Admittedly, I’ve not synced any PRC files before today. That does not mean I’ve never Hotysnc my Centro before. Nor does it mean I’ve never installed any Palm program since the last few months that I’ve been on Ubuntu. Usually I’d have my cable in my bag and being the lazy bum that I am, I’d just Bluetooth the files over. Today however, I did have my cable out (needed to charge the thing) and guess what? I couldn’t figure out how to sync the damn files over!

Turns out, I need to drag the file to the tiny gpilot applet on my deskbar. Man, can’t these things be documented somewhere? But there ya go, it can be done. To those still using the archaic Palm OS, that’s the trick.

I’m going!!! Got my confirmation email yesterday! I’m freakin’ excited! The last talk that I found very memorable was the one by Bazuki of Reuters. Here’s an excerpt from National Geographic’s site:

SOMEWHERE IN CHINA, a new series on National Geographic Channel, premieres on October 12 at 19:00. SOMEWHERE IN CHINA sends Peter and Jeff back to China – where they lived as children – to document the nation in the midst of social reinvention. The series allows them to demonstrate what they do best, taking truly stunning photographs and film footage that make the series a visual feast for viewers.

Don’t miss the chance to get a behind the scenes experience with Peter and Jeff Hutchens!

Somewhere In China Photography & Film Workshop

See unlike Microsoft Office, this one’s free to download and use, no strings attached. Updates are free too. Installing in Ubuntu is as simple as:

1. Uninstalling the previous version (sudo apt-get autoremove openoffice*.*)
2. Downloading the new version (wget http://openofficeorg.secsup.org/stable/3.0.0/OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz) *feel free to use any other mirrors
   
3. Extracting it (tar -xvzf OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz)
4. Navigating to the extracted folder (cd OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358)
5. Installing it (sudo dpkg -i *.deb)
6. Placing the proper shortcuts for your desktop (cd desktop-integration, followed by, sudo dpkg -i openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9354_all.deb)

It should appear in the Office menu. Nope, running command-lines are not necessary, but heck, it’s simpler coz then you’d be able to copy-paste from the web into the console and let the installation run.

Source: Installing OpenOffice.org 3.0 - Linux Magazine Online, Install OpenOffice 3.0 Final in Ubuntu | Quick Tweaks

Gaara, Hidden Sand Jinchuuriki

Originally uploaded by Eng Bernie

It’s been a while since I posted any photos on my blog. So here one. Photog info: 85mm @ f2.2 for the bokeh. Larger apertures causes them to be less defined. I wanted it this way. ISO1000, handheld @1/8 shutter for the bokeh to register. SB600 fired to the left of the camera.

Hold on a second, 1/8 to handhold a 85mm lens? Impossible? I have super-steady hands? Wrong. Just turn off all the lights, that way, the camera can’t ’see’ the blurry Gaara due to camera shake. Only when the flash fires, does the camera register Gaara. Since flash happens only for fractions of a second, the final image has a sharp Gaara in it.

This one is bound to be another hit. It had just finished airing in Japan (read: full torrent download available!) and continues from Macross Zero. I won’t give away any spoilers, rest assured there’s plenty of action (ow gawd the CGI Valkyries are sweeeeeet!), a new race of bad aliens, twisting storyline, and of course, lots of singing (it wouldn’t be Macross otherwise). Even the Zentradis are back (well, they never did went away, hehe).

I’m currently getting my hands on the original soundtrack for Macross Frontier. The songs are pretty good (but then again most songs for popular animes are good) and is worth downloading listening to.

This thing’s still hot on YouTube and a host of other video hosting sites, so unfortunately I can’t find an online clip to share. You’ll just have to trust me when I say it’s good and worth wasting 25×25 minutes of your life

rsync is a tool common to the Linux operating system. What’s unique about rsync is that after the initial backup, subsequent ones only backup updated files. This means that backups are really fast (important if you are backing up to remote directories via the network). After switching over from Windows not too long ago, I had not been backing up my documents, something I tend to do regularly. Since source codes gets backed up to the cvs, this is the only backup that I need. Here’s a quick command to do rsync:

rsync -arvu –no-o –no-g [source dir] [target dir]

Here’s a breakdown of what the rsync command does: a= archive, r= recursive, v= verbose, u= update, –no-o=do not change ownership, –no-g=do not change group. Since I backup to a flash drive, the target dir for Ubuntu users would be /media/[flash drive name]. I actually backup 3 dirs to the drive; my linux documents directory and 2 other windows documents dir. To automate the thing, I put the 3 rsync commands into a backup.sh script that I run every few days or so. If you’re running the backup to a remote directory, you can even cron the backup script to run periodically. Cool eh?

Source: How to use rsync to backup files in Linux « Midspot, rsync chgrp error since upgrading to 7.04 - Ubuntu Forums