Sunday, December 31, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Things we take for granted
Late night, and I was finishing off my daily "surfing entertainment". I went on to check on of my favorite mp3 hosting blogs(Don't wanna share the name, sorry) based out of Singapore. The website just refuses to load. I hit refresh and it keeps loading forever. I "what ev"d it and went to sleep.
Today morning I happen to read this news. An earthquake has disrupted Internet connections in Asia. After all these days of my wifi, hi-speed Internet access, I kind of started to take Internet connectivity for granted. This event just reminded me of the bandwidth crunch that we have in public Internet in India. Basic Internet access such as checking yahoo emails used to be a "crawling experience" back in my hometown. Hm!
So, it is time that I took all the comforts that I enjoy a little seriously!?
Today morning I happen to read this news. An earthquake has disrupted Internet connections in Asia. After all these days of my wifi, hi-speed Internet access, I kind of started to take Internet connectivity for granted. This event just reminded me of the bandwidth crunch that we have in public Internet in India. Basic Internet access such as checking yahoo emails used to be a "crawling experience" back in my hometown. Hm!
So, it is time that I took all the comforts that I enjoy a little seriously!?
Monday, December 25, 2006
Java 6 runtime on Ubuntu dapper
As Java SE 1.6 is officially out, I thought of getting JRE 1.6 to be the default in my Ubuntu.
Java 1.6 is super fast with a lot of UI related improvements. So, always good to have.
So, if you want to have it, do the following:
1. Download the *.bin file from sun's dowload location.
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
If you are not a "Java dude", just choose to download the "Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6"
2. Run a terminal session, and goto the folder where jre-6-linux-i586.bin is downloaded.
3. make sure that it is "executable"
chmod +x jre-6-linux-i586.bin
4. Run the installer
sudo ./jre-6-linux-i586.bin
5. This will extract the JRE in to its own folder(called jre1.6.0. Now, put this into appropriate library location
sudo mv jre1.6.0 /usr/lib/jvm
6. Set new JRE as one of the "java alternatives" as (all in one line)
sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.6.0/bin/java" 1
7. Set the new "alternative" as the real java to run (all in one line)
sudo update-alternatives --set java /usr/lib/jvm/jre1.6.0/bin/java
This should print a message - Using `/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.6.0/bin/java' to provide `java'.
We are all set!
Oh and, happy christmas! let there be peace and joy - forever!
Java 1.6 is super fast with a lot of UI related improvements. So, always good to have.
So, if you want to have it, do the following:
1. Download the *.bin file from sun's dowload location.
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
If you are not a "Java dude", just choose to download the "Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6"
2. Run a terminal session, and goto the folder where jre-6-linux-i586.bin is downloaded.
3. make sure that it is "executable"
chmod +x jre-6-linux-i586.bin
4. Run the installer
sudo ./jre-6-linux-i586.bin
5. This will extract the JRE in to its own folder(called jre1.6.0. Now, put this into appropriate library location
sudo mv jre1.6.0 /usr/lib/jvm
6. Set new JRE as one of the "java alternatives" as (all in one line)
sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.6.0/bin/java" 1
7. Set the new "alternative" as the real java to run (all in one line)
sudo update-alternatives --set java /usr/lib/jvm/jre1.6.0/bin/java
This should print a message - Using `/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.6.0/bin/java' to provide `java'.
We are all set!
Oh and, happy christmas! let there be peace and joy - forever!
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Eye candy - second thoughts
After a visit to the apple store last Friday, I decided that I need XGL on my Ubuntu desktop. So I compiled and installed XGL and beryl on dapper. Everything works great, wobbly windows, "dream" effects, desktop cube etc.
On a second thought, I started asking myself "Do you need all these special effects on your computer?" - Well, with XGL/AIGLX Linux seems to stretching things a little too far. Too many "on your face" kind of effects (Which are unstable at times). Things like the "dream" effect on Menus and tool tips are distracting. Thank god, like anything else, beryl is highly configurable. I disabled a lot of settings and running only necessary effects I like:
Drop shadow - Gives a real feel of focus on top most window
Desktop cube - Rarely do I switch desktop, but while I do it, it is fun.
Expose' like effect - I have stopped using the old "alt+tab". Instead, I press F9 or move mouse to a hot-spot corner, and I get tile of all open windows, from which I can chose from.
Everything else, disabled! Here is a screenshot:
On a second thought, I started asking myself "Do you need all these special effects on your computer?" - Well, with XGL/AIGLX Linux seems to stretching things a little too far. Too many "on your face" kind of effects (Which are unstable at times). Things like the "dream" effect on Menus and tool tips are distracting. Thank god, like anything else, beryl is highly configurable. I disabled a lot of settings and running only necessary effects I like:
Drop shadow - Gives a real feel of focus on top most window
Desktop cube - Rarely do I switch desktop, but while I do it, it is fun.
Expose' like effect - I have stopped using the old "alt+tab". Instead, I press F9 or move mouse to a hot-spot corner, and I get tile of all open windows, from which I can chose from.
Everything else, disabled! Here is a screenshot:
Friday, December 8, 2006
Cross platform nightmares
I had to volunteer to support a customized CRM software release the other day. Since it is CRM-call center related software, it had critical time lines for implementation and rollback if anything got messed up.
First of all, I want to vent my anger towards this software that costs a few millions.Its production deployment involves running 1000 different scripts and copying over 1000 different files - stone age kind of way to deal with an Internet age solution.
But the actual nightmare was related to cross platform voes. There was a bunch of SQL scripts that needed to run against a DB2 database. Unfortunately, this database happens to be in a Mainframe computer. For tests, we could always run these scripts from our development PC using any damn client. But due to "processes" this has to be run via a JCL on the mainframe itself. There starts the nightmare.
Mainframe does not like a file which has more than 80 characters in a line- or at least the damn JCL was set up to behave like that. Now, we sit down and format the whole bunch of scripts ( yes, we were too short on time to write a script now) and then "upload" it to in to the Mainframe. The JCL again "Abends". One person informs that the JCL expects 72(what the heck?) characters per line. Well, we go reformat again, and upload it to mainframe "datasets". Hm! oh as I am writing this, I just realized that it was not the Mainframe to be blamed.- I got to change the title of this post.
First of all, I want to vent my anger towards this software that costs a few millions.Its production deployment involves running 1000 different scripts and copying over 1000 different files - stone age kind of way to deal with an Internet age solution.
But the actual nightmare was related to cross platform voes. There was a bunch of SQL scripts that needed to run against a DB2 database. Unfortunately, this database happens to be in a Mainframe computer. For tests, we could always run these scripts from our development PC using any damn client. But due to "processes" this has to be run via a JCL on the mainframe itself. There starts the nightmare.
Mainframe does not like a file which has more than 80 characters in a line- or at least the damn JCL was set up to behave like that. Now, we sit down and format the whole bunch of scripts ( yes, we were too short on time to write a script now) and then "upload" it to in to the Mainframe. The JCL again "Abends". One person informs that the JCL expects 72(what the heck?) characters per line. Well, we go reformat again, and upload it to mainframe "datasets". Hm! oh as I am writing this, I just realized that it was not the Mainframe to be blamed.- I got to change the title of this post.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Long time...
Well, I had been busy..
with what?
Kahlua
vodka martini
Budlight
Merlot
Jack daniels
Jim Beam
Hic!... ;)
with what?
Kahlua
vodka martini
Budlight
Merlot
Jack daniels
Jim Beam
Hic!... ;)
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