Monday, November 29, 2010

Jackie Sawiris: He Must Be a Friend

My friend Jackie was assaulted in Amman. She has been fighting harassment through the objecDEFY harassment project.

objecDEFY Harassment is a women-powered, Arab world-based, self-perpetuating system that empowers women to combat harassment.

Please help break the silence and spread the word. Jackie speaks about her ordeal here.

"He Must be a Friend" (www.7iber.com)
"Must be a Friend" (www.sawtalniswa.com)

Visit the www.objecDEFY.com website and join the efforts to fight back.

Go Rock Portable Speakers

Love listening to music while hacking on my computer. The go-rock portable speakers are my prized possessions. I use the go-rock single portable speaker to listen music on mp3 audio player. The battery lasts for few days, always carry this speaker when traveling or spending time outdoors.

Go Rock single speaker

Got a second go-rock portable stereo speakers for mostly watching DVDs on my laptop. This speakers are designed in shape of an over sized pill, they break up to form two left and right speakers. The USB and Line-in cables can be retractable easily, just pull the cable and spring action will retract the cable smoothly.

Go Rock stereo speaker

The audio quality of go-rock portable speakers is good. You can unscrew the top for BASS mode. They are small enough to fit into my laptop bag and can be recharged with USB. Never had any problems with these speakers, except once I broke the locking notch by applying to much pressure. If you are looking for great portable speakers, go for go-rock.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

George the robot makes a come back at 60

Robots, the stuff of my childhood dreams. Tony Sale revives the much loved robot George, the 6 foot robot made from scrap metal. It is remotely controlled can walk, move the arms and turn his head. The robot inspired the whole generation and found its way into popular fiction.

Newsreel From 1950

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Getting Started With Sahana-Eden

I was introduced to Sahana Open Source Disaster Management Platform few years ago at FOSS.in 2008. But never contributed any code to this project until the SahanaCamp 1.2 in Hanoi last week.

Sahana-Eden is based on web2py python web development framework. Coding with Model-View-Control(MVC) framework is breath of fresh air and I dived headlong into the code on day one of the event. Thanks to Fran Boon, for helping creating this quick tutorial for Sahana-eden developer setup.


# Get all dependent packages for sahana-eden 
sudo apt-get install python-lxml python-reportlab python-xlwt python-shapely libgeos-3.2.0

# Create a directory to store web2py and sahana-eden source files
mkdir ~/Sahana

cd Sahana

# Checkout web2py source code
bzr branch lp:~mdipierro/web2py/devel web2py

# web2py applications are stored in directory
cd web2py/applications

# Checkout sahana-eden source
# Note web2py doesn't like - in directory names (Thanks fran!)
bzr branch lp:sahana-eden eden

# Change to base directory
cd ~/Sahana

# Launch rocket web server with password 'eden' 
python web2py/web2py.py -a eden 
web2py Enterprise Web Framework
Created by Massimo Di Pierro, Copyright 2007-2010
Version 1.85.3 (2010-09-18 07:07:46)
Database drivers available: pysqlite2
Starting hardcron...
please visit:
       http://127.0.0.1:8000
starting browser...in 5 seconds

# Open the webpage and login with password 'eden'
firefox http://127.0.0.1:8000/eden

# On first run, sahana-eden creates 000_config.py and cron/ files
# Change FINISHED_EDITING_CONFIG_FILE = True in 000_config.py file
nano web2py/applications/eden/models/000_config.py

# You are done! Start hacking and send it your patches!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Installing mod_pagespeed

You must have heard Google released mod_pagespeed module for the Apache web server. The mod_pagespeed module improves web page speeds by delivering optimized formats of CSS, Javascript and images on the fly and turning on HTTP caching options. If you are interested read the in-depth technical details on mod_pagespeed filters page.

So you want to get started with mod_pagespeed?. Site Point has published a good guide to Apache mod_pagespeed installation Optimization Made Easy with mod_pagespeed .

Dreamhost users can take advantage of this module right away, it takes less than a minute enable mod_pagespeed using Dreamhost Panel.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Convert MagicISO UIF to ISO

This morning I have the unfortune task of converting MagicISO (Universal Image Format, used by MagicISO) to standard CD image. Thankfully Ubuntu linux has 'uif2iso' program for this purpose. First install the package and then run the follow command to convert the .uif file.

sudo apt-get install uif2iso   
 
uif2iso image.uif image.iso

UIF2ISO 0.1.7
by Luigi Auriemma
e-mail: aluigi@autistici.org
web:    aluigi.org

- open image.uif

  file size    000000003118ba6d
  version      4
  image type   8
  padding      0
  sectors      494134
  sectors size 2048
  blhr offset  0000000031184e6c
  blhr size    27649
  hash         8f60ec4f532c6729852bab2b1f082890
  others       00000040 00000000 01 02 01 00 00000000

- enable magiciso_is_shit encryption
- ISO output image format
- create image.iso
- start unpacking:
  100%
- 0x000000003c51b000 bytes written
- finished

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