Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Hitesh

If you have come here looking for a way to install Skype, visit this post instead.

By sheer coincidence, I got my hands on an Asus EeePC just in time for the Ubuntu 9.10 release. Given the state of Windows XP on it, I was left with no option but to do a clean install of UNR.

Before

The netbook was virus infected and was crashing as soon as it booted. Not even the safe mode command prompt only worked! So I decided to wipe the factory installed Windows XP and install UNR instead. It did take a bit of time to find out what to be downloaded and how to install.

The guide at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR/Installation/Easy suggests that the img file be downloaded, but there is no img file for the Karmic release.
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An angel has landed

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Hitesh

On the 21st, our wait finally ended and a little angel arrived. We have named her Prisha, meaning “God’s Gift”.

Sharing a few pictures taken on the day of her birth.

[rant] Opensource spirit in .NET world

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Hitesh

Did not want to post a rant, especially when I haven’t yet crystallized my thoughts.

Background:
My previous post was about a project I came across – hornget. I wanted to help because I liked their ideas. I offered to manage the SupportedPackages page for them by automating the process. Or to share the script for the same.

Reason for rant:
Guess what was the reply?

Nothing at all. The powers that be, simply banned me from the hornget-dev group. I am flabbergasted. I am not sure what brought out this behavior.

If anyone from hornget dev team reads this, could you please spare a minute to explain why is a volunteer treated like this?

Opensource .NET Projects (ALT.NET)

Posted on October 10, 2009 by Hitesh

I recently stumbled across Hornget, which plans to be the maven of .NET world. I found their design philosophy interesting, but haven’t yet got a chance to evaluate the project itself.

But what I liked is they have cherry picked very good .NET software building blocks. Here is a list of projects supported by hornget. Even if you do not end up using hornget, this can still act as a good reference.

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How to be a faster programmer?

Posted on October 3, 2009 by Hitesh

I am reposting this from my, now dead, blog. Hopefully this time I will be able to finish the series.

Note: This is not targeted at seasoned professionals who would find most of the stuff mentioned here very basic. Instead this is for beginners who unfortunately do not have good mentors.

Know your tools

To start of there is nothing more important than knowing all the capabilities of your tools, be it an IDE, a report generator, database, text editor or the operating system itself. This will help to:

Know what is possible, thus saving time wondering how to do something
Know what is the best tool to do something

Know yourself

Know your most productive times and plan your day around that. Avoid any disturbances, meetings etc. during your peak times. Get other things, like documentation or responding to mails etc., done during non peak time.