Don't Say Geek! Say Syntux!

During my tech-life I had to deal with number of Web Hosting providers and truth to be said I have had extremely pleasant experience with many of them although I don’t use any but two of them now.

Truth to be said I picked them because they offered Debian based dedicated, VPS or shared, although on shared it doesn’t matter if it’s Debian or not but I’m so extreme when it comes to GNU/Linux.

LayeredTech.com: my first experience with them was when it was my task to hunt for a decent dedicated servers provider and since I was the administrator to be I picked them because they have a good reputation and they provide Debian and Ubuntu! my experience with them were so good, they are fantastic people although I don’t remember flagging any of our tickets to them as critical but their support was always fast, it’s worth mentioning that our machine with Layered Tech would have been running without the need to reboot for almost two years now but in real life we needed to reboot for kernel upgrades.

Linode.com: One of my freelance projects needed a decent hosting that is not as pricey as dedicated hosting and not as restricted as shared hosting so the decision was to go with VPS solution and again because the guys at linode.com have decent reputation I picked them and honestly never needed to contact them other than requesting upgrades and/or downgrades; our VPS account, seriously I have never had any problem with them not a single glitch.

Dreamhost.com I wonder who don’t know about Dreamhost.com, they are really good at least in the big picture of it, many of my personal small and petite projects are running on dreamhost and actually on the same account. Their accounts are highly flexible and you could use your account for various things starting from hosting your blog ending with setting up a VPN over your account or even running a personal Debian repository and again they run Debian. Although they get many glitches but they are so transparent about it and so quick in fixing them too considering the large setup they have.

One of my dreams other than studying at MIT which I cannot afford now is working in an internships with Dreamhost.com, it’s not a feasible dream, anyway.

If you have been into hosting business as in reselling or were hired as a system administrator then you would definitely value decent providers such as the mentioned above.

NOTE: Dreamhost link has a referral parameter, if you don’t like the idea just go to dreamhost.com

Tags: setting up a vpn, kernel upgrades, gnu linux, layeredtech, freelance projects, downgrades, dedicated servers, first experience, glitches, glitch, dreamhost, big picture, worth mentioning that, repository, good reputation, linux, truth, blog

Amman, March 13th 2008 -Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team.
As part of Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team continuous efforts to spread awareness about GNU/Linux in the Kingdom, the team organized a public event at The University of Jordan in Cooperation with IEEE Student Branch. Mr. Khamis SekSik gave a lecture Introducing FLOSS in the Jordanian way, as well as a brief background of FLOSS history.

In addition, the lecture included Mr.Seksik explaining some reasons to use FLOSS Jordan, as well as comparing selling service VS selling software, and comparing backward compatibility issues between FLOSS and other software.

Other issues discussed by Mr.Sisek were the ethical reasons to use FLOSS. The argument is that using proprietary software without paying for it equal theft and as such is unethical. In many ways, Mr.Siksek highlighted, choosing the right software is a very important decision because it affects time, effort, and money invested in this software.

Following the lecture, a number of Ubuntu Jordan LoCo helped in setting up the FIRST Ubuntu Lab in The University of Jordan.

It is worth mentioning that next week Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team is scheduled to start giving Ubuntu Desktop Courses in cooperation with Jordan University IEEE Student Branch.

Tags: desktop courses, jordan university, university of jordan, continuous efforts, compatibility issues, backward compatibility, gnu linux, khamis, right software, selling software, floss, time effort, proprietary software, ubuntu, amman, loco, siksek, cooperation, linux, money

I witnessed all browsers wars in my life, just like many of you; and they are just like nations, they rise and fall, Netscape once dominated the market even Internet Explorer did at some point; some great browsers with great capabilities such as Opera never got the exposure that they really deserve and some good browsers like FireFox got great deal of promotion, a proper marketing team behind it I’d say.

I work as web developer and I’m so attached to Web Standards, Usability and Accessibility, I do believe in them and I do my best to stick to them whenever possible. I’m also a self-taught kind of people which means I read a lot and mostly online so I really value any piece of software or website that would make my reading experience just better.

Recently I decided to quit FireFox because it eats memory as no other application would, even GNU Image Manipulation Program or Video editors doesn’t eat as much as Firefox does, so I decided to quit it.

I tried Opera, it was good in term of using a browser but for reason or another I wasn’t satisfied and my experience with it wasn’t convenient, lots of functionalities and maze of preferences.

I tried Epiphany but I needed bit more of control on my browser preferences so I gave Galeon a try and a new love story began.

Galeon is a GNOME Web browser based on Gecko (the mozilla layout engine). It’s fast, it has a light interface, and it is fully standards-compliant. You can download it but first take a look at some screenshots and read additional documentation (installation…). Galeon requires Gnome and Mozilla.

Although reading Galeon History would give the impression that Galeon is the bad guy but after using it you would understand how over simplifying things might not work well.

Using Galeon would tell you that if you want a web browser that as promised the web and only the web then its bookmarklets and smart bookmarks would be more than enough for the best browsing experience.

I’ve been using Galeon for two weeks in row and since then never had to run Firefox, Opera or any other browser, it’s just the one I need and the one I’m willing to spend my browsing life with forever.

Tags: gnu image manipulation, gnu image manipulation program, image manipulation program, new love story, gnome web, light interface, video editors, smart bookmarks, documentation installation, internet explorer, layout engine, marketing team, bookmarklets, reading experience, functionalities, gecko, web standards, web developer, maze, usability

Yesterday we had a very energetic LoCo meeting and we decided to have a fixed monthly schedule

• Monthly FLOSS introductory lecture
• Monthly Ubuntu Desktop Course
• Monthly Ubuntu Installation Festival

This month we will do it at Jordan University and I’m so excited about it but that’s just the kick start of what we are planning to do.

I’ll keep this blog updated about LoCo Team activities and plans in the Kingdom, so stay tuned!

Tags: Course, Desktop, floss, introductory lecture, jordan university, kick start, loco, ubuntu, jordan university, introductory lecture, kick start, floss, loco, blog

I’m really in love with those tiny tools that can do the magic to you when you are really depressed looking for a miracle to get your task done.

I work as action photographer in my free time and yesterday I had to edit 200 shot in a very short time, first I downloaded the RAWs into my computer and then started to delete the ruined ones and then I needed a way to convert all of my CR2 files into JPG; after bit of googling I found that there is a living application out there called DCRAW that let you decode all of your RAW files and then you can pass your decoded data into a tiny application called CJPEG that can compress the image file into JPEG image file and so I did

This is the magic of command line tools in GNU/Linux, I was able to get all of my RAWs decoded and converted into JPEG in about two hours which includes googling for for the way to batch edit photos and convert RAWs to JPEG.

If you are into Photography then you would understand how many hours I have saved to get this task done.

Later I wanted to add a border and my signature to all of these photos plus I needed to resize them for web usage so I used Phatch.

Phatch is a simple to use cross-platform graphical Photo Batch Processor and Exif Renamer with a nice graphical user interface. Phatch handles all popular image formats and can duplicate (sub)folder hierarchies. Phatch can batch resize, rotate, apply shadows, perspective, rounded corners, … and do much more actions in minutes instead of hours or days if you do it manually.

I can certainly confirm that phatchs saved lots of my time, in return I’ll start translating it into Arabic language out of respect and to give something back to the developers and the community.

Photo editing under Linux isn’t that user friendly yet, but I’m pretty sure it will definitely be user friendly when Phatch get stabilised and gets more features.

NOTE: This example was tested with dcraw v8.80 and cjpeg 6b. cjpeg is available under libjpeg-progs package.

Tags: action photographer, arabic language, batch processor, command line tools, cross platform, dcraw c, decoded data, folder hierarchies, gnu linux, googling, graphical user interface, image file, image formats, raw files, raws, renamer, rounded corners, tiny application, tiny tools, web usage, dcraw c, folder hierarchies, graphical user interface, action photographer, command line tools, decoded data, batch processor, tiny application, tiny tools, raws, gnu linux, raw files, community photo, web usage, rounded corners, googling, image formats, renamer, stabilised, arabic language