yes another blog goes online today. visit us at gatog.wordpress.com to get your dosage of GATOG technology!

This branch was created to address the true randomness of this blog. this way, this blog will be for general/announcement posts while gatog will be reserved for technical posts.

A new blog has been started to provide (what else) “straight to the point technical information”.

http://zappedpoint.wordpress.com

SIGTERMer

i emailed this to two guys i know and thought someone might be interested:
"Guys, this is a FREE golden opportunity to get into the world of game design. i know it's a general game design course (does not revolve around computer games) but it still provides a good foundation for game designers. I signed up (along with three other people). this is the link: http://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/
the instructor seems experienced and this looks like a good chance. and since the course is free, there is nothing to loose (i think it's blog based). if you do regester, add me as a "friend" so we could be added to the same group (whatever that means).

ps: why does this message seem like spam?"

SIGTERMer

No Administration Rights Required to install/run the programs mentioned here. Enjoy

Two months have passed since i started working at an IT solutions company here in kuwait. it’s a “Microsoft Gold Certified Partner”, which is probably why it has windows running on every machine capable of running it (except for an old P2 which runs fedora). I have been using linux/gnome for a while now and i have to tell you, it’s rough. there are a lot of things that you miss like:

And to top it off, I’m not the admin! so vista is pretty much locked up. i can’t even install firefox, or so i thought.

The following is a list of some of the software that made working in a hostile locked-down windows environment a little more easer. (NO INSTALLATION OR ADMIN PRIVILEGES REQUIRED):

Portable Firefox

source:Firefox portable This app might be the reason why i’m still sane. this is good news to anyone who has an addiction to firefox (which probably includes 92.327% of real PC users out there*). just don’t forget to modify the proxy setting for firefox if you work behind a proxy. if you don’t know how, just follow these steps: 1: open IE 2: go to Tools->Internet Options 3: select the connections tab 4: click “LAN settings” 5: copy the address and port 6: open firefox 7: go to Tools->Options 8: click on advanced 9: select the network tab and click “settings” 10: fill the required fields and don’t forget to enable “Use this proxy server for all protocols”. and you’re set .

PuTTYPortable & winscp

source: winscp PuTTyPortable If you have an ssh server running you will appreciate these two. if you don’t, then you should! here is a detailed guide on how to do it. basically you can ssh into you’re box from work (even behind a firewall using a few tricks) and you can transfer files as well. just don’t forget the proxy.

Portable GIMP

source:GIMPPortable For those of you who haven’t worked with windows for a long time, MS-paint is retarded. it doesn’t even give you hex values. if you’re a web-developer, you need this if you want to avoid a headache.

These are the Tools/apps i needed so far to make my job more easier. but these aren’t the only ones i use, one of the notable applications i use is Blender which comes in an unzipable package and

In conclusion, this group of software is what i was able to find useful for a linux user working in a locked down windows installation, and i’m sure the are a lot of great apps that don’t require installation but haven’t been mentioned here. if you know any application that hasn’t been mentioned but should have, please help me out by letting me know

SIGTERMer

a couple of weeks back, the news of sun being bought by oracle spread through linux comunities like wild fire. all the apps you and I took for granted now seem to face an unknown fate; Virtualbox, OpenOffice, MySQL all lie in the danger zone with the risk of being canceled.
This got me thinking about an even worse scenario, Microsoft getting one of the big guns in it’s dirty clutches. even though it seems it has Novell in it’s pocket, it isn’t as bad as owning it or any other major open source contributor.
Now what if microsoft got a hold of the Free Software Foundation…

SIGTERMer

I guess one of the benefits of working for a company that is very close to Microsoft is getting to know all their “solutions” first hand. One of these solutions is Windows Sharepoint Service. basically, it’s an application suite that allows people who are working on a project to work better with one another by organizing the way information is managed and accessed while providing methods to organize team work and increase team efficiency.

How did they do it? will it’s simple really, they just jam a blogging platform, a forum, subversion control, and a wiki into on system and provide exceptional integration with MS Office.. thats all.

Why should i give a *? will for starters, this can be the perfect solution for developing software. as you may have noticed, almost all major projects have a Sharepoint like system, one way or another. sourceforge, gnome live, and so on.

OK, now two problems remain: It’s proprietary and it costs money. I’ve searched the net and found an open source sharepoint clone released by Alfresco (google it) but it’s more oriented towards replacing microsoft’s sharepoint technology than providing a platform for POSIX servers. it even integrates with Office!

One solution is to write my one tailored sharepoint system. that, or wait until someone else writes one. I’m probably going to write one myself (most likly using python since it’s very convenient for web applications) if i get the chance.

i’ll probably design it for technical projects rather then general purpose, it might include:

you might wonder why i intend to write the previous tools all over again appose to using will established tool already available. the answer is simple:

In conclusion, I hope I don’t need to write the thing. but if no other sutable choices exist, i’ll probably have to write it anyways. as usual, any feedback is appreciated

SIGTERMer

PS: I might also integrate OO.o if it provides the necessary functionality, and if i have enough time to read on the subject.

Today, I realized that i have been tricked into working for microsoft! REALLY!

BY Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

I have started to work for a software solutions company here in kuwait. I had a felling something was wrong but i continued anyway. before i started to work i made my boss aware that i’m a linux guy, i like linux.
he assured me that i wasn’t going near microsoft products or .net. he even offered to install linux on my work pc.
–hapy–
i worked for several weeks with python and linux. last week, i recived word that i’ll be developing software with .net even though the boss told me i wasn’t going anywhere near it.
–shock–
today, i was asked to read up on share point service 3.0 because next week we’ll start working on redoing the company’s site.
–WTF–

now i realize i’ve been terned into a microsoft zombie

Long lives Microsoft.. log lives the psycho-maniac of a company!

ps: I MEAN COME ON! SHARE POINT! F!

As i was searching for a large blob of text written in arabic (to test the longtext variable in MySQL), i stumbled on a wikipedia article on islam. one thing that caught my eyes was the verity of languages in which this topic was covered.
Even hebrew had its version of this article. being the curious person i am, i decided to translate it and see how correct the article is since it was a Featured Article.

This is part of it:

…According to the Muslim perception, the world is divided into two parts: Dar Al – Islam (دار الإسلام) – House Islam, the region has already held a Muslim area, such as Saudi Arabia and some of the Middle East, and Dar al – Sword (دار الحرب) – a place of war, the region where These non-Muslims to live, like Europe. הקמת מדינה לא-אסלאמית באזור של דאר אל-אסלאם מהווה בעיה קשה בהשקפת העולם המוסלמית, ויש מוסלמים הסבורים כי אי אפשר להשלים עם מצב כזה, אלא באופן זמני ומוגבל. The establishment of a state does not – in the area of Islamic Dar Al – Islam is a problem difficult to be seen in the Muslim world, and Muslims believe that is impossible to accept such a situation, but temporary and limited. השריעה מטילה מגבלות על לא-מוסלמים החיים במדינה מוסלמית. Sharia imposes no restrictions on – Muslim Muslims living in the country. רק בני דתות מונותאיסטיות (ובעיקר נוצרים ו יהודים ) רשאים לחיות במדינה מוסלמית והם מוגדרים כ” בני חסות ” החייבים במס גולגולת ונתונים להגבלות. Only son religions Monotaistiot (especially Christians and Jews) are allowed to live in a Muslim country and they are defined as a “sponsor of” skull and have tax restrictions…

Dar al – Sword (دار الحرب)…

I’ve been a muslim all my life, and never have i heard of such a term!
because of people (like the author of that paragraph) who posses an outstanding ability to make things up, a lot of people have the wrong idea about islam. before writing about something, the author must at least know a little about what topic he/she is writing about. at least when writing for a site that many people consider correct.

Don’t believe Everything you hear

SIGTERMer

إختبر قدرة و سرعة موقعك (او مدونتك)

by JOHNNIE W@LKER (and these are only the test servers)

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته…

معظم من يقرء هذا الموضوع يعلم أن المواقع التي يراها على الإنترنت ماهي إلا ملفات ترسل الى متصفحك من قبل برنامج يسمى ال”سرفر”(server)، و الذي يختلف عن الجهاز الذي يعمل عليه (ايضا يسمى “سرفر”).
هناك عدة انواع من برامج السرفرات، ولعل ابرزها:

ا- اباشي (Apache): من أشهر و أفضل برامج “سرفر” في العالم
ب- مايكروسوفت IIS: بصراحه، ليست لدي أي فكره عن سبب إستخدامه حيث أن Apache افضل منه و أرخص (مجاني)

البرنامج الذي يتناوله هذا الموضوع أحد البرامج المدرجة مع اباشي ويسمى ب”ab”. هذا البرنامج يقوم بمحاكاة زوار المواقع حيث يقوم بدخول الى الموقع المراد إختباره كزائر طبيعي (لا يوجد فرق بين نوع السيرفر المراد إختباره، فab يعمل مع جميع أنواع سيرفرات HTTP). و يمكنه محاكات مستخدم واحد او الف مستخدم. و يلي نموذج لهذا (10 مستخدمين و 1000 طلب (request)):

Server Software:        Apache/2.2.11
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        14593 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   0.849 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      14942826 bytes
HTML transferred:       14622186 bytes
Requests per second:    1178.15 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       8.488 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.849 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          17192.28 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        1    3   2.3      3      16
Processing:     1    5  17.6      3     209
Waiting:        0    4  16.1      2     207
Total:          3    8  17.6      6     210

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      6
  66%      6
  75%      7
  80%      7
  90%      8
  95%     17
  98%     19
  99%    159
 100%    210 (longest request)

في المثال السابق يمكن معرف سرعة النقل (17192.28 Kbytes/sec (لأنه localhost)) و معدل الزوار بالثانية (1178.15).

لتنزيل البرنامج، يمكنك زيارة http://www.apache.org. اذا كنت تستخدم أوبونتو، اكتب
sudo apt-get install apache2-utils
في Terminal.

لإستخدامه أكتب
ab -c م -n ع http://www.شيء.com:80/
حيث أن “م” تمثل عدد المتخدمين و “ع” تمثل عدد الطلبات و شيء يمثل الموقع/المدونة المراد إختبارها. يلي مثال بسيط على هذا:

ab -c 1 -n 100 http://araby.com:80/

سيقوم بإختبار http://araby.com كمستخدم واحد خلال عشر طلبات

أختم بالقول ان هذه الأدة مفيده ولكن يرجى إستخدامها لتجريب مواقعكم الخاصة وليس على مواقع الغير لأنها قد تستهلك سرعة السرفر في الرد على الاخرين.

و السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته

SIGTERMer

as i wait for my boss to show up, i’ll write this nice little post about a tool I “discovered” today.
Most of you have probably heard of apache. one tool that comes with it is a benchmarking tool called ab. this tool can be used to preform benchmark tests on any HTTP server (not only apache) and supports a whole bunch of options. most of these options are for special cases, but for a basic setup (99.999999% of the web’s servers*) the following command is all you need:

ab -c [Number of users] -n [Number of requests] http://[domain]:[port]/

where
Number of users: the number of concurrent users the tool should simulate.
Number of requests: the number of requests ab should generate.
Domain: sites domain e.g. example.com
port: normally 80, sometimes 8080. can be something else

this can be used to benchmark local and remote servers. i have posted the output of ab after a ran it to test my server (ab -c 10 -n 1000 http://localhost:80/):

Server Software:        Apache/2.2.11
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        14593 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   0.849 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      14942826 bytes
HTML transferred:       14622186 bytes
Requests per second:    1178.15 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       8.488 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.849 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          17192.28 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        1    3   2.3      3      16
Processing:     1    5  17.6      3     209
Waiting:        0    4  16.1      2     207
Total:          3    8  17.6      6     210

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      6
  66%      6
  75%      7
  80%      7
  90%      8
  95%     17
  98%     19
  99%    159
 100%    210 (longest request)

as you can see, apache -on the same system- can handle 1178.15 users per second at 17192.28 Kbytes/sec (i wouldn’t mind having that kind of internet speed)

now, lets test a remote server (microsoft.com for example, i’m sure they won’t mind the extra load). [ab -c 10 -n 1000 http://microsoft:80/]

Server Software:        Microsoft-IIS/6.0
Server Hostname:        microsoft.com
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        0 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   101.323 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        2
   (Connect: 0, Receive: 1, Length: 0, Exceptions: 1)
Write errors:           0
Non-2xx responses:      999
Total transferred:      423576 bytes
HTML transferred:       0 bytes
Requests per second:    9.87 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       1013.227 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       101.323 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          4.08 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:       13   26  14.4     19      83
Processing:   647  775 1138.3    663   30042
Waiting:        0  743 661.9    661    6704
Total:        664  800 1139.1    684   30060

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%    684
  66%    694
  75%    705
  80%    711
  90%    737
  95%    752
  98%    776
  99%   6676
 100%  30060 (longest request)

This benchmark isn’t as accurate as the previous one. (microsoft keeps closing the connection. the first time it did it after 800 req.s the second time it closed it after 400 req.s i had to force it using the -r option to get the full 1000 requests).
microsoft (at the time of this test) can serve up to 9.8 users per second. epic slug.

ab also has the abilty to gennerate plotting data, but i don’t have time to get into this right now. see ya.

SIGTERMer
___
* this number might not be accurate