Sunday, 07. February 2010
Cleaning up WinXP 
I've been meaning to clean up the missus' winxp laptop for quite a while now. It had slowed down to the point of being completely unusable. Followed some of the tweaks from:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1494&page=2and turned off mcafee ( avira is much better) and some other unused apple crap. The machine is blazing along now.
Sunday, 24. January 2010
Kubuntu 9.10 rocks!
I had been putting off upgrading to
Kubuntu 9.10 for a while now even though it's been out for a while. I had heard all kinds of horror stories about folks moving to KDE4 and not really liking it as much as KDE3. Well, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded and it kicks some serious a**!
I just selected the upgrade from within my older version and it downloaded and updated all the packages. One reboot later everything came up just fine - no hassles at all whatsoever. During the upgrade it prompted me for input whenever it found a diff in any files in /etc which was really nice. So I didn't have to do anything to setup my
Brother MFC-495cw. It was automagically picked up by the new version.
Everything so far has been quite stellar - kudos to the kubuntu team!
Wednesday, 04. November 2009
Importing contacts from Windows Mobile to Android
I've picked up a new Google
Android based
Samsung Moment recently. The UI and functionality is a little different from the Windows Mobile phone we're used to but it's definitely a big improvement though the Mrs is still pissed that her long fingernails don't quite work on the touchscreen ( probably cuz it requires tactile feedback).
As usual the phone company couldn't transfer the contacts from the Windows Mobile phone to the new Android phone. So I started googling around looking for solutions to this problem. Just when I was contemplating writing a custom app using as specified at:
http://pythonce.sourceforge.net/Wikka/PIMsI came across this really neat freeware program which exports the contacts into a csv file:
http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/ppc-download-thunderbird-contacts-export.htmlThen one can import them directly into gmail:
http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/ppc-download-thunderbird-contacts-export.htmlWorks like a charm!
I must say that the android phone has really blown me away with it's UI, features and most importantly integration with web based applications to access and update it's data ( gmail, calendar, etc). The icing on the cake is the fact that the SD card mounts just fine as a usb drive under Linux. The integration between the phone and the internet based apps is a dream compared to the nightmare than activesync was for the windows phones.
Friday, 16. October 2009
free book: pro git
I've been using
git off and on for some of my personal stuff for a while now. I found an interesting little tidbit of information at the
git talk which
Matthew McCullough gave at
no fluff a few weeks ago. Apparently there is a
neat way to use git under the hood which makes it work seamlessly with the
SVN repository. All the git commands are mapped onto SVN commands so the integration is seamless.
Also, on the topic I found a cool free book online about git:
http://progit.org/book/
Tuesday, 13. October 2009
sweden falls off the internet
all I have to say is .. wow :)
http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/10/13/sweden%25E2%2580%2599s-internet-broken-by-dns-mistake/I wonder how well their testing for this change was designed and implemented.
kinda makes you one wonder how reliant we are on DNS these days …
Monday, 05. October 2009
chrome
I've been playing around with
Chrome at work these days. Though it does kick ass in terms of performance, I still miss gestures from
Firefox. Still, here's a couple of tips you might find handy:
- if you run into weird 'Unhandled Exception' errors, you may want to try the '- -no-sandbox' option to start it. Just keep in mind that it's supposed to be a security risk so be careful about where you browse to.
- there's a way to block flash in chrome. You have to use the '--enable-user-scripts' startup option to enable user scripts and then download a block flash javascript file. Full details here.
Hope someone finds this stuff useful :)
I'll probably continue to use both firefox and chrome for now.
Thursday, 01. October 2009
what is my ip
I've been trying to figure out a way to be able to setup access to my folks' linux box remotely for a while now. They've been happily using it for a few years now and apart from the rare windows office incompatibility, they really haven't run into any big issues.
They don't have a static IP ( like pretty much everyone else on a non business plan these days) so I looked into Dynamic DNS as an option but couldn't get it going quite right. It needs to be setup on the Verizon router which supposedly has options to set it up but it never really worked.
Being the lazy programmer that I am I started thinking about how I could re-purpose what's already available for my needs. A simple, brain dead solution I came up with is to run a script via cron ( say on the hour) which figures out what their computer's public facing IP is and then scp it over to my box:
It could probably be improved upon by not sending anything if the IP hasn't actually changed or streaming the data instead of copying the file but this seems to work great for now! =)
Wednesday, 23. September 2009
Perimeter
Read a really interesting article in Wired today about a soviet doomsday machine called Perimeter. Apparently it was pre-programmed to destroy the US in the event of a nuclear attack and it had built in safeguards to accommodate scenarios where the soviet leadership might be wiped out, etc etc. Man, I wouldn't want to be the programmer who worked on parts of this system :)
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all
Friday, 11. September 2009
Interesting RMI/Windows issue
we've been using a scheduling server at work to automatically schedule jobs programatically. It uses RMI and I've been working on a real interesting problem which would just manifest itself as a socket write exception. After having gone through the usual checking to make sure that it's not a connectivity issue, etc I finally narrowed it down to an interesting fact about RMI on Windows.
Somewhere within the Sun implementation someone is not handling spaces appropriately. Since we use Maven on Windows for dev work all the third party libraries end up in 'Documents And Settings..' folder on C drive. Note the space in there. This was causing RMI heartburn though the manifestation of the problem as a socket write exception was a mis-direction. See:
http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t126367-spaces-in-path-to-app-causing-rmi-fits-with-malformedurlexception.htmlSo I found the RMI properties, one of which allows users to see debug info:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/rmi/javarmiproperties.htmlwhich revealed the actual problem.
Needless to say everything works fine in production land since it runs on Linux.
Fun times =)
Tuesday, 01. September 2009
Neat magazine!
Googling around I found a really interesting magazine based in Bishkek, Kyrghyzstan. Fun read!
http://www.thespektator.co.uk/
Friday, 21. August 2009
Tamil Bhangra
omg this is way too funny! chak de ...
http://uberdesi.com/blog/2009/08/15/tamil-bhangra-mind-it/
Wednesday, 05. August 2009
tiny pc!
A really neat review of a pc that's smaller than a pen's dimensions. It runs
Ubuntu Linux - very cool!
http://www.roytanck.com/2009/07/29/fit-pc2-review-the-worlds-smallest-desktop-pc/ Wednesday, 22. July 2009
Device bandwidths
A cousin had asked some help in deciphering the marketing mumbo jumbo on his hard drive so he could upgrade his hard drive. It was an Ultra ATA/100 hard drive which is the previous generation of standards than the current SATA standard. So I was googling around trying to figure out how to explain the speed of the drive and how the marketing terms translate into that when I came across this real interesting page on wikipedia which lists device bandwidths for lots of peripherals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidthsIt's kind of interesting to compare the standards over the years and how the speeds have improved.
Thursday, 09. July 2009
Gnaural
I read about an interesting program called
Gnaural over in the
Linux Journal. It's a program which generates binaural beats which are supposed to influence the brain. I'll have to try it out one of these days - sounds interesting.
Friday, 05. June 2009
Book : Rise And Fall of the British Empire
Read an interesting article on
http://www.rediff.com about an
interview with a British author who wrote a
book about the Decline and Fall of the British Empire. I think I'll have to add it to my reading list over at
KCLS.
Monday, 18. May 2009
SeaJUG meeting tomorrow
We have a
SeaJUG meeting tomorrow evening in case folks are interested. It seems like there is quite a push in the market these days towards writing more quality software and being able to measure the quality in a repeatable manner. I've been using some real neat tools at work like mocking frameworks and some continuous integration tools that I haven't played with in the past. It's more work but quite a lot more satisfying knowing that you always cya your code.
Thursday, 09. April 2009
Cool Brother Printer
The old Brother printer that my folks had been using for over 3 years finally gave up. It had lasted a helluva long time, especially considering the fact that we picked it up as a refurb unit for under $40/- bucks. I've been really impressed by the fact that Brother is one of the few manufacturers out there who has been actively supporting Linux users and providing linux drivers for their products.
So we went out to look at what was available out there and picked up this great little Brother MFC-490CW which looks like an upgraded version of their older model. We picked it up from Staples and I had it running on their Linux box within 15 minutes - both scanning and printing. The only thing I can say about Brother printers on Linux is that their support for Linux is truly world class!
http://www.brother-usa.com/MFC/ModelDetail.aspx?ProductID=MFC490CW
Tuesday, 24. February 2009
SeaJUG meeting in Feb
We had the
Seattle Java Users group meeting for Feb last week. I took our camcorder there to tape the meeting and see if I could manage to put it online. It took a little fiddling around with
mencoder and
ffmpeg because we have a
JVC HD Camera and I had to reformat and re-encode the videos it produced. It appears to use FAT32 as the filesystem for the hard drive cuz the video was split up into approx 2 GB files. I finally ended up with an approx 701MB mp4 encoded file which seemed like it would work well.
I also looked around at the various services for uploading the video and ended up using
Vimeo though I did have to purchase their yearly plan cuz of upload caps.
You can view the video at:
http://www.vimeo.com/3356282
Wednesday, 14. January 2009
India and the UAE
We were on vacation for the last few weeks so I haven't had a chance to update the blog. Here's a brief synopsis of our travels.
We flew into
Delhi via
Dubai at the beginning of December. Met up with the folks and drove up to
Punjab in a rented taxi. We spent about 10 days there visiting friends and some family we still have left there. Some of the places we visited included
Amritsar,
Jalandhar, our village near
Nakodar, the Mrs' village near
Jagraon Ropar/Chandigarh and then back to
Delhi.
The next few days were spent visiting friends in
Delhi and
Noida. We took the
Delhi Metro and I was very impressed with it! I hope they maintain it with the same standard in the long term that they do at the moment. We stayed with family friends in Mohan Nagar near Ghaziabad during this time.
Then we flew to
Bangalore and visited some family members of the Mrs who live there. We also made a side trip down to
Mysore for two days. Saw the forts and palaces in Mysore and
Srirangapatna. That was a lot of fun!
Next we flew to
Dubai where we were going to spend our wedding anniversary and welcome in the new year. Unfortunately the rulers had canceled all fireworks and celebrations because of the conflict that erupted in Gaza so we ended up making it a quiet, intimate evening.
We spent a week in the
UAE traveling to all the different emirates. Did lots of sight seeing in
Dubai itself. Saw the
Burj Dubai, skyline on
Sheikh Zayed Road,
Jumeirah beach, the malls, souks, etc etc. The trip to
Al Ain and
Fujairah was quite memorable. We saw some of the old forts there and drove up to
Jabal Hafeet on what is apparently one of the
twistiest road in the world ( the Mrs actually got vertigo by the time we made it to the top). The Mrs went to her
old school and met some of her teachers. Her family used to live in Dubai before they moved to Canada and she was quite shocked by how much it had changed.
All in all it was a fun vacation but all good things must come to an end. Luckily it appears that we missed out on most of the bad weather here but ultimately there's no place like home. So now back to the regular programming :)
Tuesday, 11. November 2008
ramdisk on linux
http://blog.mousefeed.com/2007/12/faster-build-compilation-with-ram-disk.htmlspeeded up my build 3-5x .. cool!
Wednesday, 05. November 2008
Chak de!
Been jamming to 'Captain Bhangra Da..' at work here .. chak de! =)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1JDKyW_eag
Eclipse Equinox P2
I had been playing around with integrating some eclipse plug-ins at work here into our build system. It turns out that this functionality has changed significantly since Eclipse 3.4M6. This write-up might be helpful for folks who might be interested in this topic:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_Getting_StartedI've been working on some OSGI/Equinox stuff at work here that's pretty cool! :)
Thursday, 30. October 2008
self signed certs and JSSE exceptions
been working on SOAP/REST web services at work here and ran into the old self signed cert issue wrt JSSE. Most browsers give you the ability to add a self-signed cert to your list of trusted certs so that you can proceed beyond the SSL handshake. That's a little hard to do with command line sample java apps .. until I found this little gem which lets you import the self-signed cert as a valid CA cert thus creating a chain of trust which validates the cert:
http://blogs.sun.com/andreas/entry/no_more_unable_to_find Wednesday, 29. October 2008
more 80s music!
MTV tries to compete with youtube .. nice! more 80s music for us :)
http://www.mtvmusic.com/ Wednesday, 22. October 2008
Seajug meeting last night
We had our regular monthly
Seattle Java User's Group meeting last night. I've been hosting them since Jayson handed off the responsibilities to me. He's moved on to bigger and better things :)
There was a pretty good turnout and I've put up a
writeup and slides in case you are interested in checking them out.
Friday, 17. October 2008
Cool Uni-motor-cycle
I know I saw this concept at one point in some Anime flick that I can't think of right now. Really cool!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufiMy87zK-Q
Wednesday, 01. October 2008
funny video!
I think the sysadmins will love this one ;)
http://www.nastyhobbit.org/player.php?clip=the-website-is-down
Wednesday, 03. September 2008
Loins of Punjab
This looks like a really good movie .. the music video is hilarious!
http://uberdesi.com/blog/2008/09/03/make-way-for-the-loins/I also saw a pretty interesting off-beat Bollywood movie the other day called 'Summer 2007' which was also kind of interesting. Not the usual crap .. it did have songs though :(
http://ww.smashits.com/news/bollywood/movie-review/6742/summer-2007.html Wednesday, 27. August 2008
Smallest PC in the world
neat article about the smallest PC in the world running Redhat Linux:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2008/08/27/a-real-space-oddity-arrives-at-pc-pro/embedded devices are pretty amazing. Here's a list of linux'ey things:
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT4936596231.html Thursday, 21. August 2008
An exploding case of mangoes
Read a really interesting book from a Pakistani writer based in London about the plane crash that killed General Zia back in the 80s. A good read!
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Exploding-Mangoes-Mohammed-Hanif/dp/0307268071/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219345213&sr=8-1
