Planet dgplug

GNUnify’10 etc

2010-03-17T09:22:37+00:00

I wasn’t able to spend too much time at GNUnify10 – a weekday came in and, then there wasn’t enough time to do anything. A couple of things did strike me though.

The profile of the attendees was different from last time. If the organizers talk about the demographics, this observation might be validated but I got the feeling that the crowd was more of professionals than students
The event has introduced diversity and, that is a good thing to have
There have been new speakers as opposed to the “same old faces” talking
There were elements of avid interest in things Fedora where the speakers were enthusiastic and participated in rapid Q/A

I liked what I saw. Including Shreyank’s enthusiasm to not get off-stage till the “download link came up”

One of the things that I’d hoped would happen at the event is that the group of Fedora folks who met would sit down and discuss their goals for this year. By goals I meant the stuff they would be focussing on and, more importantly, how they would be measuring their achievements. I don’t know how much was discussed along these lines but it is a good time to start doing it. Keeping the focus on a few important things and then creating easy-to-visualize ways of looking at the achievements allow the contributors to assess themselves. Self-assessment goes a long way in removing any perceptions of anonymity that might be lingering on. And, it also creates a sense of involvement – of belonging.

The other important bit this would achieve is that it would make the developers more visible and approach-able. For too long I have seen developers have an aloof or, stand-offish approach to their projects. And, it isn’t because they are arrogant but perhaps it is their trait. Unfortunately, “they will contribute if they figure out that the project is good” isn’t a nice approach. Going upfront and talking about goals, plans and in general doing advocacy allows potential contributors the confidence to tinker with the code and, start contributing. Building up the confidence to tinker not because it is “good for the nation” but because it is “good for oneself” and, is profitable is a concept that needs to be repeated over and over again. The students aren’t rolling up their sleeves enough and, it is an urgent need to exhort them to do it. The world is moving forward at a fairly fast clip and they cannot take comfort in the “learn-by-rote-to-join-TWITCH” way of life in the various colleges across the country. In money terms as well as in time and effort an enormous quantity is invested in students, that shouldn’t go to waste.

The others have already blogged about the event, I’m waiting for Hiemanshu’s writeup.

Posted from GScribble.

Rabindra Rachanabali and Bangla fonts

2010-03-17T07:41:58+00:00

The fonts that can be obtained from the site here display the following information. Now, how is one supposed to package (there isn’t a defined upstream as much as I could fathom) and redistribute (especially Bangla Akademi.ttf) them ? The fonts by themselves are fairly nice and, that’s a sad aspect as well.

And, an evaluation version of the BitRock Installbuilder seems to be used for creating the font installer.

$ otfinfo -i Vidya.ttf

Family: Vidya
Subfamily: Normal
Full name: Vidya
PostScript name: Vidya
Version: Version 0.6
Unique ID: PfaEdit : BanglaTemplate : 30-3-2003
Designer: NLTR
Manufacturer: NLTR
Copyright: Copyright NLTR License: GPL
version 2 (or later, at your option).

and,



$ otfinfo -i Bangla\ Akademi.ttf

Family:              Bangla Akademi

Subfamily:           Regular

Full name:           Bangla Akademi

PostScript name:     BanglaAkademi

Version:             1.0  2008 initial release

Unique ID:

SocietyforNaturalLanguageTechnologyResearch(SNLTR),Kolkata,India.DesignedaccordingtoPaschimBangaBanglaAkademiStandardbyBiswarupBhowmik:

Aangla Akademi: 2008

Description:         Society for Natural Language Technology Research

(SNLTR),Kolkata,India. Designed according to Paschim Banga Bangla

Akademi Standard by Biswarup Bhowmik, 24B Lake Road, Kolkata 700029

Designer:            Biswarup Bhowmik, 24B Lake Road, Kolkata 700029

Manufacturer:        Society for Natural Language Technology Research

(SNLTR),Kolkata,India.  Designed according to Paschim Banga Bangla

Akademi Standard by Biswarup Bhowmik

Trademark:           Bangla Akademi is a trademark of Society for

Natural Language Technology Research (SNLTR),Kolkata,India.

Designed according to Paschim Banga Bangla Akademi Standard by Biswarup Bhowmik.

Copyright: Copyright (c) 2008 by Society for Natural Language

Technology Research (SNLTR),Kolkata,India.  Designed according to

Paschim Banga Bangla Akademi Standard by Biswarup Bhowmik. All rights

reserved.

cartoons in inkscape

2010-03-14T16:35:04+00:00

Trying out the upcoming version of lekhonee-gnome

2010-03-13T17:51:20+00:00

Testing the upcoming version of lekhonee-gnome frontend.

Status:

One can write post in the direct view mode
Still one can edit the html by clicking the view source button
Spell checking is only working while working with raw HTML source
Supposed to work properly with any unicode string like কুশল দাস

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A web-calendar for events – does that sound nice ?

2010-03-10T16:43:32+00:00

For as long as I can remember I have found the LWN.net Community Calendar very useful. It would perhaps be nice to have a similar web-based calendar for Fedora events across the world. Currently, the events are tracked by this page. That is nice but doesn’t give the visual representation of a month full of events world-wide.

It would be nice to have a calendar that integrates with FAS and, allows someone to post the details of the event. Another group of folks, can take a look-see at the posting and approve it to be listed. The original poster could choose to be the event owner or, add someone who is the actual owner. Since Events etc fall under the ambit of FAmSCo, perhaps they might consider this stuff.

collaborators

2010-03-07T01:20:56+00:00

I am now involved in several projects - a little more than I can handle, and am looking for collaborators. None of the projects are yielding much money now, but that could change. I am looking for people in the areas of web design, web applications with django and in GIS applications. Remote working is fine, but location in North West Tamilnadu would be a plus. This is unpaid at present, but if I make money I share it. Freshers are ok, as long as they do not expect to be spoonfed. If nothing else, I am an excellent teacher - no one who has ever worked with or for me is on the streets - this includes people I have chucked out or have left my employ under a cloud.

White

2010-03-05T14:50:25+00:00

You remind me of a time when things were pure, to every disease there was a cure. You remind me of eras when men were strong, and would accept their faults when they were wrong. You remind me of clarity that I seek everyday, all the dreams that I threw away. You remind me of logic that is crystal clear, which blows [...]

Update #2 on “FOSS multimedia authoring doesn’t quite cut it”

2010-03-05T10:39:33+00:00

This post is the reply from Shri Anindya Banerji, multimedia developer to the clarifications sought by Dr Mandar Mitra. I’m posting the Shri Banerji’s clarifications verbatim.

Legend : [MM] = Mandar Mitra; [AB] = Anindya Banerji. AB’s clarifications are italicized. The text in bold-italics are from the original mail from Mr. Banerji.

===========================
Audacity (as a substitute of Audition)
===========================

> Codecs are very poor

[MM] Poor in terms of supported formats? What format were you decoding from / encoding to?

[AB] formats and standards including ASIO, VST, DirectX, and ReWire.

> MP3 cannot be edited properly

[MM] What problem did you face? Again, I have used Audacity to edit mp3 files without issues.

> Cannot be converted into MP3 properly

[MM] I usually do my editing on wav files, and use lame separately to encode to mp3. I know audacity can be set up to use lame directly.

[AB] problem regarding transparent sample rate conversions of files from a wide array of sources and deliver them in the audio format including Windows PCM (WAV), OGG, AIFF, MP3, and WMA with customizable dither settings whether converting material to 44.1kHz, 48kHz, or 96kHz for CD, video, or DVD to get great-sounding results

> Conforming process frequently crashes

[MM] What is a conforming process? I have been using Audacity for several years now, and cannot recall a crash.

> Unsafe rendering

[MM] What does unsafe rendering mean?

[AB] no convenient batch processing feature to convert large numbers of files that have different formats, sample rates, and bit depths to one common format, or to apply scripts to multiple files

crashed many times while problems regarding rendering realtime, while overlaid ( not punched ) numerous sub-takes and saving multiple audio files faster with simply specifying the file format, location, filename template, and more, and these parameters to be applied to each file in the batch synchronization between audio and video playback over projects of any length

> Too few tools to operate

[MM] What tools were you looking for that you did not find?

[AB] looking for :

- quick mix files together by dragging clips and controlling automatic crossfades with on-clip handles

- effects including Convolution Reverb, Analog Delay, Mastering tool and Tube-modeled Compressor

- looping tools

- phase analysis tools

- effects Paintbrush tool

- spot Healing Brush tool

- phase Correction tool

- adaptive Noise Reduction tool

- spectral Frequency Display tool

- lasso tool in Spectral Frequency

- delete Silence feature

> Recording in full duplex cannot done properly

[MM] What is recording in full duplex? Playback during recording? What “improper” behaviour did you observe? In any case, for archival quality recording, you want to leave the processor as lightly loaded as possible. When I feel really uptight about this, I switch to single user mode (telinit 1) and do my recording using arecord, and edit later using Audacity.

> Dubbing facility is not available

[MM] Did you mean adding an audio track to a video recording? AFAIK, Audacity does not have a video component, so yes, I agree that’s not available. But why would you use an audio editor to do dubbing? Or maybe I am misunderstanding the problem.

[AB] problems regarding,

- display video while scrub, keyframe view, and edit sound automation in it, match up audio with the action onscreen.

- editing the soundtracks for videos

- Stretch effects or dialog to fit a video clip by simply dragging the edge of the clip in Multitrack View

- synchronization between your audio and video playback over projects of any length

- editing soundtracks for video and then export the enhanced video in AVI, MPEG, DV, or WMV format

- digitally extract tracks from audio CDs to hard drive for project use

- Seeing level meters that are in use for the master track as well as for multiple input devices, and for multiple output devices

- listening audio inputs through the software, including effects applied to the input track, then modify parameters after recording, if desired

- quickly fixing recording errors by punching in corrections on-the-fly as you rerecord, Toggle the record button to punch in new take only where to replace the old one. Punch in and out as many times as you want

- altering tempo without changing pitch, or change pitch without tempo distortion

Update #1 on “FOSS multimedia authoring doesn’t quite cut it”

2010-03-05T09:53:21+00:00

First, let me thank all my friends and colleagues in the FOSS community for coming out so strongly in support to my call for help on this matter. You guys rock!

Yesterday evening there was a mail from Dr Mandar Mitra (of ISI, Kolkata and IOTA Board member), wherein he posted counter arguments to Shri Anindya Banerji’s (the multimedia expert whose comments on inadequacy of FOSS tools for CBT development lead to this series of posts). Dr Mitra also asked from Mr. Banerji to clarify further on his comments.

Dr Mandar Mitra’s email rebutting the claims and asking for clarifications

NOTE : The Italicized lines are Shri Banerji’s original comments

This is with reference to the problems outlined by Shri Anindya Banerjee. I have first-hand experience only with Audacity and I found the list of problems very imprecise (details below). Perhaps Shri Banerjee could further clarify what he meant?

I think your suggestion that a small CBT be prepared as a proof of concept by competent and interested persons is an excellent one. If such a CBT can
be put together, that will be the best possible refutation of complaints about the capabilities of open source tools. If it cannot be done within a reasonable time frame, then we must decide whether the CBT itself is more important for IOTA than the means by which it is created.

Mandar.

—————————————————————————

> Audacity (as a substitute
> of Audition)
>
> Codecs are very poor

Poor in terms of supported formats? Audio quality of encoded file? What format were you decoding from / encoding to?

> Conforming process frequently crashes

What is a conforming process? I have been using Audacity for several years now, and cannot recall a crash.

> MP3 cannot be edited properly

What problem did you face? Again, I have used Audacity to edit mp3 files without issues.

> Unsafe rendering

What does unsafe rendering mean?

> Cannot be converted into MP3 properly

I usually do my editing on wav files, and use lame separately to encode to mp3. I know audacity can be set up to use lame directly.

> Too few tools to operate

What tools were you looking for that you did not find?

> Recording in full duplex cannot done properly

What is recording in full duplex? Playback during recording? What “improper” behaviour did you observe? In any case, for archival quality recording, you want to leave the processor as lightly loaded as possible. When I feel really uptight about this, I switch to single user mode (telinit 1) and do my recording using arecord, and edit later using Audacity.

> Dubbing facility is not available

Did you mean adding an audio track to a video recording? AFAIK, Audacity does not have a video component, so yes, I agree that’s not available. But
why would you use an audio editor to do dubbing? Or maybe I am misunderstanding the problem.

FOSS multimedia authoring doesn’t quite cut it - A view

2010-03-03T19:55:12+00:00

SInce my posting on the topic of “Making change happen - the case of the IOTA job ad“, there has been interesting additional development.

A multimedia expert was asked to create a feasibility plan for development of the CBT using FOSS tools, and his report is as follows. I figured it would be interesting reading for a lot of people, so I’ve shared it below.

=== THE REPORT ===

I have gone through the most recommended open source software in Linux, to be used as substitutes of the commonly known graphics related software. On basis of the requirement for CBT development project, I have performed dry-run of some test cases. The results from those trials can be stated below.

GIMP (as a substitute of Photoshop)

- No option for true resembling of bi-cubic to bilinear conversion

- Many of the layer comp option cannot be found

- Antialising is poor

- Many of the color correction tools are absent

- Cannot share GIMP comp with INKSCAPE comp and UIRA comp layer wise

- Smart object facility is not available

(There are several other problems are there in GIMP, but those are not mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)

INKSCAPE (as a substitute of Illustrator)

- EPS quality and standard of vector is not up to standard

- Cannot share INKSCAPE comp with GIMP maintaining vector property

- INKSCAPE drawing cannot be used properly to animate with UIRA

- Vector layers cannot be managed with UIRA

- Rasterization of Vector , maintaining transparency and smooth edges cannot be done

(There are several other problems are there in INKSCAPE, but those are not mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)

F4L (as a substitute of Flash)

- F4L is no more

- It is now converted into UIRA with a blend of QFlash

- Both of them are not so professional

- Crashes anytime and almost every time

- Smart clip and nested movie clip system is unstable

- Symbol definition is not OK

- Action script is full of bugs

- File compatibility is not even good

- Authoring property is very bad

- Compatibility with running text in local language is very bad

(There are several other problems are there in F4L, but those are not mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)

KINO (as a substitute of Premiere)

- Codecs are very poor

- Conforming process frequently crashes

- Lightweight screen captured video cannot be edited properly

- Unsafe rendering

- Unwanted loss of project data in time of save and reopen

- Voice-over cannot be taken in form of dubbing

- A little bit long timeline often crashes

(There are several other problems are there in KINO, but those are not mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)

Audacity (as a substitute of Audition)

- Codecs are very poor

- Conforming process frequently crashes

- MP3 cannot be edited properly

- Unsafe rendering

- Cannot be converted into MP3 properly

- Too few tools to operate

- Recording in full duplex cannot done properly

- Dubbing facility is not available

(There are several other problems are there in Audacity, but those are not mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)

“I want a Fedora DVD, don’t know what to do !”

2010-03-02T09:17:59+00:00

Following up from what I had written sometime back on this, I would say that the time is good enough to do a rethink.

When it comes to India, traditionally, we have been producing media specifically aimed at distributing at events. We do get large amounts of face-time with our participants at any event and, invariably it leads to sharing of media or, requests for media. This is besides the production that is carried out by magazines across the country. During the F12 cycle we conducted a small experiment.

We did not produce any media.

Not even for events.

Since this was a shocking thing to do, we spent the entire cycle with bated breath trying to assess the impact. As on date, it seems to be minimal. In fact, it has allowed us to do interesting things. Things like ensuring that at events we have an updated tree around for anyone who wants to update their system or, even update their trees. We have had a moderate measure of success with spinning LiveUSBs. But more importantly, we have had “Local Points of Contacts” and, some enterprising folks come up to fill up the void. Or, in other words, the deliberate creation of vacuum allowed some “retailers” to come in to the picture and, become the source points to obtain the media.

Producing media, even when done in the bulk that we do, is an expensive affair and, add the shipping costs towards sending them across to events and, you can figure out that it was becoming more of a “mass media production house” kind of business without actually having a full-fledged team doing it.

The next logical step would be to figure out how to provide the information about alternative sources of media (even if they are not zero-cost) to those who cannot obtain it via the Freemedia system. Providing them with an option to choose a retailer from which to purchase the media from is a better option than letting their Freemedia requests go unattended. A system that allows such vendors to be listed and, based on regions, information provided to the requesting parties would go a long way in addressing this. Clearly mentioning that this is a pure information provider service with no assurances of guarantees would perhaps be the caveat that would allow us to begin ensuring that anyone who requests a media has the information about where to obtain one from.

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Font panel extension for sugar

2010-02-26T19:50:20+00:00

27.02.2010 Lately i am working on font panel extension for sugar control panel. Had loads of pygtk documentation and it still is going on. Have not been blogging since a long time, was quite busy with this font panel stuff which is to be included in 0.90 version. Almost it has been complete with few bits

GNUnify2010 and my python workshop

2010-02-26T05:53:02+00:00

GNUnify2010 was the first for me. Started a bit early to the venue, Rahul was along with me. His talk was in top of schedule. I slowly moved to the lab where my python workshop was scheduled.

The main target of the workshop was to show/teach the basics of the python programming language. I hear mostly students asking “How to start working on a project?” but as the learning curve is not so easy in most of the things, they run away. The only students we have from India who are contributing to any FOSS projects are the people who came in their own interest. I found programming with python can be an easy entry point for the general students and they can become better programmer in life. This is the main reason behind my python workshops in different places.

No need to buy books, great online community, projects working on different dimensions, all of these can generate interest in the students.

Coming back to my workshop, I generally try to follow my own book (which I have to update). Slowly going through simple examples and showing that it is not difficult. I ask the students to solve the lab works they do in any programming lab in python. This will help them to understand the basics of the language. The workshop lab was supposed to have 30 students, but many more came so I had to ask them to seat in groups in the computers (most of them was running Fedora ). The basic feedback I got, states that it was easy, but how the students are going to use this, I have no clue. Btw, most of the students in my workshop were from Pune University Maths department, I told them to attend Ramki’s workshop in the second half as his workshop was about explaining how to solve mathematical problems.

At the end of the workshop I showed few applications written in python and talked about job opportunity in market. 2 students contacted me after the event.

Full set of the event photos can be found here.

Coming month, I will be in Durgapur, doing another python workshop , I will also conduct a Django workshop.

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Making change happen - the case of the IOTA job ad

2010-02-25T18:31:32+00:00

Since reading Rajib’s passionate mails, and Rohit’s (iamhere) email about the WBCS officers’ training on FOSS, I thought of sharing the recent case of the IOTA job advertisement.

The background : IOTA is planning to recruit on contractual basis 2 multimedia developer and 1 project consultant for CBT development. The CBTs are intended for schools across the state.

The case that was : Until 18th Feb, 2010, the advertisement asked for people with work experience on *entirely* proprietary software - Adobe Flash, AfterEffects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, 3D Studio Max. You can see a copy of that ad here below:

The Change : On 19th February evening, a meeting was convened at IT Department under the chairman-ship of the MIC IT, Prof Debesh Das. Clear guidelines were laid out. The minister re-iterated that IOTA can not do such as thing while it has the mandate to take the message of FOSS across the state. A committee sat down on the 20th Feb, afternoon at IOTA office, went through the use-case scenarios around the CBTs to be developed and identified the potential software stack to be used in the changed scenario. The updated advertisement, which is entirely pro-FOSS can be seen here

or on the IOTA website. The change was made on 20th evening itself.

The Message : A case where things got “right”-ed in a govt dept, although in Harry Truman style, the “buck” finally stopped right at the “top”.

Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die

2010-02-19T18:32:17+00:00

Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die

The old Rocker wore his hair too long,
wore his trouser cuffs too tight.
Unfashionable to the end --- drank his ale too light.
Death's head belt buckle --- yesterday's dreams ---
the transport caf' prophet of doom.
Ringing no change in his double-sewn seams
in his post-war-babe gloom.

Now he's too old to Rock'n'Roll but he's too young to die.

He once owned a Harley Davidson and a Triumph Bonneville.
Counted his friends in burned-out spark plugs
and prays that he always will.
But he's the last of the blue blood greaser boys
all of his mates are doing time:
married with three kids up by the ring road
sold their souls straight down the line.
And some of them own little sports cars
and meet at the tennis club do's.
For drinks on a Sunday --- work on Monday.
They've thrown away their blue suede shoes.

Now they're too old to Rock'n'Roll and they're too young to die.

So the old Rocker gets out his bike
to make a ton before he takes his leave.
Up on the A1 by Scotch Corner
just like it used to be.
And as he flies --- tears in his eyes ---
his wind-whipped words echo the final take
and he hits the trunk road doing around 120
with no room left to brake.

And he was too old to Rock'n'Roll but he was too young to die.
No, you're never too old to Rock'n'Roll if you're too young to die.

GScribble new release

2010-02-19T17:03:58+00:00

I started this project back in last summer. I wanted to learn something, and I had already been hit by twitter. As a result I lost interest in blogging, I always wished something like twitterfox so that I could blog whenever I wanted to, without opening firefox. It is a tedious task to open firefox [...]

Football in Pune

2010-02-15T11:37:42+00:00

You can find the pics at here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 India License.

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Upcoming Changes

2010-02-14T05:28:00+00:00

When I stood on the stage during the closing of FOSS.IN/2009, I announced that I was stepping down as Project Lead of FOSS.IN, and would not be involved in the organisation of future FOSS.IN events

I promised a journal entry about this, clarifying things, but a number of things got in the way, and I really wanted to take a calls on a few more things as well before posting. Some of these things are now being carved in stone, others will too, soon.

One change that will be visible over the next few days will be that this site will be complete revamped - which means that I am basically abandoning my 8 year old code base for this site, and switching to a standard CMS - WordPress.

Once all that is done, I will have more freedom and flexibility, and will return to writing, as promised.

Thanks for being patient, and I promise that it will be worth the wait.

New Fedora buttons

2010-02-11T07:12:58+00:00

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Mukti’10

2010-02-08T08:49:18+00:00

Mukti is the annual FOSS festival organised by the GNU/Linux Users Group of NIT Durgapur. Mukti 2010 was held on 5-7th Feb. Students from various institutions in and around Durgapur and many FOSS enthusiasts were present through the three days and AFAIK, for the first time, the registrations crossed the 1000 mark! The first

golf tournament software

2010-02-05T07:42:21+00:00

Today I released djangogolf - golf tournament management software. The scoring module is ready, draw and handicapping to come. The demo is here: http://greenchilly.in/

An introduction to Linux Device Drivers – #1

2010-01-29T10:49:39+00:00

An introduction to Linux Device Derivers

change in status

2010-01-29T03:12:52+00:00

I will be moving from working at NRC-FOSS more or less fulltime to working part time remotely from Ooty.

new foss books

2010-01-26T07:31:39+00:00

just saw the new foss books brought out by http://fsm.co.in - good work by Ramadoss and his team - although their order form sucks big time! Well worth buying the books.

spamhaus

2010-01-26T06:34:06+00:00

and now my id is blocked by spamhaus and mails to ilugc are being rejected. Why do these people use stupid services like spamhaus?

2010-01-26T00:59:36+00:00

travelling: http://thedownstownchronicle.in/reportfull/72/

After long time #success

2010-01-24T22:01:38+00:00

Its been 2 months since I blogged, was much busy in my final presentations of DSD (Distributed Software Development). A very nice final demo, in which all the prof’s were very pleased. Expecting excellent grades from this subject.

After the completion of that subject marked the end of Semester 1. A very happy smiling faces all through every people, with the temperature also shooting to bit more higher level at -12 degree C (Earlier it was -30 degree C ) adding cherry on the frozen cake

Good things doesn’t last long and again thesis (the main hurdle) comes forward. Its a thesis at Ericsson and the topic is also quite interesting. For the first part of it I was trying hard from the last few days to recompile the kernel to install LTTng. Presently working on a Ubuntu 9.10 virtual box (as because it is same as Uni lab) and after 3 days of kernel panics, clock synchronization errors, blank screens while booting finally and successfully installed LTTng kernel and Control packages. Excellent tool to use and seeing the trace results makes you feel more good.

At present LTTng happily, am working on the document for LTTng Installation along with the problems faced by me, and also use of certain kernel patching tools like quilt.

Will blog soon taking time from my hectic but awesomely interesting thesis work , ciao

sql import script

2010-01-22T06:55:25+00:00

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys

def checkparms(parms):
    """checks all the input parameters
    format: partialtableimport.py -i infile.sql -o outfile.sql -t tablename -c oldcol=newcol,oldcol=newcol,...
    """
    b0rked = 0

    if len(parms) < 8:
        sys.exit('userdump takes at least 8 parameters, you have given %s parameters'
            % len(parms))
    if parms[1] != '-i' or parms[3] != '-o' or parms[5] !='-t' or parms[7] != '-c':
        sys.exit('format: userdump.py -i infile.sql -o outfile.sql -t tablename -c oldcol=newcol,oldcol=newcol,...')
    infile = parms[2]
    outfile = parms[4]
    tablename = parms[6]
    colnames = parms[8]
    #check if infile exists
    try:
        ifile = open(infile,'r')
    except:
        sys.exit('cannot open %s' % infile)

    #check if outfile has sql extension
    tfile = outfile.split('.')
    if len(tfile) < 2:
        sys.exit('output file needs an extension')
    else:
        if outfile.split('.')[1] != 'sql':
            sys.exit('output file should have a .sql extension')
    #check if columns are correctly formatted
    pairs = parms[8].split(',')
    for pair in pairs:
        if len(pair.split('=')) != 2:
            sys.exit('column parameters not formatted properly')
    #check if we are over writing the outfile
    try:
        ofile = open(outfile,'r')
        b0rked = 1
    except:
        pass
    if b0rked:
            sys.exit('file %s exists - choose another file name for output' % outfile)
    ofile = open(outfile,'w')
    return ifile,ofile,tablename,pairs

def createsql(ifile,ofile,tablename,pairs):
    """creates the sql"""
    parsed = False
    for line in ifile.readlines():
        if not line.startswith('INSERT'):
            ofile.write(line)
        else:
            if not parsed:
                parts = line.split(""") VALUES (""") #split on values

                keys = parts[0].split('(')
                keylist = keys[1].split(', ')

                # find the keys you want.
                newkeylist = []
                for n,k in enumerate(keylist):
                    for p in pairs:
                        x = p.split('=')[0]
                        if x == k:
                            newkeylist.append((n,k))
                leftside = ','.join([x[1] for x in newkeylist])
                parsed = True

                #now to generate the right side
            parts = line.split(""") VALUES (""") #split on values
            valus = parts[1].strip(""");""") #strip trailing ) and ;
            vallist = valus.split(', ') #separate the values
            rightlist = []
            for k in newkeylist:
                rightlist.append(vallist[k[0]])
            rightside = ','.join([x for x in rightlist])
            sql = "INSERT INTO %s (%s) VALUES (%s);\n" % (tablename,leftside,rightside)
            ofile.write(sql)


    ofile.close()
    ifile.close()

if __name__=='__main__':
    ifile,ofile,tablename,pairs = checkparms(sys.argv)
    createsql(ifile,ofile,tablename,pairs)

old article

2010-01-20T09:30:15+00:00

just published an article I wrote long ago:
http://thedownstownchronicle.in/featurefull/1/

Adieu Durgapur

2010-01-18T16:44:46+00:00

So. today is my last day in Durgapur, I will be moving to Ahmedabad for next two months. Having some mixed feelings as this is the first time I will be out of my home town for long, best song suiting the mood now is Tanha Dil by Shaan Posted in life, wow [...]

seat_of_pants programming

2010-01-14T11:05:37+00:00

I had occasion to import data from a table in a database and import it into another table on another database on another server. pg_dump with -a, -D, -t options gives the table data as a set of INSERT statements. The thing is that I needed to insert into a table with a different name, with only selected fields which were named differently. I tried massaging the dump in a text editor, but soon gave up. Then decided to do it with a python script - no problem, took about 10 minutes. Then I go ambitious and decided to make a generic script that would work on any pair of tables - as this use case could arise frequently. Good to do this kind of stuff occasionally. As I do not write code every day, I tend to forget simple usages like enumerate, strip, split, join and list comprehensions. So I went into it seat of pants style - thought it would be done in 20 minutes - took nearly 3 hours!

money laundering

2010-01-11T02:59:57+00:00

today I put on a newly washed crsiply ironed shirt and found the pocket full of fresh laundered and ironed currency notes

user stats

2010-01-09T02:30:24+00:00

just discovered that livejournal has user stats - pretty decent stuff, now I know how many people read my journal. Of course I do not know who they are! But it is nice to know that the world is full of jobless people ;-) And may my readers never get jobs.

Goodbye

2010-01-06T21:58:00+00:00

I am moving over to Wordpress. The main reason for this is that Multiply makes it really difficult to leave comments by asking people to create accounts. It is also strange that they offer to import from other blogging services but I am unable to figure out how to export the contents from Multiply.

if no one else writes for the dtc, I will!

2010-01-06T07:27:55+00:00

http://thedownstownchronicle.in/memoryfull/1/

Best photo of 2009 (new meme)

2010-01-05T08:56:47+00:00

This was taken in March in the colorful festival known as “Holi” . I played holi after 5 years. The kids from the society building already started by the time I came down with my camera. I was really tensed about the camera as they were throwing colors in all directions. Withing few minutes, putting the colors in the fountain and using it as a big tank full of colors became the main attraction for them.

The idea for this meme came from sankarshan.

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The small lane

2010-01-02T17:30:02+00:00

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.8

Gnote 0.7.0 released!

2010-01-01T09:09:00+00:00

0.7.0 "The end is near" - 2009/12/31

This is the first of the new 0.7.x series and has new features and bug-fixes.

New Features:

* 590589 - Add a Note of the Day addin

Fixes:

* 579359 - XDG directory spec conformance
* 597307 - Addins can't be disabled
* 604367 - Bugzilla addin doesn't work

Translations:

* Updated translations:
- Arabic (ar)
- Spanish (es)
- Portuguese Brazil (pt_BR)
* Added translations:
- Bulgarian (bg)
- Danish (da)

Download, Home Page, Support:

http://download.gnome.org/sources/gnote/0.7/
http://live.gnome.org/Gnote
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=gnote

tribute to my mother

2010-01-01T08:55:40+00:00

I thought I would launch 2010 with a tribute to my mother: http://thedownstownchronicle.in/personfull/1/

Stuff that I have been up to

2009-12-30T17:19:08+00:00

December turned out to be a pretty busy month for me – here are some of the stuff I have been involved in/working on:

FOSS.in: As always FOSS.in ‘09 turned out to be an amazing affair. Being someone who works remotely, this event is probably one of the best opportunities for me to have “real” interactions. It’s a place where I can simply sit down, have long face to face conversations, come up with new ideas, be inspired, and most importantly, have fun. My heartfelt thanks goes out to the people behind the event for making this possible. I have some photos in this Flickr photoset.
Book reader: This month’s priority has been stabilizing the Sugarlabs/OLPC book-reader code, and a large number of important bugfixes landed during the last few weeks. More in this status report.
Arduino: At FOSS.IN, thanks to the efforts of the ever enthusiastic Kushal Das, I managed to get hold of an Arduino clone board (it is terribly difficult to get hold of one in Kolkata). I had heard of Arduino before and wanted to get one, and the session on it at FOSS.in by Russell Nelson finally served as the “kick” which made Kushal and me call up the local distributor and get a couple of boards for ourselves. I have been playing around with sensors support in Sugar for sometime (I helped make the Measure activity work on XO 1.5 hardware), and realized that this would be yet another interesting way to connect Sugar with the “real” world. So after a couple of weekends worth of work, I got Arduino support in Turtle Art.
XO keyboards: There may be a new AZERTY keyboard for the XO laptops very soon. See this wikipage for details.
Pootle: The Pootle developers have released version 2.0, which is a vastly improved edition compared to the previous releases. I have been testing it out with plans to upgrade the Sugarlabs/OLPC translation server soon. While testing, I added a quick (and ugly) hack to implement msgfmt –check style syntax checking in Pootle. This would definitely make the process of integrating the translations with the upstream code much less painful – and here’s a screenshot (click on it for a larger version):

Solang: new bug tracker

2009-12-29T11:40:00+00:00

From now on, we will be using bugzilla.gnome.org for bugs, feature requests, etc..

Sony’s hi-def camcorder - Handycam HDR-XR500E plays nicely with Fedora 10

2009-12-28T09:35:41+00:00

I had borrowed my friend John Bose’s expensive new toy, the Sony Handycam HDR-XR500E to record Devdas “f3ew” Bhagat’s lecture at WBSU (Barasat) on the 26th of December, 2009.

The specs of the device was *nice* - 1080i, 120GB HDD, 5.1 Dolby recording etc. It was a last minute arrangement. I didn’t like this! There was no time to tinker and see if the device was compatible with Linux and Kino for post-recording stuff.

It was set for 1080HD AVCHD or Advanced Video Codec High Definition. The camcorder was easy enough to handle. Most of the controls being easily accessible via the touchscreen. After coming back home that night, I was eager to see the results. So, with some trepidation I decided to plug in the mini-USB cable (that had came with my trusty old Canon PowerShot A610) into the mini-USB slot on the side of the HDR XR-500E.

Immediately the standard tail -f /var/log/messages routine threw up the following details:

Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=054c, idProduct=0346
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: usb 2-2: Product: HDR-XR500E
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: usb 2-2: Manufacturer: Sony
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: usb 2-2: SerialNumber: 0C59300C6CC1
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver…
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
Dec 27 00:24:49 localhost kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Dec 27 00:24:54 localhost kernel: scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Sony Camcorder 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
Dec 27 00:24:54 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 234413857 512-byte hardware sectors (120020 MB)
Dec 27 00:24:54 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Dec 27 00:24:54 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Dec 27 00:24:54 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 234413857 512-byte hardware sectors (120020 MB)
Dec 27 00:24:54 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Dec 27 00:24:54 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Dec 27 00:24:55 localhost kernel: sdb: sdb1
Dec 27 00:24:55 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
Dec 27 00:24:55 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Dec 27 00:25:24 localhost hald: mounted /dev/sdb1 on behalf of uid 500
Dec 27 00:25:24 localhost gnome-keyring-daemon[3043]: adding removable location: volume_part1_size_120019828736 at /media/disk

Sweet!!! Camcorder’s being correctly auto-detected with it’s 120GB HDD storage being propering mounted and being made accessible. Going by the AVCHD file / directory structure, using Dolphin, I browsed to the STREAM folder and found the video recordings from the day, present in MTS format. The files opened nicely using the VideoLAN client (vlc) on Linux, except for the some spots of interlace combing (for an example, see this link). Oh well! we *are* working with 1080i here.

Right now, I’m using Kino 1.3.3 to import the .MTS file by converting them to raw DV files needed by Kino for its own workflow. So far, FFMpeg seems to be working nicely.

Input #0, mpegts, from ‘/home/stephanie/Desktop/wbsub-vid-raw/00017.MTS’:
Duration: 01:09:09.0, start: 1.040000, bitrate: 4096 kb/s
Program 1
Stream #0.0[0×1011]: Video: h264, yuv420p, 1440×1080 [PAR 4:3 DAR 16:9], 25.00 tb(r)
Stream #0.1[0×1100]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 448 kb/s
Output #0, dv, to ‘/home/stephanie/Desktop/wbsub-vid-raw/00017.MTS.dv’:
Stream #0.0: Video: dvvideo, yuv420p, 720×576 [PAR 16:15 DAR 4:3], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 25.00 tb(c)
Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1

Right now FFMpeg is about half way through conversion process. I’m already looking at a ~7 GB file. Let’s hope I do not run out of space!

We have lift-off

2009-12-25T15:35:00+00:00

I just published Solang's tracker branch a few minutes ago.

Now I can celebrate Christmas!

Solang: the move to Tracker (and Tumbler), etc..

2009-12-24T14:17:00+00:00

For the last so many weeks I have been planning to use Tracker as the meta-data store for Solang instead of the "import your stuff into my own SQLite/XML store" approach that almost every photo manager that I have come across uses. Last week after my exams got over I started to actually try to implement this idea, experimentally. From where I am right now, I think it would be possible to actually pull this off. Since I anyway had to replace all blocking calls in our internal API to asynchronous ones, I thought this would be a good time to give our thumbnailing code a bit of a face-lift too. Enter Tumbler. Tumbler is basically a session service implementing a standard interface over DBus which applications can use.

Nothing of this is available publicly yet. Mostly because the experimental tree on my laptop is completely messed up. I have restored a part of it to a state where it can result in a meaningful commit, but there is still some cleaning up left to do.

In the sky

2009-12-24T10:32:45+00:00

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Upcoming - “System Administration Reloaded” a lecture by Devdas Bhagat on Dec 26, 2009.

2009-12-24T07:28:43+00:00

What : A lecture by Devdas (f3ew) Bhagat, who will be passing through town and was coaxed into giving this talk.

Where : Dept of Physics, West Bengal State University, Berunanpukuria, Barasat.

When : At 12:30 PM on Saturday, 26th December 2009.

Lecture Synopsis - “Most people who end up being system administrators are self taught. There is little formal theory in this field so far. System administration also involves very different sets of tasks, ranging from helpdesk issues to management reports, from wiring to software.

A very large number of people also start off with small numbers of machines to run and few issues to troubleshoot. As the number of machines grows, keeping pace with troubleshooting becomes impossible. Sysadmins spend time firefighting, and then burn out. Hiring is often very limited due to budgetary constraints or simply due to lack of available labour.

This talk deals with the constraints sysadmins work under, and how to work around them so that they aren’t as big a bottleneck. We take a look at the mindset required to do this work, and how to convince management that the solutions you are implementing are cheaper than the alternative. We also take a quick look at some of the solutions available for sysadmins to reduce their workload.”

Speaker Bio

Devdas Bhagat is just another recovering sysadmin, and is currently playing database administrator for a large domain registration system. In his copious spare time, he works with other business units at his workplace to help tune their systems, add business benchmarks and other general monitoring stuff. He has spoken at the sysadmin miniconf at LCA’09 (Linux Conference Australia) on system automation and on DNS benchmarking. He has spoken at various network operator group (SANOG) conferences on spam control, DNS, operational issues, large scale email systems, etc. He has also been a speaker on databases at FOSS.IN and it’s previous avatar, Linux-Bangalore. When not busy working with computers, he spends time in the hills trekking and photographing.

Organised by : West Bengal University of Technology in association with Kolkata Linux Users’ Group (ILUG-CAL.ORG)

certification launched

2009-12-19T04:13:41+00:00

I have launched my long dreamed-of certification. Lets see what happens now. http://certificate.nrcfoss.au-kbc.org.in

no more windoze bashing

2009-12-19T03:36:53+00:00

it is axiomatic that one should not talk about things one does not know of. I have suddenly realised that the last time I seriously used windoze was in around 98. After that, I have used windows to browse in net cafes on a couple of occasions and in a friends house once or twice. So I know nothing about windoze - so am not competent to talk about it.

Tracker 0.7.12 provides Nautilus extension

2009-12-18T19:44:00+00:00

Few weeks back I had spent some time on a Nautilus extension to interact with Tracker. Thanks to the marvellous enthusiasm and support from the Tracker developers -- Philip Van Hoof, Martyn Russell (who cleaned up some coding errors on my behalf among other things) and Adrien Bustany it was merged into master today and is available in the Tracker 0.7.12 tarball that was released few hours ago.

Student,Contributor,Ambassador

2009-12-11T17:19:02+00:00

I often hear good things about the strength of the Fedora Ambassadors in India. With a 110+ group of people, it does allow one to look at upsides and, areas of improvement. But more importantly, what it stands as testimony to is the tough work that is put in behind the scenes by various individuals and, groups within Fedora to make that happen. (Hint : some of the said individuals are also mentors for the Ambassadors in India, so, if you chance onto them on IRC, be sure that you thank them for doing a job well and, doing it with a passion that is unique to folks within Fedora.)

This year we have been able to reach out to a number of events and groups which helped us take the message of the Four Foundations to them. That has been good. We have also noticed that a larger number of those signing up to become Ambassadors are students or, are dipping their feet into the FOSS way of doing things. So, here’s the area in which we need to work our hardest.

Earlier I wrote:

Additionally, if during the initial days, the new Ambassadors are encouraged to actively participate in any other part of the project, it should lead to greater involvement and appreciation of the Foundations. This of course has the advantage of helping them build the social connects and network across projects/amongst individuals which is an invaluable part of being an Ambassador. It also builds up the required confidence in the Ambassador to go out and evangelize about contributing back to various projects and upstream. Because, if one has already drunk the Kool-Aid, talking about it is dead simple.

And, it is true. An Ambassador is the face of the project to the external world. It requires people skills but more importantly, it requires an intrinsic knowledge about the project that takes time and effort to build up. Unless an Ambassador takes a keen interest in the various projects within Fedora and, contributes to at least one of them, it is an uphill climb for most. More so for a student who is just learning the ways of FOSS and, gathering experiences via Fedora.

In the coming months, the plan is to put in place a stronger coaching plan for these student contributors so as to tap into their huge talent and, the capacity to produce stunning results. We have always been surprised by the sheer amount ideas that come up when students are gradually pointed to a direction.

Stay tuned. Exciting stuff is going to happen.

FOSS.IN 2009 in a total

2009-12-11T12:01:26+00:00

5 days of full of excitement and fun. This year I tried to break/arrange my times in few things I wanted to work on. So the first decision was not to take many photos , I tried to keep my camera inside my bag only. The idea worked, I found more time on hand than last few years. From the speaker’s list I already knew who else is coming so fix up my mind according to that.

On the first day we took charge of the Fedora booth. Kital, Heimanshu sat on the table, /me and Sayamindu sat on the ground behind the table and started discussing many things. Next table was full with KDE-IN team with many swags. Day 1 I spent mostly meeting old friends and talking. It was nice to meet Kital once again

I managed to find Girish Ramakrishnan in a table in the first floor. So asked for his help to have a long waiting feature in pony. I wanted to view images with a semi-transparent background just like picasa does in windows systems. While working on it Prashanth Udupa also joined and helped to visualize what I was trying to achieve. Finally it was done with 2 lines of code

I also had a plan to sit with Sayam and discuss two of projects , Jukebox and Lekhonee. Got couple of unknown areas cleared in sugar activities. In lekhonee-gnome I tried to have a WYSIWYG editor using gtkwebkit and later also tried libabiword. This work is not completed yet. Will see which one comes out better.

Meanwhile 2nd day of the event was Fedora Project of the day. Mether, Kiltal, Kedar, /me, Shrink, Susmit, Ankur, Heimanshu many others were there. I gave a talk on python-newt module and tried to show how easy to use that while developing console based applications.

This year was again special as Milosch and Brita came again to FOSS.IN. Russ Nelson also joined along with his talk on arduino boards. /Me and Sayam bought two boards from a Bangalore based firm in the same day. Milosch gave an inspirational talk on how one should start working hardware based projects. He bought me couple of cool gifts so that I can start working of my own. He and Russ had great workshop on 8 bit and 32 bit (OpenBeacon) small computers. I spent the last two days of the event with them only learning small small things. One of the biggest outcome of the event is computerclub.in (not ready yet), a group to work on hardware-software related stuffs. We have our initial mailing list and sf.net project created. Please join if you are interested. The Bangalore group already fixed their first physical meeting.

The event ended with a great performance trdp. Enjoyed the show too much, never took out my camera

All shots can be found here.

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Solang

2009-12-10T23:59:00+00:00

From now on one can directly commit translations to Solang's Git tree through Transifex.

Fedora logo in LED

2009-12-10T15:43:46+00:00

While it is off

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Moving to wordpress

2009-12-07T23:30:42+00:00

I have moved my blog to wordpress. Please update your bookmarks to arunsag.wordpress.com . Thanks :-)

Do we need to look for new software ?

2009-12-06T01:46:22+00:00

In an unguarded moment of misguided enthusiasm (and, there is no other way to put it) I volunteered to translate a couple of my favorite TED talks. The idea was simple – challenging myself enough to learn the literary side of translating whole pieces of text would allow me to get to the innards of the language that is my mother tongue and, I use for conversation. Turns out that there was an area that I never factored in.

Talks have transcripts and, they are whole blocks of dialogue which have a different feel when undergoing translations than the User Interface artifacts that make of the components of the software I translate. In some kind of confusion I turned to the person who does this so often that she’s real good at poking holes in any theory I propound. In reality, it was my turn to be shocked. When she does translations of documents, Runa faces problems far deeper than what I faced during the translation of transcripts. And, her current toolset is woefully inadequate because they are tuned to the software translation way of doing things rather than document/transcript/pieces of text translation.

In a nutshell, the problem relates to the breaking of text into chunks that are malleable for translation. More often than not, if the complete text is a paragraph or, at least a couple of sentences – the underlying grammar and the construction are built to project a particular line of thought – a single idea. Chunking causes that seamless thread to be broken. Additionally, when using our standard tools viz. Lokalize/KBabel, Virtaal, Lotte, Pootle, such chunks of text make coherent translation more difficult because of the need to fit things within tags.

Here’s an example from the TED talk by Alan Kay. It is not representative, but would suffice to provide an idea. If you consider it as a complete paragraph expressing a single idea, you could look at something like:

“So let's take a look now at how we might use the computer for some of this. And, so the first idea here is just to how you the kind of things that children can do. I am using the software that we're putting on the 100 dollar laptop. So, I'd like to draw a little car here. I'll just do this very quickly. And put a big tire on him. And I get a little object here, and I can look inside this object. I'll call it a car. And here's a little behavior car forward. Each time I click it, car turn. If I want to make a little script to do this over and over again, I just drag these guys out and set them going.”

Do you see what is happening ? If you read the entire text as a block, and, if you are grasping the idea, the context based translation that can present the same thing lucidly in your target language starts taking shape.

Now, check what happens if we chunk it in the way TED does it for translation.

So let's take a look now at how we might use the computer for some of this.

And, so the first idea here is

just to how you the kind of things that children can do.

I am using the software that we're putting on the 100 dollar laptop.

So, I'd like to draw a little car here.

I'll just do this very quickly. And put a big tire on him.

And I get a little object here, and I can look inside this object.

I'll call it a car. And here's a little behavior car forward.

Each time I click it, car turn.

If I want to make a little script to do this over and over again,

I just drag these guys out and set them going.

Get them out of context and, it does make threading the idea together somewhat difficult. At least, it seems difficult for me. So, what’s the deal here ? How do other languages deal with similar issues ? I am assuming you just will not be considering the entire paragraph, translating accordingly and then slicing and dicing according to the chunks. That is difficult isn’t it ?

On a side note, the TED folks could start looking at an easier interface to allow translation. I could not figure out how one could translate and save as draft, and, return again to pick up from where one left off. It looks like it mandates a single session sitdown-deliver mode of work. That isn’t how I am used to doing translations in the FOSS world that it makes it awkward. Integrating translation memories which would be helpful for languages with substantial work and, auto translation tools would be sweet too. Plus, they need to create a forum to ask questions – the email address seems to be unresponsive at best.

it could not have happened to a better guy

2009-12-05T10:00:36+00:00

http://nibrahim.net.in/journal/?p=268

In the company of a ninja

2009-12-04T02:11:02+00:00

It looks like watching the Ninja Assassin hasn’t done Shreyank any good. Else, he would have figured out that it is easy-peasy for a Founder and Chief Ninja like Dimitris Glezos (who is also known as DeltaGamma) to be at Bangalore and, elsewhere. Dimitris paid a surprise visit to Pune yesterday and it was fun. It isn’t always that you get a CEO of a startup provide you with an in-person repeat of his keynote with added wisecracks and side-talks that are too scandalous for a “keynote” And, that too, at a fairly crowded Barista. It was awesome.

In fact I wanted to talk with him about how massive the momentum built up by Transifex has been. Just two years ago, in 2007, Tx was a GSoC project within The Fedora Project aimed at looking at managing translations from a developer’s perspective. Today, it is a start-up which is hiring employees, relocating to newer offices, has a foot-print across a significant portion of upstream community projects and, most importantly, has clients willing to pay for customization services and, developer services. Tx isn’t only helping translation communities by allowing them to craft their work in peace – it is keeping developer sanity with the fire-n-forget model of the architecture. I hear that PulseAudio, PackageKit developers are strong supporters of Tx. That is tremendous news. The provocative nature of Tx is also based on the charm that it has been bootstrapped. That should provide hope to developers thinking along the “product” route.

I would say that these two years have done Dimitris good. His focus on the road Tx should take has become more vivid and, he has a deeper insight into the changes he wants to bring about via Indifex. There’s nothing more exciting than keeping a close watch on his team and his company for news that would come up soon. Tx is coming up with a killer set of features in the upcoming releases. That should get the attention of a couple of clients too.

Throughout the afternoon we ended up talking about getting youngsters up to speed to think beyond patches as contributions and, starting tuning their thoughts to products. Dimitris opines that patches are excellent jump-off points but in order to become a valuable contributor, one must start thinking about “architecture”, “design”, “roadmap”, “milestones” and all such issues that form part of the theory classes but never see implementation in real-life scenarios. In addition, there is also the need to inculcate the “CC thinking” in everyday work of creativity – be it code or, content or even be it hardware and standards (the “CC thinking” is a fancy short-hand towards thinking about Open Standards, Open Protocols and so forth. In a somewhat twitter-ish way, we compressed it to a meta-statement we both could relate to and agree with).

Dinner and post-dinner with a couple of us was another story. Having a bunch of hard-core “Fedora” folks in the room creates a passion. Sitting back to savor the flames of discussions and, interjecting with a leading viewpoint to keep the debate flowing is the best way to get action items resolved. Nothing wasn’t touched upon – from the way to get best out of *SCos to mundane stuff like getting feature requests into Tx, OLPC and Sugar, or, talking about the general issues within the IT development community in Greece. And of course, the frequent checks on Wikipedia to validate various points in the argument. We could have done with an offline Wiki Reader yesterday

I think I finally went to sleep at something around 0200 today – which is impossibly past my standard time. There are photos aplenty, though I don’t know who will be uploading them. There was food, there was coffee, cakes, and, there were friends – in short, a nice day.

Fedora Project day in foss.in started

2009-12-02T06:01:46+00:00

Kital is giving the first talk on Fedora Security Spin. The room is not full yet, people are still coming in slowly. Kital just a very nice example of robbing bank and how one should go ahead to plan and execute that

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Foss.in day 1

2009-12-01T17:45:30+00:00

First day was fine. Met Kital after long time. Was really happy to find a Fedora booth which was assigned to Rahul Sundaram. Girish helped to me get one of the long waiting feature in pony.

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how to write code?

2009-12-01T06:33:37+00:00

the other day I was working on integrating an online payment portal with a site. The code supplied was in PHP - obviously insecure unusable crap. I worked the whole day and got nowhere - I could understand the code and workflow, after all I have done it before! But translation from PHP to python will not work. Mostly my code is seat-of-pants - I write the comments first and the code follows easily. Not this time. I am informed that one should first write documentation, then tests and then write code until all the tests are passed - at which stage stop writing the code. I wonder if anyone actually does this? I know a lot of people claim to do it. But I bet they cheat. So this time I am going to start with sketching out the thing with dia. Then write the tests, and see if the claim that the code will write itself is true.