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kaeru introduced to me the book called "Time Management For System
Administrators" and quite frankly it is a good book. And most of the
tips are very applicable in real life unlike most "time management"
ideas. But this week it has just been... emmm.. backfired, sort of. I
can name at least two. The first one, my centro.
Oh my centro, what has happened to thee. I miss thy ever present
memory of all things to come and needs to be. If any of you have been
following my identi.ca then you would know that my centro has kinda
bit the dust. First it kept on syncing until it's batteries are dead.
Then even when I have recharged the batteries it stays dead. Called
palm and they want to replace my battery first. I know it's not just
the batteries problem. After this they would have to replace the unit
too. Why not just take it first already and spare me the agony of
being centroless.
So how did the book idea backfired? Well.. one of the great ideas in
the book is that don't rely on your brains to remember stuff like
todo's and appointments and stuff. Reserve your brain for more
important things. Our tools like pda's and organizers keep a better
record than our brains when it comes to just making sure you don't
forget. So.. emmm.. I don't remember anything. It's all in the centro.
If I had another one it won't be much of a problem, but I don't.
Seriously thinking maybe I should just get myself an old fashion
organizer. Won't be as effective but at least it is waaaay more
reliable. Palm.. oh Palm..
What is the other one? Well.. one of the great ideas in the book is
make a habit of filling your fuel consistently so that you don't get
caught with no fuel. So you should set a certain time when you would
fill your fuel tank to full even if it's not really empty yet (it
cannot be completely full of course). So you don't have to every worry
about suddenly finding that you are late for appointments and stuff
but need to fill up your tank first. Mmmm.. I choose to fill my
motorcycle's fuel tank 3 times a week. Going back from work on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday. So today I went to KL to drop off my centro's
battery at the drop off point. On the way coming back I saw my fuel
tank almost empty. But thinking it would be alright because I'll be
filling it up on the way back later, I didn't follow my gut feeling
and went on with it. Guess what? On the way back right on the flyover
heading towards Petronas at Precinct 8, my bike died (mmmm.. seems
like my tools like to make a habit of dying on me). So I had to push
my bike.. :'( Ohhh... the agony... It is the most exercise I've got
since a long time. Pushing motorcycles is hard work. Lucky for me some
guy saw me pushing my bike and came to ask what's wrong. When I said I
was out of fuel he offered to push me to Petronas. So lucky me was
pushed from behind all the way to Petronas. I am sooo grateful. I
didn't even get his name. Not even his plate number. Once we're there
he just said okay and went off. God bless you unknown stranger. God
bless you...
But in the book there is also another tip. Which was, use mantras.
Things which normally happen to you. Make decision early about it, and
remind yourself to take that decision every time using mantras. So my
mantra now is "if it looks like it needs to refuel, just refuel damn
it..'.
Oh well.. So that's what I wanted to share. Nothing all that
spectacular and it ain't going to win a bestseller award or anything.
So thank you for reading, and thank you unknown stranger for you help.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We have been struggling with zooming TextArea in Flex for 2 months now. Tried lots of combination but nothing worked. Can someone help?
Essentially, we scaleX and scaleY the TextArea as the zoom level changes. The component zooms in fine, but the text in it keeps wrapping as we keep zooming. We expect the text to stay as it is and just zoom. Not re-wrap.
Here is the text at 100%. Notice the last words on the lines.

TextArea zoom at 100%
Here is the TextArea at 150% zoom. Notice how the wrapping disrupts.

TextArea zoom at 150%
I have a live example if you want to try this out.
We have tried using zoom effect, adding line breaks at the end of each line before zooming and removing them, trying different fonts, embedding them - everything we could think of! But this looks like a bug! TextArea keeps wrapping the text as we zoom.
What could be a solution?
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# sarthor@salaar-laptop:~$ ssh -v 192.168.0.100 # OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1.2, OpenSSL 0.9.8g 19 Oct 2007 # debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config # debug1: Applying options for * # debug1: Connecting to 192.168.0.100 [192.168.0.100] port 22. # debug1: Connection established. # debug1: identity file /home/sarthor/.ssh/identity type -1 # debug1: identity file /home/sarthor/.ssh/id_rsa type -1 # debug1: identity file /home/sarthor/.ssh/id_dsa type -1 # debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1 # debug1: match: OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1 pat OpenSSH* # debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 # debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1.2 # debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent # debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received # debug1: kex: server->client aes128-cbc hmac-md5 none # debug1: kex: client->server aes128-cbc hmac-md5 none # debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent # debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP # debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent # debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY # debug1: Host '192.168.0.100' is known and matches the RSA host key. # debug1: Found key in /home/sarthor/.ssh/known_hosts:1 # debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct # debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent # debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS # debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received # debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent # debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received # debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password # debug1: Next authentication method: publickey # debug1: Trying private key: /home/sarthor/.ssh/identity # debug1: Trying private key: /home/sarthor/.ssh/id_rsa # debug1: Trying private key: /home/sarthor/.ssh/id_dsa # debug1: Next authentication method: password # sarthor@192.168.0.100's password: # debug1: Authentication succeeded (password). # debug1: channel 0: new [client-session] # debug1: Entering interactive session. # debug1: Sending environment. # debug1: Sending env LANG = en_US.UTF-8 |
I’ve been thinking of various ways to kick-start learning opportunities in my career and hobbies.
1. Read books. There are tons of books about programming–probably most of them are useless, but there are many, many gems that can greatly influence your abilities.
I still find that it’s easier and faster to find information about many topics in familiar books than to find similarly valuable information online. Read all your books to get to this point.
Books are also valuable from theory, architecture, design point of view. There just aren’t that many places on the web to get high-quality, authoritative instruction in this.
2. Read Code. This is something I was late to. I didn’t start reading a lot of significant code until after I had a few years of professional programming experience. I would be a better programmer if I had started earlier. I try to read some source code every week (not related to work, not my own, etc.) from an open source project. Start with programs that you use and are interested in. I started with Paint.Net and it solidified a lot of .Net program design technique for me.
Reading other people’s code shows you different ways of doing things than you might have thought of on your own.
3. Write Code - Lots of it. Fundamentally, the best way to learn something is to do it. You can’t fully internalize something until you’ve written it. This starts with something as simple as copying the code examples from tutorials and books. That’s copying by hand, not cut&paste. There’s a difference. The idea is internalize and think, not blindly copy. Look up new API calls as you go. Tweak things.
Most importantly, develop your own projects–whether they’re simple games, participation in an open source project, or a simple plug-in to a program you use.
Try to use new technologies, new techniques, new designs–do things differently. Do things better in this project than in previous ones.
This is really the core point–if you want to be a better developer than develop.
4. Talk to other developers - about specific problems you have, as well as the latest tech news from [Apple|Microsoft|Google|Other]. This not only helps you feel part of a team or a community, but exposes you to a wide variety of different ideas.
Different types of projects require different designs, coding techniques, processes and thinking.
If you work in a small team (like I do) and you don’t have access to many other people, go find some at a local user group meeting. If nothing else, participate in online forums (you’ll have to look harder for an intelligent discussion).
5. Teach others. Similar to just reading code versus writing it, teaching other people can do wonders for forcing you to learn a topic in depth.
The very idea that you’re going to have to teach a topic to someone else should force you to learn something with a far better understanding than you might otherwise. You can face questions.
If you can’t explain a concept to a 6 year-old, you don’t fully understand it. - Albert Einstein
Teaching situations are myriad: one-on-one with your office-mate, water-cooler meetings, informal weekly gatherings, learning lunches, classrooms, seminars, and more.
How about setting up a once-a-week 30 minute informal discussion among like-minded developers? Each week, someone picks a topic they want to know more about and teaches it to the others, instigating a conversation. If you knew were going to teach the group about synchronization objects, don’t you think you’d want to understand the ins and outs of critical section implementation?
6. Listen to podcasts
If you’ve got time where your brain isn’t otherwise occupied, subscribe to podcasts. My current favorite programming-related one is .Net Rocks. They also do a video screen cast called dnrTV.
These will help you keep up on the latest and greatest technologies. You can’t learn everything and podcasts are a good way to get shallow, broad knowledge about a variety of topics, from which you can do your own deep investigations.
If there are other, high-quality developer podcasts, I’d love to hear about them.
7. Read blogs
There are more blogs than people to read them, but some are extremely well-done. I’m not even going to post links to any–there are plenty of other resources out there for that. This is one of the best ways to connect to people who actually develop the software you love and use.
8. Learn a new language
If all you’ve ever done is C(++,#)/Java there are a LOT of other ways to think about computer problems. Learning a new language will change the way you think. It’s not just a different syntax–it’s fundamentally rewiring the brain. Sure, all languages get compiled down to assembler in the end, but that doesn’t mean a high level abstraction isn’t valuable.
Functional, query, and aspect-oriented languages are starting to merge with C-based languages–are you ready?
9. Learn the anti-patterns
Aside from knowing what to do, learn what not to do. Read Dailywtf.com often and take the lessons to heart if you don’t already know.
It’s all well and good to understand proper OO design, coding style, and what you should be writing, but it’s easy to get into bad habits if you’re not careful. Learning to recognize bad ideas is vital when taking charge of a project.
Wikipedia has a thorough breakdown of many common anti-patterns,
10. Be Humble
Learning means:
There’s no way to learn until you admit you have some deficiencies. It all comes back to humility, doesn’t it? If you ever start thinking you know everything you need to, you’re in trouble. True learning is about hungrily seeking after knowledge and internalizing it. It takes lots effort. We all know this in theory, but we have to be constantly reminded.
I was in search of a good project management system 16 months ago. And I am searching for one again!
I reviewed more than two dozen task / time tracking / project scheduling / collaboration systems this time too. The requirements are the same as last year. Something simple, usable and effective. Something that ties the different processes together. This time, we want it to support partners/contractors as well. This time, we would like to integrate the communications too.
As of now, I have three solutions in my shortlist:
And then, I want to hook it up with Openfire / Spark / Red5 for communications / conferencing.
Am I looking for too much? Not sure why I can’t find a system that solves my problems!
What do you use?
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We’re releasing Launchpad 2.1.8 this week. During the code roll-out
Launchpad will be unavailable for up to two hours.
Going offline: 00.00 UTC 21st August 2008
Expected back before: 02.00 UTC 21st August 2008
We’re sorry for the inconvenience this down-time will cause. I’ll send
details of what’s new in 2.1.8 to this list once we’ve made the release.
If you have any questions or comments, please email me.
–
Matthew Revell - Launchpad.net - free software collaboration and project hosting
Last two weeks, some kids have break into my shop (cc) and happily play it for free from 12am til 5am. bastard. They take nothing but just play it for free. I just realized it when the management system produce a report that indicates the pc is open from 12am til 5am.
I have enabled dyndns services on my linksys router from the start day of my business in 2006, so that I can monitor my cc from anywhere. I have also enable vnc server for the counter’s pc.
So now, for the last week , I have been monitor my cc from my 3g phone to ping the router. If the router is up and managed to grab a screen from my vnc, sure these bastard kids will get a ‘good lesson’ from me. For the moment, I have still not fixing the hole from the ceiling to get these bastard kids. 5 of them.
On the other note, last Sunday, me and my old friends get a tt sessions at Senoko, Stulang. we talk like the old school time from 10pm tll 1.30am in the morning.
This is interesting. Google’s Street View. Yes, I’ve seen a lot about it on the blogosphere, but I decided to finally try it out. The photo is of the house, where I used to live. Zooming in, now I can tell you that to the left of that, is where my dodgy landlord still lives ;)
Actually, more to the point. These pictures were definitely taken this year. I know this because I had the room in front, upstairs, and there were things sticking out between the shutters and the window. This picture is too serene, so must’ve been after November 2007.
I see good potential in Street View. Think about mashups with a site that focuses on you finding rental properties. Now people can comment on the property, look at the surrounding neighbourhood, and basically help you make a better choice at renting.
The real estate industry has moved online (in Australia, I can think of Ray White, LJ Hooker, at the top of my head), but its not really been disrupted. No, domain.com.au isn’t disruption - look who owns it?
I was mildly surprised to find out about HomeSpace.sg from the e27 unconference I attended a few weeks back. Its focus currently is only for homes that are for sale, but they focus on the important aspects - like is it near an MRT, what kind of shopping malls are nearby, if you’re buying a property and have kids in mind, what zone to head to and so on.
They’re mashing it up with Google Maps. Pity there isn’t Street View in Singapore, huh?
Street View does 360° views as well. Nifty, if you ask me. See the surrounds. Does anyone know of a real estate disruptor in Australia, yet? Otherwise, there’s definitely room to start coding one…