Its been a while since i made a post to this blog. I have mainly been micro-blogging on twitter (@shauvik) and google buzz (shauvik).
From now on, I am considering posting reviews of technical papers and tools that i use to this blog.

So, stay tuned

Tentative schedule:

Friday 23rd Oct:
6pm – Registrations begin
7:30 to midnight – sessions
night – camp out with geeks (games/discussions/movies/food/beer)

Saturday 24th Oct:
morning – breakfast
sessions restart and continue till evening.

BarCamp was mentioned at the Fun in Atlanta lecture.
For those who don’t remember, Barcamp is an un-conference i.e. an adhoc gathering where everyone (generally) talks on something cool. The sessions are more dynamic and topics range from product/start-up demos, software tutorials, general discussions, how-tos etc. And ofcourse it’s not compulsory to stay all time, but believe me you’d want to! Be prepared to talk about some cool stuff you’d like to talk about or to volunteer (Without talks, barcamp isn’t fun !)

It is a free event but don’t forget to RSVP at this link:
http://www.meetup.com/BarCamp-Atlanta/calendar/11158798/

Last year i got a chance to have some liquid nitrogen ice-cream that was made infront of me, learnt poker and some cool more stuff, gave 2 talks (web security, beagleboard) etc. The year before that i got a chance to see the olpc, learnt about firefox 3 (which wasn’t released then) from mozilla developers and saw videos from people working in the commercial space industry (again this time !), gave a talk on code coverage.

You can check this for an intro on barcamp-atlanta ’07.
http://www.slideshare.net/shauvik/barcamp-atlanta-2007

#Find the runtime of program wget
for i in {1..100} ;
do
s=`date +A%S*1000000000+A%N`;
start=$((`echo $s | sed 's/A0*//g'`));
#Have to do this hack as every number that starts with a zero is considered as octal by bash.
wget -q http://site.com -Y on;
e=`date +A%S*1000000000+A%N`;
end=$((`echo $e | sed 's/A0*//g'`));
echo $(($end-$start));
done

Here is the video of the MS info sec students from my batch who graduated this semester.
Most of the indian names were as usual spelt incorrectly

Chrome is a new browser with loads of new features and this blog post is about how to achieve some of those things using Firefox.

The Firefox ProfileManager provides a way to maintain many profiles and keep their settings separate. This feature can be used for getting most of the chrome-like features.

Creating a new profile: Just start firefox with the -ProfileManager flag and it would give you a dialog to manage profiles. When you have created a profile, just use -P <profilename> to use that profile. Adding a -no-remote flag allows firefox to run with multiple profiles.

1. Application Shortcuts: This chrome feature is not a big deal. You can do this by using a separate profile that has all toolbars hidden (for fullscreen effect).
   I have setup desktop/start menu shortcut for gmail (just like how chrome adds)
2. Web-Page Isolation: Chrome starts a new process for every webpage. This feature prevents a crashed page(/plugin in a page) from crashing the browser.  I categorize sites as mainly work related (gmail, calendar, docs etc.) or social/information related (all other sites.). The main requirement for me is to isolate these 2 groups.(esp. my email/gmail from every other site)So, i use a separate profile for my gmail. And since firefox instances using other profiles don’t have a gmail session; my gmail is isolated from them.
   
   
3. Incognito mode: This is an anonymous browsing feature in chrome used for private browsing. Again, you can setup a new profile in which history saving is turned off or turn on Private data clearing on browser close.
   

@Readers: Please let me know any cool firefox hacks/shortcuts you know and i’ll post a link to them here.

In this blog item, i shall list some of the Ganymede features that bring value to my developement.

1. Breadcrumb: The eclipse breadcrumb makes it easy to browse packages, classes and members.
   

2. Rich Hovers: The hovers on Datatypes, bean variables and debug variables shows a more detailed information in Ganymede.

   

   Javadoc hover on Datatypes

   

   Hover on bean variables

   

   Hover on variables in debug

3. Different highlight colors for read and write occurrences of variables.
5. Data Tools Platform (DTP): I used the Quantum eclipse plugin before for database access but it had some limitations and wasn’t very effective at certain times. (I’ve had problems exporting DDLs etc). But things seem to run a lot better with the Datatools project. Export to DDL is supported along with support to lots of databases and autocomplete in the sql editor.
   For more details on the datatools platform, read this article:
   http://www.vogella.de/articles/EclipseDataToolsPlatform/article.html
6. Web Tools Platform: I love the new Web Page Editor. It has a preview and WSIWYG type editing and a palette to drag-drop HTML objects. This makes creating mockups or HTMLs a lot faster inside eclipse. Earlier, i used dreamweaver and NVU to do all WSYWYG web page editing but now can do it inside eclipse.
   Also, the support for Javascript has been greatly improved. You can right click on any web project and add javascript support to make the .js files and javascript in JSPs/HTMLs to be editable with autocomplete and other features.
   Also worth mentioning are the improvements in the Server configuration. One can now have a new tomcat server downloaded and setup automatically. It also makes tomcat configuration so easy.
7. UML2 tools: There is an improved support for UML in ganymede. I used it to make class and deployment diagrams and found it easy to use. It looks as a good alternative to ArgoUML and i am yet to explore all features in ganymede UML2 tools.
   For more on eclipse class diagrams read this article: http://www.vogella.de/articles/UML/article.html
8. JavaScript Features: A new javascript IDE called JSDT has been included in ganymede. Also, the BIRT project contains a JS debugger which i am yet to try.

Some of the features that seem interesting, but i haven’t got a chance to try them

1. SQL Query builder : http://wiki.eclipse.org/SQL_Query_Builder_Component_API
2. RAP – Rich Ajax Platform
3. Support for external class folders
4. Enhanced Error log view and filters
5. Plugin Spy – (http://www.eclipse.org/pde/incubator/spy/)
6. Eclipse Communication Framework – Shared editing and messaging with file transfer (link)

Also check out the following articles on Ganymede:

http://datacute.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/eclipse-ganymede-features/

http://xml.coverpages.org/EclipseGanymede2008.html

http://eclipse.dzone.com/articles/eclipse-34-hidden-treasures

The first step is to configure the ubuntu machine/server for remote desktop.
This can be done by going to “System -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop” and setting the Remote Desktop Preferences to

Sharing ->
Allow other users to view your desktop (Checked)
Allow other users to control your desktop (Checked)

Security ->
Ask you for confirmation (Un-Checked)
Require the user to enter this password: (Checked)
Password: Specify the password

Next download and install putty (executable file) and Ultr@VNC.
You need to create a new Stored session in putty.
just enter the login credentials and then select the category “Connections -> SSH -> Tunnels”
Add a new forwarded port with the following:
source port: 5900
destination port: 127.0.0.1:5900
5900 is the port on which VNC listens.

I have written 2 batch scripts, one of which calls the other.
vnc.bat

;Start vnc-local.bat in a minimized window
START /MIN vnc-local.bat
;Wait for userinput after login in putty
PAUSE
;Start vncviewer to connect to localhost
"C:\Program Files\UltraVNC\vncviewer.exe"  /64colors /connect localhost /autoscaling

vnc-local.bat

;Start putty with the profile "Cheetah VNC"
"C:\Users\shauvik\Downloads\putty.exe" -load "Cheetah VNC"

I run vnc.bat which opens putty with the Cheetah VNC profile to which i login. After login, i go to the batch window and hit a key to start the other script which loads the vncviewer.
Somehow the /64colors option has no effect and hopefully i’ll figure it out someday.