Linux systems

One of the two machines is a Sony Vaio Laptop (VGN-T140P) and other is a desktop built on a Asus P5K-e Wifi/AP motherboard with an Nvidia 8400GS video card.

Install strategy

In both cases I chose to do a clean install. I always keep /home on a separate partition, so clean installs are not much of a hassle. I usually move all the dot-files (and directories) from /home/me out of the way before a clean install. After the install, I bring the ones I need manually. This, I believe, prevents any configuration issues arising from new versions of applications adding/removing/changing any configuration items. I do have to configure some applications – like compiz – all over again, but it is not a big deal most of the time.

I also make a copy of /etc directory before a clean install, just in case I need to refer to the hacks that worked around bugs in the previous release.

Trends

If I look at the way thinks are working on the two of my systems since Ubuntu 8.10 – Hardy Heron, I see pretty consistent trends. My laptop was at its best in Hardy, things are not quite that good now. The desktop, however, is at its best in Karmic! I wonder if it has to do with the video hardware (Intel in laptop, Nvidia in desktop) or wireless usage (I use it in laptop all the time, never on the desktop).

Suspend/resume has gotten worse on the laptop, but almost perfect on the desktop.

Laptop is plagued with wireless issues, but I know I am not alone there (Launchpad bug reports as of today).

Sound, at least on my systems, has greatly improved. It worked out of the box on both of them.

Laptop experience

The general feel of the OS has definitely improved. With the new boot experience, artwork, new themes, Karmic looks pretty neat. It is snappier than ever, even on the laptop with mediocre specifications. All that good stuff is marred by the issues that have come up in this release – from back in the alpha days.

There has always been a problem with the laptop hardware, that when it resumes from suspend (to RAM), the backlight is missing. In the past, I have been able to work around it by setting quirks in suspend/resume scripts. Those hacks don’t work anymore. I haven’t found any work-around for Karmic yet. Launchpad bug #417599.

An even worse issue that has come up is with the wireless networking. In my case, it just doesn’t connect. Even when it does, it doesn’t stay connected for long. It is extremely annoying. Launchpad but #429035. So its mostly wired network for now. I know, laptop wired to the router? That sucks
I hope not for very long though.

Desktop experience

On the desktop, Karmic is just sweet. Out of the box, everything just worked. Sound, video, suspend/resume, everything!

The only thing worth mentioning is that when I first rebooted the system after installing Karmic, Windows entry was missing from the Grub2 menu. All I did to fix this was:

  % sudo update-grub

I wonder why it missed the Windows entry during installation. I am sure it runs update-grub as an installation step, doesn’t it? In any case, if you see Windows entry missing from your Grub menu after installing Karmic on a dual-boot machine, just run the above command.

One more thing I haven’t checked is if wake-on-lan works. If it doesn’t I’ll need to do what I usually do after clean Ubuntu installs – Howto: Wake on LAN with ASUS P5WDG2 WS Pro in Debian/Ubuntu. Hope it works this time too!

Well, there. Now that the computer are all working, time to get some work done!

Incidentally, I set up a github account for all my little hobby projects. Check it out. All the projects are purely experimental and educational. Nothing is going to blow your mind.

In a nutshell – in comparison with Opera Mini 4 – it looks slick, but usability sucks!

It is almost sacrilegious to comment on the quality of a Beta product, but I couldn’t find a way to pass on my feedback to Opera directly (comment, if you know how). May be folks at Opera haven’t tested this version with BlackBerry Pearl. May be the Pearl is just too old. But here is what’s been bothering me last few days:

Keyboard Shortcuts

I don’t know about others, but I use keyboard shortcuts extensively with Opera Mini. To access speed dial entries, to refresh, to go to bookmarks, etc.

In Mini 4, it was as easy as hitting * n to access speed dial entry n (e.g., * 1 for speed dial 1, * 2 for speed dial 2, etc.).

In Mini 5 beta, the ALT key must be used to use a symbol or number. So the keyboard not-so-shortcut to access speed dial entry n becomes ALT * ALT n (e.g., ALT * ALT 1 for speed dial 1, ALT * ALT 2 for speed dial 2, etc.). A little annoying!

Typing

The Inline Editing feature in Mini 5 beta allows you to use the multi-tap input method to edit text-box entries on web pages. I prefer using the SureType input method. So I turned off the Inline Editing feature.

Even without Inline Editing, the text box entries are edited right on the web page. Mini 4 would open a text entry dialog of a sort to edit text. This is cool!

Scrolling

Now this could be just that my Pearl is too old for the new generation of software, it doesn’t have enough resources to handle them. But scrolling performance is really poor. Every scrolling movement results in the hourglass (processor busy). I have a feeling that it still accepts trackball inputs while it is busy, though. Because when the hourglass is gone, its scrolls way too much. I must scroll back to get where I want to – which of course means another few seconds of hourglass.

This is not an issue in Mini 4.

Mobile view

Staying on the scrolling topic, what happened to the fast scrolling in mobile view by moving the trackball horizontally? That was so handy! In Mini 5, the mouse pointer is always visible. So moving the trackball horizontally only moves the pointer.

I loved how Mini 4 would go to next link or page down/up by moving the trackball vertically and scroll fast by moving it horizontally.

For now, I am just trying to get used to keyboard navigation. It results in a slightly better performance.

Fonts

Mini 4 fonts were almost perfect sized for me. Mini 5 beta fonts are either too big, or too small. In my settings, I’ve set the font size to medium. Which makes fonts a little bigger than what Mini 4 had. I guess I’ll get used to them.

However, the fonts on Mini 5 beta’s menu and other interface are a little too small. Wonder how to change them, I am sure there is a way.

All in all, I think Mini 5 beta is a neat looking browser for the phone, but seems a little resource hungry, which in case of an older phone like the Pearl is a problem. Most of the new features are targeted towards touchscreen devices and don’t apply to Pearl.

What’s been your experience?

I’ve been learning PHP lately (sounds off topic, but stay with me here). The project I’ve started, as a tool for learning PHP, is a blogging platform. Being just a study project, it is as simple as it can get. Posts are saved in text files – a la blosxom. PHP merely displays the posts in a readable/navigable manner.

In order to keep the project simple, I had no plans of implementing comments in the blogging platform. No database. I called it OnlyBlog.

I soon figured that a blog has no soul without comments. So I decided to support hosted comment services like Disqus and IntenseDebate.

As I became more and more familiar with these comment systems, I thought this WordPress blog could use enhanced comment system too. Immediately, the question was, IntenseDebate or Disqus? Since IntenseDebate is owned by Automattic, who also owns WordPress, I figured that IntenseDebate should be the best choice. Since then, comments on this blog are managed by IntenseDebate.

However, like many I came across the internet, I still haven’t found a good answer to the question IntenseDebate or Disqus? So I decided to read a little about both and do a fair comparison. Here’s what I found (note – this is in no way a comprehensive review or comparison of the comment systems):

I’ll start with the point of view of a blogger who uses one of the popular blogging platforms. Next, I’ll deal with the point of view of a developer who wants to integrate these comment systems into an unsupported blogging platform.

Blogger/Commenter point of view

Installation

Both Disqus and IntenseDebate have plug-ins for most of the popular blogging platforms – Disqus supports WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, MovableType, while IntenseDebate supports WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, and Tumblr . This makes installation and management of the comment system very easy.

I tried both on my WordPress blog. Both Disqus and IntenseDebate add elaborate configuration panels to the WordPress Dashboard, where you can customize their behavior in great detail. Both Disqus and IntenseDebate also imported the existing native WordPress comments into their own systems. In my case, IntenseDebate imported the comments flawlessly. Disqus, however, had some (unspecified) error during import and could import only a handful of comments – but that may just be the case with my blog. I’ll give Disqus another shot sometime soon, hopefully with better results.

Features

Features of both comment systems are listed on their respective websites – Disqus / IntenseDebate. As you will find out, the features are comparable for all practical purposes. Both systems support threading of comments, notification when someone comments on your thread, the ability to reply by email, even moderate by email.

Authentication

One of the things I like about both Disqus and IntenseDebate is that they provide a variety of ways to authenticate a commenter. A Disqus/IntenseDebate account is great, but not required – being registered on your blog is definitely required. Visitor can use OpenID, Twitter or Facebook to authenticate. I do prefer some kind of authentication, to a guest comment.

Here’s a couple of screenshots that show how the comment entry interface in the two comment systems looks when you are not logged in.

Disqus comment entry when you are not logged in

IntenseDebate comment entry when you are not logged in

Pretty similar, isn’t it!

Spam

Even a not-so-busy blog like mine accumulates thousands of spam comments over period. Both Disqus and IntenseDebate have effective spam filters. I was happy to know that Akismet can be used on both the systems – since I was already using it before I switched to enhanced comments, and was loving it.

Moderation

Again Disqus and IntenseDebate sport a similar comment moderation functionality. Comments can be edited, deleted, marked as spam, etc. They both support having multiple blogs under one account. This is very convenient if you manage multiple blogs. Like I mentioned before, comments can be moderated by replying to notification email with appropriate moderation command also.

Social

For visitors who have a wide social presence, both systems allow cross posting to different social networks – a comment can be sent to Twitter, a comment can be put on your Facebook wall, etc.

From my experience, IntenseDebate only allows you to tweet your comment if you used Twitter to sign in. Disqus always provides you with this option, no matter how you signed in – I like that!

Disqus comment entry when you are logged in. Notice the option to send the comment to Twitter

IntenseDebate comment entry when you are logged in

Instead of posting more screenshots, I’ll encourage you to experience Disqus and IntenseDebate on their respective blogs.

Documentation

Both these comment systems are extremely feature rich, to the extent of being complicated. However, the documentation on both websites does not scale up to the level of complexity of the features. All features are listed with very few details. Specifics are left for you to figure out. It would be nice if the Twitter connection and the Facebook connection was documented in a little more detail – for the not-so-Web-2.0-savvy folks!

Support

Like I said, documentation on Disqus and IntenseDebate leaves a bit to be desired. However, both @disqus and @intensedebate are active and very responsive on Twitter.

Developer point of view

I am not a hardcore developer, merely a PHP newbie trying to get my hands wet in the web-tech. So the developer point of view I present is specific to the little project I described above.

There are two aspects of commenting that I want to incorporate into the project – how the visitor enters comments and display of comment count on the index page.

Comment entry

In both Disqus and IntenseDebate, adding a comment entry text box at the bottom of a blog post is as easy as including a short JavaScript snippet in the HTML. This small stub brings in all the goodness of rich comment system. You can adjust appearance and functionality of comment input from your Disqus Comments settings or IntenseDebate Dashboard. Comment systems know how to associate comments made on a page to the blog post based on the URL of the page (permalink).

Comment count

It is neat to have a little comment count next to the blog post title on the index page. Both Disqus and IntenseDebate have ways to do this. This is one place I think a little more detailed documentation would greatly help. I could somehow get Disqus to do what I want. But I am still struggling with IntenseDebate. Both sites don’t make it clear on how to achieve this – what happened to good-old examples??

Conclusion

Asking IntenseDebate or Disqus? is like asking Coke or Pepsi?. People have their reasons to pick one over the other (although I don’t get why people drink Pepsi when there’s Coke!… well, see? ).

It is a matter of personal choice. What may seem like a minor feature missing may be a deal breaker for someone else. I use IntenseDebate on this WordPress blog, just because it worked out best. I don’t know how long it will stay – as new versions come out from Disqus and IntenseDebate.

If you are trying to decide between the two, it behooves you to at least try both. They are both free and easily available on most blogging platforms. And they are both awesome!

Incidentally, is there a third (or a fourth) hosted comment system out there waiting to be discovered?

I spent almost entire last week, in trying to install it on my Sony VAIO VGN-T140P laptop. It is a small laptop, so I thought Jolicloud would be a good option to try. However, the laptop BIOS does not support booting from a USB drive. And Jolicloud only provides a .img file that can go on a USB drive.

During the past week, I tried various ways to convert the .img file into a good .iso file that I can burn onto a CD and boot from there – sadly to no avail. Among the many things I tried were ccd2iso, nrg2iso, mkisofs, plain renaming of the .img file to a .iso file. Nothing generated a CD that I could boot from. All I had was a full set of 12 bad-CD coasters!

Last night, I found another free product that made me say WOW! aloud! During some intense googling, I came across this thing called PLoP Bootmanager. It claimed to do exactly what I wanted – boot from USB without the support from BIOS! I downloaded it and put it on a CD. With the Jolicloud USB drive in the USB port and PLoP Bootmanager CD in the CD drive, I restarted this laptop – it worked! PLoP Bootmanager came up, and showed me an option to boot from USB! I selected it and woo hoo! Jolicloud was booting!

I’ve installed Jolicloud on this laptop since, and am liking it. My laptop is not one of the supported devices, so I am sure there will be problems, but none so far. In fact, I am posting this from Google Chrome installed via Jolicloud Applications.

There are a few software titles that I swear by and always keep a copy handy – SuperGrubDisk, GParted, Ubuntu on a USB drive – to name a few. From today, I am keeping PLoP Bootmanager CD in that bag of goodies too! Kudos and many thanks to PLoP devs!

I use [insert Linux distribution / some Open Source Software] and I love it! It fails in [insert some scenario/hardware/etc]. But hey, I can’t complain, it’s free!

I don’t know if this is a result of someone misinterpreting the term free or just not being responsible enough.

From what I understand, Free Software is software licensed such that anyone can freely copy, extend and redistribute it. It just so happens that with such a license, the software is easily available free of charge – so you don’t need to pay anyone any amount to install and use it.

What keeps free software alive is the community behind it. The community of developers (God bless them!) who make the software. Also the community of responsible users, who take it upon themselves to contribute in one way or the other. Many choose to make monetary donations to keep the development of free software funded, others choose to make contributions in form of testing. Using the software, reporting bugs when something doesn’t appear quite right, helping the project evolve and stay healthy.

Being free doesn’t mean it is any less in quality. In fact, price has nothing to do with quality. Look at Microsoft Windows and on the other end of the spectrum, look at Mozilla Firefox, Ubuntu or VLC to name a few good quality free software projects.

So when someone says – so what it’s broken, it’s free. You get what you pay for – it really bugs me. If you find something broken in any free software it should be reported to the developers. Most free software projects make it fairly easy to report bugs. Consider it your contribution to the software you use.

Users of free software who talk about the software they use on various platforms – blogs, comments, news websites, etc. – are also the marketing force for the free software. When we users are not careful of what we say about the free software we use, love and support, it is the project that is getting negative publicity.

Although free software is free of cost, it is – IMHO – not free of moral responsibility.

Kind of a rant, but had to say it!

Upgrade the Web – Firefox 3.5 is released!

Like many of the past Firefox releases, I used this release (code named Shiretoko) from its pre-alpha stages. It has developed into a solid release.

Now that this release is out, there will be many users to use it and report bugs. For me, it is time to grab the latest nightly builds and start using them. Hopefully file some bugs to help with testing.

Plans for the next version of Firefox – called the Firefox.next – are already in the making.

Congratulations to the Firefox developers on yet another great release. Now back to work on the next one…

Many apologies for the downtime over the past few days.

The process of transferring domain between registrars, as simple as it sounds, was anything but. At least in my case. In about a month’s time, took three attempts, coordination with losing/gaining registrars and more than a week’s downtime to get it right.

After all the confusion, I think, mahesha.com and all its sub-domains of are now up and running.

I must say, so far, I am loving my new host – DreamHost (Here’s a promo code if you want to sign up with them: MMAGOTUDREAM). I hope it stays that way!

Cheers!

Incorrect hue in videos can be corrected by fixing the hue setting in Movie Player

This is on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), where Firefox uses GStreamer plug-in to display video. Movie Player (Applications -> Sound & Video -> Movie Player) also uses GStreamer as its back-end.

So to fix the hue issue, I opened Movie Player preferences (Edit -> Preferences). In the Display tab, under section Color Balance noticed the Hue. In my case it was set to the minimum value. I clicked on the Reset to Defaults button. It reset the Hue slider to a center position.

Closed Movie Player preferences and reloaded the movie. It looked so much better.

Now I wonder what changed the Hue setting in the first place…

It is desirable that when we use our browser on different computers, we want to feel at home on all of the computers. If we bookmark a website on one computer, other computers should also get it seamlessly. If we end up using a loaner computer, the bookmarks should be readily available online.

When I say feel at home, I have something very Mozilla Firefox specific in mind. I use Firefox’s smart URL bar, or what is called the AwesomeBar, extensively. When I start typing in the URL bar, I like to get suggestions based on my bookmarks and history. When I get the suggestions, I want them to be derived from the latest and the greatest of my bookmarks – bookmarks added on my current computer, or some other computer. Getting history from the other computer would be great too, but just bookmarks should be just fine.

So what are the options? From what I read, there are quite a few…

Weave

Weave from Mozilla Labs, to me, is the most promising candidate to solve the problem at hand. But it is far from ready for general consumption. Every new version (that comes out pretty frequently) seems to break something or the other – It is fixed very promptly too – but there is disruption. It is indeed in lab-mode.

Weave synchronizes variety of profile items

What I like about Weave is that it synchronizes almost your entire Firefox profile between multiple Firefox installations – Bookmarks, History, Tabs, Saved Passwords, may be even more in the future. The data is stored (by default) on Mozilla’s servers in an encrypted format, that only your can read. Privacy freaks concerned can setup their own servers, so their data stays with them. But then they must keep the server accessible from the internet.

All this is achieved using the UI elements that already exist in Firefox – namely, the star in the URL bar. It is very intuitive, and in most cases very seamless.

It is really neat.

The down side to weave, is that there is no web interface to the data on the server. So if I am on a loaner computer, or in an internet cafe, my bookmarks are not accessible to me. I cannot use my existing bookmarks. I cannot add a bookmark if I come across something useful.

Delicious

Delicious is one of the most widely used social bookmarking service. Delicious add-on for Firefox provides an additional bookmarking system where the bookmarks are stored on the Delicious website. The add-on provides handy buttons to manage the online bookmarks.

Delicious adds button that do things similar to Firefox’s star

Although the Delicious website says that the add-on enhances Firefox’s bookmarking system, in my opinion, it is more like an additional bookmarking system. The add-on adds UI elements to Firefox toolbar to interact with Delicious bookmarks. A tag button that functions exactly like the star in Firefox’s URL bar. A new window to add tags to the new bookmark, where you input almost the same information that you do in Firefox’s native interface. A bookmarks menu item, that is very similar to the native Firefox bookmarks menu. There’s just too much redundancy.

Since Delicious is mainly an online service, it has a very mature and efficient web interface. And because all your bookmarks are online, you can access them from any computer with an internet connection – whether it is your own or a loaner or one in an internet cafe.

Google Bookmarks

Google Bookmarks is a part of Google Web History. Like Delicious, the bookmarks are saved online and they can be accessed from any online computer.

Google Toolbar adds its own star

Google Bookmarks integrate well with the Google Toolbar for Firefox. Also like Delicious, the interface provided by the Google toolbar for bookmarking is exactly like Firefox’s own. The toolbar adds its own star, which is used to bookmark a website, or edit (add tags to) an existing bookmark.

Foxmarks A.K.A. Xmarks

Foxmarks which is now known as Xmarks is also a strong contender in this space. It has the goods of both online bookmarking services and native Firefox bookmark synchronizing. Xmarks provides an add-on for Firefox (in addition to Internet Explorer and Safari, which is an added bonus), that just synchronizes your bookmarks with an online storage on xmarks.com. They have a neat web interface to manage the online bookmarks. Any changes made online, or on any computer are automatically synchronized.

The missing link

Although Delicious and Google Bookmarks provide a usable interface with Firefox, there is one deficiency in both of them that is very significant to me (an AwesomeBar user). Bookmarks on Delicious or Google Bookmarks don’t become a part of Firefox Bookmarks, and hence are not accounted in the search algorithm used by the AwesomeBar. If I add a bookmark to either of the two services, it will not be suggested when I type something in the URL bar.

Conclusion

I love the fact that online bookmarks (Delicious/Google Bookmarks) are available from anywhere on the internet. However, no matter how much I try to get used to one of the two services, I miss that fact that online bookmark are not included in the AwesomeBar suggestions.

A web interface to manage Weave’s bookmarks online will be a welcome feature. Or If add-ons provided by online bookmark services somehow integrate their bookmarks with Firefox’s bookmarks, that would be cool too.

Until then, it will have to be an inconvenient combination of the two.

I have not used Xmarks long enough to form a solid opinion about it. I’ll just have to play around with it for a while.

Edit: Added Foxmarks/Xmarks as a viable alternative, after this post was first written.

Edit (05/12/2009): Well, looks like the Delicious add-on for Firefox just came a step closer to the way I like it. With its version 2.1.041 released yesterday (?) delicious bookmarks are now integrated with the AwesomeBar. In addition, if you start typing in the address bar with ??, AwesomeBar will show only Delicious bookmarks. If you start typing with >>, AwesomeBar will show Delicious tags. This is great! Now if it could just reuse Firefox’s native UI elements…

You do not have sufficient disk space to complete this installation. Please free 5000 KB and try again.

My disk is nowhere close to being full. A little Googling pointed at a known bug in the installer – Apparently, the installer has C:\ hard coded in its installation path. So if your boot/system drive is not C:\, the installer dies with a very misleading message, quoted above.

I tried to follow the workaround suggested for Windows XP, but it did not quite work, since Changing the drive letter of the system volume or the boot volume is not a built-in feature of the Disk Management snap-in.

Further Googling pointed at a very simple solution. All you need to do is map C: to an existing folder (G:\ in my case). So I opened the Command Prompt, and executed the following command:

subst C: G:\

There. I started the installer again and had no problem this time!

Way to go Adobe..

PS: Don’t ask me how I ended up having G: as the system drive instead of the standard C:.