Google Summer of Code 2010

My GSoC proposal was selected. Read more at my new blog: http://codeninja.in/2010/04/28/google-summer-of-code-2010/

This blog will have no more posts, most probably :|

And I'm wondering if I should export this blog to codeninja.in, hmm.

Yachiru

As mentioned in the previous blog post, I did buy a netbook. The Lenovo S10-2. Yachiru, I call her, after a lovable character from the anime series Bleach.

Here are some mandatory pics.




Yachiru with Yachiru.

FOSS.IN

I've been to FOSS.IN this year. 'Twas held at Bangalore, India, from December 1 to 5, 2009.

Nothing much to write home about, except that it was very very memorable. And yeah, this was my first time to Bangalore.

Here's a picture from a slide I loved in a presentation given by Dimitris Glezos.



I did not have a laptop, and it was difficult to get work done. So, I'm getting myself a netbook! :D Hoping to buy a Lenovo S10-2, but then, a friend tells me they have the Atom N270, instead of the N280 as the website says. That's a matter of concern.

I'll probably be buying it in a couple of weeks. Yes, pictures coming up!

Yahoo, you do have something Google needs to catch up to!

Today, I was surprised. By Yahoo. After a long time. And it's delightful. Maybe I'm late at this, but Yahoo, I've got to say, "Cool! Very cool!"

What is this noise all about? Well, it's about the Yahoo! Developer Network. More lovable is the Developer Resources page.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you find "Libraries & Best Practices" and "Language Centers". I've obviously not gone through the entire content, but a browse-through was very eye-catching. And I think every Web Developer or anyone just interested in learning about performance on the Web should read the Exceptional Performance page.

And oh, the language centers. All of them have some tutorials on the language in general, but mostly focus on using the various Yahoo! APIs.

Only, oh poor Yahoo, its been so long since I've stopped your services, and I'm now very dependent on Google.

But to note, Google has to catch up quite a bit, in terms of API. (Okay all you Google fan boys, I am not saying Yahoo has a superior API, just certain things that Google lags behind in.)

Some thoughts:

- Yahoo! Media Player. At first sight, it might seem to be just a plain embedded music player, but the wiki along with the Yahoo! Music API makes it very cool.

- Google had a 'bookmark' feature, but later revamped it to a bookmark section in Google Notebook. Still, I find Delicious a better choice (Delicious was acquired by Yahoo, in 2005).

- Yahoo! Finance is much better than Google Finance, any day.

- Yahoo! Pipes is plain awesome. Really, I haven't found a parallel.

Frankly, after all this, I don't have a hope that Yahoo will rise from the ashes, nor anything as fairytale-ish, but the lost respect for Yahoo is back. It still has some awesome engineers.

I still respect you Yahoo! I still do.

install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.

First, the problem.

I was trying to do sudo apt-get upgrade when it stopped on me giving this error

Setting up findutils (4.4.0-3) ...
install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.
dpkg: error processing findutils (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
findutils
W: No priority (or zero) specified for pin
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Well, I tried googling it up, without considerable success. Finally, I found this on Debian Bug report logs.

Apparently, there are packages named install-info. One, a GNU version, another, a Debian provided package.

The-Matrix% whereis install-info
install-info: /usr/sbin/install-info /usr/local/bin/install-info /usr/share/man/man8/install-info.8.gz
The-Matrix% /usr/sbin/install-info --version
Debian install-info version 1.14.25.

Copyright (C) 1994,1995 Ian Jackson.
This is free software; see the GNU General Public Licence version 2 or
later for copying conditions. There is NO warranty.
The-Matrix% /usr/local/bin/install-info --version
install-info (GNU texinfo) 4.13

Copyright (C) 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

And they have problems. The idea of replacing the Debian's version with the GNU's has been forwarded, but I'm not sure of the progress. For all I care, the problem hasn't been solved.

As the link provided says, "It is not Debian's fault if someone has GNU's install-info in
$PATH before /usr/sbin/install-info - don't mess with the packaging system,
you'll just get in trouble."

Now, the solution.

Get the /usr/sbin into the $PATH variable before /usr/local/bin, or essentially, do something that would get dpkg to find the Debian's version of install-info. I did the latter, leaving $PATH as it was. Just renamed the GNU's version of install-info

The-Matrix% sudo mv /usr/local/bin/install-info /usr/local/bin/install-info-gnu

And it works. ;)