Shekhar

I do like Ubuntu Netbook Remix’s UI. However with 10.04 it’s just gone so unstable for me.

• After login when system prompts for keyring secret, UNR environment crashes and drops to gnome. I have to relogin if I need UNR env.
• After I removed a few packages it could not just start gnome panel causing a great inconvenience. I guess this is due to Evolution integration with latest Ubuntu. Mail client I like and use is Thunderbird. I cant switch to Evolution.
• Initially after 10.04 release it was damn slow to respond, so had to do some work around to get it to acceptable speed.

Considering all that I decided to switch to Xfce. It just worked like charm. But now I also use (and like :) ) UbuntuOne service for my backup. UbuntuOne is not integrated for XFCE. Also you cant do everything from UbuntuOne’s cli.

u1sdtool -q; killall ubuntuone-login; u1sdtool -c # configuration
u1sdtool --create-folder ~/my_data # add folders you want to be synced
u1sdtool --list-folders
u1sdtool --current-transfers

For more details you might want to check Ubuntu One wiki .

• It works. Make sure while purchasing you inform them that you use Linux
• It’s fast and reliable in Pashan, Pune area
• Below config worked for me on Ubuntu 9.10 AND 10.04
• There are Linux drivers on the CD but I could not get it working on Ubuntu 9.10.
• For activation, I had to use Windows :(

sudo apt-get install usb-modeswitch wvdial

vi /etc/wvdial

[Dialer Defaults]
Phone = #777
Password =
Username =
Baud = 460800
Stupid Mode = 1
New PPPD = 1
Tonline = 0
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Baud = 460800
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
ISDN = 0

Surely one of the most over-hyped film. What was good? Aamir, Music and the first half laughs. Post interval it becomes a predictable, boring, idiot bollywood movie.

Munnabhai s were certainly better. I would say watch it on TV or atleast don’t pay 3 times higher than usual for tickets like we did. 4 and half stars by critic hmmmm..

Pulling your hairs over some i18n bug or you fix it but are not able to explain what. This is little help in getting fair idea about unicode/codecs/encoding/decoding etc.

Quick tips:

a. It does not make sense to have a string without knowing what encoding it uses.
b. Utf-8 is a way of storing string of Unicode code points.
c. Encoding: Transforming a unicode object into a sequence of bytes
d. Decoding: Recreating the unicode object from the sequence of bytes is known as decoding. There are many different methods for how this transformation can be done (these methods are also called encodings).

Now
Must Read 1. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html
Must Read 2. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/447107/whats-the-difference-between-encode-decode-python-2-x
Continue reading 1: http://farmdev.com/talks/unicode/
Continue reading 2: http://diveintopython.org/xml_processing/unicode.html
Continue reading 3:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/440320/unicode-vs-str-decode-for-a-utf8-encoded-byte-string-python-2-x

cat /etc/wvdial.conf

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
ISDN = 0
Stupid mode = 1
Phone = #777
Password = internet
Username = internet

• Syncer: A event daemon based on Pyro.
• Stockie: A personal portfolio manager for an Investor

          
------------        ----------
|           |      |  Guest  |
| Host  ----+------+-----    |
|      |    | Hub  |     |   |
|      |tap0|      |tap1 |   |
|      |-----+-----+-----|   |
| eth0      |      |         |
|   |       |      |         |
----+-------       ----------
 |
(Internet)

Host
* Add a hub
# vde_switch  -x -d -tap tap0 -tap tap1
* Assign ip to host's nic
# ifconfig tap0 192.168.1.1
* Setup ip forwarding
Modify /etc/sysctl.conf
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
* Setup masquerading
# iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
* Fire qemu
# vdeqemu -m 1024 -localtime /vm//jos_8.04_01/jos_8.04_01.img

Guest
# ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2
# route add default gw 192.168.1.1
# vi /etc/resolv.com
# ping google.com

While there is a lot already written here my quick howto

$ sudo bash
# apt-get install dnsmasq squid
# echo "listen-address=127.0.0.1" >> /etc/dnsmasq.conf
# echo "no-dhcp-interface=" >> /etc/dnsmasq.conf
# vi /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf 
# # ^ uncomment line #prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;
# vi /etc/resolv.conf  # Add nameserver 127.0.0.1 
# /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart
# vi /etc/squid/squid.conf 

http_port 3128
visible_hostname localhost

acl all src 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0

cache_effective_user proxy
cache_effective_group proxy

http_access allow all
icp_access allow all

positive_dns_ttl 1 month
negative_dns_ttl 1 minute
httpd_accel_port 80
httpd_accel_with_proxy on
httpd_accel_uses_host_header on

cache_dir ufs /cache 400 16 256
cache_store_log none         


# mkdir /cache # I have this dir on reizerfs partition
# chown proxy.proxy /cache

# /etc/init.d/squid restart

much better than struggling with the graphical tools.

shon@ubuntu:~$ cat test.dot

digraph FlowChart {

 node [
         fontname = "Bitstream Vera Sans"
         fontsize = 8
         shape = "record"
     ]

 edge [
         fontname = "Bitstream Vera Sans"
         fontsize = 8
         fontcolor = "Red"
     ]

// all blocks
greet [label="Hello, techie", shape="oval"]
which_os [label="What OS do you use?" shape="diamond"]
like_me [label="Great, me too!", shape="oval"]
which_browser [label="You must be using firefox", shape="diamond"]
ff [label="Cool", shape="oval"]
bye [label="Bye", shape="oval"]

// relations
greet -> which_os
which_os -> like_me [label="I use Linux"]
which_os -> which_browser [label="I use Windows"]
which_browser -> ff [label="Right"]
which_browser -> bye [label="what firefox?"]
}

shon@ubuntu:~$ dot test.dot -Tpng -o test.png && eog test.png

import zope.interface.verify

class ITest(zope.interface.Interface):
   def foo(arg1): pass
   def bar(): pass   

class Test(object):
   zope.interface.implements(ITest)
   def foo(self): pass

class Test2(object):
   zope.interface.implements(ITest)
   def foo(self, arg1): pass

class Test3(object):
   zope.interface.implements(ITest)
   def foo(self, arg1): pass
   def bar(self): pass

for cls in (Test, Test2, Test3):
   try:
       if zope.interface.verify.verifyClass(ITest, cls):
           print "OK: %s correctly implements %s" % (cls.__name__, ITest.__name__)
   except Exception, err:
       print "Error detected with %s's implementation: %s" % (cls.__name__, err)

Python programming is joy. I was stuck on python 2.3 at my work for long and could not really get chance to explore later versions. Now that I got the opportunity doing re-architecture of the product I started exploring these. I am more than excited looking at deque, groupby, defaultdict and much more ... Also on top of it there exist excellent python softwares like twisted, sqlalchemy, turbogears makes it even more cool.
It's little pity that the language is stll somewhat less recognized than others. Or there are more hyped languages exist.

Anyways Python rocks!