Crossover Office

If you compare crossover office with WINE, immediatelly you know the difference. Codeweavers really do a good job. I can install IE 5.5 and access to our intranet application without any problem now.

Crossover Office

My colleague ask me this morning, can I use Internet Explorer on my linux system?

I say, "Can not.".

Then she ask again, "How do you access to our intranet application?"

I answer, "I have 2 PC!" (1 install linux, the other is Windows 95)

I think over again, actually I can use Internet Explorer in my linux, just too lazy to try. I get the crossover office about a month ago, but too busy to try out, crossover office is just like WINE, a window emulator on linux. Why don't I give it a try.

I did download and try to compile WINE before, but no luck. This time before trying the crossover linux, I will try the WINE again. I download the binaries, luckily there is rpm for mandrake10. I just install a libstdc++ libraries, everything install just fine.

I try to install the Office97 and ie5.5. I can't install the ie5.5, is a common problem, stop at about 75%. Ofiice97 can be installed without much problems, excel is not working, winword can be launch. Anyway this version of Word is buggy.

I heard crossover office can support IE, will try next time.

Journey of 'Thelma and Louise'

'Thelma and Louise' is a movie by director Ridley Scott. We are going for journey in the coming weekend before the end of 2004, travel through Perak and Kedah state, no plan, no destination, just like 'Thelma and Louise' in the 1991 movie, but should be a happy ending.

Some interesting reading about programming

A lot of the programmer like to re-write codes. Joel Spolsky have a different view point here.

should I still blog? :)

Read a news here. Dairy of a Fired Flight Attendant.

Configure CUPS, nightmare

Configure printing service is always a nightmare for me in Unix system. There is once I try to configure network printing services on a Solaris 2.8, the printer should output to a windows shared printer, I give up. Sun claim that they are good in networking? In windows, I just share out the printer by right click on the folder will do, everyone on the same network can print through their windows system. Just click on 'Add printer', select network printer, and choose the printer server from the selection will do. Just so easy. I though after CUPS came out, the printer configuration on UNIX system will be a lot easier, yes it is much more easier but not good enough. I add a network printer(share by windows system) on my mandrake 10 using the Mandrake configuration tools. After sometime I change the printer name, so I need to modified the configuration, but unfortunately I was not able to add/modified the printer through Mandraker system console, it always give me Add/Modified printer fail, and I don't know what is the reason behind it! There is no terminal selection through samba, I have to key in the terminal(with printer attached on it) manually. So, I use the browser to connect http://127.0.0.1:631/. Now I am able to add printer, but problem again, I was not able to get the HP LaserJet 1100 driver from here, but I am able to get from Mandrake printer configuration. How could it be different on the same system! Finally I have to manually change the url in /etc/cups/printers.conf. If you set password for your pinter sharing in windows, can try edit /etc/cups/printers.conf, change url to smb://user:password@printer_server/printer_name. I spend almost the hold day settig this up, why can't they just make it easier. No matter how much you dislike about Microsoft Windows, but they really do things right.

Lode runner game for Palm

Yesterday help my friend to install his palm device, is a m515 model, like my Vx, but with colors(160x160), 16M, with SD slot. I found the lode runner game from Aaron Ardiri(his interview). The game just look like the old PC game in 80s, the animation is surprisingly smooth and actractive, even though it is running on a 160x160 screen rather than 320x200, you can find it here, take a look at the re-make of Nintendo's Game & Watch Octopus too. There is quite a number of Game & Watch game that I like but hard to find now, like Octopus, Mickey Mouse(Egg), manhole etc. Those games are simple but good to play, thanks to Nintendo's Gunpei Yokoi.

netisam vs sql

Is raining outside, now raining season. I get a call from customer, they need to delete an unuse record from the database, for some reason, they just can't remove the record from the application, even their MIS people can't help. It is using a netisam (Sun product) file database. I need to write a program to delete the record. If using sql (any) database, just issue a sql command will do.

Joke of the day!

I received a email from innvo. The email remind me, they claim to have a J2ME virtual machine running on WinCE, they promise to give me a copy, but never. Coventive claim they have a 143kb linux kernel, smallest in the world, I never seen it before, and I really have no idea, where is the number(143) came from, why not 142 or 145?

Open Source Cobalt

Sun end it Cobalt server and release the software as opensource in December 2003. Take a look at the Blue Quartz. I get the link from the funny link here.

Cobalt

Yesterday went to Nasmic office, take a close look at the cobalt qube 3 server. A very nicely design and well integrated unix machine(shoule be running linux). Sun bought Cobalt it for 2 billion USD! in year 2000, now the product is no more continue. Community support is here.

There is 1 Sun Blade 100 (this is too old, something similar here) and another 3 Sun Ray 100 terminal sitting there, not many people know how to use it.

Link:-
Sun acquire Cobalt Network
NetworkWorldFusion
Open IT World
TechWeb
Linux Mag
PC World
InfoWorld
a review on zdnet 2004.

All Linux Devices

Unix XIM program and xpacman game

I found some resource for unix xim programming, there is some tutorial for automake too. Want to try out pacman game on unix? Is easy to compile.

IBM 486DX2-50, linux kernel 2.0

This suddenly came into my mind, since I might need to down grade my kernel, may be I should try kernel 2.0.x, I don't need all those new driver, and the frame buffer may work too. I download kernel 2.0.40(latest!), but it does not compile on my system, same for kernel 2.0.38, 2.0.39. Kernel 2.0 only tested on gcc-2.7.x. Luckily I still have the redhat 5.2 CDs, which came with gcc-2.7. Finally I can get it compile, but it doesn't run on redhat 7.1. Insist of using kernel 2.0.x may need a lot of work around, but the compress kernel size is just half(300k) or the 2.4 version!

IBM 486DX2-50, Red Hat 7.1 is up, finally!

I unplug the IBM 500M HD from the machine and plug it to a old pentium HP machine. This version of HP machine (HP Vectra VE P100) is very good, the cover is easy to open up, bios can auto detect the hard disk, this machine is very much better(in design) compare to many of their later version. (Don't know why HP always screw up in their later design, like iPaq PDA after HP4150). I plan to install through NFS, so I don't have to plug in the cdrom and Red Hat 7.1 just have 2 CDs, just copy to the server hard disk. Unfortunately the installer doesn't detect the 3Com ethernet card. I have a few card available(ethernet II, ethernet III), all is not detected by the rh71 installer. The cards are using 3c503.o driver which came with the CD, but the installer need something newer like 3c59x driver(eg. 3c590, 3c90x). I have no choice and plug the HD into a HP Vectra PIII desktop, finally the network card working and installation from NFS, just take about 10 minutes, and I have try about 2 hours earlier to get Red Hat 7.1 install on the IBM 500M HD(plug and unplug hd, nic and try different combination). You though is the end of the story? Not yet! When I plug it back to the IBM 486 machine with 16M Ram, it can't boot. Not enough ram to boot the kernel 2.4? Not really! I have encounter the problem earlier before. When you install it on pentium, the installer will choose the 686 glibc library to install, so it will not boot on 486! I found a 386 kernel too. So I replace the 686 kernel and glibc with 386. Don't forget to clean up everything in /lib/i686, and now it boot on the old IBM DX2-50 16M ram machine! I have a ESS1688 sound card, but not working and can't detect by sndconfig. This ESS1688 is Sound Blaster 16 compatible and not using the ess driver in linux. After try for some time I think the Red Hat 7.1 kernel may not include in the isa plug & play driver module(yes! isa too old!), may be I will try later. Is late and I am a bit hungry, have to stop and go back home.

IBM 486DX2-50, switch the hd for rh-7.1

I have done this before, install the redhat 7.1 in a bigger ram configuration, after that I remove the extra memory, and the machine still work. The only thing that you need to take care is you need the 386 glibc not the 586 glibc. I though the HD was seal on the IBM machine, actuallay is not, is just tightly screw like seal there. It take me a lot of effort to unscrew it. Come on! I am not a hardware guy!

IBM 486DX2-50, Red Hat 7.1

Earlier the working system is a Red Hat 6.2 Linux, which I don't have the CD with me anymore. Red Hat 7.1 seems to be a good distribution. After I boot up the red hat 7.1, it complains 'not enough memory to install'. I have 16m of ram now. I still have some spare ram with me. I switch it over, the machine is too old, it can't support the newer ram. I read some the IBM 450DX2 ram specification, it can support up to 64M. I am stuck here now.

IBM 486DX2-50, ext3

After I have upgrade my kernel (v2.4.26), I always encounter this error message while boot up:- task_no_data_intr status=0x51 Sometimes it stop at boot script 'Check filesystem'. I decided to switch back my filesystem from ext3 to ext2. # e2fsck -fy /dev/hda1 Unfortunately, after the repairt, it corrupt my filesystem and can't boot up anymore. May be I have no choice and have to re-install the Linux system again. This time I will use a newer distribution, may be Red Hat 7.1 (Ya! I know is very old!).

iPaq PDA

Spend the whole afternoon partner a friend to buy the latest HP iPaq(HP6355, with SIM card). PDA sales is going down, I think is lacking of content for small device browsing.

IBM 486DX2-50, Cirrus Logic

Is halloween. Yesterday I work till late night, try to get XFree86-4.4 (with freetype support) working on the machine, but fail. Luckily the old version(v3.x) is still working. The machine have a on board GD5430 display chipset (by Cirrus Logic), 1M memory, but I just need a 640x480 256 colors to match with my grey scale IBM monitor. XFree86 team doesn't do a good job here, the new driver don't support the old Cirrus Logic GD5430 Chipset. I suppose to use FrameBuffer. The frame buffer driver is with linux kernel, but the new linux kernel don't support the old driver too. Too bad.

IBM 486DX2-50, a start

After talking with my housemate yesterday night, I decided to work on my old antique-- IBM 486 machine. Yes, is a IBM 486DX(with floating point unit support!), 2 should be double of 25Mhz, I have a 50Mhz machine! I move it to the office, so I have more resource to update the linux software in it. I open it up, it came with 8M ram, and I have alerady add another 8M earlier. Oh! Good, I have 16M! I install a very old 3Com card in it, and saw the sound card is Aztech's Sound Galaxy, a second hand sound card which I bought for $10, many many years ago. The 1st thing that I want to do is to upgrade the kernel and enable with network support. To make sure the network card is still working, I download a 3Com diaganostic program to test it. Oh! Yes, the network card is using 3c503 driver. Upgrade the kernel to linux-2.4.26 give me some problem. The earlier kernel(2.4.19) seems to be working(without network), but my new kernel show some error:- "Kernel compiled for Pentium+, requires TSC feature!" After search through the web, only find out that kernel version after 2.4.22, TSC is enable by default, even though you choose i386 or i486 cpu. The work around is: $ make oldconfig Kernel is up and ethernet card is working fine, but seems like the sound card is not working properly. It is a sound galaxy, but should be compatible with sound blaster. The error messae shown, the sound card is too old(more than 8 years ago) and it is 8bits, or may be I will upgrade it with another better sound card. I try to compile a kernel without modules(everything into 1 kernel file), seem it will hang. Anyway I already have a working kernel with network support, that will be good.

Microsoft Java Virtual Machine

One of our customer have some problem using XP SP2 access to our java(applet) online real time quote. I install a new version with SP2 included, no java support in IE(Internet explorer). I check Microsoft website, seem like they didn't include Microsoft Java Virtual Machine(MSJVM) in those porduct after SP1a. They even provide a tools to convert MSJVM dependend program to .Net platform. Sun's java is moving more to the backend like J2EE server. Out application still base on applet. The original code for graphic java on unix platform(including Linux) is buggy. Those legacy code is still in the new version of java, atleast in version 1.4. There is no java graphics in J2EE, may be sun doesn't want to fix the problems.

Record of the year

Rushing to write article for Apple Magazine, finish at 11pm. The is the record of the year, so late.

Langkawi trip

Just came back from Langkawi trip. Not much things to say.

Apple iMac G5 launch in Zouk

I just went to the Apple iMac G5 launch in Zouk. Look like interesting but disappointing. No Steve Jobs, no demo, the only things that you know about the launching is 'iMac G5'. You can easily get it from internet. Apple asia reagion marketting manager fly all the way from Hong Kong, he should be disappointing too. Since Apple have spend some money(and willing to spend), better use the budget for cash rebate, may be can help Apple to boost the sales better. 10.30pm, nothing much happen. Foong and I walk to Jln Sultan Ismail. Seem like that area is a more happening area. Unless Zouk have good financial support, or ...

Red Hat meetup Oct 2004

Went to red hat meetup, this time a bigger group turn up. Linus Lai, Chan, Stephen, Heoh, etc. 9 of us meet in Coffee Bean. Some of them went to the recent Red Hat World tour. 9.30pm, I left the meetup drop by the nearest Apple Center, saw the new iPod mini, a nice device.

Tea time at starbuck

Went to Starbucks with Richard. We like Starbucks for different reason. He love it for the lifestyle, I like it for broadband access. Since I already get my broadband access at my place, the reason has just gone for me.

We went there last night because we have a coupon, buy 1 free 1. The price now keep increase, quite expensive, but buy 1 free 1 is still ok. Richard ask for more, he ask the manager for dessert discount too, he is a regular customer, so he can ask for discount.

When the new manager heard, he got a shock, discount!? No such things. Then the counter lady told the new manager, Richard always get discount for dessert, so he get some discount for the dessert too!

Richard's BBQ party

Is has been long time Richard didn't have such a big party. Many of his colleague from CEDE communication came, some of his friends like Yap, SeeMun, JieQiu(and his pretty sister). Uncle Chong, Adrew & Tifany join in later too. We start from 6pm and end at 12am. Very successful. Anthony talk on phone from 12am to 3am, and still talking before I sleep. :)

Is Friday

Time fly, is friday, and is October. For almost a week not done anything. Just compile XFree86 and firefox. Today do some configuration on XFree86. The problem with Linux never take off in desktop, the problem is start from X, X is too big, and not well organize. Look at the font, not standardize, it support pcf, speedo, type1, ttf font, just the bitmap font is 20 - 40M but still can't solve font problem, when it magnified, quality lost. Microsoft do a smart move using ttf font, Arial, Time (New) Roman, Courier New(fix font) Adobe have Helvetica, Time Roman, Courier. All these fonts are standard, 2M of hd space can solve many problems, but nothing much is standadize in X(or XFree86). Is friday, more relax, stay back a while to finalize my job. Is so boring to stay back on friday. Make a call to a lecturer friend, pick up 9.30pm, go for dinner. My lecturer friend is not felling well these few days. Preparing some noted for next semester class, ask me some problem with n-base arithmetic eg. oct + oct... I stay until 12am. Today TVB 星河頻道 showing 'Return of cockoo' (澳門街) last episod. While driving back feel empty and lonely. Want to talk to someone, but no one to talk to. Tomorrow night(actuall is tonight), Richard is having BBQ party here.

Firefox-1.0pr compile fail

XFree84-4.4.0 compilation is ok, but firefox-1.0pr just can't compile on my Mandrake-10, redhat-7.1, except Gentoo Linux PPC. May be firefox has to be compiled by gcc-3.x, so is not working on redhat-7.1(gcc-2.9x). I have tested firefox on iBook, not sure about the performance, but still need a lot of ram(about 20-30M) to run the application, so may be I don't update it to my IBM 486 yet. I think I need to take some rest. These are the few packages that I have updated in redhat-7.1 to compile firefox:- 1. XFree86-4.4.0 2. freetype-2.1.9 3. fontconfig-2.2.3 4. pkgconfig-0.15 5. glib-2.4.6 (not glibc) 6. atk-1.6.1 7. xft-2.1.2 8. pango-1.4.1 9. gtk+-2.4.10 10. libIDL-0.8.3 All these packages compile without much problem, so c++ program like firefox, really need to be improved.

Jobstreet.com

Jobstreet.com is going to be listed on Mesdaq soon.

Borland story

Find an interesting article about Borland story.

moon cake festival

Yesterday night gathering with kf's friends, rain a bit in the evening. When I go back home is already 2am. The moon is big and bright. I heard those people in south pole may see 2 moon these 2 days, a meteorite (a big one!) just pass thorugh the earth, and NASA is monitoring it.

Forbes 400

Forbes publish the 400 richest Americans. Guess who is the top 10? As usual. I like the notable newbies.

XFree86 and firefox-1.0pr

Upgrade XFree86-4.4.0 is no smooth, many library dependecy problem. Compilation for firefox-1.0pr fail on my x86 linux platform, may be the ppc gentoo linux will work, but it take me too long to compile last night(may be 2 hours(?)), so tired, I stop the compilation, shutdown my iBook, and go to sleep at 2am. Will try again later.

Firefox 1.0 PR

Try firefox 1.0 browser today. Suddenly something just came into my mind.

So I talk to kf and swk while having coffee in Long Black at night. I have an antique IBM PC. Yes, it really from IBM not just compatible, is a 486 SX(yup, no coprocesser) 66 (it suppose to be a 33Mhz and double it into 66). With 8M Ram, I added in another 8M Ram, now I have to total of 16M, and a 420M CPU.

I am going to upgrade to software, make firefox-1.0 to run on that machine. Please don't laugh, it may work. I want it to support truetype font as well.

Kf have a 386SX machin in early 1990s, with 1M ram, 40M HD(and he install stacker software to double it), it is capable to run windows (v3.1) with EMS enable and play Romance of Three Kingdom(KOEI Game) too.

Gentoo & Anacondas

Update Gentoo portage for my iBook yesterday, I think it takes about half hours to complete. So tired, after it finish is almost 3am in the morning.

Tonight go to cinema watch Anaconda2, not that bad, just simple story.

Gaim!

Spend me almost 3 days to compile the gaim, finally find out what's wrong. Is my rpm spec file, forget to unremark the make command, the the plugin path goes to /tmp directory. Compile on P3 800(mandrake 10) is very much faster than on G3 iBook(gentoo). P3 take about 7 to 10 minutes, but POWER PC take more than 15mins. Why?

Early celebration for moon cake festival

Received a call from a friend just came back from Hong Kong. I have dinner appointment and have early celebration for moon cake festival. Is 1 week earlier. Very full.

Boring night

Is friday night, a bit relex. Came back from Long Black internet cafe. Feeling not good, should sleep early.

RFID seminar

Attend a RFID talk this morning. The speaker point out something very important. The total investment for RFID tag and reader is nothing, more important is on software, especially integration to the legacy system.

OpenOffice.org

Now only I know that the official name for open office is OpenOffice.org. Not OpenOffice or Open Office. No wander is call as OOo. OpenOffice.org is a great software.

Soul

I believe there are people trade their soul with devil.

雅虎1.6億收購 Musicmatch

雅虎14日宣布以1.6億美元現金收購數位音樂公司Musicmatch。 雅虎執行長 Terry Semel 在華納工作二十四年 現在打算把雅虎轉型成媒體公司很合理

Chinese Input for linux

今天心血來潮， 就把我的 Mandrake 10 加入 xcin 中文輸入法系統． 之前都一直沒有辦法輸入中文．　
首先下載 xcin-2.5.2.3 原始碼
$ tar xzvfp xcin-2.5.2.3.tar.gz $ cd xcin-2.5.2.3 $ ./configure --prefix=/usr $ make $ make install 若 msgfmt xcin-zh_TW.po 有問題，可能是 xcin-zh_TW.po 內有 \ 因為舊版的 gettext 在處理一些中文字會有問題，所以會加入 使用 xcin : $ export XMODIFIERS=@im=xcin （一些版本使用 XMODIFIERS=im@xcin ） $ LANG=zh_TW.Big5 gedit & $ LC_CTYPE=zh_TW.Big5 xcin & 這樣子就可以了，簡單．

Start blog

I heard that blog is a next big things. So I blog.

I start blogging because I see Cassandra's blog

Editor is not working, and I have to use HTML!