbingly conventional (and unoriginal).

Mine was buying a Tube ticket (in the days when you had to go up to the window and ask, this was before we had Oyster cards!) at Charing Cross and asking for a ticket to “St Pancreas“. Revolution! Indeed.

The strange thing though is the other week I was buying some other train tickets for London and the guy working at the station at the ticket desk said “St Pancreas”, thinking I had misheard I ensured conversationally that it was said again, and there it was, St Pancreas. Is it a small act of subversion by a railway employee? A way of introducing some interest (and I use the word quite loosely) into an otherwise tedious day? Or perhaps this guy really thinks it is St Pancreas and no one has had the heart to set him straight!

Or perhaps it really is St Pancreas and I’ve been wrong all this time… now that really would be subversive. I’d get out my Tube map and check but I’m too busy starting my own small revolution.

Here’s one I came up with using the ‘default’ theme to work from. I made changes in the CSS to have rounding and drop shadows for the avatar images, message bubbles and to change the formatting a bit for colouring. Most of the supplied themes seem to have “account colouring” in the theme, i.e. when you have multiple accounts with a different colour attached to them, the theme will use it in the display. This can be useful or sometimes I am using Gwibber just to aggregate and read messages rather than post and reply so am not concerned about the account colouring and wanted it all to have a uniform colour (that fits in with the desktop theme).

Here’s how it appears under the Radiance theme…

… and the Ambiance theme

If a different theme is selected (this is Clearlooks with some custom blue colours) it will pick up the theme colours accordingly.

This is with multiple streams, e.g. for twitter and facebook.

In this version the borders of the messages take on the colour associated with the account (as it is done in some of the supplied themes).

Multiple streams with account colouring

The code I used for these is mostly CSS and I’ve included it below. Generally it can be done by making a copy of the ‘default’ theme folder (in /usr/share/gwibber/ui/themes) to a new folder with the name required e.g. ‘MyTheme’. I’ve overridden the template.mako and added main.css to the folder (with overridden styles compared to the defaults).

In main.css:

* {
color: ${theme['fg'].hex};
}

body
{
background-color: ${theme['bg'].hex};
margin: 0px;
}

.imgbox {
width: 38px;
height: 38px;
margin-right: 10px;
margin-top: 0px;
-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
border: 1px ${theme['fg'].darker(.6).hex} solid;
-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 5px ${theme['fg'].darker(.4).hex};
}

.thumbnails img {
-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
border: 1px solid ${theme['fg'].darker(.6).hex};
-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 5px ${theme['fg'].darker(.4).hex};
}

.basemsg .message {
-webkit-border-radius: 0px;
margin-bottom: 6px;
margin-top: 1px;
margin-right: 6px;
}

.title {
color: ${theme['fg'].darker(.8).hex};
}

.time
{
color: ${theme["bg_selected"].darker(.65).hex};
}

In template.mako I changed the top section as follows for the non-account-coloured theme -

<%namespace name=”base” file=”base.mako”>
<%def name=”msgstyle(data)”>
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom,
from(${theme["bg"].hex}),
to(${theme["bg"].darker(.9).hex}));

border: 1px solid ${theme['fg'].hex};
-webkit-border-radius: 8px;
-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 5px ${theme['fg'].darker(.4).hex};

</%def>
</%namespace>

or for the account-coloured one:

<%namespace name=”base” file=”base.mako”>
<%def name=”msgstyle(data)”>
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom,
from(${theme["bg"].hex}),
to(${theme["bg"].darker(.9).hex}));

border: 1px solid ${data['color'].hex};
-webkit-border-radius: 8px;
-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 5px ${theme['fg'].darker(.4).hex};

</%def>
</%namespace>

and added the call to main.css at the bottom

<style>
<%include file=”css.mako” />
<%include file=”defaultcss.mako” />
<%include file=”main.css” />
</style>

Anyway, I’ve decided to pick up working on this again although the prize deadline has passed, as I think it’s an interesting, challenging and worthwhile puzzle in itself. Not to mention, even without the prize money, being the first person to solve the thing and come up with decent code (and documentation…) would be good for a CV (Britain) / resume (America) and be something to generally boast, gloat and feel self-satisfied about. (And I can’t get enough of those! )

Actually I was relieved that the deadline passed and no-one had managed to solve it, as if anything it just proves that the problem is “non-trivial” and otherwise I’d have thought “So-and-so managed to solve it, why couldn’t I?” and had a huge crisis of confidence in my abilities as a geek etc. Especially as I’d started working on it quite late (the competition was open for about 3 years in the end, and I only started on it a few months before the final scrutiny date). I was quite confident though that someone would have solved it! With all that mathematical, computer science and other experience that must exist ‘out there’. Many of these people are much better mathematicians and coders than I, so there must be some ‘extra ingredient’ as to why it still isn’t solved.

A lot of people seem to be saying a solution ‘ought to’ be published now that the deadline has passed, to prove that there was actually such a solution, it was possible to solve (i.e. known to be possible) and therefore was a fair competition. I have no doubt that it is genuine and that it is known (whether through physically having a solution, or a proof of why it’s possible) that such a solution exists, I expect the lawyers/insurance companies/whoever would have insisted on that in any case (to avoid complaints of the “it was never possible to win” variety)! I think if a solution were to be published (by the Powers That Be) that it would diminish any remaining enjoyment from solving it, much more interesting to carry on in pursuit of not just a “random” solution that works… but a method for generating the solutions…

I’m not sure if the rule about “not disclosing details of pieces” still applies so I’m assuming it does, so this is just in general terms. I started out with a kind of “control group” algorithm with random placement of the (non-border) pieces, initially without the ‘fixed’ piece being placed, and then with. Placed all the pieces and then carried out 2-way and 3-way swaps determined stochastically and with a weighting for ‘improvement’ of that solution and other factors. As you can imagine the results from this were pretty poor (as I’d expected, this was just for a “baseline” number of correct edges). I changed a couple of conditions and got minor improvements. Interestingly though, I made a programming error which greatly increased the quality of the solutions (to about 250 edges matched, not great at all but not bad for a random algorithm with no “intelligence”) and there was no ‘logical’ reason this should be, something outside the system had caused this to be the case. So I started looking at the ‘higher level’ things that have to be true of a solution.

The problem of course is the sheer amount of possible combinations and data that have to be handled (I’m not sure of the exact GB size that it would theoretically be, but the number is close enough to infinity not to matter!) and how we usually deal with these situations is to ‘chunk’ things according to particular properties. Coming up with an appropriate ‘classification’ scheme I think is the way to deal with this puzzle. This entails knowing what features are relevant or are just ‘noise’ and what level to work at (and obviously, I don’t know what the answer to this is or it would be solved!) but I’ve no doubt that it requires a human to ‘step outside the system’ and help the computer ‘see’ things it can’t see for itself!

[1] “There’s a possibility that…” in the sense that one says “There’s a possibility I might have left a huge mess in the kitchen” or “There’s a possibility that what I just said isn’t strictly true”, etc.

A graphics tablet works by “mapping” the screen (or window) area to the tablet surface, so how does it work when the tablet and screen have a different aspect ratio? I set out to get this working, with a semi-elegant solution…

Looking at the monitor aspect ratio

This particular monitor is a 23″ widescreen although the same principles should apply to any screen (adapting the maths accordingly). Its maximum resolution is 1920 by 1080 px – an aspect ratio of 1.777…:1 or more commonly known as 16:9.

When rotated into portrait orientation, it obviously has the same dimensions, but with the vertical aspect ratio i.e. “9:16″ rather than 16:9.

To be useful in portrait mode, we need to be able to rotate the screen display in Ubuntu to match (as obviously just physically rotating the screen won’t rotate the output, as the OS doesn’t “know” the screen has been turned around! )

This can be done in the GUI, from System > Preferences > Monitors, choosing the appropriate rotation (left in this case) where needed. Or it can be done using xrandr on the command line (which will set the same options) e.g.

xrandr

This will give a list of displays (e.g. monitor and laptop screen) and can be used to rotate the display on the command line (where “o” is for orientation). There are many other options it can carry out (xrandr -help will list them) but I haven’t used them here.

xrandr -o left

(Setting it back to normal will put it back in the default orientation!)

If your monitor has a different aspect ratio from this, the same principle still applies but with a slightly different calculation. It’s the ratio of the length and width, rather than the actual size, that’s important. For example a monitor with 1280 by 720 resolution would have the same aspect ratio and therefore the same relationship to the tablet.

Making the graphics tablet match the monitor

I found this wasn’t very well documented, so now I’ve found out myself how to do it by working from “first principles”, I’ll try to word it so that it can be understood easily! There is various documentation around but I couldn’t find anything that applied to my specific setup.

On a graphics tablet, as said above the surface of the tablet represents the screen area. The tablet has its own physical dimensions – see the specification page on the Wacom site for details of the measurements. The spec normally gives the size in inches and/or cm but we will see shortly it also has its own internal representation of its size and active area.

In the (admittedly rather crude) diagram I’ve shown a representation of the tablet, with the lighter grey area being the active surface.

Then what happens if the tablet and the screen have a different aspect ratio? – By default, the whole area of the tablet is used to represent the whole area of the display. So if they have different proportions, all sorts of strange things could happen. Moving the pen an inch vertically won’t represent the same amount of ‘movement’ (on screen) as if you move it horizontally!

You can see this by drawing a circle (or anything of known proportions) on the tablet, in my case I drew around the circular hole in a CD but it can be anything you like. With a mismatch between the tablet and screen “units” I didn’t actually get a circle on screen! The red line is what was drawn, the dotted lines around it show the proportions that an actual circle should be. As you can see, it was “squashed” vertically compared to what I should have. The result would be similar (an elongated circle) for the portrait monitor orientation.

We need to “deactivate” a region of the tablet, so that the available surface is in the same proportion as the screen we are using. This is a similar principle to when you have the black “bars” at the top and bottom of a TV screen when a movie is broadcast in a more ‘widescreen’ format than the actual shape of your TV – the inactive area will be similar to the black bars.

The picture shows the grey area (from the image above)  with an orange area overlaid on it which is a representation of the actual area needed to use in order to map the tablet to the widescreen monitor in the same proportion. Logically it has to be this way rather than ‘enlarging’ the active area, as you would then have part of the screen that can’t be reached by the tablet!

Making the tablet match the monitor using xsetwacom

The command line utility xsetwacom can be used to set options for the tablet (see the instructions in that link for how to install the required packages to run xsetwacom, and how its options can be made “permanent” i.e. used for each session).

There are many options available so I’ve just gone into the ones needed to get this setup working, but the documentation contains many more!

First I listed the available devices that X can ‘see’:

xsetwacom list

This will give all the different inputs it has available. Depending on the exact model the output will be slightly different, mine was as below. Make a note of the listing somewhere (e.g. paste in a text file) as these device names will be used in a minute to send commands to the various inputs.

Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad PAD
Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch TOUCH
Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser ERASER
Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus STYLUS

We need to find out the internal dimensions (i.e. as represented in the software) for the active area of the tablet. This can be done using xsetwacom, which can give out information as well as changing options. I want to know its vertical and horizontal dimensions which are defined by the top/bottom X and Y coordinate. I won’t reiterate all the syntax options for xsetwacom here as they are documented elsewhere, but broadly, –set commands will change a parameter value and –get commands will display its current value. So here, I am listing out the coordinate positions at which the active region starts and stops.

xsetwacom get “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopX
xsetwacom get “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomX
xsetwacom get “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopY
xsetwacom get “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomY

This gives me respectively 0, 14720, 0, 9200 – a dimension of 9200 units for the short side and 14720 for the long side (an aspect ratio of 16:10).

Since my monitor has a 16:9 ratio as detailed earlier, I now need to “trim off” part of the area of the tablet so that the short side is in proportion to the “9″ rather than the “10″ (16:9 vs 16:10) in the display.

The mathematical bit (that I had to re-do initially due to errors in mental arithmetic! This is the correct version. )

• The current dimension on the short side is 9200 units (as found out above)
• I want to make this a smaller number, so that some of the units are ‘unused’.
• 9200 / 10 * 9 = 8280 units (I confirmed this by calculating that 14720 / 8280 gives the aspect ratio of 16:9)
• I want to split this inactive region (920) equally across the top and bottom, as if I have 2 “black bars” (you could have the inactive region all together if you want, so the active part is a ‘corner’ of the surface rather than centred) so each inactive area should be 920 / 2 = 460.

So I want the “top Y” position (i.e. where the active region starts) to be at 460, and the “bottom Y” to be at 8740 (9200 – 460):

xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopY 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomY 8740

The same principle applies to the other devices (eraser, touch etc) as listed in the original output. If you wanted the inactive region to be in one “block” then the Y could start at 920 and finish at 9200.

The ‘active region’ however it is currently defined will be applied proportionally to the screen area. The settings are for each device so need to be set separately.

Handling rotation (to portrait mode) of the monitor and tablet

With the monitor in landscape format this should all work correctly but what about when the monitor is in portrait rotation? (Assuming you’ve rotated the actual monitor display as well!) It will all be out of proportion again…

The principle is similar, but also uses a rotation command on the tablet, so that it can be physically placed in front of you in “portrait” orientation (if this was not done, you would draw a vertical line on the tablet and it would come out horizontal! ) again using xsetwacom, for example:

xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” rotate ccw

As above, the rotation applies to each device. (To get it back to standard ‘landscape’ orientation you can do the same command but tell it to “rotate none”.) The rotation is ‘absolute’ rather than relative, i.e. if you rotate ccw again when you have already done it, it won’t rotate a ‘further’ 90 degrees.

The active/inactive area will then need to be set, similar to how it was done above, but taking account of which is the “X” and which is the “Y” dimension (which are different when it’s rotated). For example:

xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomY 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopX 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomX 8740

There is a command in xsetwacom which will reset to default the top X, top Y, bottom X and bottom Y positions, rather than set them back “manually”, if required – e.g.

xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” xyDefault 0

Rather than set it back to 0, 9200, 0, 14720 I could have “shortcut” this by resetting the defaults, but this would only make sense for the standard laptop display (on my setup) due to the aspect ratio.

Batching up the commands into a script and adding command buttons (optional)

This part is optional, and there are other ways this can be accomplished, but what I wanted to do was get all the commands into one file that could be used to set various options (touch on/off, landscape/portrait/laptop orientation) without needing to copy and paste the relevant commands every time. I also didn’t want to set them as a global default as I may or may not be using the monitor, touch etc so I just wanted the laptop default on boot.

Having tested each of the commands (this can be done by e.g. sending the command to terminal, checking that a circle draws correctly and the right area of the tablet/screen can be accessed, etc) I put them into a text file which I saved to the filesystem as a shell script (bamboo-set-options.sh but it can be called whatever you like) and made it executable.

This page is far too long already so I won’t go into how to program a script in any great detail, but just note that I have set up the one below so that I can execute the script with the argument -p, -l, -s, -touch-on or -touch-off to set each option. The script doesn’t change the monitor orientation programmatically, though this could be added. It sets all the relevant options, so doesn’t rely on what it was set to previously (i.e. “assuming” that topX was already 0 etc).

(I’ve included a complete copy of my file at the end)

I then made a custom set of menu buttons in the Ubuntu GUI calling the script with each relevant argument in turn. So for example I have a button for “portrait monitor”, one for “touch off” etc. This could be tailored according to what you need. Clicking on each button means I can then run all the relevant commands for that setup, without needing to call the script with the arguments again manually (or type it all in…)

#!/bin/bash
#
# Configuration script for Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch tablet
# for widescreen monitor and touch sentitivity
#
# — SET ROTATION AND ACTIVE REGION
# For the monitor, aspect ratio 16:9 does not match ratio for tablet (16:10),
# so we proportion the active region down accordingly for the X and Y coordinates.
# Short side = 9200 by default and long side = 14720 (as per xsetwacom and tested).
# So for 16:9 AR, we scale down the 9200 to 8280, then split the difference equally
# between the two sides giving “top” position 460 (0 + 460) and “bottom” 8740 (9200 – 460)
#
# Arguments: [ -p (portrait) | -l (landscape) | -s (standard 16:10) ]
#
case $1 in
-p)
# Set rotation to counter clockwise and restrict X dimensions
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” rotate ccw
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomY 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopX 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomX 8740
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” rotate ccw
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” BottomY 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” TopX 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” BottomX 8740
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” rotate ccw
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” BottomY 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” TopX 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” BottomX 8740
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” rotate ccw
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” BottomY 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” TopX 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” BottomX 8740;;
-l)
# Set rotation to none (ie “normal” orientation) and restrict Y dimensions
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” rotate none
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopY 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomY 8740
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopX 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomX 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” rotate none
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” TopY 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” BottomY 8740
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” TopX 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” BottomX 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” rotate none
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” TopY 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” BottomY 8740
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” TopX 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” BottomX 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” rotate none
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” TopY 460
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” BottomY 8740
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” TopX 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” BottomX 14720;;
-s)
# Set rotation to “normal” and reset X and Y dimensions
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” rotate none
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomY 9200
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” TopX 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen stylus” BottomX 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” rotate none
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” BottomY 9200
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” TopX 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Pen eraser” BottomX 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” rotate none
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” BottomY 9200
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” TopX 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger pad” BottomX 14720
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” rotate none
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” TopY 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” BottomY 9200
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” TopX 0
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” BottomX 14720;;

-touch-off)
# set touchpad OFF
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” touch off;;

-touch-on)
# set touchpad ON
xsetwacom set “Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4×5 Finger touch” touch on;;

esac