Logos of Crafts

A new start

CK — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:47:20 +0000

On early October 2010 I started working with Exodus S.A. in Athens, Greece, following my return from Germany. I was appointed as the coordinator of NEPHRON+, a multi-million, high-risk, ambitious EU research project aiming to help End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) patients with a wearable device for 24×7 haemodialysis. This period was challenging (moving in a completely new domain) and rewarding every time we achieved some next step towards this great vision. I feel grateful that I was given the chance to be part of this amazing consortium and I wish them the best of luck in the remaining two years of the project.

Tomorrow I’m stepping down from that position, ready to start chasing one more dream. I have an itch on my back that I need to scratch, it’s been there for a couple of years now and it just won’t go away. The time is far from ideal to start a company, but hey — no pain, no gain.

So wish me luck, and stay tuned for more information in the near future!

A short poll

CK — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:00:06 +0000

I’m doing a 1-question poll. Let’s assume you can get the following web-based services, all under your own full control (domain name, private data –not “in the cloud”–, possible to export, etc):

Intuitive wiki system supporting WYSIWYG editing and file attachments;
TODO list management (specifically: GTD-based), possibly with Android/iPhone integration;
Bookmarks management a la del.icio.us (without the social features);
Standards-based calendar and address-books, that can be integrated with your desktop PIM (Thunderbird+Lightning for sure) or used over a web interface;
Your own non-relaying private mail server (incoming + outgoing) with encryption/authentication, anti-spam controls, and Ajax-based webmail;
Possibly a dropbox-like service;
…and a popular, easy to use CMS for your personal web site.

All of that in a 1st-class data center with power and network redundancy.

The question is: Would you be interested in that as a commercial (managed) product, and how much would you be willing to pay per month, including email-based support?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Update: Just to clarify, this would be addressing privacy-concerned individuals; it is not meant to target large commercial entities, who require different levels of support and integration anyway.

Function references in Scala

CK — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:07:16 +0000

I’m starting to learn Scala, and have some trouble coming to terms with its syntax. Maybe I’m spoiled by Python. In any case, here’s an example of things that I find annoying:

scala> def f(x:Int):Int = x f: (x: Int)Int


  scala> def g(f:Int=>Int, y:Int, b:Boolean):Int = if (b) g(f, y, false) else y

  g: (f: (Int) => Int,y: Int,b: Boolean)Int

scala> def h=f :6: error: missing arguments for method f in object $iw; follow this method with `_' if you want to treat it as a partially applied function def h=f ^ scala> def h=f _ h: (Int) => Int

So basically, although it is fine to use just f when defining function g, in the definition of function h it is necessary to postfix f with an underscore.

I haven’t read the language reference yet, and there may be good reasons to do it like this (although I can’t think of any right now), but the inconsistency is quite confusing.

Looking for VPS provider

CK — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:01:58 +0000

The home server project is more or less over, following a power outage today. I’d be very willing to keep it always on, but if I’m to use this as a service to rely upon, I have to get such disruptions out of the way. So I’m looking for an unmanaged VPS provider, who should a) be relatively cheap, b) be relatively reliable (three 9s would be nice), c) have a/the data center in Europe, d) offer Xen with plans between 512 and 768 MB guaranteed RAM and e) allow me to install the system myself or accept ready-made images, so that I can have the disk data encrypted.

If you know of such a provider, please leave a comment here or reply on twitter at @ckotso — thanks.

My personal little “cloud”

CK — Tue, 24 May 2011 21:12:11 +0000

Here it is, and it works perfect:

You will need a VPS or a home server. I’m using the wonderful, fan-less Shuttle XS35GT with a small SSD, as it is also my HTPC
A Linux distribution. I very highly recommend Mint 10 if you’re using the XS35GT so that you get a working audio + wireless and a stable XBMC, otherwise you may wish to use an LTS release like Ubuntu 10.04 or Mint 9.
An installation of eGroupware, to use its addressbook and calendar modules with its GroupDAV and SyncML synchronization facilities. You can easily install eGroupware using the deb repository provided on the project’s site.
Thunderbird, Lightning and the SOGo connector to support GroupDAV. Make sure you don’t use the “SOGo Lightning” extension; at least for me it didn’t work. Then subscribe Lightning to the eGroupware calendar and addressbook. Don’t bother with TODO items, unless a flat list is your thing.
A SyncML application to synchronize your phones. My Nokia E71 comes installed with one, while on an Android you can use the wonderful Synthesis client. Synthesis offers clients for additional platforms, but I only tried the one for Android.
The amazing Tracks application for GTD. It takes some effort to install, but it is totally worth it. You can also subscribe Lightning to various views of Tracks exported calendars. I’ve subscribed only to the one for due items, so that they appear with deadlines in my calendar. There are also two mobile applications to sync with Tracks, one for the iOS and one for the Android. Unfortunately the latter doesn’t work yet with Tracks 2.0, but it looks like it’s only a matter of time before it does.
…and, finally, Mindtouch Core (DekiWiki) as my data sink. There’s also a for-pay version, but I’m using the free/open-source one, which is fine. It’s also installed via a deb repository. I guess others may prefer some other platform, but for me Deki is perfect.

Then, your router set to post its address to DynDNS/No-IP or a similar service, and some CNAMEs in your domain to point to the hostname you have chosen (or simply the address of your VPS). All three services (Mindtouch, Tracks, eGroupware) are powered by Apache2, on virtual servers over HTTPS.

The data is yours!

PS: Special thanks to Yannis for suggesting to use eGroupware instead of SOGo+Funambol. A great improvement, indeed.
PPS: I only accept IaaS to fall under the term “cloud computing”, hence the quotes in the title.

Suspending a Dell 6410 w/ Mint 11RC

CK — Fri, 20 May 2011 09:34:44 +0000

If you just installed Linux Mind 11 RC on a Dell Latitude 6410 and, while on wireless, your system crashes when trying to suspend it, try this:

sudo mkdir /var/run/wpa_supplicant

This should fix it.

Nokia going Windows. Share price going south.

CK — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:09:43 +0000

Not much to say about this. One only needs to read the comments of developers following the announcement that Nokia completely "changes strategy", hand-to-hand with Microsoft. I guess most people expected that, ok, Nokia will test the waters and develop some Windows devices. Or at least that was my assumption. Unfortunately, such close partnership is quite reasonably expected to kill Symbian (which would be ok IMHO), Qt and Meego altogether. Microsoft is not known for its affection towards competitors. The PR talk by Nokia is not convincing.

I guess, it’s not only developers who are not convinced. During the day, Nokia’s share price in the DAX fell by some 14%:

At NYSE, as we speak, the share price falls by some 16%:

Clever move to go Microsoft, guys. Everyone has lots of faith in this, as you see.

The upcoming WebOS ecosystem

CK — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 07:00:10 +0000

I was particularly impressed by the HP announcements yesterday, that in addition to a couple of new phones and a tablet based on WebOS, it is also planning desktops/notebooks with the same OS. The main reason being, HP seems to be the second behemoth in a few days that realizes the obvious: Offering a complete ecosystem attracts developers; and a large range of applications attracts users — given, of course, a decent OS in the first place. Apple did this and has been winning the race so far. Microsoft does offer an ecosystem as such, but it doesn’t seem capable to capitalize on it, presumably because the platform/OS itself is not good enough. Android is apparently managing very well on the mobile world, but Google’s proposal on the desktop, ChromeOS, does not integrate on a development level (even though Google’s services make up for that to a large extent). Although this does not hurt Android-phones sales, I believe it is only due to the fact that Android is an open system, so phone manufacturers feel safe to base their businesses upon it.

I really think that WebOS can remain (become?) one of the big players in the future, given this new strategy of HP, its deep pockets, and the system’s quality. If I was a developer, I would be more than happy to create applications for this platform — especially if they have "write once, run everywhere" properties with as little customization as possible.

Hopefully, Nokia will also build on a similar strategy with Meego — even if it must divert towards Windows/Android for a while, to keep the stock holders happy. It would then have the additional advantage of offering an open platform (like Android is) to attract other manufacturers, but compete on device quality where it shines. Revenue from desktop H/W sales would be a bonus.

Blogilo

CK — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:07:19 +0000

BTW, the previous post was the first one I wrote with Blogilo, and I like this tool quite a lot. Simple, and it just works.

Steve, I won

CK — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 03:01:44 +0000

After spending a considerable amount of time (yes, George, I know) looking at my options and trying various ways to synchronize desktop PIM data with my Nokia E71 phone, I eventually managed to make it work. It wasn’t piece of cake, and it requires running on my laptop some additional services, which I would not otherwise run. But it works. The main problem to deal with, is understanding your options. I tried many different setups with various combinations of Kontact / Evolution / Thunderbird+Lightning / Funambol / SOGo / OpenSync / SyncEvolution. Some of them appear to work for some people, but none worked for me in complete. Some that worked partially were

Evolution + SyncEvolution + Funambol, but unfortunately Evolution was giving me so much pain re: my IMAP severs, that I just couldn’t stay with it;
Thunderbird + SOGo connector + Funambol, but after creating TODOs and events I could not edit them anymore (this is a known bug, which remains unresolved).

Eventually, what worked for me was a combination of Kontact, Citadel, Groupware Sync server (customized Funambol release) and the Funambol SyncML client on the phone (although Nokia’s native client is used underneath and would apparently work directly if I tried it). This setup works almost out of the box (well that’s sort of a euphemism, admittedly); if you want to reproduce it, here’s how to do it:

First, install Citadel. This acts as a bridge between Kontact and Funambol, using GroupDAV on one side, and a Funambol connector on the other. Kontact is a full GroupDAV implementation, and so is Citadel. The alternative is eGroupware, but Citadel’s being fully open with no "upgraded" versions was the key factor to try it first. I never tried eGroupware eventually. The installation of Citadel (from source, as I could not find a Fedora package) was smooth and just happened. Configuration was, more or less, painless.

Then, I created a new KDE standard calendar resource from within System Settings, using GroupDAV and connecting to the local Citadel server. This bypasses akonadi, which has plenty of problems to solve, and is used immediately within Kontact (KOrganizer). Works like a charm. Following that, there was the biggest challenge: Going through akonadi for contacts. Unfortunately, KAddressbook cannot bypass akonadi; using a GroupDAV-based contact store must necessarily go through it. Until I managed to get it right, I had to fight with data store inconsistencies and delayed synchronization, disappearing contacts, and the like. Eventually it worked, when I created the new akonadi addressbook resource via KAddressbook and, before inserting any contacts, I set (via "Folder properties") an "Interval check time" of 2 min, "Local cache timeout" of 5 min. Apparently the exact values are semi-random and don’t play an important role, but it is (I guess) important to deactivate ""Inherit cache policy from parent". Based on the set up described above, contacts are always synchronized without problems, albeit with a delay of up to 5 minutes.

Having completed all that, it was time to install the Groupware Sync server, which was as easy as it gets. It knows where to find the local Citadel installation, and the built-in users are created automatically based on Citadel accounts. So not much more to do on this side either.

The last step was to install the Funambol SyncML client on the phone, and set it up. After some trial-and-error, I got it working. One of the things I had to do was to change the Funambol server’s port from 8080 to 80. As I am not running any other services on that port, it’s ok for me. I guess that eventually it would also work with 8080, if I would commit some more time to figure out the correct settings on the phone.

To make sure there’s a clean start, I removed all contacts and calendar entries from the phone — they were outdated anyway. The Funambol client has an option to do that very easily. Then I chose to synchronize everything, and, voila! My Kontact addressbook and calendar entries made it on the phone.

While using it I found out that addressbook entries are not synchronized when the default phone of the contact is a cell phone number (apparently a bug, it’s ok if it’s declared as a land line), and also that contact photos are not sync’ed (who cares). Perhaps these would be ok with eGroupware, but I’m not interested to change only because of that. Citadel’s appalling web interface? Yes, that could make me switch.

The result is much more important for me than simply synchronizing my PIM data. It means that, to a large extent, I am now safe from lock-in. I am running my PIM using an open integrated solution (Kontact) on an open desktop (KDE) and an open platform (Linux), so I’m safe enough on this side. Citadel is GPL as well, and Funambol is also open source (not sure about the exact license). All are running on my own infrastructure, and the data remains with me. On the phone side, I can use anything with a SyncML client available — and apparently, there’s one for most of the interesting phones/platforms out there. So I could simply switch to a different phone & OS, without caring too much about PIM synchronization. Which is, honestly, a blessing.

I’d love to hear if this article solved similar problems for you, so just leave a comment if you find it useful!