Techwithfun-Learning Technology with fun

A Twitter Bug with snipped URL

2011-02-25T00:12:00.000-08:00

I am someone who is not a big fan of retweet functionality of Twitter. I still prefer the old RT style. So I mostly copy paste the tweet and prefix them with "RT @....".

Yesterday, I discovered some problem with twitter. I happened to like a message and wanted to retweet it. On the right pan of NewTwitter, I selected the message and out of sheer habit, pressed Ctrl+C 3-4 times (I know it is weird but I mostly press Ctrl+C multiple times. Thankfully, I don't do so with Ctrl+V ;)). Alas, the link part of the tweet spit null. Check the screenshot to see what I mean.

I tried it with a few other messages, there was no problem. Only difference between this tweet and others was that this tweet had a snipped link nybooks.com/articles/archi.... I tried this with other tweets having snipped links, the bug was reproducible on Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13 on Ubuntu. However, this issue wasn't found when I tried it on Google Chrome. I haven't been able to try it on other platforms/browsers.

As far as I can guess, the problem is with the Twitter's URL shortner API. I know of no serious consequences of this vulnerability, but I hope Twitter fixes it soon.

Update: The image in the post is not clearly readable. Here is the direct link of the image.

Helping solve few problems in Nepal with Technology

2010-09-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

I have been working on a research titled "Innovation Ecosystem for Development of Nepal" for past few months. Since, I started working on this research and after having gone through several literature, I have realized there is much more youths and individuals can do for Nepal than I earlier assumed.

I have been musing a lot over the ideas where technology, particularly ICT, could be used in improving the economic status of the country or living standard of marginalized group. There exists immense possibilities even the ones with great economic returns. However, here I am sharing two ideas from more of social entrepreneur perspective rather than business entrepreneur perspective. The ideas still need refinement where your inputs might help.

Build a portal with reasons and information to help people invest in Nepal. Something like http://www.investmentcommission.in/

The portal can be used to highlight quality work being done and potential growth sectors
Since the govt. support is unlikely to come (at least at the earlier stage), getting an endorsement by successful Nepalese with International branding like Prabal Gurung, Kiran Joshi and the Nepali diaspora will help
It would be great if the site could be community owned and developed collaboratively on github or similar platform
If ever, government agencies come forward, the ownership should be transferred to them
I know many of us who are familiar with Nepal's present situation would be laughing at this idea and find it ludicrous. but believe me if we start to explore positive sides, we will definitely find some. We already have low wages, huge concentration of population in youth age-growth (see I found a few!). We don't necessarily have to eye for an investment from Google here today or a supply-chain business from Wal-mart. Nepal would begin growing even if we, say for example, manage to get car-seat cover factories (that is so trivial, isn't it but Nepal doesn't make them yet), electrical switch making companies, some hydro-power solutions.

Helping pregnant women get customized advice through mobile phone

The idea is inspired (or you can say copied) from the following news story: http://www.iadb.org/news-releases/2010-08/english/pregnant-women-in-peru-will-improve-their-health-via-cell-phones--7708.html
It can easily be implemented by a startup IT company in Kathmandu
Would be a great service to do in a country where maternal mortality rate and infant mortality rates are very high
The idea need to have major focus for rural areas
Since reducing maternal and infant mortality rates are critical MDGs (Millenium Development Goal) for Nepal, getting some INGO to fund the cost shouldn't be difficult
Can be easily done in partnership with a hospital
This will be very useful as several rural women don't have access to hospital and the cases of teen age pregnancy are high
The implementing organization can still make profit through SMS charges (though margin can be a bit low). However, I believe the social capital through such project would produce good returns in long run. And, moreover, it will help develop a market for SMS based services at the bottom of the pyramid (it is virtually non-existent in rural area at present and has great potential. One has to only connect to the kinds of services that would matter to rural population).

Although, I would like to work on these ideas, I am not quite sure if I would be able to work on either of them because of my other engagements. I would be more than happy to extend any help if someone wants to implement them.

Google Bots are looking at you!!

2010-04-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

We all know of the enormous amount of data Google stores about so many things. But today I ran across something that I hadn't imagined Google bots were stalking at.

A picture is worth thousand words. Hence, lets see this screenshot of my Gmail account.

In the email thread (http://groups.google.com/group/foss-nepal/browse_thread/thread/2725fc8a421c90b8) I had proposed an IRC meeting on Tuesday at 8 PM. I was surprised to find "Add to Calendar" suggestion with those details (I have noticed this feature for the first time.) It is just so wonderful and genius of engineers at Google to suggest you to add the event to you calendar, isn't it?

Even before, I add the event to calendar, Google still has an idea of the fact that I am having a meeting at the specified time and venue.

Google bots might over period store so much of information about your meetings that it might be able to tell you when exactly you went on date with and when.

Is Google experimenting Video Ads in Youtube?

2010-03-25T02:03:00.000-07:00

For sometime now, Google has been vigorously experimenting variety of ads on Youtube. Anyone who has used Youtube in past 3-4 months (I don't exactly remember when Google launced it and I am too lazy to search ;) ) must have at least noticed the text based ads that appear at the bottom of videos.

Today, while trying to follow the Google-China Saga, I clicked upon a video link to notice L'OREAL ad being bombarded at me.

For a moment, it seemed I clicked wrong link. And, in a while, the video I was looking for actually appeared. For a moment, I thought that it might have been uploaded that way by the video submitter. Hence, I refreshed the page to be greeted with PEPSI ad.

This seem to be a new advertising methodology Google is experimenting in its lab! I am not sure how people will react to it but for the time being, I am loving the idea.

e-libraries in Udaypur and Lamjung

2009-01-21T12:55:00.000-08:00

11 January '09 was a great Sunday. On this day, we set out to establish e-libraries in Udaypur and Lamjung districts. And with those setups, we are a couple of steps closer to perceiving the dream "1 e-library per district" envisioned by Help Nepal Network (HeNN). As of now, HeNN e-library project has been deployed in 8 districts and 9 sites.

While the Lamjung project was solely carried out by HeNN, Udaypur project was financed by Save the Children-Norway and HeNN looked after the implementation. FOSS Nepal provided the technical assistance in the projects.

I have been associated with HeNN since the days I volunteered for establishment of e-library in Sudal, Bhaktapur and it has been more than a year now. But working this time was a different experience all together. With Roshendra Dai and Shishir Dai gone for further studies, I was transferred the responsibility of technical co-ordinator for the projects. So, this time, I was in charge of affairs right from purchasing hardware, co-ordinating with volunteers to communicating with Save the Children-Norway. Of course, I also had to deal with technical issues in the setup and content for the e-library. Handling all these responsibilities parallely was tough but a good learning experience.

In the Udaypur deployment, we had a team of 4. Me, Suraj, Mitra Rai and Khem Rai. The project was accomplished in Shree Rauta Higher Secondary School, Murkuchi. In Lamjung, Sushil Shilpakar led the team, with Sanjeev KC, Dipesh Shakya and Kailash Budhathoki as other team members.

There were lovely moments as well as tough moments during the project. But the accomplishment of the projects is definitely a thing we feel proud of since this has created an opportunity of learning Information Technology for at least 1000s of students who will be helping hands in the nation-building tomorrow.

And the beauty of these projects is that they are solely based on Open source and implemented using LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) which greatly reduces the cost which is a key concern in nation like ours. Moreover, we have tried to ensure that the setup is more than just a computer lab. With contents like gCompris, Student Wikipedia, e-Paath developed by OLE (Open Learning Exchange), eBarnamala, Kalzium, etc. the setup is a supplement to the traditional library. Hence, we call it an e-library.

I am pretty sure that this mission of "1 e-library per district" will give several young minds an opportunity to be aware of the power of Information Technology and connect them to the global phenominon. This definitely is a reason for me to smile and feel good about these deployments.

LTSP Training of Trainers conducted

2008-12-17T10:45:00.000-08:00

LTSP (Linux Training of Trainers) technology is gaining momentum in Nepal considering the impact that it can cause at very low cost. Organizations like Help Nepal Network and FOSS Nepal have set up a vision of establishing 1 e-library per district. I am proud to be associated with this vision and was one of the deployers of the e-library project in Bhaktapur district.

The vision itself is very innovative since it not merely empowers rural Nepal but also students of technical institutions who are given opportunity to go to different parts of Nepal to set up the e-library. Since, not much students are familiar with the use of this technology, a training was conducted. This was the second training on LTSP being conducted, last one being conducted on 15-16 December '07. I was part of the instructing team for both the training events.

I have made a blog post of the training @ http://elibrary-ltsp.blogspot.com/2008/12/2nd-ltsp-training-of-trainers-conducted.html

Classifying data to class interval using AWK

2008-12-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

Recently, I needed to do a 'Simulation And Modeling' assignment which required me to classify the discrete datas into class interval.
Thanks to my counting skill (or probably it was concentration), I ended up finding different frequencies for the class-intervals each time I counted.
I knew I would never complete the assignment if I continue counting. I thought I would better go for a script to do counting for me. And hence, I wrote a small one for myself using awk.
I copied the discrete data in a plain text file called dataset. The data was separated by a blank space and looked like this:

07 05 96 14 10 90 ..............

Had to write only a few lines of code to do the trick for me. In the class interval, I had to include the maximum class limit and exclude the minimum class limit. Wrote the following code in a file called class.sh and executed it.



#!/bin/bash
awk '
{
for(j=1;j<=NF;j++){
   p[int(($j-1)/10)]++;
 }
 print "Class Inverval","\t","Frequency";
 for(k=0;k<100;k+=10){
  printf("%2d lt; r <= %3d",k,(k+10));
   printf("\t\t%2d\n",p[int($k/10)]);
 }
}' dataset

The output of the script would look like this:


Class Inverval     Frequency
 0 < r <=   10             8
10 < r <=   20            13
20 < r <=   30             8
30 < r <=   40            12
40 < r <=   50             7
50 < r <=   60             8
60 < r <=   70             8
70 < r <=   80             8
80 < r <=   90            12
90 < r <=  100            11

Easy, huh? Isn't it.

FOSS Nepal wins best SFD '08 event for consecutive year

2008-11-26T09:07:00.000-08:00

Today, it was a day of wonderful surprise for the FOSSians here.

The results of the best SFD (Software Freedom Day) events was announced and guess what we have managed to stand one of the best SFD events team for the second time in a row!

Thanks to the effort put by together by the collective effort of volunteers. Bibek Paudel ensured that our effort were properly logged in a report to be submitted. And here we are!!!

SFD announces three best SFD events team every year (in no particular order). The other two teams who managed to tell precisely how they managed the event were: SFD Nicaragua and DabaweGNU. The information is available at :

http://softwarefreedomday.org/Competition2008

FOSS Nepal was declared one of the best events even last year ('07) along with SFD Nicaragua and Beijing SFD.

SFD was celebrated throughout the world on September 20 this year. You can find a post about activities in this year's event in Nepal on Pravin Gautam's weblog

Everyone is enthralled and we will soon be having party to celebrate this victory!!! And, now that we have tasted the fruit of success, we are looking at making a hattrick. :)

A week long journey to hightech rural Nepal

2008-11-21T01:00:00.000-08:00

It was unexpected but very pleasant surprise for me to receive a call from Basanta Dai (http://basantashrestha.blogspot.com) asking me if I could manage time to go to Nangi for follow-up training of PAN localization, a project by MPP (Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya: http://madanpuraskar.org/). I needed to teach the trainees about Blogging and CMS.

But then I was a bit hesitant since I needed to miss college for at least 10 days. I talked about this to Suraj, Manish and Shishir Dai. Everyone said that I should go. And so I was ready for a lifetime experience.

We started our journey from Kathmandu on Nov. 17 and had a night stay at Beni. The next morning we had to trek for 10 hours to reach our destination, Nangi. It has been the most difficult trek of my life till date but such a beautiful place is worth every pain.
The view of Annapurna South, Annapurna II, Dhaulagiri, Gurja Peak all make you feel like a heavenly creature.

While you trek, you wonder if you would even find salt at such a place, you will be amazed that most of the villagers use VOIP as the sole telephony medium. Most of them are good at emailing, chatting and you would find most of the communication in the neighbouring villages taking place through forum on a local webpage. What more, they have a tele-medicine centre.
I was really stunned to see this hightech village. And despite this all, they are so friendly to you.

The training was arranged by ENRD (E-Network Research and Development). Uttam Sir and Ambika Madam from ENRD accompanied us.

While Basanta Dai needed to discuss the new features in Nepalinux 3.0 like Text-to-speech, Nepali Sabdakosh, Nepali spell checker in Open office as well as GIMP, English/Nepali Wikipedia, Web Domain Registration, I was assigned the task of teaching Blogging and Website building using CMS. I chose Drupal (http://www.drupal.org).

From the next day, we had to start the training session. And, it was supposed to be a 9 day training session.

The trainees (or probably I say trainers since it was a Training of Trainers programme) were from 5 different locations namely: Krishna Sir, Kishan Sir and Boj Sir from Nangi (Myagdi), Sete Sir and Yamshree miss from Shikha (Myagdi), Narayan sir and Amrit ji from Tolka (Kaski), Shivaram Sir from Dandagaun (Rasuwa) and Chhanu Sir from Jhuwani (Chitwan).

In these 9 days, we got along very well with everyone and it was all fun inside and outside the class. We would take classes from 9.30 AM to 4.30 PM with an hour break and would then go for walk around village.What more, we also got to participate in the traditional Magar dance. I am glad that I got to experience all this.

In the meanwhile, Amar Sir from MPP joined us on training on 8th day while on his way to Ghorepani with his friends. We organized a small feedback session. And it was pretty good that we received good remarks about the training from the participants. Only the complaint that the participants had was that the curriculum in schools had to be Vendor independent so that they themselves had the opportunity to use Nepalinux regularly and teach their pupils. We assured that we would do the best we can. By the way, let me bring it to your notice that we are already putting the curriculum issue before CDC (Curriculum Development Committee) and I am taking charge on this front on behalf of FOSS-Nepal.

By the end of the training, the participants from the centers had developed the center's respectives sites. The following are the links to the sites:

Dandagaun -- http://dandagaun.com.np

Jhuwani -- http://jhuwani.com.np

Nangi -- http://nangi.com.np

Shikha -- http://shikha.com.np

Tolka -- http://tolka.com.np

Well, I have a lot to say, but let photos express it in a better way.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jitendra-pic/sets/72157609561027757/

GMail launches themes

2008-11-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

Just today, when I was about the check my mails, I read the feed of GMail blog that talked about launch of Themes in GMail. I was so excited by the thought. I signed in to find no 'Themes' tab under Settings.

I went through the whole article to find that Google was updating each account and the process may take some time. And hence, it was a long long day for me. Then, finally, I got to see 'Themes' tab in the Settings which looked like this.

Themes tab with 'Mountains' Theme activated.

What more, some of the themes work with your local time. Like the 'Beach' theme would change the appearance of your GMail to simulate the look of a beach at your local place.

There is a theme for everyone. Even a theme called Terminal for console fans and geeks!!!

So, I am a much more happy GMail user now :)

Dynamic svg graphics using PHP

2008-10-20T02:13:00.000-07:00

If you have ever used Inkscape, I am sure you must have loved the power of the software. Besides nice and easy to use interface, what makes it a really powerful tool is the graphics standard that it follows - SVG or Scalable Vector Graphics.

The SVG format is an XML based open standard for Vector Graphics. The XML format makes SVG a powerful resource for dynamic graphics with the help of some programming or scripting language. Many web browsers now support SVG format. All you have to do is include the following header:
header('Content-Type: image/svg+xml');

Let me present a small demo to give you a glimpse of what can be done with SVG and PHP together. I have used a very simple example with minimum graphical components to make it easy to illustrate the concept. Though, there is huge possibility of making things better.

Say, if marks of a student in various subjects were to be presented in the format shown below, where the name of the subject and the marks are fetched from a database table, you would probably have used a complete graphics library package.
You would notice that the color intensity of the bar graph for various subjects are different. I have chosen 40 to be pass marks. Anything below it would be rendered in red with highest intensity for 0 marks and lowest for 39. And anything above it would be rendered green with lighest intensity for 40 and it gets darkest at 100. The number of subjects are also dynamic.

This task can easily be performed using svg graphics and php. So, where do I begin?

Well, writing the complete xml script for svg by yourself may be difficult if not impossible. The best way is to draw the initial framework using Inkscape or any other Vector graphics tool. I drew something like this.
Don't worry about the accuracy of color intensity and percentage. We will leave the mathematics for PHP. And you don't need to be accurate about positioning and other stuffs. You can always edit them later. All you have to do is prepare basic framework.

If you notice properly, you would identify that there are 4 components that are dynamic for our purpose. The text that writes "Maths" (it will be fetched from database), the container for the bar (it will have to be replicated for all the subjects), the bar itself (besides being replicated, it will have varying color and width) and the percentage text of course. Note down the id of these components from the graphics tool you are using.

Now, open your svg file in some xml editor (almost text editor would open it). Copy the whole script. Create a PHP file as follows:

<?php
header('Content-Type: image/svg+xml');

mysql_connect(HOST,USERNAME,PASSWORD);
mysql_select_db(DB_NAME);
$query="SELECT * from TABLE"; //TABLE has two fields: subject and marks
$result=mysql_query($query);
$count=mysql_affected_rows();

echo 'PASTE THE COPIED TEXT HERE';
?>

The code above should be self explanatory. Now, locate the section of the dynamic components and keep them in loop as:

for($i=0;$i<$count;$i++){ $subject=mysql_result($result,$i,subject); $marks=mysql_result($result,$i,marks);
.................................
}

Now, the tasks that you will have to undergo are as follows:

1> Make the y value of all those components dynamic as every subject will appear at different value of y. Something like this:

y="'.(405.21936-$i*60).'"

2> Replace the static text 'Maths' with $subject and '23' with $marks.

3> Vary the width of bar component.

width="'.($marks*5).'"

4> Now all we have to do is vary the color of the bar to meet our requirement.
It was done as follows:

style="opacity:1;fill:';
if($marks>=40)
echo '#00'.(dechex(210-2*($marks-40))).'00;';
else
echo '#f82d00;';

echo 'fill-opacity:';
if($marks>=40)
echo '1';
else
echo (1-$marks*195/(255*39));
echo ';stroke:none;stroke-width:0;stroke-miterlimit:4;stroke-dasharray:none;stroke-opacity:1"

While I chose a certain sort of colors to depict on the graph, you can choose your own sets of color. If you go through the above code carefully, you would easily realize how the colors were generated.

While this should have given you an idea about the power of svg, you can refer to more resource on integrating svg with php at svg.org's wiki with complete source code.

So, if you are a nice designer with good programming skills, you have both your hands in a pool of treasure now!!!

This article has also been published in the first issue of 'The init Magazine' released by IOE FOSS. The magazine can be downloaded from http://ioefoss.ioelive.com

Managing your mails with Labels and Filters

2008-09-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

I have often noticed most of the newbies who subscribe to an active google group unsubscribe soon after being troubled by messy inbox because of the email flood. Or, as an alternative they choose not to receive Emails.

Hey! in case you have a gmail account, it was never that difficult to be receiving the discussions in your mailbox without bothering to locate an important mail in an ocean of mails from the group. The task can be easily accomplished with the help of Label and Filter. Not just groups, you can also you it to filter your mails as per your convenience.

Let me tell you the way to vanish away the cause of your daily migrane.

Go to Labels->Edit Label link from Left panel or Settings->Labels from the top bar.

Type the name of the label in the text box accompanying 'Create' that you would want to associate with your mail filter. You can choose any name you desire. And press Create button.

For example, if you wanted to filter all the mails from ioefoss google group, you could name the label IOE-FOSS or anything you deem suitable.

Huh! will that filter the mails from ioefoss in my mailbox? No not yet, you have just created a label, you need to filter the mails now.

Now, choose Filters from Settings. And click the link 'Create a new filter'.

So, you see so many criterias for filtering your mail. You can filter on the basis of the sender, receipant, subject, etc etc.

So, if a friend of you frequently communicates to you and you want to filter the mails from him, you would simply type in the email address of your friend in the 'From' textbox.

And in case, you wanted to filter the mails from google groups, you would type in the email address of the group in 'To' textbox.

For eg, to filter your emails from ioefoss google group, you would type 'ioefoss@googlegroups.com' in 'To' textbox. If you are confused how to select the field for filtering the mails, you would better check the header of the mail and find something common the mails you want to filter. You can do this by clicking 'Show details' in your mails.

After this, click 'Next step' button.

So, now you have various ways of filtering the mail.

If you wanted not to receive your filtered mails in your inbox and directly go the the Label, check 'Skip the Inbox' and then 'Apply the label'. In our case, the label would be 'IOE-FOSS'.

If you wanted to apply this for the prior communications, check 'Also apply filter to ___ conversations below'.

And that is all you had to do to get rid of your headaches. Simple, isn't it?

So, happy GMailing (thanks Dhruba for coining the term!!!).

Do you still love your old snake game?

2008-05-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

With the development in graphics hardware and computing power, the games developed these days are very powerful and challenging. But still there is something fascinating about the traditional computer games. Most of us have must have played snake game popular on cell phones. I am sure there are many who are very crazy about it. I am myself a fan of the game and I love the simplicity of the game. But as far as I believe, after a certain time you adapt to the game and get hold of timings and strategy which may dilute your enthusiasm after sometime. And there is really no time factor for eating the food. How about being able to limit the time within which a player must eat the food? Hmmm.. not convinced with the idea.

Ok how about adding a timing limit indirectly by making you compete for a food which your friend in network also tend to occupy. That is making it go multi-player. Ah, now that sounds interesting. Want some more challenge? How about an intelligent snake which the computer controls and which is capable of determining the shortest path to food? Scared? Ain't you excited about it? Yup, there is a game that adds these feature to the snake game-iSnake. The project has been developed in Java. And just to let you know I am one of the developers of the game.

We developed this game as a part of our academic project and with the purpose of research in AI and real time gaming. But that doesn't mean we ignored factors like smooth gaming experience. We twicked the original swing components in Java to give the GUI a game like touch. The project uses Apache Mina Framework for communication. Besides, the game uses an algorithm for shortest path finding which we developed ourselves. The biggest challenge in the project was path computation in real time. Each game cycle is of 100ms and computing path within 100ms with other threads simultaneously running is really tough. Most of the path computations are rarely done in real time. We code- named the algorithm that we are currently using in the game as Viper. The game won the first prize at 'KUCC Software Meet 2008' and we participated with the project in 'LOCUS-Technical Fest 2008' for which the results are still awaited.

The game is hosted at sourceforge.net and has been released on 07 May. The game is registered under GPL and can be launched from web page using Java Webstart. You can find the complete documentation of the project including the path finding algorithm on the website.

So what are you waiting for? Browse the url: http://isnake.sourceforge.net, download the game. And get going. Give your friends a difficult time eating food. Happy Gaming!!!

Extracting email addresses from multiple files

2007-12-22T01:13:00.000-08:00

Few days back, we conducted a LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) ToT (Training of Trainers). We invited application (a .txt format) for the training. We needed 25 applications but we had around 90.
Now sending notification to everyone about their selection status was a problem. One option was to open the .txt file one by one then copy and paste the email address which was way too manual and time consuming (not less than 2 hours). Hence, we thought of an alternative.

I placed all the .txt files in a folder 'application'. Then I extracted out the lines that contained email addresses. The following simple yet powerful command did this for me.

jitendra@jitendra:~/application$ cat *.* | grep '@' > email_lines

cat *.* concatenated all the files in the directory and grep extracted the lines containing @. The output was directed to a file email_lines. The output contained lines like the one shown below:
(g) Email address: abc@gef.com

Though this command was sufficient to simplify out task and I could have done with it with more 15 minutes processing. But I wanted to go further experimenting and making the task more simple.

Now what I wanted was the section only after : from each line. This was accomplished using cut command. I went about like this.

jitendra@jitendra:~/application$ cut -d: -f2 email_lines>email_list

cut command remove the sections from each line of files. Here -d defined : to be the delimiter. -f was used to select the field. 2 specifies the field to the right of the delimiter : . 1 would have specified field to the left of delimiter. email_lines is the file from which the field section has to be removed. I directed the output to email_list.

Now I had a list of email addresses only. I preferred adding comma manually to them to create a comma separated list of email-addresses to send the notification.

The task which would have otherwise taken more than 2 hours was over in less than 10 minutes.

GMail: Bigger and better

2007-11-18T01:23:00.000-08:00

Only days after welcome improvements in UI and functionalities with new additions, GMail has now increased the mailbox volume to around 5000 MB mark.

The change comes in less than a month after GMail raised its mail size from around 2800 MB to 4300 MB.

With this, GMail makes it clear that size is never going to be a barrier in using GMail. Before you reach anywhere near the limit, you will get your mailbox size enlarged.

The improvements in UI are really a welcome change. Though the changes seem small, but I feel most of them are really awesome. Though I have not much explored the changes because of lack of time, the ones I liked are:

The new color selection looks better than the previous one. Though the change in color appear only at few places.
The change in position of Loading status display was long awaited. The previous design used to hide the Sign Out link in case of Loading.
The contact info on mouse-hover is really a great feature.

With these additions, GMail has shown that nothing can beat Google when it comes to innovation and quality.

Brand your Site with Favicon

2007-10-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

Want to give your website a professional look? Want it to be distinctly identified among others? Static and animated favicons, can work for you.

A favicon (short for 'favorites icon'), is an icon associated with a particular website and is displayed in URL bar, in the list of bookmarks and next to page title in tab-enabled browsers in a favicon enabled browser. Basically, favicon is a 16x16 pixel icon. 16x16 pixel is too small size but it can contain something really meaningful and attractive.

While Internet Explorer supports only .ico format, Firefox, Opera, Flock, etc support .png and .gif as well. So, if you are using static favicon, it is advisible to go with .ico file to have support for all browsers.
Firefox has even added support for animated .gif files. It won't be a big surprise if other browsers also add support for them in their new releases.

To have one on your webpage, go through the following steps:

Create a 16x16 or 32x32 pixel ico/gif/png file and name it "favicon.xxx" where xxx is suitable extension.
Include the following tag in the head element of the webpage if you are using .ico image.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico">

If you are using .png or .gif image, use the following tag instead

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.xxx" type="image/xxx"> where xxx is proper file type (gif/png).

With this you are ready with one on your page.

N.B.: GIMP can be used to create .ico image. And if you are looking for creating an animated gif image using GIMP, you can find a good tutorial to start with at http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/1664.html

Auto-forwarding mails from GMail to other mail accounts

2007-10-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

Do you want to have fun with your mailbox? Want to receive mails sent to your Gmail Account in your Yahoo, Hotmail or any other mailbox? That means even another Gmail account. Believe me, this is quite possible. Let me tell you how.

Sign in to your Gmail account.
Click Settings on the top-right of your Gmail page.
Choose Forwarding and POP tab.

In the "Forward a copy of incoming mail to" textbox, write the email address where you want your emails to be forwarded. Choose one of the following as per your convenience from the drop down menu:

Keep Gmail's copy in the inbox
archieve Gmail's copy
delete Gmail's copy

Choose Save Changes.
The screen shot below illustrates the task.

So, from now on you will receive the mails sent to you on your Gmail account in the account convenient to you.

I am sure that was fun. Want some more? Ok, now I tell you to selectively forward the mails from Gmail inbox to other mailbox.

Choose Settings->Filters.

Click "Create a new filter".

Enter the criteria of filtering your mails.
Choose "Next step".

Provide email address where you desire to receive mails meeting the criteria you entered to "Forward it to:" option and check the option.

After this click on Create Filter button.

And you are done.

Was not that interesting? But I am sure you would not want to have your gmails in other accounts. Wish the other way round was true i.e., mails from other account could be auto-forwarded to Gmail.

3D Modelling and Animation

2007-10-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

If flash movies and animations are something that fancy you, you will surely love this: Animation and movies in 3D!!! According to a survey, global animation and gaming market was of 100 billion dollars in 2006 and the projection estimates this to grow to double by 2010. May be next time you think of making a model, an animation or a game, you use the softwares I tell you about. Believe me, it is much more effective.

Ever heard of 3Dmax or Maya, popular 3D animation softwares? While these are the good options, I prefer Blender-a free and open source 3D content creation suite. Primarily, because it is available for all the major OS: Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, IRIX. Another important feature of this suite is its extensibility using easy to use popular C and Python language unlike 3Dmax that requires Maxscript particularly created for this software for extensibility. For comparisons on different 3D development softwares, refer to:
http://wiki.cgsociety.org/index.php/Comparison_of_3d_tools.

Blender has got loads of features that allow modeling, skinning, UV unwrapping, texturing, rendering, non-linear editing, animating, etc. Moreover, it has got advanced simulation tools for rigid body dynamics, fluid dynamics, soft-body dynamics.
It has variety of features for primitive geometry like subdivision surface modeling, NURBS surfaces, Bezier Curves, can be integrated with YafRay, a free and open source ray tracer. The modifiers allow non-destructive effects. The key-framed animation includes inverse kinematics, non-linear animation, particle system with collision detection, etc.

The most amazing feature of Blender is Game Blender, a sub-project, that allows interactivity features. With collision detection, dynamics engine and programmable logic features, one can create stand-alone, real time applications of all sorts including high-end games.
Another great feature of Blender is an internal file system that allows to integrate different scenes in a single file with extension .blend. All images, textures are within a single file. Moreover, .blend file made in one version has good compatibility with the other version and blender on other platforms.

This software has improved a lot in the aspect of User Interface. While earlier versions required one to do almost everything through keyboard shortcuts, new versions are robust with menus.
I have only recently started learning Blender and found it very useful and easy to learn (but you need to go through proper tutorial for sure). Blender foundation is really working hard on improving the documentation. Tempted to give it a try but wondering where to start from? You will find the tutorial at here useful.
Communities have strongly been contributing in this aspect. There are many communities who can help you learn blender and solve your queries regarding it. Moreover, you can have a downloadable magazine with issues in 3D development at : http://blenderart.org.

So, don't stop yourself. Get going and add a new dimension to your knowledge.

Configuring Kopete for Google Talk

2007-10-06T01:01:00.000-07:00

If you heard Pidgin has a support for Google Talk and are disappointed for not having it in your Kopete, don't worry you have a way out. You can configure your kopete to work for Google Talk just like you do for Yahoo, MSN, AIM or others. Here is a how to to make things happen for you:

Start Kopete.
Choose Settings->Configure...
Select Accounts from the left navigation bar.
Select New...
The screen should appear like this one.
Choose Jabber and click Next.

The next screen should be like the one shown below:

In the Jabber ID, enter your complete google account ID. For eg, I would enter jitendra.harlalka@gmail.com for me. Choose Remeber Password as per your convenience. In case you choose it, provide Password in the TextField. Similarly, you can choose Exclude from connect all and Exclude from Global Identity as per your convenience.

Now, choose Connection tab. It should look like this one.

Check Use protocol encryption (SSL) and Override default server information. Type talk.google.com in the Server TextField. Keep Port to 5223. Click Next.

Choose color for your google talk ID. Click Finish button. You should find yourself online if you are connected to internet connection.

Finding fastest mirror/site

2007-09-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

Say if you are to download something from a mirror and have not been suggested the best mirror for you, how will you decide which one to download from?
Perhaps, speed and efficiency will be the factor for you. But, how to know which one will be the fastest and efficient mirror?

The answer to this question is netselect. This package chooses the fastest server automatically. On providing space separated list of sites, it chooses the fastest server. The calculation involves various factors like ping time, number of hops required to reach the target, the percentage of ping requests that got through successfully.

For example, say you want to download apache from its official site. You will be provided with a list of mirrors (you will be provided with a suggestion for best mirror-site but lets ignore that for the moment). I chose to find the fastest one out of 3 mirrors: http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/ http://apache.hoxt.com/ http://veritris.com/mirrors/apache/ .

So, I typed
$ sudo netselect http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/ http://apache.hoxt.com/ http://veritris.com/mirrors/apache/
which gave me output
2175 http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/
Hence the fastest one out of 3 was found.

Actually, netselect gives score to each mentioned server on the basis of various factors. The lower the score is, better is the server response. Now, to know the score of each server, run netselect in very verbose mode with -vv option. For more information on netselect, refer to netselect manual.

Also try netselect to check fastest search engine at your location by supplying a list of search engines with the netselect command.

Netselect will definitely make your life easier especially if you are using slow dial-up connections.

N.B.: I tried this command on Debian based Distro, Ubuntu. This command works on Debian based systems but I am not sure about rpm based systems.

Listing the dependencies

2007-09-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

I have come across many people who don't have access to internet connection and are worst hit by dependency problems while installing a package. Some time back, I myself was suffering from such problems. While borrowing from your friend, how to ensure that you have got all the files required to install a package? One such method is using:
apt-cache depends packages
where package is the name of the package of which dependencies are to be listed. For example,


$ apt-cache depends adduser
adduser
  Depends: perl-base
  Depends: passwd
 |Depends: debconf
  Depends: 
    cdebconf
    debconf
  Suggests: liblocale-gettext-perl
  Suggests: perl-modules
  Replaces: manpages-pl
  Replaces: manpages-it

Shown above is the output of the command for package "adduser". The output lists out the packages on which the specified package depends along with the sub-dependencies.

Now, you are ready to use the above command to list the files on which your desired package depend, copy .deb files and install them using dpkg or other package managers. Rock your Linux box and enjoy!!!

File type description

2007-09-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

You must have used ls -l and recieved output something like this one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-rw-r--r-- 1 jitendra jitendra 0 2007-07-28 19:19 mysqlaccess.log
drwxr-xr-x 11 jitendra jitendra 4096 2007-05-17 03:51 netbeans-5.5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 806 2007-05-04 13:49 python-defaults_2.5.1-0ubuntu3.dsc
-rw-r--r-- 1 jitendra jitendra 102447 2007-05-10 17:03 showthread.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 jitendra jitendra 29976 2007-09-06 18:02 ubuntu-files
-rw-r--r-- 1 jitendra jitendra 123 2007-08-26 21:11 version.h
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do you know what does the first characeter in the line denote? Basically, it denotes the file type. In the above output, you find '-' and 'd' as first characters but these are not the only ones. Let me tell you about the possible options and their meanings.

d         The entry is a directory.
As is clear, the entry denotes a directory.

D         The entry is a door (Solaris).
The concept of door is derived from Solaris.

l         The entry is a symbolic link.
Symbolic links are like shortcuts (M$-Windows naming convention).
l denotes symbolic links. Use ln command to create symbolic links.

b         The entry is a block special file.
As you may be aware that Linux treats every device as a file.
b denotes file corresponding to block devices like disk partition,
RAM, etc.

c         The entry is a character special file.
This is for another type of device called character devices. These
are not hardware device. The entries falling under this category are
console, tty, etc.
  
p         The entry is a FIFO (or "named pipe") special file.
Unlike normal files, "named pipe" do not contain any user information and
facilitate communication between two processes by reading/writing from/to
this file.

s         The entry is an AF_UNIX address family socket.
As is clear, this file is for socket connection.The connection is internal
and can't be invoked from outside.
  
-         The entry is an ordinary file.
The files we create are generally of this type.
The text files, graphics and all other are candidate of this type of file.

If you have never come across these symbols, use 'ls -l' in /dev directory. You will find most of them. However, if you are an end-user, you will never need to create files of type except '-', 'd' and 'l'.

What type of file types did you locate?

Linux knows your fortune

2007-09-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

Yup, that's true. Linux knows your fortune. Do you want to know yours?
Go to console and type
$ fortune fortunes.

For me it was
You are taking yourself far too seriously.
Ha ha!! What fortune Linux predicted for you?

Type the same command again and again to see more predictions.

Basically, fortune maintains text files from which it selects a random epigram. In the above command fortune is the name of command and fortunes is the category. You can choose from a lot many categories. To see the categories available to you, type
$ fortune -f

And say you want something on love, type
$ fortune love

The output that appeared on my monitor was
People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
-- Ken Kesey

You can simply type fortune to see output from a random category.
The best output I found was
C:\> WIN
Bad command or filename

C:\> LOSE
Loading Microsoft Windows ...

But if you are the one who easily gets offended, please please don't install the package fortunes-off. Don't install it rather than being offended. And go through the manual for more options.
$ man fortune

May Linux have good fortunes in store for you.

Was that wonderful? Please, share.

Displaying uncommented and non-blank lines

2007-09-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

If your file is too long with lot of blank and commented lines, this might be the thing you have been looking for: Displaying uncommented and non-blank lines.
Let me explain this with an example of a file that contains a few typical lines from xorg.conf. I call this file neat_file and in my case it looks like this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Section "ServerLayout"
     Identifier "Default Layout"
     Screen "Default Screen"
     InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
     InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
     #InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"    
     #InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
     #InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
     Mode 0666
EndSection
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let me dissect this problem in portions to ensure that you understand this properly.

$ grep -v '^$' neat_file
^ denotes the beginning of the line and $ denotes the end of the line. So, '^$' denotes blank lines. -v option inverts the selection. Hence, what we get is the non-blank lines. With this half the task is done.

$ grep -v '^#' neat_file
This command is similar to one above except the fact that it looks for lines starting with #. Alas! it doesn't work. It is because in our case the commented lines begin with blank space not #. So, what is the solution?

$ grep -v ^' *#' neat_file
* represents zero or more occurrences. Since, * is preceded by blank space and followed by a #, it will look for zero or more occurrences of blank space followed by a #. And, as usual -v will invert the selection and give those lines which do not match this pattern that is uncommented lines.

Now, how to combine these commands to get desired result?

$ grep -v '^$' neat_file |grep -v ^' *#'
| combines different commands.

Was that useful? Do, comment.

Review of B3 web-browser

2007-09-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of B3 (browser-based-browser)? It is a product by AOL. If you are still trying to figure out what is browser-based-browser, let me tell you it is a web-browser that runs inside another web-browser. I am writing a short review of my experiences with this browser. I have tried B3 with firefox, konqueror and elinks. But the results seem to be similar for other browsers as well.
I came across this web-browser while I was searching for something else. A web-browser by AOL, it sounded great to me. So, I thought to find out what it was. I came to know it can run in inside your web-browser on different platforms and according to them it can run on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and many other browsers. I couldn't understand what could be the use of a browser that needs the support of other browser. Anyways i thought why not give it a try? Guess what, no need to download packages. Just click this link users.aol.com/stevejrice/b3browser/browser.html
and your browser may look like this if you are using firefox.

When I chose OK, the alert message was displayed which said "Most excellent choice!". But you will run into trouble with the alert boxes popping out regularly which say "Gotcha! April Fools! hee hee..." in case you choose Cancel.
Anyways, I typed in the navigation bar provided by AOL www.google.com and as expected google search page was there. I tried it out for yahoo and many others. It worked. But to much dismay, the excitement ended here. When you click on a hyperlink, the navigation bar's URL doesn't change on AOL. While on your original browser (firefox or any other), the URL displayed is the URL of B3 and not the page you are currently visiting. So, it is very difficult to figure out the page URL you have currently opened. It was really getting difficult for me to bear with this so called browser and understand why AOL designed it.
The biggest shock came to me when I tried to test the browser's support for plugins. I opened same page in B3 (firefox) as well as B3 (konqueror) which required JRE (Java Runtime Environment) enabled. JRE is enabled in my Firefox but not in konqueror. The page in firefox opened while not in Konqueror. That was a shock!!!
I thought if I had carried on with it that much, why not try it in elinks too. The browser opens but URLs typed can't be opened.
The AOL claims its browser is for consistency and gaming. Though the product is still in alpha phase according to the link I found, I simply disagree with the idea of a browser inside another browser which is doing absolutely fine.
What I can understand is that B3 is merely a ad on top of your page in the browser displayed for free (atleast adsense pays you for the ads on the page) that forwards the URL typed in its input box to your original browser. Otherwise, why different results in case of Jave enabled page. I may be wrong but it was my experience.
Try out and post your experience in the comments.

BVS, First Private School to opt for Linux!!!

2007-09-01T08:07:00.000-07:00

It may sound astonishing to many that in Nepal school computer lab runs on Linux. But it's true.
LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Projects) has already been running in 4 schools in Nepal (in Dang, Bhaktapur, Phulchowki, Myagdi). Several projects are still under planning. These projects were funded by HeNN (Help-Nepal) and MPP (Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya). Luckily, I was a part of the project in Bhaktapur funded by Help-Nepal.
But today (September 1, 2007) is a special moment in the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) history of Nepal because today Brihaspati Vidya Sadan (BVS), Naxal, a reputed school in the capital got Linux installed in the PCs in its computer Lab. I was lucky this time too. I was part of this historic moment as well.

Around a month ago, we were in Brihaspati Vidya Sadan for the FOSS awareness program. We get presentation on what is FOSS, why use FOSS and blahh blahh. Mr. Pravin Joshi, the computer teacher had already been using Linux in his PC at home. He was so impressed and positive that he asked Shishir Dai (our senior and motivator) to help setup Linux in computer lab in the school. This must be the first in Nepalese history that school administration has approached for getting FOSS implemented in its lab. I must say even the students were really sharp and keen to try things. And, so we were there today to install Linux.
The computers didn't have cdrom so the installation method preferred was Net-Boot. Shishir dai configured his laptop for DHCP (Dynamic Host Communication Protocol) and TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol). And made the Ubuntu available on his apache server. While, Ujjwal helped debug the errors that occured, we (me and my classmates along with a junior Kulchandra) looked at the installation in the PCs. The computers, hence, were ready to install Ubuntu from Network. And now Linux co-exist on the PCs with MS-Windows. Though, some additional packages still need to be installed which will soon be done, the greatest achievement is at least students have something to start with and know that much exist beyond Windows.
For the qbasic programming (that is a part of the curriculum for computers), we will we installing dosbox and wine. Besides, we will have bluefish editor, gcompris suite and other stuffs.
Hats off to Pravin Dai, BVS, Shishir dai who have reached a milestone with this step and have set example for other schools. I wish this step helps government consider for a syllabus based on Free and open source rather than propritory.

Cheers

Changing MAC Address

2007-08-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

In a network where IP Address is provided by DHCP mode, how will you identify a particular computer? The answer to this is MAC (Media Access Control) Address of an ethernet card. Every ethernet card is burnt with a MAC address. But, the MAC address can be changed. Here is how to:

ifconfig ethx down
where ethx is the interface. This command is to deactivate the ethernet card.

ifconfig ethx hw ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
where xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is the 12 digit hex address which you want the address of your ethernet card to be.

ifconfig ethx up
This command is to activate the ethernet card.

And you are there.

There are softwares like macchanger which can also be used to change the MAC address. They do not do anything different from the previous method expect allowing you change to MAC address from particular vendor. So, the above method is advisible rather than using macchanger.

But your MAC address gets restored once you restart your computer. Now how to this permanently. Well, there are different methods for this. You can write a script and add to your run-level to load it when computer boots. But I prefer a more easy and convenient method of editing the file /etc/network/interfaces.
In the above file, you will see line like
auto ethx
Below this line add the following line:
hwaddress ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

N.B. : You will need root permissions to do the above tasks.

The above examples are given with reference to Kubuntu-7.04. The methods described above should work with others Linux distros as well.

Acid Test for Web browsers

2007-08-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

Have u ever wondered if your web-browser follows the agreed standards. You can have acid test for your web-browser at the following link:
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/#content-main
This page links to a test script for checking whether your web browser confronts to the setup standard. I tested it on Mozilla Firefox and Konqueror.
I was pretty sure that Firefox will pass the acid test but it badly disappointed me. It didn't properly support the transparency and other features. Well, the page specifically mentioned that Browser had to be in default setting. I guess mine is.
With very little expectations, I tested it on Konqueror. Guess what, it rendered it perfectly (at least what it seemed at first sight!). It was something unbelievable. Now I guess I have answers why Apple chose to base its Safari on Konqueror. But with some more efforts I could find some problem with Konqueror also. Certain portion of image moved when scrolled while other portion was static. That is it had problem with fixed-positioning. Moreover, re-sizing of the window distorted the image.
I read the Opera performance on the link provided above. What I figured out was that Opera also have same faults as Konqueror.

I wish I could test the other web-browsers but I had only these two installed.

Does your browser pass the acid-test? Do comment.