Thoughts on Linus "F*ck you nvidia" video

I FINALLY took the time to actually see the whole video. And I find the whole video quite thought provoking. I would admit unabashedly that Linus is a hero for me. I look up to him and find the way he thinks to be interesting and worthwhile my time to actually get familiar with. That said, I'm going to talk about some of the highlights which I found interesting (apart from the f*ck nvidia part which I think is just Linus being Linus, not much to learn from there, except for maybe if I'm running Nvidia the company).

It is interesting for me that his level of programming is not just a passion and hobby thing, but all the way up to the level of a habit. He programmed a lot of his own tools. And Linux was originally written just because he couldn't afford Unix and he thought it wouldn't be very hard to write his own Unix. That is just awesome. And early on he would even program directly in machine code by doing the assembly by hand, and just output the machine code directly. Talk about bare metal.

He talks about how open sourced software is able to take advantage of the different kind of strength of people. People have their own interest and able to contribute what THEY are interested in. People did what they were good at doing. A funny part of this was that he said he have never done any web programming before. There are MIS people for that. He wasn't interested in that. He was interested in PROGRAMMING.... LOL.. I write web apps for a living, but I also agree with him. I don't feel what I'm doing is real programming. For me if you're not compiling your source code to machine code, and running it on bare metal, you're not really programming. You're just scripting. Fancy scripting certainly, but just scripting none the less. Of course that's just my view it.. :P

He also talks about why Linux has not taken over the desktop and basically it is down to getting it pre-installed for the users because normal users do not want to install their own OS. He feels that the biggest hope for Linux on the desktop might be on Google's Chrome Book. Sadly this is very true. Unless someone can produce extremely cool hardware that people just drool over it without even thinking it's running Linux, desktop Linux ain't gonna happen. At least not to most normal people. I've been using Linux as my main desktop for almost a decade already. I KNOW it's ready for the desktop. But then again, I'm a user that would install my own OS.

One of the things that I really like about Linus is how he seems to be able to say whatever he wants and never have to be sorry about it. It is so different from me. A lot of my regret comes from things and projects I didn't shut down very early on only because I am trying to be polite. But when the going gets tough, I couldn't deliver. People get dissapointed and I feel regret for not being fortright early on.

Linus is very proud of git. He doesn't feel Linux was his own design because Linux was just following Unix, but git was his own design. And he's very proud of it. For most of my own projects, I do use git. But at work, we started out using mercurial from early on, because we had to work on windows and at the time, mercurial would actually outperform git on windows. And if not anything else, tortoisehg is much more nicer than the tortoisegit. Not sure how things are now though because I haven't looked into this aspect for years already.

One last thing I'd like to point out, is that Linus is not really a big fan of vision statement kind of thing. I find this very interesting. Because another personal hero of mine, my own father, also does not believe in the whole vision statement thing. You should have a sort of general idea of where you're heading, but the most important thing is just to get down and work on it. You have to be responsible, and as Linus says, passionate about it enough that you just keep on working on it, regardless of whatever vision statement you have.

I like offending people because I think people who get offended should be offended - Linus Trovalds. :)

Haven't blogged anything for a long time

I haven't blogged anything for a long time. Have so many things to say. Learned so many things to share. But in the end didn't allocate any time for it. Oh well...

Where has the love gone?

I am a bit late about this as I have only read it on twitter a few minutes ago, but the case of Hamza Kashgari really makes me sad. My heart aches every time something like this happens and I feel so sorry for the state of the ummah currently. The man said a few things on twitter regarding the prophet, and now it seems that his life might be on the line.

It makes me sad whenever people make fun of the prophet, the muslims rather than teach how the prophet was really like and his contribution to their lives and in doing so makes them understand why it is so disrespectful to make fun of such a person, choose to collectively call for murder of these people. Early in the days of his da'wah, people made fun of the prophet in even worse way, they called him even worse things, they put trash in his path, they even flung camels dung and intestines on him while he prayed. But when he finally won the conquest of Mecca, did he do the same to the people who hurt him so? No, he forgave them. When the people of Ta'if sent out their urchins and stoned him till he fled from them bleeding, and the angles were willing and ready to crush the town with mountains, did he approve of it. No, he just prayed that maybe their next generation would be muslims. A man who his companions say was never angry on his own account. Such a man, do you think if he was still amongs us today, would want us to react this way to such small and trivial things? I believe that he would rather not.

You can go here and here to see exactly what did he tweet. In his tweet he did not call the prophet any names, or associate with him any bad behaviour or anything. At most you can say was that he called the prophet a man, a normal man. And that was all that the prophet claimed he was. He was a normal man. With a message from Allah. And maybe that's the part where the contention is. With words like 'do not like the halos of divinity' and 'I shall speak to you as a friend, no more', people jump to the conclusion that he has renounced his religion. He even apologized and made shahadah and still people howl for his blood. Personally, I think these are extremely bad examples the muslims are making. You are not making the case of proving a 'most merciful and most forgiving' God by killing people. You are not making the case that if the muslims ruled the land, all the people will be treated fairly and justly with due respect and dignity no matter what they believe in. You are not making the case that Islam is the highest and none is higher because you are acting like you need to "protect" Islam and that it's followers are just dumb sheep that would be easily confused because their faith is so complicated.

On his death bed, the last words of the prophet was 'ummati, ummati, ummati' (My ummah, my ummah, my ummah). So concerned was he for his ummah, that even in the very last moment of his life, he was still thinking and worrying about them. He had such love for this ummah. He gave up everything and underwent countless challenges so that this beloved ummah would be properly guided and would find peace and safety in this world and in the next. Please do not bring shame to the prophet this way and make the world think that he was a lesser man than he actually was.


p/s: ummah means people. As the last messenger of Allah, Muhammad's ummah was the whole of mankind.

Running Android SDK on Arch Linux x86-64

A funny thing happens once you've downloaded it. Running ./adb in the platform-tools folder will yield a command not found error. But it's right there in clear view. Why wasn't it found. The answer seems to be because the android sdk itself is only 32bit thus you would be required to enable the multilib repos. Follow the instructions here on the things you need to do after you have enabled multilib support, namely you need to install the multilib-devel package which would replace the base-devel package.

Ice Cream Sandwich on the cheap

My son keeps on playing with my htc phone until the batteries run dry. People can barely contact me because if my son answers the phone he doesn't want to pass it on to me. What's a techie to do? Why, get his son something else to play with of course.. :P So I scoured the low yatt plaza looking for something that would be cheap enough that if my son breaks it, I wouldn't mind, but fast enough that he can play his games on it. After searching high and low, the best I could find was the android pocket pc. It's basically just a very cheap android tablet that comes with a casing with a keyboard in it. Funny thing is, the keyboard is usb, the tablet only accepts mini usb (not even a micro usb) and so they also give an adapter from usb to mini usb. It costs rm 699 a pop. If it's still running by the year end, I'd consider that already as ROI. They claim the cpu is 1.5 Ghz and memory 1 GB. I haven't installed any diagnostics software to make sure, but the internal storage is 1 GB just by looking at the application management settings. It doesn't have a back facing camera to take any pictures, but it does have a 1.3MP webcam you can use to video chat or something. And it comes with a somewhat customized android 2.3 (customized as in it looks like a tablet interface, something like the original galaxy tab I think).

So I just had to do it. This morning I was already ready to try installing ICS on it. Mmmmm... manufacturer... none that I can find.. model.. oh err... damn these cheap things... How on earth am I going to find info on how to go about flashing it and all. Finally I just googled the build number, and I come to this gem of a post..

So basically the steps are, download the ics image either from:
MOMO9c ICS v1
build #1
Model 97FC
Kernel Version 3.0.8+ inet_dada@Inetsoftware #1 (without market, still has bug)
Build Number 97F1-D1-H2-H01-N412-20120105
- Momo9c ICS v1
Kevin Custom build 12
Model 97FC
Kernel Version 3.0.8+ inet_dada@Inetsoftware #12
Build Number 97F1-D1-H2-H01-N412-20120111
- Momo9c ICS v2
build #15
Model MOMO
Kernel Version 3.0.8+ inet_hxj@Inetsoftware #15
Build Number 97F2-D1-H1-H02-1553-20120113

I tried both the #12 and #15 build. Both seems to work fine.
After the image is downloaded, download the LiveSuitPack.
Run LiveSuitPack_v1.07.exe first,
then run LiveSuit.exe. (Yes, I did this in windows. Since it involves hardware, I would highly not recommend you try it in wine or something).
Running LiveSuit.exe will automatically run the wizard, if not click the third icon (the gears).
Click on "Yes",
then "Upgrade Mode",
then "Format",
then "Next",
then "Yes",
browse to the image you downloaded,
click "Finish".
Once that is done, there will be a progress bar but does not move. Now for the tablet.

First, switch off the tablet.
Then press the + volume button,
while keeping it (the volume button) pressed, connect the usb cable to the computer,
press the power button 6 times,
then let go of all the button. Fuh...
I had to go here to find out that.
Once that is done, the dialog box to confirm will pop up 2 times. Answer yes for both, and soon the progress bar will start moving.
Once it's finished, disconnect the table, turn it on, and there you have it, ice cream sandwich on the cheap.

Note about the build #15, it's in Japanese.
So you should first go to the settings page (flick the screen to the left to go to the pan on the right, it's the black box with control setting on it).
There choose the language options (it's the one with a capital A next to it),
click on the first option,
and select whichever english language you're comfortable in.
Then you can start playing around.
Both the build #12 and build #15 already has the market in it but I wasn't able to find the icon. What you should do is search for market, then you will find the market app. Install whatever you need.

Well, that's all for now. Time for me to keep on learning (playing) more about the ICS I've just downloaded.. :P

Changing to text in Excel

I find that I have to do this once in a while and every time I'll have to look it up again. Basically the problem is that someone sent an excel file which the column need to be a string but the data is numerical, so without adding the tick in front of the number, excel interprets it as number. Here's the small script to add the tick:

For i = 2 to 196
    Range("C" & i).Select
    ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = "'" & ActiveCell.Value
Next

Now I won't have to google all those mysterious command again the next time it happens.. p/s: don't laugh at me struggling with vb you insensitive clod.. :P

Back into Gnome 3

It has been quite a while since I've last used Gnome 3. The thing which I especially didn't like was starting an application by browsing the menu feels like a whole lot more cumbersome, mainly because it'll take the whole page filled with huge icons to do it and I didn't like how when you press alt-tab all the apps are grouped together kind of thing. So with a mind to get back to gnome 2, I switched my arch machine to use linux mint.

But guess what? Even linux mint is moving to gnome 3 with it's upcoming release 12. Except it'll have a bunch of customization which keeps your workflow more the less the same. And not only that, it's even easy now to install the gnome-shell in ubuntu 11.10. So since now almost everyone is on that bandwagon, I might as well get on it myself.

I've bought myself a spanking new laptop recently and thought that'd be a good candidate for a new start on gnome 3. At first I thought maybe I'll try fedora first (I've always been unlucky with fedora for some reason). Since the new laptop already comes with Windows 7 and I wanted to dual boot anyway in case there might be situation where I might want to use windows, I wanted the installer to automatically resize the partition and install it side-by-side. But alas, my bad luck streak with fedora continues as trying to use the installer to resize the partition gives an error. I've forgotten exactly what the error was, but after 3 attempts at it, I said, well maybe I'll try something else. Burned an ubuntu cd and a few minutes later I've finished installing ubuntu 11.10 side-by-side with windows resizing the partition just using the installer. Sweeeeeeeet.. :) And one 'sudo apt-get install gnome-shell' and I'm in the game again. Oh, looked at unity a bit again first before installing gnome-shell, still don't quite like it.

One thing that I approach differently now when using gnome 3 is don't think so much of using it menus style, use it gnome-do style. Press the super key (that's windows key for those who don't know :) and just type a few letters of the app you want to start. Things I usually use like terminal and firefox usually come up right in front so it's really just pressing around 3 keys (super, f, enter). Apart from that I've wrapped my head around the idea of using the alt-tab and alt-"key above tab" for jumping between windows of the same app. So it's getting a whole lot more acceptable now. I might even convert my main desktop back to arch or something once I have the time. Starting to really like using gnome 3 again.