my top words

Tried wordle.net and here is the result of feeding in my blog RSS feed..

similarity

In the below shown screenshot, the emacs window has 3 emacs-windows within it. Try to find the similarity between them Reward == *free* **hugs**

oh god, my desktop

This is what happens to my desktop when twhirl starts everyday..

These pop-ups stay on top for a few seconds and then vanish with a small vibration effect. The green colored pop-ups are actually direct replies to me, some even a month old. I actually do not check the pop-ups as they are too many in numbers and most of them too old.

the fixing field trip

On turning up at office on Tuesday, after a 3 day holiday, heard about the problem blowing out here and there in our kiosks due to a broken package in our repository. Thankfully it was happening only with our ongoing new rollout image which was installed in around 80 kiosks in Karnataka. We decided to make a field trip and asses the situation, find a fix that can be executed in the affected kiosks with the help of the field engineers and operators itself. Our earlier plan of making the trip on Tuesday evening itself was dropped as it would have been too late when we could reach even the nearest affected kiosk.

We started the field trip around 8 a.m. on Wednesday, getting a cab to take us around. This will help us in visiting as many kiosk as possible in a day. We started with a 2 hour travel to Yadiyur near Kunigal falling under the Tumkur district. The cab driver suggested us a nice hotel in Kunigal, where we had plate-idlis, vada and tea before continuing our journey.

The Yadiyur kiosk is located right in front of the cattle market of the village. We started hunting for the bug which caused all the mess and soon found it to be an extra netmask line in the network interfaces file. Removing this line and rebooting the machine brought the network up and the machine started to operate normally. But when we tried the second machine, it was more than this. The firewall seemed to have messed up during the upgrade, so we needed to clean it, then clean the interface file and bring up the system back. We also started calling up the field engineers, asking them to go to the nearest problematic kiosk and guide them to perform the same fix we found.

Having found the fix, we wanted to test it again. So we next moved to our kiosk in Maisandra, which is some 20 Kms from Yadiyur. We had a bit of trouble in finding the kiosk as it is located in a building interior to the main road. The kiosk was small but neatly maintained. We fixed the first machine following the same procedure, but the second machine did not face the updates because of lack of network switch to connect both the machines and hence it was still unaffected. We finished our job and left to the next location, but it was already afternoon.

Our next location was Huliyurdurga, which is on the other side to Yadiyur and it took us almost an hour to reach. We again had problems locating the kiosk as the name board is not put on the building it is located at and people could not get a clue of what we were searching for. Thankfully the operator was standing out in front of the building, could spot our car and I could spot her waving. We quickly fixed the first machine, made it operational as customers were waiting and moved to the second machine. With some extra effort, we managed to fix it too.

We were hungry and decided to feed us with some snacks from the bakery. We decided not to visit the next kiosk Tiptur as it was very far and it was already 5 p.m. We started our way back to Bangalore and after crawling through the traffic around Nelamangla and Yeshwantpur, we reached office by 7.40 p.m.

We have learnt our lesson that we need more stricter Q.A. process and more rigorous testing before we update our stable repository next time. When we were in the kiosk, probably a hour or two at each location, there were indeed customers turning up at least once every hour On the whole, it was a nice day of traveling through rural Karnataka and visiting few more of our kiosks.

the meet, the misery and the mess

The title looks interesting, so does the 3 things. First the meet, which happened this weekend. Hobbes` had called for a welcome meet for Kartik moving to Bangalore. We had originally planned to have it in South Indies, Indira Nagar but due to unavailability of  seat we  moved to Tangerine,  just on the opposite side. As the man of the meeting rather went to talk about Debian in some college, we still decided to carry on the party. The #linux-india meet was attended by moi, Hobbes`, tuxplorer, vegpuff, shastri and his friend (forgot name/nick).  The place was nice and the food was nicer. I tried my first hand on a cheesed vegetable steak sizzler and it was awesome. The meeting lasted around a couple of hour, with people trying to find what BLUG was/is and Hobbes’ suggesting that we reactivate linux-india mailing list as the primary list. Then we had a small chat about bikes (not the ones with motor, but the ones with pedals) before we started fining our way back home.

Now to the misery. Summer has started in Bangalore and so does the water problem. We were originally getting Cauvery water filling up the sump directly. Now it got stopped and we have to fetch water from the common water tap in the area. As a single water tap is shared by a dozen houses, each house gets a limited volume of water which has to be further shared by the various tenants. What our owner does is get the water and pour it into the sump, then use motor to pump it to the overhead tank, which finally comes in our taps. Though this idea sounds logical, it doesn’t seem to be practical. The water doesn’t come before I leave to office, hence am not there when it comes. Second, once the limited water gets to the over head tank, you have to be quick in filling up your storage vessels otherwise you will be left without water. As am not there when the water is in the tank, am left without water. Even if am there, I manage to get only one or maximum two buckets of water. This has to be shared between two for all purposes. Third, since there is no water in the tank, my water heater doesn’t work. So no hot water supply, unless I manually boil water in the stove. Life has started sucking, and I have 3 more months to pass before summer ends.

Time for the mess. Someone posted a bug (bug #18395 on BBox, which is surprisingly listed under project’s section for Ubuntu India Loco Community in Launchpad. Thus, the team automatically got subscribed to it and the whole junta who were in the team got the bug mail. This resulted in half of them wondering why they got the mail and replying back to it. Their response lead to cumulative effect of mails and ended up as a major spam. It also resulted in half of the people who were in the team to realize that they have no reason to be in the team, resulting in an unjoin spree. When I poked people for help in #ubuntu-bugs, even the bug control guys reported the bug to be not visible to them. Then we found out that some one made it a security issue. I wonder who did all these things, messing up everything in the pipe line. Please people, do not panic on such an issue, poke around the team and find out if some one is trying to fix it out. If not, ask them to. Phew!

visiting the client side

If I was one among the mass of outsourcing fed code monkeys, it would have been a trip outside India. As I was lucky to work for an Indian company operating rural business centers in rural parts of Karnataka I was blessed with a chance to visit the urbanized rural part of Bangalore, around 15 kilometers from our office (not sure, just a guess).

It wasn’t a planned visit, at least for me and my team. We had a deployment plan for today and a couple of guys were to visit th kiosk for deploying. As most of my colleagues were interested in joining them and as we had an extra car to ferry us, we all decided to go to the kiosk. We left office in two cars an hour before our usual lunch time (hence most of us were hungry too) and reached the kiosk in half-an-hour or so. There was a small hotel opposite the kiosk, so most of us grabbed our lunch from there. Jacob and me trying raagi muddhe (with jace telling some personal horror stories about the experience of eating it), while others resorted to chappathi.

We had quite a nice time in the kiosk, finding various issues which we had not thought about especially the usability ones. This has given us some more insights about real situations in the kiosk and how we have to improve our systems to counter it. We also had a fun time with 7 out of 9 from our team being there.

We were done with the deployment by 3 p.m. and 5 of us left a bit earlier back to office. In the way, jace told about the food street and others wanted to go there for an afternoon snack. We ended up having the Gulkand icecream and Masala pepsi. One other important thing about this trip was, jace used his GPS device to track our entire route in the map which can now be uploaded after making some minor edits. Thus, we ended up in a surprise field visit and food street visit today

* Kushal, we all missed you a lot

My 5 today: #127274 (hal), #199362 (synaptic), #59397 (xfce4-session, hal), 33794 (hal), #199358 (nautilus)
Do 5 a day - every day! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day

the hackday

I am sure my colleagues should have published the same in their blogs, but I do it anyway. Since I joined here, each one have been working individually though I have done some pair programming with jace a couple of times.  But today was a special day. For the first time, 5 of us were working on a single project, each one playing a unique part. But still we found a lack of proper communication and collaboration between us that jace resolved to make us sit together in one room and work together. Suddenly we saw a lot of things fixing up and things moving faster towards completion. Still we have a night to go through, to test everything and make sure it just works. We ended up having a hackday, with 7 of us moving our systems into the discussion room. Sorry, I am not uploading any snaps of it but think kushal has done that.

Monthly Update - January 2008

The new year has been busy, but not so really busy in terms of busy. Been quite involved at work, with a lot of things to do with my project on Login Control. Somehow managed to get things working, only a few bugs to fix and packaging to be done. On Ubuntu front, got my hands in Bug Triage for few weeks now. With Onkar’s help, managed to submit a patch for enigmail bug which seems like will not be accepted. Not having an internet connection at home is taking toll on my contribution plans, especially holding me off from trying out with packaging.

There remains a pending blog post which I promised to make, if my patch gets some attention. It’s about an introduction to fixing bugs, repackaging and submitting debdiff to close the bug. Now it looks like I have to go with the post without my patch actually getting accepted.

I will barely be at office during the February month, as I will be at fossconf Chennai in the first week, then go to Mumbai for a workshop at IIT-Bom and then again to Chennnai for my cousin’s marriage. Am talking at fossconf chennai tomorrow and again on Sunday, though I have not prepared anything for it yet. Have a dozen tasks in my personal ToDo for the trip, so I am not sure how long will I be able to hand out in fossconf. At least, can use this opportunity to meet my ILUG Chennai friends whom I have not met for months since I went to Bangalore. Probably the next few posts in my blog will be on fossconf chennai experiences.

the Mandrivia joke

Disclaimer: it’s j/k

A> ubuntu is linux for human beings - mandriva is linux for computers

* A has quit ()

<B> ah, the computer shut him down!?

<C> heh

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

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….

if you are in a mailing list

Still I remember the day I joined my first ever mailing list, with a warning from my mentor not to immediately jump into mailing the list. It was followed by 3/4 months of observation period where I just kept reading mails, queries and replies. I was asked to learn how people ask questions, how people answer questions and how you shouldn’t ask/answer a question. It also helped me understand the entire idea about mailing list. I also learned about flaming and when did people landed in the middle of one. The monthly reminders on Net-etiquette where quite useful and kept me reminded on what I shouldn’t do. Still there were certain instances where my butt got burnt a little, but its quite normal.

Of late I got an additional responsibility in the ubuntu-in team, as a moderator for mailing list. Since then I have been seeing the inner world of mailing list, only known to the mail admins, about spams, over-the-limit mails, etc. That’s why I decided to write this post, of what not to do and what to do when you are in a mailing list.

1. Read the mailing list guidelines, otherwise called as netiquettes, and follow them.
2. Try to improve your linguistic skills, so that you can ask better understandable questions and offer clear replies.
3. Observe the mailing list before you take active participation. This helps in knowing the unwritten rules followed within the list community and understand better the common participants in the list.
4. Observe the common participants and pick up a mailing style, while still following the list guidelines such as “do not top post”, “do not over quote”, “crop unwanted text” etc.
5. Most mailing lists are enabled with “reply-to munging”, which means when you press the reply-to option in your mail client it automatically selects the list mail address as the reply-to address. Be careful, especially when you trying to mail the OP offline and do not want the list to know about it
6. Please do not indulge in personal duel. Mailing list is also a community and has people who differ in their way of life, profession, experience, expertise, ideologies etc. If you are not ok with anyone’s idea, just state you do not agree, place your points. If the conversation seems to digress somewhere, please remind silent so your butt is not burnt.
7.  Please answer things which you are very sure of. Try to understand what the conversation or query is actually about before trying to post a reply. Its quite embarrassing to be pointed out that you misunderstood and gave some crap as a reply.
8. Do not repeat points already posted by others. If you want to second on a posted opinion use “+1″ to mark you support the idea.
9. There might be a lot of discussions happening in the list. No one tries to participate in everything, though you might follow them up. Please think twice before venturing into unknown lands.
10. Please stick to the purpose of the list and do not digress. Though many list allow off-topic posting with a “[OT]” tag, that doesn’t mean you can ask anything under the sun.
11. I seriously advice to use a separate mail account for mailing list subscriptions. This is not just to manage the huge amount of mails you get, but to prevent unknowingly sending personal stuffs, forwards and spam mails to the list.
12. Those who send “join me in foobar social networking service” are considered to be the worst type of spammers and the list administrator might resolve to kick such people out from the list. Beware!
13. If the mailing list doesn’t welcome wishes and greeting mails, like “Happy New year!”, please refrain from sending one to the list.
14. Do not talk about food, religion or politics in a mailing list. These are topics where people have their own preferences and are quite strong in them. Indulging so might lead to people’s sentiments getting hurt and you getting flamed at the end.
15. Even when pointing others about their mistakes, please be polite. Do not make fun of other’s innocence or negligence. If you are proved wrong, just accept your mistake and learn from it.
16. New members of the list will be quite enthusiastic (may be they didn’t read a post like this ). Please understand it, give them time and support to learn. Flaming their butt will just create fear and they might leave the list calling it to be unfriendly or egoistic.

Remember, these aren’t rules but just some tips I learnt through the experience of participating in various mailing list for the past few years. Hope it does some help people who are venturing into the new world of Mailing Lists. Good Luck!

its foss.in time!

One more week to go, will begin one of India’s famous FOSS conferences foss.in 2007. I have been attending it for the past 2 years, first time as a mere delegate and last time as a part of sponsor’s team from NRCFOSS. This time, am taking up a new avatar, experiencing it more closer by being a volunteer myself. This gives me a chance to be a part of such a big conference, though volunteering is not new to me. This experience might prove useful in future endeavors when I take up more responsible roles.

What brings the people, especially a major part of the community, is an opportunity to meet one another, to match names with nicks (especially true for the #linux-india guys) and meet some international contributors of FOSS projects. Last time I had the opportunity of interacting with Aaron Seigo, and eventually I became Pradeepto’s K-convert (a new term for people converted to KDE, especially from GNOME) It was also an occasion for me to meet people I knew through IRC like t3rminator, tazz, barkha, devmodem|anurag, ubunturos, derek_, n3003n and many more.

This foss.in is special because for another main reason, Ubuntu India LoCo team is participating under the Ubuntu-In banner. Though the team had been in existence for quite sometime, this is the first major event its going to show itself up (after Carte Blanche of course, where we had a stall). We have joined with the Debian-In team and participating in the Project Days. Thus we will be enlightening the junta about “how to contribute to the Ubuntu project?” and “how to become one among the proud (contributing) ubunteros?”. We also managed to put ourselves with the Debian-In team in the FOSS Expo as well. One thing to remind is that this endeavor is purely by the Ubuntu-In LoCo team and has no commercial interests. We need to say this because often people relate us to the commercial side of Ubuntu Project, the Canonical Ltd.

We are getting some stickers and bookmarkers printed. We are also expecting some Ubuntu CDs to arrive (some customs and courier issues are holding it back). We might get some t-shirts printed as well, as a token of appreciation for those speakers who spoke for us (mean the Debian/Ubuntu Project Day). We are also getting some handouts printed, about the LoCo team. Similar things are happening in KDE-In team as well, so do in Fedora and Gentoo teams. I hope to get some laptop stickers to fill the empty space in my laptop

I am also hosting some of my buddies, as I have some extra beds in my house and I am allowed to have another 3 people with me. Though there is enough space to accommodate more, some issues in the water line is prohibiting me to host more people. As Kushal is coming back by Dec 1st after more-than-a-month of rest following his arm operation, we have another place to accommodate some of our buddies. The only thing which makes me feel a bit uncomfortable is this is happening during the weekdays and I have to take 5 days off. May be I can compensate by working weekends following the event (as I have no plans to go $HOME before New Year).

All said, its time to clean my house and make it ready for a few visitors. Hope to have an amazing time this year at foss.in 2007 As a part of foss.in volunteers I wish my best that the event rolls out to be a success

got the Gutsy

I had asked Ubuntu/Canonical to ship a couple of Gutsy CDs to me on 22nd October 2007 and the request was approved the next day. I almost forgot about it and when HereBeDragon reminded me about it a couple of days ago, I found it was 3 weeks since I put up a request. So I was expecting it to come in another week or so, but to my surprise it arrived at my table just a few minutes ago.

It always happen that the CDs arrive when I remember about them (after requesting for it, of course). The first time I requested Breezy, it took nearly a couple of months for it to arrive and then we could ask for more CDs. Now we can request a maximum of two and I usually get it before a month. It also comes with a few Ubuntu stickers, which am ready to give to others as I already have enough stock with me

Its a nice feeling when you have the Gutsy CDs sent from Netherlands in your hands Will now check whether I can get Kubuntu CDs

Where is my title ?

Was checking my RSS feeds after a couple of days when I discovered that all my posts from 29th October have been shown in Planet FLOSS India with a title “technofreak” rather than the actual ones in the post slug. I wonder how and why only mine got changed this way when other feeds are pretty normal. Have poked sayamindu who manages the planet, hope it gets alright soon