Make your Ubuntu sexy... screenlets and docks ;)

Ubuntu is great for a lot of stuff. It's GUI layout is making some really fascinating progress. It's almost perfect to handle everything without the command line (almost being the key word here).

But I wanted to add a bit more colour to the desktop. Why not borrow some ideas from the Mac itself. Not exactly ideas, but implementations, these ideas have been around for sometime.

Let's add some widgets to your desktop. Screenlets served the cause for me. They warn of it still being in the introductory stage. So do forgive the devs if it's a bit laggy. But to the colour it adds to your desktop, its totally worth it. Sexy, comes with a price ;)

http://www.getdeb.net/app/Screenlets

Sometimes the screenlets manager starts multiple screenlets, goes a bit cranky. Never fear. Go to the ~/.config/screenlets and in the screenlet that's being a pain in the arse, you'll find multiple .ini files. Check it out and delete off the unnecessary ones.

Next, let's get a docker. Yes, that sexy thing in the Mac OS X. It's the avant window navigator. That's what I have tried out, but it's not the only one. Just google it and you'll see what I mean. This is memory friendly, and looks so cool. I just love it. (You can check the memory in a sexy way using the sensor screenlet... hehe)

http://www.getdeb.net/app/Avant+Window+Navigator

Make sure you add it to the start up programs in your session if you want it every time.

Be warned~ These things take up memory. But sexy comes with a price, and in the open source world, it ain't cash, but memory. Hail open source!

GSoC

After so many years of learning, GSoC presents an opportunity to earn a substantial amount (at least in the context of a broke college student), and put the good knowledge that was accumulated all these years to some good use. May open source live forever!

http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/AdviceforStudents

http://code.google.com/soc/2007/asf/about.html

Good perl tutorials

In my search to exploit the world of Perl these are a few good perl tutorials I came across :

Learn Perl in 10 easy lessons : Guides you through the important aspects of perl in a nice and simple way. But only 6 lessons are available out of the 10. If all lessons were there you wouldn't need any other tutorial.

Perl Tutorial by Nik Silver : A historic perl tutorial. But it's good to learn the basics.

Essential Perl : Someone with programming experience should take a look at this. Good for someone in a hurry and is used to programming.

Scripting Insantiy ?!@#

It has been a daunting task to script... No no... not to actually start doing it but to actually find a language to script.

It was suggested that if I was new to programming I should try python, as it is more structured. Since I'm not new to programming I thought I'll go for something more powerful. Hmmm, PHP is popular. Being a heavy metal lover I never liked popular stuff. And obviously it was very popular cause it was easy, widely used and blah blah. Maybe I should try Perl. This was more or less influenced by what one of my colleagues said about it's manipulation capabilities.

I didn't give up on javascript though, since it was client side with all the hype about Ajax. I'd like to know that too.

So yeah perl and javascript... But wait perl 5 or perl 6 ... that's a problem too. Interesting though. So many things to review to just to make the choice of what to learn... haha... Maybe it's getting too complex for its own good... Then again. It's freedom of choice.

WSF/Spring (Web Services Framework for Spring)

WSO2 recently released WSF/Spring. A web services framework for Spring.

So what's so special about WSF/Spring? Does anyone get the feeling that its already out there? Is it the same old thing all over again? Take a look closer maybe it's not the same old thing.Let's clear it out by taking a look at what's out there.

1. Doesn't web service engines like Axis2 have Spring
   integrated already?
   

Exactly. Spring is already integrated into these engines. But here's the catch. Spring is integrated into Axis2. Not the other way around. No Inversion of Control here. It's done in a “non-Spring” manner. The web service engine is in control.

WSF/Spring changes this around and puts the Spring user in control. It integrates Axis2 into Spring. A Spring user can actually expose one of his beans without any knowledge of Axis2!

2. What about Spring Web Services? Web Services done in the Spring manner. Surely, this has to address the above problem.
   

It does address the problem. Allows the suer to expose web services in that “Spring”
manner. Here's the difference. It's contract-first. And yes, it's an excellent method to use. But use it a while and you'll find out that it's a bit too complex for a simple web service. A simple Hello World! will involve a considerable amount of work. WSF/Spring follows the code-first approach and with just a few entries in your
application Context, your Spring bean is ready to be consumed as a web
service.

Let me illustrate. Say you have a bean with id “productManager” and you want to make it a (surprise, surprise!) web service. After the initial web.xml configuration (documented in the INSTALL file, a simple copy and paste activity) here's all you have to enter in your application context.

<import resource="axis2Config.xml"/>

<bean id="services" class="org.wso2.spring.ws.WebServices">
<property name="services">
<list>
<bean id="managerService" class="org.wso2.spring.ws.SpringWebService">
<property name="serviceBean" ref="productManager"></property>
<property name="serviceName" value="TestProductManager">
</property>
</bean>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

That's it!!! and you have a web service that exposes the “productManger” bean.

The axis2Config.xml that is imported here is given to you in the framework.
That's the neat other feature. You can actually change the Axis2 start up parameters, and that too in the Spring way.

Here's a snippet of the axis2Config.xml :

<bean id="axisConfig" class="org.wso2.spring.ws.SpringAxisConfiguration">
<property name="parameters">
<list>
<bean id="hd"
class="org.wso2.spring.ws.beans.ParameterBean">
<property name="name"
value="hotdeployment"></property>
<property name="value"
value="true"></property>
</bean>

Just like defining a Spring bean, now you can control how the Axis2
engine behaves.

WSF/Spring inherits the power of Axis2 as it uses the Axis2 web engine. This means that some of WS-* implementations that Spring Web Services have not implemented yet, such as WS-SecureConversation, WS-Trust, etc. is already implemented by WSF/Spring.

Still a child in making, WSF/Spring is yet to prove its worth in the industry. But at a glance, it seems to make life much easier for the web service savvy Spring user.