Just another trying-to-be-a-geek's blog
shoaibi
So what is this Error404NotFound all about? Well thats my usual nick on irc.freenode.net. Usually i am on #cosp, #cosp-offtopic, #ubuntu, #zsh, #python, #centos, #django, #vim and etc. Other nicks that i use frequently are err404notfound,|404NotFound|, sleeping`dragon, ^^root^^ and may be couple of more. Who am i? I am Muhammad Shoaib, commonly known as shoaibi in friends' circle and as error404notfound online. My birthday is 30th August 1986, and birth city is Lahore, Pakistan. I am a graduate, currently a sysadmin and a hobbyist mobile/web developer using technologies such as php(cakephp, zend), python (django), iphone, and etc at Islamabad, Pakistan, consider myself noob in all these technologies as i never got much time to really get to playing with nuts and bolts of these. I am an Open Source believer, preacher and hacker, also a Member/BDFL of COSP. Ubuntu has been the choice as operating system since 5.04 release (which doesn't mean that i hate any specific vendor/operating system). I don't like the idea behind social networking and hate it when neighbors comment each other's status on facebook whereas they haven't seen each other for months. Still for the sake of online presence i do have accounts on couple of social networking sites. The one i use the most (once per couple of week/month) is Facebook, so you can get me there. I also have my profile on couple of professional networking sites such as rozee.pk and linkedin but those are long since outdated so don't rely. I like to share stuff and act as a consultant most of the time. I love it when people ask me "what do i do?" type of questions, though i sometimes get really hyper when people want spoonfeeding. In food i consider myself in a party if i see a rice dish, pizza or any fast food item :P. I hate watching someone do stereotyping, love rain and a bit chill weather, hate when people change to double cross or play with someone's emotions. What else?
Homepage: http://www.cosp.org.pk
Jabber/GTalk: shoaibi@cosp.org.pk
Posts by shoaibi
BMI Calculator: My First Android App
Sep 1st
Okay, after Oracle went after google for patent rights i got interested in android more than ever so decided to jump right in and program something. Following is my first app:
BMI Calculator
Purpose
- Calculates BMI (Body Mass Index).
Features
- Support multiple unit systems
- Bells and Whistles:
- Changing Unit System automatically changes the units inside Height and Weight field labels
- Gender Spinner data is read from @arrays/gender_list. This was not needed, just did it to learn how one can read XML and attach an adapter to it.
- Gender Spinner’s Prompt reads from @strings/select_gender. This was needed and done.
- Height and Weight EditText allows 6 characters, single line and decimal
- Hitting Calculate More >
SSH: Tips And Tricks You Need
Aug 24th
SSH is one of the most widely used protocols for connecting to remote shells. While there are numerous SSH clients the most-used still remains OpenSSH’s ssh. There is a plethora of tips and tricks that can be used to make your experience even better than it already is. Read on to discover some of the best tweaks to your favorite SSH client.
Adding A Keep-Alive A keep-alive is a small piece of data transmitted between a client and a server to ensure that the connection is still open or to keep the connection open. Many protocols implement this as a way of cleaning More >
Error while retrieving tweets (Twitter down?)
Aug 24th
You might have noticed that since the last 6 (or 8?) hours “Tweet Activity” have been giving that error. I got some time on my hands to waste and i googled for it, came up that its a pretty common error observed by a lot of users yet there were no official statements regarding what could it be. To verify that i can still resolve twitter from our server and that i haven’t gone over ther API Hits limit i created a check-twitter.php with the following code:
<?php echo gethostbyname('twitter.com'); ?>
Accessed it via Chrome and came out just fine. More >
OpenVPN and Windows
Aug 22nd
Today it was the second time i was asked by a friend to help him in fixing his openvpn on windows 7 and to tell you the truth it was exactly same problem that i had fixed before, before he had to reinstall windows that is. Being clumsy i didn’t make notes in the past on how i fixed it and wasted a lot of time after which i came to a solution. So here are some tips for people who are using OpenVPN on windows to avoid issues that i come across frequency:
- Create a shortcut icon of Open VPN GUI More >
Five Ubuntu Features You Didn’t Know About
Feb 15th
The quest to discover something new and fresh about Ubuntu, which is arguably the world’s most popular and best documented Linux distribution, is an almost ridiculous one to accept and an almost impossible one to fulfill. I felt like the Mission Impossible character, Jim Phelps, as I read the request from my editor. I expected to see the words, “This is your mission, Ken, should you choose to accept it. This email will self-destruct in five seconds” at the end of that message.
Missing me? :P
Feb 1st
Well, sorry, i wasn’t here for the last 10 days and have a long list of stuff to post in here but i got into a small accident on bike (which i still haven’t fully recovered from) and then this strange weather, almost having a 247 fever, can’t help it. Let me get well and i will be back to post some more “geeky-looking” or atleast “trying-to-be-geeky” stuff
