Noulakaz

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

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Google in Mauritius: Day 1 on Twitter

By 16 Comments

20090903-gmauritiusday1

Today I was at the G-MauritiusDay2009 conference organised by Google and the Board of Investment and I spent the whole day listening to the Google engineers and twittering about the event. Here is my Twitter transcript:

(about 9 hours ago)
Twittering from G-Mauritius Day! The Wifi connection (being shared by 100's…) is slow but it works :-)

(about 9 hours ago)
I recognise a lot of friends: Anwar and Raj from the UoM, loads of ex-UoM students, friends from RCC, ex-MCCI colleagues etc.

(about 9 hours ago)
Starting now… with a promo video of Google… as if we needed one :-)

(about 9 hours ago)
Speeches are starting. Boring as usual… up to now.

(about 9 hours ago in reply to fadilfr)
@fadilfr Raise your hand fadil so that I can see you :-)

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Sascha Brawer, lead engineer at Google Zurich, starts his keynote address.

(about 8 hours ago in reply to girishmungra)
@girishmungra The speech was, ahem, a 3/10 speech :-)

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Adewale Ostineye, Google London engineer starts talking.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu … history of the web. I'm not too happy he said the web was crap in 1995. It was not.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu You should bet on the web.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu open standards HTML5, atom, openid, oauth

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google, Apple, etc. are behind HTML5 so you can bet on it succeeding…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu geolocation api allows a webpage to know one's location. Of course, the user has to allow this first.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu HTML5 + offline (web workers, appcache, etc.) for more powerful client software.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari all collaborate. The browsers are becoming really good. Chrome succeeds Acid2 & most of Acid3.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Web browsers have excellent Javascript engines now. Try http://www.youtube.com/html5 for a non-Flash version of YouTube…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Test the speed of your webpage with the page-speed Firefox extension.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of Ajax apps now. Still a bit too generic for my liking…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu API-driven development is the future. Twitter gets more traffic through its API than its web interface…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu "The mobile web site is changing from being the low-end website to being the high-end website"

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu There is no difference between a laptop and a (good) mobile phone now… as they run the same browser.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Going to give an interview to the MBC

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu demo of Picassa, Friendfeed, etc. without polling, hence minimal use of bandwidth.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of cloud computing now: Google App Engine & Amazon EC2

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to have a look at http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ The name is crap :-)

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Someone is having fun playing with Google Map Maker…

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu When using Pubsubhubhub, the hubs run on the cloud: Google App Engine.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu GoogleMapMaker http://bit.ly/10l7qM does not work at this moment. Google is surely seeing 100's of requests from the same IP…

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu GoogleMapMaker includes a wiki to discuss about edits before they become permanent.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu I'm yearning for some code :-) I would like to know more about the Google Maps API…

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Easy way to use Google Maps API. See http://bit.ly/wCQZ

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Yeah! Google Maps API code. It's really powerful and easy to use. Javascript closures are used to make the code more compact.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Maps API Wizard found at http://bit.ly/xbgAL It generates HTML code.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Amazon EC2 is instance based. You have to manage your own "machines"

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Fabric based clouds (like App Engine) allow you to deploy to an environment and Google decides how many servers should be used.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu http://bit.ly/aIxdA Sandbox: no threads, no native code, no filesystem access, no sockets, must respond to requests within 30s.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu App Engine only hosts web apps. Receive requests and send back response. Shared-nothing architecture: stateless.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Java session API works using Datastore http://bit.ly/ZDDhQ and Memcache http://bit.ly/cdYrn

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Google App Engine applications are written in Python by the way. I forgot to mention that.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Every language which runs on the JVM runs on the Google App Engine: Java 5 and above, JRuby, Clojure

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Quota: under 500 queries per second is free :-)

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Distributed datastore based on Bigtable http://bit.ly/y9lw4 Looks a lot like a hashmap instead of being a RDBMS. GQL for queries.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu UrlFetch library / Send email / Image manipulation / Optional authentication using Google accounts… (including gafd accounts)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu cron has just been added to the App Engine. 20 actions max.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Experimental feature of Google App Engine: task queues (essentially delayed requests and responses.) Increases scalability.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Adewale Ostineye likes Python and he is raving about Jython…

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Google App Engine gallery of applications: http://appgallery.appspot.com/

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Someone asked about polymorphic queries. Google will answer later. See http://bit.ly/EWXhr

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Polymorphic queries are just queries which return rows from derived tables too. SELECT * FROM animal returns DOGs and CATs.

 

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Relaxing for 5 minutes before a hopefully great app engine hands-on with the Google Web Toolkit http://bit.ly/18FoZ2 and Java.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Java, Eclipse, Javascript, HTML to be covered. I need to be convinced that a UI can be *easily* done in Java :-)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu We're starting HELLO WORLD using Google Web Toolkit, GeoGuestBook, maps, gears and geolocation.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian Harris Technical Account Manager

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Starting a new Web Application Project in Eclipse. Need to add the App Engine Eclipse plugin.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Starting a new Web Application Project in Eclipse. Need to add the App Engine Eclipse plugin.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu GWT offers history support. Solves the problem of the BACK button in browsers…

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu I'm trying developing my own app using GWT and so far it works ;-)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu GWT supports Java 5

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Now we're doing some geolocation…

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu onModuleLoad is the entry point. According to Julian, GWT looks a lot like Spring

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Java looks verbose even if inner classes somewhat make things simpler. A service can return POJOs or collections of POJOs.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Personally I am not too convinced about GWT. I wonder if something like jQuery is not adequate enough.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu In GWT, a POJO is the schema for the database. No separate XML required.

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Geolocation based on Wifi access point works really well. See http://bit.ly/antBw

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian thinks that using a static language like Java is a good thing (TM) Scala?

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu is showing us how I18N can be done. I works with Java property files and looks trivial…

(about 5 hours ago in reply to vyshane)
@vyshane Most dynamic languages too are strongly typed :-) So, no need for wars :-)

(about 5 hours ago in reply to kurtavish)
@kurtavish You're right. Replace all @ by #googlemu :-)

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Wave is written using Google Web Toolkit.

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu I need to get more into Spring Web Flow :-)

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu … or Wicket. It's not (yet) used in industry but a lot of people are raving about it. See http://wicket.apache.org/

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Time for lunch now!

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Back from lunch (ahem!) and Chewy, a Google Developer Advocate, has started talking…

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of iGoogle. And of RSS aggregation. Gadgets. Which can be rich applications. Flash games. Or other webpages…

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu iGoogle gadgets are interesting… but only a few people use iGoogle and there are so many of them! How do you choose?!?

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu The philosophy of the Amazon gadget is interesting. One can compare prices with non-Amazon store (which are sometimes cheaper.)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Gadgets are build upon HTML and therefore you can easily use analytics on them.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Gadgets can also be embedded on normal webpages. This is very nice IMHO.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu The Google Gadget Editor http://bit.ly/2f8eP looks nice and can be put on iGoogle as a gadget. Recursion at work ;-)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu One can enable and disable caching on a gadget to gadget basis…

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu I should try to build my own Google Gadget. Looks easy. And I can then embed it on https://www.noulakaz.net/ :-)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu OpenSocial starting now. Social everywhere!!! Share links. etc. Talks of 5 eras of social web http://bit.ly/232XYZ

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to investigate Facebook Connect http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu http://www.skittles.com/ is the future of websites!!!

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu http://www.booneoakley.com/ is too :-)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu People don't come to your website anymore…. (re: Twitter) Email is dead!

(about 3 hours ago)
I am delighted to tell the world that this is my 1000th twit. Thanks to all those following me. I love the web :-)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of http://www.opensocial.org/ now. Mentioning Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Salesforce. OpenSocial has a REST interface.

(about 3 hours ago in reply to asheshr)
@asheshr Thanks! I would never have guessed that my 1000th would have been in the middle of a Google conference ;-)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to check http://www.buddypoke.com/ It uses the OpenSocial API and runs on Google App Engine

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is making me reconsider my stance towards social games. I'll need to try some of them. They seem to be neat :-)

(about 2 hours ago in reply to sjdvda)
@sjdvda Congrats. Incidentally, it would be a good idea to have a regular girlfriend too :-)

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to understand the implications of Google Friend Connect http://www.google.com/friendconnect/

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu As a flight sim addict, I am definitely going to check http://plane-crazy.appspot.com/

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Friend Connect looks really powerful and can greatly increase the "attractiveness" of websites…

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy has finished. Things to check: gadgets. And Google Friend Connect. There are so many things to learn and so little time.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Presentation of Chrome Themes & Extensions starting… See https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/index.html

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Creating a Chrome extension http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/common/extensions/docs/getstarted.html

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Extensions in Chrome are still in their infancy. Extensions will be able to manage all features of Chrome e.g. bookmarks

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Still showing how to customise Chrome. I'll leave in a few minutes as I'm tired.

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Extensions are written in Javascript and need a JSON manifest. Little by little, JSON is replacing XML ;-) http://www.json.org/

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu I asked about Chrome OS :-)

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu He said that Chrome OS is still only a few words on a blog right now and nothing substantial has been done.

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu yet :-)

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Time to go home now :-)

(about 1 hour ago)
Finished! Today I am going at my brother's place for a barbecue. Life is cool :-)

X-Plane 9 simulator on Linux

By 17 Comments

20090902-x-plane-9

X-Plane 9 is the best flight simulator available on home computers. It has the best flight-model, the best scenery (60Gb of space required for installation!) and best performance. As Microsoft has killed Flight Simulator, I can easily foresee that a lot of people will get into X-Plane in the coming years.

For me (and I blogged on that before), the greatest thing about X-Plane is that it is multiplatform: it runs equally well on Linux, on Mac OS X and on that thing from Redmond… provided you have some decent hardware.

 

As I own a MacBook with an integrated (crap) Intel GMA950 GPU, X-Plane does not run well on it. Consequently, I run X-Plane 9 on my desktop PC which is a 3-4 years old AMD Athlon64 with 2Gb of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 7 GPU. I run X-Plane under Linux Mint 7 (as I currently believe it is the best Linux distribution for home users.) And I have to say that I am very satisfied with the performance and the looks.

From Faro to Ibiza

Just to give you an idea of how X-Plane looks under Linux, here are some screenshots from my flight from Faro (in the south of Portugal) to Ibiza (which is an island off the coast of Spain.) The flight took some two hours (real flight simulator addicts do not use accelerated time!) and was very nice…

Here I am in my Piper Malibu, which has a single piston engine, over the south of Portugal. The scenery below is magnificent (don’t you think so?) and 100% realistic. The weather effects (real-time of course) are also very believable. We will reach Ibiza (in principle) in around two hours…

20090902-ibiza-1

After two hours of uneventful flight hopping from an NDB to a VOR back to a NDB (I didn’t want to use GPS), Ibiza in sight (I wonder where are parties are organised???):

20090902-ibiza-2

Landing at Ibiza on runway 06 is interesting as it does not have an ILS. Instead I used a VOR positioned at the airport for the approach and used the autopilot to align myself with the runaway. I also used the autopilot to give me a 500fpm rate of descent until at about 2-3 NM from the threshold:

20090902-ibiza-3

I landed manually and I have to take care because of some crosswinds. What is great about X-Plane (and so unlike Flight Simulator) is that runways are not flat: they follow the contour of the terrain below and the aircraft bumps and jumps (like real small aircrafts do when landing):

20090902-ibiza-4

After taxing to a nice parking slot, I switched off the engine and the avionics of the Piper Malibu:

20090902-ibiza-5

Get me the beer now!

A picnic, a bus and Chinese relatives

By 4 Comments

20090822-bus

Mauritius is about a lot of things: the sea, the sun, dholl-purees, rougaille poisson salé, the séga, Phoenix beer, koz n’importe and, well, picnic dans bis.

Since I was a kid, I love going to picnics in a rented bus. Most of the time, we rent a 60-seats bus and pack it with (i) family (ii) drinks and (iii) food. And, of course, we make sure that all of us coming know (i) how to sing the séga and (ii) drink without, ahem, spilling.

As you can guess, I am in an excellent mood right now because I’ll be going on a picnic dans bis very shortly. I hope I’ll manage to capture some nice pictures to share with you.

 

Incidentally, all my Chinese relatives will come to the picnic. As you know, Christina’s father is Chinese. His sister and himself came to Mauritius just after the Second World War from China. That was more than 60 years ago. My father-in-law never went back to China and, consequently, did not meet anyone else from his family for more than 60 years. So you can easily imagine how happy his sister and himself are to meet their youngest brother (who was a kid when they left) who has just come to visit them in Mauritius:

20090822-chinese-family

(From right to left: my father-in-law (Christina’s father), his youngest brother (he is more than 60 now!) who lives in China and has come to Mauritius for the first time, my father-in-law’s sister who lives in Mauritius and who is now 84, the brother’s wife, Christina, Kyan and Anya.)

Maybe you briefly saw Christina and myself on TV during the 19:30 news bulletin a few days ago? MBC thought that siblings meeting each other after more than 60 years of separation was newsworthy. I tend to agree.

How do you say picnic dans bis in Hakka?

[Bus photo courtesy of Helen Morgan.]