I miss TARCRooms.com so I brought it back to life.


New technology, new workflow and trying out a self-sustain system that fully automated without me need to do anything -- well except fix bug. Bug #1: Manual intervention.

$ unset DISPLAY

$ soffice -headless -accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;" -nofirststartwizard

Recently a friend of mine asked me to help him develop a small web application to be run on a tomcat server. So that would mean I have to develop the application using Java, which I have not used ever since my student days. But because the requirements were pretty small, I took up the challenge just for the opportunity to learn something new.

The system was meant to capture the answers of a questionnaire and calculate the score they got. Then display back the past scores. It's pretty small involving just CRUD and a small amount of business logic to calculate the scores. Could probably be done in a bit over an hour if using tools I'm already familiar with like CakePHP or Django. But with Java, it was a completely different story.

My experience with CakePHP when developing MyMeeting made me quite reluctant to ever not use a framework ever again. Unless it's just a small trial program to understand a new language, it's better to use a framework. In the framework usually there is already quite a lot of thought put into how things should be organised and what's the best way to achieve our goals. So you get the benefit of quite a lot of wisdom without having to go through acquiring it. So that was the first thing I did. I googled for a 'java framework' and BOOM. Despair. There was tons of them. So many I had no idea what to choose. So I started to search for reviews and comparisons. You basically can't read about Java framework without struts being mentioned. Tapestry was pretty popular too. But they all seemed to have quite a high learning curve and you read a lot about the DREAD of configuring xml files and all. Finally I tumbled on wicket. Reading reviews and presentations about it got me pretty excited. And when I started developing I realised this framework is just for the UI. It made it pretty easy to do quite ajaxy stuff, but there's nothing about database connection and stuff. And there was no tutorial on how to get CRUD even. So after more googling I finally found Databinder. It is basically using Wicket as UI framework and either Hibernate, ActiveObjects or Cayenne for the database abstraction and interaction. Alhamdullillah. With plenty of examples to copy and paste from (hey, I didn't have a lot of time okeh.. :P) , I was finally able to get simple CRUD working.

Of course by then I met with a lot of the things which made programming in Java a pain. The dependencies, all the declaration, putting in setters and getters for almost every variable. UGH!!!! But in the examples they showed how to set up your project to easily work in Eclipse. And I followed it. And now I understand why Java developers swear by their Eclipse IDE. It's way freaking cool. I mean want to put in all the setters and getters for every variable even though you've got around 50 of them? Forget about typing it, how about just right clicking on the file and choose 'source->generate getters and setters' and it will all be done for you. How cool is that? What's it? You just copied from one file to another a bunch of lines which declared types you've got to import? No problem. Eclipse will automatically copy the imports too if it's already resolved. It's way seriously cool. If only it had vim keybinding.. :P

Anyhow. That took most of my weekends recently but it was very well worth it. I'm not 100% comfortable with it yet, but at least now I can do dev in Java. And if someone was to read my resume and ask me do I know Java I won't have to answer 'Well.. I did a few assignments with it when I was a student'... :P So now the only languages I'd really really like to have a serious go at it is ruby (probably with Rails) and Lisp. Maybe the opportunity would present itself in the future. In the mean time, I still got to polish my Java-fu.

Most of us now work with relatively large amounts of data, whether it be media or data. I've been on a Gigabit Ethernet switch now for a few years, because transferring data or virtual machine images of several gigabytes over the network is painfully slow at 100Mb/s (12.5MB/s max). If you see this limit when transferring files with GigE equipment and Cat5e/6 cables, chances are auto-negotiation is setting a conservative limit.

One usually thinks of wired connections as relatively plug and play, and that's true for the most part. Unfortunately, I found out recently, that at least on my Ubuntu Linux workstation, with cheap networking equipment such the RealTeks, the Lantecs and what not that you have at home, the defaults may set your media speed to 100Mb/s (Fast Ethernet) and not 1000Mb/s (Gigabit Ethernet).

These days you do not need to look at blinking lights to see if stuff is connected (usually).

The launch of Utp's intranet student forum and Introduction to Linux by Mohammad Farhan.

The launch of Utp's intranet student forum and Introduction to Linux by Mohammad Farhan.

For more information please contact mail2zeff@gmail.com

When typing on the terminal, sometimes we need to record what commands we have typed for later reference. Sure, we can simply copy the .bash_history file, but that file only shows what you have typed and not the result of the commands that you have typed. To do these kind of jobs, there are two applications that you can use:


1. script

To use script, simply run script before you start using your terminal

# script -f logfile.log

where -f is to flush output after each write, and logfile.log is the file to write whatever script has recorded.

After finish using script, simply type exit or logout to quit script


2. rootsh

Please install rootsh first if it is not installed. To use rootsh, run rootsh before start using your terminal similar to script

# rootsh -f logfile.log --no-syslog

where -f is to show which file will be used to record the session, in this case logfile.log and --no-syslog is to tell rootsh not to log to /var/log/messages. To quit from rootsh, type exit or logout. All the commands and output will be written to logfile.log.closed to show that rootsh has closed the session.

Last week, a new site which help the fellow aussie to able themselves check and compare the best deals on Australian mobile handset market.

MobileBuddy listed almost 1000 different handsets and plan. This will bring back the power of user to determine what is the right choices for them. User can browse directly to the Mobile Plan page, which is easy and clean interface and make the experinence much better when choosing the right plan.

Head down to MobileBuddy and start search for the best plans and deal for your phone. 

This post is brought to you by your friends at MobileBuddy

Chrome Extensions Mini Hackathon

Chrome Extensions Mini Hackathon
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10:30am - Building chrome extensions (a step by step presentation with examples)
11:30pm - Mini hackathon.
13:30pm - Lunch is served.

And after that, MyOSS meetup :)

There is reason for word 'More...'

Lately been busy with works and so on. Also here is my new venture with Syed Syahrul, the owner of Idea Buzz . A vidcast talk show style, review gadget, website, and promoting stuff in bahasa style. Yeah, I know, why bahasa Malaysia? Just because there are plenty tech site reviewing it in English, and we want to gather the Bahasa Malaysia crowd.

We recorded it in a photography studio - Pohon Minda. Now currently we have 8 episodes and hosted the video on Vimeo. Please subscribe to our channel here at http://vimeo.com/channels/ideabuzz and start promoting it. We do it because of our passion and love about gadget.

For the record we need some sponsor and if you have any info or contacts that they like to put the product to review on, please contact me.

If you also have any comments and feedback, go to Idea Buzz.

Morsetexter is an application to send SMS using morse code for symbian V2.X phones. It is not for latest symbian phone such as symbian 3rd or 5th versions. This application is good to amateur radio operators to sharpen their morse code sending skills. To iphone users, try iditdah from KB1OOO.