The Bit Guru

What extra steps do you take to increase your chance of getting an interview?

Farhan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:36:45 -0600

In the past whenever applying to a job I have tried to go a step beyond what the employer might have requested. In a few cases the requirement was C++, so what better way to demonstrate your skills than writing a C++ program? After some thinking I decided that a C++ based resume would be a good sample. So, I ended up writing a program that renders my resume almost exactly as it would have been rendered by Microsoft Word. Instead of hard coding the complete resume I wrote a text rendering engine that reads an array of string and renders it on screen based on some simple rules.

To make it simple for the hiring manager to run this program I embedded the text in a string array so they can just pass the exe around without having to worry about sending multiple files. The program works just as well reading from a text file. Here is a quick screenshot of this program.

So, what extra steps have you taken to increase your chance of getting an interview?

Migrating MySQL data to PostgreSQL

Farhan — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:14:07 -0600

I just finished posting a new article about migrating a django application database from MySQL to PostgreSQL. This article is very technical and only covers the actual migration steps (i.e. does not explain why I made the move). Check it out if you are interested or curious.

Migrating MySQL data to PostgreSQL

"device not managed" in Ubuntu Karmic 9.10

Farhan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:28:33 -0600

I just finished upgrading my laptop to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). After the upgrade finished I noticed that for my wireless card the Network Manger applet in gnome claimed “device not managed.” A quick search revealed that this had happened in the past. I had to set managed=true in /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf. Doing this again and restarting the network service didn’t seem to fix the issue. After a few minutes of looking around in /etc/init.d I saw another service (network-manager!) that needed to be restarted. In summary is here is what you need to do.

1. Edit /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf and set managed=true

Specifically change the 'managed’ under ifupdown…

1 2	[ifupdown] managed=false

...to true.

1 2	[ifupdown] managed=true

2. Restart networking and network-manager services.

You can always restart the computer, but where is the fun in that :) To get things to work without restarting, run the following commands.

1 2	sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager restart sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

3. Have fun!

Sample & Demo

Farhan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:45:00 -0600

My apologies for not posting this sooner. Somehow I overlooked an email with sample and demo for How to Set ListView Column Header Sort Icons in C# article that John Moreno had emailed me a long time ago. Anyways, it is online now, check it out.

Mini Flash Drive Review

Farhan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:59:27 -0600

My new OCZ Rally2 8GB Dual Channel Flash Drive showed up today. It is a dual channel drive and I wanted to see what speeds it would give me. So, here a few numbers that I got from two of my computers.

Description	Write	Read
Laptop, one 1.11GB file	9.11MB/sec	30MB/sec
Desktop, one 1.11GB file	7.67MB/sec	35MB/sec
Desktop, multiple smaller files (138MB total)	2.59MB/sec	35MB/sec

My older USB flash drive gives me 4.50MB/second write speed and 21.68MB/second read speed. An even older one does around 6.81MB/second (!!) read with 4.85MB/second write. So, for reading the dual channel drive might be worth the extra price.

Cannot unlock iPhone: baseband 05.11.07, bootloader >05.09 (e.g. 06.04)

Farhan — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:57:59 -0600

2009-11-03, update: GeoHot released the unlock for baseband 05.11.07! Check it out.
—-

Recently a friend purchased an iPhone off of craigslist that he wanted to unlock for use with a different carrier. The phone was running iPhone OS 3.1, which the dev team has released a jailbreak for. Unfortunately, what he didn’t know was that the boot loader (or bootloader) version mattered a lot :)

He wanted a good, clean unit, and this was a newly refurbished one, jailbroken, very clean, no scratches, and 0 minute usage. He thought all he had to do was install ultrasn0w and he would be good to go. Well, he tried, but no luck. After a few tries he brought it to me and I started my research. Apparently, because it is a newly refurbished unit, it had the latest version of everything: iPhone 3.1 (seller might have upgraded it), latest baseband, and latest boot loader. Here is what my research turned up.

Baseband 05.11.07 cannot be unlocked at the time of this post (October 2nd, 2009).
You can downgrade baseband 05.11.07, but only if the boot loader is version 05.08 or older. In this case the easiest solution is to use fuzzyband downgrader.
If you have baseband 05.11.07 and a boot loader newer than 05.08 then, unfortunately, you are out of luck because you cannot unlock your iPhone.

If you are buying an iPhone for use with a carrier other than AT&T then make sure that your device can be unlocked. Also, be careful once you do get the new, compatible iPhone because upgrading to iPhone OS 3.1 using the official ipsw will upgrade the baseband! and possibly the boot loader; you will be stuck without an unlock! (Hopefully you are not reading this post after the fact :|)

The easiest way to check the boot loader and baseband versions is to install Fuzzyband using Cydia. Do this before the purchase. You want a boot loader that is 05.08 or older, and a baseband that is 05.11.07 or older (if it is 05.11.07 then you will have to downgrade to an older version, which is possible assuming that the boot loader version is correct).

What if you have an “un-unlockable” iPhone?

Basically, you need an AT&T subscriber :) Here are a few (realistic!) possibilities.

The cleanest option is to sell it to someone who is an AT&T subscriber. There are AT&T subscribers looking for iPhones. My guess is that it is because they don’t want to extend their contract.
A rare case would be an AT&T subscriber with an unlockable iPhone looking for an iPhone for a family member who is not on AT&T. In this case they can unlock their phone and give it to the family member, and use the new device themselves (on AT&T).
Swap it with an AT&T subscriber who is using an unlockable iPhone. You will have to give them some incentive to do this though, e.g. if your iPhone is newer, cleaner than theirs, or maybe offer coffee, lunch, etc. :)

Browser in Palm webOS 1.2 now gets 1/100 on acid3

Farhan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:28:00 -0600

Finally, the webOS browser’s javascript engine gets 1 mark in the acid3 test. Previously the acid3 would completely bomb out and exclaim “JS?” :)

Palm [Pre] webOS 1.2 has been released

Farhan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:00:40 -0600

In case if you haven’t seen it yet, Palm released the webOS 1.2 earlier today. For a complete list of changes checkout the official Palm blog post or the PreCentral post (official list of changes from the support site). Here are a few things that I am looking forward to (as I wait for Pre to upgrade) :)

The browser now supports downloading files from a web page. To download a file, tap the file name.
The browser now supports paragraph selection, cut, copy, and paste on web page text. A yellow highlight appears to indicate paragraph selection.
Contact entries in the call log now show both the phone number and type.
You can now tap a phone number in a calendar note to dial it.
You can press and hold the orange key/Option and tap a link or image. Options displayed include opening the item in a new card, sharing the link or image via email, or copying the URL. For images in JPG, BMP, or PNG format, an additional option to copy the image to the Photo app is displayed.
If you tap on a text field, the page zooms to a level at which it is easy to read the text being entered.
Notification sounds play softly when you are on a call, regardless of the system sounds setting.

Below is one that I am not so sure about.

When you press and hold the orange key/Option and drag onscreen, the cursor now moves one word at a time instead of one character at time in Email, Memos, and other apps. The cursor still moves one character at a time in the Web address bar and Messaging body text entry field.

Let’s see how it turns out :)