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Linux dual desktop

Running Linux on my main workstation : check

Using dual desktop on Linux : check

Having a good experience : fail

I’m not sure what graphics card I have in my main workstation (I believe NVIDIA), I know it has 512 mb memory. That should be enough to power 2 24″ screens. (Or so I think). If I drag windows around it feels slow. (BTW I can’t use compiz).

Does anybody have a dual desktop setup in Linux that works really well? Preferably with compiz enabled on both screens ? Please let me know, I’m sure Linux can also kick MS ass in this field I just need the correct setup or correct video card.

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Flex

I’ve been reading a lot about flex lately. I’ve even done some small applications (even 2 for some customers.) I have to say, the more I use it, the more I like it. I know there are major drawbacks to using it. But in the end if you have to build an application that’s not available for the public why not build it in Flex.

One thing I don’t understand is : why isn’t there more support for handheld devices? I know that adobe is pushing support for handheld devices, but why isn’t it widely adopted yet? I understand that microsoft will try to push their Silverlight stuff first, but vendors like Nokia,HTC,RIM , why don’t these guys start introducing it onto their smart phones? Okay that you don’t put it on a regular phone, but on your high end models it should be possible?

Anybody got an idea if it runs on the freerunner or the nokia tablet?

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Veel sterkte Bruno!!

Ik las net enkele posts van Bruno . Het deed me onmiddelijk terugdenken aan mijn vader en de tranen schoten me in mijn ogen. (Mijn vader is nu al een 4tal jaren geleden overleden, er werd een alvleeskanker geconstateerd. Laatst op een bbq kwam ik een specialist tegen en we geraakten aan de praat. Blijkbaar is alvleesklier kanker een van de zwaarste gevallen en ligt het sterftecijfer heel hoog veel hoger dan de % die ons waren meegedeeld) Mijn meter (geen rechtstreekse familie van mijn vader had borstkanker, zij is er wel goed uitgekomen. Kanker is dus zeker geen doodvonnis!!

Ik wens jullie veel sterkte in deze moeilijke tijden. Ik heb het ook meegemaakt en hoop dat het net als bij ons jullie familie veel hechter bij elkaar brengt, ik hoop ook dat het bij jullie zo afloopt als bij mijn meter en jullie je leventjes mooi verder kunnen zetten. Dat jullie nog veel kleinkindjes mogen krijgen. (-> in oktober wordt mijn moeder moeke!!)

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Groovy and Grails

Rails has got a lot of buzz the last couple of years. I myself have investigated it, didn’t write any apps but it looked nice indeed. I wonder why grails doesn’t have this much attention yet. I have read the a couple books on groovy and grails and started my own small project. I have to say I like it, the thing I probably like the most is that you can package it as a standard war file and just deloy it. Another great thing is the fact that you can reuse all the big java libraries that have been released. So you create your reports in Jasper or Birt and just call them from your grails application.

I wonder how they solved this issue in rails. I can hardly imagine they rewrote entire libraries? (maybe they didn’t solve it yet).

Any grails users out there? Any good user groups in Belgium?

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ssh -X to the rescue

I’ve got a dedicated pc running some vmware images (trixbox,openbravo,oracle on linux,…) but after upgrading to ubuntu heron I couldn’t start my vmware console anymore. (Yes I know if I would be using Xen I didn’t have this issue.) But I like vmware better because you don’t have run a modified kernel. (maybe that info is outdated, not sure). In the end it just works. That is until the upgrade. I can’t start my vmware console to connect remote and my server is headless …

ssh -X to the rescue, you just gotta love linux 🙂

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Nice windows calendar

At some clients I have to work on a windowsm machine. One thing that’s just stupid is the calendar in the taskbar. It just tell’s the time and there is no way to see the date. You have to open it (and you just lose time)

I normally install this nice tool it makes your taskbar look a bit more like the one I use in gnome 🙂

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Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy

I upgraded a while ago to Ubuntu 8.04. I wasn’t really impressed, I didn’t see much difference with the previous version. Now after a while I’m actually getting pissed off with it :s I had configured my system just like I wanted it. apt-get installed most of the things I wanted. And now it seems many of the upgrades weren’t like I had expected. (prolly it’s my own fault, I’m also using non standard repo’s)

I also have a lot of firefox plugins installed (google calendar,del.icio.us,firebug,…) most of them can’t be upgraded to firefox 3. Also my zoneminder got broken so I have to recheck why that is happening (and yes, prolly I had better done this on a real server, but who hooks up a webcam to a server 😉 )

In the end I wished I had waited a bit longer until all applications got upgraded as well. Reminder to be more patient next time around.

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Postgresql nice to know

I had built a small application using Postgresql as my database. I used the phpgpadmin to create my database schema (if I remember correctly). When I tried to issue SQL statement I always received errors that the tables didn’t exist, I figured out that if I used “TABLE”, then it worked.

Yesterday evening I had enough. I started googling why this was happening. After some time I found the answer and doing some testcases, it seems that this behaviour was pretty logical.

In short if you use Postgresql


create table TeSt(iD varchar(200));

Is not the same as

create table "TeSt"("iD" varchar(200));

If you do the first you can actually perform select id from test (or select Id from tEsT (reverse capitals). I get the feeling everything is converted to lowercase!

But if you issued the second statement the former selects won’t work. You really have to make it pinpoint accurate. So any people out there giving Postgresql a go. Take care how you generate your tables!!

The fix I did was pretty straightforward. Export my database to a sql file (using phppgadmin)(Also export data!). Then open with your favorite editor and replace all ” with nothing, save. Drop all your tables (but be sure you exported also the data 🙂 ). After you schema is empty, perform the SQL and you should be up and running without the case sensitive stuff.

NOTE
I do agree that TeSt is not the same as test. I’m pro linux filesystem file conventions, but for sql it really is a pain in the ass when you use generator tools and they fuck up.

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Flex update

I had a nice discussion with TimothyP I agreed on most of his points that Silverlight is indeed a nice framework (as is XAML as a language,standard,…). This evening I was doing some more Flex development and I noticed that I had forgotten to mention one thing. Maybe ActionScript is weakly typed, but the Flex Builder tool allows you to have code completion as if it was a strongly typed language.

You could compare it to VB.NET as there you also have code completion but are allowed to call functions that aren’t visible. (sometimes handy when you’re dealing with an ActiveX and don’t want to dependent on the version)

I’ll put some screenshots and code in the near future. Now I’m wrestling with a deadline 🙂

BTW Timothy sorry for the many spelling mistakes. I don’t want to lose time with writing stuff and normally correct it when I’ve published it, but seems there’s no way to edit a comment ?

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Lifesaver

If your monitoring tool get’s out of control this is your lifesaver!!

mailq | tail +2 | awk ‘BEGIN { RS = “” }
# $7=sender, $8=recipient1, $9=recipient2
{ if ($7 == “monitoring@pczone.be” && $9 == “”)
print $1 }
‘ | tr -d ‘*!’ | postsuper -d –