Technology

ಇಲ್ಲಿಯವರೆಗೆ ನಾನು ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಬರೆಯಲು Google Transliterationನ ಬಳಕೆ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದೆ. ಅದನ್ನು ಬಳಸುವಾಗ ಬೇರೆ ಪುಟಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋಗಿ, ಅಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಬರೆದು, ಅದನ್ನು ಮತ್ತೆ ಕೋಪಿ ಮಾಡಬೇಕಾಗಿತ್ತು.
ಆದರೆ ಈಗ ನಾನು ಗೂಗಲ್ ಕ್ರೋಮ್ ಬಳಸುವ ಕಾರಣ, ಒಂದು extension ನ ಬಳಕೆ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಿದೇನೆ

I know I have not posted at KalaaLog.com for quite a long time (a little more than a year). The reason for this, is not the subject matter of this post. The things that I started to ponder when I was upgrading the Wordpress installation is the subject matter.

Let me repeat the title - be very careful while you use tasksel on Ubuntu (or a Debian based Linux distribution for that matter).

Here is something that I am going through right as I write this entry that might save you the trouble. I was back from work, and it was 2 AM in the morning but I still wanted to do some setups on my laptop. It had been recently upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and I wanted to setup a LAMP stack.

I invoked tasksel and saw that Ubuntu Desktop was highlighted. I unchecked it, checked LAMP server and hit OK.

And all hell broke loose.

It was uninstalling the Ubuntu Desktop packages right in front of my eyes!

Well, I killed the process half way through but some harm was done. If I shutdown my laptop now, or it crashes I need to use a CD to recover it. But since I had been through a similar situation before, I know I should be able to recover from this.

It might sound cocky since I am still on the recovery process, but I do have confidence that it will pull through.

Bottom line though is that be careful of the GUI wrappers like tasksel or even Synaptic Package Managers. They can do a lot of harm for the "ease of use" they provide. Stick to explicit command line that does only what is told. And also, do not do critical system changes with sleepy eyes. :)

In his post, Ubuntu 9.10 Boot Performance, and Does it Matter? Christopher Tozzi makes a point that it doesn't really matter that the boot performance has improved since "none of us" shutdown the desktops/laptops, opting instead for suspend/hibernate.

It just seems quite seems like his world view is quite flawed in my opinion. When I was in Denver, and a power outage did not occur for the two years I was there, I did keep my Ubuntu powered Dell laptop up and running all the while.

But back in India, now in Chennai, the power outage is quite frequent. I do not want to keep my laptop hooked on all the time. I do want to shutdown completely and boot in when I want to use it.

I just hope that people who lead the development of Ubuntu as a distribution are not just filled with people with narrow views.

It has been a while since I decided not to use Apple products any more.

Here are some of the reasons I came to this decision:

1. Their iTunes software required to sync/buy music and to make use of the iPod/iPhone Apps out there is not available on Linux. I hate it these days when someone forces me to dual boot into my Windows partition.
2. iPod batteries suck. Not batteries themselves, because I do understand the concept of recharge cycles, but not able to replace it yourselves is really a bummer. And sending it in to Apple for a replacement will cost you almost half the price of the device, which is absurd. Read MG Siegler's view at The Short Lifespan Of The iPhone.

Now, I will be using the iPod I bought, until it dies. I am glad I bought an iPod Touch and not an iPhone. But I will not be buying anymore of Apple's products. I will not be buying them for myself, or as gifts for others.

Apple has lost me as a customer.

iPod photo by juanpol.

I have been tweeting (follow me) my impatience to see Google Chrome for Linux for a while, but this post on them getting it ready for Mac, does make me voice my opinion as a blog entry.

Google, I believe does owe a lot of what it does technologically to Open Source, and I feel they are leaning towards being evil by not committing to deliver a Linux native port for Google Chrome.

I have been mulling over technological convergance and specifically my outlook on the same with respect to Personal Digital Gadgets.

No, I do not think that is an actual term. By Personal Digital Gadgets, I mean the music player, hand held communication device a.k.a mobile phone, cameras (still and video), gaming devices, and similar 'consumer gadgets'.

Looking at the gadgets I have owned, I have realized that I have a friction with the technological convergance that seems to be happening in this area. The first cell phone I had was a Nokia 3315, a variation of 3310 model for the Asian market. I used it for a good two years before taking another fancier model.

I do not even remember the model number - because inspite of more features, I just used it for making/receiving calls and for SMS (called 'texting' in US).  During that time, I was seeing a lot of my collegues and friends craving for better models that served more than the purpose of calling and SMS. They wanted it to be their music player. They wanted it to serve as a camera - and the industry seems to heed to such a demand, providing ever increasing mega-pixel capability.

About two years back when I came to US, I realized that due to more constrained telephony market, my friends seemed to be constrained by the carrier on which cell phone model they could use. The difference between Indian and US telephony market is a different discussion all together. Anyway, I ended up having a BlackBerry 8700g. That is when I got introduced to the another concept of PDAs - where you used such devices to do rudimentary internet browsing, and email communication. But I ended up using it just for making and receiving calls.

Bottom line of my rant - do we really need all these different features crammed into a single device? In my opinion, a separate still camera provides better results than those pixelated images you glean out of a cell phone embeded camera. Isn't the music player (iPod, Sony, Sansa, Archos) better than what the cell phone can squeal out?

I would rather have separate devices that do their own job well. Perhaps I am more influenced by the *nix philosophy of having smaller programs that do only one thing, but do it well.

I have been working on C++ again after a break of more than two years, and I found that Eclipse can be a good tool to do so. I have learned to get myself to be more productive in Java projects, but translating that knowledge to developing C++ in Eclipse requires at least Eclipse Europa - it is for me of course, because I have gotten used to that simultaneous release of Eclipse at work.

Sadly, Eclipse is at a older version - Callisto - in Ubuntu, even after the latest upgrade to the distribution itself - Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex.

Being open source, it lets me dig quite deep to find the status on this project:

1. Ubuntu Brainstorm Idea # 1265
2. Ubuntu Launchpad Bug # 123064
3. Debian Bug # 432350

It is actually nothing new for me - at my day job, I deal with a lot of proprietary tools, and support - even when paid for - is quite flaky. At least, here I get some transparency.

Going through the Debian bug does give a bleak feel on the situation. Now, I have a choice:

1. Live with it. ;)
2. Live with an encumbered process of installing it myself and maintain it - but I am quite addicted to Synaptic Package Manager (read it as I am lazy).
3. Dual boot (triple boot) to Fedora 10
4. Help those maintainers to package Eclipse into Ubuntu/Debian repositories

I am not keen on option two. I might try out option three sometime. Since I am at the moment so fond of Ubuntu, I should be going for option four - but I do not know where to begin with to package an application and create a deb. I think I should start learning about it, so I guess I will be choosing option one for a while. :)

I have been using Akisment for spam blocking here, and on other sites that I run or manage. Plugin/module is available for both Wordpress and for Drupal. It has been a great service for stopping spam on their tracks and saving a lot of my precious time. Lately though, I have seen an increasing number of spam slip through its filtering algorithms.  Since this is happening for all the Wordpress and Drupal sites, it cannot be something due to the sites themselves.

I think it is time to think about the other options.

There is Defensio. It has a Wordpress plugin but no Drupal module as of this date. But it seems to be pretty good, and my friend Mayank seems to be pretty pleased with Defensio.

Then there is Mollum, an endevour by Dries Buytaert (founder of Drupal) and Benjamin Schrauwen. It obviously has a module for Drupal, but does not yet have a plugin for Wordpress.

This is something I need to dig into a bit. Any suggestions are much appreciated. :)

I got the 500 GB external hard drive shipped to me this weekend. It is the Western Digital 500GB My Book Essential 2.0 - USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDH1U5000N as described at Amazon.

With the tons of artwork, videos and other data I am creating, I have started to grow a bit paranoid with loss of that data. And that was the drive for this investment.

I don't think I will be using the auto sync feature because I would want some control over what goes and what does not into that drive. I basically needed a large chunk of storage where I can put copies of my works from my laptop. Now, all that remains is to organize my data, and back it up.