Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Long time no blog

people usually say: Long time, no see! and this happens now in the blogosphere!

Well, it has been a bit hectic for me last quarter starting a new job and getting acquainted to it, and truth be said, it is really interesting on my journey of understanding how different jobs in an enterprise should really be and understand things from different perspectives.

The reason I usually like to get to learn something new every now and then, is that to make decisions you need to see the situation from different angles, and what you see depends on where you stand, so if you stand on some reasonable places it would be a good way to make sound decisions.

I hope things will go smooth during the process, GTD had been instrumental in my journey on keeping control of things, now some applications where having a huge contribution to the success of Q1, I will mention some of them:

1- Xobni
2- Evernote
3- iPhone!

In the upcoming blog posts I will talk about each in detail.

Until then, hope to see you soon!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Blogging from my iPhone about Accessories

I'm just writing this short blog post to reflect my impressions on some of the cool accessories for iPhone 4.

I believe these are essential for any commuter .

Apple Wireless Keyboard

image.alt.MC184

This one is cool for keeping your pace writing your blog posts, especially of you are the kind of person that is always on the go, it's also neat for writing your meeting minutes just right after the meeting if you are commuting with a company driver, once your are stranded at a traffic jam you will never regret the chance to write that monthly report or just turn on you wireless mobile connection to check your emails with more focus and read every line in that "I will read it later" email series while enjoying a full response to it.

You can take the chance to work on your added value projects that promotes your value within the enterprise in that time.

A tool like Evernote is killer in this regard, since you will write offline and then find your notes at the Desktop. Want a simpler option? Simple note is a good alternative as well.

This keyboard works virtually with any device that support Bluetooth keyboards, Starting by an iMac Desktop, Air, Book Pro, iTouch, iPhone, iPad and Windows XP and Vista and 7!

One trick you will need is to know that Holding down fn and then hitting delete deletes to the right. Which many people think that Deleting to the right is missing feature on this keyboard.

Many reviews say that the battery life is great, up to 4 Months of continuous use and the two A4 batteries are rechargeable,

iTrip Auto Universal Plus

  I have a story with this one; most Kia Optima 2008 cars have a problem in the AUX function switching from the FM Radio, that will make it impossible to listen to your Audio books from within the iPhone into the car speakers.

Itripautouniversalplus_1

The FM module has a great sound quality, and is quite handy, I tried it today and it's priced reasonably.

PDair Leather Case for Apple iPhone 4 (Flip Type, Black)

A must for any iPhone in the business environment, just try it and you will know why.

PDair Leather Case for Apple iPhone 4 (Flip Type, Black)

iPhone 4 Car Glass Mount Rotatable Rack Holder

Apple iPhone 4 Car Glass Windshield Suction Mount Rotatable Rack Holder 156216

This one is excellent along side 2 things:

1- Google Maps, to find the shortest way using the “Directions Feature” .

BH08N Bluetooth Headset

BH08N Bluetooth Mono Headset
I grabbed this quick Pick from Tesco in Oxford, it’s really handy to the point that I bought two in a Sale.

I can’t but recommend any want to buy, it worth the value, and charges through USB. I charge it once every month!

Here is a review about the unit.

Apple iPhone Car charger

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Impressions on iPhone 4

 

After months of thinking and intimidating (Just like I used to do back when I moved from Palm OS to Windows Mobile, The Dark Side at the time)); I have finally made the move to the current one, that is iPhone.

Yesterday, I had to meet two of my friends, one with HTC HD 2 and the other is with iPhone 3 GS with a Version 4 ROM. I happened to have my HTC Touch Diamond 2, and we ran the following test: locating something on the map, and going to it with scarce resources in terms of Wi-Fi hot spots, GPRS … etc .

There’s an amazing sense of serendipity when you realize that you can skip sourcing the web because you already have what you’re looking for. And this is what you feel when you have the improved feature of caching Google maps offline .

It’s only then when I quite realized that: “ Whatever exists on other platforms it's still not on par with what's available for the iPhone”.

Aside from pricing, which is currently good and reasonable comparing with a couple of months back, I’m really impressed of the following:

iPhone is a force to be reckoned with in the enterprise, I finally can join the WPA enterprise network at work, and could browse Outlook web Access! this is quite handy, and was not available for me on other platforms  .

Exchange is there and other features as well. Arabic support is excellent, and these are the features I care about the most on any mobile platform.

Being an old Palm OS timer, having a wealth of apps is an essential feature, and currently iPhone is unparalleled .

I know that Developers are flocking to Android in their droves, and that my next device may be an Android one, especially that I’m a Linux Geek, but by and large, I'm sure that iPhone is currently the best fit for my needs.

The only thing that I feel challenging, and I know there is a workaround for, is the Adobe Flash thing that is just inviting the wrath of everybody.

I just scratched the surface of the platform, that is I can’t give a sound concrete opinion about it, however I'm currently poking around with the tools; they're very easy to use. And I will try to writ another post after a couple of months In Sha Allah to see where I get on with the platform .

Friday, May 28, 2010

Managing 100s of Linux and Solaris machines with clusterit

I’m copying this through Blog O’ Matty, I will post my test for the app as soon as I get time ! But since it’s important and want to postpone it.

 

I use numerous tools to perform my SysAdmin duties. One of my favorite tools it clusterit, which is a suite of programs that allows you to run commands across one or more machines in parallel. To begin using the awesomeness that is clusterit, you will first need to download and install the software. This is as easy as:

$ wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/clusterit/clusterit-2.5.tar.gz

$ tar xfvz clusterit*.gz

$ cd clusterit* && ./configure –prefix=/usr/local/clusterit && make && make install

Once the software is installed, you should have a set of binaries and manual pages in /usr/local/clusterit. To use the various tools in the clusterit/bin directory, you will first need to create one or more cluster files. Each cluster file contains a list of hosts you want to manage as a group, and each host is separated by a newline. Here is an example:

$ cat servers
foo1
foo2
foo3
foo4
foo5

The cluster file listed above contains 5 servers named foo1 – foo5. To tell clusterit you want to use this list of hosts, you will need to export the file via the $CLUSTER environment variable:

$ export CLUSTER=/home/matty/clusters/servers

Once you specify the list of hosts you want to use in the $CLUSTER variable, you can start using the various tools. One of the handiest tools is dsh, which allows you to run commands across the hosts in parallel:

$ dsh uptime

foo1  :   2:17pm  up 8 day(s), 23:37,  1 user,  load average: 0.06, 0.06, 0.06
foo2 : 2:17pm up 8 day(s), 23:56, 0 users, load average: 0.03, 0.03, 0.02
foo3 : 2:17pm up 7 day(s), 23:32, 1 user, load average: 0.27, 2.04, 3.21
foo4 : 2:17pm up 7 day(s), 23:33, 1 user, load average: 3.98, 2.07, 0.96
foo5 : 2:17pm up 5:06, 0 users, load average: 0.08, 0.09, 0.09


In the example above I ran the uptime command across all the servers listed in file that is referenced by the CLUSTER variable! You can also do more complex activities through dsh:



$ dsh ‘if uname -a | grep SunOS >/dev/null; then echo Solaris; fi’


foo1 : Solaris


foo2 : Solaris


foo3 : Solaris


foo4 : Solaris


foo5 : Solaris



This example uses dsh to run uname across a batch of servers, and prints the string Solaris if the keyword “SunOS” is found in the uname output. Clusterit also comes with a distributed scp command called pcp, which you can use to copy a file to a number of hosts in parallel:



$ pcp /etc/services /tmp



services                   100%  616KB 616.2KB/s   00:00
services 100% 616KB 616.2KB/s 00:00
services 100% 616KB 616.2KB/s 00:00
services 100% 616KB 616.2KB/s 00:00
services 100% 616KB 616.2KB/s 00:00


$ openssl md5 /etc/services


MD5(/etc/services)= 14801984e8caa4ea3efb44358de3bb91



$ dsh openssl md5 /tmp/services


foo1 : MD5(/tmp/services)= 14801984e8caa4ea3efb44358de3bb91


foo2 : MD5(/tmp/services)= 14801984e8caa4ea3efb44358de3bb91


foo3 : MD5(/tmp/services)= 14801984e8caa4ea3efb44358de3bb91


foo4 : MD5(/tmp/services)= 14801984e8caa4ea3efb44358de3bb91


foo5 : MD5(/tmp/services)= 14801984e8caa4ea3efb44358de3bb91



In this example I am using pcp to copy the file /etc/services to each host, and then using dsh to create a checksum of the file that was copied. Clusterit also comes with a distributed top (dtop), distributed df (pdf) as well as a number of job control tools! If you are currently performing management operations using the old for stanza:



for i in `cat hosts`
do
ssh $host 'run_some_command'
done


You really owe it to yourself to set up clusterit. You will be glad you did!”

Saturday, May 8, 2010

How twitter helps in physical social networking

image

Due to some dust storms, I was stranded in Malta airport yesterday, a free open wireless network was captured, and I was thinking, if any body is tweeting about this in the airport and to know more details about it.

 

Up to my surprise, only one person tweeted about this, I was thinking if I could meet and discuss some of the social aspects wit that person.

Hours passed by, and my Laptop battery drained and I decided to start the journey to look for a power outlet, I ended up with one socket with two outlets, and no chairs! I decided to set down and start utilizing this time to do something productive, back and forth, I asked the person beside me if he is using twitter, and he turns to be the guy tweeted about the event.

He turned to be the CEO of a software company helping and coaching youth on how to be on track for Web II services, from my chat with @billzimmerman,I understood he is also funding fresh grads for their projects after filtering.

This might have a potential for Libya, and this needs more thinking.

It’s interesting to see how twitter is helping cast networking not only on the web, but the other way around .

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta Now Available

If you didn’t hear it yet, Red Hat had announced its new major release to its customer yesterday evening.

 

 

Nothing impressive for me, however, we finally have RHEL6 on the stage !

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

How much time does it take to break your password?

How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords

Source.