First experience with Kubuntu 9.04

I just installed Kubuntu 9.04. Even though I have tried KDE 4.2 earlier this was a fresh installation and become a fresh experience.
Installation was usual no problems at all. But the connecting to Internet from the newly installed system was not that smooth. The package wvdial was not installed by default but networkmanager was there with a plasma widget front end. There was no way to put my Huawei E220 in to business.
I had two options to bring it back to business which I was familiar,
1. Install wvdial manually with all it's dependencies
2. Install knetworkmanager which has a GUI
But both options required Internet access to download the required packages which led me to go with (1) and download all required packages from a different PC and move them manually to the newly installed system.
Following post was very helpful to get the wvdial installed,
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=846522 (reply #8)

End of Semester II

Oh it was tough !!
Just finished the semester II exams of MSc in CS (UOM) reminding me that keeping every thing to study at the last moment is not the best way for exams. Printing lecture notes at 2.00 AM (paper was @ 9.00 AM so 7 hours before the exam) was a nice experience though :)
Happy about the week before the start of Semester III. A short break to enjoy the life with a long weekend.

Process Maker on Kubuntu

Process Maker is another application running on top of LAMP.
Following are few steps which I followed !

sudo apt-get install openssh-server mysql-server php5 apache2 php5-mysql
(install LAMP, actually AMP)
cd /opt; sudo wget {link to the latest tar}
(download)
sudo tar zxvf pmos-.tar.gz
(extract)
sudo a2enmod expires
sudo a2enmod rewrite

Copy /opt/processmaker/etc/pmos.conf to /etc/apache2/conf.d/
Open /etc/apache2/conf.d/pmos.conf
and change all the occurences of your_ip_address to 127.0.0.1
and your_processmaker_server to localhost

restart apache!

open the browser and go to http://localhost !! your there but with some problems.
(I had to change the MySql password, and issue some grants)

KDE4.2 has a default MySql instance (which I can't remember the root password)
Reset the MySql password (follow the below steps)

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
sudo mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &
mysql -u root
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> update user set password=PASSWORD("newPW") where User='root';
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> quit
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start

Happy modelling & fun !

The cheerleader effect

Kinda important principle by Barney Stinson, even though a group of woman seems hot, when you look at them individually the hotness disappears.They look hot only as a group!
This is also known as 'Bride mate paradox', 'Spice girls conspiracy' :D
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from : "How I met your mother S04E07" !!

First experience on KDE 4.2

After a huge struggle I managed to upgrade KDE to 4.2
Even though the Kubuntu forums & all other sites explained the upgrade as a few step smooth process, mine was not that easy due to a strange KDE mess-up. I guess still I'm not in a position to handle this kinda thing in the proper way.
Anyway thanks to the developers, my desktop looks like this now, plasma widgets are amazing!

Still I couldn't find a way to bring the native application forms to the plasma widget style. Anyway the new version of Adept-manager (which is now called Adept installer) is not that cool, I like the way it was. Other than that so far so good. Again hats off for the developers!

Canon Power Shot A460 on (K)ubuntu

After migrating to Kubuntu, one problem I faced was downloading the pictures to my PC from the camera (Canon Power Shot A460). Did some googling but could not find a simple understandable solution. Rather I found a lot of Canon camera users face this problem, When I plug the camera PC does not detect it.

I found a cool simple solution for this, digiKam/KDE3 !
All you need to do is just install it and go to the menu, Camera> Add Camera and press the button 'Auto Ditect' while your camera is plugged. It will ditect the camera and there is a lot of cool features that you'll try after that.

Lonely Hills - Buluthota

Decided to explore the lonely hills of Buluthota during the holidays of week 50. Sri Lanka is considered as a flat island with most of its surface is between 30 and 200 meters above sea level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Sri_Lanka), center is a highland surrounded by ridges and valleys.
Buluthota is a loneny small (compared to the center) situated in the south west of the center. One border of the Sinharaja rain forest is this mountain range. Even though this is a very nice part of the country due to lack of development of the infrastructure still this area is not famous among the tourists.