use Perl;

I've been working on a glue project for the last few days, and finally finished the first phase. Started off with a mix of stuff. Perl, sqlplus and even some shell scripts. Did not go very well. It started to get bigger and messy. Perl is a very flexible language, and has really good and large module support (CPAN). It was a big help. Got things done really fast. But Perl is a messy language. I know you can make it really neat too. But one reason why I use Perl is since I can get things done really fast, thus this results in ugly code. Well; I say ugly cos lately I have been too use to python and I love the looks of python code.

As for Perl its is too permissions related, and too messy to deal with. But this time Perl really did the job. I was able to make the system which was at the center of 5 different systems. The job was to integrate and communicate between them. One of which included an Oracle based system too.

I have to admit Perl really helped. Perl is really good to get things done fast. Lately its been that way, since I need small scripts on and off. All of which is mostly developed in Perl. Now I am starting to wonder, if I should keep things the way it is and go on with Perl. The problem is I know this system is gonna grow really big, and I am not so confident with large Perl based systems. One thing I will hate is if I have to migrate the code to python or Java. Then it will be like hell again. Anyway lets see.

The National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software

Below is a mail I got from the general MLUG mailing list. Thought I should post it here as well.

From: NRCFOSS
To: "Bangladesh1 Bdlugmaintainer" , "Bangladesh2 Bangladesh Linux Users Alliance" , "Bangladesh3 Ankur Bangla Linux users" , "Bhutan1 PL from DIT, Dzonkha Localization Project" , "Maldives1 MLUG" , "Nepal1 Linux Nepal" , "Nepal2 Nepalinux" , "Nepal3 Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya" , "Pakistan1 Linux Pakistan" , "Pakistan2 Foud Bajwa FOSSFP" , "Pakistan3 Chairman FOSSFP" , "Pakistan4 Project Manager (OSRC)" , "Pakistan5 TreMU" , "Pakistan6 Computer Society of Pakistan SIG" , "Sri Lanka1 LKLUG" , "Sri Lanka2 Lanka Software Foundation"
Date: Monday 18:56:40

The National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software


The National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) is a
program of the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of
Communications and Information Technology, Government of India. Managed
jointly by C-DAC, Chennai and AU-KBC Research Centre, NRCFOSS
(http://www.nrcfoss.org.in/) aims to contribute to the growth of FOSS in
India through Research and Development, Human Resource Development,
Networking and Entrepreneurship Development as well as serve as the
reference point for all FOSS related activities in the country.

C-DAC Chennai has now become the South Asia node for the International
Open Source Network (IOSN), an initiative of the United Nations
Development Programmes's (UNDP) Asia Pacific Development Information
Programme (APDIP) and supported by the International Development Research
Centre (IDRC) of Canada.

An excellent source for primers and resources on FOSS, Open Standards,
Education, Localization, Licensing, Government Policy, Networking and
Security; IOSN South Asia is poised to become the clearing house of FOSS
Information in the South Asia region. You can visit the site at
http://www.iosn.net/.

We would like to invite all LUG groups and FOSS enthusiasts to contribute
to the following subcategories of IOSN under your region -:

1)News
2)Events
3)Organizations (non-commercial)
4)Commercial
5)Projects

Kindly send your information with the Country and Subcategory as Subject
headings to nrcfoss@cdac.in.

You could also suggest new ideas or Subcategories to enhance its purpose.

We look forward to your co-operation to foster development in the region.
_______________________________________________
general mailing list
general@mlug.mv
http://mlug.mv/mailman/listinfo/general_mlug.mv

the cables laid beneath the sea

Finally, they are gonna hit our islands soon. Hopefully very soon. This is good news. Number one reason being that this should bring down the cost of communications. More bandwidth. Hopefully more stable communication channels.

Its not a easy job, as it sounds. A lot of logistical issues and technical issues need to be resolved. It will be easy to say just get the damn thing laid and add the interfaces and do the routing. If everything was as easy as it sounds, we can do so much. Anyway that's a different story, but lets hope this will be a major break through for Maldives. The cost of communication has been coming down, since competition was introduced. Its been so much improved, that people have almost forgot how things were a few years back. The call charges, and the internet charges. Not to talk about the services that we use to have. All that seems to have changed over night. Suddenly things are improving so fast. This is really good. Even the customer are getting more aware and demanding more. That again is good news, it helps the companies to develop and deliver better quality service. But then again things don't happen over night. If you are the one who is suppose to do all the work then only you will know. One thing we often forget is, its easy said then done.

Unicode to mIRC

Finally, Khaled added support for display of UTF-8 text as Unicode to mIRC 6.17. Now I think its 6.2, which I tested. Works ok I guess.

The display of UTF-8 can be enabled by default for all windows in the Options/IRC/Messages dialog, or individually for any window you like via the Fonts dialog. Use the /font command to open the fonts dialog.

I guess you need to have Dhivehi as a language installed on your windows to have it fully working.

open source knowledge base

from http://www.opencyc.org/

OpenCyc is the open source version of the Cyc technology, the world's largest and most complete general knowledge base and commonsense reasoning engine. OpenCyc can be used as the basis of a wide variety of intelligent applications such as:

• rapid development of an ontology in a vertical area
• email prioritizing, routing, summarization, and annotating
• expert systems
• games

to name just a few.

I'm not sure about their claims, however, the project looks very interesting. I just got it up on a system and now my part is done. I hope the people who are suppose to use it enjoy it as well. buhahahaha.

how safe is safe?

Hello

dont worry the situation in Kabul is quite stable there are many forigner workers here and there have not been any kidnapped cases or murder many Europian UN worker drive around kabul and go for shopping and there isn't any problem so i hope you will enjoy working in Kabul to let you know i cant recommand you to work in the south and eastern provinces because there are some enemies and they are trying to kidnapped the foreign and government workers but Kabul is Safeeeeeee

so i hope you come and have a great experience in Afghanistan take care

Regards W

This was a email I got. According to it, its safe. The question now is how safe is safe?. There is another email I go too, which had a good point.

One more thing: there are much more chances to die of autoaccident in Minsk, my native city, then here of a rocket explosion and car crash together.

This was a good point. But I don't think still all this will convince my family and friends for me to take up a job at Kabul, Afghanistan. But I guess, if not for them I would have considered taking the offer. Well no one will know what holds for us, but most will say better not take chances with your life. So nothing much can be said. I am kinda sad, cos I think I have to let down the chance. It would have been a good experience and the pay was damn good. Plus I needed a change.

Form the looks of how things are going, things are stalled. Most will say its a very "harudhaana" choice. But for me, I'd rather move on and learn more. I don't think I would wanna be working for one place for a long time. I think its better for us to move on, find better options and gain experience. But most "harudhaana" minded people will disagree with me on this. That's fine. Its just my view that I am expressing here. One reason being, the more exposure you get the better chances you have to learn and improve. But if you wanna rule and take over a place or make it look as if you are the boss, or will be soon. Then stick on. Or maybe if you think you will never get a better job. Stick on. But as of now, I guess I'd be always on the look out for better options. Maldives is obviously out. There is nothing much I can learn from here. Even most jobs the pay "SUCKS". But I hope this time, I'd get a saffer offer.