Geek with an attitude

A little over 6 years ago, or just 2 posts below :), I wrote about how I use VIM from the command-line to invoke a GUI version of VIM, where each file would appear in a separate tab. I've stuck with that setup to this day, where VIM is still my main IDE whether working on Linux or macOS. Recently I bought a pine64 based PINEBOOK Pro  laptop which is powered by a low-cost ARM64 Single Board Computer (SBC) . This came pre-installed with Manjaro KDE edition of Linux. Though this laptop is no slouch (I find myself using it more thanks to 8hrs+ battery), I wanted to keep it lean without loading too many GTK apps. KDE, being built on Qt, I decided to try neovim-Qt, which is powered by neovim, a somewhat newer rewrite of VIM, that is pretty slick and fast. This is how I got neovim-Qt working in a similar manner to that of vim / gvim. Install packages First, install neovim-qt. On Manjaro, this would involve pacman. sudo pacman -Sy neovim-qt Next, the secret sa...

I love Linux! For those who know me, that's somewhat of an understatement. That's because, over the years, I've been known run almost every Linux distro you can think of, on devices you probably didn't think of. I actually enjoy the process of installing and configuring the system because every distro and device/platform has its quirks and unique challenges to get it working. Over the years, I've compiled a list of useful software packages that I've grown to like and can't live without. However, I didn't much enjoy manually installing the same list of packages every time. I often found myself comparing the newly installed system with the current one to figure out what needed to be installed and configured. I got tired of this few years back and so that's why I created Install Buddy! Think bootstrapping, not a configuration management Configuration management systems are great f...

It’s been a really really long time since I last blogged so bear with me while I try get a little bit of my mojo back :) I’ve been busy changing countries, cities, apartments, jobs – the usual stuff life throws at you. But the one thing I’ve tried to change and keep coming back to is my beloved editor – VIM. This post is on making VIM a little better, like that other one developers tend to use these days. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting VIM is better (or worse). But after having used VIM for so long, I don’t want to just give up on it. If you’re in the same camp then read on. Get me some of that WYSIWYG I know what you’re thinking – VIM is awesome because its all terminal. And there is no reason to give that up! I haven’t, especially for those quick edits. However when it comes to coding for any length of time, my goto editor has been one where VIM is wrapped in WYSIWYG goodness. I’m talking about the likes of gVim alternatives such as vim-gnome (Linux Gnome...

Wow how time flies when you’re having fun! I first thought of writing this post back in January, when I was on a roll with writing blog posts. But it never materialized beyond notes I collected in preparation. Come several months later with a lot more experience on what I am about to tell you, and you have this post. The notes I’m referring to is about a development style that came about as a result of optimizing, how we at thinkCube organize and work with source code in a revision control system . Considering the wide use of such systems such as SVN and GIT, I thought I’d share our development experience in the hope it will help you to take another look at your own development style. But before I get into it, I’d like very briefly touch on some background on the evolution of development styles around version control systems. Thou shalt not commit, Yet! Back in the days of CVS , source code lived centrally on a server called a repository. One had to earn the...

Compared to other new years where I would spend some time cleaning up my room or upgrading my gear , this year I did none of that! Instead I invested some time cleaning up my online space starting with a brand new distro. I’m a big fan of MacOSX’s Lion desktop and wanted to bring some of that minimilistic simplicity to the Linux desktop. So if the above screenshot looks appealing, then read on to see how you too can get a modern desktop that is simple and elegant. Unlike some of my previous desktop customization article, I’ll keep this one to the bare minimum so that you can implement it fairly quickly. Installing the base OS IMHO, Gnome 3 is the best next thing when it comes to being a modern desktop. I realize this is a controversial statement, given news of some ditching and some forking the project. But IMHO when you have a project that can polarize a community that was once united, it means you’ve got true innovation - not just incremental tweaks. Ha...

I know, I know, it’s a bit of a cheesy title to promote my Open Source project but here me out - it really does work. Though I didn’t really write it to track my new year resolutions (I’ve never found them effective beyond a week), I did write it out of constant frustration with not finding a TODO productivity tool that stuck with me. Let me explain… I’ve tried EVERYTHING! Google Calendar & tasks Sending myself Emails Wiki (Dokuwiki, Mediwiki, Twiki etc.) Tomboy Tomboy with UbuntuOne & Android App EverNote Remember the Milk Gedit notes on my desktop Post-it notes widget Actual Post-it notes Old-skool diary Pieces of paper including backs of payment receipts From the above list, if anything came remotely to sticking as a habit, then it’d be the sticky notes & pieces of paper. I’m not suggesting the other methods suck, but I wouldn’t use it beyond a couple of weeks. Why was it that despite me spending hours on a computer, the best thing that had a chance of r...

The passing of Steve Jobs came in as an instant shock that morning as I was reading the news on my phone. While it wasn't as much of a surprise as when MJ passed away, mainly because I had seen that one photo of Steve wearing a black gown coming back from the hospital, something inside me felt empty. When many flooded the social media and TV with messages of condolences and looking back at his achievements, I just watched not sure how I should express the loss. So after about a week later, when I was asked if I can do a talk on Steve Jobs for Refresh Colombo , I immediately and almost impulsively said YES! But I still wasn't sure what I wanted to say. One thing I did know was that I didn't want to recap his life or accomplishments like I knew the guy. Soon after accepting the talk, the next thing I almost instantly realized was that I needed to get Chanux in as a co presenter, not because we've recorded so many episodes of a podcast together but due to his reactio...

Recently I've been looking for an alternative to docbook , which I've used for most of my tutorial handouts and internal developer documentation at Thinkcube . But the more I used it docbook the more I wanted a simpler solution which didn't require me to make sure my XML was in order. Naturally, at first I thought I'd try Latex since it had a pretty good wrap with geeks and has even surpassed usability expectations set forth by some of the mainstream wordprecessors :). What I loved about Latex was you could concentrate on the content first and formatting later. Its legendary ability to output desktop publishing quality documents and convert to a variety of formats such as html, pdf or odt was a killer. Just as I was about to dive into Latex, Chanux suggested Markdown as an alternative. Hmm, Markdown, I pondered... I even liked the sound of it. It turns out Markdown is even better! You could think of it as a simplified wiki syntax but a better description would...

So it's been a little over a month since I switched to MacOSX Lion as my primary desktop after running Ubuntu and before that Gentoo on this Macbook. So why'd I finally switch? Well I'm sure it comes at no surprise to existing mac owners who mostly run OSX anyways. I'm different! I owned two Mac's to date, first a MacMini G4 (PPC) since 2006 and now a Macbook Aluminum since 2009, both primarily ran some flavor of Linux. Sure I had OSX lying around in another partition, but I'd only boot into it once in a while, just to update or checkout an interesting app or two. Linux was what i used, not because OSX was bad (like Windows is) but because I was more comfortable with it, it was more flexible, had more innovation happening (pretty much every 6 months) and above all it was fun to use. Part of that fun was really the do-it-yourself attitude Linux has had for years but is somewhat fading away IMHO with distros such as Ubuntu. Its also no secret that I l...

There's an old quote, "Reading makes a full man". I'm not quite sure who said it but I know it's got to be at least a couple of years older than myself because I was introduced to the concept early on by my dad. Despite the early infusion of such words of wisdom, I really never turned out to be a good reader. For one, I could never read on a moving platform for more than 60 seconds without feeling nauseous. Forget about reading in bed either, for more than 40 - 60 minutes (my record might be about 90 minutes) before the book starts slapping my face multiple times as I loop over the same paragraph of text over and over before giving up and falling asleep! When I do get into the mood of reading, it still seems to take me much longer to finish a book when compared with, oh I don't know my sister! She's got a ton of books, almost all novels and I remember seeing her finish them fast. So early on as a kid, I realized, my reading time was precious and best spe...

Greeting fellow bloggers and no I'm not dead. Blogging for me has got to a point where its a post or two per year! So at this point it doesn't matter what I say because I doubt any of my old followers are going to read this any time soon. As usual, I would have blamed busyness (a result of %s/y/i/) and twitter but honestly speaking it was the absence of the mood which killed it. Lately I've been doing so much of writing at work, the last thing I want to do is come home and do more of it. So instead, I'd prefer to pretend to hack on some C/C++ or Ruby or PHP and play some PS3 and call it a day. Today was different, it was our celebration of the International Sysadmin's day . So unlike my typical day, I went to a bar and talked geek with fellow sysadmins, all the while munching away on bites and sipping on some free beer (free for now, IOU Deep). During our conversation, amidst the noisy band that was playing, one of the things, I came out and confessed is the topic...

Oh my, it has been a while since I visited my Blog. While there were few worthy posts which I should have blogged about, that never happened. Recently, when I came across a post on OMG Ubuntu , about a new kernel patch which supposedly speeds up Linux, I just had to try it out. Its been a while since I've compiled my own kernel (these days I rely on stock Ubuntu), but after seeing the results myself thought it was very much blog worthy for me to share with you. First off, for the impatient or the unmotivated, let me point you to another post on Phoronix, which contains a video showing the night and day difference this patch brings. If your still not impatient, then you could wait for 2.6.38, which will hopefully have this, considering Linus's supportive comments , regarding the patch. Ok now for the glory details on getting this patch up and running. I did this on Ubuntu 10.10 but it should work the same for other Debian and Debian like distros as well as other popular distro...

Its been almost an year since I last blogged and what can I say, micro-blogging killed blogging for me. Even micro-blogging has got to a point, I don't do as much as I used to. Perhaps the end of web 2.0 or perhaps I'm getting too old for this :) Anyhow, getting back to the subject of this quick post, it seems splitting a git repo into two separate git repos is somewhat obscure and required a bit of googling around. Fortunately I came across this great blog post , but wanted to summarize it in one place (the author made me look at several pages to put it together). Say I have a git project called foo.repo which had a subdirectory called bar, that I now want to make its own separate git project called bar.repo. Current state foo.repo/ .git/ bar/ abc/ xyz/ target state foo.repo/ .git/ abc/ xyz/ bar.repo/ .git/ Step 1 : Clone existing repo as desired repo on the local clone $ git clone --no-hardlinks foo.repo bar.repo Step 2: Filter-branch and reset to exclud...

Fedora 10 (F10) was one of the best fedora release I've come to use. I liked it so much that I made it the default OS on my Mac Mini PPC. So naturally I was looking forward to the release of Fedora 11 (F11). But with a couple of release dates slipping, the wait was somewhat of a torture. This of course is to be expected with Fedora, I was told, because all good FOSS community software follow the philosophy "IT WILL BE RELEASED WHEN IT IS READY!" (oh and "RELEASE OFTEN" but thats beside the point :). Now before I give my first impressions, I must warn that if your a die hard Fedora fanboy, then please STOP reading. .... Even if your not please note that these impressions are based on the Fedora Live CDs (both standard and kde based) and I have yet to download the DVD release. I did not install the Live CDs but merely ran them Live and only for a short period of time (a little over an hour combined). I tested the Live CDs on both my older Acer TravelMate 4200 lapt...

SinhalenFOSS , the audio podcast we started a little over an year ago is now available as a vidcast . A couple of months back, I got a call from Dr. Ajantha and I was thrilled to hear of UCSC.tv , the latest venture by UCSC . I was even more thrilled when Dr. Ajantha invited us to produce the SinhalenFOSS podcast on it. Despite our enthusiasm, we soon learned how hard it was to produce the show as a vidcast. We were used to recording the audio podcast at our own time, sometimes in the car, sometimes at home or office or even on the road. We would sometimes answer phone calls from loved ones in the middle of the recording and edit that out. Our podcast was pretty much a basement operation by 3 sweaty guys :) So I guess the most difficult task was to make us presentable on video. To that extent, the UCSC TV crew has done a good job with makingup us! The next challenge was time management. While our audio show was roughly 1 hour long, it wasn't strictly 1 hour long. Sometimes we went ...

Kanchana, my wife had an old P4 machine from back in the days before we met. It was a PC House branded G-Max. Anyways, she's been wanting to fix it up and give it to her sister to use and so we'd figure it would be a good B' day gift for her. So last weekend, about this time, I was sweating it off trying to put it back together in time for April 25th, her B' day. We'll it began a couple of days earlier, 23rd to be exact, when we picked it up from her parents place and cleaned it up and tried plugging it in. For better or worse, nothing happened - nothing worked. At least this thing wasn't going up in smoke. I removed the casing which was slightly more difficult than usual as a result of the case design. You couldn't pull out the motherboard because the CPU fan hits the CDROM and you couldn't pull out the CDROM for exact same reason. So I removed the power supply, slid the motherboard and lifted it up once the CPU fan was in the clear. The fun part was ...

Considering it's been exactly 1 year since my last post, I pondered a bit on a title for this post. "The comeback", "Still live and kicking" or "I'm back!" sprang to mind. But then I realized I'd be fooling my self and you, if I even remotely meant this blog was going to be regularly updated. Hence a title which better reflects the current state of my blog and to an extent my life - pulling a long a day at a time. Now don't get the wrong impression - I'm not depressed! As some of you already know my life's gone through a few transformations. Hmm let me see, first there was the marriage, then moving to our own (rented) place, loosing my iPod touch (oh the drama), moving again to a bigger house, moving again to a new office, moving away from Gentoo, moving back to Gentoo, buying new iPod touch 2g, getting a new macbook, buying a few ps3 titles including guitar heros 3 and buying an actual guitar and taking up lessons. Ok so that las...

The Sinhala Bloggers Union is organizing a 24hrs Blog Marathon starting from 8pm local time today, 18th to the 19th. There are currently over 30 participating blogs, including our sister (or brother depending on where your from :) site sinhalenfoss.org . Each blogging site will be trying to reach a crazy difficult target of 96 posts! In otherwords, we're talking about a blog post appearing from each site every 15 min! Multiply that by 30+ sites and boy I hope the net doesn't crash :P The easiest way to catch all the fun is to constantly reload http://marathon.sinhalabloggers.com/ , the official blog aggregator (syndicator) for the event. But it doesn't stop there. These guys have created a custom Face Book application for the FB junkies, a twitter channel for twitter addicts like myself, a Yahoo Pipes mash up for the web services oriented and even IM based updates. If your interested in blogging in Sinhala Unicode, it might not be too late to enroll your self by contact...

If your a music lover and also inclined to discover new (&old) music then last.fm is the place to be. I've signed up a couple of months back and have really been enjoying music surfing. Thats right! similar to channel surfing last.fm is about discovering music based on what you like and what others who are like you like. There is plenty of research in this field, some of which are headed by the folks at lastfm, but what it essentially means is a good trip down music lane :) You can sign up for a free account and search based on artist or a tag such as pop , rock , jazz or female vocalist . In any case your search result becomes a virtual radio station which goes off on all sorts of tangents discovering similar artists or similar artists, tags and so on. When you hear a song you really like, you can express your pleasure by marking it as loved, or display your hate by banning it and you shall never hear it. You can also skip tracks, unlike web streaming radio but can not see...

Recently I've been trying to start a Blog and Podcast as a means of reducing the language barrier when it comes to learning and playing around with Free and Open Source Software, aka FOSS. So a couple of months back I started the Sinhalen FOSS Blog at Wordpress.com. The idea of the blog is really to introduce various aspects of FOSS such as howto's, command line tips/tricks etc. and provide a forum for other Bloggers to contribute related articles. In this regard, I am grateful to Lakmal and Kanchana for their contributions and hope more of you will take the challenge in installing Sinhala Unicode and getting in to the habbit of remembering to write in Sinhala :). Yes it can be a pain, especially with the current state of input methods. Yes there are always complexities in writing proper Sinhala. But as far as I'm concerned writing something is better than not trying at all. In this regards, I'd have to thank my mom who is my personal Sinhala specialist (she's go...