Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Archives for June 2009

Brand new Linux User Group of Mauritius website

By 14 Comments

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The new Linux User Group of Mauritius website has been launched. Visit it at:

http://lugm.org/

Interestingly, we have chosen to use WordPress to power the website instead of a CMS like Drupal. The reason for this is that we have a hidden agenda (not so hidden anymore now…): we want people to interact as much as possible. We want YOU to leave a ton of comments (except if you are a bloody spammer…) We would like that all those who use Linux and Open Source Software in Mauritius (whether you do that at work and/or at home) become aware of that website and use it to communicate. So, please, share the URL with all your friends (including those who have been brainwashed by the guys from Redmond. Who knows what might happen?)

Additionally, if you want to contribute an article to the website, you are very much welcome to do so. Send it to our editorial board (at avinash AT noulakaz DOT net for the time being…) and we’ll do the necessary.

Thanks. Linux rules!

Orange expo 2009. What for?

By 23 Comments

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Yesterday, Christina, the kids and I went to Orange expo 2009. We were not very impressed. Granted, the décor was modern and the hostesses were nice looking but the products themselves were lacking. I felt the objective of this expo was to sell instead of to make people discover new ways to use technology… and become empowered in the process. When talking to the people on the stands there, I felt only a few knew about what they were talking about and this was frustrating. For instance, I asked someone from the iPhone stand whether it was possible to buy applications from the Apple App Store with one of his Orange iPhones and he couldn’t answer me satisfactorily… I also spent a few minutes talking to someone demonstrating an ebook reader but he knew his product only superficially and I felt he thought it was pathetically crap… and I personally didn’t! (I would love to get a Kindle 2 for instance.) It was surreal. I was more enthusiatic about his product than him.

Anya, my 6-year old daughter, summarised my feelings when she later said in the car: “I would rather have been to a real expo.”

Announcing avinash.meetoo.name

By 18 Comments

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I am happy to announce the official launching of

http://avinash.meetoo.name/

As you can see, I have bought the meetoo.name domain (and .name is really a top-level domain like .com or .net!) I spent a few days thinking about what to host there, discussing with some people on Twitter (thanks Saajid!) and finally come up with what you can see above.

At first sight, the webpage looks simple but, in fact, making it has allowed me to learn a lot of new tricks. For example, the XHTML is fully semantic (look at the source to understand what I mean.) Layout is entirely done by CSS courtesy of a framework called Blueprint. And I’ve used Javascript to modify the targets of the images as strict XHTML does not support the target attribute. Furthermore, I’ve used powerful caching strategies which mean that all the images, scripts and CSS files are only downloaded once on the client no matter how many times the page is accessed. And the result is that the page is quick to load and is valid XHTML and valid CSS.

Naturally, clicking on the various images will send you to the various websites and social networking sites I like. Have fun exploring

http://avinash.meetoo.name/