Planning the next Hanoi Tweetup

It is time for another Hanoi Tweetup. Mien who organised the last Hanoi Tweetup has moved to Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City. So I decided to pitch in and organise the next Hanoi Tweetup.

What is a Tweetup?

A tweetup is an event where people who Twitter come together to meet in person. Normally we connect with our friends online after we have met them. At a tweetup you meet the people you might only otherwise know virtually. Like finally putting a name to a face, a tweetup is a great opportunity to really connect with the people who you follow on twitter.

When is it?

November 11, 2011 was selected as the date for the next Hanoi Tweetup by a public vote (doodle.com/4bn2isdxi5r4rv9z).

Where is it?

We haven't decided the venue for the Hanoi Tweetup. The Word Vietnam is throwing a party on the same evening. Am trying to resolve this conflict and would announce a venue in a few days.

Help Us!

Unfortunately I have to travel to Berlin for Mozilla Camp soon. Anyone interested in helping us coordinate the Hanoi Tweetup activities on November 11 ?. Please leave a comment or tweet me back @playingwithsid.

Learn more

If you have a Twitter account, you can contact us with hashtag #hanoitweetup in your message. You can also follow us using this twitter search page (#hanoitweetup). Don't forget to bookmark this link.

PS: Don't worry if you don't tweet. Come and meet some great people at the next Hanoi Tweetup.

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Barcamp Phnom Penh 4

Travelled to Cambodia to attend Barcamp Phnom Penh 4 this week. It is the second largest Barcamp in Asia, over 1500 people attended the event this year. The barcamp's are user-generated conferences (or unconferences) with open, participatory workshop-events, the content of which is provided by participants.  Barcamp Phnom Penh 4 attracted dozens of foreign barcampers from all over the world. The barcamp featured talks related to Blogging, Entrepreneurship, Android Development, Web Technologies, Mobile App development, Security, Mapping Technology and Localization.



The young and enthusiastic team of volunteers led by Be Chantra organized a great event. Quite impressed with the spirit of Cambodian youth and zest for learning.  Last month Mozilla helped organize the Open Cambodia event.  My trip to Cambodia is to engage the Mozilla contributors and kickstart Mozilla Khmer Localization (L10n) team.

Mozilla Khmer Localization (L10n) Sprint 



Open Institute has been developing KhmerOS to provide local language computing environment for Cambodia. However their decision to change the name of Mozilla Firefox and other Open Source software has fractured the contributor community. I hope the Mozilla Khmer Localization(L10n) sprint and my interactions with KhmerOS team would pave way to remedy this situation.



Vannak (@evannak) of KhmerOS project has been spearheading the Mozilla Khmer Localization(L10n) work. The sprint was delivered in English and Khmer by Vannak and me on the first day of the Barcamp Phnom Penh 4. After my presentation, Vannak did a practical demonstration of Khmer localization by translating Firefox strings using Narro web based translation tool. A lively discussion about the linguistic nuances of Khmer language followed.



The response to the sprint was very positive. Many people expressed their interest to join the Mozilla  Khmer Localization (L10n) team. We hope to organize more such events to engage the contributors in Cambodia.

Mozilla Khmer L10n presentation, Barcamp Pnnom Penh 4

Mozilla Khmer Localization Sprint

Vennak (Mozilla Khmer L10n Team)

Khmer Localization Using Narro

Barcampers Enjoy Khmer Food

Barcamps are great! 

Khmer Translation Talk

Google App Engine talk by

Guy Flysher (Google)

Localization of 'Open Data' Cambodia

by John Weeks

KhmerOS's Norbert Klein makes a point

Khmer Unicode on Android by

Stephen Gibberd (finder.com.kh)

Mobile Learning with iPad by

Adrian Tan (Square Crumbs)

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The Search ends, Bastard Original Hacker TV Series

Few weeks ago I wrote on my blog Do you know this old TV Series about a hacker?. From the other side of the world Niko found the answer. This TV series called "Bastard (1989)" had started my fascination with computers decades ago.

Der Bastard (TV mini-series 1989) 

Niko found my blog post using google search engine and wrote this comment.

I remember watching this show as a kid in the 80's in Slovek TV, dubbed in slovak.

I remember a scene, where the main character is trying to hack into a computer with his Commodore 64 ans a vintage modem. As he tries to guess the password, he types in "bastard" and it works.

I think we're talking about the same show - because the dog in the main title is a bastard...

Gee I would LOVE to see it again, I just remembered it today and started googling... that's how I stumbled upon your blog.

As kids we knew about Brute-force attack. I used the method to guess our parents long distance Subscriber trunk dialing (STD) unlock code. Niko remembered the key detail of the show and correct password 'bastard' (amazing Niko!). Ten minutes later he found complete information about the TV show including the title track and few scenes from the TV show .

I found the show!!! It was called BASTARD, it was german, shot for the WDR german tv station.

Look at this! http://www.deutsches-filmhaus.de/filme_gesamt/s_gesamt/stark_ulrich.htm

there is an article in Der Spiegel magazine (in german) about the show here: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13495823.html

and this should be the title song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtI1Toq-N1A

And this is the imdb page for the series although the picture is not the right one I think... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096541.

Bavaria Media Television website provides further information about Bastard (1989) TV series.

Paul David, computer expert and ingenious hacker, is caught in the electronic meshes of a international data network and is confronted with criminals operating behind the scenes of a worldwide organisation, which uses the most modern communication technology for cleverly coordinated, criminal actions. Then Paul is suspected of double murder. When desperately trying to escape the noose he is surrounded by more and more people who obviously have the same aim in common: to catch him in a lethal trap. Only Dettmar Mushaake, expert for computer crime from the regional police department, seems to be on Paul's side - and, of course, Diddle, a mongrel who is anything but a lapdog. He tracks down ambushes, delivers messages and leads Paul's pursuers astray.

You can download full information about the show here.

Perhaps I should write to Bavaria Media Television to let them know that they have a cult classic, They might even consider a DVD release. :)

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Setup RubyGems path in ubuntu

Building Virtual Machines (VM) using Vagrant this week. Unfortunately the Ubuntu Natty does not add Ruby Gems directory to system path variable. Using Ruby Gems on command line is tedious if you have to type the full path prefix everytime. For example I have to type /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/vagrant .

Instead I used the solution suggested in libgems-ruby bug #145267 .

sudo echo "PATH=/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin:$PATH" > /etc/profile.d/rubygems1.8.sh 

Perhaps someone could add this to Vagrant Ubuntu installation documentation.

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Gitbox Git GUI tool

Here is another post in the series of the posts about tools that makes developers life simpler. Git was developed as distributed revision control system with an emphasis on speed. However in real world developers are hampered by lack of good graphical tool to manage their git repositories.

Software developer David Clarke (@onecyrenus) discovered this the hard way. He started using Gitbox application to manage his numerous git repositories and found that it helps speedup his work. I love the simiplicity of Gitbox user interface and it really seems to make 'version control as easy as mail'.

I would love to hear about your experiences with Git. Do tell me about your favorite Git GUI and why.

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Do you know this old TV Series about a hacker ?

Update (20 Oct 2011) : Niko helped us find the answer to this question, read more about the search ends for the TV Show.

What has been your defining moment in life? It is a difficult question. Let me share one defining moment of my childhood. My fascination with computers started with a TV show about computer hackers on India's national television. It was dubbed in English, produced by some foreign (German?) television . I vividly remember the starting scene of the show with a dog running towards the screen, jumping over the opening credits of the TV show.

We'll the credits were actually in some foreign language. The characters looked like German to me, but I might be wrong. The name of show sounded something like 'Computer Spezialist'. The TV show was about a computer hacker who gets mixed up with some criminals who plan to rob a bank. The shows central character is a dog who lost its master in hands of these crooks. Does that ring a bell?

I remember looking up from the TV screen to ask my uncle 'How can this guy get into a bank using a computer?'. My uncle said banks in developed countries were all connected with phones and satellites. It seems so amazing to my young mind. In those days the TV had one channel and getting a telephone would mean 3 years of waiting-list and personal computers would cost an arm and leg.

Do you have any information about this TV series?. I would love to watch it again.

I couldn't find much information about this TV show on Internet except for this blog post. The comments on this blog post might give you more detailed description about the show.

Anonymous said...


It was very nice reading your blog. And you seem the right person to pose this question that i had for a long time -- do you happen to remember a German crime/thriller show that used come on DD1 sometime on Sat or Sun early evening (5 pm 'ish i guess) and involved some computer hacking as well ..and had a very nice soundtrack in its title song ..something involving these words - fighting for his life ..heart of stone. it does not seem Derrick, Der Fahnder, or Der Alte ..but i might be wrong as i really do not remember much ...except that i know the tune of the title song. thanks,

leoNYdassaid...


Yes I do remember that series and the catchy title music. I have vague memories about it since not many episodes were actually aired. It was a series about hacking and I am quite sure it's not German. Well I guess thats as much as I can remember.

asif said...


Dear leoNYdas


i m really thankfull to God ..i came across ur blog


i am desperate to find this tv episode-this wud fall under the categories(drama,thriller and suspense).the name of the series is Computer Specialst(the second word SPECIALIST was spelled differently so i guess this wud be some russian or some other language-european series)...the beginning of the series shows a little dog running towards the screen.the series has beautifull title song..bit metallic or rock ..


"Hearts of Stones".i can faintly remember the lyrics but heres wat i can recall the best

"hearts of stones..ready for hearts of stones ..there is one man....

compromise..."


also the main character i think is a hacker..and he gets in touch with the bad men...of these one the opposite lead character's name is Elizabeth..she is a european police officer..a female spying i guess.also the other names i can recall is Powell..a bald guy i think is the main villian.


the hacker stays with some lady called "teresa" if i m not wrong and is totally involved in computers...


there are few scenes i can recall: the one of bomb explosion ..they kept under the keyboard and the hacker is made to drive a car into some remote place .. a castle ..where the victim who survived the bomb has been under house arrest.


also the female police officer her name elizabeth(she speaks in some other language at times) in the series kills a man in the hotel room with cyanide (she breaks a bit of the cyanide from the pill and mixes it in the drink,she carries the cyanide pill in her finger ring,,,this was shown cleary).elizabeth also has a locket or necklace with the two letters EP...and when the hacker asks her wat does this stand for ..she replies Elizabeth Powell..to which the hacker replies that its European Police.



there is also one scene when a male police officer is hanging from the window from the hackers home and the bad guys are unaware of thi police officer hanging.


in some other episode a man is murdered who comes in to investigate..he orders the hacker to remove his trousers and the man is killed as some one pulls off the carpet beneath his legs and he dies instantly..later his body his dumped in some remote place wrapped in the same carpet he was standing on....and also when the other detectives arrives to investigate the matter ...a person walks in the room and brings in the carpet of same type and he says that he is a carpet cleaner....



plz mail to me as i believe this series was aired in the 1990s ..plzzz somebody help and if u recall these series and let me know-


thanking you

Abhishek said...


Nice Post..

can anyone recollect the name of another detective/thriller..again agerman serial..where the protagonist was a techie guy...it had a very good title track..

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Mytop MySQL Monitoring Tool

If you are a developer or systems administrator who know the MySQL server performance in real time. MyTop tool is just for you. Designed like the traditional 'top' unix program Mytop displays MySQL server information, current mysql processes. It also lets you view complete query information and allows you to kill any MySQL processes. You can get mytop program using systems package installer or download it from mytop project website.

Usage:

You can launch the mytop in the system terminal using the following command line options.

$ mytop -u username -p password -d database

Press f to view full description of selected MySQL query and k to kill the the MySQL process.

You press ? anytime to view more keyboard commands.

 $  mytop -u username -p password -d database

MySQL on localhost (5.1.54-1ubuntu4)                    up 0+06:01:44 [16:26:50]
 Queries: 91.0    qps:    0 Slow:     0.0         Se/In/Up/De(%):    21/00/00/00
              qps now:    0 Slow qps: 0.0  Threads:    4 (   2/   0) 00/00/00/00
 Cache Hits: 17.0  Hits/s:  0.0 Hits now:   0.0  Ratio: 89.5% Ratio now:  0.0%
 Key Efficiency: 100.0%  Bps in/out:   0.2/ 19.0   Now in/out:   8.3/ 2.1k

        Id      User         Host/IP         DB      Time    Cmd Query or State 
        --      ----         -------         --      ----    --- -------------- 
        50      root       localhost      narro         0  Query show full proce
        53     narro       localhost      narro        24  Sleep                
        54     narro       localhost      narro        24  Query SELECT DISTINCT
        45      root       localhost                  543  Sleep                

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Help Test Narro Online Translation Tool

Narro is a web application that allows online software translation and coordination. Some of the Mozilla L10n teams use this tool for their localization work. The tool was developed by Mozilla Romanian L10n team member Alexandru Szaz to make localization simple and easy to use.

Please take a moment to test the Narro 2.0 and report any problems and offer feedback to make Narro better.

https://l10n.mozilla.org/narro/projects.php

Please use Narro issue tracker file to your bug reports.

http://code.google.com/p/narro/issues/list

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