Happy Holidays

me is the off! me go! me say bye bye! me also say enjoy and happy new year 2006!

Note: Last year same date, I stayed up late and went to sleep very late. Woke up to a tsunami! I wonder what I will wake up to today!?!#!

Google and Python

Google has hired the creator of Python , Guido van Rossum. This has not yet been officially announched by google, but according to this news groups postings, its true.

It is a cool move, since google already is using python for its projects, including the new versions of blogger.

How can you tell if your boss is a "BAD BOSS"?

Does your boss:

• Ignore "people" issues such as support, development and conflict?
• Criticize, downplay or ignore your ideas; or take credit for your work?
• Lack necessary knowledge, skills or experience in your field or profession?
• Ignore serious problems or make them worse?
• Measure results based only on things that can be easily counted?
• Hire unqualified employees, vendors or consultants?
• Do the nitty-gritty, detailed work in your department?
• Insult, taunt, harass, or threaten you; or snap, shout or curse at you?
• Expect you to agree with her or his ideas, or give you incorrect information?
• Gossip with your peers or encourage infighting and internal competition?
• Use company assets inappropriately or unethically?
• Work against company goals and programs while pretending to support them?
• Appear to have different personalities on different day

If you report to a bad boss, know these four things:

1. Some bosses want to be bad and they're not going to change.
2. Bad bosses know how to get away with what they're doing.
3. You're not imagining it--it is really happening.
4. You are not the problem.
   

Information source

An Orgy of Linu(x)

Is it the looks or the feel? What ever it is; its simply very cool. From a handful of linu(x) distros like Slack, debian and redhat we have evolved to new stage. Now we get so many of them. Most of them are oriented to specific user(s) or applications. I knew we had load of them; at a point in time I had the count too. But later on I lost it, now today I was shocked to see this page.

http://shots.osdir.com/index_thumbs.php

One PC two users?

Well; its nothing new multiuser and multitasking, bla bla stuff. We all have seen and experienced it but this is something new for me and thought worth a look at. The concept is to have two users using single PC at the same time. Not at a server level; or remotely connected, but simply using two different desktop environments and applications, etc on one PC. This has been done at various levels using various methods; but this one seem to be cheap and fun.

So if at home; or office you need to share a machine,now all you need is a dual-head video card and an extra USB keyboard and mouse. This is done using a software called Desktop Multiplier and runs on the Linux OS. If the PC is powerful enough it can even support more then 2. Extra hardware needed will be USB hubs or PCI cards.

This will be real good application to be used at a place like a school or at a cyber cafe'.

Time for the big break

We have been having a good year; I’d say 2005 was one of the best years so far. Things have been smooth and I had fun and good times. Learned so much; achieved most of my goals. This year I would consider to be a year of experience and learning. Getting to know new people; learning new things and experimenting and most of all got to know the real dark side of life. Things which should be digested, not ignored. Learning to fight back, and stand up and ignoring bull shit! Don’t let those get in your way. Drive and feel the wind, who cares; as long as you enjoy the ride. Let the cars hiss by and horn! Even if they spray water at you; at that speed you’d dry up in no time.

I am off in a few days for my annual leave. I guess I’d have a good new year celebration . We did plan for a trip; all those fun party nights. Sad thing is not all got to join the trip. Some of my friends will join me and we plan to have a good time. I am really looking forward for the year end break. End of so much and I hope start of better things. truly a journey of self experience.

The bad snake

"Python programming: be the snake, eat the ruby, and throw the perls to the C" this was the topic of today when I went into the #python channel on undernet. I totally support this.

I've been into python for some time now; Perl is ok and cool; though most will say its the thingy. Well for me I think it does not matter what language you use. Its getting it done, and how fast you get it done, and the maintainability. As for my work; I often have to write small scripts to do odd jobs on the systems; and I found Python to be a life saver. Its easy to develop in Python, its fast to develop and it looks neat! Yeah! Bloody neat compared to Perl (most) scripts.

Last night I got some small scripts done again; to automate the process of mailing all staff bills to their emails as html mails. This was simple, but had to do a lot of odd stuff that might have taken me lot of time if "I" were to do it in Perl or other shell scripts. Plus Python scripts run on windows, *nix and on my phone as well. So its a good toy language too, to play around with.

I have not done major big projects with Python and which involves heavy usage for the GUI's and DB's but I think it's high time I should do that. So next question is Microsoft coming up with a "Python#" ?!? hehe

Hi old buddy!

Long time no see. Still on Linux(obviously) and on Dhiraagu ADSL. Ah! Got ya! Since when did you move to Firefox? I thought Konqueror was the choice. Anyway cool! No Worries! End of transmission! End of Story! I give up! Thanks!

"little knowledge is dangerous" ?!?

Ok! I got a call from primary0 a while back; and has explained me this story behind the DOSS. The real story behind this is that; they have accused me, primary0 and sigey of DOSS'n their site. So obviously we will look into the matter.

primary0 has told me that he found logs of my ip going to thebalaabodu.com. Ok next question is why? here is the explanation. I was asked by a friend to download all the pics on the forum. After all that's the reason why everyone seems to join the site. So after a quick look into. I figured out that the pics were hosted in a folder on the site. So I simply did a wget for the .jpg files.

wget -m -r -l1 --no-parent -A.jpg http://www.thebalaabodu.com/4rum/files/

that was the command. Simply what this will do is connect to the site; and download the files with the extension .jpg. When run this. It will go through the dir and download all files. Next time its run; it will do the same; but will not download the files which is already in my HDD. So basically its a kinda mirror thingy which happens for the pics.

This these guys has considered as a "hacking attempt"; come on its good to be paranoid but this is way too much. They don't know the difference between a DOSS attacking and someone connecting and downloading pics. Besides they had this folder open. And it was for public; so I don't see anything wrong. What's the big deal. This is very simple. It does not do anything harmful but just download pics. Don't they want people to download pics? Ok if they say yes! Ok I admit I did it! But is this such a big deal?

I think what really happended is the timing. Seems these guys has offended Business man like Jabir and gov officials like Mr.FJ. So obviously they will try to attack them as well. My guess is they bought off the hosting service during the same period of time when I did the download. So its not nice to say someone bought off their hosting; it looks much cool, to say he ISP guys hacked into them! That's the real explanation behind what really happen'd. But I am sure they know this by now, but they just don't want to accept it since they have gone this far. Also its not so cool to admit that Jabir really messed them up. But I am sure if Jabir and FJ did this; they will be really laugh'n their ass off now. Cos these guys did not even know what hit them, and they are running after us.

Dear Mr. Jabir

With reference to the post below
http://www.thebalaabodu.com/4rum/viewtopic.php?t=2&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=3825 ; on the balaabodu. It seems we are exposed now. Sorry I did not give the money to primary0. Sigey is happy with the 10K he got. I think the 20K was not enough and the site is backup again! So now that they know you paid me 30K! LOL this has got very dangerous!

Also the site is back up again! So we need to do something about it! Lets bring it down again. This time the charges will be doubled! and the next time the charges will be tripled, and so forth. I am sure we can STOP them someday! hehehe!

Anyone else who needs a hacker for Rent please do mail me (but make sure you have 30K for a start)! LOL

Also according to balaabodu the latest technology is to DOSS a site! WOW ey!

Note: This is the most fun thing I ever been accused of. And I am enjoying this. Also in the process I am hoping that I will make good connections with Mr. Jabir and might get to go to his resort on week ends. Well Mr. Jabir what do you think? Can I? Can I? Please?

x0780 range test

Here is the first script to test the thaana with Symbian using Python.


from appuifw import *

def tha_input():
first_list = [' '.join(thaa_char[i:i+11]) for i in range(0,50,11)]
y = popup_menu(first_list, u'select Thaana char')
if y is not None:
x = popup_menu(thaa_char[11*y:11*(y+1)], u'select Thaana char')
if x is not None:
t.add(thaa_char[11*y + x])

thaa_char = [unichr(0x0780+i) for i in range(50)] # 50 thaana chars

app.body = t = Text()
app.menu = [(u'thaana', tha_input), (u'clear screen', t.clear)]

# wait for user to exit program
import e32
lock = e32.Ao_lock()
app.exit_key_handler=lock.signal
lock.wait()

Symbian and Thaana : Work in progress

Maybe a joke; but I still am into Thaana even when it comes to phones. Been trying to implement it on a phone. Starting with SMS. I've got the usual NOKIA 6600 phone which comes with Symbian OS. It already supports sms in languages like Arabic and Hebrew. Why not Thaana? After I experimented around. I found out by default it comes with a unicode font. Unfortunately; no Thaana code pages. So the next option was to upload a font which got thaana in it and make it the system default font for the phone. After some reading up, I am able to get a font installed; but still I can' get it to display Thaana correctly. On the symbian the fonts are not vector based but bitmaps. So It won't be that hard.

Next is to come up with a way to write and send sms through the phone. Right now I am doing that through the PC through bluetooth. The approach I am planning to take is to develop python scripts for this function. I still have no idea how the UI can be like. But hope to get this done; with in the next week. Anyone interested to join?

primary0 talks to the most hated forum of maldives

primary0 has a post on his blog which is very interesting.