Older blog entries for fallenlord (starting at number 43)

Trying out the new Friendster Blogs

I recently gave the new Friendster Blogs a test drive here in DLSU-CSB during the Wordcamp Philippines 2008 conference, and so far, I'm really impressed. There's a lot of clean-looking themes, and the functionality of blogging has really gone a long way since I started writing blogs in Advogato way back in 2002 (yeah I know I'm a dinosaur in the blogging world - back then we didn't call blogs as blogs, but as journals). 

My only wish though is that Friendster would allow me to import all my journal... err blog entries in Advogato that I started in July 2002. The RSS feed for Advogato only has the 10 most recent entries. I recently found that there's a WordPress plugin for importing Advogato entries, but as of now, Friendster does not allow plugin installation. It's one thing I understand - being a former information security practitioner in a past life tells me that allowing random third-party code in your site is generally a BAD IDEA.

Syndicated 2008-09-06 12:07:00 (Updated 2011-08-20 17:30:59) from Living Core Dumps

A Mockery of Standardization

I thought it was only an April Fool's joke that ECMA 376, also known as the Office Open XML "standard" was ratified as an ISO standard. Guess what - after hundreds of millions of dollars of lobbying, political maneuvering, the old boys at ISO ratified OOXML as a document standard. The weird part here is that the entire process in the national BRMs were noted to be tainted with intense lobbying and very sharp contrasting stands, rather than the expected unanimous decision that USUALLY happens when a standard gets ratified.

Shame on you Microsoft and ISO, shame on you. To ratify a 6000+ page plus paper stack that even MS hasn't even implemented fully, not to discount that it still has so many bugs that SHOULDN'T EVEN BE IN A STANDARD, is such an amazing feat, not of engineering, but on how corrupt and how low will this company go just to keep earning its dough. No offense, I've got no qualms with business earning their daily living decently, but with this kind of corruption of subverting and making a mockery of proper procedure, this company doesn't even deserve our support.

Syndicated 2008-04-02 22:21:00 (Updated 2011-08-20 17:30:59) from Living Core Dumps

The long wait for a new Thinkpad

Two years ago I bought the first laptop I really loved and claimed as my own - the Thinkpad T42p. While it wasn't exactly a competitor compared to the Core Duo laptops during that era, that Thinkpad was IT for me, given its size (14" screen with 1400x1050 resolution), weight (2.2kg with the 9 cell battery), ran Linux flawlessly, no Windows keys, and durability (my first laptop, a Dell Latitude C640, was already dead beyond any repair) that's unsurpassed in mainstream brands (no, Toughbooks don't count as "mainstream"). Coupled with a good price of P63,000 back then it was a steal for me to get that mobile workstation.

Fast forward to today. After having sent it for repairs to replace the FireGL graphics card and a new screen, the Thinkpad that I loved is already showing its age. Sure it's still fast, but given the nature of my work, a laptop with a 1.8GHz Pentium M and 1GB of system RAM will not be enough for running multiple VMware images. What I'd want/need is a laptop that would go 4GB, or better yet, beyond, without breaking my back in terms of weight.

I must admit, I've been considering the Macbook Pro - it's sleek, it's got a Unix already preinstalled (Mac OSX), and it will go to 4GB without hiccups. A definite plus is VMware offering their bread and butter app for only $70 on Mac OSX, whereas in Linux and Windows they easily cost $180. The only thing I'm worried though is how much level of abuse will it take. The Thinkpad I'm already familiar with its build quality and ability to last a long time, but not with Apple portables.

There have been reports lately that Lenovo has already revamped their numeration strategy with the advent of the Thinkpad X300. It seems that their numeration system already indicates the the size of the LCD - X300 at 13.3", the rumored X200 at 11", while there's news of T400, T500, W500, W700 Thinkpads. Now if they only have arrived now I would've gotten one.

Looks like it's gonna be a long wait for me. I'm not getting the current X or T-60 series. Besides, I'm still short on cash so it's not really a priority for me.

Syndicated 2008-04-01 11:27:00 (Updated 2011-08-20 17:30:59) from Living Core Dumps

It's been quite some time since I did an update on this journal... might as well continue it.

Been a very, very busy year for me - as I've been travelling quite a lot, coding quite a lot (Zope,Plone and Archetypes for a legacy ERP project that I'm now rewriting, then Ruby on Rails for the new web apps, XUL and Pythonfor some funky stuff we're doing...) and working a lot more than usual. I guess my friend was right that this would be my busiest year.

Got myself an IBM Thinkpad T42p (2373-N37) after my old Dell Latitude C640 got its system board fried a few weeks ago. That laptop lasted for 2 years and has given me good profits. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS just got the thing running out of the box.

I'm now moving away from using Plone as my web development platform and shifting to Ruby on Rails. It's not due to the hype - rather - I find mixing RDBMS and Plone to be a daunting task (even with Archetype's SQLStorage layer).

LaTeX has been quite a lifesaver for me during document preparation... got nicely-formatted manuals in less time than it would take to have them done via word-processors. I've tried DocBook a long time ago but LaTeX is much easier for me.

Despite having a very busy lifestyle, my girlfriend Sarah has been quite very supportive of me.

The RHCE so far has given me the worst headache I've experienced since a couple of recent years past. As I only got an examination voucher for RHCE free of charge after a friend transferred it to me (he's writing a book so he doesn't have the time to take the exam at all) I gave it a shot.

I got to pass to get the RHCT designation - but since I don't do a lot of network services for a very long time already I didn't pass the RHCE component. No matter - for me it's already an achievement in itself, considering that I don't do system administration, nor have handled a RedHat system for nearly two years (ever since that RH 7.0 fiasco). Why RedHat systems make it so hard, ermm let me rephrase that, make it so unlike Debian, is a mystery to me :)

I was kinda struck with what Jonathan Schwartz of Sun mentioned in his December 2 blog, which I myself find to be true (after landing a couple of support contracts for the ERP I'm building):

Free software creates volumes that lead the demand for deployments - which generate license and support revenues just as they did before the products were free. Free software grows revenue opportunities.

Betting against FOSS is like betting against gravity. And free software doesn't mean no revenue, it means no barriers to revenue.

I've just finished migrating my old site in the UP Manila servers to eoncomputing.net. Since I'm shutting down my current company in favor of setting up a new corporation by next year, I figured I'd use the empty webspace of my company for the meantime as my own consulting site.

Why does this have to happen at the worst possible time - my laptop's hard disk just crashed! I don't mind working on my dual Xeon workstation... but I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT CARRYING a 4U machine as a portable! Now I need to find some cash to buy a new laptop hard disk...

I've made a lot of progress with the ERP I'm building. Just incorporated charting functionality via ZGDChart. It's still a bit slow (I haven't really optimized the database yet as there's still no data warehouse yet) but hopefully in time I'd be able to do an audit and fix all these problems (or at least a whole lot of them).

The initial interview with Google came out fine. Now I'm a bit worried as they haven't replied with an updated schedule for the second (technical) interview. I can't make it Monday morning on my time as I do have a class by 8AM. Big problem... Oh well...

Somehow I've made my dual proc workstation stable under kernel 2.6 by disabling ACPI and recompiling the kernel to remove the ATI radeon loadable kernel modules. Not cool, but until I get some cash to buy an Nvidia card or hopefully the OpenGraphics card (I'd buy it even if it cost $200) which would work real fine on Linux I'd stick with my flakey ATI Radeon 7000 running on VESA.

I got reelected to the board of the Philippine Linux Users Group a month ago (and I didn't write about it back then! Sheesh...) There's still a lot more to do for me in PLUG, and hopefully we would pull those projects off and tasks well done.

Today is I guess a lucky day for me.

I've got the most unexpected job offer in my mailbox today - it's from the amazing, uber-cool group of people residing in Mountainview, CA. I'm truly honored and shocked at the same time, as I haven't even dreamt of getting even one at all.

LinuxWorld Conference Philippines 2005 was quite a tiring event. It's not enough that I've done a couple of preparations for PLUG, but I've also supplied the "toys" (a Dual Xeon workstation and a last-mile Senao wireless AP) as well as given a talk on Zope and Python for business applications.

However, I really deplore the presence of the vendor tracks - sadly though LinuxWorld is becoming more of an avenue for big businesses to sell their stuff. I would've preferred the old-school style of LinuxWorld - more of the cutting-edge tech stuff but with the suits staying at their booths.

Next time I bring an SMP machine to an event I'd make sure it won't have an ATI Radeon card. SMP Linux + X11 + Radeon = death by crashing. Even disabling DRI wasn't enough as the rig's still very unstable. This is payment I guess for having the misguided conception that no proprietary drivers = very stable. That goes except for the sucky ATI Radeon cards...

I managed to flunk a couple of students last term. Bad. I hardly care anymore if they give me a low rating - I know I've done good by treating students professionally and absent of spoonfeeding them information. They're college students for the heck of it! At the very least I now have a fresh start by having freshman students rather than those sophomore students who've been spoonfed too much. I never intend to sink to the level of spoonfeeding lessons. Never had, never doing so, and never will.

There's still danger of software patents in the Philippines. Apparently our patent office allows the patenting of software when embedded in hardware. No way would we allow such practice go unscathed and unchallenged. We plan to make people notice this real soon. I'm not looking forward to a future wherein I wouldn't be able to make free software and a living out of it simply because of the institutionalization of software patents!

We plan to have another conference by next year, but this time in the spirit of Free and Open Source software - ala Linuxconf. There's still a year for me to draft the plans - but I plan to make it work. And maybe bring RMS to our country as we've already talked with him during the UNDP-APDIP conference in Cambodia earlier this month.

Linux IS NOT Windows! When will those hard-headed Internet "cafe" (which are gaming stations in disguise) owners realize that? Now that a nationwide crackdown is being done by the OMB (funded by BSA, of course), they're now looking up to us in finding them painless solutions for migrations. It's disappointing to tell them that Wine is not a solution - native ports of games would be - but I'm not counting on that to happen anytime soon.

The temerity of Microsoft not to tell the truth that they're still behind it all in these raids. They tell that they aren't involved - it's our NBI and police that are doing these raids. Oh yeah, and my first name is Elvis.

It's been a long time since I updated my journal of free-flowing open source thoughts, so here I go.

My bid for the MSCS got rejected for the second time. I'd try again and again. I'm not really giving up getting a degree - and I really think it's unfair that I'm being judged just because of my bad performance during my college days. Heck - if I weren't only in the ROTC as a cadet officer back then I wouldn't have those bad grades. I do believe I've changed for the better for the past four years I've been active in the computer science scene and helping my colleagues who themselves are taking masters degrees in computer science - and a far cry from my dismal self during my years in college. I just want to be given a chance. Then again, it's pointless to rant here - I know I could try my luck elsewhere, or just concentrate with making more money.

Lately I've been engrossed in reading classic and contemporary literature - among which are "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas, and "1984" by George Orwell - as well as constructing and painting Gundam model kits. It's far from the computing profession, I know, but at the very least it's quite relaxing. A little of such won't be too bad anyway.

The good thing about having total control over one's own schedule is that I could proceed on any project at my own pace and preference. Despite having a hard time with the finances, I still prefer this freedom over being pressed with working with more layers of bureaucracy over myself.

I've already finished a cool lot of the ERP I'm building with Zope, Plone, XUF and Postgresql: the inventory, sales and accounting modules are already finished and relatively well-tested, though there are some snags. The only thing I don't know yet is how to port it from a ZODB object into a filesystem-based Zope product. I think I would have to really figure this out as my client's wish (as stipulated in my contract with them) is to fully open-source this application. Hopefully if there could be any help coming from anywhere I'd really appreciate starting from somewhere - as I'm still dumbfounded on how to port an entire product that is based on dependencies from Plone.

We'd be having a LinuxWorld Conference Philippines this 14-16 September 2005 at Dusit Hotel Nikko in Makati, Metro Manila. The only gripe I have is the relatively high price of the tickets - while I do have complementary tickets being the secretary of the Philippine Linux Users' Group I certainly am having doubts as to how the main mover of this conference, MediaG8Way, would be able to pull more attendees given the high cost of tickets. Coupled with the Philippine situation of worsening politics and even worsening economic situation, well.... you'd get the picture.

It's with deep regret that I would have to close my partnership firm for the moment - as my colleagues and I are eyeing to reform ourselves as a corporation by next year. A fresh start to things... and also a way to end an embarrassing debacle with the Bureau of Internal Revenue. I do admit it's entirely my fault as to why I haven't been able to file a tax return for last year - I simply don't have the time or the funds. At any rate, I'm willing to have this issue resolved with all our support as we're not interested in going to jail for willfull tax evasion.

I still have an Opteron box to build before this year ends. I'm looking forward to use future earnings to complete the acquisition. It's been dragging too long but I believe I could pull it through. The high-end servers I've been building for this year could still be used when we regroup ourselves by next year.

Hopefully I would still be able to convince our client to stay or there's no real point in dissolving the partnership firm. There's a big chance I'd be able to renew the contract which would expire this month.

For the meantime though, my instructions to my colleagues are to study and improve ourselves.

Since wxPython 2.6 is now API-stable, I could now start again with my projects depending on wxPython without any fear of any drastic API changes. I'd start coding once the first term expires by the start of next month.

Speaking of the end of the term - it's already two weeks away from finals week and there's only one team that has given me a project proposal. I'm quite perplexed by this development - as I stand to flunk four whole classes this term. I don't like the sound of that - I'm not really inclined to flunk any student as long as he or she is willing to give effort - but with this problem I could only hope they'd wake up.

My interests in wifi adoption hasn't faded just yet - on the contrary I'm now more interested in making money out of it to sustain such an initiative by offering a community-based wireless service. I'd like to test it out... and the hell do I care about unfair regulations imposed by the NTC. Their regulations on wifi usage effectively killed community wifi. Are we consumers to suffer and to be blamed just because some telco wouldn't find it profitable to install their services in our area?

The end of my term as the Secretary of the Philippine Linux Users' Group is fast approaching, and I do believe that I've done well with my part. I've got no regrets with helping the community that fostered what I am today. At any rate there's still a lot of work to be done, but given my free schedule I think I could pull the requisite legwork into place.