Linux Media players

The other day,I was trying to remember an awesome playlist that I had listened to earlier. For a moment,I thought my memory was good enough to remember such details,till a lesson from my Human computer interaction class rang true :"Recognition is better than recall.. Never make the user strain their faculties to do a task using you software!!" I was using VLC player. VLC is perfect for one off tasks,such as movies. However for music where you might want to save a playlist,it is a task in recall rather than recognition. Its a process that is not only lengthy and unintuitive,it requires that you remember some nitty gritty details like folder to which a particular playlist was saved!! Why on earth save a playlist in the first place if I am required to remember such things!!?
To solve this problem,I looked around on the net (as a good developer friend of mine once told me "Google is your friend") and I stumbled upon a player called exaile. This was a beautiful music player albeit alittle simplistic. It solved the problems that I was experiencing with vlc in a nice and simple way. However,it wasn't long before I started experiencing problems with it. I am not sure whether this was an isolated case but the player kept crashing one too many times. It is something about me,my impatience does not allow me to tolerate such,so I purged the damn thing out of my linux box! Now, I was on a new search for a player that would not only solve the problems but also do so consistently without such mishaps. After searching for a while,I bumped into Amarok. Amarok is a kde based media player. If you use the ordinary gnome-based debian-derivatives like ubuntu,amarok installs a number of kde packages to enable it working smoothly with your gnome environment. There is a small issue with this,if you are keen with space,this process takes quite some hard disk space which you might not appreciate. Anyway,its a small price to pay considering the benefits that it accords your media experience.Once the process was complete,I began using the player,it was fantastic but for one little thing that was disappointing to a user like me,it kept crashing! You can imagine my disappointment, a beautiful piece of work like that only to disappoint at the last moment! Now,what was I to do?

After a week of trying to tolerate this behaviour,I could not take it anymore,I did my usual thing,purge the whole thing from my packages,after all,it feels good to do that when you are disappointed by something,right? It reminds me of the famous phrase by Donald Trump in the The apprentice: "You are fired!".

Just when I was about to give up on my music experience on linux,a friend suggested to me that a player called songbird might do the trick. That was a ray of hope,though I was not as expectant.I installed Songbird and started using it with baited breath. Alas,it was plain awesome! From its interface to the features supported as well as the multimedia management capabilities!
I have not been disappointed in anyway by this player since I started using it. You can try it out and let me know your sentiments.
If you disagree with what I have said,feel free to comment at the bottom and I will get back to you.

Send-a-friend-for-something messages

Recently a friend sent me a message that I found interesting but equally annoying. Here is an excerpt of the message:

“This year we're going to experience four unusual dates: 1/1/11,1/11/11,11/1/11,11/11/11 and thats not all... Take the last two digits of the year in which you were born. Now add the age you will be this year,and the result will be 111 for everyone! This is the year of money!!! This year October will have 5 Sundays,5 Mondays and 5 Saturdays. This happens once every 823 years. These particular years are known as 'moneybags'. The proverb goes that if you send this to..bla,bla...”

These message was interesting because of the math involved,how we all get 111 after some funny additions (You can do the math if you are interested) but more so because of the fascination that people have with dates that have the same digit appearing for the whole date digits. Whats the big deal with these dates to the extent that superstitious practices are attached to them?

The messages are annoying because of the clause “send to friends..” else something sinister that happened to someone in similar circumstances is alluded to. That is supposed to coerce you to actually send the message further. Then a more annoying phenomenon occurs where another friend sends the same message again,damn! Doesn't it make you want to scream your lungs out? And the cycle goes on and on till,the same message comes back bearing an additional comment that goes like “..This message has been around the world 3 times..” and the same old implicit threat to send it to your friends so that something can happen to you.
Has something good ever happened to you after sending these messages?

Beast of burden

Has it ever crossed your mind how selfish we humans are?I mean,a friend of mine quipped that it is a man eat man society. Forget the so called "abundance mentality" professed by many a motivational writer,I beg to differ! I subscribe to the "man eat man mentality" or more aptly I baptize it "Dog eat dog society"... Isn't it funny how sane men strive to outdo each other,actually take advantage of the weaker among them?
How any right thinking creature will actually work towards completely annihilating the other in order to gain a foothold on some perceived or the far more elusive “real” territory?

To illustrate this rarely noticed phenomenon,consider the following simple, though somewhat ludicrous, scenario from the real world:

A marketing professor asked her students what things they could do to improve how they served clients at their places of work. After a 2-minute pause, with absolutely no attempt from a normally active class
except for one quiet and dull girl at the front who whispered almost inaudibly “smile at clients”,she decided to ask the converse of that question: “What is it that you dislike from persons serving you ?”
Suddenly,several hands shot up like the “arrows of the Persians” in a scene in the movie 300. For a moment,the professor was appalled but it dawned on her,the reality that we are all so afraid of facing,the ugly visage of human selfishness. These students were so quick to point out the mistakes in others while completely blind to their own,talk of the proverbial seeing the speck in your brother's eye and missing the log in your own!

This is the case of most freelance programmers and even interns at many of the software development firms around. Recently,a group of novice and intermediate programmers had undertaken a project with one of the big software companies. As with all such programmers the project is considered a challenge,very exciting each eager to prove their salt. With this mindset,the programmer is absorbed into the technical details of the project without fully considering its economic or rather its financial implications. Two issues quickly come to mind for any commerce student worth that name. First,what are the commitments set by the other party to ensuring the smooth flow of events. Most programmers will at this statement shrug “Isn't it obvious?” Well,in business there is no such thing as obvious,its all about agreements and living up to them! So the programmer is implicitly screwed at this level.. That is the main reason why programmers are an unhappy disgruntled lot with respect to remuneration.
The second issue is mainly occasioned by project management practices,most projects are bound to delay and change at one time or another but software projects are special:

They are special not because they are modern but because they possess certain qualities that are unique to them. They are oft delayed because of the numerous changes that most clients usually request. They also are not as tangible as expected,so the tendency to meet deadlines as stipulated in the project schedule. With this in mind,the projects usually are poorly budgeted and planned and are on a failure path from the very start!

This is the very muddle to which programmers are subjected. They bear the brunt of all these mistakes.
The project manager is quick to save their backs from the consequences,all these at the expense of the programmer,who by the way does most of the work anyway! The project manager with all the fat perks still threatens to squeeze the last drop of juice of the programmer's income! This is the case with the novice programmers working for the big company. Despite the lucrativeness of the industry,the companies still exhibit the law of selfishness and unfortunately,the programmer is the beast of burden!
The hours of work they put in that the project manager has absolutely no idea nor concern for and yet the peanuts they get in return!

Is it the project managers that are the problem or is it just a law of nature,like the many that we know of? The law is also cognizable in other professions where some sort of hierarchy is the norm.

This begs the question,is it a law of nature or just a culture that can be reversed?

Orange modems

Recently I spent several precious manhours trying to figure out how
to use my Orange modem on my linuxbox. It was so frustrating to have
to resort to a lesser operating system like windows (sorry windows guys
am I stating things to openly ?). For a long while I pondered how the
whole ONDA community (ONDA is the vendor for these USB modems) could
have missed the whole point, I mean have a device that doesnot work on
Linux?? That would have been catastrophic to say the least,a simple mind
would even quip, ".. can't the technosavvy opensource community bring down
ONDA say by hacking into their servers (or any other high sounding techy name)in revenge?"
After googling around and regoogling and re-doing it uncountable times each
more frustrating than the former, I remembered what my "virtual God-father"
keeps saying:
"The epitome of madness is doing the same thing over and over and still
expect different results.."

So here I was,google-ing as it were.. Have you ever checked out the last page
on google's results? Well,in this instance I did,all to no avail!

So I tried to do something different this time,atleast my VGF(Virtual God father)
says that is an element of cleverness and ofcourse,I like to regard myself
as clever..

This is what I did:
Configure Orange Modem On linux

Orange Modem on Linux

Here is how it goes on linux mint and I think this will work for Ubuntu as well:

First,Connect your Usb Modem to your machine and ensure the words
"Orange connection" appear as one of the connectivity options when you
click on the networkk Icon

For some reason,unknown yet to me,this takes an awfully long time in my machine.
As a critic,i would term it unacceptable however desperation calls for
measures equal

Once that happens,edit the connections information
Right click on network icon>>Edit Connections
Choose the broadband tab

Choose "Orange connection" or whatever name you have named your connection
Click on it and click Edit

You should see a screen like this:



The username is orangefixedplus which comes up by default

For the password field use "orange" This is the password that
you use inorder to be authenticated by the orange network

Once you are done close the window to save your changes.

Click on the network icon and choose your "Orange Connection"
or the name you gave your broadband connection and voila!
This should be happy surfing..

You can come check out this blog for more helpful albeit interesting
quips and observations.

The universe is structured in such a way that every single however tiny thing you do has

direct and indirect repercussions... Some who subscribe to the multiverse theory will even

stretch Newton's thought process even further!

Just recently I came across this compilation from a friend who thinks this is one of the perspectives

that mututho's drinking bill should be looked at. A kenyan sheng dictionary will do well

to consider using this set.

Feel free to add your own words onto this via comments!

Have a laugh:

Ututho: the act of refusing to buy someone beer
Ututhoism: The act of drinking
Kututhwa: ukienda place na haukununuliwa pombe
Tuthana: buying beer for each other
Tutho: roundy moja
Tututho: roundy mbili
Tatutho: roundy tatu
Metuthos: many
Mututhologists: are those who mouthtuthard the beer..
Mututholeaks: ni kupii after kututha
Pretutho: drinking b4 drinking hrs.
kututha: the act of drinking
Tunatuthana: ukibuy na mimi nibuy
Mututhorization: the act of accepting 2 buy
Mu-tu-tho : as far as beer is concerned, ngeli ni ya mu-tu-tho
Tuthotutho: ni kuwa mlevi
Mututhoholic: being an alcoholic
Aatutho: those who refuse to buy...
Mututholocks: those locked in.
Mamtuthoosis: wale wanadis beer
Ututhology: The study of alcohol n its effects
Tuthophobia: The fear of drinking beer b4 5pm n after 11pm lest u get arrested
Mututhorite: the favorite law
Masaa ya ututhonization: 5pm - 11pm
Tuthorization: The treatment of booze disorders
Nktutho: is the anger of being harrased by mututho’s cop
Mtutholess: an area or pub where mututho laws never exist or apply.
Kututhwa: Hangover
Postmututho: is the aftermath of tuthoring.

hello world post

Hi Guys,
This is my hello world post..
I have no guarantees about frequent and interesting updates but,like open source
expect quality stuff that rocks!!
How is that for a first post?