Notes from openSUSE Conference 09 session - "Making Technology Previews succeed"

http://lizards.opensuse.org/2009/10/09/making-technology-previews-succeed-osc-09-unconference-session-notes/

openSUSE Conference 2009

I'm heading over to Nuremberg on Wednesday (16 Sep) for a few days to participate in openSUSE Conference! This is the first-ever openSUSE Conference, an opportunity for openSUSE contributors to do/attend talks, workshops, Birds of a Feather sessions, and collaborate together face to face. The conference will be held from September 17 - September 20 in Nuermberg, Germany.

The interactive event aims to bring the openSUSE contributor community together to share ideas, experience, learn, hack and help to guide the direction of the project. The different tracks include Desktop Development, System and Toolchain (openSUSE Build Service, YaST, Kernel, Packaging), Community, Quality and Appliances (Moblin, SUSE Studio). There will be a lot of Fun in the form of Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, roundtable discussions, Unconferences and hackfests apart from scheduled talks.

I will be doing an Unconference session. The topic is "Roads Less Travelled - Making Technology Previews succeed".

Check out the full schedule here.

VIM tip of the day!

Ever wondered how to avoid VIM creating those annoying backup files like foo~ ?

Add the following to your vimrc:

" Don't backup files like foo~
set nobackup
set nowritebackup

LWN.net quotes me

LWN.net a leading online magazine which covers quite a bit of Linux Kernel development had quoted my name in the Security advisory on CIFS multiple vulnerabilities.

To quote LWN:

kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
Package(s): linux-2.6 CVE #(s): CVE-2009-1630 CVE-2009-1633 CVE-2009-1758
Created: June 2, 2009 Updated: August 20, 2009
Description: From the Debian advisory:

Frank Filz discovered that local users may be able to execute files without execute permission when accessed via an nfs4 mount. CVE-2009-1630

Jeff Layton and Suresh Jayaraman fixed several buffer overflows in the CIFS filesystem which allow remote servers to cause memory corruption. CVE-2009-1633

Jan Beulich discovered an issue in Xen where local guest users may cause a denial of service (oops). CVE-2009-1758

Forgot to stick the url: http://lwn.net/Articles/335751/
(Thanks Nikanth)

Wondering how did I miss this.. Pleasantly surprised.

HackWeek IV: Fun with BlogPost (a blog publisher)

As part of Novell's HackWeek IV, I decided to learn and develop a GUI application that allows me to post blog entries quickly, without much effort (without using a browser).

Why I wrote this?

• I wanted to make myself capable of developing desktop applications (as a Kernel developer I have spent very little time/no time on GUI development). Learning new stuff is always a lot of Fun!
  
• I have always found using browsers for writing blogs is time consuming and takes little more effort for me.
  
• None of the existing applications convinced me.
  

What it is , what it is not?

• BlogPost is a simple, easy to use blog that is aiming to make blogging experience better. It
  currently support blogger.com only.
• It's a alpha software and tested to limited extent only so it will have rough edges (use it with care :-)).
• I wrote this application for Fun and Learning (actually I learnt GTK/PyGTK and Python when I developed it). So don't expect it to be bug-free or quite solid.
  
• It's a GPLv2 Software.
• It's not a feature-rich a.k.a bloated application that is intended to replace web blogging.
• It's aimed at developers/users not for professional bloggers who might need more features.
  

List of Features

• support posts to blogger.com
• Offline blogging (save drafts locally and send later)
• Basic formatting
• Select blog names to post
• Labels/Tags support

Screenshot


Want to try BlogPost?

Prerequisites:

• python-gdata (gdata api's) package
• python-base and python-devel if not installed already (which usually are present in the default installation of openSUSE).

Once you have the prerequisites installed, grab the BlogPost rpm from here:
(Currenly x86_64 and i386 rpms available)

BlogPost x86-64 RPM
BlogPost i386 RPM

Install the rpm the usual way:
$rpm -ivh

The tar ball can be found here:
BlogPost tar ball

To install from source tar ball

• Extract the source: tar -xvjf blogpost-0.1.tar.bz2
• cd blogpost-0.1 and run ./setup.py install
  
• Run `blogpost' to launch the application after install
  

I had Fun; Hope you'll like it!
Feel free to leave your comments, feedback!

BlogPost: an update

Some more work done on BlogPost.. (but yet to package, sorry)

Changes:

• Changed GUI a bit to faciliate easy of use..
• Basic Formatting is now supported (not fully though, see screenshots)
• Ability to include links (pictures not yet supported)
  
• Label/tags are supported
• Offline blogging (saving drafts locally and editing later)
• Ability to remember login information
  

Note:
If you are a frequent blogger, let me know which of the features you would use the most and if that is missing (ofcourse difficult to figure out from the screenshot and limited information). Remember, the goal is to provide a simple, easy to use client that allows to blog quickly .

BlogPost - Initial screen shots

Here are some initial screen shots which perhaps are subjected to Change..
It's still heavily under development.

BlogPost - a Blogging client

I'm writing a blog publisher got GNOME desktop using PyGTK, initially for blogger and planning to extend later. This is my first post using BlogPost.

Gnome Blog - Blogging made easier!

I was thinking of using an application that allows me to post blog entries from my Linux desktop (that runs openSUSE 11.1) without having to use a browser. I think for me, web is some sort of a distraction. Whenever I wanted to blog, I try to do that when I'm not so busy (which is very rare) and so the frequency of posting blog drops. I also wanted blogging to be done quickly without much effort say for e.g. it should be able to allow me to convert my notes quickly to a blog. I'm trying out Gnome Blog, which going by the documentation is exactly what I wanted - simple interface with just what is required. I hope it would allow me to post more frequently. Let's see..