Ideas & field notes

Writing archive

Essays on AI, systems, and engineering

Apr 21, 2013·7 min read

Google App Engine + APNS

Earlier this month, Google App Engine released support for outbound sockets and I figured that a Saturday spent mucking around with AppEngine to see if I could get it to work with APNS would be time well spent.

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Jan 14, 2013·9 min read

Git guts

Today I will dive into the guts of git to showcase the simplicity and elegance in which git manages the content internally in it's own content addressable file system.

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Dec 31, 2012·2 min read

Musings on Git

Having spent some quality time with Git over the holidays, my appreciation for the flexibility of this DVCS and the elegance with which it has been constructed has reached a state of awe.

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Sep 23, 2010·2 min read

Mahavilachchiya needs you!

Several years ago, I got the opportunity to visit a small foundation in the middle of the jungle in Mahavilachchiya that made a strong impression on me and my friends in the LKLUG.

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Sep 24, 2008·1 min read

Software Freedom Day 2008

An event to mark the Software Freedom Day was organized by the Free Software Foundation and held in Boston over the weekend. I felt that a long drive was just what I needed to get my mind off the series of mini catastrophes that have been taking place at work during the week.

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May 29, 2008·3 min read

Debian packaging with git — Part 1

Recently, I've been taking a look at tools to version control and maintain my Debian packages in git. Git, like mercurial, is a distributed SCM used to maintain the Linux kernel since version 2.6.12.

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Apr 26, 2008·2 min read

On OpenSolaris

In a recent article, Ted T'so makes some interesting points on Sun's motives behind OpenSolaris, and how it fares today in the FOSS ecosystem as a result.

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Mar 3, 2008·2 min read

Linux on Palm TX

Here are the steps to get Linux running on a Palm TX. For the approach described, you'll need an SD card, an SD card reader and a Palm TX that you can hopefully live without.

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Jul 1, 2007·2 min read

GPLv3 Launch

GPLv3 was launched on Friday after close to eighteen months of public involvement in it's drafting process. This has been an important milestone in the free software world as an upgrade to the GPL to address some of the more modern concerns have been a long time coming.

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Mar 25, 2007·2 min read

Sahana receives FSF award

I attended the 2007 FSF members meeting today, codenamed Year of the upgrade. Four members from the Sahana team were present at the meeting to receive the Free Software award for Project of Social Benefit.

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Jan 18, 2007·2 min read

It all comes down to that, really.

The Sony Reader that I ordered last week has finally arrived and I'm quite impressed with the little gadget. The best feature of it is probably the screen.

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Oct 22, 2006·2 min read

Mahavilachchiya — day two

Yesterday was the second day of the FOSS-ed on Wheels at Mahavilachchiya. The kids were some of the brightest I've met and they pick things up in a flash.

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