ToDo App - jQuery UI

I have been playing around with Jquery UI and finally got some time to create a stand alone app. It's a GTD like app, of my personal taste. I use it home/work for personal tasks management. It may eventually hit the Chrome store, but I need to iron out some more kinks. I used to use task on cygwin, see my blog on this, but it certainly lacks in UI.

Features Include:

• Uses jStorage for local storage: So tasks are available even after browser restart.
• Keyboard Shortcuts - q  and Q to either quickly add a task or a form driven interface. Quick Add (q) follows some cryptic format but lets users "quickly" add a task. e.g., Something important ^t @Work #Feb 5 !H
• Today/Next/Someday - Tabs can be navigated using arrow keys. 
• Sortable tasks - This is the jquery ui sortable; lets users drag the tasks based on the order in which they want to perform.
• Completed Tasks get nicely stricken out for that sense of accomplishment :D

Few enhancements that are still in the making:

• Allow drag-n-drop across panes.
• In-place editing of tasks : description/context/due/priorities
• Log of completed/deleted tasks

This app was inspired by the so many good GTD apps available on Chrome Store or Mac OS X & the iOS. 

Unix sed - Fun at Work - Its Friday!

In my constant pursuit of efficiency vis-a-vis laziness, I ended up writing this stream editor command. I needed to transform this long list of constants in java into an HTML select tag. This served as a perfect opportunity to use sed.
Input: This comes from my file.

public static final String SOME_CONSTANT_1 = "CST1";
public static final String SOME_CONSTANT_2 = "CST2";

Output:

SOME_CONSTANT_1 
SOME_CONSTANT_2 

Here is the magical command.

sed -e 's/[[:space:]]\{1,\}/ /g' \                                                    
-e 's/.*g[[:space:]]\(.*\);/\1/g' \                                                   
-e 's/\(.*\)[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*"\(.*\)"/<option value="\2">\1<\/option>/g' \ 
fileName

• [1]: Replace multiple spaces/tabs [white spaces] in and around a line in a file with a single space.
• [2]: Get rid of unnecessary text
• [3]: Swap and format the output to HTML

Cygwin task - My office GTD

I extensively use Cygwin on Widows at home and at work. No no, I am not talking about Windex vs Cygwin. I am talking about the OS Windows :|
To some extent it has become indispensible to me. A nifty new tool that I installed on cygwin a few yrs ago has now become my primary GTD app @Work. I can manage all my office work using this tool. It's a very basic tool but it comes in handy.

You can find all the necessary help here

CPU Coolers and Thermal paste

When I first built my PC back in Dec 2009, the i7 920 CPU temp were 36/52 F running @ 2.67Ghz stock, and I was patting myself on the back for choosing a superb cooler. Then last week I thought since the system is running so well, for more than a year now, I needed to try something new.

I tried over clocking it and was successfully able to over clock it to 3.8 Ghz with temps like 55/75 F. Not too shabby on a air cooler! But I never really needed to over clock. Windows 7 Performance index crawled up by .2 from 7.4 to 7.6 out of 7.8; and yes I know I could have used some proper tool like 3D Mark scores, but never mind.

After returning to stock speeds, I realized that the temp was not 36/52 F, as I had or in that ball park, but now it was 42/65 F. I was not too pleased and I wanted to have the idle temps below 40F.

For almost a week, I have been taking off and re-mouting my Noctua NH-U12P SE2 120mm SSO CPU Cooler on my i7 920 CPU. I tried various combinations and techniques of changing the thermal paste and the amount and yet nothing gave in. I cleaned the surfaces with Artic remover and cleaner and used the noctua thermal compound and also bought the artic silver 5. Finally I settled with the artic silver 5 since the noctua compound seemed to have dried out. I used a credit card and a few drops to apply all over the surfaces and just enough to have a thin coat.

I have tried at least 10 iterations to get the CPU temperatures down and finally decided that I don't care anymore. I have concluded that, after a few years the CPU temps will never return to the youthful age again :(

Apparently, I am not the only one facing this problem of how much is too much, when it comes to thermal paste.
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/21/apple_macbook_pro_2011_freezes/

Ubuntu 10.10 Linux - Using wired for LAN and wireless for internet SIMULTANEOUSLY!

From my post @ http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10590567#post10590567

Amazing, finally its all working!!

Setup: Ubuntu 10.10 connects to the internet using wireless (wlan0) and it also connects to my iMac running Snow Leopard 10.6.6 over the lan (eth0). I have also configured netatalk and avahi so my Linux machine shows up in iMac thru zero conf/Bonjour (No manual connection required. Excellent writeup here)
The suggestions from the post pointed me in the right direction, but it did not work for me. I had to add some of my own tweaks before my networking adventure got on the road!
Steps:
1. I am using Network Manager. I removed Wicd Network Manager since I was looking for this option "Use this connection only for resources on this network"
2. As per quote 2, add a wired connection manually (iMac LAN). Setup is: fig. iMac LAN

Then configure a static IP as shown in fig. LAN.

3. For this LAN connection, using NM add the route details and check "Use this connection only for resources on this network" option after clicking "Routes".

4. I left wireless as is, but here it is in fig. wlan0

The config is now as shown in fig. wireless


5. Additionally, I configured the Network settings on the iMac. Go to System Preferences>Networking>Select 'Ethernet' on the left and for 'Configure IPv4' as Using DHCP with manual address. I used 169.254.26.55/255.255.0.0. This works with the LAN settings!

And now I am streaming movies from my RAID 5 on my Linux to the iMac over this LAN and using the internet on the Linux machine as well. Note: Somehow iMac chose this LAN interface over the wireless one! My avahi configuration does not have any interface info. BTW I need to be able to use the Linux RAID for my laptop over the wireless. Talk about a simple setup .

I am sure a nifty /etc/network/interfaces file config can do the same. But for now this is the Eureka moment !

Quote:
Originally Posted by gpgp
I want to connect to 2 physical networks. I am using my wired to go to lan used for machine control. And using my wireless to connect to the lan attached to the internet.

It seems i cannot use both at the same time in Karmic. If i open a web page via wireless then plug in to the machine control lan with my wired connection, i can no longer get web pages via wireless. The settings for wired are over riding the wireless and it doesn't try the wireless connection.
Can anyone help with this ?
Thanks
gpgp

I found it. there is a box to check : use this connection only for resources on this network. System> Prefernces> Network Connections> Select conection, edit> ip4 tab> routes button> check box.
Thanks, hope this helps someone else.

Quote:
Originally Posted by houstonbofh

If I am reading this right, you want to browse the Internet on wlan, while also connecting to a single network on lan. This is easy.

1) Right click on your network manager icon, and select 'Edit Connections.'
2) Under 'Wired' click '+ Add'
3) Name it something, uncheck 'connect automatically' select the 'IPV4' tab, and give yourself static IP, but do not fill in the gateway.

By not putting a gateway in, your lan interfaces has no default gateway, so the wlan one can be used. Otherwise the lan gateway takes precedence.

Apple Mac OS X Screen Sharing

Apple Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard comes with an amazing VNC server/client called "Screen Sharing". Once it's enabled from the System Preferences > Sharing > Screen Sharing, Mac OS X magically (Bonjour/Zero Config) looks up any Mac computers on the same network and brings them up on the Finder side bar. Clicking "Share Screen" & after entering the user login/password, brings up the remote desktop view of the other machine.

Screen sharing is nothing new and it has been around for as long as Mac OS X Leopard has been, and Linux guys would immediately quib about VNC being around much longer. However, this isn't about VNC client/server.

This blog is about a eureka moment when I was using my old powerless 2005 Apple PowerBook and working on my 2007 24" Aluminum iMac. I have been using my PowerBook as a very fancy remote for the iMac, but I could never practically use this VNC feature. My iMac is setup on my desk, and the PowerBook is lying around the bed. The reason for this is my 24" iMac native resolution being 1920x1200 and the PowerBook being 1280x854. My PowerBook runs Leopard and the iMac runs the new Snow Leopard (BTW an amazing upgrade).

Due to the huge difference in the PowerBook and iMac resolutions, I could barely read or for heavens type anything on the iMac using the Screen Sharing from my PowerBook. So the silly eureka moment was to just bring down the iMac resolution as close as to the PowerBook's native resolution.

Well there you have it now! I was able to write this entire blog over this Screen Sharing from my PowerBook onto the iMac. Well this may not be so thrilling, but the real advantage of this setup is to run heavy duty applications like eclipse/mysql db server and other development tools over the iMac and then use the PowerBook, which is at a crawling speed even running Safari 5.0 browsing the net, as a very cool laptop chugging at all the J2EE development I can remotely do. Exciting and Sad :|

P.S: Last week, I spent some time googling for ssh -X and the X11 forwarding on a mac, and it all worked. This is a nice tool, if the only applications we need to use are X11 based; which is not the case. Something of an alternative to the VNC and screen sharing where X11 forwarding runs the application on the remote machine, but brings the screen to the local m/c and uses the local keyboard and mouse to interact with this app. It was exciting to get this to work, but this excitement quickly disappeared when I realized X11 forwarding will only work for X11 based apps. One cannot be excited about xeyes for too long!

 

Samurai Jack - The best imagination!

It is no surprise that I bumped into this animation. Mix Animation, swords, fantasy world & I am there. Its not to say I like all kinds of cartoons,...I am not that kind of a cartoon. I had seen Samurai Jack few times and knew that the style is quite different from most. It looks too simple to me - official terms are "highly detailed, outline-free, masking-based animation". I seem to contradict when I say simple. However, there is plenty of detail, colors, & amazingly creative imagination.

I think Samurai Jack is the best animation. It would be more appropriate to say that the creator has the best imagination I have ever seen. I am not trying to compare this simple yet brilliant animation to the likes of Final Fantasy or Ghost in the Shell, but the creativity is out of the world, metaphorically & literally. Where most of the animators (graphic artists) try to bring the animation as close to the reality, Samurai Jack goes full blast into making taking the audience into a wonderful fantasy. The variety is so enormous that it just blows my mind. How can a person have such an innocent & vivid imagination? The stories are thought provoking & each one is quite unique in characters & places.
After such an impression, I decided to find some more information about this animation & reached Wikipedia. It turns out it has won Emmy award, 4 times. And surprisingly its an American animation created by Genndy Tartakovsky & that he lived in Chicago [1].
--
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genndy_Tartakovsky