To all Americans among you:
Happy 4th of July!!!
Friday, July 04, 2008
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Opera 9.5 is 66% faster than IE7 - and I have numbers to prove it!
Hi All
I just found an interesting study, that compares cache efficiency of Opera, IE7, FF3 and Safari (on Windows) and finds, that Opera is the best one, leading 66% over IE7. From the site:
As it is clear from the results, Opera 9.5 caches web content most effectively, performing 3-times less disk operations that Internet Explorer 7. FireFox 3 coming on the second place with a minor -12.87% disadvantage. Safari 3.1.2 is on the third place with 6,991 accumulated disk operations. Internet Explorer 7 is coming on the last place with a huge -66.63% disadvantage relative to the Opera web browser.
Posted by Alex at 06:05 0 comments Links to this post
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The new computer
Hi all
I've purchased a new computer couple of weeks ago. I made a research on my locale market, and found that I want the following configuration:
- CPU: Intel Q9450
- MB: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R
- Memory: Mushkin CL4 4Gb
- HD: Western Digital WD5001ABYS
- Case: Antec Sonata Plus 550
- Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce 8500GT Silent 512Mb
All in all, it came in about $1630.
Currently, my main work requires me to work with lots of different Windows configurations. It lead me to use the following installation:
Main OS: CentOS 5.2 (updated 2 days ago) 64bit
Windows OS: XP machines in VirtualBox.
This configuration was chosen to provide as versatile environment as possible.
CentOS Linux was chosen as enterprise-grade OS, providing me as stable environment as possible.
It is a great, quite machine. I'm happy.
Posted by Alex at 06:39 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: enterprise computing, Gentoo, life, linux
Monday, June 02, 2008
Universal Tracker
Hi All
My friend started a new project for the Android platform: the universal tracker called "Unit".
Cited his definition:
Unit is a mobile application for tracking lists of owned, loaned and borrowed assets (such as books, CDs, DVDs or board games) using Android mobile platform.Here's a demo screenshot:
He's currently looking for help developing the application, so if you like this, join him!!
Thanks :-)
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Firefox3 RC1
I cannot believe its happening to me.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Running tests on Windows.
Hi all
I need a free tool for testing a GUI application. Something in lines with Mercury's WinRunner.
Does anyone knows something like that?
Thanks
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Cellular Video Calls: reality that never happened?
Hi all
I recently started working for Comverse - the company supplies solutions for telephony providers, mainly cellular ones. Our product lies in the core of the operator's network and manages all or some of the services provided by the operator, such as Voice Mail, SMS, MMS, Video Calls, etc. Our system can provide a complete solution or integrate its parts with other available solutions in the market.
As I'm having an educational process now, I got an interesting thought during the studies. I got an insinuation from some of the cellular operators in last years, that video calls ability was the major drive behind the transition to fast networks, such as 3G, 3.5G and next generations. While it is true for some cases, I am not that sure that it is completely valuable.
Just think about it: would you perform a video call using the modern handset that has a video camera? Of course not - you'd have privacy issues right away. Do you really want the whole world to hear what you are saying? So what the point then in having fast network but not providing any type of service with it? Probably this is one of the reasons that cellular providers have problem: they have the infrastructure, but no services to monetize it. So everything else costs more to cover the losses. And this is something that I as consumer do not like.
I wonder why is it so in my locale that we do not have an unlimited connection cellular plans. We do have various packages, but they all are paid per minutes or MBs of data - just similar to what dial-ups used to be ages ago. It really would be great to have internet everywhere, and I think that cellular companies are not getting something here.
It's not that they make more money on pay per minute/byte basis. It's just me not buying the service at all while this is the payment scheme. So general users of this are business folks that gotta have an access to their email at all times. And even then, better options exist (we have WiFi hotspots almost everywhere now).
Just wonders of the world I guess.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Oh Gentoo, what had become of thee?
Dear friends
Yesterday was an important day for me. I stumbled into a very important issue, albeit small, which made me to come to the following decision: I am leaving Gentoo as a desktop platform.
It does not come as an easy decision. I've been using Gentoo and quasi-actively participating in the community for about 5 years. I have it installed currently on 3 out of 4 computers I have (the last one being mac mini, which I keep with Mac OS X). So why would I take this decision?
It all began with a one simple thing. You may have read my previous posts on various WINE installations, and I use some Windows applications with WINE. But recently Internet Explorer stopped working. I've tried to reinstall it (and it is easy in Gentoo, just as in any other Linux distribution with decent package manager), but to no avail.
Next step was slightly more complicated, but still quite simple: I've used VMWare to install complete Window XP environment. It worked fine for awhile, until I couldn't use VM images between different computers I have. It just stopped working. Besides that, the performance of VMWare on my AMD Athlon 1.8 with 1G of memory was, to say the least, appalling. Next came Innotek (now Sun) VirtualBox. This is the best emulation environment I could find to work on my computer. It works fine, and I use it for all my Windows-related projects.
But as a side effect of all installations, system began breaking. I started noticing various weird things, such as sudden applications freezing at times, etc. Couple of days ago, when there were no applications running, I've seen CPU usage at ~80%, I did what most Windows users do. I rebooted the machine.
And then, system just broke. System utilities seemed nowhere to be found. Some init scripts seemed to be incorrect, etc. I somehow fixed the situation by copying old versions from other projects, and updating the system. But now, GNOME has problems with graphics and themes, and most applets do not work and even do not exist. It just never ends, does it?
So, as a normal user of Gentoo, I went to emerge my world. I haven't done that for a couple of months, so there were almost 1G of updates waiting for me. I've downloaded all the packages, and began the emerge.
The thing that broke the last straw was a simple apache update. The system update failed because I had an old version. Not because compile didn't work. Just because it needed me to manually do something!! It redirected me to a Gentoo doc site, which has 2 lines of code that fixed the problem, and emerge now runs again.
Why in the heavens name wasn't this done automatically? Why did I loose half a day, during which my system could be updated? I lost this time because update procedure stopped. I had to fix the Apache configuration, so my GNOME desktop could continue updating. I understand that this specific issue with Apache may be serious, and that not many ordinary people run it on their computer, it still bugs me. I don't like it when I have to do this sort of manual intervention in update procedure.
So what is the problem here? Daniel Robbins created a Gentoo moto once: The goal of Gentoo is to design tools and systems that allow a user to do his or her work as pleasantly and efficiently as possible, as they see fit....If the tool forces the user to do things a particular way, then the tool is working against, rather than for, the user. (cited from Gentoo Philosophy)
The problem is that I spent too much time caring for the computer with Gentoo. I don't have that luxury anymore. There was time, when geeking with the machine and fixing problems was cool. Today, its a burden. I value time, and I only have 24 hours a day of it.
I believe that this may be one of the general problems with Gentoo. When it began, most folks using Linux were techies, who cared about all the bits on their computers. Gentoo fit very well in this community, so it flourished and became very popular. It provided tools that noone had (and used to compile anything manually anyway), and community of a good will and lot of friendship. It had the best documentation (and maybe still do) among brothers, and best team of engineers.
But nowadays, many users want word processor, web browser, email program and video player. They want it now, and not wait 20 minutes when compilation will finish. They don't care about technicalities. And as Gentoo haven't changed its nature, it doesn't fit for majority anymore. Sabayon anyone?
Gentoo distro has proven over the years, that it will stay the way it is. And that's why it won't be back on my desktop soon.
So, Gentoo, stay on server.
Ubuntu, CentOS - my desktop is waiting.
Posted by Alex at 06:25 5 comments Links to this post
Labels: CentOS, Gentoo, life, linux, Red Hat, technology, Ubuntu
Monday, April 21, 2008
Linux on the desktop now!
Posted by Alex at 01:32 1 comments Links to this post
Sunday, April 13, 2008
My new computer
Hello folks!
Posted by Alex at 04:10 2 comments Links to this post
Labels: Core 2, Gentoo, hacking, Intel, life, linux, quad-core
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Back to the net
Hi all
I've been away for a long while and it feels now like a long vacation. I've done few nice things in a meanwhile, the major 2 being visit to Italy (Tuscany) and starting a new job.
So Italy - I had a great time visiting one of the most beautiful places in the world. We've been in Tuscany, where one of the best wine in the world is produced, and saw medieval cities built very long time ago. We also saw Renaissance structures, but most of all - we liked how the new integrates with the old, and how countryside is full of buildings built within last 5-10 years but look like they stood forever on those green hills.
And now I started a new job - I'm in intergration position in Comverse, working as subcontructor. My job would be packaging the company's products and integrating them into a complete offer, which mainly means a lot of perl/bash/Linux stuff, which in turn makes me very happy.
Have a nice day everyone.
:-)
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Back from Italy
Hi all
I had a great time in Tuscany last week!! The trip was a present for my significant birthday date last Thursday.
It is also great to come home :-)
I have posted few photos from the trip, you're welcome to take a look here
Sunday, February 24, 2008
La citta ideale
Hi all
I'm going to Tuscany in about a week, so I need as much information as possible - can anyone direct me to sources of "ideal city" architecture?
Thank you very much
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The keys to a blog success
You all know how it is: you hear in the blogosphere about making money from blogging. Then you find and read thoroughly the major league: the Problogger.net and JohnChow.com; and then you make up your mind: "I'm going to do that too. If they can make it, so can I".
And then, you go and read Darren's list of newbies tips, and John's ebook. But you decide that you're not ready to pay for the blog yet - after all, you're just trying out, right? So, you sign on Blogger or Wordpress, just to save a $100, but you do register domain, because everyone agrees that it is the most important thing you should start with.
And then you start posting. At the beginning, you're on fire. Finding everything you can on the net, posting like a crazy. But, for some reason, stats do not go up. Then you say to yourself, "well, maybe no one really reads what I write", and you post less and less. And then, no one really reads your blog.
Such a state of things would probably describe most of new bloggers (and that would include myself as well). The idea of making money out of blog is very attractive, but many do not succeed at making enough for cup of coffee. Why is it so?The main reason is that many newcomers start with the obsession over statistics and the idea of earning the same money that big shots do. They check visits every few hours, they check how much cents they've made out during those hours. They put many ads into the blog, and wait until money and readership would thrive. Big mistake!
So, here's the list of things required to make any blog successful:
- Create an interesting content
But there are more things that I'm doing for my blog:
- Listen more to Darren from ProBlogger and John from John Chow. These guys apparently know what they're doing.
- Less is more: that recent post on ProBlogger made by Skellie from AnyWired, is really a good one. I decided to post not more 4 technology-related posts a week, including posts regarding the process of building the blog itself. In addition, I removed some advertisers which didn't bring anything in a long while, and just made a bad impression for being there.
- Stop caring about statistics. Don't check it every few minutes. Its a stressful action: you wait, it doesn't rise up, you panic, you loose motivation. Just stop doing it. In 10 minutes you checking for statistics, you could have an outline for a new post.
I only have to remember that myself :-)
Posted by Alex at 07:03 6 comments Links to this post
Labels: blog, building this blog, Gentoo, life, linux
Monday, February 18, 2008
Looking for freelance projects
Hi all
After years of handling different systems and hardware including servers and storage and also considering the fact that I want to make my life better (and much more interesting) I would like to ask your help with finding freelance projects (those that can pay internationally).
Currently I can do consulting for IT technology on all levels (design, requirements, building), implementing, integrations, customizations and optimizations of complex systems (except programming), blogging and technical writing (without proofing). I'll be thankful for any ideas and leads that you can give me.
Last project I did was to build customized distribution based on Gentoo for small computer based on AMD Geode processor. The distribution comes on DVD (which is based on Gentoo LiveCD) and installs complete system on the computer. It will be available as an optional download.
I will provide as much additional details and information as needed.
Thanks in advance.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Fedora Kickstart installations
Hi all
I'm writing this in a hope that someone knows the issue.
I'm creating a spin with Revisor (spin of Fedora 8) and while I'm including the kickstart file, the installation doesn't seem to perform the "post" part. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks a bunch...
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Commercial Ubuntu
Hi all
I just read a post by Bruce Byfield, where he raises an interesting question: after the fact that Canonical will try and offer commercial software from a specific repository, would anyone use it? And if not, could it alienate other users of Ubuntu from using the distribution at all?
He continues to argue for a whole 2-pages-long article for something that I don't even think exist. His main point is that this idea of commercial repositories has been tried out before and it didn't work. Why try now? After all, it's just a matter of time until something else will replace our current software:
A download service might find a temporary niche in offering software for which no free equivalent exists. For instance, despite recent improvements in apps like Kooka and Tesseract, someone who regularly needed to convert scanned text to a usable format might welcome a GNU/Linux version of OmniPage. The trouble is, given the speed with which free software is developing, such a market would be temporary, lasting a year or two at most. A service specializing in these niches would continually lose out to maturing free software, with no prospect of replacement products.But why doesn't he see that this service may not be different from other software distribution methods? It seems he more argues the fact that there are proprietary and commercial application offers in Linux, than the fact that they are provided in Ubuntu. But, as it seems to me, the main reason for Canonical to do so is not for all Ubuntu Desktop users - its for business users and maybe even Ubuntu Server users, who may use those proprietary applications for their businesses and need a standard way of installing applications. Why should the way of installing Parallels be different than one for installing Open Office? It should not.
Sun has its own software distribution system, just as Apple's Mac OS X and MS Windows do. Why is it forbidden for Linux distributions to have one that includes commercial software?
I can provide the example of commercial software that I have used and had to install on Linux: IBM Rational ClearCase (and trust me, moving to other version management tools was much more expensive in human-hours because of the huge amounts of code and fast workforce turnover). Yes, the are free/open source alternatives, but they were not viable for that specific case.
I see the offer by Canonical as very pragmatic, practical and not hurting Ubuntu in no way. Ubuntu is Linux distribution. Canonical is the company behind it, which goal is to make money. So what is the problem that they try to monetize the free infrastructure they supported to build? The infrastructure is and will remain free, and as there's no additional effort required (except maybe for billing system in-place), Canonical has nothing to loose - and much to gain.
Here's another question while we're here: why the author doesn't criticize the Red Hat's model where you pay for the distribution first, and then if you use proprietary software, then for the software once more? Is it that much better? I don't see users ditch Red Hat and its siblings (Fedora and CentOS) just because Red Hat has proprietary parts in it.
And I don't believe that Ubuntu users will drop using Ubuntu because Canonical has proprietary repositories.
I side Canonical in this specific case not because I'm pro-Ubuntu. While I am pro-Ubuntu, I'm really distribution-agnostic person (although I do have some emotional and personal allegiance to Gentoo). But I think that author just emotionally reacts on the offering of something proprietary for Linux. While it is perfectly fine for some users to be upset, business people might actually be glad that they will be able to get the software they anyway want or need in a standard fashion.
Update: I just thought about it while answering to one of the commenters. Would this issue be such negatively reviewed if IBM or HP would offer such a repository with their own commercial offerings and not Canonical? I wonder...
Saturday, February 09, 2008
zRaven in Linux review
Dear all
I've been contacted by the Zoundry, developers of Zoundry Writer and got notified that they've got zRaven into beta, so I might try it and run in Linux. Here's the quote:
Please note that Zoundry Blog Writer has finally be deprecated and replaced with a new version called Raven.This is very cool to be contacted by them, so here we go. I've decided to play around with a new release. But I have to give the following notion: I've tryed zRaven before. When I performed a research about different blog editors for Linux, I've even tested some of them in Windows first, using VMWare image. And if I liked the program I would test it on Linux later. And that's how I got to run and test Zoundry Writer. And Raven was also one of them - I liked its interface and apparent simplicity.
We're really striving to make it the best product we can, so we'd love it if anyone interested could give it a try and give us some feedback. Raven just went into public Beta testing this week.
We haven't tried getting Raven to work under Linux, so obviously your mileage may vary. However, I do think we have done a much better job with the UI this time around. :) Let us know what you think.
So, first to my testing results: Raven runs and works in Linux under Wine. But there are some serious caveats, which I will go over now. To install Raven, you will need a pretty recent Wine installation. I did this in both 0.9.46 and 0.9.54 versions, but your mileage may vary. I think that it should work in most versions. The install is pretty straightforward: define your WINEPREFIX variable and run the installer.
The installer will run and Raven will be installed. But before you could run the program, some manual handling is required:
- Install MSVCP71.dll. You can download it freely from the web. Just google it, unzip and copy to your SYSTEM and SYSTEM32 Wine folders.
- Do the same with gdiplus.dll and shlwapi.dll files.
- Now there's a need to hack around a little: run winecfg with the WINEPREFIX set to your WINE system folders. Go to a Libraries tab, and remove gdiplus and shlwapi from that list. This action is required to make Wine to use native Windows libraries, because its own do not implement all the necessary functions for GUI manipulations.



So what does work? Mostly everything. Posting to multiple blogs, good editor, tags, offline editing, posting as drafts...
What doesn't work? At this moment, and I haven't resolved it yet - the right mouse click causes an exception and error. The program doesn't crash, I just can't use right click on the mouse and some toolbar buttons with multiple functions (like 'back' button in browsers). Which leads me to inability to use certain features (which at the moment I'm not even aware of).
Now, my impressions from using the program:
What I like: I like the interface. Its very slick and simple. It is convenient to write a post to a blog. I like that it supports major blogging platforms, and includes posting as draft and pinging different services.
What I don't like:
I don't really got the idea of separating tags, links and images and their representation in Raven. I'm just not yet comfortable with them, and plus that I cannot use the right click button on the mouse to learn other features, makes me uncomfortable.
I'm also not sure that opening a new window to edit the post is the best way to do the thing (I might have left it in the same main window and use tabbing feature).
I didn't like that only 32 out of my 146 posts were downloaded into Raven. I haven't found the setting which changes that and allows to download all the posts in blog.
What I really don't like or hate:
It's probably Wine's fault and not Raven's (well not all of it), but I have really bad problems with graphics and performance. I had similar problems with Zoundry Writer - which makes me believe that it has something to do with GUI framework used in Raven - and so it is originated within the program itself.
When I switch from the window of Raven to some other window and then back, it may take up to 5 seconds to redraw all the icons and window borders. The text typing is ok, but deleting and replacing it is PAINFULLY slow and makes the experience really unpleasant. Now the last but not least: XHTML formatting that Raven uses is the same as in all other blogging platforms. But Blogger is terrible in parsing this specific formatting, so some sort of tweaking will be needed after posting anyway.
So, did I like the Raven? Yes and no.
Yes because I like its interface better than Zoundry Writer. It's slicker and more beautiful and easier to navigate. Icons are more up to date. In short - it is better.
No, because I haven't been able to fully realize the application's potential due to problems both in Wine and the Raven itself. I don't really understand all the options in the program and I can't at the moment understand them because of technical issues.
So, what can I say about the program? I like it.
It can be ran in Linux. While it is still in beta, you may encounter some difficulties in using it, but it works and can be tested and played with.
What about me then? Am I going to use it? No.
At the moment, I've created working script, that takes a simple html (which is not really an html - just few markings such as 'title', 'italic' and 'bold' formatting) and posts it as draft on Blogger (If you decided to use the aforementioned script, and have problems - let me know, I'll try to help you out). I find it much more efficient, as I can create my posts anywhere in VI or Bluefish or OpenOffice Writer. I find it more useful because I work on the draft after all - and doing it my way takes less time and effort.
Now you can run the Zoundry Raven in Linux! Enjoy.
Have any questions? Feedback or suggestions? Ask them here!!
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Totally Free Wordpress Hosting
For anyone who tries to be a blogger or create some sort of information resource, the most important issue is always with high quality of the blog or site. It relates both to design and content. It takes awhile until the design makes you happy, and it can also take few iterations until you're happy with the posts.
You create the post, and proofreading it, and post as draft, and reading it again. Then you fix few things, post it online. And then you find that you're not so happy with some phrases, and you change them and post again...it takes awhile until you're totally happy. All these back and forth iterations are not always convenient - you may have a bad connection. Or you have a hosting with limited bandwidth. Or you're not sure, or anything else. Or, maybe, you'd like to see how it would look like without actually posting.
Or, you're just like me. I've posted few times already that I'm thinking about moving my blog to Wordpress. I want to try Wordpress and see how it looks and feels like before I do it on a real blog.
I might have a solution for you. It will help you to do anything you want without actual posting or making design changes to your blog. It is very simple actually, and the magic is in virtualization. It's hardly a surprise for anyone. Our personal computers are strong enough to be the host for both our own tasks and also for virtual computers. So, what you can do is to create your own virtual server that will only run Wordpress (and its all required components, such as web server, database and php engine). You can then work with your local server while you're trying to verify issues such as design and/or posts, and only after you're sure - you could post it to your official blog.
Now I will explain the procedure I tested. Just keep in mind that while it shows how to work with Wordpress blog engine, the idea can work for any other web or other resource you'd like to use. I looked over the web for all sorts of virtualization techniques, and the one I found to be the easiest is the VMWare image of rPath Wordpress Appli


