Hello 2011!

I danced and drank my way into year 2011 by celebrating with friends and family. It was crowded here at Kota Kinabalu Water Front where people from around Borneo gathered to watch the world prepare to greet 2011. The sound of whistles and the party poppers starts filling the air just half an hour before midnight as it gets louder every minute. I drowned my thirst with a bottle of Heineken as I waited for the party to begin.

And then the countdown begins. Ten… nine… eight… seven….. Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!! Bright little objects propelled into the sky and ended with a loud bang. It lit and sparkled beautifully in the dark sky with green, red and gold which lasted about 15 minutes. When the fireworks ended, the music from the pubs and clubs nearby can be heard even clearer.

Finally a brand New Year has begun and I knew I had plenty to be grateful for last year. For one I’ve graduated with a Degree and became a CISCO certified person. Now I will begin year 2011 with a new job and hopefully everything will go well. I will try to stick with my regular exercise and to live healthily even after climbing up Mount Kinabalu by the end of January. Here’s to a fabulous 2011! Cheers…

Marina Court project theme v.1

 

Green theme with black white background. Click on the image to enlarge

 

I have been working on the theme of my current project and I would appreciate any comments.

This is a WordPress site using the Lukoo theme. I tweaked the theme so that the contents look a bit more compact. Below are some of the changes I tweaked on the theme to my liking:

• Used a black & white background image instead of a plain white-grey color background
• Increased the width of the body wrapper
• Decrease height of header wrapper
• Decrease the bottom padding of the main content wrapper
• Increased the width of the main content wrapper so that the main content and the sidebar are close to each other.
• Changed the background image of the main content wrapper with opacity of 90% for transparency
• Added opacity 0.9 to the sidebar wrapper with CSS

From the screenshot above, there are still a lot I can do to make the theme better. For example I need to create my own custom logo to replace the Lukoo logo. Probably change some of the text colors and sidebar. I would really love to hear some opinions on the design. If you do have some ideas to share, then don’t hesitate to drop some comments below.

Thanks

Notetaking service Evernote takes the spot

I had recently installed Evernote on my Windows and was surprised by how powerful the service is. I had used other notetaking apps like Windows build in Sticky Notes which basically saves notes that you write on it. Sticky note is only good if you’re just trying to quickly write and retrieve notes on your computer. There are also Linux-based notetaking apps like Tomboy Notes, and BasKet Note Pads but these apps are nowhere as powerful as Evernote.

Evernote can capture anything from text, websites, pictures, videos and audio as notes and then you can access them from the Internet, your computer or your phone. It also has a powerful search function that can scan for text in image files. Evernote supports a number of operating system platforms including Mac OS X, Windows, Android, and Web OS.

You can learn more from the official Evernote website.

Bookmarking with Xmarks

Have you ever been in a situation where you forget to backup your bookmarks from your web browser when you format your computer? If you have, then you might want to check out Xmarks.

I overlook backing up my bookmarks whenever I wanted install a fresh Windows or Ubuntu operating system. I usually backup my most important stuff first which is my work; important bytes of data on my harddrive. Next I would export my bookmarks as a XML file, store it on an external drive then import it back once I have a fresh OS working. Usually I would forget to do this and I end up losing all my bookmarks.

I tried online bookmark services like Google Bookmarks and Delicious as an alternative and safer way to store my bookmarks. By using these services, I did not have to worry about ever losing my bookmarks again since it is stored online. But using these services was too much of a hassle to import and export bookmarks between the browser and the bookmark service.

Then I started searching for a bookmark synchronization application that could sync Google Bookmarks and your browser bookmarks. I have found that Chrome has a build in Sync function that does exactly that. It also syncs themes, preferences, extensions and applications which makes it a handy function to have.

But what if you want to sync those information across different web browser? I found Xmarks to be a very popular bookmark application that works as a plugin on Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac OS). I really haven’t explored the application yet at the time of this writing but I am hoping that it is the answer to all the bookmarking hassle I had gone through. Below are some of the screenshots I took while installing Xmarks on Firefox and Chrome.

Xmarks securely sync passwords

Xmarks save web pages open on web browsers

Xmarks save browser history

Ready for synchronize

Successfully synchronize bookmarks

Chrome Xmark Extension

Cellular Telecommunication – GSM, CDMA

From my last post, I have written about telecommunication in general. Here I will write more about cellular telecommunication and its technologies particularly GSM and CDMA. Both are 2G technology.

Most people now associate telecommunication with modern technologies that provide mobile communications to users both in the form of voice and data transmissions. There are a number of different standards that telecommunication companies use to provide cellular services.

Cellular telecommunication was conducted over analog system that transmits waveforms which can degrade over long distances. Because of that, cellular telecommunication has transformed to digital converting the signals into groups of numbers that could not be broken down over time and distance. As a result of this digital transformation, cellular telecommunications are based on many different standards. Phones and systems that operate on the same standard can usually work with each other.

The most popular of the digital standards are Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). GSM is the standard used in much of the world. In Malaysia, GSM is most common, while CDMA and PHS (PHS) mobile phone is also very popular.

In terms of data transfer speed, both technologies continue to rapidly leapfrog one another. Both provide “3G” standards or 3rd generation technologies. CDMA2000 is CMDA’s answer to need for speed. GSM’s answer is EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) with added technologies that include UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone Standard) and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) This technology is also known as W-CDMA, but incompatible with CDMA networks.

GSM phones uses SIM cards that allow phones to be instantly activated, interchanged, swapped out and upgraded, all without carrier intervention. The SIM itself in tied to network, rather than the actual phone. CDMA carriers on the other hand require proprietary handsets that are linked to one carrier only. When upgrading a CDMA phone, the carrier must deactivate the old phone then activate the new one and the old phone becomes useless.

Getting to Know Telecommunication

It has been almost 6 weeks already since my job attachment here in a mobile telecommunication company. As a CISCO certified person, I am appointed as an IT technician who troubleshoots pc and networks around Sabah region. During my stay, I started to speculate on the things they do here. How do they provide services to subscribers located around the region? What technologies do they use to provide these services? How do wireless broadband work? What is telecommunication? All these questions started to build up so I took the effort to conduct my own research on the subject.

Although telecommunication is a totally different field from my IT/networking background, there are still some similarities. For one which is the most obvious, the company I’m at uses CISCO devices for their interconnection too. This is because they also provide data transmission services other than voice transmission. So I am going to spend some time here to explain briefly what I have researched so far. Good stuff…

Today telecommunication is all about providing wireless connection to wide range of areas around the globe with great transmission speeds. Although fixed lines are still widely used, mobile communication has grown rapidly that led to the significant decline in fixed network subscriptions. This leads me to believe that being in the mobile industry is and will be secure for a very long time. But nevertheless, both fixed lines and mobile communication are both extension to the word telecommunication; transmission of messages over significant distances for the purpose of communication. So how did it all began?

Earlier signs of telecommunication started when the electrical telegraph was invented in the 1840s. A telegraph is used to communicate over long distance by using Morse code. Then came the conventional telephone in 1876 which is now in use worldwide. The invention of radio in the late 19th century and television in the early 20th century has played an important role in wireless communication. At that time, only voice was transmitted through the transmission medium. Now in the digital age, we have packet switching (transmission of data packets) which then made the Internet possible.

Mobile Telecommunication Company for example Maxis, Celcom and Digi provide communication services to mobile devices which may move around freely unlike Telekom who provides fixed line network. These services include wireless telephony and broadband internet services. To be able to provides these services, wireless standards have to be used. These standards are like GSM, CDMA, UMTS and WiMAX. More on these technologies in my next post.

Installing Eclipse on Ubuntu

An easy way to install Eclipse on Ubuntu is through the Ubuntu repositories. This can be done by opening up the “Ubuntu Software Center” under Applications. Click on Developer Tools -> IDEs. Then look for Eclipse from the list of IDEs that shows up. If you click on Install, you will be asked to enter your user password then it will automatically install Eclipse for you. It should be pretty straight forward here. After installation is complete, you can start Eclipse in Applications -> Programming -> Eclipse.

Another way is to install it manually by downloading the Eclipse files from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/. You will need to install JRE or JDK first before you can run Eclipse. You can do this by typing this in the terminal.

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre

Extract the Eclipse files to the /opt directory so that other users can have access to it.

tar xzf eclipse-SDK-3.5.2-linux-gtk.tar.gz
sudo mv eclipse /opt/eclipse

Then create an eclipse executable in your path.

sudo touch /usr/bin/eclipse
sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/eclipse
sudo gedit /usr/bin/eclipse

Then type in the followings and save.

#!/bin/sh
#export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=”/usr/lib/mozilla/”
export ECLIPSE_HOME=”/opt/eclipse”
$ECLIPSE_HOME/eclipse $*

Then create a gnome menu item.

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

Enter the following and save.

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Eclipse
Comment=Eclipse IDE
Exec=eclipse
Icon=/opt/eclipse/icon.xpm
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;Development;
StartupNotify=true

Now you can run Eclipse from Applications -> Programming -> Eclipse. You can also install different Eclipse packages for example the Eclipse + PDT package by using the manual way of installing.

Using Glade for UI development on Gnome

On my post about network traffic monitor project, I said that I will share some details on it here. Well here it is. My application works on a GNOME desktop environment which is the default Ubuntu desktop. Now there are two ways to go about creating GUI application on GNOME. The hard way would be to hardcode the UI from scratch using the GTK libraries or the easier way would be using a tool like Glade that helps to generate the codes for you. Glade is an open source RAD tool.

I used Glade for my project as it is so much easier to use than hardcoding each widget like windows and text boxes. It also saves a lot of time since it is much faster too. With glade you can add any widgets that the GTK library provides into a container. You can then configure the properties of that widget for example the title name, the width and length etc. When saving the project, Glade will create an glade file which is in fact a XML file that describes all the widget and its properties so that you can use it on your application.

The Glade file can be loaded by applications dynamically by using GtkBuilder GTK object. GtkBuilder adds connection between widgets and the application source code. By using GtkBuilder, Glade XML files can be used in numerous programming languages including C, C++, C#, Vala, Java, Perl, Python,and others. Below is the code snippet to add the Glade file using python.

builder = gtk.Builder()
builder.add_from_file(“filename.glade”)

builder will be used as a reference to the Glade file that is added as filename.glade. To interact with a widget on the Glade file you need to reference it first for example:

window = builder.get_object(“main_window”)
combo = builder.get_object(“combobox_interface”)

window is now referencing the widget named “main_window” that is defined in Glade. combo is referencing “combobox_interface” widget. Once you successfully reference the widget, you can interact with them for example connecting signals to it. A signal is used to tell the application that an event has occurred. Examples of events are user clicking a button or resizing the window. Since my application is GUI based, it needs to be event-driven so that it will react whenever a user interacts with it. The codes below is an example of how to connect signals.

window.connect(“delete-event”, destroy_window)
window.connect(“response”, destroy_window)

In the codes above, I’ve connected the “delete-event” and “response” signal to the window widget. The “delete-event” signal will be emitted when the window is closed for example the user clicked to the ‘X’ button on the window. destroy_window is a callback function which is called when the signals are emitted. Callback functions are used to execute codes in response to the events.

Glade can be a pretty neat tool if you ask me especially for developers that uses RAD methodology. You can change the interface easily without changing much of the codes. You can also see the changes nearly instantly after editing the design.

I will post other information of my project soon.

IDE headaches

Since I started using Ubuntu, I still have problems finding the right IDE to use for my programming needs. I went through a few like eclipse, netbeans, komodo edit, gedit + plugins and now geany. Eclipse and netbeans are nice but they are quite heavy. I prefer IDE that runs fast so I don’t have to wait 15 seconds for an IDE to start. Komodo Edit is lighter and served me well for my python project I was doing last year. Recently I tried gedit with configurations to work well for php. Yeah, gedit is the main text editor for Ubuntu but it can be used for programming with a little tweak. But the thing I don’t like about it is the lack of code folding. Now I’m trying out geany, which is in the repositories for Ubuntu. Geany is also light weight and has most IDE functions like:
# Syntax highlighting
# Code folding
# Symbol name auto-completion
# Construct completion/snippets
# Auto-closing of XML and HTML tags
# Call tips
# Many supported filetypes including C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl, Pascal (full list)
# Symbol lists
# Code navigation
# Build system to compile and execute your code
# Simple project management
# Plugin interface (see Plugins)

So lets see how long Geany will last.

Which photo sharing services

Photography has been a popular subject across the Internet for some time now. More and more people are taking up photography these days. The web makes it even even easier for people to store and share photos with family and friends. Popular photo sharing web services like Yahoo’s Flickr and Google’s Picasa allows users to have an online album so that other people around the world would be able to see and comment their photos.

I don’t see myself as a photographer but time to time I would take some pictures on my Sony cyber-shot digital cam and store them on my harddrive. Some of my photo albums that I think are interesting I upload on my Facebook account. So most of my pictures that I have are on my harddrive. Its a good practice to backup your digital photos time to time and a good way to do that is by uploading it on the web. My greatest regret is that I did not do so when I realize only to late that my harddrive would not run anymore because of bad sectors.

Last week I installed Picasa on my laptop and I liked the way it helps to organize my photos for me. When I wanted to upload my photos using Picasa I realized that I have 1 GB limit of storage space on my Picasa account. I was a little disappointed with this, so I checked Flickr. Flickr on the other hand has no storage limit. Sounds great right? Not really, there is a catch. Flickr free account users are allowed to upload 100 MB of images a month. Which means that if you already uploaded 100 MB of images this month, you will have to wait for the next month to upload another 100 MB. Yeah so you need more than 10 months to beat Picasa’s 1 GB of storage limit thats if you used up all the 100 MB upload for each month.

Flickr also limits your “photostream” to the 200 most recent photos. So when you uploaded and hit more than 200 photos, Filckr will only let you see the 200 most recent photos. The old ones will not be deleted but it will be kept hidden. If you linked the old photos to a webpage, you will still be able to see them from that webpage.

These storage and upload limits can be lifted if you get a pro account on either Flickr or Picasa. With a pro account on Flickr you have unlimited upload for each month and on Picasa, instead of 1 GB you get a wooping 7 GB!

Uploading photos on either Flickr and Picasa is easy since both have their own web browser interface and software. Downloading gives Picasa the upper hand since Picasa software itself has the ability to sync photos on the web and on a computer. Flickr has third-party services that helps to download photos from your account which I heard is a pretty labor-intensive process.

Another alternative would be Facebook. Facebook Photos has emerged as the largest photo-sharing service in terms of users and is one of the fastest growing of any size. Facebook however truncates the quality of the photos you upload to fit the required pixels it uses. So the photos you upload won’t look as good as the originals you have. Facebook photos is not a good backup plan for your photos especially for those who wants to keep the quality of their photos.

Both Flickr and Picasa have their pros and cons. It all comes down to the users and what they want to use these services mainly for. Picasa is good for managing photos and probably the best way to backup 1 GB of photos. Flickr is best for its tags and communities where its all about sharing. For me, I use this kind of service mainly for backup and that is why I use Flickr. Eventhough I won’t be able to view all my photos because of the “200 most recent photos” limit, I know that my photos are safe in Flickr until I upgrade by account to pro to view all my photos. I don’t really see myself using Picasa until Google increase the storage space. Well, that’s me.

If you want a more technical comparison between Flickr and Picasa, you can read them here.