fawad's ramblings

Book Review: Closure - The Definitive Guide

fawad — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 01:57:45 GMT

Google Closure is a set of libraries and tools for developing large Javascript applications with minimal errors. This book provides a comprehensive guide to the features available in the Closure products.
Chapter 2 of the book details the annotations that can be used to assist the Closure Compiler with verifying correctness of the applications.

Chapters 3 thru 9 explain the details of the Closure Libraries in detail. The Closure Libraries have extensive support of the common problems developers face while developing applications in JavaScript. The book details not only what is available in the libraries, but also why Google decided to develop the library the way they did and the problem their approach tries to solve.

The rest of the book does a deep dive into the tools provided by the Closure suite for developing applications. For example, It describes how debugging is supported with the Closure tools and using the Closure Inspector to debug Closure Compiler generated code with Firebug.

Overall, the book does an excellent job of explaining the functionality in the Closure tools and why it is necessary for developing high quality web applications. It's evident that the author is familiar with the ins and outs of both Closure and the problems it set out to solve. The book is chock full of examples to demonstrate where Closure is useful to JavaScript developers. It pointed out a surprising number of problems with naive use of Javscript constructs that are remedied with use of Closure. As such, readers of this book would benefit from a good Javascript book like JavaScript:The Definitive Guide to use as reference for the JavaScript nuances pointed out by this book.

Django and SCGI

fawad — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 01:16:25 GMT

Recently, I had a Django based app that needed to be executed under Apache. I found several problems getting it to run under mod_python (mainly because of segfaults due to library mismatch between python and other installed Apache modules). After struggling with fastcgi for a bit, I installed it with scgi.

Install scgi: I'm running Apache 2 on CentOS, so I installed the apache2 module from the tarball

Install flup: Flup provides a bridge between some web server protocols like fastcgi, scgi, ajp, and wsgi. Django ships with a WSGI connector.

Create a script to execute the scgi listener for my app. In my case, it was as simple as

#!/usr/bin/env python

if __name__ == '__main__':
        from flup.server.scgi import WSGIServer
        from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIHandler
        WSGIServer(WSGIHandler()).run()

Execute the app with the scgi listener. I am using runit to execute services. In this case, I run the following script

#!/bin/sh

APPROOT=/home/fawad/workspace
export PYTHONPATH=${APPROOT}
export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myapp.settings_modpython



exec chpst -u apache:apache python /home/fawad/code/python/flup/django_scgi.py

Configure apache vhost to use this app

<IfModule !scgi_module>
        LoadModule scgi_module modules/mod_scgi.so
</IfModule>
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName myapp.fawad.net
        ErrorLog /tmp/myapp_errors.log
        DocumentRoot /var/empty
        SCGIMount / 127.0.0.1:4000
</VirtualHost>

And that's it. Restart the apache server and the app should be up and running.

Free VMWare Server

fawad — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 20:07:49 GMT

According to Mike Gundeloy, VMWare Server (Renamed from VMWare ESX Server) will be free as of this Monday. Can't wait.

ipodified software

fawad — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:57:41 GMT

Chris Stone (formerly the Opensource voice at Novell) has posted an op-ed piece on SDTimes about writing software for the users. We in the software industry tend to lose sight of what the end goal of our efforts should be: delivering quality products to the end user. Chris hits the nail right on the head. We tend to get too emotionally involved with the nitty gritty of the tools: Java vs. .NET, RMI vs. Web Services. Think of what impact these things have on the end user. The user doesn't really care what you do behind the scene as long as the delivered app works to spec.

Here's hoping that we can start worrying more about the end itself more than the means we use to get there.

History of BASIC and C

fawad — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:11:55 GMT

Billy Hollis has posted a pair of insightful articles on the histories of the BASIC and C family of languages.

1982 – It is discovered that 97% of all C routine calls are subject to buffer overrun exploits. C programmers begin to realize that initializing a variable to whatever happens to be lying around in memory is not necessarily a good idea. However, since enforcing sensible variable initialization would break 97% of all C programs in existence, nothing is done about it.

Hooking to technorati

fawad — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 01:39:33 GMT

Ignore this post. It's just fodder for technorati.

Technorati Profile

PDC '05 Contents online

fawad — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 16:34:46 GMT

Microsoft has been kind enough to post the PDC '05 presentations (videos, powerpoints, etc.). They are free for online access for six months. I know how I'm spending my afternoons for the next couple of weeks. Go and watch the presentations, tell your friends, neighbours and significant others. The site doesn't seem to work on firefox, though.

Earthquake in Pakistan. Help needed

fawad — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:11:56 GMT

From Sajjad's blog

It has been just over 32 hours since the earthquake struck and the death toll is still rising. The last count was over 19,000 dead and over 42,000 injured. Aftershocks had stopped after the early morning ones, but they have returned in groups of 3 or 4, separated only by minutes. There were quite a few very long ones this afternoon.

Though most of the images on TV show the single apartment block in Islamabad, virtually all the damage was done in the mountainous region north of here. There are reports of mudslides there and there isn't much aid getting through due to blocked roads and bad terrain. Last night's thunderstorm and rain didn't help either. All this would make it very difficult to get accurate casualty and death figures.

The people in the devastated areas desparately need help. Links to places where people can donate are below.
---
President fund, accepts paypal(credit cards)
http://akhbar.urdupoint.com/khas/charity_projects/quake/

--
https://remit.ublny.com/ can be used to send donations
to Mir Khalil UR
Rehman Foundation - MKRF using the following

MKRF - Pakistan Earthquake Relief Fund
A/C: 0102598-5
Branch Code: 1234
Branch Name: Al Rehman Branch
Address: I.I Chundrigar Rd.

----
ICNA relief can be also used to send donations.
http://reliefonline.org/
Tax exempt id is available if donated through ICNA
relief.

-----
Ummah Welfare Trust UK (Credit Cards)
http://www.uwt.org/

---
Hidaya is also a trusted way to donate. Tax-exempt
donations can be made online.
http://hidaya.org/

---
Muslim Aid (credit cards)
http://www.muslimaid.org/

---
Muslim Hands (Credit cards)
http://www.muslimhands.org/Site/Pages/Appeals/PakistanKashmirEarthquake

django framework

fawad — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 15:28:31 GMT

Last night's ChiPy meeting had a presentation by Adrian Holovaty on the django web applications framework. All I can say is: Rails ain't got nothin on django. I can't wait to start playing with it.

Link: The Game is Afoot

fawad — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 19:34:18 GMT

Link: The Game is Afoot

Commentary on marketing software projects. for geeks.

php xmlrpc crap

fawad — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 23:20:04 GMT

I'd like to say that this post by Ian surprises me, but I can't. There's way too much crappy code out there, and I've prolly contributed my fair share.

Go mod_security

Vasters on Pakistan

fawad — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 23:33:51 GMT

Clemens Vasters on Pakistan

Well… What I can say about Pakistan is that the people are great. It’s difficult to find a room with 600-800 people who are so exuberantly enthusiastic about information technology as in Karachi.

Clemens is one of the people in .NET development I really admire for their technical expertise. This post by him really makes me feel proud to be a Pakistani.

fawad — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 20:50:23 GMT

Matthew Thomas of Canonical has posted a thorough review of the Linux desktop under the guise of an Ubuntu review titled My first 48 hours enduring Ubuntu 5.04. It is probably the most thorough critique of the Linux I've had the pleasure to read.

Us mere mortals can only go far as to say 'this sucks'. This article pinpoints several of the sucky points in the Linux (GNOME to be more precise) desktop today. A must read article.

Links 20050328

fawad — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 17:31:41 GMT

Python at Google

Mark Cox (Red Hat) responds to "days of risk" report for Windows vs. Red Hat Linux

Discussion on VSTS pricing

My take on things:

Python r0x0rz!!!

RedHat has been good enough at providing timely updates to critical packages. Windows to RHEL is an apples to oranges comparison. We'll talk when Microsoft bundles 4 CDs of packages with Windows.

Eric Sink's post on the topic pretty much sums up my feeling about this. We're probably not getting a copy of VSTS any time soon. The OSS stack we currently use (Subversion, mantisbt, nunit, nant...) works well enough, and is cross-platform to boot. Microsoft is going after the Rational / Borland ALM crowd with these pricings as opposed to the typical starving coder; to which I say: More power to them.

Update: IronPython 0.7 is released, but with the Microsoft Shared Source license. Meanwhile, boo is actively/openly developed and has an Opensource license. Goodbye IronPython, hello boo.

Free Culture

fawad — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:04:06 GMT

If you haven't already, read Free Culture. Buy the book, download it, listen to it, read the Cliff notes version, or watch the presentation. Do whatever it takes to soak in the information. Find out why the freedoms Mr. Gates calls Communistic are so important to the progress of humanity.

Apple iProduct

fawad — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 17:21:20 GMT

BillG and IP Communism

fawad — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:26:29 GMT

Some comments from around the blogosphere (how I hate that word).

Lessig: what a total (intellectual) disappointment this man is

Creative Commons

Wired: We're creative communists, Bill

Quote of the day:

If I had the time, and the money, I'd do the deep analysis that it would take to explain to myself why it is I constantly hope to be surprised by Mr. Gates. Yet I never am.

Nerd King. Hear me roar

fawad — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:46:15 GMT

opensource == choice

fawad — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 21:27:28 GMT

via Red Hat Magazine:

Imagine a world where technology is allowed to connect naturally and simple elements create complex systems. Where choice is multiplied and the system finds the best way. Watch this video and see why open source allows choice, choice equals freedom, and freedom equals power.

watch the video

That, or Duder. His Dudeness. Or El Duderino...

fawad — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 22:15:12 GMT

dude.

"It's like man or buddy, there is often this male-male addressed term that says, "I'm your friend but not much more than your friend," said Kiesling.
</a>

Mono bundling support

fawad — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 16:30:15 GMT

Bundles in mono. Quote:

A mono bundle allows you to ship your Mono application as a single binary: no runtime necessary: everything is "statically linked", there are no external dependencies on a Mono installation of any kind.

All I can say is 'Holy crap!'. If this works as advertised, it could be a serious boost to the adoption of mono as a development platform.

Gentlement, start your svn.

Tom 'Spot' Callaway has an annotated guide to APC's Pet.

LinuxPakistan.net cracked

fawad — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 05:17:12 GMT

This is a copy of the message I posted on the linuxpakistan mailing list today.

AOA,
Today, the front page of the linuxpakistan.net website was defaced
by some cracker organization (thanks, Tehmasp for informing me so
timely). I found about it around 1 hour ago. They exploited a
vulnerability in the phpbb software we use for the forum that got fixed
today. Discussion about that vulnerability is at
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=240634.
In my rush to remedy the problem, I deleted the defaced page they created on the server (they
renamed /index.php to /fucked.php).

Apparently, after exploiting that vulnerability, they dropped a copy of
phpshell (a script for allowing execution of arbitrary scripts on the
server) with the name .a.php and .b.php. They then proceeded to rename
the original index.php and dropped their own index.htm page which
contained the run of the mill cracker greetz and so on with the token
cuss words for the admins and pakistan. In the rush to remedy the
problem, I deleted the defaced page they uploaded. It might eventually
show up on one of the defacement mirrors around.

Anyway, I took the following steps after that.

Made a copy of the filesystem and SQL database.

Changed the password for server access.

Blocked access to _everything_ on the site using .htaccess directives.

Please let me know if there's some step I have missed here. Any advice
will be quite welcome as well.

Until I have this thing 100% under control, the site will remain
unavailable. Thanks for your patience.

For communication until the site is restored, post at general@linuxpakistan.net.

Regards

-fawad

Upgrading to Fedora Core 3

fawad — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 21:35:51 GMT

Yesterday, I upgraded my home machine to Fedora Core 3. Instead of the usual CD upgrade mechanism, I decided to use yum instead. Here's how I did it.

1. Backup data: I didn't do this particular step, but you might want to.

2. Install updated yum:

rpm -Uvh ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/yum-2.1.11-3.noarch.rpm rpm -Uvh ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-3-8.i386.rpm

3. Prep the /etc/yum.conf to point to the Fedora Core 3.

[main] cachedir=/var/cache/yum debuglevel=2 logfile=/var/log/yum.log pkgpolicy=newest distroverpkg=redhat-release tolerant=1 exactarch=1 retries=20 [base] name=Fedora Core 3 - $basearch - Base baseurl=http://mirror.linux.duke.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/$basearch/os/

4. Remove third party rpms: XMMS always gives trouble during upgrades because Fedora's XMMS doesn't do MP3 and I have to use xmms.org's RPMs. I removed those and wrote a mental sticky-note to myself to install it later

5. Download and install the whole thing:

yum -y upgrade

6. Pray to God that it doesn't blow in your face.

7. Go to bed: This took a few hours to download the packages, resolve dependencies, and install. Getting some sleep is a very good idea.

Update: One thing that seems to have broken is the postfix install. The update seems to have renamed my /etc/postfix/aliases.db to /etc/postfix/aliases.db.rpmsave without creating a new one, effectively killing my postfix. Luckily, this was a very quick fix; just used the aliases in /etc instead of /etc/postfix and did postfix reload.
Update: Fedora Core 3 doesn't have the اردو keyboard yet. Oh, well. there's always FC4.

آپ سب کو عید مبارک

I'm an mp3

fawad — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 15:25:57 GMT

Which File Extension are You?

fawad — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 15:21:41 GMT

Joi Ito: The people of America have failed us today

Although the previous post about the wacky voting system is interesting, it's unlikely that any sort of recount or technicality will change the fact that today, the people of the United States of America have voted for George Bush. It was close, but the Americans have chosen Bush. It's a sad day, but in a democracy, you get the politicians you deserve/vote for. This was your chance to change your leader and you have failed. For awhile, many of us thought that you had been conned into voting for Bush - that you didn't know he wanted to be a War President. Many people didn't equate the US policies with the people of America. We thought you had made a mistake. Now US policies = US Citizens. You have my sympathies, but it's still your fault.