Please forgive the delay in posting. Preparing for the new (and final) semester, forced me to sacrifice my time to non-blogging work. In fact, I am waiting for a clean reinstall/upgrade of Ubuntu to finish. We will back to our “regular” schedule by Monday.
Tag Archives: Linux
Open Source Palm-Desktop Groupware
I recently discovered the comfort of using groupware, to organize all my communication and email needs. I never used a groupware application before, so maybe I am just realizing the potential of such software. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I commute to university the majority of the time. This means 3-4 hours on the bus, with little to do. Last semester I began intensively using that time to finish homework, edit papers and so on. One of the things I wanted to do is to write emails on my Palm Tungsten E, and send them later. The Palm came with a Windows-only mail client, VersaMail. Not helpful when your main desktop being KDE running on Ubuntu Linux (Kubuntu 6.10). Fortunately that is where Kontact comes in.
Kontact: KDE’s Groupware Offering
Kontact acts as an all-purpose groupware program. I will not discuss the virtues of this program here. It is a serious contender for replacing Microsoft’s Outlook or Novell’s GroupWare. You should check it out yourself. Kontact comes with KPilot, a great program for basic syncing of a Palm. Unfortunately Kubuntu’s version KPilot had bug in it. Fortunately I found a deb from http://ubuntu.lnix.net/edgy/updates/kdepim-proposed/ that fixed my problem.
Migration
First, I needed to migrate my mail and contacts from Mozilla Thunderbird to Kontact. I needed to export my address book in Mozilla to LDIF. Kontact easily imported this. Kontact also comes with a neat feature for importing emails from other clients. A simple wizard, and my Thunderbird emails resided now in Kontact. An hour later of organization, I readied myself for Palm integration.
Palm syncing on Linux can be a chore. Fortunately, Ubuntu 6.10 comes with easy PDA syncing for most Palm PDAs. To my horror, KPilot actually removed contacts from my Palm. After I installed the updated deb for KPilot, this problem also disappeared. Now I all I need was the Palm’s email program integrating with KPilot.
VersaMail versus GNUGetMail
My Tungsten E came with an email client called VersaMail. Unfortunately KPilot’s email plug-in does not use the MultiMail format which VersaMail uses. Not wanting to buy an email client, I searched for a free solution. I stumbled upon gnuGetMail. gnuGetMail is a simple, open source email client and uses the older single account Palm mail format. All I really needed was something to write emails for later sending. gnuGetMail does both sending and receiving of emails.
I recommend both Kontact and gnuGetMail to anyone considering Palm based emailing.
KPilot Bugginess Fixed
Success!
I need to download and install a newer version of kpilot (fortunately in a Ubuntu deb). Now everything works. Except the Palm email, but that I can look at another day.
Do You Really Think I Study???
Many people still believe students study before exams. Right… Some students still believe they should. I, however join the ever-increasing ranks of slackers and non-studiers. That said, I will look over my notes, before taking the exam. My definition of studying… kind of unconventional.
My rationale? If I did zero work the entire semester, I sure am not going to learn anything in a single night. So instead I read over my notes. And do other things.
Today, I foolishly decided would be reinstall-Ubuntu day. Most of the morning and a good part of the afternoon consisted of backing up and reinstalling. I tried installing the newest Kubuntu. Alas, it refused to accept a JFS root directory. I wanted JFS, cause I like a fast, responsive file system. Not like Reisers which is fast and crashes hard. Not like XFS that runs like if every machine was a six-million dollar rack with more RAIDs and CPUs then a centipede has legs. And ext3, thats an ancient system… old but reliable. Still old though. After jousting with Kubuntu Edgy Eft, I popped in my Ubuntu Dapper Drake and decided to go the upgrade route.
So I am sitting right now, 30 minutes into an upgrade, copying back my backed up data, one DVD at a time. When I am done the copying, I will study. Right…
Backup Time Again!
Yes, folks its that time of year again. Backups, backups and even more backups. My system crufted up in the past few months, and I need to reformat, repartition and reinstall Ubuntu Linux again.
So today I am concentrating on getting everything ready for a massive backup. I got a stack of DVDs on my right. I just want to finish organizing my music, throwing out unneeded things and grabbing some copies of my old files.
More updates as I get further.
Why Open Source Projects Make Sense Career Wise
Greetings Earthlings! (OK enough silliness for one day, back into the pocket you go Martian.) Once again I have to bring up the sort of lame excuse of being too busy to blog earlier. Well yes, it was lame too much work. Actually I killed my “1337” Gentoo box doing an update. So I basically installed the new Ubuntu 6.06, and I am in the process of setting things up. More on the new Ubuntu tomorrow.
Today’s rant is why open source projects make sense. At least from a university student’s point of view. Undergrad in CS to be exact. All other information from me will have to be extracted via torture, slyness or greasing of palm. 😉
Back to the topic, I am in the process of finding an internship position for the next 12-16 months. So far my own personal experience has mostly unsuccessful. The interesting part is that for the two interviews I have received, my interviewers were most interested in my open source projects. They glossed over my “work” experience, if you can call it that in my case. University courses were not even mentioned. Nope, the thing that stood out were the two projects I am currently actively involved in. For those in the unawares, I actually have 3 open source projects in the works. While initially I thought that working on these projects would be fun and simply educational, it turns out that they mean more than that.
There are three main reasons why I believe employers are interested. These being experience, portfolio and marketing. When you work on a project you have to not only have a grasp on the technology but also on the subtilties of team relationships, and organization. Any open source project will showcase your performance as a developer and/or project leader. The final product is interesting in itself. A look into your source code will reveal your work ethic, organization, knowledge, talent and creativity. Finally comes marketing, which applies mostly to the employer and sometimes to yourself. The words “open source” currently flow with the hype and buzzwords of the business world. By hiring an open source developer, the company gains a zen and almost messanic reputation of by part of what the business world sees as the future. Personally I think open source means plain old fashioned politeness and embraces the ethics of old (the “new” standard of “Western” ethics is quite dissettling). In some rare cases if the project is successful enough, the product becomes a brand onto itself. Any developer of said project also gains a certain amount of worth and can use this to his or her advantage when looking for work.
Well that is all great and everything but how can one gain these advantages. Simply put start a project for something that you need or want. Treat if it were a real life product to sell not just a “pet” project. This is how many open source companies themselves started out. Show your professionalism throughout the process. Try new things, and over time maybe that project will pay off in hard, cold cash.
Till tomorrow,
Dorian
Finally Peace?
Hehe I hope so. The peace part I mean. Err… I’m getting ahead of myself…
Finished my second exam today, this one being for Programming Languages. Not pleasant, since there was a good degree of Scheme on it. I actually hoped for more of a theory exam but no… mostly Scheme, Prolog, a BNF, and implement pseudo-language question thrown in for flavour. I finished in the expected time, a good chunk of my answers felt weak, so not too happy. None of this means that I will fail the course. So far I have not failed a single assignment or the midterm. In fact I’m expecting a 55-65% mark overall. Nothing to balk at in general. Still I learned alot of what makes a programming language, a language. I learnt about 3-4 new languages: Scheme, Prolog, ML and C++. Overall a pretty good achievement.
On Monday I had my Operating Systems exams like I mentioned. One word says everything about the exam: cakewalk. I got every question, finished a 3hr exam in 1.5 hours, and nearly all my answers were as airtight as… well… think of the most airtight thing… and then take that to the exponent of 100. Oh yeah! I must confess that I am bit of an expert in operating systems, being overexposed to the topic by playing with Gentoo Linux, Minix and reading Andrew Tannenbaum’s Operating Systems books. Yes I read both of them. Anyways I am a bit of a freak in that sense. Come to think of it, many of my classmates consider me to be an expert in a lot of the theoretical-technical part of CS. Being a host for an oversized ego, I neither admit or deny the honour.
Life otherwise has been placed on hold. With one more exam on next Friday, I can finally get back to doing StudentABC work. Since Keith asked me… please, please go visit his site: StudentABC. Its an excellent resource for citations especially for websites. Works near flawlessly for MLA and APA. Heck, I helped do the research and test cases for it. In the near future we will have support for parenthetical citations too. Once I get my lazy butt over there to work on the test cases. And its a totally free service. (Probably should convince Keith to get PayPal though for donations. ;-))
The real progress has come in brainstorming for my novel, Beneath My Icy Cloak. I have come up with a real basic plot, a few characters, and have done most of the research about technology, etc. When I started on the project, I decided to cut out the fantastical “technology” most sci-fi has. I even scrapped all forms of FTL travel. Why? Cause its extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon (read as before the next millenia) and its probably not physically possible. I actually nearly got bogged down on selecting suitable starship drive technology. I finally chose a combination of solar/magnetic sails and nuclear propulsion drives for travel. After some tossing and turning, I decided to keep some warp tech. Yes it helps travel somewhat. But I made it that it is so unpredictable that its mostly used for… other uses. I guess I need a tiny bit of artistic license. Anyways, I have a location, a back story, and now all I need to do is to solidify my skeleton of the story. A select few friends will get the honour of helping me edit it. How long all this will take? I’m not sure. One thing is for sure, I will publish this one. I doubt it will make its way to your local Chapters-Indigo or what-not. But you never now.
Gotta run.
Installing Kubuntu On a New Dell Desktop
Well its been a while… since I last blogged that is. Life has been more or less alright. A number of things happened in between that time so I will spend sometime on each of the major events: installing Linux on a new desktop, impressions of my courses, impressions about Scheme (which sort of relates to my courses), the Datasphere work-study saga, the madness of acquaintances, and general lack of girl friend and major events (hey, I need to bitch about something)
I recently got a new machine, so like any real technophile (or more accurately gadgets-techs-and-other-toys-lover or simply a normal guy) I totally went nuts the day I got it. A few weeks ago I ordered a brand-new spanking Dell Dimension 9150 with a 19″ UltraSharp LCD thrown in. Naturally the morning it arrived I was on a tech-driven high. The poor Puralator guy must of thought I was nuts, bouncing all over the place. But hey, its not everyday is a Christmas equivalent, and the delivery guy basically became a Santa Claus. 😉 A few minutes later of forced calmness, I managed to drag my new toy upstairs and get it setup. The rest of the day was spent either installing stuff, or doing random chores and putting the machine through its paces. I must say that I was impressed with the machine in general, and strangely enough I enjoyed playing around with Windows XP Media Centre which I found to be very well polished and thought out for the most part.
Ater a tiny bit (read as days) playing around with Windows XP Media Centre, I got into installing Linux. All I can say to that is that one I’m a Linux junkie, and second that the target machine is a desktop, hardware issues would be less of an issue. Or so I thought. Fortunately for me I did a bit of research before deciding what kind of a machine to get (and kind of hardware it would contain). Hence the presence of a nVidia card (sorry ATi you maybe Canadian but your support is below par :(), the Intel integrated sound card (I’m not too serious in the music production scene… yet), and the Intel e1000 based network card. This time while having a much more agile machine, I decided against going with Gentoo. Simply I got tired of all the hassle of baby-sitting the system, and dealing with a never-ending stream of updates. So I decided to try out Ubuntu to see what all the fuss was about. Specifically I chose KUbuntu, since I prefer the more polished KDE over over-simplified Gnome. The installation went without a hitch, except for the network card. Aparently I have the latest generation of Intel’s Pro 100/1000 Ethernet cards, and the e1000 driver that comes with most Linux kernels was too old. Intel preceiving this released the source code for an updated e1000 kernel module. Since I was new to Ubuntu and Debian-style distributions in general, so kernel source recompilation was out of the question. I switched back to Gentoo for about two weeks. During that time I found that some compiled and posted the module for the Ubuntu. So I reinstalled Ubuntu, and I have stuck with it since.
My intial feelings about Ubuntu are positive. The distribution packaging system is based in the rock-solid apt build system (which mirrors Gentoo’s Portage), and has a decent number of packages available right of the bat. The hardware detection and setup is very well done, and I appreciate the dbus-hal-ivman automounting functionality (even thought the automatic starting of Kaffeine player when plopped in a DVD is a bit unnerving). The idea of doing sudo for everything that would normally require su-ing in as root is an excellent idea. In a matter of a day I had pretty much everything I needed to run a full scale development box. I even found this neat blogging utility that I am using now called BloGTK. All I need to figure out is a few minor issues such as DVD copying. I hope to get comfortable with compiling kernels under Ubuntu too, so that I can peacifully upgrade to any newer kernel (or slightly tweaked one), and still keep my Ethernet functionality working. Overall, I am greatly surprised how easy it is easy to install and administer a Linux computer nowadays. I think the open source community has gone a long way to making Linux a viable desktop option. I still can remember the fun and games of installing older versions of Mandrake, and SuSE on an older machine and my laptop a few years ago. You want X running on your laptop back then? Good luck. And you want to use your funky-dory nVidia card for 3d accelerated graphics??? Under X??? Dream on. Fortunately those days and experiences maybe numbered. That is all on the topic of new desktops and installing Linux.
Err… remember that I would write about more stuff earlier on? Well I guess I lied. I will continue on later tomorrow. Night.
Putting the Edge Back into My Sword
He ran softly down the tunnel, morningstar sword in hand. The passageway in the caves had begun to twist in a myriad of directions. He stopped to listen for the monster’s footsteps. A few days earlier while exploring the cave system, he had stumbled across an orc patrol. He then smote the first one that got in to this path. Apparently that one was the orchish commander’s lieutentant. Oops. Now there he was the great Adventurer… hunted like a rat by an entire orcish army.
You know those days that you feel like our Adventurer? Well it seems that this month has given me nothing but those kinds of days. Yeah those days. Sort of like perpetual Mondays. 😉
Course work and midterms backed up on me so much, that I had to drop my philosophy course. Did not really like anyways… but I sure hell could you the money. Also I must admit that I have fallen behind in Datasphere work. I was hoping to catch up on that this week, unfortunately I stumbled across my own orchish army. In my case, it was the departure of my laptop’s late chipset. Yup. My chipset of all things. My fan, and HDD are intact. But the machine’s performance has ground to a near P2 halt. Oh, and did I mention that I run modern software applications??? After a number of tests, and reinstalls of my new Linux distribution to no avail. I think I have to “acquire” a new modern system. Unfortunately I have about $100 in my account. So a purchase is out of the question, even off a self-constructed rig. Without the 3D graphics card. Right now I have borrowed my Dad’s laptop. Windows 2000 sucks, and getting the whole system to my liking is a pain in the… neck!
I finally left Gentoo after 1.5 years of continuous usage. I realized that I spend more time configuring my system and hacking then doing school work, house work or even hobbies. Also I don’t have the time or the patience of building a distribution. So hence, enter Ubuntu, or more specifically Kubuntu. The system looks nice, the installation is easy (for a non-RPM system), and is hacker-friendly. I am looking forward to using it, along with setting it up. I hear there a huge variety of packages. So we shall see… I still think Gentoo Linux is the best out of all them. The most flexible, configurable and the nicest package manager. I just don’t have time to do that anymore, besides my configurations often turn out disastrous. And the package release is too fast. But the community is the best I have seen anywhere on the web. Kudos to the Gentoo developers, maintainers, and community for making those 1.5 years the most colourful, exciting and informative years in my Linux experience. However I think I will be more use to you and the OSS community as whole, as a developer. Thanks guys!
I seem to have lost my edge in programming and computer science. I remember being the second best in high school. Some of that elitism continued into university with being a Linux fan, and project manager of my own pet open source projects. Nowadays looking at my mark, and me being in the lower part of the class marks, I feel rather mediocre. In fact if it were not the valiant and determined work on my partner and friend, Daniel D’Alimonte, I would be doing worse. I know that this third year, and that I am in the top elite of CS. However when I am surrounded by such brilliant and talented individuals, a half-talent enthausist looks rather like a drone. Sure from the perspective of a high school student I may seem like a demigod. But I feel puny in my current surroundings. My midterms place me where I am supposed to be. Sorta sucks to finally meet your limit.
Now for more of my unhappiness rant. Dude, I feel so sucky. I am terrible at educational pursuits, as seen above. I don’t excel in art, or any of the other humanities. Social interactions are almost non-existent. Heck even my friend (you seems most unlikely) Rudy as a girlfriend. And supposedly a hot, cute, and almost-“perfect” one at that. I even tried asking out Kat again recently, to go out and do something. She was unfortunately busy with moving. I am not a great worker, in a rule-filled environment I seem out of place, I carry my memory in my PDA (which curiously lost its own… a lot of its own), bad organizational skills, and I can say the say thing about almost anything. I feel most uninspired, and not compelled to work at anything… since I am sooo sucky.
Sigh… I wonder why I even try sometimes. Well I got bored yesterday… and since my crap-box was hogging my wireless card, I did not get ANY school work done. Instead I managed to compose a shorty ditty in Fruity Loops… I hope to use it in my game project for Visual Computing. It will be on my school website, Gluppy Intro.
Well I have to get going. I have a lot to do… OH AND PLEASE WRITE COMMENTS. Most of the time I feel very lonely, it would be nice to know that I am not alone all of the time.
Nightfall, Weariness and Hope
I feel so incredibly tired that I am amazed that I am still able to function enough to be able to write a journal entry. Must of switched over to auto-pilot. Funny. Today was busy, and full of unexpected twists.
Got up this morning, and rushed to get ready to school. Meanwhile my Mom and brother were preparing for another day out. I had just enough time to stuff my backpack, make my brother breakfast, make myself lunch, copy a CD, and few small computer fixes before launching out of the house for my first class. No hope for a ride back, but oh well I have the whole day to work.
A beautiful, warm day, but I had to dress warmly as my university believes that the temperature most conducive for learning is the breeding temperature of Emperor penguins. The lectures were hard to sit through as usual. I tried to pay attention but I still managed to copy two more CDs that I owed Mom. Sorry Professor Sills, and Katz, I only have a maximum attention span of 45 minutes. So I learned a bit in Requirements Engineering and almost nothing in Symbolic Logic. However, I managed also to try out some tricks with my Palm. I seems that I am making progress in connecting with my Linux-only laptop. But I would really have to work on it. I don’t have time for that now. Too much other things to get setup and running.
Registered with AccessAbility, and now I have the letters for my professors. In the meantime however, I received a nasty shock. My laptop refused to start up! I believe it had overheated later. But at the time being I was panicking (inside of course, always cool on the outside). A while later I turned it on… everything worked. Except that the power light had changed positions with the floppy/CD light. Confusing to no end. Now it works… lights right and all… Sometimes I am wondering if I am not dealing with a sentient being…
By the time I reached databases classes I was so exhausted that I was in my famous ranting mode. Fortunately I had nothing to talk about, but still I started falling asleep in class. And I sat at the front, not a good thing. However, I regained my senses half-way through and could answer questions, and ask for clarification. I think I understand this databases stuff. I really hope I do. Its pretty cool, once it all clicks into place. Danny was thoughtful to bring a DVD with ISOs for the course software (all legit, thanks for the lenient license Microsoft!). I got it most copied on to my system except for Visual Studio .Net 2003 Prerequirements and XP Pro. Now if only I can get VMWare Workstation to work on my laptop, we would be cruising.
I got back home by bus. Chilling and listening to music helped to kill the time, and I got off with high spirits. The short walk home I enjoyed throughly. Soft silent warm night air breezing around me, cooling me down but not too considerably. I enjoyed it. Life is good. There is a good chance I will be working for Dr. Graham in the Psychology labs… paid hacking. 😉 And I signed up for PEY too. OK I now post, and reboot. Hope this kernel fixes the framebuffer issue.