Archive for January, 2009

Trip to Rangamati

January 27th, 2009

A trip supposed to be fun when you are with some fun loving guys, and it adds extra joy when you are in such a place which is surrounded by 100% nature. Yesterday, I arrived in Dhaka after 3 days trip at Rangamati. We, a group of trippertians went to have some fresh air after releasing a big facebook application called “Godfather Crime Rings”.

Journey started with an adventure. I never saw that much fog in my life. Our bus started at 10:30pm and even, 2ft away things weren’t visible for heavy fog! Spent a sleepless night on the way as each moment was exciting and scary at the same time. We saw a car got twisted in front of our eyes! But thank God we arrived at the destination safely. That was my first visit at Rangamati. I heard a lot about rangamati before. When we arrived, it was around 7am in the morning, we didnt take any rest, neither we had the hotel room fixed! So we started roaming, and transportation was boat of course. First we went to the beautiful island “Peda Ting Ting” – means, eat a lot :) that was nice and beautiful island. Silence of the island attracted me.

Beautiful Rangamati

Beautiful Rangamati

Anyway, we visited lots of places by 3 days journey. And i enjoyed every moment of it except sleepless time. And here are some comments that I would like to make about rangamati.

  • Rangamati’s people are cool minded, they are honest with their work.
  • People of rangamati respect visitors.
  • 100% natural and secured, but if you are from out of Bangladesh, you have to let the local police know that you are visiting there, you have to take their permission.
  • Most of the houses are made by bamboos.
  • “Sofia” is knows as best hotel in Rangamati, but if you can manage the district council rest house then thats the best place for anyone – more importantly, its way cheaper than others.
  • If you are planning to spend the night in any Island, please book your cottage from Dhaka. There are only 3 cottages in Peda Ting Ting. “Tuk Tuk” is another small Island in Rangamati where you can spend your night as well.
  • Don’t forget to visit “Chang Pang” (if you want, you will get it) restaurant to eat all traditional foods. I can tell you, foods are really tasty.
  • You can visit “shuvolong” on the way to Chang Pang, Shuvolong got stone hills that will take your eyes away!
  • And afterall, you will always love the boat journey and the nature around the river.

Well, thats all for now. If you need any more guide or any kind of help that you think I can, please email me. I will try my best….

and well, we took thousands of pictures from the trip…not all of them are uploaded. You can have a look at some of them on my flickr : http://www.flickr.com/photos/junal/3230542961/

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Posted in Bangladesh, Bangladeshi Village, Facebook, Friends, Trip

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Installing Google App Engine SDK on Ubuntu

January 12th, 2009

Installing Google app engine SDK on Windows and Mac OS X is very easy as they have installation launcher, but for Linux and other system we have Google App Engine SDK in a zip format which has to be installed manually. Not a big deal but few step that requires to get it done.

Let’s get them step by step

  1. Download Google App Engine for linux from here and Unzip It in your selected drive (for me the unzipped location is here /opt/lampp/htdocs/google_appengine)
  2. Create a new folder inside the directory and give it a name (for me /junaltest)
  3. Create 2 files with the following name app.yaml & yourfilename.py (for me junaltest.py). Yaml file describes which App Engine runtime environment the application uses. My app.yaml file contains the following lines
application: junaltest
version: 1
runtime: python
api_version: 1
handlers:
- url: /.*
  script: junaltest.py

and junaltest.py looks like the follow [for a simple hello world]

print 'Content-Type: text/plain'
print ''
print 'Hello, World'
  1. Open the command prompt and run the following command dev_appserver.py [options] <application root> (i.e. python appcfg.py /opt/lampp/htdocs/google_appengine/junaltest/)
  2. Once you successfully run the command you can visit here on your local machine  http://localhost:8080/

now, you are supposed to see the text “Hello, World” on your browser. We are done here but for further clearance let’s open and account on Google App Engine from here and let’s upload a file using command line. (assuming you have a gmail id)

please note that, application identifier is the application id. So give it a name that you can use it in the yaml file. Im keeping the same name for application identifier as “junaltest”.

Now, let change or do something on junaltest.py file and let’s upload it to the Google Server using the following command

dev_ appcfg.py update <application root>

(i.e. python appcfg.py update /opt/lampp/htdocs/google_appengine/junaltest/)

now it will ask you for your gmail id and password. Give it correctly and then check your application page from here http://appengine.google.com/

bingo! One file is uploaded! Check it, see if it’s showing what you gave :) ask me if you have any questions.

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Posted in Google, Google App Engine, Python

Completing Windows Needs on Ubuntu.

January 7th, 2009

Other day, I was having this argument with one of my friends that Linux (Ubuntu) is no more a complex OS which can be used by only some skilled people. He kept going on and on but I just wanted to prove him wrong that a normal user can use Linux if he/she doesn’t play games or doesn’t work on Flash/3D stuff. Except 2/3 issues why wouldn’t you use Linux? When you have better performance, no virus tension and more importantly, you are not using a pirated windows!

Personally, I have been using Linux for last couple of months. Few alternative softwares were just missing to full fill all needs of windows and finally I got them all in my Ubuntu stomach.

My acer laptop has a built-in camera but I didn’t have any software for it to view . Rayhan posted a needy article on additional Linux software here. From them I got this command for my web cam and its working brilliant now.

To install this web cam software open the command prompt and paste the following line

apt-get install webcam cheese

Viewing my web cam with cheese

Viewing my web cam with cheese

another problem was, my Nokia N72 mobile! I didn’t have any software like Pc Suite, all I needed was, transferring file and getting files from and to my mobile. But yes, it has also a nice solution. If you have Nokia phone and looking for a software that would do the same stuff that Pc Suite would do then have a look here.

Trasfer file from Nokia phone on your Linux

Trasfer file from Nokia phone on your Linux

And finally, I was looking for a better screen shot capture software for Ubuntu. Something like Snag it on Windows. Unfortunately, there is NOT any Firefox add-ons that would do this job (if you know anyone, let me know please). But this software called Ksnapshot almost doing the same job. Try the following command to install this software or just search for it with “ksnapshot” from the Synaptic package manager.

sudo apt-get install ksnapshot

ksnapshot for better screen capture

ksnapshot for better screen capture

So yea, i have full filled all the needs of windows on my Ubuntu :)

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Posted in Friends, Technology, Ubuntu

I’m Your Senior, Mind It!

January 3rd, 2009

I was in grade 8 when I had this conversation with one of my uncles about political situation in Bangladesh. I asked him why all these people couldn’t just live peacefully, and he would be like “Junal, naturally, we people fight for power, we don’t want to follow anyone, instead we want to have a lots of followers!”. And then I went to high school/college and met some students who were senior than me,for that they didn’t allow me to smoke in front of them. Because, you got to respect seniors, but in my head I would be like why I cannot do such thing that you can do in front of me? So, I always had this idea that one day, I would be “senior” like them when I will ask my juniors not to smoke in front of me!

This situation had improved when I went to university, seniors didn’t mind for smoking with me, but the attitude of seniority was there. Seniors wouldn’t allow juniors to say anything, their decision was the final decision in every case.

And finally, after graduation I started my career as a PHP developer in a local software firm. And yes, situation was unchanged! Seniors like to order “learn this, learn that…i want you to finish this by next day!” blah blah …. but there is a difference between “request” and “advice” and these two words can make a huge difference.

I wrote another blog about senior developers on my old blog and yesterday, after reading this blog I felt like writing next one on similar topic. Does it mean I’m really frustrated about this barrier ? Answer is “NO”, not really, personally, I consider myself very lucky to to work with some nice guys. Specially, after joining at Tripperlabs. But I have this sympathy for junior developers  from around the world . I know situation is not same everywhere. I want this to be changed. I hope a “Senior act” will remain there but it will not be transparent.

I really like this blog that I read yesterday, let me get some part of it here so that it makes clear how seniors/juniors should be everywhere!

With a senior developer, you have to be lucky that he’s learned from his previous mistakes (and every developer makes mistakes, no matter how good he is or how much experience he has), that he hasn’t picked up too many bad habits and that he is open minded. If you can get a senior developer like that, consider yourself very, very lucky because there really aren’t that many of them.

With a junior developer, you can easily mold them into the kind of developer you want them to be. They haven’t really had a lot of time to pick up bad habits, and they are eager to prove that they belong at your company so they will be very eager to learn and improve. All you need is a couple of people who are willing and capable of teaching these young developers.

Ok, I hope I will not write anymore blog on senior/junior stuff. Hope it gets better in upcoming days and hope juniors feel lucky to have RIGHT senior developer with them.

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Posted in Bangladesh, For me, Job Experience, Trippert Labs

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