Really hoping that Google buys Canonical ...

ruby is a breath of fresh air

Well I couldn't have said it better myself!
https://medium.com/learn-love-code/why-teach-ruby-bac8416c77ba

Cloud based coding

For the last year or so I've been using Cloud9 as my primary development environment.

I cannot recommend this tool highly enough. The combination of Cloud9 with bitbucket for free, private git repository hosting and Heroku, for rock solid affordable application hosting, is unbeatable!

With these tools I now access any and all of my projects from any device, anywhere. On the rare occasion that I do make updates from a different environment, git's distributed model makes accessing these changes through Cloud9 trivial. Deploying changes to Heroku is instant via a simple git push statement.

I've looked at several similar alternatives such as Nitrous, Codio, CodeAnywhere, Koding and Codenvy. I find Cloud9  stands head-and-shoulders above these alternatives - you'll be hard-pressed to find a more productive environment

Phoebe - master coder!

Out of the blue tonight Phoebe tells me I have to teach her to program.

I've got a bit of work to do and I haven't had a chance to think out a well structured approach so I say that we can have a go at the weekend.

However Phoebe wants to learn NOW!

It then strikes me that I have a simple +/- 100 line C program on bitbucket (tictactoe) that I wrote a couple of years ago for Holly to demonstrate the Raspberry Pi in class. I figure we can use this as a starting point and warning Feebs that this will likely be boring as I haven't had a chance to prepare, we get stuck in.

5 minutes late my nine year old daughter is clapping hands with delight as she now has her own bitbucket account :).

Using Phoebe's netbook, running ubuntu 14.04 we do a quick install of git and the gcc compiler from the ubuntu repositories, clone the bitbucket repository, view the code and compile and run the program. Phoebe did all the typing from the command line and is creating directories, changing directories, listing directory contents and viewing files via vim like she's been doing it for months.

A couple of games of tictactoe later and we're off to bed a happy camper.

Introducing your children to something new doesn't always go the way you want; sometimes you lose - however sometimes you win :)

Cloud based productivity suites on Linux

I use Ubuntu as my personal desktop OS. For productivity apps like word processors or spreadsheets I mainly use Google Docs and revert to LibreOffice on the desktop from time to time. For note taking I favour evernote. I also use a livescribe skypen, which syncs my handwritten notes with evernote, which is a great feature too. Occasionally I use Google Keep for simple notes such as shopping lists etc.

Despite my appreciation for evernote, I do also like MS OneNote, which I use on my employers Windows based laptop, fairly regularly. The ability to view the rich note taking ability that OneNote offers, across all my devices is appealing so I thought I'd give Office365 a try to see how their Word, Excel and OneNote cloud based offering stacks up.

Office365 has such huge potential. The ability to share your MS Office docs seamlessly across all devices, especially touch-based devices such as Windows tablets would be an attraction for many.

Sadly, at this stage, Office365 doesn't cut the mustard. It's slow, clumsy (but granted the tool ribbon LOOKS good) and as a Linux user, offers no advantages over Google Docs. Personally, I found the  Google Docs feature set, richer and more user friendly than Office365. For me, it's back to my old favourites and my Office365 30 day trial is on it's way to expiry

Installing MicroOlap for Postgres under WINE on Linux

MicroOlap.com provide a great commercial CASE tool for working with postgres databases. I've been using the software happily since 2006. Since then, I've painstakingly evaluated many different competing opensource and commercial products but have yet to find a product that matches MicroOlap for features, ease of use and robustness.

The software  isn't available in a Linux version, however it does run seamlessly under WINE. As a pre-requisite to installing MicroOlap under WINE you need to install jet40 and mdac28 via winetricks, as documented here: https://www.microolap.com/products/database/mssql-designer/help/Introduction/WineConfiguration.htm

$sh winetricks jet40 mdac28

For a 32 bit OS that is all that is required, however on a 64 bit OS you will get the following error reported:
jet40 install completed, but installed file /home/USER/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files (x86)/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/dao/dao360.dll not found

The "missing" dao360.dll is however available under the /home/USER/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/dao/ directory.

The trick is simply to create a shortcut in the Program Files(x86) path to the dll in the  Program Files path, as follows and then to try the winetricks command again (you may also have to create the dao folder under the Program Files(x86) path first):

$sudo ln -sf /home/USER/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program\ Files/Common\ Files/Microsoft\ Shared/dao/dao360.dll /home/USER/.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program\ Files\ (x86)/Common\ Files/Microsoft\ Shared/dao/dao360.dll

Lastly, if you are by any chance behind an authenticated proxy, you will need to first set the http_proxy environment variable, before running winetricks, as follows:

$http_proxy=http://user:password@proxy_ip_address:proxy_port

$export http_proxy

http://register.gongride.org.au/2013-Sydney-to-Gong-Bike-Ride/skilly/&utm_source=individual&utm_medium=Widget&utm_campaign=

I'm doing the Gong again next week. The ride is in aid of MS Australia. If anyone wants to part with their hard earned cash, they can donate to the cause via my page below:

http://register.gongride.org.au/2013-Sydney-to-Gong-Bike-Ride/skilly/&utm_source=individual&utm_medium=Widget&utm_campaign=

I'm riding the gong in Sydney this year ...
http://register.gongride.org.au/2012-Sydney-to-Gong-Bike-Ride/skilly

Phoebe crawled into our bed a few nights ago after waking up from a nightmare. She dreamt about a T-Rex chasing butterflies, fairies and unicorns. I can't decide whether I'm sad that phoebe had a nightmare or happy that it included fairies, butterflies and unicorns :)

After a long and frustrating struggle, we've finally been granted Australian permanent residence status. It's a huge relief as we no longer have to live with the uncertainty that comes with temporary residence and now have much more stability in terms of schooling, employment, accommodation etc. We're planning on taking some time to relax before we make any more big changes!

The coolest thing about living in Sydney is that you can walk around with a cowboy hat and nobody thinks its odd (at least I think not).

Anzac day today, so a public holiday tomorrow. Off to the NSW Caravan Camping RV and Holiday Supershow this afternoon. Ultimately, camping may turn out to be one of few options available to us in terms of an affordable housing solution in Sydney.

Oh the soft pitter-patter of little pachiderms ...

We slept under the stars in the garden with the girls last night, which caused a bit of excitement. For supper we roasted a balanced meal of mushrooms, cubes of haloumi cheese and marshmallows over the fire. (The haloumi cheese was an experiment but I highly recommend it). Had to carry the girls inside at around 4h30 am when it started raining ... reminded me of camping at Winsome Valley on the Crocodile river, only no exploding bottles of Geoff's home brew during the night.

Had a late morning for a change and went to see "How to train your dragon" - quite good, worth a watch.

Holly and Phoebe have finally gone to bed for the night and are eagerly awaiting the Easter Bunny in the morning, as are Tracey and I.

from the mouths of babes ...

Discussions with Holly around spirituality always bring a smile to my day :)

This evening

Holly: Dad, where does the world come from? I mean who was the first person on earth?

Dad: Well, people have been asking that question for thousands of years. People have different religious beliefs like Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Judaism and many more. Some of these have similar ideas about how the world started and some have very different ideas.

Holly: Dad, what do YOU believe.

Dad: I think that it's more complicated than we can understand at the moment. We have many ideas but we don't really know

Holly: Dad, I think John Smith and Bob Marley created the world

Dad: [temporarily lost for words]

Mom: John Smith?! Which John Smith, the John Smith from Pochahontas?

Holly: No, John Smith from the Springboks.

WTF? I really have to marvel at the thought process that spurned this gem!!

Tuesday evening

Dad: Holly, how were Bahai lessons today?

Holly: Dad, Christ died!

Dad: Really?

Holly: Yes, he was kneeling down in the forest praying and a hunter thought he was a buck and shot him!

I think the time has come for me to put a little more effort into understanding the Bahai faith's beliefs :)

Surf's up!

Well, I feel like an old hand now that I've been at Commonwealth Bank for a few weeks. I'm really enjoying the job, leading a team of Service Designers, converting an existing SOA implementation to integrate with a SAP backend.

Tracey got her car last week and with all of the big things like bank accounts, schooling, jobs, housing, cars etc, out of the way, we're starting to organise the fun things now. We signed Holly up for "Little Nippers" at the local life surfing club and I signed up for surfing lessons every Sunday for the next two and a half months. We both go from 9am to 11am every Sunday. While I'm getting lessons, Holly does board skills and surf acclimatization. We're both quite excited!

We also had a lot of excitement in the household during the week with our first sighting of a possum in the garden. They're mostly regarded as pests here but we're obviously quite pleased to have them - for now! Tux, our cat, is also very pleased but it seems he has dinner in mind - hope we don't have any nasty confrontations. Yesterday I was busy showing Roger and Kerry around the garden with the webcam while we were skyping and I came across the possum again quite by accident. Got some nice close up action, though not too sure how it came across on the camera. The possum was really chilled and let us approach close enough to touch - Phoebe even managed to feed him a leaf by hand.

That's it for this session, I can hear my bed calling. Stay posted for further riveting revelations from Oz!

How aar ya?

It's taken a few embarrasing conversations to realise that when the Ausies ask "How aar ya?", it's a rhetorical question - they don't really want to know how you are. It's more of a greeting like the Poms when they say "awright?"

We've reached another milestone having moved into our new place in Balgowlah. Unfortunately our furniture from SA only arrives towards the end of July, however we've rented some beds, linen, couches, kitchen stuff etc. from a company over here that rents out these things for a month at a time. So we're OK for the meantime! Holly has her first play date tomorrow afternoon with her friend Laura from Tasmania, who started on the same day as her - very excited! Holly's also got her first party invite coming up next week. Assimilation is inevitable - resistance is futile. Phoebe's busy learning letters 'P' and 'B' at school (don't ask me why these two letters - I was too scared to ask in-case they thought I was stupid) and practicing counting to 20 - very cute with her funny pronunciation. Spent a great afternoon with Geoff and Val last weekend - really good catching up again. We're off to their house on Sunday for Val's pork roast - looking forward to it. Tracey is busy working off her bi-annual bout of tonsillitis so had to take a few days off this week after her retail conference, which went quite well. I still haven't found any work yet but I did have an interview with an agency today and I've been put forward for another position by another, so I'm keeping fingers crossed. Tomorrow I'm off to see another South African who I met at the last Sydney Linux User Group meeting to checkout his Ubuntu setup.

All in all things seem to be moving slowly in the right direction!

Captains log, star date whatever.

We've been here for just over a month now and first impressions are great. We're staying in Manly, opposite the ferry. Very handy for getting to town and also on the main bus route. Manly forms the north head of the Sydney harbour area separating the bay and the ocean with about an 800m wide strip of land, so we're in easy walking distance of both the bay and the ocean. The strip that separates the bay and the ocean is called The Corso and has a whole lot of shops, restaurants bars, coffee houses etc. One thing that I have to give the Ausies is that they probably make the best cappuccino I've ever tasted. The weather's been good enough to go for a few swims despite it being winter, our favourite swimming spots are Manly surf beach and the Manly tidal pool. Phoebe has started school at Ecopreschool in Balgowlah and Holly has started school at Balgowlah Heights Public school. School fees are diabolical but both schools are great and Holly and Phoebe are really happy, so all-in-all we're very pleased with the schooling. We start our new lease on a property in Balgowlah on 3rd July, however it seems (at present) that our stuff from home will only be arriving in the middle of July. Not too sure how we're going to be handling that - we'll play it by ear. We've been doing a little bit of casual sight seeing, so far we've been to Taronga zoo twice (once with James and Cherie), the Sydney aquarium, the Manly aquarium, Sydney WildlifeWorld, Luna Park and the Powerhouse museum. We're planning on getting together with Geoff and Val soon at the North Ryde RSL. Tracey is already fully into the swing of things at work and has already popped over to Singapore for a week on business. I've been sending out my CV to a few places every day but so far no takers. At present I'm thinking of continuing to send my CV, but doubling the number of copies for each day that I don't get a response until I wear the bastards down.

I'm twittering on www.twitter.com/mohudu for those who are TRULY starved - for WHAT I'm not sure.
To check out a map of my places click here

Map of the Silvermine MTB route in Tokai Forest

A map of my favourite route in the forest. I try go every weekend - sometimes I get it right

Learning new tools

Having sat down earlier tonight with the express intention of further developing my new drupal based website, I've once again made the classic mistake of first checking out my mail. Needless to say, a couple of hours later, I'm still checking out blog entries on Steve Yegge's site at http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/blog-rants. Not that it's been a waste of time mind you - I've thoroughly enjoyed what I've read so far and I recommend that anyone with an interest in programming check out his site. I ended up on Steve's site by following a link from the clug.org mailing list, which is another group of really knowledgeable people who maintain a well disciplined mailing list and have imparted a wealth of absolute gems in terms of Linux knowledge. The relevance of all this is that something that I read this evening made me decide that I should perhaps consider changing the way that I utilize skills that I've gained or tools that I've mastered. Generally once I'm au fait with a new tool, I tend to stick with it as there's a lot of comfort in the familiar. Going forward, I'm thinking that once I've mastered a new skill in the future, I should immediately put it aside and start using a different tool for the same job. As an example, I've recently had to learn vi in order to edit files on my new server, which doesn't have X installed. Having become quite comfortable with vi (albeit reluctantly at first) I had decided that from now on I'd use vi exclusively as my text editor of choice. However, if I were to apply my latest train of thought, now that I'm comfortable with vi, I should immediately stop using it and instead start using something new (to me anyway) like emacs instead. This way I get experience with a wider toolset and I'm in a better position to judge which tools are best for a particular situation.

Not exactly an earth shattering idea but I'll give it a bash anyway .