RIP George Carlin

I guess Java has a problem with /etc/localtime in Ubuntu.

Unless the /etc/localtime file is a symlink, Java doesn't want to read it. Check out this bug report. 

If you are one of those who use Sametime under Linux with Meanwhile protocol, and since your Lotus Notes guys upgraded to the 7.X version of Lotus Notes, you probably are having hard time using the meanwhile protocol, because it wouldn't show user status correctly. (Check out the discussion on pidgin ticket #58)

There is a fix for pidgin under Windows. (and for Adium for Mac OS X) But for the longest time there was no fix for Linux users because the Meanwhile protocol development stopped (or extremely slowed down) since 2006.

Fortunately, the developer of meanwhile, taliesein, decided to patch the protocol library to fix this issue. (But an official version is not released yet...) The patch is in the 1.1.0 branch of the CVS. Here is what I did to patch my meanwhile protocol until an official version is released.

• Download the 1.0.2 version of libmeanwhile.
• Also download the new versions of the files: cipher.c, mw_cipher.h, mw_st_list.h, common.c, mw_common.h, srvc_conf.c from the 1.1.0 CVS branch:
• Replace the same files under src/
• Then: ./configure; make
• The library ends up in the directory src/.libs/ all you have to do is now to copy that library to the original location. (/usr/lib under ubuntu) (libmeanwhile.so.1.0.2)

Quick and dirty, not the most elegant solution, but until an "official" version is out, that's the best I can do

Happy Sametime :P 

I will be turning off my lights on the March 29th 2008 for one hour at 7:30 pm. Please join me, and many others on this symbolic event to create awareness for global warming. Try to spread the news in your community.

Here is a video about EARTH HOUR 2008. Let's help Sydney, Australia to make Earth Hour a global event.

Problem: I have a CSV file where I have source and destination IPs. I want to resolve only destination IPs.

Format of my CSV file: (let's call it test.csv) (it's tab separated...)

99.88.77.66

11.22.33.44

118340.86

187

The solution is pretty simple with python:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import csv
import socket

reader = csv.reader(open("./test.csv", "rb"), delimiter="\t")
    for row in reader:
    host, aliases, ips = socket.gethostbyaddr(row[1])
    print row[0] + "\t" + host + "\t" + row[2] + "\t" + row[3]

First we import the necessary libs. (socket and csv)

Then we open the file to read with as a csv object. (Careful because our delimiter is not comma, but TAB)

for each row we get the second row (row[1]), convert it to host, alias and ip by gethostbyaddr method.

The last line is to create the new tab separated format. (Just pipe it to a file and you have your new CSV file. [tab separated... but oh well..])

Done!

Rest in Peace Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

Today Sir Arthur C Clarke passed away at the age of 90 at Sri Lanka...

I pulled the trigger on this 24 inch iMac. So far so good. I was expecting harsh battles with Leopard... But it looks like things are going very good so far. After some 8 hours of usage, I'm still happy with OS X.

I have some projects in the future. But first i need to get used to "über user friendly" interface...

Today I learned something new!

I had two files one with a list of domain names, the other with corresponding IPs. I needed to merge these two files to display domain names next to their corresponding IPs.

It looks like it's the simplest task with the command paste. 

All I had to do is: paste /tmp/domain_names /tmp/IPs

Thanks Igor for the tip