Internet – Employers and Employees, enhance your IT business…

How can our life supporting stuff of the date – internet – save us our time money and more ???

Websites like odesk and many others have already taken this initiatives to a consultant based job level. Not soon, we can see this in employee based plans, and who knows we all will have to loose our employees shoes and wear a consultants shoes. May be not that far.

Being a software engineer, I was lucky enough to work from home for a couple of months. These are some points that I figured out in this course of time.

Not all software companies require their employees to be at their facility. Instead they can get their service remotely. This is beneficial for both company and Employee.

Company saves,

1. energy, money for hosting a facility, internet, cleaning staff etc etc etc
2. More attendance, as to secure train tickets employees take two days extra of leave for a celebration that has already got some lowed days of vacation, or a friday at office will be mostly people less if the thursday and saturday near it is already a holiday.
3. You wouldn’t talk about recession unless you want to use it deliberately to lay off some of your employees.
4. Rapport formation can be regulated, and project overloading by a race causing problem for other race can be reduced to a bigger extend.

( believe me, that exists in India, say you are in Tamilnadu( a state in India) 85% of your colleagues will be them, and I being from a renowned MNC i would share one instance. My friends who are non tamil have been asked to get out, when they raised their voice against team level meetings happening in tamil ( Tamilnadu’s native language) ! enough ? I had a neat Manager who was Tamil, thus we were safe in all those stuffs mentioned above, but colleagues grouping themselves by language they speak, existed there too. BTW they all can speak English.)

Employee Save, ( More points goes here, as I’m an employee)

1. First, get relieved from the mess of securing the unavailable train tickets ( well tatkal(emergency rail tickets) booking agents will incur job loss! ) towards home at weekend.
2. Don’t need to have a bad talk with supervisor, about securing leave.
3. Of course no body like to be formal in dressing and sitting posture, the way we behave at office.
4. You don’t have to do two times investments, one at city and the other at your native. Doing it at native would do.
5. Saved from the rush of city.
6. Trust me alcohol, cigarette consumption will come down dramatically, and you don’t have to visit a rehabilitation center.
7. With all these, you save a lot in the form of bank balance, just by avoiding unwanted expenditure.
8. If you have problems at your rented flat in City, live water, power or cable or your flat owner himself, forget them and feel at home. Ah! be at home.

Always you all can have a meet up once in every two months or so, and that can be extended with a team outing, which will keep the bonding strong.

And while remote, today we have enough softwares to support us to work in a team. And I have been working that way since last 10 months. All you need is uninterrupted Internet and Power supply, and a sane place to work.

Fed up of this repeating life situation which occurs while in city may happen here too, though in a very very less proportion. But that is what cities are meant for, take a small vacation, or go to cities for a week with your family or nearest person to your heart. Don’t lose your leave days, work in the morning( assuming you have a laptop and a mobile internet connection) and enjoy rest of the day.

Drawbacks:

Togetherness with colleagues will be missed, city night life with friends will be missed. But if you have got a feeling to live with family, these would never be a reason at all. And with more and more companies deploying this facility, you will have your neighbor and childhood friend available after office hours for your bash though he is not working with your company. Some would even love leaving near a calm quite beautiful country side, with a small river flowing by.

High secure jobs, like banking projects at IT companies cannot even think about this. But still a lot of open source based companies at least can follow this.

And Employees, you better make sure you have supportive family behind you. And at those places where arranged marriage happens like India, you may face difficulties finding a girl just because you work from home. No matter how high your position is. But if you are a girl, you will have a good book entry in the marriage market just because you work from home. Well this differences in boys and girls are subject to another blog which I am not going to write now…:)

Hey thanks for reading, and feel free share your views about this topic with us.

Take care,
Sumit.

 

PhpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 10.10 with apache2 and php5

Let us install PhpMyAdmin on your machine. You know, PhpMyAdmin is the coolest way to view your database, easy to modify, see the table structure and even search around your tables if you have got a hundred of them in a single database. This web based tool helps fasten our development heavily by saving a lot of time. I will oppose this installation only for one reason, coz you will forget how to write an sql query to fetch data. But if you want, PhpMyAdmin gives provision to give query on your own, in it. So let us move on to the installation part.

We need a couple of packages to get this Installation work. Let me assume you have mysql. If you don’t have it, install it first.

Get all required support packages using

apt-get install php5 apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5

We are using apache2 to host this web application, and php5, as PhpMyAdmin is a Php application
php5-mysql is the set of libraries that provides the connection with mysql for the php application. libapache2-mod-php5 helps apache compile php code and render html in your browser. Understand, if after the installation is completed and you are pointing to phpmyadmin from browser and the php file is offered for download by the browser, instead of viewing html, libapache2-mod-php5 is not installed well. But if you are sure you have installed it well, then try running

a2enmod-php5

on your command prompt. This is to enable the php module for apache.

Download latest PhpMyAdmin package, unzip it and move it to /var/www/ directory of your file system. This is where the sites hosted via apache are defaulted to.

now we have a directory /var/www/phpmyadmin/ with contents inside the package in this directory.
For more clarity the index file inside your phpmyadmin package downloaded must look like this

/var/www/phpmyadmin/index.php
/var/www/phpmyadmin/setup/

Now I’m going to walk you through the easiest way of configuring your application, but easy means less safe. But for a normal home use this would be enough. Don’t share your sql password with any as your application will be available to anyone who knows your IP address. Create a file config.inc.php

/var/www/phpmyadmin]$ vim config.inc.php

and copy this code into it and make the required changes. That is enter your mysql username and password in the place of your-mysql-username and mysql-password-for-the-above-user respectively

<?php
$i=0;
$i++;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user']          = 'your-mysql-username';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password']      = 'mysql-password-for-the-above-user';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type']     = 'config';
?>

auth_type config is the easiest type to go with a home installation. Save and Exit.

Now go to /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and copy file default to a file phpmyadmin.

 $ cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
/etc/apache2/sites-available  $ cp default phpmyadmin 
vim phpmyadmin

edit the phpmyadmin file you created now in /etc/apache2/sites-available to look like this.

/var/www/phpmyadmin]$ <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

        DocumentRoot /var/www/phpmyadmin
        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>
        <Directory /var/www/phpmyadmin>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

you dont have to copy this and paste, instead just go to your phpmyadmin file and edit DocumentRoot to look like the above, that is let it direct to /var/www/phpmyadmin, your application’s root path.

Rest in that file is itself a matter for a blog, but not this time. Coz now your phpmyadmin is waiting for you.
Direct your web browser to http://localhost/phpmyadmin

Have happy time with Mysql!!!!

 

Git Commit

While I was trying to commit the code to my GitHub account I started getting a strange error. After tweaking around a while, surfing through a couple of websites, I got these steps. And these steps solved the issue.

Have a look at the error: ( If you are getting the same error, proceed to read the rest of the blog.)

blogger$ git push remote master
fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Now the fix
running the commands listed below, did the thing for me. Running this once will do for the session of the terminal.

git notes --ref=bugzilla add -m 'bug #15'
git log --show-notes=bugzilla
git log -1 --show-notes=*
export GIT_NOTES_REF=refs/notes/bugzilla
git push origin refs/notes/bugzilla
git push origin master

Now every yime you want to commit the code just run

git commit -a -m "your message"
git push origin master

Enjoy sharing your code!

 

Coding Migrations ( Ruby on Rails )

I’m noting down some of the points that I come across while learning rails migrations

Migrations should not be repeated, and each migration should have coded delete for all that was created.
ie, in a similar way when we create a migration, there is a self.up and self.down defined in the Migration class, we should also create self.down for all sort of creations or insertions into the database via Migrations.

While implementing a HABTM ( has and belongs to many ) relationship, the intermediate database that serves as the link between two databases with HABTM should not have PRIMARY ID. To make the database table without primary id we should code the Migration file like this…

class BlogsTags < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :blogs_tags, :id => false do |t|
      t.integer :blog_id
      t.integer :tag_id
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :blogs_tags
  end
end

Here, we are connecting two tables Blogs and Tags with HABTM relationship.

by naming convention Blog comes first to Tags, so the name of the intermediate Table should be Blogs_Tags
:id => false , makes the table without PRIMARY ID ( this is mandatory for an intermediate table of a HABTM relationship.

Why self.drop is important ?

Migrations are made with filenames specifying the time of creation of a Migration. Rails is providing us facility of reverting back actions we have done on the tables using that datetime. For that purpose, rails adds self.drop method which tells how to revert back. While we are creating Migrations by ourself coding, we should also write the code in self.drop to revert all actions we have done on the database, so that rails can help us rectify any error.

 

Proprietary Mac

Apple, the most widely accepted computers and systems in US, is the least accepted system in India. Their Mac policies are well know to all. Especially when it comes to i-Phone and i-Pod. I being a programmer who is learning android and iPhone Programming is very upset with Apple ideas of business. iTunes is the very application used to sync their iPhone and iPod. For US people who mostly prefer to own a mac itself, it doesn’t make a difference.
But if they have to sell the same in India, Indians are no way going to buy a mac , just so that they can sync their iPhone and iPod.
Thats why they provide iTunes for Windows. It’s not only about showing the mac beauty to windows users, but also , a method to market iPhone and iPod.
I don’t have any problem until here.
But the thing that they release iPhone sdk for mac only, is irritating me a bit.
Because i want to be an iPhone programmer, and now it compels me to buy a mac, that i cannot afford, as a beginner. The thing we have to keep in mind is that, all other sdks, like, Android, Palm Pre etc are available for Mac.
News are coming that iPhone market is getting more and more particular, and thus, more and more apps are getting rejected from the iPhone Market.

I only want to ask – is Apple thinking – ” If you want to make money with Apple, then just pay us a tribute of money first.”

But a comparison of market rates of Mac Book, US and Indian, shows a difference of 10,000Rs ( 217 USD ).

At least bring down the rates Steve.

 

Setting up a github project: A-Z

Setting up a github project

First create a github accound accross your gmail(my preference) account.
Now go to your Dashboard at the top part of your account home page.
you will see a link for “Create a Repository”.
Click on it.

Project name is the name you assign for you project, prefer it to have no white-space.
Description – fill it as descriptive it can be.
Now, create Repository.

Now, in your home page you can see “Public Repositories” and your Project Listed below that.
Click on the Project.

You will see two URLs namely, Public Clone URL and Your Clone URL.
Now we want this Your Clone URL, which will be

git@github.com:username/ProjectName

Now we are going to set the project on our Machine, which i am assuming to be kUbuntu9.10 for the time being.

Before that let me tell you something,
GitHub is highly secured and follow ssh-rsa
So we need to setup as ssh public key for our connection, and let github know about it.

take terminal and as user ( not root, usually many of us have a habit of typing sudo su as the first command at terminal, this time avoid it)
type

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "yourmailid@gmail.com"

here key is generate against your mail id as a string

Here,
-t -> tells which encryption
-C ->try to use the same mail id you have given to github (for ease of memory)

now you will get two files
id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in ~/.ssh/

now copy the whole content in file id_rsa.pub without altering the content of the file.

Now go back to you github account.
go to account settings >>> SSH Public Keys
Add a new Key
and paste the content you copied into field “key” and save (give a title of your choice).

now github know to process the requests from your system.

now try

$ssh git@github.com

this must return

PTY allocation request failed on channel 0              
ERROR: Hi UserName! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access                                                              
                 Connection to github.com closed.

ignore this error, that is not an error.

but make sure , it shows Hi! UserName

okay! now we are going to set the repositories local copy on our machine and reflect changes at the remote system

make a directory ( as user, not root )

mkdir MyProject
cd MyProject
git init

( initialize an empty git repository there, see for a hidden folder .git/ there.)

after creating files in MyProjects, when you feel like adding it to your repository at github, do

git add

now run status and check the files you are going to commit next,

git status
git commit -m "Your comment about this commit"

( this updates .git/ folder in your local repository )

now we tell git about the remote repository to be updated

git remote add origin git@github.com:username/ProjectName

( you remember from where we got this URL, its Your Clone URL )

git push origin master

now we are done.
Go and check your github account, and the project in it,
You will see new files, and changes in the existing files, reflecting there.
Now explore more about Git – the fastest Subversion system.

 

My GNUstep user Suggestions

I prefer using GNUstep with Kubuntu9.10
It fits well

Kate – Text Editor is having pretty good sync with Objective-C
even though there is no code suggestions as far as i understand, but, if you use NSString once , you will get it on suggestions with CTRL + SPACE

Also vim is having good sync with Objective-C

both give code color identification for Objective-C.

 

Tackling error /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lgnustep-base

I installed GNUstep from the package downloaded from GNUstep official website.
After installation , when i tried to compile any program

command used to compile my program:

]$. /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh

[ this is a one time environment setting command, one time for one terminal ]

gcc `gnustep-config --objc-flags` -o main *.m -lobjc -lgnustep-base

it exited with error like this,

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lgnustep-base
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Now i cleared the error, even though i don’t know how to explain what the error was.

What i did was just install gnustep-base from the ubuntu repositories, just by doing,

apt-get install gnustep-base-common gnustep-base-doc gnustep-base-examples- gnustep-base-runtime libgnustep-base-dev libgnustep-base1.19 libgnustep-base1.19-dbg

when it is asked to change the file /etc/GNUstep/GNUstep.conf
give Y

the do the above mentioned environment setting command and then compile your application.
Now my program works fine.
I’m putting it here, just in case someone encounters any error of this kind, he can do it correct.

————————————————————————————————————
Simple solution: ( Sorry, I could find it lately only.)

compile the program , liking with the Libraries, like this,

gcc `gnustep-config --objc-flags` -L/usr/GNUstep/Local/Library/Libraries -lgnustep-base *.m -o out

 

Substituting for-each for NSMutableArray

For all those who learn Objective C with GNUstep…

Mostly you will learn using For-Each statement , for manipulating NSMutableArray.
But with GNUstep, it is not possible.
The for each statement looks like this,

	for(NSObject *st in myMutableArrayObject) {
			NSLog(@"%@",[st myMethodDefined]);
	}

Here is how we can do it without For-Each statement,

	for(i=0; i< [myMutableArrayObject count]; i++) {
		NSLog(@"%@",[[myMutableArrayObject objectAtIndex: i] myMethodDefined]);
	}

Here, we are using a method predefined called count which returns the number of objects in the MutableArray Object
and then another method objectAtIndex which iterates the objects at the interval from 0 to (count – 1).

 

What to do with .xlsx file in Linux ?

One day we got our week schedule from our project head as Microsoft Excel 2007 Document. We where all confused how to get it working in out Fedora 10 machines provided by the company.

This is how i came with a solution. The solution is very very simple. As far as i know Open Office ( at least till 2.0 ) don’t have implemented file management for .xlsx coded excel files.

I am assuming you have access to a google account…

Just upload the file to your google docs and Download it in the format you like to…

Isn’t it simple…