Entries from August 2006 ↓

I wanted to add an image gallery to the site for quite some time. Now that I got a new camera, I thought it’s a good time! And then I read Kishore’s post about integrating Gallery2 with WordPress. And I said, ok, I got to do this too! So I now have my photo gallery setup! In the setup, I also upgraded WordPress, got the Gallery2 Remote app, setup the same pictures on Flickr, tried the 1001 software (it’s very cool btw), and even got ImageMagick setup on my Mac! It was fun doing all this, I must add.

So now to the main actor! I had taken a picture of this cute kitty the other day. I was in my office working, and she came and sat outside the window. I immediately took out the camera and took the picture. But she ran away. The photo is one of the best photos I have taken so far!

I was even looking for the same cat to come back for many days. She came twice, but ran away as soon as I tried to take pictures. Today she came back. Looked as if she was not feeling alright. She sat and I took pictures from behind the window. And then opened the window slowly to take some more pictures, but then she walked away.

I am still stunned by the expressions on her face!

You can checkout the gallery to see her yourself.

I am reading Strategies for Hypergrowth from the ExpressExec series. The series is a collection of mini size books that summarize the core concepts and practices about a topic. I found the series shallow in coverage but started liking this particular book.

It’s probably also because Magnet is growing rapidly now and I am learning about things to watch out for!

Few ideas from the second chapter:

• Hypergrowth occurs when an organization is growing at a much faster rate than other similar organizations.
• Hypergrowth may be successful or unsuccessful. The latter often leads to the demise of the organization!
• Cashflow and the input of resources need very careful control during a period of hypergrowth.
• Hypergrowth organizations are most likely to be found at the adolescence stage of the organizational life cycle.

I am currently reading the evolution of hypergrowth and found the account of industrial revolution, the railroad boom and the shipping industry boom fascinating. Realized how much things have grown in the last century. And how fast we are progressing every day!

Growth is something that must be managed, and hypergrowth even more so. Imagine hitting an obstacle when you are going at the speed of sound. So better be careful!

We wanted to label all our hardware assets and an easy way to track things. As we are moving to a new office, it’s time to try out all the cool things and experiment! Came up with the idea of using bar codes on the labels. We first looked for Macros we could use in OpenOffice (or Word/Excel) to accomplish the task. Find a few solutions - but most of them were paid. We would certainly prefer something free - and even better, something free and open source!

And we found KBarCoder. It’s a KDE application that uses the GNU Barcode library (and also supports a few others) to print the bar codes. KBarCoder also allows you to generate labels - and use images, text and dynamic values in the labels. I had seen an application like this from Seagull software earlier, and am very impressed by the quality of KBarCoder.

It’s got its own short comings, but it functions well. I first got it via debian repositories, so got an old version. The latest version is 2.4 and supports the feature that we wanted - merge data from a CSV file easily. Yes, KBarCoder can also take data from a database. And even JavaScript! The manual is nice too. The label editor is not fancy, but can get the job done. You can not use arrow keys to move objects around, the selection is a little buggy, but it works.

Keep one thing in mind, the bar code must be at the top in the label. I kept it below some other fields and it jumped to the top automatically! The other issue I had was to print the labels on the printer. The labels were not on an A4 size sheet and KBarCoder does not allow custom page sizes. So I had to redesign the label so that the left margin was higher - this printed the labels in the center of the A4 page, and worked as I put the stickers through the printer’s manual feed.

So for the benefit of people who want to print bar coded labels, here’s the simplest approach:

Download and install KBarCoder. Ensure you get the 2.4 version. Open up the application, you will see a window like this:

Now go to the Label Editor and design the label as per your wish. The dynamic fields that will be coming from CSV will be inserted as [$HeaderName]. The CSV file must contain this HeaderName, and the data from that column will go to this particular text field.

After saving the label, go to Batch Printing. Select your label file.

Tell the software that you are going to import the data from a CSV file. You may also import it from Database or type it manually.

Select your CSV file. You will see the headers in the file.

After the data is in, you can add or remove records in the following screen.

KBarCoder allows you to print a serial number - it increments it automatically. You can use the following screen to set the starting value of the serial. This will work only if you have inserted a dynamic field [serial] in your label though.

You are close to getting done. Choose to print.

While printing, make sure you try out with a few records first. Get the printing correct, then only do your final print.

We now have loads of stickers lying around - waiting to be placed on the beautiful power houses that are lying in our office and my house as I write this

Read a nice blog post about performance of web applications. There are good set of articles on the same blog about RIA performance as well.

Worth reading.

I did not know that my white MacBook will get dirty when I bought it. And I am not happy with it. The machine works very well, I’ve got three operating systems installed on it and I like the performance. But - not the way the wristpad has faded out the color and how dirty it looks.

Not especially after seeing the cute black MacBooks that we got two weeks ago. The black ones don’t have the problem with the palm rest and even have a better trackpad I feel. I heard a couple of friends say that Apple will change the palm rest of the machine and that is a known issue.

Well, indeed it is a known issue. Apple Support also mentions it. But my Apple dealer said he has the same problem with his MacBook and he is not aware of a policy from Apple on this. Guess I will have to call Apple office in Bangalore now.

Even the glossy screen does not get cleaned easily.

Is there a solution to this?

Update (19 Sep 2006): I called up the Apple Care call center, got details of a local service center and got the palm rest area changed. It took some time for them to get the supplies, but the replacement was done on the spot and my MacBook is not a Clean White Beauty!