Whats up with Hatim!

Since my all time favorite tv show  finished off in its 10th season I had been waiting for its Direct-to-DVD movies. Here in Pakistan we get all movies by hook or by crook since there is not much copyright protection or for that matter proper distribution of films going on any way. I had decided that once these movies come out I will surely buy them (to support guys like Robert C Cooper who spend so much time and money to bring this entertainment to us) but alas I have not been able to give back to the SG makers. However thanks to Bit torrent I was able to download Stargate : Ark of truth and later to my surprise buy a pirated copy of Stargate : Continuum from a local DVD shop.
I found both films to be amazing, although I liked the story of Ark of truth a bit more than Continuum. I really thought that Jack would have more part to play in Continuum, but it was not enough. Overall I think there is a good chance that if more SG movies are made, they would be hailed and the mythology will catch momentum like Star Trek.

I have recieved my stamped residence permit today. I spent a good deal of time yesterday trying to trace it. By calling the Embassy, FedEx and even going to the Embassy. The lady who talked to me from the Swedish embassy was very bitchy. I in fact needed my passport for another journey late this month so I was concerned that Swedish embassy is sitting on it for a while. I an extremely bitchy tone she said that if you need your visa right now I can send it to you unstamped. I said no thank you as I didn't want to risk delaying the process.

Today I got this on my FedEx status

So I went to FedEx office to pickup my visa. There was a very small queu of people recieving visas back. My visa has been granted from Aug 1 2008 till Oct 1 2009. After getting visa , accomodation and plane ticket now the only thing left is packing.

Since I got admitted for my masters program I have applied for Swedish visa (also known as residence permit) and prepared my self for booking accommodation air line tickets etc. I have yet to start doing my packing and it's just 6 weeks till I leave.I applied for my residence permit on May 19th and was given an interview date of June 9th. Around July 8th upon inquiring from the Embassy I got to know that I was granted my visa. I have yet to get my passport back with the RP stamped in it.

I shall be flying from Lahore to Gothenburg via Frankfurt on Lufthansa airlines in last week of August. I got the ticket for around 47000 Rs . (around 430 Euro). I was also able to book an  from chalmersstudentbostader. Their international student apartment booking is password protected and is usually pretty swamped when there is a chance that apartments would be posted. I used a trick to book my apartment (it has to do with how a simple Java EE application is hosted,normally its running at port 8080 and its proxied from port 80 to this place, instead of using no port in URL, which implies HTTP port 80, I used HTTP port 8080). Then after booking the apartment I filled my contract and with help of a friend submitted my deposit.

Though I have arranged for my accommodation, I have yet to get a temp accommodation for the few days I shall be not in my booked room.

There are excellent resources for Pakistani students at PakSirZameen.net (which is maintained by a highly motivated pakistani guy, in Linkoping Sweden). It also has a list of different mailing lists of Pakistani student associations across Sweden.This site helped me a lot. It also inspired me to open up my own chat room for incoming Pakistani students to Sweden.

For past few days I have been working on OpenNMS poller tests. I have to adapt the curretn tests so that they can better utilize the Hibernate upgradation i am taked for do for my SoC project. A quick grep led me to find the following java files in my svn branch.

Under trunk/opennms-services/

src/test/java/org/opennms/netmgt/config/PollerConfigFactoryTest.java
src/test/java/org/opennms/netmgt/config/PollerConfigManagerTest.java
src/test/java/org/opennms/netmgt/mock/MockPollerConfigTest.java
src/test/java/org/opennms/netmgt/poller/PollerTest.java
src/test/java/org/opennms/netmgt/poller/remote/PollerBackEndIntegrationTest.java
src/test/java/org/opennms/netmgt/poller/remote/PollerBackEndTest.java
src/test/java/org/opennms/netmgt/poller/remote/PollerFrontEndIntegrationTest.java
src/test/java/org/opennms/netmgt/poller/remote/PollerFrontEndTest.java

Under trunk/opennms-webapp/

src/test/java/org/opennms/web/services/PollerServiceTest.java

I have skipped remote poller tests for now. I have started with PollerTest as it seems to be the most obvious. As per suggestions of OpenNMS community I am extending this Test class from AbstractTransactionalDaoTestCase. But since AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests comes in its parent hierarchy, which sets setUp and tearDown as final. This means that eiteher a new way of setUp and tearDown have to be figured out, or spring context has to be provided from with in the indivisual tests. I think the second way means much of boilerplate code in different unrelated places and hence duplication.

I am still updating the code, more to come on this blog entry.

I was in need of checking my HQL queries from within Eclipse so I could check for their validity. Furthermore since it was for a Spring/Hibernate based project (namely OpenNMS for my Google Summer of code) so there was no hibernate.cfg.xml to begin with (OpenNMS has loads of other configurations in which it stores what it needs to do with hibernate and databases). So the solution was simple, to make a brand new hibernate.cfg.xml for own use (this file wont be committed, but i think a provision of such thing should be there so there is easy way for new comers to startup hibernate tools)

I have been reading up alot for my Summer of Code, I have completely read Harnessing Hibernate  and am currently taking reference from Beginning Hibernate and from Java Persistence with Hibernate. These are all excellent books. Harnessing hibernate was helpful in the setup of hibernate tools in Eclipse.

Following are some screenshots of hibernate tools on my system.

Hibernate tools tab completion.

Hibernate tools executing HQL query on OpenNMS model

I have to confess that I have never owned a DSL connection. It was always a Fiber optic connection or a shared T1 line at the workplace/university. With the ongoing price wars for DSL connections I decided to get a connection for my self at home (actualy it was for my sister). The connection was ordered in April 2008 and then there was a long wait. Every time I would call to them they would make up some excuse. In the end around June 15th I decided to lynch the call center guys. In limits of decency I lynched him on the phone, and the next thing you know that with in 24 hours the installation of modem was done. It was running fine for one week, when it suddenly it stopped working.

On inquiring from the people in Tech support I was told that this connection was not installed to begin with. I admit that there were probably few loose ends to tie, for example when ever there was an incoming or outgoing phone call the DSL connection would drop. And even though the connection was dropped if the DSL device was on, there would be noise. I had to literally beg the equipment installation guy to make my connection work as I had lots of work to catch up to, he gave me some one elses ID (how typical of Pakistan, solve a problem by breaking rules).

Then I lodged a complains a few times with PTCL(the telephone company) to clear the noise and they always give me a token number (like its a big prize). In short getting a DSL connection in Pakistan is not easy even though as compared to previous years prices have come down considerably. With no electricity or sane internet I wonder why people think Pakistan is an ideal place for outsourcing.

My telephone line at home was out of order for about 3 weeks now and I was in need of an internet connection at home. I decided to give using internet through my cell phone (GPRS) a try. The reason for this was simple, I needed an internet connection which would make me truly mobile and was cost effective as well. And ofcourse an implied requirement was that it should work with Linux(easily). So I searched up the internet for tarrifss of local cellular companies and compared them with other options which I had. I decided to go with Zong's (a China Mobile comapny) unlimited GPRS package. I was skeptical about the internet speed and was not even sure how I would be ablt to connect my laptop with the internet as it was only recently that I had begun using internet through my Mobile.

First I got hold of a Sony Erricson data cable as I had lost the one which came with my phone. This cost me 200Rs (3 US$), then I purchased some Zong credit for testing. Then using another internet connection I searched on how to use ubuntu with GPRS enabled phones. I found an article at softpedia to be very helpful. I found through dmesg that on my system, my phone was registering itself at ttyACM0 as well

Then I installed gnome-ppp and used it as per described in the article. The APN for Zong is zonginternet and apprently there is no username and password, but I still used zon/zong so that gnome-ppp could dial out. I also had to ensure that my user was in the modem/dial_out group. I tested the internet connectivity and was delighted to see that after dailing in there was nothing else to be done. Later I called up Zong customer services after feeding in some extra credit of 550 Rs (roughly 8US$) and activated my monthly unlimited internet package.

Later I tried watching a Youtube video, the bandwidth was not enough for me to stream it live but I was able to download a 9 MB file in a relatively short time compared to dialup connection. I was able to go to a download speed of 15KB/sec which I think is more than enough for day to day browsing and coding related tasks. I am looking forward to using this connection for my summer of code activities.

There was a suicide attack outside the Danish embassy on 2 June. The Embassy is located in a posh residential area of F-6/2. The attack claimed 8 lives and 24 injured almost all of them Pakistanis and most of them belonging to the office adjacent to the Embassy. The attack has triggered few other embassies to close down operations temporarily including embassy of Sweden of whose closure affects me personally. There are few problems which I think need to be addressed.

In entire Islamabad there is a severe shortage of housing and office space. On top of that all the good spots are taken up by foreign missions etc. They should be moved into an isolated locale so that they don't affect day to day operations of Pakistani citizen.

The Danish could have made an exception in exercising freedom of speech. They could have just stopped printing of those cartoons the second time. The only messege those cartoons were giving was that freedom of speech is more important than caring about the feelings of millions of muslims. If they had stopped reprinting of those cartoons perhaps it would not have come to blasts in Pakistan. I think there are sensible people in EU and US who would agree with me, freedom of speech does not necessarily mean saying what ever you want, some times making sure that hurtful and hateful message never get across.

On this previous monday I recieved my Google Summer of Code payment card. Its a Master Card from some finance related company run by General Electric. It does not have my name on it, instead it has a number and GSOC 2008 Stundet written on it. The card had no value on it and had a number written on it to enable it. It was a US 1-800 number. I had a hunch that skype should let me call 1-800 numbers for free, and a google search confirmed it. I activated my card at no cost :).

I have always wanted to try out skype. I had an idea about it's excellent voice quality from guys a Twit, but today I witnessed it first hand. The thing which was holding me up was the unavailibility of Mic (input sound) on my laptop. Today I figured out what the problem is. On my Acer 7720-6604 I have an internal mic, for some reason it does not work, but an external mic does. I for some reason was thinking that no mic works what so ever. I added a line in /etc for proper module loading (I didn't have it in my fresh Hardy installation) and in options for volume control I chose Mic as input source. When recording from Gnome's sound recorder I chose Digital as input of recording. So atleast I am able to record sound now (although not with my internal mic)

Then I checked out this link for installation of Skype on my linux box. On 64 bit machines you have to fool the thing to use 32 bit libraries. I made a test call and it soudedd perfect. Then i even tried a call with webcam and it worked well too. I actually have a conference call with browzow from OpenNMS regarding my summer of code assignment, which has started since this Monday. I have not coded any thing worth committing yet and lets hope I have some small stuff cooked up by the end of this week.