Abhi Yerra

[tags]redhat, files, cgi[/tags]

With the SELinux turned on in RedHat and Fedora it is not possible to write to files within CGI scripts since SELinux prevents it. However, to enable this I saw no easy way as when I disabled httpd protection from SELinux it still didn’t allow the scripts to write to the disk. So I turned off SELinux to get the CGI scripts to write to files. I know this sounds dumb, but it was what made the scripts work.

Just a write up for anyone else who may have this problem!

[tags]macbook, review[/tags]

Yay! Seems like the mooing is gone with 10.4.7! Anyone else experience this as well? If so wonderful thank god Apple is addressing this.

No discoloration yet except the dirt from my dirty, dirty hands. Ah well I can deal with that!

It scratches pretty easily I put my MacBook in my backpack and after 4 trips it’s pretty scratched! Not that I care that much, but it’s not pretty anymore. It’s like a giant iPod…. maybe I should draw a screen and a clickwheel on it and carry it around.

Still hot, but it’s bearable!

[tags]macbook, review, apple[/tags]

Alright, so I just have had the MacBook for just under a week so time for another review. What’s my verdict? Well they are pretty mixed. First I have the whole holy crap I just spent $1400 on a computer for which I really don’t have the money for and I have tuition and rent to pay. Ignoring that the MacBook also has mixed a review from me.

First the mooing (the fan slowing gaining speed which causes a mooing sound like the computer is taking off) is a tad annoying especially when listening to the music. However, that can be overcome by wearing headphones. The Mac’s speakers aren’t really that great anyway.

Again, the heat is also very annoying. Especially with Bay Area summer it is just a tad annoying to have to put my hands on something that is hotter then the hot air around me.

So other then that I love GarageBand, it is fabulous and the built in speaker and iSight are awesome. Friends and I are already starting to play tunes and messing around. Quite fun and puts a warm feeling in my stomach.

I get annoyed with some limitations like where the hell do you set the hostname? Ok maybe that’s a Mac OS X issue, but still.

After coming out of sleep. There are wierd swiggly lines where the screen didn’t refresh properly. I guess this is also a software issue, but still annoying.

I got Parallels installed and I must say it is pretty nice. I didn’t do much, but it looks quite nice in Full Screen and is quite responsive. I recomend it quite a lot.

I get annoyed that I can’t play WMV files, but that’s alright I was assuming that was the case. VLC is quite nice for most media files.

Battery doesn’t seem to last that long. Three hours? My Centrino 15″ gets about 4.5 hours.

Well that is about it for my ramblings…

[tags]macbook, apple, review[/tags]

So I finally got my MacBook a couple days ago and I must say one thing. I love Fedex! Being able to ship from China to Alaska to Indiana to my home in California in two days! That is just amazing! Now to the MacBook Review!

First thing I noticed as always with the Apple products I buy was the design of the box. So simple nothing on the box other then MacBook and an Apple logo. Anyways after opening the box the and take the things out one thing wasn’t apparent to me as to how I would use it. That was the the AC adapter cord. Anyways, now for the actually MacBook review.

Well I have had the following problems heat ang mooing. The computer gets pretty frigiin hot and I mean burning my hand hot. I know I bought it knowing it had this problem, but still it gets pretty hot! As for the mooing when I use a lot of processes it starts to moo as the computer gets hotter. And as other reports claim it does sound like the MacBook is about to lift off. Another problem I have had is the placement of the fn key. Damn it there could have been better positions to put that key. The key is where the ctrl should be as my fingers naturally go there. Now I have to notice where I put it. This may be an annoyance for emacs users.

Well other then the fn placement I love the keyboard. It has the click feeling I like that those old keyboards used to have. I just love that. The click, click, click as you type. Just don’t type a lot when the roommate is sleeping as that would probably annoy the crap out of him or her.

The system itself is nice. I loaded it up with a 1gb of ram so everything is quite responsive. Applications like Office 2004 seem to work fine under Rosetta and other then the loading up time, which is also slow on a PC there won’t really be much of a difference. There was just a little delay of a few milliseconds, but I got used to that.

Anything else I should note. Well I installed DarwinPorts and I must say it is quite nice. I installed MySQL and python 2.4.3 through it and it functions just wonderfully.

The Front Row remote is also lovely as it also functions with Keynote. So if your doing presentations you don’t have to buy an extra slide changing remote if your not moving more then 10 feet or so from the computer.

This is just turning out to be a rambling, but I just wish they had clicking on the trackpad as clicks instead of actually clicking on the mouse button. That would have been a nice feature. As for the two fingers on the trackpad and button click equals right click. That was a nice feature, except not turned on by default.

Well that is it. Except for the heat and mooing which are pretty annoying I love my MacBook. It is so pretty, I just wish Apple spend a bit more time with the heat issue. We shall see how long this thing lasts before overheating.

Update 6/16/2006: Last night as I was using Azereus the temperature was super hot. The MacBook box I was using as a holder seemed like it was about to burst into flames. Yikes. I still love it tho…. It’s like going out with a woman who is pretty, but has a black heart….

[tags]presentations, speaking, public, presentationzen[/tags]

I’ve basically read everything there is at Presentation Zen. It’s a great blog and I recomend anyone who is giving a PowerPoint presentation to read it. I don’t do much PowerPoint, but still I want to become a more effective speaker better able to articulate my ideas to others.

In the future I may be required to do such things. I am a horrible speaker when there is more then one person involved. For example, if I am talking o another person I can talk to them normally and be able to mostly express myself clearly. Then as the number of people start growing, it becomes impossible or very difficult for me to express myself and I just ramble to grab attention. Yes, I admit it I have a problem with wanting attention. It is something I am trying to break.

Anyways, it seems to me that Lessig’s Model of Presentations and Jobs’ Model of Presentations are best. They are simple, yet effective at what they do. And yes, Microsoft’s presentations do suck. Read the blog to find out more.

[tags]callug, schedule, design[/tags]

Well the Scheduling App is almost done. I just need about another week of work on it doing the actual scheduling part. That should not be too bad! So what does this mean and what have I learned?

When designing software ALWAYS THINK OF THE USER! That should be the first priority! Throughout, development I was constantly thinking how will this affect the ability of the user to do what he wants. I still see a lot of problems such as when there are a lot of classes the page scrolls off and the user can’t see what he added. To me that’s really annoying since I want to see what classes I added and if I find that a problem then there will be many more that have the same problem.

So always think about the user. How can this better the life of my user in some way? How will the user react to the little things? How does the design affect the usability?

Think of how iPods are designed. Almost every aspect was designed with the user in mind. This should how software should be designed. How will it affect the user. This includes the code!

[tags]php, callug, schedule, development, beauty[/tags]

I have settled on PHP for development as the Scheduling App Server Language. I generally don’t like PHP, but it is well supported by many vendors andit is also easy to move scripts around so that they work at other sites. When I was trying to do it in Python it was a bad experience trying to debug the app in the different environments and I was constantly getting different errors.

I may have given up too easily, however, I am coding the application much faster now. It may not be a beautiful language, but it is a productive language and has a lot of libraries for webdev so it is relativly fast to develop code. I am trying to make it as pretty as possible though, since programming in my opinion should be a thing of beauty. Programming is an art!

More to come as to how PHP is holding up, however so far the MySQL connection is pretty nice. Not as nice as MySQLdb for Python, but at least it’s in every PHP instance and most sites support it.

[tags]speech, graduation, high school[/tags]

Here is the speech I gave during my high school graduation. It was a reflection on life as a Hero’s Journey. I don’t know why I post it now, possibly since it’s been a year since I have posted it and in that time a lot of things have changed as I have grown as an individual.

Ladies, gentlemen, parents, students and teachers.

In the last four years, I have learned much about life in the form of the little miniature scale version of it, that which we call high school. While there are two things certain in high school – Standardized testing and bad food – there is only one thing certain in life: the path of life is one taken alone.

Granted, there are guides along the path such as parents, teachers, friends and the people we meet. However, in the end, you are the ones who make the choices; you are the ones who decide your own path. You are alone when you make your choices, when you descend into the unknown.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus makes his descent into Hades to talk to the oracle alone. In Beowulf, Beowulf makes his decent into the swamp to fight Grendel’s mother alone. And for the Star Wars fanatics, Luke Skywalker goes to face Darth Vader once again alone. All of these are examples of the Hero’s Journey. And in each, the descent is one taken alone.

In literature the hero’s journey is a metaphor for our own lives. In each of our lives we, are the heroes descending into the darkness, each time coming out changed. Each of us graduating today will face our own journeys through life, and throughout our lives we will be making our own choices.

Yet the choices we make are that which allow us to grow as individuals. As the philosopher John Dewey said “The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.” So go and take your journey. After all, the choices you make are that which make you the hero.

I would like to thank all the teachers that have inspired me in my journey. And to my parents and sister I might not show it often enough, but I love you, and I am thankful for everything you’ve done for me.

Thank you

[tags]macbook, apple[/tags]

I finally gave into desire and bought a MacBook! The worst part of this is I have so many other things I could have used the money for such as paying for the apartment, motorcycle, car maybe. Just so many other things I could have done! However, the worst thing is I am actually glad for this purchase. It is one where I am paying for it! Sure my mom is chipping in some money, but most of it is money I myself have earned and am using to pay. I guess it is not everyday that I can buy a computer, but it is a way to show my maturity.

So this post isn’t something about the MacBook for those of you coming here for stuff about it. It’s a post of the maturity I have reached to finally be able to buy something as much as this without worrying like I previously did, because I have the money and financial stability to buy it!

Man this is a long post about nothing! Sorry about that.

[tags]buddhism, mindfulness, meditation[/tags]

There is one activity that I enjoy quite a lot. It may not seem like it’s all that great and some people may just hate it since they may have to do it everyday of their lives. However, for me mopping is a great way to be in the moment.

When I mop it is as if there is nothing else important than to get the floor clean. The whole goal is between the floor and me. It is cleaning the floor making it spotless while at the same time making sure it is spotless. When mopping nothing else is important then to just clear away the dirt.

Mopping is great practice. Clearing away the dirt on the floor making it nice and clean, however many times it takes akin to meditation. Meditate as long as it takes clearing away the dirt of the mind however many day, years or lifetimes it may take even when the dirt returns and the more times you mop the less dirt there is to mop away and the easier it becomes.

To tell the truth of this post I am having trouble lately trying to get myself to meditate. This is a reminder for myself on why I am doing the practice. To clear away the dirt of the mind.