Planet FLOSS India

: We have moved!

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:56:39 +0000

FOSS.IN has moved to a new server, to avoid the overload issues from last year. Expect some instability for the next day or two while we get things under control.

The Call for Participation, Call for Volunteers and Call for Sponsorship will be released as soon as we are sure that this server can handle things

Suchakra Sharma: Last Combat :-)

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:36:27 +0000

For all the crazy things that go on in the world wide web, this one’s a unique addition. For those who have been in oblivion till now, Ladies and Gentlemen kindly visit Last Combat and add fuel to the fire

Sadique Puthen: Is it possible to resize the storage for a xen guest in RHEL5, If yes how?

noreply@blogger.com (Sadique Puthen) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:35:15 +0000

This is a million dollar question. The answer can be "yes" and "no" and highly depends upon the configuration of the guest backend and how it has been partitioned inside the guest. Most people want to resize without initiating a reboot of the guest system, but most of these people make wrong choice while configuring the guest backend intially and end up having to reboot the guest or not being able to resize partitions inside the guest.

A lot things need to be taken into consideration to decide how to resize the guest storage. Before proceeding into how to resize, it's good explain different types of backends that can be used for guest.

1 - Block device. A block device in Dom0 can be used as a backend for the guest. It can be raw partitions, LVMs, raid devices and etc. It can even be a unpartitioned disk as a whole (like "sda" which is not recommended).

2 - File based storage. A file built with a specific size using zeros in Dom0 can be used as the backend of the guest. While using a file based storage it can be any of the below two types.

2.1 - Sparse file. While using a sparse file, disk blocks are not pre-allocated while creating the file, but are allocated only when data is written to the disk fom the guest. This is not recommended for production uses due to performance issues.

2.2 - Fully allocated file. Entire blocks are allocated while creating the file based image. This gives more performance and is recommended for production usage if using block devices are not an option.

I would explore different types of storage configurations and how resizing can be done in those scenarios. I prefer to abstain from explaining the nasty methods of resizing partitions using "parted" or "fdisk" inside the guest. So I prefer to say, if LVM is not used inside the guest, resizing a partition is not possible. Only new partitions can be created after extending the backend. If resizing using parted or fdisk is preferred for anyone, it's upto them.

Different Scenarios and How to resize.
----------------------------------------------

1- LVM is used in both Host and Guest. The backend for the guest is an LVM device in Dom0 and this has been repartitioned in guest using LVM. There are two ways to resize it.

1.1 - Create a new LV in Dom0 and attach it to the guest as a second disk. Repartition the second disk in guest, extend the Volume Group using the new disk, then extend the LV using the additinal free space in the VG. This method does not require a reboot of the guest and is preferred for most xen users.

1.2 - Extend the LV device which is already attached to the guest in Dom0. After the LV is extended in Dom0, the guest should be rebooted to see the new size. There is currently no way to let the guest now that the size of backend has changed without a reboot. Once the guest is rebooted, it would show the new size as free. Create a new partition using the free space, make it a PV, extend the Volume Group using that PV, then extend the LV using the free space in VG. Most people don't like this method since it requires a guest reboot, but most people resize the LVM in Dom0 expecting that the guest would recognize the new space without a reboot and end up rebooting the guest and keep blasting the company that delivers the product.

2 - Raw partition - Eg, sda1 - is used in Host as the backend of the guest and LVM is used inside the guest.

2.1 - Attach a new partition to the guest - Eg, sdb1 - as a second disk. Repartition the second disk in guest, extend the Volume Group using the new disk, then extend the LV using the additinal free space in the VG. This method does not require a reboot of the guest and is preferred.

2.2 - The other method may be to extend the raw partition in the host using parted or fdisk. Reboot the guest to see the new size and extend LVM inside the guest. This is not preferred and may be dangerous.

3 - Fully allocated file based images are used as the guest backend.

3.1 - Create a new fully allocated file based image in Dom0 and attach it to the guest as a second disk (see 3.2 for details on how to create it). Repartition the second disk in guest, extend the Volume Group using the new disk, then extend the LV using the additinal free space in the VG. This method does not require a reboot of the guest and is preferred.

3.2 - Extend the fully allocated file image in Dom0 which is already attached to the guest. It's recommended to shutdown the guest while doing this.

A fully allocated 5 GB /vm/images/guest.img disk is created using the below command initially while creating the guest.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/vm/images/guest.img bs=1M count=5120

To extend and make it 10G without losing data, the below command can be executed which is the safest method, I think.

# dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=5120 >> /vm/images/guest.img

OR

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/vm/images/guest.img bs=1M count=5120 oflag=append

Then create new partitions inside the guest and extend the LVs which already exist or use the new partitions individually.

4 - Sparse File based images are used as the guest backend.

4.1 - Create a new sparse file image in Dom0 and attach it to the guest as a second disk (see 4.2 for more details on how to create it). Repartition the second disk in guest, extend the Volume Group using the new disk, then extend the LV using the additinal free space in the VG. This method does not require a reboot of the guest and is preferred.

4.2 - Extend the sparse file image in Dom0 which is already attached to the guest It's recommended to shutdown the guest while doing this.

A sparse file image with 5 GB of size - Eg, /vm/images/guest.img - is created using the below command initially while creating the guest.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/vm/images/guest.img bs=1M count=0 seek=5120 conv=notrunc

To extend and make this 10G without losing data, the below command can be executed which is the safest method, I think.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/vm/images/guest.img bs=1M count=0 seek=10240 conv=notrunc

Then create new partitions inside the guest and extend the LVs which already exists or use the new partitions individually or to create new VGs and LVs.

Note: Sparse files are not recommended for production system due to preformance reasons. Always use fully allocated file based images.

- In all x.1 above, it's ok to use all possible options. Eg, in 4.1, new LVM in Dom0 can be created and attached to the guest, a new raw partition can be created and attached to the guest and a new fully allocated file based image can be attached to the guest to extend the volumes inside it. This is applicable for all x.1 explained above. I used only one option for my convenience.

- The task "attach it to the guest as a second disk" can be achieved by following either of the below two methods. This is applicable only for x.1 above, not x.2.

1 - virt-manager -> Open -> View -> Details -> Hardware -> Add -> Storage Device -> Simple File/Normal Partition -> Device Type - Virtual Disk. This is the hassle free method.

2 - Edit guest configuration file and add the second disk details to the configuration file. See examples from the sample configuration file. Can also be attached live by the xm command as below.

# xm block-attach

Eg, to attach a new lvm block device as xvdb to guest named "guest1" with read-write, below command need to be used.

# xm block-attach guest1 phy:/dev/VolGroup00/LV1 /dev/xvdb w

or

# virsh attach-disk guest1 --driver phy /dev/VolGroup00/LV1 xvdb

To attach a new file based image as xvdb to guest named guest1 with read-write, below command can be used.

# xm block-attach guest1 tap:aio:/vm/images/image1.img /dev/xvdb w

Or

# virsh attach-disk guest1 --driver tap --subdriver aio /vm/images/image1.img xvdb

- Reszing of guest LVs can be achieved without a reboot if x.1 is followed, but a reboot of the guest is necessary if x.2 is followed for the guest to see the new disk size.

- The online attaching of disks may not work as expected for fully virtualized guests which doesn't have PV drivers installed.

Raji Seetharaman: ttyrec and ttyplay commands

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:10:07 +0000

Hai, today i read a message in ilugc mailing lists titled ” ttyrec and ttyplay console videos “

Tried it.

Came to know what it is.

Here ‘s my experience

ttyrec :

Stands for tty recorder.

It is a command used to record a Unix termianl session

To see how it works, it has to be installed

Install it by typing sudo apt-get install ttyrec on ubuntu.

Usage:

Type ttyrec my.tty from the terminal ( my.tty is the file name )

Press enter

Now type some commands.

For example type

1. ls command

2. pwd

3. date

Exit from the shell (Ctrl d )

ttyplay :

It is used to play back the commands of what ttyrec recorded

To do it, type ttyplay my.tty

You can see the recorded commands

Rajesh Ranjan: फ़ायरफ़ॉक्स मैथिली में तैयार है...

noreply@blogger.com (राजेश रंजन) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:08:07 +0000

जाना-माना लोकप्रिय वेब ब्राउज़र फ़ायरफ़ॉक्स मैथिली में तैयार है. हमलोगों कुछ वर्ष पहले मैथिली में पूरा का पूरा कंप्यूटर तैयार करने की आकांक्षा पाली थी और खुशी है कि हम इसे पूरा कर पा रहे हैं. इसका उपयोग कीजिए और बताइए कि कहाँ-कहाँ हम इसे सुधार सकते हैं.

हम पहले ही फेडोरा, गनोम, केडीई जैसे मुक्त स्रोत सॉफ़टवेयरों को मैथिली में ला चुके है. फ़ायरफ़ॉक्स लोकप्रिय है. उम्मीद है कि मैथिली जानने वाले लोग हमें अपने सुझावों के रूप में योगदान देंगे.

डाउनलोड करें —

फ़ायरफ़ॉक्स मैथिली - विंडोज़ मशीन के लिए
फ़ायरफ़ॉक्स मैथिली - लिनक्स मशीन के लिए
फ़ायरफ़ॉक्स मैथिली - मैक मशीन के लिए

अगर आप संस्थापित नहीं करना चाहते हैं तो उदाहरण के लिए आप विंडोज वाली लिंक डाउनलोड करें और अपने पहले के खुले फ़ायरफ़ॉक्स बंद कर अनजिप करके फ़ायरफ़ॉक्स चलाएँ.
अधिक विकल्पों के लिए लोकेल नाम mai खोज कर यहाँ से डाउनलोड करें.

आपके सुझाव की प्रतीक्षा में

— मैथिली कंप्यूटरीकरण टीम

Tarique Sani: Last month @ SANIsoft blog September 1, 2010

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:05:44 +0000

[CakePHP] How to re-size images at run-time
This is a helper + controller combo for CakePHP which I often use. It helps to re-size images at run-time and also aid display them. Oh yes! once the image is resized it also caches them. First let’s look at helper method. PLAIN TEXT PHP: class MyHelper extends AppHelper { function getImageUrl($path, $size, [...]
SQL data source in Sphinx
These days I am getting more and more into Sphinx and falling in love with it . In this post we will see how to make use of SQL data source to create indexes. Sphinx has inbuilt support for MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. The drivers for these databases can connect to the database using its [...]
Namespaces in PHP 5.3 – Part 2
Welcome back! In Part 1 of this post we discussed how to create namespaces and use them for classes, functions and constants. If you have not read Part 1 I strongly recommend you read it before we move on to some of the advanced parts related to namespaces. Lets start from where we had left. [...]
Adding security to your CakePHP application – Part 2
In the Part 1 of this post, we’ve discussed how to secure your CakePHP application by following some thumb rules and using Sanitize class. Now, in the second part, we’ll discuss how to add some more security to your application by using the nice Security component of CakePHP. Before coming down to the nitty-gritty of [...]
[iPhone] Parsing RSS with NSXMLParser
One of the test apps I created while learning iPhone development was a FeedReader app using UITabbarController. Using TabbarController in combination with NavigationController, TableViewController and WebViewController was challenging enough for someone who just began with iPhone development. But more on that later … One of the problems I faced in this app was parsing the [...]

Originally published at http://tariquesani.net/blog/. Please leave any comments there.

Sitaram Chmarthy: Hg easy to use?

noreply@blogger.com (sitaramc) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:20:09 +0000

http://groups.google.com/group/vim_dev/msg/7e494fa0fe6cc732

If Bram, author of vim, cannot do some simple version cutovers in Hg, is it really that easy to use?

The other thread at http://groups.google.com/group/vim_dev/browse_thread/thread/1ce709f61e5424e5/f70ea0132796c96a?hide_quotes=no#msg_f70ea0132796c96a is even more illustrative (and, as a friend on #git said, too fatiguing to read).

Branching it seems is still a mess in Hg...

Raji Seetharaman: An Upgraded Hello World in Quickly ( adding a dialog )

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:50:05 +0000

Hai this guide is an extension of previous post.

Here, you can see how to add a dialog to the before hello world program.

Follow the five steps mentioned in the previous post.

Steps :

1. Add a dialog

The above command will add a dialog to the helloworld project

2. Design the dialog.

The above command will open the Hello World button in Glade interface

To use the dialog choose Projects – > NewDialog.ui

New dialog is opened

Add a label to it. (click label from control and widget)

Edit the label in General Properties tab

Save and close the Glade window

3. Edit the code

You can find a new NewDialog.py file added to the project.

Import the dialog

To import it, edit helloworld file and add the NewDialog to the list of imported modules

from helloworld import (

AboutHelloworldDialog, PreferencesHelloworldDialog, NewDialog)

Create an instance of NewDialog as below

newDia = NewDialog.NewDialog( )

To run the dialog, make use of run( ) method

newDia.run( )

To destory the dialog, make use of destroy( ) method

newDia.destroy( )

Now on_button1_clicked function looks like

def on_button1_clicked(self,widget, data=None):

newDia = NewDialog.NewDialog( )
newDia.run( )

4. Run the application

Aanjhan (tuxmaniac): Home Trip Aug’10 – My Diary Notes

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:41:09 +0000

Life in the first 6 months of 2010 was abuzz with work. Completed my MSc thesis, interned in a lab working on hardware platforms performing Side Channel Attacks, consulted for a couple of startups on FPGA based system designs and was contemplating/deciding on my next career move. Of-course there were these never ending bureaucratic issues that needed fixing. Finally I decided to stay back at school and pursue a PhD (a separate blog post coming up). Before the start of this phase of my career, I had decided to do a mini north EuroTrip and spend some time with family/ friends back in India. So here I was in India for the past 1 month meeting a whole bunch of people and having pleasant exchanges. I am scribbling down a few memorable moments of August 2010.

Meeting up with friends in Pune and Bangalore, discussing a wide range of topics from life to capitalism to Indian media to Ekta Kapoor / Indian film industry to state of Indian education to anything under the sky.
A memorable night out at a farm house near East Coast Road with college friends and spending most part inside the pool again discussing random things.
Finished reading Gone with the wind, AIDS Sutra, Animal Farm, A Whole New Mind and An Indian Odyssey. 5 books in a month. The last time I achieved this number was a long time back.
Traveled more that 5000 Kms by air and land.
Spent a good amount of time with parents.

The BIGGEST thing I will be missing back in Switzerland is the casual chit-chat with family and friends over a whole lot of issues – basically the feeling of connection at the emotional level and of-course the HOME comfort. Strangely enough, I DONT seem to miss Indian food. @sidcarter put it very well in this tweet earlier today. There were of-course some disappointments/frustrations; but I am in a very light mood as of now to even think about them.

Tonight I head back to work in Zurich, Switzerland. See you later, India.

Raji Seetharaman: Hello World program in Quickly

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:28:08 +0000

Hai this tutorial guides you step by step of how to create a hello world program in Quickly

Steps :

1. Create a project with name ‘helloworld’.

2. Close the Helloworld window (File ->Quit or cross-mark(x) at the left top of the window.

3. Run the helloworld (without customizing) project.

4. Design the user interface.

Here, i want to modify the default project to have a button named ‘ helloworld ‘ inside one vertical container within a window.

Iam going to delete the menu bar, label, image, status bar by clicking on the respective widget name from Actions window.

Then right click and apply Delete

Delete all the four widgets.

Reduce the four vertical container to one.

Click on vbox1.

Go to General tab

Reduce the number of items from 4 to 1.

Put a button inside the vertical container.

Click on a button widget present in the control and display.

Click inside the vertical container.

Adjust the properties of the button.

Go to Packing tab, increase the padding to 10.

In the General tab, scroll down and find the Label entry.

Change from button to Hello World

Now set the signal handler for the button widget.

Go to Signals tab.

Click on the clicked signal and select on_button1_clicked handler.

Design part is over.

5. Edit the code

In the editor window, go to helloworld file. (a special python file )

Add a function in name ‘on_button1_clicked’ which we set up in the signal handler of glade ui file

def on_button1_clicked(self,widget, data=None):

print ‘Hello Quickly’

Save and close the gedit

The use of the above code is if the ‘Hello World’, button is pressed, the string ‘Hello Quickly’ is displayed on the terminal

Now run the application.

Ravishankar Shrivastava: चंद मज़ेदार ईमेल पते

raviratlami@gmail.com (Raviratlami) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:40:03 +0000

हाल ही में मुझे सैकड़ों जगहों से अग्रेषित एक ईमेल मिला जिसमें सैकड़ों तरह के मनोरंजक ईमेल पते दर्ज थे. आपके मनोरंजन के लिए इनमें से कुछ छांट बीन कर पेश हैं-

ये हैं सुनील, सुरों वाले-

दुभाषिया अरूण इधर हैं-

वाहे गुरु!

इनसे घृणा करें ताकि ये आपसे प्यार करें-

अनाम चकित-

नाम भी, मोबाईल फोन नंबर भी- (व्हाट एन आइडिया सर जी?) -

मैं तो पागल हूं! -

आधुनिक श्रवण कुमार – कंधों पर ! का कांवर!!

जरा इनके नाम का अंदाजा लगाएँ -

नौ कमेंट -

विकी कहता है.... पर क्या ?.... -

मन से रेडी ?

इस विजय में तो बहुत ऐसेन्ट हैं -

द पायरेटेड सनी -

इस विनय में तो सुर-संगीत है-

वरूण में भी बहुत सारे ऐसेन्ट हैं

उलटे सीधे कृष्ण -

दिया तो खुद में ही खुश है. हम भी खुश हुए -

साईं प्रवचन....-

ये डॉ. तो किताबी कीड़ा प्रतीत होता है-

जरा देखिए तो हैरी किसके बीच फंसा है-

व्हाट एन आइडिया सर जी! -

क्या? सिर्फ दो दिन बचे हैं?

वाह, बहुत बढ़िया -

अफ़जल, जरा बढ़िया संपादित करिए अपनी जिंदगी -

इधर तो रीचार्ज्ड अजय हैं -

आपका मेल पाकर भला कोई कैसे मुस्कुराएगा नहीं?

अनिकेत भाई, तुम अमरीका फतह करो हम तुम्हारे साथ हैं...

ग्रेट न्यू पिक्स? व्हेयर?

अनिल बदला लेने वाले का अंतिम युद्ध. आर या पार -

येस, यू आर राइट सर -

किसी को समझ आया हो कि चकर किस भाषा में क्या कह रहे हैं तो कृपया बताएँ-

लड़ाई शुरू होने वाली है – तैयार हो जाएँ!

उलटी गिनती शुरू...

ये बेचारे अकेले राम -

डॉन को पकड़ना नामुमकिन है-

गुरु भाई और इंट्रोवर्ट ? कभी नहीं-

आह, एंटीकंसल्टेंट गाइड. इन्हीं की तो अरसे से तलाश थी-

खराब दिन? लगता है इनका क्यूबिकल इनके बॉस के ट्रांसपेरेंट चेम्बर के ठीक सामने है-

हरे कृष्ण ! हरे कृष्ण !!

जाओ भई जाओ. पर शुभ कामनाएं तो लेते जाओ -

अच्छा? -

ओह, बड़ा दुःख हुआ-

ऐसा क्या?

पितृपक्ष में मैरी क्रिसमस?

वाकई महाईश्वर! -

बहुभाषी डेविस -

बेचारा ! ये कुछ नहीं जानता -

और बाकी समय में? -

अरे, कोई इनकी मदद करो -

येस, आई एम -

और भी हैं. कुछ और दिलचस्प नाम स्क्रीनशॉट के बगैर –

इसमें कोई शक नहीं -

"R@Vi's 300 wOrLd'S BeSt!!!"

आई एम फ़ाइन, थैंक यू -

"RAVI TEJ@ (h0W!)@RY"

टाकिटिव?

"rajitha..... d most talkitive...."

हैप्पी बर्डे? रोज, हर ईमेल में?

"$riHarsha......K 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCE'"

सतीश में वाकई डबल शक्ति है-

"$h@kTi $@Ti$h"

ईजी टू अंडरस्टैंड, हार्ड टू रीड-

"A-A#,B-B#,C-C#.. esy 2 lrn hrd 2 play"

अच्छा, कब आए?

BACK IN HYD KALYAN

जंग में लगे रहने वाले ही अंततः जीतते हैं -

Battle may lost But war is on

आपका परिचय पाकर हम धन्य हुए -

"Bharath kumar ..... Agonistes...."

वाओ! तो क्या करें?-

"COOL DUDE $$$$$ WITH GRT ATTITUDE(YOOOOOOO)"

सेमिस्टर?-

Final days of 1semister

फ्रंड्स, वू हू...

here only for frdss waiting for uuuuuuuuuu

हा हा... वी आलसो हैव प्लान्स...

"Naresh got a PLAN... haha :D”

बताने के लिए धन्यवाद -

r@ju.... pR!nC# Of mY OwN K!nGD*m

संदीप .... क्या कोई अंदाजा लगाओ भाई!

"Sandeep ¡¢ë(/)äñ |=äñ"

या, इट रीअली लुक्स लाइक....!!!! -

"sandy njying lifeeeeeeeee...........!!!!!"

और भविष्य में? थड?

"Shyam<- A 'Blast frm d Past'!"

वेरी नॉटी -

scooby_naughty

अच्छा – हमने तो कोई और समझा था -

yo man sumeet kshirsagar here

क्रिप्टिक की वर्ड्स -

"®o ck $T @® ™ . ! . ! . !"

श्रवण के लाइफ के फंडे -

รђгคשคภ lเŦє เร รђ๏гt ภן๏א єשєгא รєς

अरे, आदित्य, ओरकुटिंग इतना बुरा भी नहीं है-

α∂ιтуα no orkutting

ठीक है, इंतजार रहेगा -

"▒♪♠♂Anirudh♀♥♪▒. will be back after 15th..."

बैनर बढ़िया है-

"ミ★мєgнα ѕнｿαм★彡 ............................"

उफ़. हमारी दिली संवेदनाएँ -

"AnUdEeP ReDdY Proposes Girls Disposes...."

ग्रेट! नाओ डोंट डू दोज सिली थिंग्स अगेन!

"SAM...BORN AGAIN"

बट, हू से?

"Anuu.....coolll dude Wid Cool Attitude..."

वेरी बैड सैंडी, वेरी बैड. -

Sandy Lost da belief in FriendshiP

बट, वी आल आर प्रेइंग फार अवरसेल्फ -

PRANEET KUMAR_ PRAY FOR ME BOTHER

कहानीकार राघव – नाम में ही कहानी है -

"## R@GH@V ## The Story Teller"

ये कौन सी भाषा है भाई -

"veelithe4maatalu kudhirithe cup coffee...."

शुक्र है, अन्यथा बहुत सा लफ़ड़ा हो जाता -

Life has No CTRL+Z

अच्छा? जरा दिखाओ तो! -

Man with Unique power for u

हरि ॐ तत्सत...

ॐ†ﷲ HARISH™ॐ†ﷲ ®ॐ†ﷲॐ†ﷲॐ†ﷲॐ†ﷲॐ†ﷲॐ†ﷲ

थैंक्स, आई थॉट इट्स समवन एल्ज -

"8a1ju ...........its me"

आप क्या कोई नेता हैं? -

$@!... luv .I.N.D.I.A.!!!!

क्लास बंकिंग अगेन -

"@IITM..STUDENT MARUTI.. STUDENT LIFE AGAIN"

आदित्य आपके पास कौन सा सूर्य है यार! -

"ADITYA ..THE SUN NEVER SETS.........."

इक्का भी तो वापस आ गया है -

"$!/@ $@//K@r KING !$ BACK NOW"

बिजी सोमू को कोई मेल न मारे -

"$oMu Bu$y @gAin @FtEr LoNg B@(k........."

जाओ जाओ...-

"g0ing onnnn..... --Bh@nU---"

व्हाट पैसन?

Brahma On d way 2 Wakeup His Passion

बॉस आलवेज कम्स विथ बैंग बड्डी! -

"Sreeraj,The boss is comming back.with a bang."

ये तो बहुत बुरा हुआ सन्नी!

"Sunny...... born 2 party bt force 2 work"

हाँ, हाँ, क्यों नहीं!!

"CAn I hELp U ?.. ..........RaJ"

चिंटू भाई चिंतित -

"CHINTU @0044@@@@ 460@@8: MISS U ALL RA"

अच्छा? ऊपर किसी बंदे ने तो फुल ऑफ जॉय कहा था.. -

---=|Þ®¡yäñkä|=- ℓιƒє ιѕ α ¢нαℓℓєηgє

लो, लाइफ पर एक और फिलासफी -

LOVE FEELS LIKE HEAVEN BUT HURTS LIK HELL

हाँ, हाँ, करो तो मरो न करो तो मरो -

*Goutham* Get busy livin or Get busy dying

---.

Shakthi Kannan: Clojure meet

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:00:00 +0000

A hands-on workshop on Clojure was organized in TwinCLinGs' August months' meet at Rhythm & Hues Studios Pvt. Ltd, Hitech City, Hyderabad, India by Bhaishampayan Ghose, co-founder and chief geek at Infinitely Beta. A picture of the attendees:

The slides are available. You can install clojure on Fedora using:

  $ sudo yum install clojure

A clojure programming book is also available at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clojure to get started! Thanks to volunteers who sponsored for Bhaishampayan Ghoses' travel, to and from Pune, India.

Raji Seetharaman: Getting Started with Quickly

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:25:15 +0000

You can find a very good tutorial packed into Quickly software during installation.

To read the default tutorial, from the terminal type

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ quickly tutorial ubuntu-application

Press enter.

The execution of the above command opens a Quickly 0.4 User Guide window as shown below

Now invest your time in reading the tutorial

Quickly Commands

To get a list of available commands in Quickly, from the terminal type the command

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ quickly commands

The following screenshot is the result of help command in quickly.

Creating a Ubuntu project

The first step is to create a ubuntu project.

To do it issue the following command from the terminal.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ quickly create ubuntu-application myproject

press enter.

You will get a message in the terminal and screenshot as below

Close the Myproject (name of your project) window by choosing either from the menu File -> Quit or click on the cross-mark (x) on top of the window.

Once it is done, you will see the additional message (Congrats…….) along with the previous message in terminal.

After execution of the above command, a subdirectory with name ‘myproject’ is created in your current directory.

Now lets look into the contents of ‘myproject’ directory

Python files are placed in myproject/myproject

Glade files are placed in myproject/data

Running the application

To launch the ubuntu application, you must cd into myproject directory and has to issue quickly run command.

To edit the UI design issue quickly design command.

This will import the project into Glade User Interface Designer

Now you can customize the default project as per your needs.

To edit the code, the command is quickly edit.

It will open the Gedit text editor with the built-in coded files.

You can modify the code now.

That’s all for now. Packaging and Releasing will be dealt later.

I experienced programming in Quickly is sooo fun and very easy.

Also, im surprised to see how quickly i can develop a application

Thanks a lot to the community members

Sitaram Chmarthy: fixups on an existing commit using tig and the new autosquash option on rebase

noreply@blogger.com (sitaramc) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:21:41 +0000

This shows how to use tig and the new option in rebase to do fixups very quickly.

What you need first is this line in your ~/.gitconfig:

# fixup, from http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/154460
fixup = "!f() { git commit -m\"fixup! $(git log -1 --pretty=%s $1)\"; }; f"

and these lines in your ~/.tigrc:

bind main = !git fixup %(commit)
bind main R !git rebase --autosquash -i %(commit)
bind generic s view-status

We need to make a quick change in conf/example.gitolite.rc. We first make the
change, then start tig

type 's' for status view, then cursor down to the file that you just changed

type 'u' to stage that file

type 'q' to quit status view and go back to main view; cursor down to the
commit you want to "fixup"

hit enter to make sure it is the right one; it is... the filelist confirms it

hit 'q' to get rid of the commit details, then '=' to invoke the "git fixup"

Notice the commit message?

hit enter to get past that commit confirmation message, then arrow down 1 line

hit "R" to rebase with respect to the selected commit

save and exit the editor

hit enter to see the new commits

Raji Seetharaman: How to install Quickly on Ubuntu 10.04 ?

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:45:30 +0000

Before starting to explore the power of Quickly, it has to be installed first.

To install it, from the terminal type

sudo apt-get install quickly

Raji Seetharaman: What is Quickly ?

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:21:00 +0000

Quickly is a open source command-line tool for creating software programs and publishing the code ( for others to use ) quickly

Quickly is a product of Ubuntu sponsored by Canonical Ltd.

Quickly gets life from Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) http://www.canonical.com/news/ubuntu-910

Rick Spencer, the leader of the Ubuntu Desktop team at Canonical Ltd came up with the idea of ‘ Quickly ‘

Rick Spencer worked on his idea, gathering help from the community (include an incredible community member called Didier Roche), and thus Quickly was born

Quickly helps you create software programs (and other things) quickly. You can select from a set of application templates and use some simple quickly commands to create, edit code and GUI, and publish your software for others to use. Quickly’s templates are easy to write. So if you are a fan of language foo, you can create a foo-project template. Or if you want to help people making plugins for your killer app, you can make a killer-app-plugin template. You can even create a template for managing corporate documents, creating your awesome LaTeX helpers. The sky is the limit!

https://launchpad.net/quickly

Quickly on the whole makes use of various open source technologies such as

Python for the language

PyGTK for the user interface

Glade for UI design

Gedit for editing the code

Desktop Couch for data storage (optional)

Bazaar for version control system

Launchpad for code hosting

Ankur Shrivastava: Weekend Project II

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:22:33 +0000

In march i posted about a weekend project which involved controlling a small toy car using my cell phone, this is a similar one again implemented in few hours, here we are trying to play the awesome game of pong using the tilt sensor on Samsung Wave. The pong application running on Laptop is written in Qt (C++) and the application on the Phone is written using the Bada SDK.
The working is simple, the pong application running on Laptop requires phones to make a TCP connection to it. Phones just create a TCP connection to the application on PC and sends tilt sensor data to it, movement of paddles is done by the PC application based on the value it receives from the phones. It still requires better calibration and we will work on it after the exams are over (Education prevents you from doing cool things!!), there are a lot of ideas buzzing in our empty heads (according to our teachers!!) , the original idea was by Abhimanyu which we implemented.

if you cannot see the above video here and here are short demo of how it works.

PS – code and proper working for the previous and this weekend project will be posted soon!

Ratnadeep Debnath: wordgroupz development news

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:58:06 +0000

Lately, I worked on fine tuning the code for wordgroupz. I fixed some bugs that I was aware of, like unable to parse data retrieved from wiktionary pages which did not have any ‘Contents’ field, error launching games when no words in db, some bugs in webster view, etc. Now, I have added a dialog which will show a message saying ‘Not enough data’ if the number of words in the db are not enough for playing games. I have also added support for parsing data from wiktionary pages which have no ‘Contents’ field. Also made some fixes in the webster view.

I today updated the RPM for wordgroupz to wordgroupz-0.3b-4.fc13.noarch.rpm

You can install the latest version of wordgroupz as follows:

1) download rtnpro.repo into /etc/yum.repos.d/

2) then as root, do :

yum install wordgroupz

You can also get the source code from http://gitorious.org/wordgroupz/

Please test wordgroupz, and feel free to drop in your suggestions.

Tarique Sani: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-29

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 07:49:38 +0000

Reading: The Timeless Beauty of National Geographic – http://retinart.net/?p=2188 #
Soon all WiFi capable phones will be able to act as access points (Read as – mine does not as yet!) #
I may be small but I can get nasty http://is.gd/ey64Y A lion cub snarls #photography #
SANIsoft Blog: SQL data source in Sphinx http://t.co/kYqNL0v #
@rohitweet Don't moderate everyone – anyone who has posted 5 good messages can unmoderated in reply to rohitweet #
@geetanjalic A nitpick on your twitpic – It is a toad! Though you can still try kissing it

Tweet
Read the rest of this entry »
Originally published at http://tariquesani.net/blog/. Please leave any comments there.

Ankur Sinha: Oh! my system had a remote I had forgotten about!!

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:46:48 +0000

My forgotten remote

I’ve to present a seminar as part of my syllabus for the semester. I was looking for one of those remote controllers to make the seminar COOLER. Weirdly enough, I remembered that my laptop came with a remote that has been tucked in and forgotten for a loong loong time. It presently doesn’t seem to work, probably a dead battery, but my next TODO item is to get this working with Fedora. I’m going to get a new battery and hope this works outa the box!

Pramode CE: Please help me create a database of companies looking for FOSS skills

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Please help me create a database of companies looking for FOSS skills

Aug 28, 2010

The classes for my first full-time batch started on 25th of August. If you are working for a company which needs engineers with solid FOSS skills, or if you know of any such companies, please drop me a mail - my id is: mail@pramode.net.

Shirish Agarwal: COEP FOSS issues

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:34:09 +0000

HI all, This post attempts to highlight some of the issued I saw/felt during the recent MiniDebconfIndia organized in COEP specifically with the broader Information Technology education policies and FOSS implementation policies as well. This is not to down COEP but just as an example of a disease which is within quite a lot of [...]

Praveen Kumar: qroneko Packaging

praveenrocking2008@gmail.com (Praveen Kumar) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:51:57 +0000

10-days back I was searching for some qt projects on sourceforge and found a project named qroneko. It is a front-end of crontab. I liked its interface and wanted to make it as a desktop application. At that moment i didn't know how to make a desktop file for it. One guy Rathandeep Debnath helped me out. He gave me his project desktop file and I made a desktop file for qroneko.

Then I thought why not package it. I already attended a rpm packaging class on IRC conducted by Rahul Sundaram. I just revised IRC logs of that class and started to make spec file for it. After 2 days I made a spec file but it failed at the install section. I was bit nervous and pinged Ankur Sinha on IRC. He helped me a lot. Due to him I got success in building an rpm on my system and then he told me to use Mock to test my rpm. I again got stuck with mock testing and finally Shreyank Gupta told me how mock works and what I was missing. Due to the help from these people I could finally build it.

If you want to try the rpm , you can get it from http://kumarpraveen.fedorapeople.org/qroneko/ .Then you can install it your system as

# rpm -ivh qroneko-0.5.4-1.fc13.i686.rpm

Then go to Application->System->qroneko for start it.

Here is one Snapshot:

For more Snapshots click here

Barkha Khatri: Friggin’ cold

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:23:34 +0000

Friggin’ cold, originally uploaded by barkha.

But I was happy!
Good times, those were. Will I get some more?
Time will tell.

Prakash Advani: @abasu Does it matter? in the …

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:38:19 +0000

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Prakash Advani: Lower-powered ARM processors coming to servers

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:28:28 +0000

Smooth-Stone, a chip startup company is coming up with low powered ARM processors to power servers. ARM processors have been very successful in smart phones consuming less than 1 watt at its peak and still running at upto 1 GHz. They have now started moving into tablets (iPad), Netbooks, Plug Computers, personal servers and more. It is interesting to see how they stackup in terms of processing power per watt.

The news was that Facebook is planning to use this in their upcoming data center which Facebook denied, however low powered server is still interesting. Good news for the environment.

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Anurag Patel: Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Ahmedabad - Autorickshaw Taxi fares

nospam@example.com (Anurag) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:39:32 +0000

Rickshaw fares for Mumbai

Two months back Mumbai's autorickshaw and taxi drivers went on a strike, demanding a steep increase in fares. While earlier the fare calculation was simple, after the new fare structure came in place, autorickshaw fare calculations became relatively complex.

I started http://rickfare.com on the day new fares came into effect after seeing the new complicated fare structure. Over time, friends pitched in for their cities and I added New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune and Navi Mumbai. Today Rickfare.com is accessed by thousands of commuters over a wide variety of mobile devices including iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, HTC and assorted Nokia handsets.

I'd like to thank Ashish Mehta, Atul Jha, Kartik Mistry and Kamaleshwar for helping out with auto fares of their cities

Nirbheek Chauhan: Systemd in Gentoo

noreply@blogger.com (nirbheek) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:18:56 +0000

A lot of folks are raving about the next generation in init systems (aka systemd), and how it's (almost certainly) going to be the default init system for Fedora 14 (paid article, subscribe to LWN to read! [or wait a week]). It also seems that OpenSuse will be moving to systemd sometime in the near future (don't take my word for this though), and Debian has at least considered it. It is also well-known that Ubuntu will not be using systemd for the foreseeable future.

So where is Gentoo in all this? Our current init system is baselayout-1 in the stable tree, and openrc in the ~arch tree. The maintainer-wanted bug for systemd has been quite active with users posting preliminary ebuilds for it. The bug itself currently has >30 folks CCed (including me), and 86 votes. So users are definitely very interested in seeing systemd in Gentoo. However, it will take a lot of work before systemd can enter portage even as a masked ebuild.

Even after systemd enters portage, it is extremely unlikely that it will become the default init system for reasons that are listed below. Some developers are strongly in favour of moving from baselayout-1 to systemd, while some think it's a pile of crap that Gentoo should stay far away from. Neither of these opinions is shared by the majority of Gentoo devs. (that includes me :-)

In all likelihood, the end result will be that openrc will finally go stable (replacing baselayout-1), and if any developers are willing to spend the massive amount of time and effort required to make systemd usable in Gentoo, systemd will become an optional init system, strongly recommended for desktops/laptops.

Now why can't we throw out baselayout-1 as well as openrc and just use systemd? I was going to make a full list of the reasons, but as I was making it, I realised that I don't know enough details about systemd's requirements, what all it provides, what parts of Baselayout would need to be rewritten, how much porting of the tree (and systemd) would be needed, etc. So instead of hand-waving, I'll just list "needs several volunteer developers" as the blocker for now :)

I'm tempted to list myself as a future volunteer, but I won't do such a thing yet. Rest assured that if I do end up working on this, I'll be sure to blog about it. Although it is probably just a matter of "time" ;)

: FOSS.IN/2010 Event Announcement

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:08:37 +0000

Team FOSS.IN is happy to announce FOSS.IN/2010.

This year’s edition of India’s foremost Free & Open Source Software event will be held on December 15-17, 2010, and the venue will be again the NIMHANS Convention Centre, same as last year.

There are several differences between this edition and previous ones:

Duration:

This year, the event is 3 days instead of the usual 5 days - a 5 day event was simply too exhausting for everyone (participants and team). Also, we have moved the event into the middle of December, to give students of colleges that usually have their exams end-November or early-December a chance to attend. Our American friends will be happy to note that we have moved the event safely out of Thanksgiving range

Scope and content:

As has been made clear since last year – we are enlarging the scope of the event to include more technology. While FOSS is still very much the heart of the event, we are encouraging people to be more involved in technology, and get into the “hacker mindset” that has been the basis for the FOSS movement across the world, but has been more or less avoided here in India.

Note to the media: “Hacker” is a good thing – it refers to a person who pushes the technological envelope, and extending technology beyond its known limits. What the media has been calling “hackers” is really “crackers” (criminals who break into computer systems and networks). We will have a separate note for you soon on this subject).

The content of the event will reflect the technological scope of FOSS.IN – there will be more practical hands-on, more “workouts”, more workshops, and fewer talks and tutorials. This is in line with our credo “Talks is cheap, show me the code”. More details about this will be in the Call for Participation that will be published on August 30th, and also in posts following this one.

Funding the event:

As most of you know, funding an event such as FOSS.IN is a hard problem, and to avoid the problems we ran into last year (the less said, the better), we are making some changes that were long overdue:

While we are keeping the participation fee for students the same (Rs.500, or about US$11), which includes the cost of lunch and tea/coffee, we are raising the fees for individuals to Rs.1500 per head, and to Rs.5000 per head for corporate attendees (this will be acknowledged as support for the event). We know that some of you will complain about this, but we introduced the Rs.500 fee six years ago, and the Rupee just doesn’t go as far as it used to.
We have to unfortunately drop the travel sponsorship for international speakers, except for very exceptional cases. As we did last year, we encourage speakers to seek travel sponsorship from their employers, user groups or other sources. We will treat this as support for the event and will acknowledge this on our website. However, no changes in accommodation and other hospitality – we will continue to cover all costs for outstation speakers – bed&breakfast, (lunch is at the venue), local travel, conference fees, etc.
As usual, the event will depend on sponsorship from organisations supportive of the concept of people getting more involved in technology, and gaining a deeper understanding of it. There will be a separate note for you, but if you are keen to get the process going ASAP, please do get in touch.

Talks:

We have been steadily reducing the number of talks during FOSS.IN, because we want people to participate in workouts, but we are not eliminating talks. There will be two kinds of talks as usual – talks during the Main Sessions (ie daytime) and “hacker sessions” in the evenings and late at night. There will be one keynote every evening. More about all this in the CfP when we release it.

There are a lot of other little things that we won’t cover in this note, but be prepared, as usual, to have the time of your life.

More information will appear soon on the FOSS.IN website, and a detailed Call for Participation, Call for Volunteers and Call for Sponsorship will appear there soon.

And as usual, May The Source Be With You, people, and get ready to ROCK!

Team FOSS.IN

p.s. DO follow us on Twitter and on the FOSS.IN Mailing List to keep updated on emerging details about the event, and to participate in the discussions leading up to it.

p.p.s Happy Birthday, Linux!

Prakash Advani: Creating micro products for India the Allianz way

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 06:58:29 +0000

Consumer companies have successfully launched micro products to reach out to Indian customers by having Shampoo sachets. The advantage of this that people who cannot or do not want to invest in the whole bottle , can buy a small sachet for 1% of the cost of a bottle.

The end result is more volume of Shampoo is being sold through the sachets rather than bottles and this is hugely successful in the rural India.

Items	Indian Rupees	US$
Shampoo Sachet	Rs. 2	US$ 0.02 (2 cents)
Shampoo Bottle	Rs. 200	US$ 5

Now Insurance company Allianz has taken the same route to launch Micro Insurance.

This today has 3.8 Million customers: Most sold in India and balance 600,000 sold Outside of India.

Alliance earned 30 Million Euros in Premiums. Here is the maths.

Items	Indian Rupees	US$
Weekly Insurance Premium	Rs. 35	US$ 0.75 (75 cents)
Accidental Death Insurance	Rs. 33900	US$ 725
Natural Death Insurance	Rs. 13200	US$ 280

If unclaimed, the entire deposit with interest after 5 years. Here is the full story.

Similarly Indian companies have launched $40 cellphones in India with 30 days battery life (stand by). They have taken away 14 percent market share. Nokia the incumbent player in India which had 64 percent market share has dropped to 52 percent market-share.

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Atul Chitnis: Happy 19th Birthday, Linux!

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:51:30 +0000

Today (August 25th) is the 19th “birthday” of Linux, so I thought I’d wish everyone’s favourite computing platform a Very Happy Birthday!

Why August 25th? Well, just read up about it

Barkha Khatri: Promo 2010 - Masters students

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:16:00 +0000

Promo 2010 - Masters students, originally uploaded by barkha.

Soon, a new batch of students will come to Eurecom for studying.

And we will be the “grandparent” batch.

I feel so old already.

Praveen A: A campaign for no UID – Till complete transparency, accountability and people’s participation

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:39:17 +0000

21st August 2010

Dear Friend,

Since May 2009, the UID project is under implementation. Even though any legislation sanctioning it is yet to be passed in parliament, the UID authority is functioning. Rs.19,500 million have been allocated to the project. In addition to this allocation, the census expenditure has a budget of Rs. 30,230 million. The UIDAI plans to use the census data, to issue Aadhar numbers. The total project is estimated to cost Rs. 1500 billion. The budget for the Authority was passed with the GoI annual budget but without discussion on it or setting up of UIDAI.

The UID project envisages recording ten finger prints and iris scan of all people residing in India, allocating a unique number to each individual whose biometric data is captured, and storing it in a database with other basic information such as: name, parent’s name, date of birth, gender, and address. Clearly, the UID project will affect everyone residing in India. To ensure proper implementation it is important to carry out a detailed study of the project’s viability and feasibility. That the project has been launched without such a study is a matter of grave concern.

The authority presents the UID project to the public as a way to prevent leakages in the PDS and MGNREGS. If the project could achieve this, it would be a welcome solution, but even a cursory examination reveals several reasons why this objective seems impossible to achieve. Among these is the fact that many countries, after trying similar projects, have abandoned them because they were found to be incapable of achieving their projected objectives and posed high security risks. For example: in a study that was conducted by the London School of Economics on the UK Government’s National ID card scheme, it was found that it would not achieve the objective of preventing illegal immigration and further that such a central database would itself become a target for terrorists, The new elected UK government scrapped the project in June 2010.

The UID project also raises many questions concerning the abuse of personal data gathered in the process. The collection and logging of data, done in the manner proposed by the UIDAI, is in effect similar to “phone tapping”, a practice which can be abused by those overseeing it. The data collection itself is outsourced to private agencies. The linkages provided by UID to a person’s data that is collected for the UID to other databases, such as bank accounts or mobile phone companies have the potential for serious abuse. Despite these concerns, the UIDAI has already taken initiatives, such as collaborating with many multinational and Indian private companies for gathering data and setting up / maintaining the database.

This meeting is organised to discuss UID’s lack of a feasibility study, huge cost, legality and real danger of abuse. Hence, we invite you to come for a public discussion where people from many diverse groups will express their viewpoints on the subject on -

25th August 2010 from 10.00 am to 6.00 p.m.

at the Constitution Club Auditorium, Rafi Marg, New Delhi.

High-Tea and meeting with MPs: 4 pm to 6 pm.

This will be an interactive meeting in which, we hope you will be able to gain insight into this immense project, its costs and impacts. Please confirm your participation in the workshop at insafdelhi@gmail.com. This would help us make the necessary arrangements for your convenience.

In Solidarity -
Alternative Law Forum, Citizen Action Forum, Delhi Forum, PEACE, People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) – Karnataka, Moving Republic, Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), Slum Janandolana – Karnataka, The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) and many other organisations and concerned individuals.

Read UID appeal to MPs (pdf)

Kushal Das: Google video chat plugin for Fedora

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:01:48 +0000

Wait is over, you can try the rpms from here. Before installing don’t forget to remove nspluginwrapper. Working perfectly on Firefox.

Nigel Babu: Cleansweep Update

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:07:59 +0000

Finally I am getting around to doing this week’s Cleansweep update. From this week on, we’re starting to do a “blog about what others are doing” inspired by what Jorge has been doing on his blog lately. We’ll be naming one awesome contributor to the project and highlighting how awesome they are!

Total bugs with patches: 2196 (-37)
Reviewed patches: 420 (+11)
—
Bugs with ‘patch-needswork’: 99 (+5)
Bugs with ‘patch-forwarded-upstream’: 177 (+3)
Bugs with ‘patch-forwarded-debian’: 62 (0)
Bugs with ‘indicator-application’: 39 (-2)
Bugs with ‘patch-accepted-upstream’: 56 (-1)
Bugs with ‘patch-accepted-debian’: 10 (0)
Bugs with ‘patch-rejected-upstream’: 18 (0)
Bugs with ‘patch-rejected-debian’: 3 (0)

This week’s awesome contributor is vish! He’s unbelievably humble (yeah, I asked him for an interview and he didn’t give me one; he also told me not to do this) but plays a very important role in the teams that he is part of. He’s the designer of the Ubuntu Reviewers Team logo and has been supportive and critical where he has to be about the Reviewers Team. He’s reviewed innumerable patches in Launchpad and also talked to a lot of people about the team and its efforts! Of note, besides all this, he also leads the papercuts project and administers the BugSquad mentorship program. If you know him, please give him a hug

Ratnadeep Debnath: wordGroupz development News

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 05:43:04 +0000

Although, I had added the accuracy for the words in wordGroupz in the treeview, it was not satisfactory. First, the app crashed whenever I added a new word to the database. I fixed that easily. But then, the new word would show its accuracy as 0% even before attempting to answer it. I decided to set the CellRendererProgress bar text to ‘New’ for new/not attempted words.

I got some help for IRC Nick: Juhaz at #pygtk in GimpNet. I came to know that set different properties of a cell for a particular column in a gtk.TreeView, I have to set a function in gtk.TreeViewColumn.set_cell_data_func(). I got further help from the documentation at Develp in Fedora.

Finally, after some tries, I got the code up and running. Now new words show ‘New’ and after being attempted, they show their respective accuracy.

I also wrote some code to enable migration from old wordgroupz db schema to new db schema with retention of the old db contents.

I have pushed the latest code to gitorious.

If you want to try the code, you can get the source from http://gitorious.org/wordgroupz . Then, you can install wordgroupz in your system as:

#python setup.py install

Then run wordgroupz : $wordgroupz

Now, I need to do a code cleanup.

Ashik Salahudeen: Arch FTW !

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:02:58 +0000

So finally Google got their act together and released a googletalk plugin for GNU/Linux systems – they released it for Ubuntu. A sensible option since a large number of desktop GNU/Linux users use Ubuntu. They might make an RPM available. So what about the Arch people ?

Aah. Thats the point cpcgm goes ahead and creates a PKGBUILD and puts it on AUR. You can look at it here and install it (if you have yaourt ) using

 yaourt -S google-talkplugin

This – the self dependence and readiness to understand and fix the systems – is why Arch has the best documentation around , and at the same time a small,close community. I love being a part of it

Atul Chitnis: How I use my iPad

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 01:30:02 +0000

Ever since I got myself an Apple iPad (64GB, Wifi only) in early April, people have been asking me why I bought it, and how I use it. These questions just got more common once people saw me on the NDTV techlife awards, with the iPad glued to my hand. And since Twitter is such a “smoke puff in a hurricane” medium, people keep asking the same questions over and over again – enough for me to put together this blog post. Which has been languishing for a while now, until Kishore Bhargava, who was also putting together a rather broader post about iPad usage, pinged me and asked me for inputs. I’ll update this post and link to his when he publishes it.

1. Why did you buy an iPad?

Short answer: My name is Atul Chitnis. That should completely and comprehensively answer your question.

Long answer: I have, for several years now, been studying and talking about the concept of The Next Billion Users – people without a PC/Mac background using technology the way we use our wristwatches (we don’t think of our wristwatches as “portable time computing devices”, do we?) and who have consciously stayed away from PC/Mac-type of devices, because they are “computers”.

I have been gathering information that I can share with developers who need to target this new audience – you wont believe how hard it is for a developer with a PC background to wrap his brain around the concept of “technology for non-technology-users”.

The iPhone, the iPod Touch and now the iPad (and soon to come iTV) all address this audience, not the lemming-like PC (or even Mac) crowd.

So I got myself an iPad in early April 2010 for one primary reason: I assumed that the iPad would represent a tipping point, and I needed to be able to understand it and its use by The Next Billion Users.

Oh, and it seemed like a fun device.

Both points proved to be right.

2. What do you primarily use the iPad for?

Short answer: to feed Steve Jobs.

Long answer: I don’t use it as a notebook replacement. I don’t even use it as a computer. In fact, the second someone suggests that I “try this great ssh app for the iPad”, my hackles stand up. I do have a few “computing tools” on the iPad, but I deliberately bury them on one of the screens.

I don’t do wordprocessing, I don’t do spreadsheets, I don’t create presentations. I barely create email, though I do use it for reading mail.

And I don’t take my iPad to client meetings (it distracts too much and wastes time – for that kind of work, I prefer a notebook, or a USB stick with my stuff on it).

I know that many people actually acquire the iPad for “zap value”, but the iPad isn’t a one-to-many device, it is a personal device, and though it does have a VGA out adaptor, that is defeating the purpose of the device.

I use the iPad the way I expect The Next Billion Users will use it – as a personal content consumption device, without consciously doing so.

Since I got the iPad, I have watched children, grand-dads, housewives and other people (who wouldn’t use a PC/Mac even if someone held a gun to their heads) take to the iPad like fish to water.

Clearly, Apple is onto something that the others are missing, and I want in on that.

3. What are some of the apps you use often?

Short answer: Steve Jobs ain’t gonna starve.

Long answer: I have 200+ apps on my iPad, and at least 600 more on my mac, downloaded over time.

I have been an iOS user since 2008 (ever since the concept of iOS apps and the AppStore kicked off), and I have been downloading (and often paying for) apps for ages. Since all these apps also work on the iPad, I naturally had a good selection to start off with when I got my iPad.

Some of the more common ones I use:

Safari, Email. iPod, Maps, Photos, Youtube and Videos: Built-in apps I can’t do without. In particular I use Videos to watch video podcasts (will make a separate post about that) and movies, especially when I am on the move.
iBooks: I have been reading eBooks since the mid 90′s, and hence have a HUGE collection of ebooks. Using Calibre, it was a cinch to convert them to ePub format and install them in iBooks. I think that iBooks could be done a whole lot better, but it (along with the Kindle app) is a usable way to read books.
Last.fm: LAST.FM client (only available in US, UK & DE appstores)
Kindle: I own a couple of physical Amazon Kindles, and honestly – I prefer those for reading books. But in a crunch, the Kindle app lets me read them as well.
Facebook: I don’t actually use the Facebook app for iOS on the iPad, because it isn’t native iPad, and in any case, the iPad is big enough to simply use the Facebook site in the browser. Not that I use Facebook that much.
MindNode: A very nice mindmap tool that I also use on my Mac, but it makes much more sense on the iPad. I use mindmaps a lot while brainstorming, so this tools gets heavily used.
Goodreader: The Swiss Army Knife of PDF reading and file management.
Pulse: RSS reader par excellence.
Mundu IM, Mundu Radio, Spokn and Mundu SMS: Instant Messaging, Internet Radio, Voice over IP and SMS apps from Geodesic.
Air Video: Let’s me watch videos stored on a computer on the network, with on-the-fly conversion. I’d rate this one as one of the top apps I use. Also great for converting AVI/MKV/etc to iPad/iPhone/iPod compatible m4v format.
SimpleNote: A simple note taking app that syncs to the web, and has clients for almost any device and OS. Once I make a note with it, it is available on any of my devices.
Toodledoo: Great ToDo app, with lots of bells and whistles. Replaced Things on my iPad after the Things author tried to gouge his iPhone customers.
Echofon: I have tried other twitter clients, but until Twitter/Tweetie for iPad comes out (its a iPhone-only app now), this is my top client that I also use on my iPhone.
We Rule: Think Farmville for the iPad – but no Facebook required
Angry Birds: Terribly addictive game!
Scrabble: Fantastic version of this game, and even lets you use your iPhones & iPods as “tile racks”.
Mahjongg 2 HD: What can I say – I am a Mahjongg addict. It calms me and provides me endless hours of gameplay.
Myst: If I have to tell you what Myst is, then you probably are not much of a game-player Technically a PC game, but makes far more sense on a toouch device like the iPad.
Bejeweled 2: Bejewelled has been on my mobile devices since the 90′s. Hopelessly addictive.
Cool Hunting: Find and read about cool stuff in art, tech and other things.
Nimbuzz: An all-in-one IM app that also does VoIP. I use it rarely (I use Mundu IM and Spokn far more) but keep it around to troubleshoot connections or the rare time that I use Yahoo Messenger.
Billings: I am a professional consultant. Tool of my trade.
Idea Sketch Another mindmap-kind of app. Rarely used, but useful as an outliner.
MagCloud: A great app for discovering magazines on the net.
ITC Mobile: Apple’s app to track AppStore sales.
Amazon.com: I have to tell you what Amazon.com is????
houzz: Heavily used (along with similar apps) during the design and construction phases of my house.
WebMD: OK, so we all have our little hurts and aches. This one lets me at least figure out the possible issues.
Firefox Home: Syncs my Firefox bookmarks and other info (including open tabs) with my other devices
Clockradio: Nice app to show me a clock and play internet radio when I am not using the iPad.
Dropbox: Really – I need to tell you what Dropbox is?
Setlist: App to show me songs in a setlist while I am practicing guitar, also lyrics and other useful info.
L&M Guitar Gibson’s guitar tuner, metronome & Chord diagrams
Remote: Remote control for iTunes
PressReader: My daily fix of newspapers from across the world.
Skype: Skype is… well.. Skype. ’nuff said.
Kayak: Flight timings, routes, tracking, etc.
iBanner HD: Great app for running LED banners. Good for telling people on stage that they should hurry up and finish, so we can go have food.
VNC: The only PC centric app – used to access my Macs and other VNC-capable devices.
Google Earth: Fantastic version of Google Earth for the iPad.
iDraft: Great sketching app. Especially nice for simulated press-sensitivity and variable thickness on the fly.
Epicurious: A gorgeous cookery book.
Aquarium: Does nothing but show fish in an aquarium, but the sound makes people rush to the bathroom

Many of these apps also exist on the iPhone and I use them there as well.

Note that I also bought and have installed Pages, Numbers and Keynote for the iPad, but I don’t use them for anything but demonstrating them to people who want to know about them

This is far from a comprehensive list, and keeps changing as I discover new apps. Unfortunately, no one has written an AppList kind of application that looks at all installed apps, looks them up on the appstore and creates an exportable document that lists the apps, descriptions and frequency of use. (Hint, that’s an app idea you could exploit!)

Santhosh Thottingal: Indic Language Computing Workout, Pune

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:29:15 +0000

On 22nd August, I conducted a workout session with Praveen on Indic Language Computing at Red Hat Office, Pune. The plan was to solve some of the issues in Devanagari support for the encoding converter Payyans. But most of the time was spent on Introducing the concepts of Indic language computing to participants. Project Silpa was also introduced and demonstrated. Students from College of Engg, Pune and other colleges attended. Red Hat sponsored the venue at their office. It was very interesting to interact with energetic and enthusiastic students.

Ravishankar Shrivastava: सदी की सुपर व्यंग्य कथा...

raviratlami@gmail.com (Raviratlami) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:20:08 +0000

आज के जमाने में जब तक आदमी सुपर नहीं बन जाता उसकी पूछ परख नहीं होती. मामला चाहे बग का हो या फिर बेवफाई का.

अभी तक तो बेवफ़ा और बेवफ़ाई का नाम सुना था. मगर यारों को इसमें भी बहुत सारी ईमानदारी नजर आई. लोग बेवफ़ाई का नोटिस नहीं लेने लगे, इसे आम समझने लगे, तो बड़े भाई लोग सुपर बेवफ़ाई ले आए. याने जब तक मामला सुपर तक नहीं जाएगा, काम नहीं जमेगा. सुपर से नीचे किसी चीज का नोटिस नहीं लिया जाएगा, कोई चीज नहीं चलेगी. चाहे सर्फ हो या निरमा. प्लेन से काम नहीं चलेगा. इन्हें सुपर होना होगा.

अभी तक लेखिकाएँ क्या क्या और कैसी कैसी लिख रही थीं, इस पर किसी का कोई ध्यान नहीं था. मगर जब बात नया ज्ञानोदय के सुपर बेवफाई अंक में उठी तो हर एक ने नोटिस क्या, सुपर नोटिस ले लिया.

ये भी तो देखिए कि खालिस हिंदी की ‘हिंदी साहित्यिक पत्रिका’ नया ज्ञानोदय अपना चोला बदल कर हिंग्लिश अपनाने का सुपर प्रयास कर रही है. इसीलिए उसने अपने विशेषांक का नाम महा-विशेषांक के बजाय सुपर-विशेषांक अंक रख लिया. महा शब्द में शायद उसे वो महानता, वो सुपरनेस नजर नहीं आया हो, या फिर, हिंदी में होने के कारण महा शब्द में आत्महीनता नजर आया हो, वो सुपीरियरिटी दिखाई नहीं दिया हो जो सुपर में आता है. कोई आश्चर्य नहीं कि ज्ञानोदय, जो बाद में नया ज्ञानोदय हो गया था, आगे चलकर सुपर ज्ञानोदय बन जाए!

सुपर शुद्ध हिंदी-वादी लोगों के लिए तो ये सुपर डूब मरने वाली बात है. अब तक हिंदी की अख़बारी भाषा पर भाषाई बलात्कार की बातें होती थीं, अब हिंदी की साहित्यिक पत्रिकाओं ने ये सुपर काम अपने हाथ में ले लिया है तो हिंदी का भविष्य वाकई सुपर है!

आदमी तो ख़ैर अपनी औक़ात जहाँ तहाँ दिखा ही देता है कि वो सुपर है, और इनमें भी नेता और अफ़सर सुपर-डुपर हैं. मगर अब छुद्र कीटाणुओं को भी कम न समझा जाए. वे भी सुपर होने लगे हैं. सुपर बग इसी का उदाहरण है. आदमी को उसकी औक़ात एक सुपर किस्म का बग बता देता है. लगता नहीं कि आदमी इतना सुपर तो पहले शायद कभी नहीं रहा?

इतनी सुपर बातें मैंने आज लिख दीं हैं, हर लाइन में दो तीन सुपर शब्द घुसा दिए हैं मैंने तो मैं सुपर मुतमइन नहीं हो जाऊं कि यह सदी का सुपर व्यंग्य नहीं बन गया है?

बची खुची सुपरता इस व्यंज़ल से पूरा कर देते हैं –

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दोस्तों जमाने में ये क्या हो गया
जिसको देखो वो सुपर हो गया

वैसे था तो वो जनता का हिस्सा
अफ़सर बनके वो सुपर हो गया

किसके बारे में क्या कहें अब
ये बग भी देखो सुपर हो गया

कसर बाकी रह गई थी शायद
बेवफ़ाई भी दोस्तों सुपर हो गया

जो भी चला जाति की चाल रवि
सियासत में वो सुपर हो गया
----.