$100 Thin-Client

Inquirer.net's news article
Blog post
Woopwoop page
Devon IT

The above are links to the project I'm interested at. I'm actually thinking of adopting this Thin-Client for knightlust.com, unfortunately, Devon IT's terminal needed $39 more. Woopwoop would only cost $100, no more no less, but you get what you paid for.. a crappy looking case. Oh, wait.. it's not a freaking casing! I think assembling one myself is the most viable option. Since my plan is manufacture hundreds of this, I need to look for a supplier that won't make my wallet scream.

Here's what I need:

• ITX Motherboard/CPU combo
• 800MHz to 1GHz
  
• Fanless
• SD and MMC ports
• at least 2 USB ports
• Can boot from USB, SD/MMC, and Network
• very small footprint
• to save space, there shouldn't be any Parallel or Serial ports

I think, with this setup, the system would run below 20W. I do need to test it though. I also hope the Mini-ITX.com offers a much cheaper systems, so I wouldn't have to rack my brains thinking about this.

Ok, this is nice. But the price! Damn!

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Job Offer

Just got a job offer and will be leaving in a month or two.. Care Home in
Sacramento, CA. Hey, no problem, I already have experience in elderly care
but I'm still looking for an IT job.. heh! Can't beat 'em all. Gotta prepare.
Too bad I won't be able to help out with Ubuntu for the next six months,
unless the care home has internet access. I'll also go buy a laptop (most
probably Dell) within a month of my stay there so I can still help out the
Kubuntu community.

Windows Marketplace: Ubuntu - Download the Free Version

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007062209235346

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Customized Homepage

Google's Customized Homepage, for me, is too sluggish and the plain old Google Search Page is, well, too plain. I decided to create my own page instead.

As you can see, I have there 4 search fields which I regularly use (I'm using Google for this) in the middle of the page, a tasks list on the left column and the Fridge RSS on the right. I also have Google Notebook, that way i can keep my notes without fear of losing them. On the right column, I also have Launchpad, Ubuntu/Kubuntu, KDE, and Xfce links which I regularly go to. And on the right, I have my internally hosted sites, those which I use for training. Below them, are a few more links like Google Services, links to webmails, KDE, Qt, and News links.

A friend commented on this... why not use Firefox's bookmarks? Well, if it's hidden, I tend to forget they're there. Besides, I've got literally thousands of links saved on my bookmarks. Even though they're organized, I don't think I'll easily find what I'm looking for. Especially those that I usually go to. Besides, having those links on the homepage itself isn't bad. One middle click and there it is, not to mention that I don't have to click on Bookmarks, then search for the link every time I have to open individual pages. For me, this is much more convenient.

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Authorware and Photoshop

Been playing with WINE and I tried installing a few more applications I used in Windows.

Here's my Adobe Photoshop 7.01

And here's my Macromedia Authorware 7

I know they're old versions but I won't spend money for a newer version that I'm not going to use anyway. Too bad I gave my Macromedia Flash MX to a friend, I wouldn't know if it'll installl on my system.

Also, I tried install Microsoft Visual C++ 6 and my dad's AutoCAD 2005 and AutoCAD Maps 2000 (?) but only Visual C++ 6 installed. Never got it to work though, but it installed.

Also tried installing Half-Life (the first one), Stronghold, Unreal Tournament, and Battle Realms. Sorry, can't get a screenshot, I either get an error if I used the game's internal screenshot tool and KSnapshot doesn't work.

Are you stil using Windows?

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Internet Explorer 6 on my Kubuntu

Finally, after a few months of contemplating whether I need Internet Explorer or not, I installed IEs4Linux. Since I've been doing a couple of XHTML work, I'll be needing IE. Even though it's not W3C compliant, I need to make sure that the pages I'm working on, well, works on IE too. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to convince my friends to switch to Linux (most of my pages are FOSS advocacy stuff). Besides, I need that for my Metrobank account (which I've been spamming.. urging them also test their page out with Firefox or other W3C compliant browsers).

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Installing Drupal on your locahost

Here's a guide on how to install Drupal. I used my (main) Kubuntu Desktop.

Make sure you have Apache2, MySQL5, and PHP5 installed before attempting to install Drupal. First, download the package here and extract them on your system.

Then copy the extracted files to your /var/www folder. Since my system is used for training purposes, I installed it on a different folder, /var/www/dax.

After that, create a schema and a user. Assign privileges and you're all set. In my case (again) I used MySQL Administrator, you can use also use PHPMyAdmin.

Now go ahead and try to surfing to the said directory. http://localhost/dax for my system.

Of course, we'll have some errors on the first try. Change permission and assign all groups (Owner, Group, and Others) to have Read/Write access to all the files. This might pose security risk but we need it.

Now try surfing to the Drupal installation page again.

Here's my setup. Database type is set to mysql, Database name is testing, and Database username is dax, and of course the password. This has been setup using MySQL Administrator (see above).

Click on the Advanced Options link to expand it. Database host is set to localhost, and Table prefix is set to dpl_. You may opt not to use a prefix, but if your database would use 2 or more CMS, then I suggest you use a prefix. We don't want other CMS overwriting tables used by Drupal.

Congratulations, it's all setup. Now we only need to remove Read/Write access to /sites/default/settings.php

This is the initial Home page. It's asking you to create an Administrator account. Do this right after setting up Drupal, if not, then anyone can just create an account and use your Drupal.

At first, Drupal would assign you a random password, go ahead and change it.

After this, go to your Administrator's page and check on the Status Report.

According to this page, I have 2 problems.

Fix the Cron Maintenance Tasks by clicking on run cron manually.

Fix the File System problem by changing the directory's permission to Read/Write. Do take note the at first, this directory is owned by www-data. You have to issue the Chown command to change it's ownership before you can change its permission.

Also make sure you create a tmp directory. This is where all uploaded files would initially stay.

Check the Status Report again to check for any errors or problems.

All set. Now create a page and promote it to front page. This is required to remove the setup instructions which poses, again, security risks.

Now you can configure your site.You can change the theme, add modules, build your site. etc. from the Administer page.

Goodluck!

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Email Address change and Mailing List Subscription

I spent the whole day today unregistering and registering from and to my KDE and Ubuntu Mailing Lists (all 62 of them). I decided to use knightlust at ubuntu.com as my primary method of contact and I have to do this so I can post to the said lists.
I also registered to Xfce and the Linux Kernel Mailing Lists... Whoo Boy! I didn't heed the warning that LKML has a very high traffic and got around 50 posts in less than 1 hour. Well, I don't mind. It's a small price to pay. Besides, I'm really intent on spending my free time contributing to a good cause, not to mention that I'll learn something new... everyday.... especially processes.
But before I go all out, I still have a few more things to take care of. Firstly, the FOSS@School Seminar this June 29, 2007 which will be attended by teachers and educators from (if the information I got is accurate) the Bicol Region. I'll be focusing on my presentations and handouts this coming days. After that, I'll be working on the Ubuntu-PH.org's Drupal theme. And then build up a portfolio (for my CV). All of these while testing apps, reporting bugs, triaging bugs, and blogging for profit (hehe!).
I almost forgot, I might be blow off my C++ migration plans for the mean time while I focus on Web Applications... that's my calling.... for now. Web 2.0 (starting to get old) baby! Maybe I'll get back to KDevelop, Qt4, NetBeans, Anjuta, and Eclipse after a month or two. Why so many IDE's? I'm teaching myself skills, not IDEs. I should be able to code on any IDE, including Kate.
For my web training, I'll be using Bluefish, Quanta, and Kompozer.
Hohummm...
I'm sleepy... I'm gonna hit the sack now.

- via email

QEMU and KQEMU Installation

Here's a step-by-step howto on how I virtualized my Xubuntu and Windows 2000

First, I downloaded the packages that I need to build KQEMU, a kernel module that will help speed up QEMU. Remember that you need to have at least 1GHz/512MB for performance reason. Anything less isn't recommended.

sudo aptitude install kqemu-common kqemu-source module-assistant

The Module-Assistant package would help you build KQEMU.

Prepare Module-Assistant by issuing sudo m-a prepare
m-a is short for module-assistant. You can issue sudo module-assistant prepare if you want. And don't worry, Module-Assistant would also download all the packages needed to "build" the kernel module. If you want, you can also install build-essential.

Next, issue the sudo m-a build kqemu to build the module.

This is the progress report window.

Now, go ahead and install the KQEMU module
sudo m-a install kqemu
You can now forget KQEMU since it's now part of your kernel. Future kernel upgrades won't affect it.

It's now time to install QEMU
sudo aptitude install qemu

Of course, don't forget QEMU-Launcher. This package is highly recommended so you wouldn't have to create and boot images manually.
sudo aptitude install qemu-launcher

Once that's done, go ahead and launch QEMU Launcher.

Here's the QEMU Launcher window. As I've said, with this utility, you can graphically create, manage, and boot images.

Creating Images

It's now time to create an image. In my case, I used Microsoft Windows 2000.

First, place the installer on the CD Tray and click on the first New button.
Select Create empty QCOW image (the default and supported QEMU image), give it a name, and adjust the image size in Megabytes (I assume this is the maximum size, gotta read the docs). Don't worry about the image size that much though because after installing Windows, it'll most probably be around 1.9GB and will just expand when needed. The initial size of the image would be around 5-10MB. Click on the OK button once you're done.

To install Windows 2000, you have to first configure QEMU Launcher to boot from the CD. Tick Use CD-ROM, set the Boot disk to CD-ROM, and click on the Launch button.

The Windows CD would now start installing Windows 2000 on the image. You can now Quit QEMU Launcher since we won't be needing it anymore, at least for this session.

And there it is, it's all done. Just take note though that the installer would ask you to reboot, you don't actually have to do anything but to confirm it.

You can also do this on any Operating System you could get your hands on, including Linux distributio. This is actually how developers test and debug their programs.

Last word? Goodluck!

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Quanta Documentation

I took a 15-min break after 3 hours of editing Ubuntu-PH's Drupal template in BlueFish. While checking out KDE stuff, I came across Quanta. Curious, I decided to download and try it out. After a few minutes, I fired it up and checked on its' features. I must say, I'm very impressed. And there's a couple of features that would make me dump... Documentation and seamless integration with Konsole, KLinkStatus, KImageMapEditor, KXSLDbg, KFileReplace, and Cervisia (I wonder what else integrates with Quanta).

However, the Documentation pane links to non-existent pages.

After a few Google searches, I found out that I need to download the docs separately. Since I'm also studying DocBook, I decided to download and install that first.

sudo aptitude install docbook-defguide

or you can download the package here: http://linuxappfinder.com/package/docbook-defguide

Ok, that's the code, now I needed to copy the html directory to the quanta doc directory and rename it.

sudo cp -R /usr/share/doc/docbook-defguide/html /usr/share/apps/quanta/doc/docbook

To test it out, I went ahead and restarted Quanta and checked if the DocBook docs are present.

That did it, now I have to download the KDE DocBook Guide and Reference. It's located here: http://kde-files.org/content/show.php/KDE+DocBook+Guide+and+Reference+Documentation?content=26176

Once I have the 26176-kde-docbook.tar.gz file, I copied the file to the Quanta Doc directory and extracted it.
sudo mv /home/dax/Downloads/26176-kde-docbook.tar.gz /usr/share/apps/quanta/doc/
cd /usr/share/apps/quanta/doc
sudo tar xzf 26176-kde-docbook.tar.gz

So now I tested it so see if it works...

Great, now that I have the DocBook and the KDE Documentation Primer working, I only needed to configure the rest.... which is a bit easier.

I opened Quanta, opened the Documentation pane, right-clicked on Quanta Plus (you could choose any item) and clicked on Download Documentation...

This window would show up. I selected MySQL5 Documentation and clicked on the Install button.

After Quanta downloads the docs, it asked me if I could install it.... I clicked on OK.

   

After that, the doc showed with a check mark, confirming that it's already installed.

Quanta installed it on my /home/dax/.kde/share/apps/quanta/doc directory.

If you have a few more users, well, using your computer, you'll need to move it to /usr/share/apps/quanta/doc.

And there it is, I have the docs for Quanta,

MySQL,

PHP,

Javascript,

and HTML.

Too bad the docs aren't packaged in Kubuntu. But maybe, just maybe, I'll package all the docs and have a MOTU upload it for me. I'm also thinking of creating a few more docs for Quanta though, who knows, maybe when I have enough time. Goodbye, Bluefish!

Last, but not least, if you can't download the docs via Get New Hot Stuff, you can download the tarballs here: http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/releases.php

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