Tuesday, June 03, 2008
feedego screencast
Feedego: Howto Screencast from Karim on Vimeo.
A news site that shows sites based on your likes/dislikes. Built on Google App Engine.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Is the linux desktop ready?
Checkout the desktop of chief economist at Google. That looks like Ubuntu to me.
The article this was linked to is "The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine".
The article this was linked to is "The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine".
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Google Accounts scares me!
Google accounts has been scaring me of late. Its basically the account to which all your google stuff is linked. Services such as Adsense, Gmail, Google reader, GTalk, Search History, and PicasaWeb are a few I use. New services like feedego are using Google Accounts to authenticate.
A friend of mine recently had his account broken into, and a personal chat was broadcast via his gmail account to a close group of friends. He called me asking if I could help. The email was sent via Gmail, mostly to people on Gmail. I can't get any useful information from IP's that are internal to Gmail (10.x.x.x addresses). Their is no account history which could show you login or logout times or locations. We couldn't tell if my friend had forgotten to log out of a machine. Had his password been compromised? Was one of his machines compromised?
After reading stories such as this and this, I can't believe that Google doesn't provide any more information for your account. Scary.
BTW, feedego seems like a promising service. Its built on Google App Engine. Try it out.
A friend of mine recently had his account broken into, and a personal chat was broadcast via his gmail account to a close group of friends. He called me asking if I could help. The email was sent via Gmail, mostly to people on Gmail. I can't get any useful information from IP's that are internal to Gmail (10.x.x.x addresses). Their is no account history which could show you login or logout times or locations. We couldn't tell if my friend had forgotten to log out of a machine. Had his password been compromised? Was one of his machines compromised?
After reading stories such as this and this, I can't believe that Google doesn't provide any more information for your account. Scary.
BTW, feedego seems like a promising service. Its built on Google App Engine. Try it out.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Official Google Mac Blog: Mac OS X 10.5.3: sync Google Contacts
Official Google Mac Blog: Mac OS X 10.5.3: sync Google Contacts:
"The Address Book application in Mac OS X 10.5.3 now lets iPhone users sync their Address Book with Google Contacts. To try it, go to the Address Book menu, choose Preferences, and then check Synchronize with Google. It’ll ask for your Google account and password, then automatically update your contacts every time you sync your iPhone."
Looks like the ability only exists for people with iPhones. I don't have an option to sync with Google and I don't have an iPhone. At least I learned that you can sync with Yahoo/Exchange (Address Book -> Preferences).
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Blame twitter...
Steve Gillmor has this article up on techcrunch titled "Blame Friendfeed".
In it he says:
What an unfair and provocative thing to say!
As a user, I joined friendfeed for the following reasons:
1. Aggregate all my RSS feeds (del.icio.us, blog, flickr and so on) in one place
2. To join in conversation around my RSS feeds and other peoples aggregated feeds
Do you see twitter in their above? In fact, twitter got in the way of me achieving the two items above. My first use for the friendfeed hide function was to hide all the twitter stuff. Their are a lot of people who like twitter and use it, but I'm just not one of them. My use of twitter is very limited, as opposed to my use of friendfeed. And friendfeed does a really good job of the two things I outlined above.
I'm just really surprised that someone like Steve Gillmor would write a rant as an opinionated user of twitter, and have techcrunch publish it. I have nothing to do with either service (twitter or friendfeed). Just like Steve, I'm an opinionated user (but of friendfeed) and this is my unresearched rant. Maybe this should go up on techcrunch too.
In it he says:
"FriendFeed is a parasite service built on the back of Twitter"
What an unfair and provocative thing to say!
As a user, I joined friendfeed for the following reasons:
1. Aggregate all my RSS feeds (del.icio.us, blog, flickr and so on) in one place
2. To join in conversation around my RSS feeds and other peoples aggregated feeds
Do you see twitter in their above? In fact, twitter got in the way of me achieving the two items above. My first use for the friendfeed hide function was to hide all the twitter stuff. Their are a lot of people who like twitter and use it, but I'm just not one of them. My use of twitter is very limited, as opposed to my use of friendfeed. And friendfeed does a really good job of the two things I outlined above.
I'm just really surprised that someone like Steve Gillmor would write a rant as an opinionated user of twitter, and have techcrunch publish it. I have nothing to do with either service (twitter or friendfeed). Just like Steve, I'm an opinionated user (but of friendfeed) and this is my unresearched rant. Maybe this should go up on techcrunch too.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Video: Robert Scoble at mediabistro circus
via mashable
I hadn't realized how interesting snackr is, until I saw it running in the background on Scobles desktop. Its installed now.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
searching for a delicious client for windows...
I've been searching for a del.icio.us client for windows, and its been driving me crazy!
I download one client, it requires dotnet framework 2, I download another its requires version 1.somethingortheother! What is Microsoft thinking? Why has it become so hard to run windows applications. Who thought this was a good idea for developing desktop applications?
Heck programming applications in Python is easier. At least you can use py2exe to create an executable that will work on any windows!
I download one client, it requires dotnet framework 2, I download another its requires version 1.somethingortheother! What is Microsoft thinking? Why has it become so hard to run windows applications. Who thought this was a good idea for developing desktop applications?
Heck programming applications in Python is easier. At least you can use py2exe to create an executable that will work on any windows!
Thursday, May 15, 2008
On google doctype
John Resig does a nice article on Google Doctype.
Update: Here is video of Mark Pilgrim on Google Doctype:
Update: Here is video of Mark Pilgrim on Google Doctype:
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Python and IDE's
Jonathan Ellis has a short run down of Utah Python User group where they talked about IDE's and Python.
He points to a nice write up of the Emacs and Python presentation here.
The write up for the *other* editor is here. :->
He points to a nice write up of the Emacs and Python presentation here.
The write up for the *other* editor is here. :->
Sunday, May 11, 2008
failed harddrives
I'm seeing more and more hard drive failures all around. I'm hearing clicking noises from one of my hard drives too. Thankfully I have everything replicated on multiple machines so I don't have to go running to backup.
It was amusing to see two tweets back to back about hard drive failures:
Anybody else seeing hard drive problems? Is it the season for hard drive FAIL?
It was amusing to see two tweets back to back about hard drive failures:
Anybody else seeing hard drive problems? Is it the season for hard drive FAIL?
Python and Unicode
Good presentation here on Python and Unicode.
The most important slide for me says:
The most important slide for me says:
s.decode(encoding)
* <type 'str'> to <type 'unicode'>
u.encode(encoding)
* <type 'unicode'> to <type 'str'>
Cocoahead videos
Debugging with Xcode
Two cool videos from cocoahead. Debugging with Xcode embedded above, and UI Design Essentials which can be downloaded from Scott Stevenson's site.
via theocacao.com
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Mozilla, Acid3 and Mark
I'd been waiting for someone more influential than me to comment on the Acid3 test situation. Looks like Mark Pilgrim stepped up...
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
twhirl memory usage
I've had twhirl running for a while, and the twhirl memory usage is really growing:
Restarting the application brings the memory usage down:
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
twhirl adds friendfeed support
I missed this somehow, but twhirl integrates support for friendfeed:
I like twhirl, it seems more stable than alertthingy for now.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
hardy
Just finished installing hardy heron, and the first thing I notice is Firefox 3 Beta 5 as the default browser.
Servers are under quite a load, so apt-get install build-essential is stuck at 0%.
Servers are under quite a load, so apt-get install build-essential is stuck at 0%.
firefox 3 download status
I've been downloading ubuntu all morning, and I like the way firefox 3 (beta5) status bar shows download status:
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
I just liked this tweet by Loic so much, I just copied and tweeted the same:
Also, this comment by Robert pissed me off...
Uhhh... yeah... way to go Robert. Dismiss millions of world wide developers developing great quality software. Software that powers most web servers today.
I could go on forever...
@Scobleizer I really can't find a reason why I should care about Mesh. I am just ignoring it totally :) good night
Also, this comment by Robert pissed me off...
Linux support? What’s that?
Uhhh... yeah... way to go Robert. Dismiss millions of world wide developers developing great quality software. Software that powers most web servers today.
I could go on forever...
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Y Combinator Startup School
Watch live video from HackerTV on Justin.tv
via techcrunch
Their are more videos here with various other talks that didn't show up for me in the video above.
Here is David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals and creator of the Ruby on Rails framework.
Watch live video from HackerTV on Justin.tv
Here is Peter Norvig who is Director of Research at Google.
Watch live video from HackerTV on Justin.tv
Friday, April 18, 2008
feeds, friends and echo
Looks like friendfeed is getting a lot of me too copies. Their is the german version called freundefeed reviewed by techcrunch.
If you have too many social newtorking aggregators (such as friendfeed and socialthing) you can use friendfeedfeed to aggregate them all.
Oh you want to see what the famous memes on friendfeed are? You could probably use almostfamous.
You want more memestuff... try readburner. Heck, if you want to really follow the echo, you must read techmeme, tailrank, rssmeme and readburner. Make sure to rinse and repeat.
Want even more of the same, try meme13. Ok so meme13 was supposed to get feeds that aren't that popular from the techmeme leaderboard, but I'm sure you're already subscribed to these sites, and are dutifully sharing them on google reader, or friendfeed or heck even facebook now. More of the same stories, Yay!
Make sure you follow a lot of people on twitter. You'll get a lot of pointers to much the same articles from all your loyal friends on twitter.
Even companies are echoing. AOL seems to want to echo Yahoo, unless I'm missing something.
Heck even this blog post of mine is an echo of stories about the blogosphere as an echo chamber which started here.
/sarcasm
:->
If you have too many social newtorking aggregators (such as friendfeed and socialthing) you can use friendfeedfeed to aggregate them all.
Oh you want to see what the famous memes on friendfeed are? You could probably use almostfamous.
You want more memestuff... try readburner. Heck, if you want to really follow the echo, you must read techmeme, tailrank, rssmeme and readburner. Make sure to rinse and repeat.
Want even more of the same, try meme13. Ok so meme13 was supposed to get feeds that aren't that popular from the techmeme leaderboard, but I'm sure you're already subscribed to these sites, and are dutifully sharing them on google reader, or friendfeed or heck even facebook now. More of the same stories, Yay!
Make sure you follow a lot of people on twitter. You'll get a lot of pointers to much the same articles from all your loyal friends on twitter.
Even companies are echoing. AOL seems to want to echo Yahoo, unless I'm missing something.
Heck even this blog post of mine is an echo of stories about the blogosphere as an echo chamber which started here.
/sarcasm
:->
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Scoble talks tech with Myspace CTO
via Fastcompany.tv
Robert talks with Aber Whitcomb, CTO of Myspace who talks about their data centers amongst other things. Really interesting to see how large websites such as myspace.com are setup.
I messaged Robert that I was missing technical content in his recent videos and he pointed me to this video. This is exactly what I was looking for. Great video Robert, I'd like more! :)
Spotlight on FOSS show
Noah Gift and Jeremy Jones have put together a show that will highlight a FOSS project in each show. You can read more about it here, or watch their first episode here.
Reading about how they put the show together is an interesting as the podcast itself so you might want to read the article first. Their first interview is with Mark Shuttleworth, creator of Ubuntu.
Reading about how they put the show together is an interesting as the podcast itself so you might want to read the article first. Their first interview is with Mark Shuttleworth, creator of Ubuntu.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Adobe AIR for linux Alpha
I've been very impressed with Adobe AIR, mostly because of the two applications: twhirl and alertthingy. Also its really easy to get AIR applications installed on Windows and Mac OS X.
The installation is quite manual so far in Linux. First go to Adobe labs and download the alpha release.
Run the commands in the above image to install the runtime. Once installed go to twhirls website and download twhirl.
I clicked on the "Open with Adobe AIR Installer", and from their AIR handled the installation prompting for a few options. The applications got added to the desktop, but didn't show up in the KDE Menu. Once started their are some display issues as you can see below:
I guess the black area around the window is where the shadow for the window should be.
Not as easy to install and get going as in Windows/OS X but the experience is not that bad at all.
The installation is quite manual so far in Linux. First go to Adobe labs and download the alpha release.
Run the commands in the above image to install the runtime. Once installed go to twhirls website and download twhirl.
I clicked on the "Open with Adobe AIR Installer", and from their AIR handled the installation prompting for a few options. The applications got added to the desktop, but didn't show up in the KDE Menu. Once started their are some display issues as you can see below:
I guess the black area around the window is where the shadow for the window should be.
Not as easy to install and get going as in Windows/OS X but the experience is not that bad at all.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
kubuntu-kde4 problems
The alpha for kubuntu-kde4 refused to boot on the machine I mentioned in my last post, and the cd I burnt the beta release on was bad.
I successfully installed the kubuntu beta in virtualbox, and kde4 is beautiful. The first thing I did was "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade; reboot". This installed a bunch of packages, and the system rebooted. I login, and their is no kde panel at the bottom of the screen. Turns out klauncher segfaults.
Since I haven't got the beta to install on the desktop yet, I'm not sure if the segfault is a result of the virtual machine, virtual machine additions, or a problem with the kubuntu beta.
Update: Ok this combination seems to have worked for me. Install OS, do "apt-get update/upgrade", reboot. Install virtual machine additions, and then follow instructions on the following page to get the video to a resolution greater than 800x600.
I successfully installed the kubuntu beta in virtualbox, and kde4 is beautiful. The first thing I did was "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade; reboot". This installed a bunch of packages, and the system rebooted. I login, and their is no kde panel at the bottom of the screen. Turns out klauncher segfaults.
Since I haven't got the beta to install on the desktop yet, I'm not sure if the segfault is a result of the virtual machine, virtual machine additions, or a problem with the kubuntu beta.
Update: Ok this combination seems to have worked for me. Install OS, do "apt-get update/upgrade", reboot. Install virtual machine additions, and then follow instructions on the following page to get the video to a resolution greater than 800x600.
SP1 improves Vista driver support?
I have an old old desktop machine that I use for test purposes. I generally use it to test software in Ubuntu before I move things to my Ubuntu server. I've also tried Vista on it since Vista RC days. Vista was a problem on this machine. The network card (a 3com 3c905b card) didn't have drivers. The sound card (Creative SBLive) didn't have drivers. Older drivers wouldn't work on the machine.
Recently I decided to try Windows Server 2008 on it. As usual the network card wouldn't work after the OS install. However, older drivers for the network card got installed. After running Server 2008 for a month, I had no problems with this machine running as a file server. Windows Vista SP1 uses the same kernel as Windows Server 2008.
I figured that if the old driver worked in Windows Server 2008 it would work in Windows Vista SP1. I installed Vista SP1 on the machine today, and what do you know it worked. I had Windows XP drivers for the 3com card on a USB key, which got picked up without a problem. And not only that, Vista even picked up drivers for SBLive online (after complaining that the card was unsupported).
The machine is a 1Ghz, 512MB Ram system, and the system seems quite snappy. Ofcourse I don't have that many applications installed on it yet. Who knows how long Vista will last on the machine. Its a test system after all and Hardy is right around the corner! :)
Recently I decided to try Windows Server 2008 on it. As usual the network card wouldn't work after the OS install. However, older drivers for the network card got installed. After running Server 2008 for a month, I had no problems with this machine running as a file server. Windows Vista SP1 uses the same kernel as Windows Server 2008.
"An update to the Windows kernel to bring the Vista kernel (version 6.0) up to date with the version in Windows Server 2008 (version 6.1)."
I figured that if the old driver worked in Windows Server 2008 it would work in Windows Vista SP1. I installed Vista SP1 on the machine today, and what do you know it worked. I had Windows XP drivers for the 3com card on a USB key, which got picked up without a problem. And not only that, Vista even picked up drivers for SBLive online (after complaining that the card was unsupported).
The machine is a 1Ghz, 512MB Ram system, and the system seems quite snappy. Ofcourse I don't have that many applications installed on it yet. Who knows how long Vista will last on the machine. Its a test system after all and Hardy is right around the corner! :)
friend feed client - alertthingy.com
A new friend feed client called alertthingy is out. I had a little problem going online, I think the username is case sensitive.
I love the ease with which Adobe AIR applications can be installed. The two apps I have running right now are twhirl, and now alert thingy. Their is an "install now" button on the web site, which you click. Go through the wizards, and the application is installed. Nice.
Too many places to post though. Their is myblog/marsedit, twitter/twhirl, and friendfeed/alertthingy. Where do I post.
Thats one less tab in my browser.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Watching hak5
Watching hak5live with Hak5Darren (from the right), Jenn Cutter, Hak5matt and Hak5Paul setup for their live show at ustream.
Friday, April 11, 2008
businessweek on windows 7
Reading this business week article, I came across this line:
Now you know why Windows Vista has so many problems. Its kernel-less!
Windows 7 is going to be kernel-based, so at least it will boot! :)
While Microsoft struggles to bring a kernel-based "Windows 7" to market in 2010 ...
Now you know why Windows Vista has so many problems. Its kernel-less!
Windows 7 is going to be kernel-based, so at least it will boot! :)
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Javascript in SG1
Ajaxian has this post where they show SG1 using Javascript.
Interesting to see that JS1 is used in the future ;)
SG1 is supposed to be current time, not the future. :)
via Dion Almaer
Some notes on Google App Engine
The Administration console doc notes that if you have a Google Apps account, you need to go the following URL:
http://appengine.google.com/a/your-domain.com
Please replace the relevant parts of the above URL.
It also notes that you can upload your apps using appcfg.py in the SDK.
Speaking of the SDK, the app engine SDK includes a web server that simulates the app engine python environment. More here.
The python runtime is restricted, which is why you should test your code with the app engine SDK. Some modules such as marshal, imp, ftplib, select, socket are empty. More here.
Logging is allowed, and can be viewed in the Administration console.
Google App Engine looks to be tweaked for running web applications only. Application code only runs in response to a web request. This is unlike Amazon EC2 where you can build/upload an image for data processing. If a request takes too long (this is vague, it says more than a few seconds) its terminated and the server returns an error code. Using the Datastore, you have 500 MB of persistent storage space. You also have bandwidth for about 5 million page views.
Python extensions in C are not supported.
During the preview period you can register up to 3 applications.
Currently a query is limited to a 1000 results.
Here is the official Google video on the release:
Monday, April 07, 2008
Google App Engine released
Google released google app engine today.
Sign Up (It says its limited and asks you to sign up. I did, and I just got an invite to start using Google App Engine :)
Here are Scobles videos of the announcement:
(They demo creating an application, plus Python creator Guido speaks)
I haven't had a chance to read the documentation as I was having problems getting to it. I tried signing up for the service
, but its limited right now, but you can download the SDK to start getting ready. You need to know Python (which isn't a problem, I do most of my stuff in Python anyways :). The SDK is licensed under the Apache license as you can see above. Their are version for Windows, OS X, and Linux.
The readme in the SDK says you have to have Python installed. Once the SDK is installed you can start the dev_appserver in a command prompt:
Here is the simple guest book sample application running. The guest book looks like a Python WSGI application (at first glance)that gets run on port 8080.
Their are more application you can download from the Application Gallery.
Update: I just got an invite to start creating applications:
Update 2:
I have some more notes from the docs here.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Hak5 releases Season 3 Episode 9
Get more options for download (mp4, Xvid, wmv) and show notes here.
They cover Yahoo Pipes, Powershell GUI and an open source forensics toolkit called Helix.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
friendfeed and twitter
I login to friendfeed and I see this:
Thats 67 tweets from Scoble. When you click on the "65 more", it expands to about 25 of his tweets. I guess thats what friendfeed limits to. Its not like everybody is going to be replying to tweets from thousands of people, so they'll limit it to 25.
Update: Robert says he is following 16000 people on twitter. Insane!
Thats 67 tweets from Scoble. When you click on the "65 more", it expands to about 25 of his tweets. I guess thats what friendfeed limits to. Its not like everybody is going to be replying to tweets from thousands of people, so they'll limit it to 25.
Update: Robert says he is following 16000 people on twitter. Insane!
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Browsers and Acid3
Two browsers are saying they have reached Acid3 100/100 today:
Webkit (the Safari browser engine)
WinGogi (Opera internal development build)
That is a screenshot of the webkit nightly running Acid3 on my machine.
Update: So far so good. The webkit nightly works fine on most of the common sites I visit. I tried it with hotmail, but it falls back to its lite version, which it did with the stable safari version as well. Gmail/Google docs work great so far on Safari, even the drop down menu's added recently to Google docs.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Safari on Windows
Anybody else notice that the fonts in safari look really great on Windows Vista. Not sure if this is a change in Safari 3.1 or if it was their before, but I really like the display. Sometimes the fonts look better than they do in OS X!
The double click on tab bar to open a new tab feature doesn't seem that useful though. I usually have so many tabs open that their isn't any space where I could double click.
Update: Their is this brouhaha over Apple pushing Safari via Apple Updates. I think Tom Krazit says it best.
If you don't want Safari, don't click "install."
Please read before you click!
Asa Dotzler talks about trust:
It really is wrong to make cause for users to mistrust, or even worse, to distrust, software update systems.
I disagree. As a security conscious systems administrator, and X-files fan I say "Trust No One!".
Firefox 3 beta is stable
I had been holding out on installing Firefox 3 beta on any thing but a virtual machine for testing. In the past, with version 2, I had run beta's and it had been my experience that upgrading from beta to the actual releases left things a bit unstable. Perhaps the profile had changes that caused random crashes, but it was irritating enough that I stayed away. Reading crunchgear's article might just change my mind though:
Firefox 3 won’t be out of beta until the end of June but Mozilla told Reuters yesterday that anyone can go ahead and download the most recent version and run it without worrying too much. It’s now stable enough for everyone, not just developers.
And I really want to try out the new mac theme (windows/linux themes seem boring comparatively). And I don't think I can wait till the end of June!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Codebreakers
A two-part documentary, The Codebreakers was aired on BBC World TV during May 2006. It investigates how poor countries are using FOSS applications for development, and includes stories and interviews from around the world. Available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. See http://www.apdip.net/news/fossdoc for more infomation
via Google Video
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Get A Bigger Screen
Get A Bigger Screen : Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin:
"‘Hey, I just wanted to let you know that your web site doesn’t look right on an 800×600 screen.’
‘You should get a bigger screen,’ I reply."
I wonder if that is a valid reply what with the proliferation of the Asus EEE PC/Nokia N800/Samsung Q1 type systems that have 800×480 pixels.
friendfeed
Scoble asks if friendfeed is a techmeme killer or the google reader killer?
I still like techmeme, but I moved of google reader a while back... I like river of news style feed reading, and I can use a combination of http://planetplanet.org and friendfeed for that. It takes too long to read my feeds if I am using Google Reader. And then you can star items for later reading and all of a sudden its not fun anymore its a chore. Let the stuff flow in a river and you catch only part of the river when you have time.
The reason friendfeed got my attention is that I can follow all the various RSS feeds generated by people. For instance, Scoble posts in so many different places. He has his Google Reader Shared Items, his blog, twitter and flickr amongst others. It gives me one place where I can view all this content. And I can do this for a number of people. And they can do the same for me. I don't have to go hunting for all these various feeds that I want to read / follow.
The one change through friendfeed is that I'm not subscribed to anybodies twitter feed in my feed reader.
I still like techmeme, but I moved of google reader a while back... I like river of news style feed reading, and I can use a combination of http://planetplanet.org and friendfeed for that. It takes too long to read my feeds if I am using Google Reader. And then you can star items for later reading and all of a sudden its not fun anymore its a chore. Let the stuff flow in a river and you catch only part of the river when you have time.
The reason friendfeed got my attention is that I can follow all the various RSS feeds generated by people. For instance, Scoble posts in so many different places. He has his Google Reader Shared Items, his blog, twitter and flickr amongst others. It gives me one place where I can view all this content. And I can do this for a number of people. And they can do the same for me. I don't have to go hunting for all these various feeds that I want to read / follow.
The one change through friendfeed is that I'm not subscribed to anybodies twitter feed in my feed reader.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Haiku OS makes it as a Google Summer of Code project
Haiku OS is a rewrite of BeOS R5 as an open source project. I've been watching the project for years as it evolves. They are now participating in Google Summer of Code. If you are a student you might be able to help the Haiku guys out. You can check out the List of GSoC Ideas here.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Cloning Virtualbox VM in OS X
It seems cloning a virtual machine is not as simple as copying the .vdi (virtual disk). Once I had an OS installed, I wanted to create duplicate VMs without actually having to install the OS again. Virtualbox specifies a unique identifier to each virtual disk so you have to use their command line cloning tool to create a clone.
Go to the directory where you virtual disk resides. In my case it was $HOME/Library/VirtualBox/VDI.
Once their you can clone the vdi by issuing the command VBoxManage clonevdi original.vdi clone.vdi. You should see output similar to this:
[ 12:18 PM Sun Mar 16 ] [Session: ttys001 VDI]
==> VBoxManage clonevdi Vista.vdi Vista-Clone-1.vdi
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1.5.51
(C) 2005-2008 innotek GmbH
All rights reserved.
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Once the disk clone is made, create a new virtual machine, and assign it the cloned image.
Go to the directory where you virtual disk resides. In my case it was $HOME/Library/VirtualBox/VDI.
Once their you can clone the vdi by issuing the command VBoxManage clonevdi original.vdi clone.vdi. You should see output similar to this:
[ 12:18 PM Sun Mar 16 ] [Session: ttys001 VDI]
==> VBoxManage clonevdi Vista.vdi Vista-Clone-1.vdi
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1.5.51
(C) 2005-2008 innotek GmbH
All rights reserved.
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Once the disk clone is made, create a new virtual machine, and assign it the cloned image.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
how I use py2exe
Just documenting this for myself to use later.
I have activestate activepython 2.5.1 installed. Copy the setup.py to the folder with the .py file. The contents of the setup.py are simply:
1 from distutils.core import setup
2 import py2exe
3
4 setup(console=['yourfile.py'])
Run "python setup.py py2exe". Two folders will be created:
1. Build
2. dist
dist should have your .exe and all the required dlls.
Update: Forgot to mention that this is after you download and install py2exe.
I have activestate activepython 2.5.1 installed. Copy the setup.py to the folder with the .py file. The contents of the setup.py are simply:
1 from distutils.core import setup
2 import py2exe
3
4 setup(console=['yourfile.py'])
Run "python setup.py py2exe". Two folders will be created:
1. Build
2. dist
dist should have your .exe and all the required dlls.
Update: Forgot to mention that this is after you download and install py2exe.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Interesting Game
"You know what I really want? I want a web experience like the soon-to-launch game Fez. Check out this video, it gets particularly interesting at :30."
via RWW
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Codepad
Codepad is an interesting site. It gives you the ability to post code in a text box, have the code run, and displays the code/output in return. It gives you a convenient URL you can point to later.
Here is a hello world program I wrote in C.
Here is a Python helloworld.
I found out about codepad from the authors post where he mentions how he was having problems scaling the site, and how he solved it using Amazon EC2.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Browsers
Their are a bunch of new/beta web browsers out that I wanted to try. I setup a virtual machine to test these out. I've just installed them so these are just things I noticed starting out.
IE8beta is out and it looks just like IE7. Their is a button that allows you to emulate IE7 mode. Also while downloading the firefox 3 beta 3 I noticed that the download dialog had an additional note that the download was checked by the Microsoft Safety Filter. Their were some rendering problems with one of the large pages I viewed but I guess that is to be expected with beta software.
I also downloaded and installed Firefox 3 beta3 which has a new theme for windows that I noticed. Not sure if I care too much for the new theme. It will be interesting to see the firefox theme for OS X though. One cool feature that I can already appreciate with firefox is the ability to
save open tabs when you quit. Their were extensions that let you do that, but this is built in functionality so one less extension to go searching for.
Flock has released version 1.1 that I downloaded though the initial interface is the same. I've only just installed these browsers, and still have to use them to tell if their are any major differences.
Update: Mozilla labs also has some new Prism stuff that I've installed on Firefox3 beta. I like prism because it lets you isolate some websites as certain applications. Gmail, Facebook amongst others are good examples of sites that I'd like to run with prism rather than as a tab in a browser. The new Firefox3 extension makes it really easy to create an application out of GMail and facebook.
Vista x64
I installed Windows Vista x64 on my XPS 1330 and the install went well. I see their are no drivers for the finger print reader, or for the touchpad. The touchpad is a little hyper sensitive and the only difference from my previous Vista x86 install is the missing synaptic touchpad software. Its quite irritating when typing, focus shifts to different points when you are typing.
IPhone SDK
Just started downloading the iPhone SDK. I don't have an iPhone, but just thought it might be fun to play around with the SDK since its free. Surprised by the size of the download which is 2.10 GB in size. Apple seems to have a lot of documentation and videos to get you started when you first register for the SDK.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Playing with Google Sites
Woke up to find Google Sites has been released for Google apps. Logging in to Google apps I couldn't find where I can start using Google Sites. Turns out you have to add the service from a link right above your existing services. My existing services were start page, chat, web pages, email, calender. I had two more services that I could add. Google Docs and Google sites.
I just had a few minutes to play, looks like a nice wiki tool for your site. You'll find more information here.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Vsp1cln.exe - Vista SP1 File Removal Tool
I've been running Vista SP1 for the past few days, and the system is quite stable. It was time to make Vista SP1 permanent on this machine. I had 45.6 GB free before running the above tool. Vsp1cln.exe is described as:
Vsp1cln.exe is an optional tool that you can run after you install SP1. This tool removes older versions of components that have been updated in SP1, which are stored during the installation in case you need to uninstall SP1 later. Saving these older components increases the amount of disk space that is used. Typically, you should run Vsp1cln.exe if you want to reclaim this disk space after applying SP1 and if you will not need to uninstall SP1. Note, however, that you cannot uninstall SP1 after you run this tool.
UAC asks for permission when running the tool, and a command prompt pops up asking if you want to make SP1 permanent. After the tool had run on my machine, disk space went from 45.6 GB to 47.3 GB. If you're sure you are going to be keeping SP1 this might be a worth while tool to run.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Slashdot or how we will do anything to get clicks...
How in the world does:
"Microsoft has stopped automatically distributing a prerequisite piece of software for Vista Service Pack 1" (emphasis is mine)
Translate to:
"news.com reports that Microsoft is withdrawing SP1 for Vista."
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Windows Web Server 2008 and Powershell
Powershell is included as part of Windows Web Server 2008, however it wasn't installed on my machine by default. I had the "Initial Configuration tasks" window open where I chose the "Add Features" option. You can also go to start, search for "Server Manager" and then choose "Add Features". Select Windows Powershell and install it. And thats it. It doesn't ask for your DVD or anything.
Activation
While trying to activate Windows Web Server 2008, I kept getting an error "DNS name does not exist".
From this site, I found re-entering your product key, and then activating fixes the problem, and activates Windows.
From this site, I found re-entering your product key, and then activating fixes the problem, and activates Windows.
Playing with Windows Server 2008
I have an ancient machine, a beige box inherited long ago from a departing roommate. Its a 1Ghz machine with 512MB of Ram that I use for testing things. Ubuntu runs pretty stable on it, Windows Vista installs, but their are no drivers for the network card. Its a 3com 3c905b card, and I've tried installing some old drivers that I found online. In Vista the drivers install, but the network card fails to function with those old drivers. Windows Server 2003 works fine on the machine though.
Windows Server 2008 Web Edition installs on the machine, however like Vista, the network card has no drivers. I tried the old drivers and unlike with Vista, they work. I'm quite impressed with the performance of the operating system. Its quite fast, I can tell no differece between Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. I haven't done much with it yet though. Its just sitting their serving files for now.
Update: Just in case you're wondering why the screenshot shows Service Pack 1, like I was, here is a probable explanation.
virtualbox
I installed the new beta of virtual box for OS X and installed Vista on it for a test. It is quite stable itself, but OS X gets a little unstable. Its the first time I saw OS X freeze up. This happens when removing an external monitor I had attached to the macbook pro. At first I thought it was freezing up completely. However, when playing a video from a DVD, the audio kept playing and only the display seemed to freeze up. I guess the display driver has problems.
Another weird problem is that firefox fails to exit cleanly after I running virtualbox. I have to "force quit".
Other than that, the virtual machine itself is quite stable. Its still beta and I hope they will have these issues cleared soon.
Another weird problem is that firefox fails to exit cleanly after I running virtualbox. I have to "force quit".
Other than that, the virtual machine itself is quite stable. Its still beta and I hope they will have these issues cleared soon.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Windows right click option for "Open in Emacs"
Warning: Be careful when editing the registry!
This article shows you how to add an entry in the right click menu to "Open in Notepad". Its quite easy to change that for emacs. Just change the notepad.exe %1 to:
C:\Program Files\emacs\bin\runemacs.exe "%1" and that should work.
Their is one problem with this. Each time you do this, a new emacs window will open. I'm sure their is a way to not let that happen, I just haven't had time to deal with it on windows yet.
via Lifehacker
This article shows you how to add an entry in the right click menu to "Open in Notepad". Its quite easy to change that for emacs. Just change the notepad.exe %1 to:
C:\Program Files\emacs\bin\runemacs.exe "%1" and that should work.
Their is one problem with this. Each time you do this, a new emacs window will open. I'm sure their is a way to not let that happen, I just haven't had time to deal with it on windows yet.
via Lifehacker
ubuntu gutsy on my XPS 1330
I bought a 1330 before the 1330n (ubuntu version) came out. Which means my system has an Intel 4965 AGN card. I was worried this might not work in Ubuntu, but actually it works out of the box. However, I am connecting to a "G" network, not "N". Don't know if "N" will work.
Skype 2.0 beta video works, but the builtin internal mic has problems. Following the instructions from Dell Wiki I was able to get the mic working. However, the volume on the mic is pretty low. Opening up alsamixer and playing with the "Digital" and "Capture" volumes fixed the problem for me. Now I have everything I need working on the machine! :)
Skype 2.0 beta video works, but the builtin internal mic has problems. Following the instructions from Dell Wiki I was able to get the mic working. However, the volume on the mic is pretty low. Opening up alsamixer and playing with the "Digital" and "Capture" volumes fixed the problem for me. Now I have everything I need working on the machine! :)
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Ubuntu 7.10 on the XPS M1330, Ubuntu Coming to Customers in Spain - Direct2Dell
Ubuntu 7.10 on the XPS M1330, Ubuntu Coming to Customers in Spain - Direct2Dell:
"Now Ubuntu 7.10 is making it's way to our XPS 1330 laptop and Dell will begin offering Ubuntu in Spain.
Starting today, customers in Germany, United Kingdom, France and now Spain can purchaseUbuntu Linux 7.10 with built-in DVD playback on the XPS 1330n (in addition to the previously-released Inspiron 530n desktop system. For U.S. customers, you'll have to hold on a week or so."
Great... I finally give in, get a 1330, and they announce a 1330 with Ubuntu as an option. This is really good news though for Ubuntu/Dell fans! :)
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
scoble with the qik guys
Hey Scoble was with the qik.com guys (Micheal and Bhaskar) in these videos:
http://www.qik.com/video/9038
http://www.qik.com/video/9042
I really like qik because Scoble has been sending videos from the CES and Macworld floors showing us all the goodies. For instance, in this video he shows the NEC screen towards the end (alienware and nec both first showed these screens in CES).
http://www.qik.com/video/9038
http://www.qik.com/video/9042
I really like qik because Scoble has been sending videos from the CES and Macworld floors showing us all the goodies. For instance, in this video he shows the NEC screen towards the end (alienware and nec both first showed these screens in CES).
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Mac OS X Tip: Create a Keyboard Shortcut for Any Menu Action in Any Program -- Lifehacker
Mac OS X Tip: Create a Keyboard Shortcut for Any Menu Action in Any Program:
"Open the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane in your System Preferences and click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Click the little plus (+) sign, choose the application you want to assign a shortcut for from the drop-down, then enter the exact name of the menu bar item you want to execute (for example, I want a shortcut to resize an image in Preview, so I'm using 'Adjust Size...'). Then just pick your keyboard shortcut, click Add, and voilà—you've successfully added a new shortcut to your Mac. When you open the app, you'll notice that shortcut is even visible next to the item so it'll be easy to remember."
Great tip!
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
10 Questions On Innovation to Alan Kay
10 Questions On Innovation to Alan Kay:
"So the price today is much higher than when mainframe people were calling us crazy for trying to do personal computing. That was nothing. What's harder today is that people think they've got personal computing and they don't really. The analogy here is between the jump from non-literacy to the printing press (which might be fought but the chasm that is to be crossed is clear) vs. the much trickier one of trying to explain to a culture that has the printing press and universities that it is not very well educated and thinks pretty poorly (for example, the US is in this general state -- it has the trappings but not the perspective to see how poorly educated most 'educated people' actually are)."
Emphasis is mine. I just thought it was a really interesting thing to say. I tend to agree with the emphasized quote.
More CES and qik stuff
I've been watching Scoble move around CES showing cool stuff streaming live of his cell phone.
The coolest thing I've seen at CES is Scoble move around CES showing cool stuff streaming live of his cell phone! :)
I was watching the latest pre-recorded video on qik, and the video changed. Scoble was streaming live. Thats good, because that means you won't miss the live stuff while watching an older video. You can always go back to the pre-recorded video. Now if only battery life was longer on those cell phones.
Some other cool stuff from engadget:
A Sandisk 72 GB SSD (can't wait for prices to drop on SSDs).
Bill Gates exit interview.
Intels MID device (interesting form factor).
Alienware's curved display (I want one!)
Also, their is this new concept laptop from Dell at CES. (interesting to me, since I work at Dell)
WiMAX enabled Asus Eee PC (the text of the article mentions 7-, 8-, and 8.9 inch models in the future)
Their are quite a lot of UMPC type devices out their now. They look cool, but the ones I tried at Frys last year seemed a bit slow for my taste.
The coolest thing I've seen at CES is Scoble move around CES showing cool stuff streaming live of his cell phone! :)
I was watching the latest pre-recorded video on qik, and the video changed. Scoble was streaming live. Thats good, because that means you won't miss the live stuff while watching an older video. You can always go back to the pre-recorded video. Now if only battery life was longer on those cell phones.
Some other cool stuff from engadget:
A Sandisk 72 GB SSD (can't wait for prices to drop on SSDs).
Bill Gates exit interview.
Intels MID device (interesting form factor).
Alienware's curved display (I want one!)
Also, their is this new concept laptop from Dell at CES. (interesting to me, since I work at Dell)
WiMAX enabled Asus Eee PC (the text of the article mentions 7-, 8-, and 8.9 inch models in the future)
Their are quite a lot of UMPC type devices out their now. They look cool, but the ones I tried at Frys last year seemed a bit slow for my taste.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
how to catch scoble live in qik
So Scoble has been streaming live at qik.com and I keep missing his live videos. By the way he is streaming live of his cell phone, how amazing is that?! I was wondering how I can catch him live, and it turns out you just need that channel open and if it is live it will start playing.
So what did Bill Gates say in his keynote?
I tried very hard to watch Bill Gates keynote at microsoft.com/ces. I really did.
Lets not talk about the fact that microsoft can't get their web pages to look any good on a mac running firefox. Or get sound to play properly, had to strain really hard to hear anything. Or if you tried to click on "view in default media player" a new page would open and then nothing. But its a microsoft keynote I'm trying to run on a mac, so lets not talk about that.
Lets talk about the web page itself. That has nothing to do with the mac right. Well, the size of the video was so small. I mean live streaming video from a cell phone at qik.com from scoble looks better than that microsoft video. I guess can't really blame Microsoft. They are apparently still trying to catch up to youtube, kyte, seesmic, qik, mogulus and others.
In the picture you see bill gates in that tiny video. On the side is this really big picture of some weird dude. Well that picture kept changing. Over and over and over. How the heck am I supposed to watch that teeny tiny video while those pictures are looping on the side.
But thats not all. You see that purple coloring around the video. It kept changing colors too. Freaking blink tag redux!
I know Microsoft is working at catching up to the internet, but its CES 2008!! When are they going to catch up?
And what the heck did Bill Gates say?
Lets not talk about the fact that microsoft can't get their web pages to look any good on a mac running firefox. Or get sound to play properly, had to strain really hard to hear anything. Or if you tried to click on "view in default media player" a new page would open and then nothing. But its a microsoft keynote I'm trying to run on a mac, so lets not talk about that.
Lets talk about the web page itself. That has nothing to do with the mac right. Well, the size of the video was so small. I mean live streaming video from a cell phone at qik.com from scoble looks better than that microsoft video. I guess can't really blame Microsoft. They are apparently still trying to catch up to youtube, kyte, seesmic, qik, mogulus and others.
In the picture you see bill gates in that tiny video. On the side is this really big picture of some weird dude. Well that picture kept changing. Over and over and over. How the heck am I supposed to watch that teeny tiny video while those pictures are looping on the side.
But thats not all. You see that purple coloring around the video. It kept changing colors too. Freaking blink tag redux!
I know Microsoft is working at catching up to the internet, but its CES 2008!! When are they going to catch up?
And what the heck did Bill Gates say?
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