bye 2007, welcome 2008

In another day 2007 ends and 2008, the new year, begins. This is the right time to look back at 2007 and make plans for 2008. I tried making a list of new year resolutions and probable to dos for the upcoming year, which also made me think of what has happened in the past 12 months. This is just a reminiscence of the past and planning for the future,

In 2007,

• I changed my job, once. I quit being Project Engineer at NRCFOSS and after a couple of months of job hunting, landed as Software Engineer at Comat Technologies where I currently work.
• Accompanied with the job switch was retiring from active physical participation in Chennai LUGs activities, even attending LUG meets have become memories these days.
• Got introduced to more people in the FOSS world, which was nice.
• Terribly failed in last years resolution of contributing to at least one FOSS project. Even my Ubuntu Karma came down to embarrassing level.
• Got exposed to Zope/Plone, while with previous experiences of CGI and Django.
• Started reading SICP, but did not cross the 3rd Chapter.
• Moved to Bangalore from Chennai, and hence my routine life got altered as per the new environment and factors.

In 2008,

• Plan to execute last year’s failed mission. Have some plans to start helping with Kubuntu packaging, but waiting for the right moment and guidance to start with it.
• Have some plans like book a month, a module a day, a new topic a week etc. but no clue how am I going to put it into practice.
• Some interest to do pet projects, in Django or Zope.
• Be less verbose and more in action (which is very very hard )
• Modify my routine to suit my above plans.
• Revoke my earlier habit of helping students, mentor them, etc.
• Try to write more useful, worth, meaningful, enlightening weblog posts rather than some crap (is this one such crap?).

Ah, think its enough and keeping it alive is worth an effort for the upcoming year.

Wish you all a very happy new year, with hopes that your resolutions, plans and wishes get fulfilled Let’s welcome 2008 with a bright smile

Bangalorians from ILUGChennai

Following lawgon’s mail to the Chennai LUG mailing list a few days back, stating that there is no single point of contact for FOSS patrol in Bangalore, especially those belonging to ILUGC, have started a new Google Group named “Bangalorians from ILUGChennai“. Though this group is mainly for Chennai LUGies who have now settled down in Bangalore, it is also open to Bangalorians and Non-Bangalorians who would like to participate along with us.

Its hard to get one

When we were attending foss.in, we got a good news from our higher ranks at the place where we work (we = jace, kushal, me) that we can go forward and recruit some more programmers. We are also in need of a Release Manager (hopefully we are soon getting some one for this) and a Sys Admin exclusively for our team (we have one, but he is heavily loaded from all corners).

As we are basically a Python shop and work extensively on FOSS, we need some one with an exposure to both of them. It would be great if we get one with experience in Zope/Plone, but our minimal requirement is “should be able to work with python from day 0″.  We are still hunting for a Python Programmer, whom we need as soon as possible. We aren’t finding one easily, rather am getting invites from other Python shops to join them

If you are a programmer, who knows Python, have some exposure with Web Development, and looking for an interesting and challenging job in a nerdy environment surrounded by well known faces from the Indian FOSS community, then please poke (PM) us (jace, kushal and teKnofreak). We are always available at #linux-india @ irc.freenode.net, else leave us a memo

(Python) PyProgram #7 - Time Object Diffs

I had two time objects and needed to find the difference of time between them. Upon Googling, querying in #python and checking the documentation, found that there is not built-in function available for this. Though there were some cookbook recipes, I wanted to write my own solution to find the difference between two datetime.time objects. Though datetime.timedelta was for time difference requirements it only has a days, seconds and microseconds property while I need hour, minute and seconds. Thus, I wrote my timediff method which accepts two time objects btime and stime where btime is a bigger time than stime (b for big and s for small ), and it returns a datetime.time object for the difference time. (Why I need to have time objects? I use storm ORM )

def timediff(btime, stime):

    """Difference between two datetime.time objects

    Accepts two datetime.time objects where btime > stime

    Returns a datetime.time object of the difference in time of

    the two datetime objects.

    """

    btdelta = timedelta(hours=btime.hour, minutes=btime.minute, seconds=btime.second)

    stdelta = timedelta(hours=stime.hour, minutes=stime.minute, seconds=stime.second)

    tdiff = btdelta - stdelta

    tdiffsec = tdiff.seconds

    if tdiffsec < 60 and tdiffsec > 0:

        return time(0, 0, int(tdiffsec))

    elif tdiffsec < 3600 and tdiffsec > 0:

        tdiffsplit = str(tdiffsec/60.0).split('.')

        tdiffmin = int(tdiffsplit[0])

        tdiffsec = float("0."+tdiffsplit[1])*60

        return time(0, int(tdiffmin), int(tdiffsec))

    elif tdiffsec > 0:

        tdiffhourmin = str(tdiffsec/3600.0).split('.')

        tdiffhour = int(tdiffhourmin[0])

        tdiffminsec = str(float("0."+tdiffhourmin[1])*60).split('.')

        tdiffmin = int(tdiffminsec[0])

        tdiffsec = float("0."+tdiffminsec[1])*60

        return time(tdiffhour, tdiffmin, int(tdiffsec))

    else:

        return time(0, 0, 0)

Notes from Roger’s OpenJDK talk

I happened to be the Hall Marshal during Roger’s talk on OpenJDK (or Open Sourcing Java) during foss.in and happened to make some occasional notes on what he said (though the last 20 mins, I had something else to do).

• Nov 2006 - gpl v2 hotspot VM jav compiler - openjdk.dev.java.net
• Jan 2007 - kitchen sink language project
• 8 May 2007 - the rest of java code, interim governance board (almost)
• 25169 source files, 4% binary only, 8% not under gpl
• font rasterizer, graphics rasterizer, crypto providers, color mgt are gpl’d
• sound engine, snmp code, imaging api are not
• sun in control, patches via email now —> community in control, non-sun committers
• write a constitution, get it ratified by community, hold elections for open seats
• initial projects - free font, free graphics, free sound rasterizers
• Gentoo openJDK ebuild done in 3 hours
• Fedora source rpm build in 13 hours
• IcedTea icedtea.classpath.org, June 2007
• framebuffer toolkit project, May 2007
• Mercurial support for external committers, Oct 2007
• Dec 2007, drafting constitution
• April/May 2007, ratify constitution
• openjdk.java.net, planetjdk.org, mail.openjdk.java.net, #openjdk
• 2 trillion handsets with java on mobile

looking for an editor that works

Been using emacs for long, though occasionally used vi as well while left alone in the terminal. Then learnt the `emacs -nw` trick for terminal emacs, created an alias (`e`) and kept moving. But sometimes I felt the need of a better editor when things did not work the way I wanted it to. Though emacs can be customized as much a Hardy Davidson can be, but not for a lazy ass like me.

Was working with webpy since morning and I had been struggling at one point since 4 p.m. It had been a single statement of using the insert function which had been messing in a mysterious manner. After trying, trying and still trying, I found out it had something to do with how it is in the file. It’s just my conclusion, but am afraid its the real reason too. Then I tried gvim, enabled syntax highlighting but it still doesn’t auto indent which I very much need while writing Python code. Thus started wondering if there is any other near to ideal editor in this world. The mac comes with one, which I have seen jace working with. But I neither have a mac book nor have it on Ubuntu.

The search for a better editor that works for me continues….

live from foss.in

Day 2, 5th December 2007,

Here am, from one of India’s premier FOSS event’s 2nd day. Yesterday was awesome and the Debian/Ubuntu Project Day happening fine. Today am watchdog’ing KDE Project Day along with other volunteers who are helping it to run smooth. I actually see a lot of foss.in volunteers around, making me feel a lot of us are indeed Ks

Being a part of volunteer team had been interesting, with some running around, heavy lifting and more importantly sitting in the registration desk all along half of yesterday. Again, I got the opportunity to meet a lot of guys who I usually see in #linux-india, as well make some new acquaintances. So far it has been really interesting though I have been missing some of the talks on being a volunteer. As the main conference starts tomorrow, we expect more delegates, more talks and more work to do

At last I found some power socket to comfortably keep my system running and as every ubunteros does, have started dist-upgrade With only a few things to fetch, it should be done in another few minutes. Pradeepto is talking about creating the setup for KDE4 development. I tried to svn fetch the source and build kde4 over my system, but some freaking dependency (the required version is not available stopped be in my endeavor. tazz told me that he has found a work around, additionally promising me to write it down somewhere and make it available for others to follow.

Day 3, Main Conference Day 1, 06.12.2007,

Had an amazing day with Main Conference kicking started. Spent my first few hours in the registration desk as usual. As it had rained today and was much colder than previous days, the delegates arrived a bit late. Then catched up with jace and Zope guys on a RDBMS with Zope talk (was really useful as we are trying to do similar thing at work). Went around and helped guys with random stuff here and there. A bit of my butt got burned as no one was manning the Debian stall and some foo guy has taken the place to setup some electronic things all over. Missed baiju’s talk as I got caught in some random stuffs. Now sitting with sankarshan and ramki, with sankarshan making me update the blog

I have two important things from last 2 days to tell about. First is the mess-up at the last talk of Debian/Ubuntu Project day. When we were in the process of finalizing the list of talks, Kart me and few others wanted the “Java Packaging in Ubuntu” talk to be not there as it doesn’t seem to 100% ok for the project day concept of encouraging new contributors to Debian|Ubuntu. But there were a few others who said we need to have the talk as they themselves are Java programmers. So we finally ended accepting the talk (and also we did not have another talk alternative).

What happened in the last few days was the original speaker wasn’t able to attend foss.in and hence he had sent a replacement which we thought was ok. But when I was helping the speaker to get his laptop setup for the talk, I noticed it was running vista. Though I wondered how one can deliver a java packaging on Ubuntu talk over a vista laptop, I did not want to interfere so I silently left the place (so did a lot of Ubuntu-In guys). Later I came to know that the talk was nothing to do with the intended topic was and there was a lot of complaints about it. I heard Kartik has written an apology kinda post, but I think its not just him who is responsible. Though its *us* who had to be responsible for accepting the talk at the first place, but still a Java packaging on Ubuntu talk is not a way to OT or way out of the conference’s purpose. But this turned out to be a good lesson for us to be doubly careful next time when we are with such an opportunity to select something to represent the team in such a premier conference. We are sorry guys, if it had disappointed you, its has hurt you in any way, we are sorry for choosing a wrong talk for such an occasion

Second thing is about the surprise “K”onqueror party thrown in by Ramki, Sankarshan and co. last night at R-R, Church street. Actually this became a complementary party to the Mozilla party attended by a lot of other guys and the foss.in team. We had a lot of K guys attending the Konq party and as it started to rain, the hot south indian thaali happened to be the right kinda dinner Thanks to Ramki for the idea and for adding me in into it (We guys managed to put ourselves in a single car and go there ) (Hope Sankarshan is now satisfied with me blogging about two things he had asked me to )

Will try to keep this post updated along the 5 days, so keep checking for updates