Microsoft Silverlight & Linux.......

It has been a long time since i wrote. Well it has been really a long time, stuck in the worst city Bangalore, then moving back. Being in there in certain things. Having a fifteen minutes of fame. Everything was there. I did miss writing here in blogger. Though there was twitter to write to, it is not fun. But a great way to say out ideas short and sweet.

Well, after a long time, and trying to figure a way out to make Linux my main os at work, i succeded last week... Yes! DimensioN Studio 2.4 started to work in linux, it took a little hard work to figure out which files were missing. With a little more help from winetricks, i did get it to work properly via wine. It was so much fun doing it. I was just happy that i need not have to move into windows anymore.

Then i just thought of giving the new browser based cloud product of ours a try from linux. But this darn Microsoft agains comes into frustrate me. Silverlight doesn't seem to work with linux. and every attempt to make the new product work with Mono Moonlight also failed. It was frustrating to think that i have to login back to windows just to work with something which is browser based. This is not fair.....

Talk about microsoft and fairness, what am i talking? So i had to give the error messages and i was able to only hope that either mono team will release Moonlight 2.0 soon and it would be compatible with Silverlight 3.0, or our engineering team will make sure it will make changes to accomodate the moonlight too. But who knows....

The suddenly today when we were just discussing things, suddenly it turned towards the new product and linux compatibility. And My interviewer asked me why don't you try with wine or whisky and run the windows version of browser and try to make it work. This was a nice idea. Firefox 3.5.3 was up in 5 minutes, but then again Silverlight decided to play bad. Everything i tried was in vain. Nothing worked. Now i have others in the race. It's got to be me or the Engineering who should find a way out.... But if others find, that is also fine.

Why?! Why is it that at everyturn a new obstacle arises......

Multilevel Menus - ddlevelsmenu

Well, last time i had written that i was supposed to convert a menu from mouseover functionality to onclick. Somehow i had done it, to the satisfaction of whoever i had shown. I don't know for whom i am doing this, but now i am happy.

The approach was same as everyother attempt at reading code. i have uploaded the js file which i had edited to achieve the desire effect. which you can take it from here. I thought it might be helpful to someone. The original script can be obtained from here (ddlevelsmenu). It works on mouse over, which i had converted to on click. This is a old version of the file that exist over there in their site, just make the same changes over there, to convert it into onclick.

I had commented whatever i had done which might help someone. If there are any unusual or wrong ways, just lemme know, so i can correct it.

The menu still lacks the ability to be on screen, when the mouse moves out of the menu. But it still has made the product a little more usable. That, is what is important. May be another day, another time, after learning Java Script i will make changes to overcome that problem tooo. or may be another version where i can combine both the functionalities with the change of a parameter or something.......

Kino, KdenLive, OpenVideo Editior Vs M****S*** Windoze Movie Maker

After all these years of moving away from windows at every possible opportunity, last week, i had go back to windows. Video Editing is still not easy for a novice, or even to a slightly average user. (maybe i am wrong, i am writing what i faced).

We had shot some videos during the new year celebration in our office, and i was given the job of editing the video, add some subtitles, some title slides here and there, and such. I decided to give a try once more on linux. The last time i tried was in December of 2006, using LiVES on a Fedora Core 6 System, but i couldn't spend time back then.. This time i set up Kino, KdenLive, OpenMovieEditor on my Laptop which was running mandriva 2009. I did not have to time to compile and set things up, else i could have even given a try for cinelerra, about which i heard some great things. For audio, i went with Audacity which i feel is the best.

Kino was cool. I just could understand what is what, but when trying to use it, i had trouble at exporting. something was not right, and system kept hanging or it would end up doing the wrong thing,(i know, kino just does what i ask it do, so i can't put the blame on kino). KdenLive was also nice, the interface was interesting, and certain things were really nice, (i did not take time to note things down). But i ran into problem soon(may be i was ignorant to search the menus or google it). and Open Movie Editor just kinda freaked me out. ok i am not saying anything bad, but at the state that i was, i just kinda threw me out....

Since i was pressed for time, i had boot back to windows ( windows gets a point ), start up windows movie maker and start doing things. I can't say Windows Movie Maker is the most coolest editor ever, i have seen sonic something when i was in college and some other stuff, which were really wonderful. Coming back, i am using the software nearly after 5 years, the last time i used it was to set up a video of all the still pictures which we shot during our Karnataka tour with a background music, so i can say i was not much of an expert at movie maker too. But i was able to start off immediately and proceed and finish the job in a day.

May be the fact that i have seen people use Movie Maker, may have unknowingly made me know that these things are there, and how to do those things and stuff.

I will have to live with it for some time, but i will have to find something or do something, so that i can and the others whom i have created interest in and those whom i have converted to linux can do video editing. I wish i could it sooner, or atleast some more time to check out any of the above mentioned tools.

Damn Small Linux on VmWare

I have known DSL for a long time (say since mid 2005 ..).  But i had never thought of it as anything more than a os on a cd to be used when my system hiccups.

I am in delhi, and am void of access to any system sparing my office pc here.  and that to i can't install anything on it.  So now me being far away from linux was sort of taking a toll on me.  so i decided to install linux on vmware as it was already there in my machine.

Initially i had tried to install it, though everything went smoothly, but it did not work or to be precise it did not boot into the newly installed system.  Then on further digging around i found it did not handle scsi disks so i had to set it to IDE.  I forgot where i had found the info, you will get it with a simple google.  i am too lazy to go around.  but it was inthe dsl forums.  That much i remember.

i will say what i had done.

First i had created a virtual IDE disk for 3 GB.
then after booting into the ISO, i went into terminal and became root.
now i ran cfdisk, and created two partitions 1 gb swap and rest as ext3 bootable.
then i started the installation with the command dsl-hdinstall.  and went ahead with the default at everyplace.

after 10 mins it was there.  i was asked to reboot and it went right into the hd boot.  now things were working fine.  Now i am planning to install jdk (which should not be a problem), mysql and then dimension, and take it for a test run...

Dom Inspector - Customizing Blogger Theme / Layout/ Template

After a long time looking at others blogs with fancy themes / layouts, today i set out to get my self one different theme, which is not there in the blogger's default layout set. Since the aim was to get something out of the bloggers default arsenal, i was just looking around for some fancy layouts. and even got thru so many which i just fell head over heels.. But, as soon as applied them, it just felt as though they were not there for my blog.

Then i decided to do something which i would normally not do. play around with the css info in the xml to fit my requirement. first i went around with a fancy theme, but i couldn't make heads or toes of it.

Since now i had my mind bent on customising a theme for me, i decided to start with a ver simple theme, a minimalistic theme which would have just a background and display. i found one, i can't remember, from where i took this.. This is the current one, which was named redplanet... I did like the base template but not the splash image which was there at the top below the title.

I started off with Bluefish to edit the xml, and get out with my customization. But somewhere down the line, i remembered kavitha's saying, something about Dom Inspector in Firefox. Since I'm using IceWeasel in Debian, which is pretty much based on Firefox and is also similar to it, i chanced upon seeing weather it has dom inspector in it. I pressed Ctrl+Shift+I and, lo behold, there appeared Dom Inspector, it was pretty much simple, working with it. Editing the theme was nearly a piece of cake with this Dom Inspector. I had seen kavitha, Sumathi, Santhosh all playing with Dom Inspector for editing / customising look and feel at work, but this is the first time i have used it Dom Inspector. It was interesting to see such a powerful tool hidden away in a browser. I already had a strong belief, as firefox is the browser for developers, and one more reason in my arsenal to drive my point home.

Try using it.

Wine 1.0 and Dimension Studio 2.3

At last, a major release of wine, which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, came out last week, and it was available in the mandriva repositories yesterday morning. The first thing i did as i reached office yesterday was to install and then try to install and use Dimension Studio in Linux. Though it was a fairly easy cake walk with wine and Dimension Studio version 2.3 did work, and worked so cool. That i was just in awe!!,,, all the struggle for the past 7 months, the pain, the angst, everything vanished, at the sight of the progress bar progressing and the spreadsheet interface appearing. I was there like child with his new toy to play with, and doing all sorts of things..... The joy was not for long, coz when i tried it with the latest version of Dimension Studio 2.4 it was very similar to what has been happening for the past 6 months. Still i need to try once again with the 2.4 version.

The next big jolt came when i tried to install the Dimension Server 2.3 in Linux, coz i know the fact that it will work in linux, and i have done it once or twice in my house. But when i tried i was running into errors of all sorts unknown to me, i did try to change the JDK to sun JDK 1.5.0_14 instead of Open JDK 1.7.. still i couldn't proceed the problem was that during installation MYSQL Tcp/Ip connectivity was disabled and myssql's case sensitivity switch was on. which was causing problems, and i was running around without checking these facts for nearly 5 hours... How insulting!!!.....


Well that was it, for now though.... I will make dimension studio 2.4 and all subsequent releases to work with the help of wine, and switch over to linux. This is a promise i make...........

Fedora 8 & Sun Java problems and Antelope

Ok, it is known fact i was hellbent on making this cool app for svn administration. But in the process of making this, i did make some cool findings which i forgot to share it, and on the way also set up the debian for sun jdk and ant 1.7.0 Kewl isn't it.

anyway on way of completing this, i found a editor for ant build files, which can be used to execute the scripts from the editor itself. The name is Antelope. it seems to be cool. and itself being built on ant, seems wondeful. thought there are some issues, still it looks great.

and also i have installed Squirrel on the debian system.

Fedora seem to have problems with sun java. i had installed jdl 1.5.0_06, seems to create some problems all programs just seems to quit just at the point of creating GUI. seems like the java is conflicting or having problems with X display system, will try to identify and rectify, but am not finding time to do it.

A GUI to manage SVN

ok! atlast i did finish the GUI code which i was creating with ANT and PHP. and yes it is working fine. but the thing is, it is there for the configuration which i have used. i.e. Apache + SVN. also still the configuration is not that easy. you gotta edit the code to set the values like where the subversion.conf is located and stuff like that. and also this depends on both Java and PHP which is not that good, ( in my guess)...

So may be, in the next round, i will try to remove the php dependency and try to do everything with ANT.......

but till then this is it. The news is official. i have named it manageSVN. and it is currently in version 0.0.3. don't ask me for any explanations. i haven't formed any idea for versioning.

The immediate additions would be a mailing system to send mails to indicate the users that a repository has been created. and stuff like that. But soon i think i have to move to something else other than ant, coz ANT would localize this, meaning you gotta be there in the server to do it. so may be a web based system to administer, create, modify, backup the repositories, writing and backing up configurations, should be developed down the lane...

build.xml for An Apache ant way for a management console for SVN

Here it is. The one which i have written till now. it is not complete yet. still, if anyone wanna have a look at it. Please do so, and if you have any bright ideas please let me know.....
so here you go

 

 

<project name = "SVN Management tool" default="manage">

    <taskdef name="antform" classname="com.sardak.antform.AntForm" classpathref="classpath"/>
    <taskdef name="if" classname="net.sf.antcontrib.logic.IfTask" classpathref="classpath"/>
    <path id = "classpath">
        <fileset dir="lib">
            <include name="*.jar"/>
        </fileset>
    </path>
    <property name="repo" value="E:\repos"/>
    <target name="manage">
        <antform title="MANAGE SVN" lookAndFeel="com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel" showwhenempty="yes">
        <ButtonBar>
            <button label="Create Repository" target="newrepo"/>
        </ButtonBar>
        <ButtonBar>
            <button label="Generate Config" target="config"/>
        </ButtonBar>
        <ButtonBar>
            <button label="Generate ACL" target="acl"/>
        </ButtonBar>
        <ButtonBar>
            <button label="Exit" target="exit"/>
        </ButtonBar>
        <controlbar/>
        </antform>
    </target>

    <target name="newrepo">
        <antform title="Create New Repository" lookAndFeel="com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel" showwhenempty="yes">
            <textProperty label="Enter new repository name" property="reponame" Required="yes"/>
        <ButtonBar>
            <button label="Create" target="createrepo"/>
            <button label="Back" target="manage"/>
            <button label="Exit" target="exit"/>
        </ButtonBar>
        <controlbar/>
        </antform>
    </target>

    <target name="exit">
        <echo message="Bye Bye"/>
    </target>

    <target name="createrepo">
        <echo message="${reponame}"/>
        <echo message="Checking if the repository already exists"/>
        <available file="${repo}/${reponame}" type="dir" property="repo.present"/>
        <if>
        <equals arg1="${repo.present}" arg2="true"/>
            <then>
                <echo message="Repository with the name already exists"/>
                <property name="repo.present" value="false"/>
                <antform title="Repository Already Exists" lookAndFeel="com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel" showwhenempty="yes">
                    <ButtonBar>
                        <button label="Ok" target="manage"/>
                        <button label="Exit" target="exit"/>
                    </ButtonBar>
                    <controlbar/>
                </antform>
            </then>
            <else>
                <echo message="creating repository ${reponame}"/>
                <exec executable="svnadmin">
                    <arg value="create"/>
                    <arg value="${repo}\${reponame}"/>
                </exec>
                <available file="${repo}/${reponame}" type="dir" property="repo.present"/>
                <if>
                    <equals arg1="${repo.present}" arg2="true"/>
                    <then>
                        <echo message="Creation of repository ${reponame} successful"/>
                    </then>
                    <else>
                        <echo message="Creation of repositoru ${reponame} failed"/>
                    </else>
                </if>
            </else>
        </if>
    </target>

    <target name="config">
        <antform title="Generate Config" lookAndFeel="com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel" showwhenempty="yes">
            <textProperty label="Generate For repository : " property="repoconf" Required="yes"/>
            <ButtonBar>
                <button label="Generate" target="config-generator"/>
                <button label="Back" target="manage"/>
                <button label="Exit" target="exit"/>
            </ButtonBar>
            <controlbar/>
        </antform>
    </target>

    <target name="config-generator">
        <exec executable="php">
            <arg value="conf.php"/>
            <arg value="${repoconf}"/>
        </exec>
    </target>

    <target name="acl">
        <antform title="Generate ACL" lookAndFeel="com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel" showwhenempty="yes">
            <textProperty label="AccessControl For repository : " property="acllist" Required="yes"/>
            <textProperty label="User's list (seperated by space : " property="aclusers" Required="yes"/>
            <ButtonBar>
                <button label="Generate" target="acl-generator"/>
                <button label="Back" target="manage"/>
                <button label="Exit" target="exit"/>
            </ButtonBar>
            <controlbar/>
        </antform>
    </target>

    <target name="acl-generator">
        <exec executable="php">
            <arg value="acl.php"/>
            <arg value="${acllist}"/>
            <arg value="${aclusers}"/>
        </exec>
    </target>

    <target name="users">
        <antform title="Create / Modify user login credentials" lookAndFeel="com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel" showwhenempty="yes">
            <textProperty label="Enter TMC Number" property="tmc" Required="yes"/>
            <ButtonBar>
                <button label="Create/Modify" target="createmodify"/>
                <button label="Back" target="manage"/>
                <button label="exit" target="exit"/>
            </ButtonBar>
            <controlbar/>
        </antform>
    </target>

    <target name="createmodify">
        <echo message="Creating / Modifying ${tmc}'s Login Credentials"/>
        <exec executable="htpasswd">
            <arg value="-m"/>
            <arg value="d:\svn-auth-file-test"/>
            <arg value="$tmc"/>
        </exec>
    </target>
</project>

An Apache ant way for a management console for SVN

Hmmm, long time been lazy. i been doin nothing other than just working on some dimensions..... But came the saturday(yesterday) and i was stranded, coz i had time with me. Free Time. something, which i did not have for the past few weeks. Well anyway, since being not doing anything was a bit sick, i decided to study the ant manual and learn few more things... and suddenly out of no where, a bulb lit up and an idea came. why not develop a management console kinda thing for SVN, coz the guyz back at office are not gonna be as techie and... and... something like an aspiring geek (like me). so why not develop a GUI kinda stuff for them. and why not use ANT for it. i know, it may be a wrong idea, or even suicide......, but who cares, to play with nature is the work of scientists. so there i went on work and did a pretty decent job at hand. but i know it is not complete yet. am still working on ways to make it perfect. Still there are loop holes. and stuff. I'll put in the raw code which i have so that if there are any one who wanna help me out or do stuff, then please help me out, coz i do not know ant that very well.

Though ant itself has some thing to address issues with svn i could not get to it. also there was no manual or something from which i can learn which i was unable to find......

I had to also use php for writing the configuration files..(to know the setup which i use for svn server you can check out the post here)... i think this part with php is pretty much solved, but still there is an issue send parameters to the php program from ant.... will soon solve 'em....
Will post the build file and the php progs soon.......

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Now playing: Instrumental - Matrix Theme
via FoxyTunes

Birds of feather FLOCK together

Flock what a name for a browser. Just another we browser on the horizon or what? well we'll have to find out. The tag line goes as The Social Web Browser. and it does seem certain things are integrated into the browser so that you can be in touch with all your friends, like blogs, and many other things...

feels good. but still..... when seen on a wide screen yeah the browser is really good. really... but in my system it doesn't make any difference. and in linux the UI really reminds to me of Firefox (which is my favourite), may be after a week i might find some more differences... Lets check it out...

Blogged with Flock

A hair cut, A Triple Boot, 3 more installs......

Hah!
yesterday was a little great in its own way, atleast after starting with a big disappointment.

First there was the Hair Cut, since something went wrong when i was styling my hair, i thought of making it right by cutting the hair off at the correct places. so with the instructions to give to the barber from my dad, i took off to the barber shop. since i have to remove the glasses when the hair occurs i couldn't see what happened. when it was finished my long hair had been cut short, my dad had tricked me into saying that to the barber.

in the evening, i decided to install the darn windows, which had crashed a month ago, and my system has a problem, coz unless the Linux partitions are removed i cannot install windoze... i hate this Redmond giant for that what a cruel little way to remove Linux from my system, so i backed up everything on dvds and went about the ordeal. this time i decided to somehow do the triple boot with 2 linuxes, which had been eluding me for quiet some time. and yes i did achieve it with some hicchups though, but hey atlast i did it. A triple boot with Windoze XP, Debian Etch, and Fedora 8. see 2 linuxes. hah! man i rock, i should say. But there is one thing, how the hell was i able to pull it off. is it because linux got easier, or i got intelligent, i would like to guess that it is the former, coz if it is the later, then there is something seriously wrong with me.

later in the day, i did install RHEL 5 double boots atleast in 3 different machines. and that was it. what a wonderful day

svn server

Hah! the wonderfull things called mistakes....
yesterday when i was trying to setup the sn server in the UAT server in CGSL, i faced a strange problem, which i did not face in linux.
i was unable to import a file to repository in windows svn server.

i found the answer today. we should use file:/// protocol instead of svn:// protocol.
nice learning though... could have thought of that yesterday when setting up. instead of trying various other things for half hour...

XMMS and Rockbox on Rokr E6

 

What is the joy of hearing music, without it's ooh's and aah's.  my phone Moto Rokr E6, is good.  the sound quality is really cool.  but still, in the inbuilt real player, if u choose any equalizer settings, u cannot observe any change in sound, even with headphones the sound remains the same.... 

XMMS a winamp clone for Linux has been ported or reworked for Moto Rokr E6 (ezx).... this works on both E6 and A1200 (aka Ming).....   the interface is cool, very similar to winamp...  the controls are also cool.... u even have skins...  and the best thing is the equalizer.  mannnn it rocks....

thought i am satisfied with the working on it entirely still i faced a small problem (it depends on the severity), i was unable to play 2 particular mp3 files with XMMS which i was able to play properly with real player and zmplayer.  now lemme ponder a little ova this, and see it i could find any reasons for it.  if i couldn't i will go back to the trusted forums to get an answer.........

The iphone theme

 

hmmm.  successfully installed the iphone theme  on my rokr e6 yesterday night.  took less than 3 minutes.  The anxiety was too high when i was doing this, and i could have bricked my phone, but i didn't.  Now the phone is working cool. 

i had to install and use linloader and a good lin script to install the theme.

if any of u need the theme file, leave a comment and i will send it to u, coz i don't have any place that does not expire with time.....

the procedure was simple.  extract the theme and take it to mmc card.  make sure there are no spaces in the folder name.  then long tap the iphone.lin file and run it with loader.  leave the phone as such for a minute till the installation is complete.  you will get a popup saying installation complete.  now switch off the phone now u will be able to see the iphone switch off screen. now switch on and voila, u have the iphone theme installed......

this worked for me, and i am not facing any problems....  still there is a easy and safe way,  that uses a theme installer, which u can find in mobile junkies forums.  you will have to register (free) to download....

Lightning 0.7

Lightning V 0.7 is cool. much better than the previous version. Ok. First things First, do u know what is Lightning. it is a add-on which gives the calendar ability to thunderbird, ma favourite Mail Client.

the inteface change is cool. I don't know if it could have been achieved with the previous versions also, but the positions which it took is cool and awesome.

Man, i'm loving it....

svn server

i am giving up for now. coz, i have run out or ideas to proceed further. I know the problem has to be with filepermissions or things like that... But still i am unable to find a way to make it work with apache. Well anyway, For now i am running it via svn:// method. Wednesday or may be later today i will go to office and try to set it up there. If i am unable to get it going with http access, then i will have to resort to svn:// there too. Hope i get it right there.

may be if i get any other bright ideas i will come back again to try. I am not putting this challenge an end. I am just taking a break.

Like how the Terminator would say: I´ll be Back.......

Svn on Fedora (yet another update)

Ok. after digging with google and svnfourms, the conclusion is this is due to file permissions.
But i tried with 777 premission it did not work
i got apache, root and local user into a common group called svn.
set the umask of local user to 002 and tried still the same error.

I am too tired to continue. I am going to sleep. will continue tomorrow.

SVn Server on Fedora misadventures.... (another update)

ok.
i found out why it was asking me id and password again and again. It was a mistake that i had made.

On inspection of the server error logs it was strange that the error recorded was user was not present. so i checked the auth (password) file which i had created and it had only one user, the one which i created last.

The reason is this. when creating users i had used htpasswd -cm instead of htpasswd -m. and so only the last user i had created existed. Well now i created the users properly. and tried to access the url via firefox, now the i crossed the authentication phase, after entering the username and password correctly, i passed thru, only to face yet another error. The error is this....

---

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
−



Could not open the requested SVN filesystem

---

I am just starting to be hustled. But this ain´t something new. I can and will come thru this. I think it is time to go back to asking Google.......

SVn Server on Fedora misadventures.... (an update)

Jeez......
it is getting more confusing. but i am moving forward inch after inch may be even mm after mm.
I had updated the httpd (apache) to 2.2.6-1. still there was no change..

When going thru the comments section of subversion.conf, all examples were made with /var/www/svn as reference. so i moved my repository to /var/www/repos/... and made the changes to configuration accordingly, now i am being asked for username and password. Great!

But now the problem is, it keeps on asking the username and password even though i gave them correctly and when i hit cancel. i am given a 401 Authorization required error..

lemme dig around more. check the httpd logs if there are any clues present and come back ....