Previously in the ‘Projects’ Category…
From Windows to Ubuntu in three days
- April
- 29th
- 2009
Since I had some time to kill the other day, I decided it was time to get rid of Windows once and for all. It is a major step, and I didn’t feel quite up to the task, considering I am such an addict to Windows software. I figured “If you want to learn to swim real fast, then jump into the pool and try and solve it as it comes along”.
If you didn’t know, Ubuntu 9.04 just came out. I had a good feeling this could be a good Windows replacement. Last version was smooth enough and I had it on my dual-boot machine. But this time I didn’t want to just have it on dual boot. I ended up spending way too much time in Windows because of laziness and comfort.
Heck I just downloaded the latest Ubuntu and burned an install CD… and formatted my harddrive. Oh I did a backup of important files, so nothing major should have been lost. Installation was smooth as always, and plonked away and suddenly there I was… a nice new shiny operating system. Now to get this working the way I wanted I had a few criteria that needed to work ASAP.
- Internet bank login needed to work in Linux
- Streaming music and movies to my Xbox360 needed to work from within Linux.
- Windows running as a virtual system under Ubuntu, with Adobe Creative Suite (Sorry, but Gimp just plainly SUCKS!)
- My secure VPN connection to Relakks need to work under Ubuntu too.
- local development server set up
What is kinda scary with Ubuntu is that you have all these wonderful Open source projects that can sort you out with almost anything you want to do – unfortunately, the people dreaming this up are not big on usability and graphical user interfaces.
Agreed: the terminal is very powerful, but for an average user it just doesn’t cut it. Sure it is simple to copy/paste code you find online, and there is some satisfaction in just watching it hammer away, but come-on… it is surely not that hard to dream up a basic interface for some of this stuff? Until they do, Ubuntu will not be a favourite of the average desktop user… well, I think my mom wouldn’t notice the difference, but we will never find out.
1. Internet bank on Ubuntu – solved with Nexus Personal
My first obstacle was the internet bank. I use certificates and software to identify myself, and after some power-googling I found out that there was a Linux version of my certificate program Nexus Personal. All good and well, and after finding an excellent guide on how to install it it worked straight off the bat. Some issues with signing, but it works most of the time. For some reason it works better for my girlfriend, who did her taxes the other night, and could identify herself with no problems. I guess my certificate might be busted. Oh well… a good 9 out of 10 for this. Points for Ubuntu.
2. Streaming music and video to Xbox360
No solid solution just yet, as the TV is busy, and I cannot intrude. I have avoided all solutions stating running a virtual desktop, as I need this to work for my GF too. Appearantly the Xbox360 can read any proper Upnp source, so I will now make an experiment witn Xbox Media Center (XBMC) which runs on all major operating systems. It is supposed to be better than anything out there, and simple enough to set up… and so far I can only agree. I will tell later on if this solution works.
3. Windows running as a virtual system
I read in many forums and blogs which environment was the best… some said VMWare, and some Virtualbox. After reading up on it and VMWare required too much time in the terminal, I decided to give Suns Virtualbox a go. Installation was easy, and pretty soon I had an XP machine going through the installation process. Not a hitch and very responsive.
I ran into some trouble with getting the USB and CD-rom to play nice, but printing worked straight out of the box. The solution to my worries was actually adding my user to the Vboxusers group, and restarting Ubuntu… then I added the USB in the settings of the machine, and presto… I now have a Windows box that I never need to shut down. I seem to have some issues installing Adobe CS3 on there, but I reckon I might need some more RAM… minimum requirement is 1GB. And it is a legal disc… guess I will have to try with an evaluation version and entering my serial instead.
Will get back to you on how this goes. If anyone knows of a good Photoshop replacement (not gimp or gimpshop) then please let me know in the comments below.
4. VPN connection to Relakks
Relakks is a privacy connection, since Big Brother has taken a jump from the TV-screen to politics here in Sweden. So far I have tried several guides with mixed results… I had it working on 8.10 so it is not impossible… just lost the original link. This guy has a pretty good idea though, and it should work… I will tweak and get him the update.
5. Local development environment
This I haven’t done yet, but will be very easy…
O Sh@#t f%ck, I just realised that I managed to delete my old one when I formatted my computer… I knew there was something… Oh well… what ever I had on there I can set up again. No biggie… fortunately I always try to do backups as well as uploads online.
Anyway, I will go with XAMPP as they make it easy to install and maintain a local environment with Apache, PHP, MySQL and all the rest.
Et voila, I now have Ubuntu, and only Windows for the necessary windows stuff.
Everybody speaks English
- June
- 30th
- 2008
I have had a few people asking me:-
“You are Swedish, and you are looking for work in Sweden. Why is your website only in English?”
Well, I have several reasons:
- I am not ONLY looking for work in Sweden – the world is my market place.I would like my website to be seen as international.
- Most people in Sweden have a grasp of English from school (it is compulsory for about 6 years) so really it is not a problem for most of them.
- The lingua franca of the internet age is English. At least until China has a proper democracy.
- I lived for eight years in London, so I still think and dream in English.
- English is a very beautiful language that lends itself well for graphical descriptions and poetical recitals (Yeah, as if you would find THAT here)
The Swedish business model
- May
- 10th
- 2008
Have now relocated back to Sweden, and am seriously looking for new projects.
This is a completely different experience from looking in London, for sure.
So far I have found about 5 different roles in the area closest to me but will expand my search to include, but not be limited to:
- Kronobergs Län
- Kalmar Län
- Blekinge Län
- Skåne Län
- Västergötlands Län
Lets face it, I usually commuted for about an hour on the Tube in London – IF the trains were on time. The difference in Sweden is that I can work with a larger area AND the trains are on time. I will of course get myself a car as soon as possible to make it easier to travel, but first my priorities are:
- Get a job, sir
- Get a car
- Get a house/flat closer to work
As far as plans go, I know from experience that the simpler they are the better.
As for now, I will drive to the coast and have a swim – no matter how cold it is in the Baltic. Laters!
GT – Good Technology
- April
- 3rd
- 2008
Started:2008/04/02
Ended: 2008/04/17
Title: Site Builder
Was hired as a freelance coder to mainly work on the Xbox Newsletter for Microsoft for the upcoming months (17 languages and used in 13 countries) and templates for the new ASDA.co.uk website. Working on existing code can be excruciating but managed to create a pretty good replica of the Xbox Newsletter that worked in all email readers and browsers – Yes that includes Google Mail, the most un-standard of browser email-clients. Was not able to test for Office 2007 and its new restrictionson HTML emails, but I hope I avoided most of the pits in the sand.
The ASDA.co.uk website was a hodge-podge of inherited code on a project that started back in early 2007. Needless to say, I was not the first coder to work on it, but defenitely one of the better ones. (My predecessor appearantly came in, sat down, looked at the code and promptly resigned) We were a team of 4 talented freelancers working on the site at any given time, fighting bugfixes with bugfixes. I seriously think we would have been better off completely revamping the code from scratch, because that way it could have been finished in one week instead of three.
But as it were, the team were already halfway through bugfixing and checking for compliance with IE6,IE7,IE8b,FF1,FF2, FF3b, Safari and Opera, as well as W3C standards. All you could do was spit in your hands and dig in. And you know what? We did it on time and on budget.
