Dare to Dream?

The day was very hectic… was up @ 10 AM, saw “Horton hears a who” @ 11 AM, had a quick breakfast @ 1PM, started for LCG meeting @ 3PM and then finally met the Entrip.com guys at 6PM - all as I planned yesternight

…and by now I am dead tired - just enough of me left to write this post

The meeting with Entrip.com founders was special because we were kind’of resonating at the same frequency, the same enthusiasm and that energy. Of course, the thread which tied us all together was Rails

EnTrip is an integrated travel utility which enables you to:

• Plan or map out your entire trip, using our intuitive map-based interface
• Capture the experiences and vivid memories that make up your trip, within their geographical context
• Easily share your adventures with friends and family around the world, in a meaningful way

If you are interested in how it works, try out the founding team’s trip to India.

I wish them a ton of good luck for their project.

After setting up the feed aggregation at ApnaBill.com’s Blog, I now had an uphill task in front of me - to tell people that such a blog exists. Writing about it at my blog was one thing, letting it known to ApnaBill’s users was another. And those small sticker like graphics on the topmost right side of the pages used to fascinate me alot.

But having a left hand - when it comes to graphics designing - was a major problem which I had to overcome! As always, I resorted to OpenOffice Presenter to utilize its drawing tools - though they suffice from a presentation viewpoint, I found out that they were not atall suitable for the task I had in mind. Infact, it was pathetic. I was so depressed - I had high hopes from the Presenter’s drawing tool.

Using Gimp or such stuff was not atall on my mind because I wanted to get this done dirt quick - but should look good at the same time. On top of that, my knowledge of Gimp is very limited - resizing images, cut/copy/paste is all what I know

I was sad! Adding a text link on the front page of ApnaBill.com would have sufficed, but it wasn’t what I wanted…

Just then, I remembered that Sameer had tipped me about the improved drawing tool/imaging in Microsoft Office 2007. Not interested much, but still I decided to give it a shot. And to my surprise, it was actually pretty good and fast. I must say, it has improved by leaps and bounds!

I was able to create this in just 10 minutes!

So this goes into OO wishlist from my side - please add more graphics with better look & feel. I never wanted to boot into Windows yesterday - if I had a choice…

Note - I still am and will be an Open Office user

Update

I just found out about Open Office Draw - am going to give it a shot today…

Yesternight, I finally installed Fedora 7 on my laptop - only to find the boot process was hanging at “Uncompressing linux kernel” message. Adding an “acpi=off” to grub did the trick.

Out of the box support for Dell XPS M1210 with default (& full) installation of Fedora seemed a bit lacking to me.

• The Wifi interface, though was shown detected, was not working (ipw2200 was installed by default)
• Sound did not worked - on & after Firstboot
• Graphics were not sharp, although F7 did picked up the max default resolution for the laptop - 1280×800

Other issues were

• NTFS partition, containing Vista were not available (obvious reasons) [Update - ntfs-3g is indeed available on the Fedora install DVD, I might have overlooked the fact that its already installed.]
• MP3 could not be played (obvious reasons)

However, the function keys & the touch pad worked quite as expected.
I did though of trying Ubuntu for a second, but then Fedora was not bad atall - specially when I get all the *-debug rpm’s prebuilt So I decided to plug in my ethernet jack & solve all the problems one at a time - & as it turned out, people had already faced & solved these problems for FC6.

Some very good links that I found were FC6 Tips & Tricks (v1.3) and Personal FC6 Installation guide

More information about XPS 1210’s hardware is on Gentoo Wiki - here & here.

So, after spending some time on internet, I managed to solve audio, video problems. Audio just started working by itself since I ran system-config-soundcard & clicked “Reload Audio Drivers”. Video is now crisp & clear with Nvidia Drivers installed. NTFS partitions can be easily mounted using ntfs-3g. For MP3 support, please head over to the above two links.

I also did managed to get ipw3945 on my system, wifi is up again - I still need to test it at Sandy’s place tonight with his Wifi router.

The leftovers now…

• The Ricoh card reader
• Dual headphone jacks
• Logitech Cam & Mike - detection, hotkey, video streaming…
• The touchpad seems to be a bit scary when doing horizontal movements. Even the slightest touch sometimes makes FF to go back/forth in history. My Bro’s HP has one of the softest & best touchpad I’ve ever used. It just seems to magically know that when you want to click & when you want to scroll… wow!
• Media control buttons on the laptop
• Power management, Suspend to RAM when laptop’s lid id is closed, etc…

If I can somehow finish this list, the support for Dell XPS M1210 might be F&F!!!

If OLPC is designed to run on hardware which is very minimal - & considering my old chap PC is almost as minimal on hardware - 800 Mhz CPU, 256 megs RAM (though it sports a 100 gig hdd) - only Gentoo manages to run well, all other - FC/Ubuntu crawl - Giving a shot to OLPC’s images would be worth a try.

Though i’m bit oo much preoccupied with other things as of now, lets see when can I try writing these images to my overloaded USB…

An excellent event! & as usual, Ramky was onto his clicking spree just as the event started - even he & the professional photographer kinda conducted their own BOF at the event

Here is what Ramky had to offer me this morning

Me @ my presentation

Kartik & Me attending Karunakar’s presentation
Coincidence - well, not much - it was expected - Me & Karunakar were speaking on the same topic… but luckily enough, his & my audience were different - thanks to the 10 AM schedule wink; wink;

The amazing GNUnify staff - each one had an equivalent amount of such high energy levels that attending the event, for anyone - speakers & audience was a pleasure! Three cheers for them!
(Check out Ramky’s photo set for GNUnify 07)

For more pictures of the event, please head over to Ramky’s Flickr. His lens has some real magic!

I’m writing this entry while attending a Font development workshop by Karunakar & Ravi. The day went pretty well, with my presentation kickstarting the Localization track in Room 407

Everything went perfect, except that…

• The projector did not picked up my ATI display
• I had to give Fedora’s presentation on a Suse machine - thank god, it was atleast Linux!
• The Suse machine did not had any Indic fonts installed besides Hindi font
• Rendering in Suse was broken - probably it was using an older version of libicu (OO.org)
• OO.org presenter was crashing every time I was escaping from the presentation mode
• I had no root access to the machine, the machine’s owner was too nervous to enter it rightly
• I was unable to run most of my examples as I had no root access to install the translations
• SCIM was not in sight - not installed

Anyways, nothing hampered the presentation Things went pretty nicely with quite a lot of discussion during the presentation, though I had expected more.

I sincerely thank the GNUnify team for the event & for inviting me (& Red Hat) for a talk

Okay… back to the event, there’s an interesting presentation on “Debugging with GDB” coming up at 4pm!

PS: BTW, I was about to attend a presentation - “Web Automation & Testing with Sahi” - but the moment I entered the hall, I saw the guys configuring a Windows machine & I knew that it was time to leave for another presentation! Ramky has taken some interesting shots of the scene, I’ll add them as soon as I can grab them

Event’s pictures to come… stay tuned!

Just checked my email & found a response from the Maemo Team - I’ve been selected for the N800 Developer Device Program

Nokia N800

I’m feeling so happy - so happy that I cannot express it in words! & at the same time, dont know how to thank the Maemo Team - probably writing applications for the Maemo platform would be the best way to go about it.

Thanks guys!

Umm.. this is what I thought I’d name it

Yesternight, I was reading Text Processing in Python, when I wandered off to a section which talked of some HTML parsing. It immediately caught my attention because previously also I was trying to scrap html from my orkut account.

A quick reading & I was ready to go… found my saved orkut’s scrapbook page & started parsing.

What I’m planning is to build a Gnome applet, which would give you a popup when someone posts a scrap on your orkut account will let you reply through the same popup.

But the challenge is… how to knwow that when is a new scrap posted!

The one solution, that hit me instantly was… to keep on fetching orkut’s scrapbook page at regular intervals. To prevent processing every time, I plan to process the newly fetched page only when the MD5 differs

& to take it a step further, a server can be implemented, which can let users query their orkut account via an xml-rpc interface… okay, that’s a bit long shot

Imagine, how nice it would be if people could build third party apps for Orkut

Previous works in this category… http://snipurl.com/wcmm

BTW, another news… I’ve added a new subdomain to makuchaku.info. http://makulabs.makuchaku.info is my new placeholder for all my devel projects/docs/etc. I’ll slowly be moving my stuff there This name “makulabs” was first suggested by आशीष शुक्ला alias “Wah Java !!”. Thanks आशीष

With 75,000+ Drupal power websites and an emerging industry supporting over
150 professionals, the open-source Drupal project and community is exploding.
At the heart of this community is an incredibly active and productive group
of contributors. Creating contributed modules, themes, bug fixes, and core
enhancement, these individuals define the course of the Drupal project and
the ecosystem of users, tinkerers, and professionals around it.

Through this internship program we will attempt to train students from India
the ins and outs of Drupal and help them established themselves as long term
contributors to the Drupal project. Over two months the selected students
will work closely with project mentors on real world Drupal projects;
contributed modules, and core patches. They will learn the Drupal development
process and gain extremely valuable experience interacting with a live
open-source project. Students will be paid a stipend of 4,600 INR to 8,000
INR a month depending on the level of their contributions to the Drupal
project.

The type of candidate we are looking for:

* Doesn’t have to have a formal higher education in computer engineering
* Doesn’t have to be pursuing personal projects relevant to Drupal
* Doesn’t have to have job experience
* Has to be a self starter
* Has to be genuinely curious and interested in developing software
* Has to have web application development experience
* Has to be social and willing to provide support to others.

Applying to Summer Drupal training program in India can be done online at
http://drupal.in/training

[quoted from an ILUGD mail]

I found this on slashdot about a day or two ago & its really worth spending 10 minutes from your precious time.

Peter has done nice work in providing a non anti-windows view on “How to make Gnome desktop better”. All earlier articles i’ve read regarding desktop usability were directed against windows usability, while this is NOT!

However, sometimes it does becomes important to keep in mind how others are fairing in the usability segment

Peter’s 40+ Suggestions for Better Desktop

Infact, these ideas will make nice projects for people who are interested in developing for Gnome. Count me in!

Something which was keeping me on my toes from past 1 month…

Fedora Core 5

Related HowTo : HowTo upgrade from FC4 to FC5 using Yum

Okay, this was something i wanted from the day i saw FC5 release news. Gnome 2.14… was dying to try it (outside vmware & outside a vnc session!)

But had absolutely no clue on how to start this upgrade as

yum upgrade

on vanilla FC4 just updates the system to latest package versions in FC4 repository. Also, i did not wanted to fiddle with yum.conf manually as the system under consideration is my production system! So no risks atall… or i would have to use my test system (which i’m still to get) as my production system. I would certainly not like that… & even my manager wont!

Okay, enough of crap… lets get to business!

NOTE - all steps are to be performed from a root console. You’ll need a decent internet connection to make this happen (in real time!)

0. yum update kernel kernel-devel initscripts kudzu
This should update your kernel to latest in FC4. This is an important step!

1. rpm -qa | grep fedora-release

2. if you find something like “fedora-release-4-2″ as the output, go to step 3, else to step 4

3. rpm -U http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm
This will update your yum configuration to fetch latest fc5 rpm’s.

4. rpm -ivh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm
This will set up your yum repositories to fetch latest rpm’s.

5. [optional - steps 5-8] To add livna repositories (extra packages)
rpm -qa | grep livna

6. if you find something like “livna-release-4-0″, go to step 7, else to step 8

7. rpm -U http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm

8. rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm

9. yum update yum
This is important as the latest yum package is damn faster than the old one. You’ll love the speed!

10. yum upgrade
This will fetch lots of package headers & in the end, you’ll need to say “Y” to start the actual packages download & install. If you want to skip the “y/N” stage, try this
yum -y upgrade

11. Enjoy the coolness!

Corrections/suggestions all welcome as comments.
Thanks
A new FC5 user

[update]

Try to leave the “optional” repositories till the upgrade is complete. This is just to make sure that unecessary deps are not created.
Also, if you get any broken dependencies for packages except (kudzu, initscripts), have a look at http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Upgrading_Red_Hat_Linux_with_yum.html
Related fedoraforum.org thread -> Thread

Run vino-preferences & configure it as per your choice

Then do “vncviewer makuchaku:0″ to access your desktop in rw mode
You can add -viewonly to the above command to make it viewonly.

[update]
oh, forgot, you need to get vnc installed on your machine to use vncviewer
yum install vnc
[/update]

Vim 7 (cvs) can now do tabs, inline function completition… wow!

Function completition in python script

Spellcheck…

Tabs…

I’ll try my hands at Vim7 asap [& that means ASAP]

Pics from Diwaker’s photostream.

A Look at GNOME 2.14

Search & search

Gnome power management

Ekiga (GnomeMeeting)

I’ll be waiting for G2.14… dude!