Desktop Whatever: Ghee Teo's thoughts on Desktop Whatever

Happy Chinese New Year!
This is the year of the Ox. A Great year for Computing especially for those who can program with hexadecimal

Feeling very strange to be working today on the Chinese New Year day. Such sentiment is probably a reflection of something inside me, not sure what that is ...

Since the launch EEE PC in late 2007, I have always wanted to get one. Somehow just didn't get down to buy it for various reason, the price I felt was too steep (300+ Euro) for EEEPC 700. So when the 900 comes up, it can be ordered in Ireland from complett for 399 (+ 12.50 delivery) and I thought that is getting reasonable. (1GB Ram, 20 GB disk with Linux).

When I came over to Hong Kong last week and found that the EEE PC 900 is selling at 3998 HKD I am delighted as the with the current exchange rate, 1Eur to 12 HKG, this is less than 340 Euro . What is even more exciting is that the EEE PC 901 is also released with the new Intel Atom chip, which is selling for around 4298 HKG. The EEE PC 1000H with a 10" (didn't get a quote for that).

I brought the EEE PC 900 with Windows XP (English Version)at the end, well, it is for my daughter after all. I dread the possiblity of becoming her Linux support person for getting the Linux version.

Though I am writing this blog using it just to try it out, I must say it is quite usable, but the form is just a bit too small to rest on the lap. The very nice surprise are that StarSuite 8 is pre-installed, sliding 2 fingers down the mouse pad behaves as the the scroll wheel.

The family has arrived in Hong Kong International Airport on Thursday, 28th June, 2007 at 16:45 local time. Despite the rush to get onto the connection from Dublin due to a delay of over an hour, BA 027 has been kind enough to wait for many of the (at least 20) passengers from Dublin, Bravo to British Airways in this aspect.

A little upset at baggage collection to have found that one piece of the baggage containing all my children clothing and even Grace's teddy bear clothes was delayed in transits which is understandable.
We were give a receipt and was told by the baggage handler (whose name I do not want to shame as yet), that once the baggage has arrived, they will call us and deliver it to the residence. I was happy with that given that the same thing has happened to me the year before.

However, after 2 days, 30th June, ten of phone calls later. I am now most frustrated and unhappy. The phone numbers I was given, it can never ring through. The baggage handler has never called back. I tried to call BA today, but well to late for that, their office is closed. I rang the flight information and managed to get through to an operator, she kindly given me a number to call. What is more annoying is that number is not on the list on my receipt. Finally, she offered to pass on a message to the lost and found department with my information. I don't mind being told the baggage is further delayed, but without any update, we have to go shopping everything for clean clothing for our 2 kids.

So what can I do now, apart from waiting or if I have some times before I travel to Beijing on Monday morning making a direct query or complaint. Wonder anyone has similar experience in the past and how that got sorted.

UPATE: So we managed to talk to the a real person at the HKIA lost luggage office before I boarded the plane to Beijing. His explanation went like this. We couldn't get through the numbers because there are some many enquries of lost luggage everyday, they have over 100 calls a day handled by one person. So phone always in engaged mode. Secondly, our lost baggage is black in colour which is the most popular colour and without further details, it is almost impossible to track if the tag label is lost. So we told him that there is a little gold coloured pad lock on the bag. I am preparing for the worst, Caleb's Chelsea's shirt may end up in a place similar to this, http://www.travellady.com/issues/issue70/70u-lost.htm

As OpenSolaris is picking up momentum, we see competitions are hotting up. Novell now has created the openSuSE community which is rebrand and release SUSE Professional as a community project according to this article.
The official website is at http://www.opensuse.org. I have not spent much times looking at what is on offered, but the fact they use the word, 'Open' makes me smile :).

create your own visited countries map or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Nice little utilities. Surely that wouldn't work that well for the high flyers and frequent world troppers like Scott or Jonanthan. What they need is a colour map which represents years has not been there. Then, it could be a good visual tools to know which countries to re-visit.

Happy New Year to All!
This has been an unusual Christmas break. It snowed on Christmas day, the first one for me for the 25 years living in Europe!

Then the sad news of Tsunami in South East Asia. Of course I was a bit shocked before I heard the full news as mmy Mum and brother just went back to Malaysia before Christmas. Especially, a few moment of anxioety when the home phone just could not connect. Thanks God, the areas affected were far away from Sandakan, Sabah.

When I was driving home a couple of Sunday ago after church service, I had this interesting conversation with my kids. The older one is 8 years old and the younger one is 5 and a half. As they are learning about Christmas is about the birth of Jesus from Sunday school, I deduced that they began seeing the significant of the event based on the conversation I had with them.

As the younger one said on Christmas day she is going to get lot of present and of course it is also the birth of baby Jesus, so I asked her if you do not get any present on Christmas day, will you be happy? She replied, "No. there got to be present!"

So I went on to ask my son, "Would you be happy if you don't get any present?"
He replied quite quickly, "Of course, because it is Jesus' birthday"
Then, within the next 2 seconds, he continued, " Actually, I will be rather sad if I don't get any present. But it is okay too because it is Jesus' birthday."

I can see that while they don't really understand the significant meaning of Christmas, which according to the Gospel of Luke 2:8-11 " And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."
Simply put the message of Christmas is: "A Saviour for all the people was born".

But I admire their simple hearts, saying exactly what they think and how they feel. Sometimes it is easier for an 8 years old just to give an answer what the adult expected of them just for approval, but I am glad he didn't.

Despite what I had said, they are going to get lots of presents this Christmas (not all from us)! Of course, deep down my hope is that they will come to grip with the real meaning of Christmas as proclaimed by the angels on the first Christmas for that is the best Christmas present they can ever receive

For the Irish and the Dubliners, the Bewley Cafe has a rather significant place the their hearts. It finally closed down this Tuesday, 3oth November 2004 at 6.00 p.m. I attempted to have a last go at the place, but only arrived at 6.45 p.m. Pity :(. Though I am not really qualified to speak for the Irish, as I am only a naturalised one and not a real Paddy. Still Bewley has been special to me too. As I was studying in Trinity College when I first arrived in Dublin back in 1986, Bewley at Westmoreland street became a rather convinient meeting place with friends for evening tea or lunch.

In particular, George Morrison, a Scott and also my spiritual father seems to enjoy this place very much. I remember Kathy said we are like two 'mi chun gao soa' chatting away and nobody else can understand nor hear us well. Partly because George's ascent is so hard to understand and my tone is so low. Well, I can only reminiscent over these at other time.

Found this picture from the web and that is Bewley Cafe at Grafton street.
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Just read this article from The Register about what Sun should do about Solaris 10. The Register has always fond of Sun's strategies even through the down turn. This is one article which really saying Sun should do more with Solaris x86. It sounds most compelling.

While there are a lot of excitement is being generated as Open Solaris debut is counting down by the days. I spotted in someone's blog about this free web based course which provides a quick introductions to what is new in Solaris 10. After spending less than an hour, I began to appreciate much more of the Dtrace scripts which I took for granted from other websites. Finally, I have created my first zone ever on my Sun Blade. I was surprised how easy it is to create one, but yet at the same time was slightly disappointed with the amount of files(300+)/packages(1400+) it copied over during the zone creation. I guess one of the reason is that the many locales on my machine. Of course, all these zones creation can be scripted and run over night. I am wondering how much time it will take for John Clingan to create 500 zones on his Ultra 10.

Next step is to see how do I get JDS runs in zones, may be it has been done before. May be it is not designed for this purpose where graphics device is not meant to be shared. I am happy to see anyone else has tried.

Well, as the work of getting nasty bugs fixes to be in before Solaris 10 FCS, this week is almost the first time I explore Dtrace to do things that truss nor dbx can not achieve. To debug something like what happen to your program when the network cable is snapped. While I have not been able to get all the information I need, that is to find out why a particular pollsys comes from and why it uses more times than others. I find it is surprisingly intuitive, even though at first it is rather scarely.

Definitely a must learnt thing for anyone is doing any bug fixes in Solaris.

As I was listening to Marian Finucane this morning. She interviewed some who had made a film about a person who have been living in the terminal 1 of the Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, France, since 26 August 1988. How can anyone do that, though this sound bizzare and unbelievable; but it is true. You can read the story some some lengthy details here. I think the saddest thing is while he could leave now but after living there for so long, he is too afraid to live somewhere else.

Open Source movement are getting into higher gear! The Software CTO office in Sun is organising a 1 day summit on Software Open Source in September in Santa Clara. Don't know who the speakers are yet, but certainly with external experts and internal Open Source veterans, I guess.

I hope this is a milestone summit, where many more will be organised in the coming years. Changing mind-set takes times and to propagate through the large company like Sun take tremendous amount of efforts and time. But like Jonanthan said, Open Source is more than just a way of doing software, it is a Social Movement . You can't beat a Social Movement, you can either stand still and join them. Of course, joining Open Source does not imply one drop one priorities completely; rather one should align if at all possible which is the most acceptable approach. Learning from others (success or failure) seems like the excellent start.

Okay, may be a bit exaggerated! Still here is the idea!
One thing I noticed is that someone I know who really enjoyed shopping over the internet, well being software engineer and working in the advanced technology company seems normal. E-commerce, e-shopping. etc.

The bit of online-shopping no body enjoyed is waiting for the delivery, for good security reason, companies do not deliver the goods to an address other than your statement address which usually is your home. Guess what kind of hour the delivery comes to your door, office hours, that is when the courier works. How many times the goods were delivered when you are not at home? How many phone calls you have to make then to the courier to make sure that the goods will be delivered to you again in the hours that you are at home? How much times did you wasted waiting for the courier to come?

Why can't the goods just deliver to you office which is where you are most likely to be during office hours. Okay security reason.

But if your credit card company would allow you to register an alternate address with a small fee. Therefore, it can authenticate to the online company that the alternate address indeed is a valid one. How much would the customers pay for this services? Could be quite a bit seeing the pain that my friend went through.

As I have not been blogging for quite a bit because of my holidays in Hong Kong and China for 2 weeks in July. I got a surpise when I did the one blog since I came back, my referers hits jumped ahead and put me in the top 50 position and Jonanthan only surpassed me during the last couple of days. I am still curious as to how it is being counted. I had intention not to blog for the week and still see the rate of acceleration, does this mean I am a popolar guy now :).

After presented the JDS paper at GUADEC, I found that we employee at Sun generally a problem to be able to post information outside SWAN. The reason is that the wiki page for each talk allows pointer to be made to the slides and the actual paper. Now, I found that I do not have an external website that I can post the slides or even the paper. So, I tried to use blog.sun.com to upload the slides. But roller does not allow it! It seems to allows only file with certain extension such as jpeg. So I thought I can improvise by giving the pdf file an '.jpeg' extension, but then that causes problem iwth the mozilla mime type. So look like the only way to elinimate this problem is to get myself a ISP account, but would a few more days etc. So now that we can blog.sun.com and even the user guide claimed this is a website, but why can't I upload just any document type I want! If disk space is a problem, then everyone could be given a disk quota! Well, if someone out there has a solution that I am looking for, add a comment, please.

The underdog has striked again, the favorite current European Champion, France has just been defeated Greece by 1:0. WOW. Never says never.

It was one of the most dramatic match as anyone can imagine. England scored 1st goal in 3rd minutes and Portugal scored second in 85 mins. No score during the Silver goal period and then 2 goals in the last 15 minutes. England is probably most saddened by the disallowed goal in the 87 minutes. I guess the climate for the Championship is almost over.

After a long time (nearly 2 years), finally got some new Sparc Hardware, a slicky SunBlade 2500 to play with. Just wondering how would that feel like comparing with the cheap 2.6 G PC running JDS on it. One thing that the PC box lacks is good graphics. Hope this new box gives a renew excitement with JDS running on it.

It looks a bit like the 1500 complete spec here.

One would think Linux is a version of Unix and Solaris is another Unix which would share many things in common. But when one goes down the low levels they can be quite different and painful. Just hack a gconf bug on Solaris http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143590. The sysmptom goes like that, login to JDS on Solaris and logout after a number of tries, one can no longer login because gconfd is sitting and waiting for some one to wake it up and gconf-sanity-check also happily waiting for response from gconfd daeomon. The problem, gconfd just violated one big rule in signal handler, i.e. running non-rentrant code within the signal handler. The irony, this is not a problem at all on Linux. Another problem I saw this week is also related to gconf. I want to set up a single instance of gconfd running across multiple machines. Use two machines to test it, one running Solaris and the other Linux (SLED 1.0). When I login to Linux and then Solaris, I started changing gconf keys on one machine and is happily picked up by that on the other machine. I was smiling but not for long ... When I then logout from both machines. Login to Solaris the Linux, I can't login on the later. Guess what, the second machine cannot obtain a lock over an NFS file. This may be obvious to some, but not to me. Just got to verify this and log bug.