The tech and other cents

Our son

2011-05-11T04:20:00.001-07:00

Son Ethan, born April 30th :-)

Python financial library

2011-01-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

I'm developing a web-based financial application in python, but I can't find any libraries for financial calculations in python. So I've decided to create one.

More on that later.

RedHat says "no enough Win experience"

2010-09-14T00:39:00.000-07:00

I just went to RedHat for an interview. Apparently, I have an insufficient Windows administration experience.

When companies previously looked at my CV, they'd think that I only have some Windows and almost no Linux experience.

But hearing from Linux company about having not enough of Windows experience is weird.

Links for 2010-03-31 [Digg]

2010-04-01T00:00:00-07:00

Ubuntu 101
The picture says it all

Ubuntu 101

2010-03-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

Well, the gmail screenshot says it all:

Maybe it's time I begin reading them...

Links for 2009-10-20 [Digg]

2009-10-21T00:00:00-07:00

Happy 5th birthday Ubuntu!
Congratulate Ubuntu on its 5th birthday and join the revolution :-)

Ubuntu is 5 years old

2009-10-20T08:31:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday Ubuntu!

Using Karmic Beta

2009-10-05T00:38:00.001-07:00

I’ve now updated to Ubuntu Karmic Koala Beta release.

The upgrade went without a hitch. It just took about an hour to download all the files and it was done.

I now only have one issue – I don’t seem to have an indicator icon. This is strange – I did have it in previous versions, in all alphas, but now after upgrade it is completely gone. Empathy and Evolution are not shown anywhere on the panel when open, so when I close them – there’s no way to open them again but to do that from the Applications menu. And it is apparent that they do run in the background – it takes split a second to show them to me.

Besides that – very impressive graphic effects on load, nice upstart updates and all the rest. I even like new background.

So now I impatiently wait for the official release :-)

Brushing the dust off

2009-09-16T02:13:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I haven’t posted here for a loooong time. Now, I’m cleaning the dust, washing spider webs and getting the new stuff in.

I’m now using Ubuntu Linux (moved from Gentoo to CentOS about a year ago), currently Karmic Alpha 5. So you’ll probably see Ubuntu/generic writing here from now on.

Also I got a bit more involved in various development projects, so you’ll be witnessing splashes of my stupidity very soon.

Cheers All :-)

Links for 2009-07-19 [Digg]

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

The 10 Geekiest Pieces of Furniture in the Universe
So you're a huge geek and have some cash to spend. You're not going to settle for some memorabilia to hang on your walls and some costumes to wear to ComicCon. No, you're going to trick out your whole freaking house with some awesome geek-themed furniture.
How to dual-boot or virtualise Windows 7
Both approaches have their own quirks and problems, though, so it pays to understand them properly before trying to install Windows 7 on your system. Here's everything that you need to know.
Internet Explorer Modified -- Nudged by Antitrust Charge?
Microsoft last week bowed to critics involved in the company's European antitrust case who have accused it of silently changing users' default browsers, a move that may be aimed at Brussels-based regulators.
Mysterious G-Men in Black SUVs Guard Fiber-Optic Cable in DC
A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of congested Tysons Corner in McLean, Va., hit a fiber-optic cable no one knew was there. Within moments, three black SUVs drove up, half a dozen men in suits jumped out, and one said, "You just hit our line."
Possible Twitter lawsuit would dive into murky blog waters
If Twitter goes ahead and sues Web sites that posted proprietary information that was stolen by a hacker, it would be moving into murky legal waters, experts said. "We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents,"
The Anatomy Of The Twitter Attack
The Twitter document leak fiasco started with the simple story of personal accounts of Twitter employees being hacked. Here's how the hacker obtained the necessary information..
20 jQuery Tutorials And Plugins To Impress Your Friends
most of them have working demos
DRM is Dead, RIAA Says
For years the RIAA has defended the use of DRM, much to the dislike of millions of honest customers who actually paid for their music. Now, in a shocking turnaround, the outfit seems to have come to the realization that DRM does more harm than good and has officially declared its death.
Do You Really Need a High-End Graphics Card?
Mid-range marvels give great bang for your buck.
Exciting Technologies Coming to Linux
The first half of 2009 is over and after your summer vacation, you might want to start gearing up for the new distro releases. Once again open source proved that developers collaborating all over the world deliver constant platform improvement. Let’s see what they have in store for us this time.

Links for 2009-07-18 [Digg]

2009-07-19T00:00:00-07:00

Military spends $155M for the nucleus of future wireless net
Raytheon to build wireless components to link disparate networks.

Links for 2009-07-16 [Digg]

2009-07-17T00:00:00-07:00

The Art Of Community: Chapter 1 Released
The Art Of Community is a new book written by Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager, to be published by O'Reilly in 2009. It discusses the range of talents required to recruit members, motivate them, manage them, and make them happy to be part of a community. The book is published under CC-NC-SA. The first chapter is available for download now.

Links for 2009-07-08 [Digg]

2009-07-09T00:00:00-07:00

Ubuntu Beats Windows 7 and Windows XP by a huge margin
A series of file system performance tests prove that Ubuntu beats the life out Windows 7 and Windows XP in all file management operations including file search, file classification, storage analysis, file copy and file synchronization. The brand new Windows 7 is actually slower than the 8-years-old Windows XP in all tests and Ubuntu takes on both.

Missed feature in Digg

2008-07-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

While I'm not that fond of making waves about that or this web service, there's one thing that bugs me with Digg. I'm also sure, that this also is a problem for a new diggers and occasional diggers as well. I'm talking about new submissions.

As many of us use Digg, it has become bookmarking service, and social networking service. People use it to look what are their friends up to. But for a new user or occasional digger, all these things are either unknown or not that important. That leads to a following problems:

1. The new user will probably only see "first-page" items on Digg, which were brought there by heavy-diggers.
2. The new user submission will be buried in a million of similar ones in 10 minutes.

While one of my submissions came through the haze and showed up on the front page, I feel the same problem as well. You post something, watch as it gets 3 diggs, and you never see it again. This sucks.

So here's an idea. Took at the current state of things:

There's no chance that ~17K entries will be seen. I doubt if 1000 of them will be read at least once.

What Digg should have, is a sort of a hint for "digging" for new posts. An example of similar idea I found on Gentoo Forums:

This feature would help to some newbies to get some diggin'. That would add to a "social" part, wouldn't it?

What do you think?

KDE4 fork mumbo-jumbo

2008-07-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

I just keep stumbling into this online. Why is it so maddening people?

If you don't like KDE4 (in any of its iterations), don't use it. KDE3 is still around.

What's all the fuss??

4th of July

2008-07-04T07:19:00.001-07:00

To all Americans among you:

Happy 4th of July!!!

Opera 9.5 is 66% faster than IE7 - and I have numbers to prove it!

2008-07-03T06:05:00.000-07:00

Hi All

I just found an interesting study, that compares cache efficiency of Opera, IE7, FF3 and Safari (on Windows) and finds, that Opera is the best one, leading 66% over IE7. From the site:

As it is clear from the results, Opera 9.5 caches web content most effectively, performing 3-times less disk operations that Internet Explorer 7. FireFox 3 coming on the second place with a minor -12.87% disadvantage. Safari 3.1.2 is on the third place with 6,991 accumulated disk operations. Internet Explorer 7 is coming on the last place with a huge -66.63% disadvantage relative to the Opera web browser.

Read full post here

Maybe I should consider using Opera now?

The new computer

2008-07-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

Hi all

I've purchased a new computer couple of weeks ago. I made a research on my locale market, and found that I want the following configuration:

CPU: Intel Q9450
MB: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R
Memory: Mushkin CL4 4Gb
HD: Western Digital WD5001ABYS
Case: Antec Sonata Plus 550
Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce 8500GT Silent 512Mb

All in all, it came in about $1630.
Currently, my main work requires me to work with lots of different Windows configurations. It lead me to use the following installation:

Main OS: CentOS 5.2 (updated 2 days ago) 64bit
Windows OS: XP machines in VirtualBox.

This configuration was chosen to provide as versatile environment as possible.

CentOS Linux was chosen as enterprise-grade OS, providing me as stable environment as possible.

It is a great, quite machine. I'm happy.

Universal Tracker

2008-06-02T01:08:00.000-07:00

Hi All

My friend started a new project for the Android platform: the universal tracker called "Unit".

Cited his definition:

Unit is a mobile application for tracking lists of owned, loaned and borrowed assets (such as books, CDs, DVDs or board games) using Android mobile platform.

Here's a demo screenshot:

He's currently looking for help developing the application, so if you like this, join him!!

Thanks :-)

Firefox3 RC1

2008-05-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe its happening to me.

I've updated to RC1 as expected by suggested update. Now the thing crashes on me almost constantly!!! Even in Gmail!

Anyone knows whats going on?

Beta 5 was so solid compared to RC....

Running tests on Windows.

2008-05-04T06:47:00.000-07:00

Hi all

I need a free tool for testing a GUI application. Something in lines with Mercury's WinRunner.
Does anyone knows something like that?

Thanks

Cellular Video Calls: reality that never happened?

2008-04-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

Hi all

I recently started working for Comverse - the company supplies solutions for telephony providers, mainly cellular ones. Our product lies in the core of the operator's network and manages all or some of the services provided by the operator, such as Voice Mail, SMS, MMS, Video Calls, etc. Our system can provide a complete solution or integrate its parts with other available solutions in the market.

As I'm having an educational process now, I got an interesting thought during the studies. I got an insinuation from some of the cellular operators in last years, that video calls ability was the major drive behind the transition to fast networks, such as 3G, 3.5G and next generations. While it is true for some cases, I am not that sure that it is completely valuable.

Just think about it: would you perform a video call using the modern handset that has a video camera? Of course not - you'd have privacy issues right away. Do you really want the whole world to hear what you are saying? So what the point then in having fast network but not providing any type of service with it? Probably this is one of the reasons that cellular providers have problem: they have the infrastructure, but no services to monetize it. So everything else costs more to cover the losses. And this is something that I as consumer do not like.

I wonder why is it so in my locale that we do not have an unlimited connection cellular plans. We do have various packages, but they all are paid per minutes or MBs of data - just similar to what dial-ups used to be ages ago. It really would be great to have internet everywhere, and I think that cellular companies are not getting something here.

It's not that they make more money on pay per minute/byte basis. It's just me not buying the service at all while this is the payment scheme. So general users of this are business folks that gotta have an access to their email at all times. And even then, better options exist (we have WiFi hotspots almost everywhere now).

Just wonders of the world I guess.

Oh Gentoo, what had become of thee?

2008-04-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Dear friends

Yesterday was an important day for me. I stumbled into a very important issue, albeit small, which made me to come to the following decision: I am leaving Gentoo as a desktop platform.

It does not come as an easy decision. I've been using Gentoo and quasi-actively participating in the community for about 5 years. I have it installed currently on 3 out of 4 computers I have (the last one being mac mini, which I keep with Mac OS X). So why would I take this decision?

It all began with a one simple thing. You may have read my previous posts on various WINE installations, and I use some Windows applications with WINE. But recently Internet Explorer stopped working. I've tried to reinstall it (and it is easy in Gentoo, just as in any other Linux distribution with decent package manager), but to no avail.

Next step was slightly more complicated, but still quite simple: I've used VMWare to install complete Window XP environment. It worked fine for awhile, until I couldn't use VM images between different computers I have. It just stopped working. Besides that, the performance of VMWare on my AMD Athlon 1.8 with 1G of memory was, to say the least, appalling. Next came Innotek (now Sun) VirtualBox. This is the best emulation environment I could find to work on my computer. It works fine, and I use it for all my Windows-related projects.

But as a side effect of all installations, system began breaking. I started noticing various weird things, such as sudden applications freezing at times, etc. Couple of days ago, when there were no applications running, I've seen CPU usage at ~80%, I did what most Windows users do. I rebooted the machine.

And then, system just broke. System utilities seemed nowhere to be found. Some init scripts seemed to be incorrect, etc. I somehow fixed the situation by copying old versions from other projects, and updating the system. But now, GNOME has problems with graphics and themes, and most applets do not work and even do not exist. It just never ends, does it?

So, as a normal user of Gentoo, I went to emerge my world. I haven't done that for a couple of months, so there were almost 1G of updates waiting for me. I've downloaded all the packages, and began the emerge.

The thing that broke the last straw was a simple apache update. The system update failed because I had an old version. Not because compile didn't work. Just because it needed me to manually do something!! It redirected me to a Gentoo doc site, which has 2 lines of code that fixed the problem, and emerge now runs again.

Why in the heavens name wasn't this done automatically? Why did I loose half a day, during which my system could be updated? I lost this time because update procedure stopped. I had to fix the Apache configuration, so my GNOME desktop could continue updating. I understand that this specific issue with Apache may be serious, and that not many ordinary people run it on their computer, it still bugs me. I don't like it when I have to do this sort of manual intervention in update procedure.

So what is the problem here? Daniel Robbins created a Gentoo moto once: The goal of Gentoo is to design tools and systems that allow a user to do his or her work as pleasantly and efficiently as possible, as they see fit....If the tool forces the user to do things a particular way, then the tool is working against, rather than for, the user. (cited from Gentoo Philosophy)

The problem is that I spent too much time caring for the computer with Gentoo. I don't have that luxury anymore. There was time, when geeking with the machine and fixing problems was cool. Today, its a burden. I value time, and I only have 24 hours a day of it.

I believe that this may be one of the general problems with Gentoo. When it began, most folks using Linux were techies, who cared about all the bits on their computers. Gentoo fit very well in this community, so it flourished and became very popular. It provided tools that noone had (and used to compile anything manually anyway), and community of a good will and lot of friendship. It had the best documentation (and maybe still do) among brothers, and best team of engineers.

But nowadays, many users want word processor, web browser, email program and video player. They want it now, and not wait 20 minutes when compilation will finish. They don't care about technicalities. And as Gentoo haven't changed its nature, it doesn't fit for majority anymore. Sabayon anyone?

Gentoo distro has proven over the years, that it will stay the way it is. And that's why it won't be back on my desktop soon.

So, Gentoo, stay on server.

Ubuntu, CentOS - my desktop is waiting.

Linux on the desktop now!

2008-04-21T01:32:00.000-07:00

Hello all

I just read an article, where Novell's CEO says that Linux will not be on the consumer desktop in at least for another 3 years. And that made me think.

We, users of Linux and open source software, would be happy to see everyone using Linux. We use it every day ourselves. And we're happy with it. Dell is installing Ubuntu Linux on various models, and people are buying them, preferring this to installing it by themselves. IBM, Sun and other vendors provide Linux systems just as they do Windows-based ones. Isn't this a nice trend that shows readiness of an operating system and its acceptance by vendors?

With this trend, how can it be that Linux on the desktop will take another 3-4 years? And what does it mean exactly? Linux desktop share currently stands about 3-4% of total desktop installations. Another 3-4% goes to Apple Mac OS X installations, another similar share to other alternative operating systems (such as Free/Net/OpenBSD, BeOs, Haiku, OpenSolaris, etc).

But Windows OS is spanning over 90% of all desktop computers. So, my guess, that in 3-4 years Linux installations can get to say, 10%. Will this mean that it is "on the desktop"? What numbers it should show for CEOs and other similarly hierarchially placed people, compared to a Windows OS so they will consider it "there"?

I personally believe, that any tool that you use should server its purpose and serve it well. If it does not do what it is supposed to do, choose another tool. I recently began to believe that there's a place for Windows systems as well for Linux systems, but I am still open-source minded. Choosing Linux or Windows, or Mac or Solaris is purely business decision in many cases. If choosing Linux on the desktop provides me with the tool to do my job (or work, or fun and procrastinate) - that's fine. If Window does the same - that's fine too, I'll just go with cheaper solution in the long run.

All the tools I use in Windows (those that are not forced on me anyway) are open source - VirtualWin, vi, GIMP, Open Office, Firefox, Innotek VirtualBox, 7zip; and much more - and if I go to Linux I will use the same tools, so I don't have to re-teach myself each time I switch platform.

So for me Linux is really on the desktop for about 4 and half years already. I don't even use Window at home anymore. And yet, Novell's CEO thinks that it will take another 3-4. If that's what a CEO thinks, then no wonder that it is all about Novell Linux. Maybe they are hibernated and there's an alarm clock set into the 3-years distant perfect future.

I wonder where RedHat and Ubuntu will be by then.

Cheers.

Update: it seems I'm not the only one

My new computer

2008-04-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

Hello folks!

It's been a bit more than 2 years since I have Serenity - an AMD Athlon machine. And it's time to grow further. So I've made my research, and I got planned a machine that will serve me for my modest needs for another 2-3 years.

As prices plummeted seriously lately, and since dollar is not what is used to be, I can get pretty decent machine for a buck. I don't play games, my main needs are VM running (even couple of machines at the same time), Photoshop/Gimp rendering (for pics like these). Here's my configuration of choice that I'm thinking to have:

CPU: Intel Q9300

Motherboard: I'd like to have an Abit IP35 Pro, but its availability seems limited in my locale. So I'd be happy for other suggestions.

Memory: Mushkin or Corsair, 4Gb, CL4

Graphics: any NVidia 256Mb PCIe will do.

HD: 7200rpm, 250Gb or any other that gives good price/size ratio.

DVD burner: we have LG's and NECs laying around here for ~$30, so its easy.

PSU: Zalman, Thermaltake or Antec. These are the decent ones we have in local market.

Case: something simple, but that can sustain my system

Please let me know what do you think about it, and I'd love an MB suggestion that plays nicely with Linux. My main intention is to run Xen or other VM, and run Linux and Window under it.

Another thing that some folks may not understand, is my attention to run it with Ubuntu. To tell you the truth, I'm still the Gentoo person, but it takes increasingly more and more time to just maintain my Gentoo-based Serenity, and its only updates. My rsync doesn't work, updates are slow and I got many errors while updating a lot, which requires an attention as it renders system unusable.

I understand that those may be very easy to fix, but as I've said - I don't have time to deal with it as I had before, so I'm going to try my luck with customized Ubuntu for a while. Besides, I like learning new things, with Gentoo I feel like I don't know what's up there. And I've always wanted to learn Ubuntu.

Gentoo star seems to have eclipsed lately, I think I might get to fixing it when I have time later on...

Cheers.

Back to the net

2008-03-25T04:49:00.000-07:00

Hi all

I've been away for a long while and it feels now like a long vacation. I've done few nice things in a meanwhile, the major 2 being visit to Italy (Tuscany) and starting a new job.

So Italy - I had a great time visiting one of the most beautiful places in the world. We've been in Tuscany, where one of the best wine in the world is produced, and saw medieval cities built very long time ago. We also saw Renaissance structures, but most of all - we liked how the new integrates with the old, and how countryside is full of buildings built within last 5-10 years but look like they stood forever on those green hills.

And now I started a new job - I'm in intergration position in Comverse, working as subcontructor. My job would be packaging the company's products and integrating them into a complete offer, which mainly means a lot of perl/bash/Linux stuff, which in turn makes me very happy.

Have a nice day everyone.

:-)

Google Calendar offline

2008-03-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

I've just stumbled into this: I've tried to add something into my calendar, but got this:

Google is down ????????

Of course not, but it's fun anyways :-)

Back from Italy

2008-03-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

Hi all
I had a great time in Tuscany last week!! The trip was a present for my significant birthday date last Thursday.
It is also great to come home :-)

I have posted few photos from the trip, you're welcome to take a look here

Calling support have a negative impact on economy

2008-02-27T07:32:00.001-08:00

I've just read an interesting piece. It talks about the fact, that when consumers call support centers, in general, all vendors do charge for those calls. It makes an approximate $50M in costs for just basic support people need.

That makes it quite intriguing information. The earlier business models of Open Source products were exactly like this - they were supposed to provide the product for free, and then charge for the support. And this would, or at least could, be a quite viable model.

Just look at those Red Hat's and MySQL's - they're in pretty good shape, aren't they? Those companies worth millions and billions, and it seems to be working for them for quite awhile. I believe that charging for support might be a good business.

On the other hand, if the consumer is in consideration, then it might not be that well. It actually adds a cost to the initial product price, and in effect it may take a substantial time and effort from customers to use his or her service (or device). But, after all, we have this way in economy for ages now. I just hope, that homeowner loans would not be required for dealing with that.

Just a thought.

La citta ideale

2008-02-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

Hi all

I'm going to Tuscany in about a week, so I need as much information as possible - can anyone direct me to sources of "ideal city" architecture?

Thank you very much

The keys to a blog success

2008-02-21T07:03:00.001-08:00

You all know how it is: you hear in the blogosphere about making money from blogging. Then you find and read thoroughly the major league: the Problogger.net and JohnChow.com; and then you make up your mind: "I'm going to do that too. If they can make it, so can I".

And then, you go and read Darren's list of newbies tips, and John's ebook. But you decide that you're not ready to pay for the blog yet - after all, you're just trying out, right? So, you sign on Blogger or Wordpress, just to save a $100, but you do register domain, because everyone agrees that it is the most important thing you should start with.

And then you start posting. At the beginning, you're on fire. Finding everything you can on the net, posting like a crazy. But, for some reason, stats do not go up. Then you say to yourself, "well, maybe no one really reads what I write", and you post less and less. And then, no one really reads your blog.

Such a state of things would probably describe most of new bloggers (and that would include myself as well). The idea of making money out of blog is very attractive, but many do not succeed at making enough for cup of coffee. Why is it so?

The main reason is that many newcomers start with the obsession over statistics and the idea of earning the same money that big shots do. They check visits every few hours, they check how much cents they've made out during those hours. They put many ads into the blog, and wait until money and readership would thrive. Big mistake!

So, here's the list of things required to make any blog successful:

Create an interesting content

That's it. Nothing more (at least at the beginning). Everything else is the result of this action number 1.

But there are more things that I'm doing for my blog:

Listen more to Darren from ProBlogger and John from John Chow. These guys apparently know what they're doing.
Less is more: that recent post on ProBlogger made by Skellie from AnyWired, is really a good one. I decided to post not more 4 technology-related posts a week, including posts regarding the process of building the blog itself. In addition, I removed some advertisers which didn't bring anything in a long while, and just made a bad impression for being there.
Stop caring about statistics. Don't check it every few minutes. Its a stressful action: you wait, it doesn't rise up, you panic, you loose motivation. Just stop doing it. In 10 minutes you checking for statistics, you could have an outline for a new post.

In a nutshell: if you want your blog to succeed, you have to build it. Blog is a content, not ads.

I only have to remember that myself :-)