And then ……
and then something…
Now you must be wondering why exactly would i be calling them unfortunate…….. One Simple Reason: they aren’t yet ready for your everyday use……….so it will be a little while before you can get your hands on (y)our Happily Ever After(tm) 😛
Ah and yes, Speaking of Happily Ever Afters………
P.S I guess this speaks for all the stuff unsaid, from all the saved drafts in my wordpress acount ……. i guess….I can safely delete them now 🙂
Basically, I will be graduating in a month and half (hopefully 😉 ) So was pondering about what all will be taking along with me, that I gained during my college life…..
So, KDE (and foss in general) is one of the first things that came to my mind, and along with it came the memories of conf.kde.in , that took place a month ago…. It obviously was the most awwsome time, I had in a long time…..
So whats so Awwsome about it?Well, met lots of interesting folks …. and when i said interesting, It really was meeting *so many* people who shared similar interests with me….. and that really is a nice experience…
It was a really nice bonding experience, from a personal perspective… I mean we finally were able to put some faces on the names that were registered in our heads… And then, It was an intellectually satisfying experience…. cuz when you meet so many awesome people, you obviously can’t stop them talking about sooooooo many interesting topics….. And then it was also really useful to make some contacts… basically whom to bug for what…. and then on the whole it really was a nice experience……
And then I finally got some time to sit down with friends and finish off some looooooong overdue work, which I will be bragging about in the next Blogpost, really soon…. I promise 🙂
And ya My session was supposed to introduce beginners to programming/Qt to the basic features of Qt GUI, with the help of this small minesweeper.. Due to the unavailability of time,cuz of the overwhelming response, it was scaled down from a 4 hours lab session(where everyone gets to make one) to a 30 minutes talk(i explained bits and pieces of code in the most raw and boring way possible). Â So, dunno how many of you actually benefited from it.. so here I am, I have uploaded everything onto my BitBucket Repo (Including my presentation slides) , Hope it is useful…
from 0 to minesweeper :Â in python and qt
Let me try telling a story using 3 pictures:
5 whole days??!!
Okay, here is the actual deal:  conf.kde.in will be held on 9th, 10th, 11th March 2011, followed  by two days of code sprint on 12th and 13th March 2011.
WHERE!?
R V Vidyanikethan Post,
Mysore Road, Bengaluru – 560004,
Karnataka, India.
More Questions?? Â Here you go:Â http://kde.in/faq/
Need More updates?? Follow us on Facebook , Twitter , Identi.ca
Need to talk to us?? mail us at conf@kde.in or join our mailing list: kde.in/mailinglist. Or ping us on #kde-in (Network: irc.freenode.net)
P.S :Â This picture doesn’t include the whole of the KDE-IN.. its just a few, who happened to meet up at the last FOSS.IN, Bangalore.
I *Finally* reached Munich on Friday afternoon(phew!!!)…. waited for an hour at the airport (Of course, the free WiFi saved me!!!) to pick Kryzstof  up and then both of us went to the Nokia’s Office. It was a nice and warm welcome that we’d received…Meeting the people behind the IRC nicks and the Software I Use immediately reminded me of asiego’s statement: “remember, though, that the people doing the “highly integrated” products at these companies are just people too. they aren’t magical oompa loompa wood elves.”
…. and here goes my (first of many) Thanks to Chani 🙂 without whose power plug adapter, my Laptop’s Battery would have starved to death…. The first day got over very quickly..I sat down and updated my KDE… and read a bit about Ovi and thats it(!!!)…We all went out for the dinner… and then to the AO hostel :
The Second Day: Today is the day when i finally met Sascha (my GSoC mentor), we sat down and just checked out my GSoC code, after which I somehow broke my Ubuntu (actually “sudo apt-get dist-upgrade”) : It simply didn’t boot!!! So thats when i had to get back to my Arch Installation t continue the work…. Till noon, Sascha cleaned up my code with “const”s and indentation and stuff(till that point i didn’t notice how ugly my code looked!!!)…while i had to setup my Syncevolution’s development environment on Arch…
Then there was the battle with a couple of bugs: one is the Syncevolution’s problem with the glib-dbus blah blah blah , which finally disappeared with a system upgrade (actually this was a known bug.. for which I found the solution on the Internet)… and then we had the *HUGE* lunch… And then, it was time for some Nintendo Wii 😀 😀 😀 And then, I tried to get my syncevolution up and running… and it Finally ran… I Wish it was that simple!!! NO!! thats not how it went…Dont exactly know what the problem was(I Still don’t know whats going on, but i’m sure autotools is to blame here!!!) but, the KWallet part of the syncevolution of the syncevolution didn’t work!!!!  So I demonstrated syncevolution using the Gnome Keyring… (apparently i really didn’t remember my passwords!!!)
meanwhile, We (me and Sascha) then discussed the GUI of syncevolution( it was something that was needed to be discussed, as IRC simply wasn’t enough to discuss the mockups!!!), which Sivan was interested to finish off… so welcome Sivan, to the synKevolution project 😀 😀
And then, if i remember it right, it was the pizza time (for the dinner!!) and then i again got back to the syncevolution .. tried to figure out what the bug was … during this apparently even Knut broke his (K)ubuntu broke!!! so sat down theretrying to boot his laptop : It didn’t have a CD/DVD drive, so tried to use a pen drive, which apparently didn’t work with Kubuntu latest version and Unetbootin!!!! After trying for half an hour or so, i Finally burned a CD and used a USB CD drive fix it!
and here comes the awesome little incident: It has been 3 years since my N70 and it now is in  it’s 7th and final stage of life : random restarts, the memory effect on the battery, etc… (The 7 Ages any one!!!)!!! it barely survives all my experiments: Syncevolution, some python stuff, heavy internet browsing : GNUBOX anyone??, lot of NES games…. Anyways, There I was in Munich, to toss a coin and decide btw. the Nokia N900 and some really powerful Android device. (Actually if the coin has a 3rd side, it would be waiting for the Meego device).. and Knut Actually gifted us with the complimentary development devices from Nokia and I got THE NOKIA N900 (Thanks a TON Nokia and Knut, its really awesome!!!) (Of course, a seperate blog post on my New and awesome N900 is on it’s way, but only after my Game Design Course assignment!!)
With the New N900 in my hand, i could barely even look at the syncevolution bug… so fiddled around with it for some time…and then finally left to the AO hostel… Ah here comes the thing about the railway strike (or something).. the train we were on stopped in the midway and took us back in the reverse direction….and then we had to use another train to get the hostel…
And here comes the 3rd day…Went down to the office and then found out that Sascha had to leave early… So unfortunately could’t have the discussion on the syncevolution’s GUI that day…Btw. I finally met pradeepto today… i had a tough time recognizing him from his facebook picture though.. anyways, today we all sat down and had “the talk” about the sprint topic,
what KDE can do for Ovi and vice versa… I’m sure you can catch more about the moral of the story of the discussion on our wiki page @
http://techbase.kde.org/OviSprintDiscussionNotes
anyways, after(or before) that talk there pradeepto started his talk on the evolution of the Symbian OS, which apparently made me really happy: for the last n years, there i was silently following the news on whatever i could find on my mobile phone, and have collected enough info on it that I was able to finish off each line as he spoke!!!
Don’t know how, but the day quickly ended… and we headed off to dinner… don’t really remember the name of the place but, it was near the place where the Oktober Fest was hosted this year… and had an awesome dinner.. (did I tell you that Nokia actually paid for our food too???) Anyways the dinner was awesome and then we headed back to the hostel… And ya, btw. this was the last day of the sprint!!! There I was thinking that this was a coding sprint and was hoping to get atleast parts of the synKevolution GUI up and running… but apparently this was something else… more of a brainstorming session I guess… and my contribution was : Syncevolution already (just) works(TM) with Ovi… It only needed a couple of fixes to be better!!!
———————–
And then the Dev Days:
Well I could write a couple of pages on just this one… but let me quickly finish it off in 3 sentences(I’m sure you ve already read a LOT about the Dev Days in many other blogs)… It was more about Networking(meeting people!!!) , Qt Quick (or Qt Declarative or QML or whatever you know it as, but it really DID feel like the whole of the dev days was just for this one topic!!! and apparently And for a couple of reasons, THIS is what is getting into the synKevolution’s GUI too…) and exploring new technology related to Qt 😀
And the Dev days went really smooth… On the last day, Leinir got a new N8 from Nokia for being a Qt Ambassador…and did I tell you I tried to charge my N900 using an N8‘s USB port??!!!….
Apparently it din’t pump out enough electrons to keep my N900 alive, but still it felt awesome to see the N900 trying to charge itself from the N8!!!
There ended the Awesome Dev Days…
———————————————
This being my first trip to anyplace beyond my Home country(more precisely: any place beyond my home and my college/school or a couple of other places), I decided to stay in Munich for a couple of extra days and see the place around…Most people had to leave on Wednesday and Thursday Morning…So it already was getting a bit nostalgic for me…Anyways, the first day to see Munich was Thursday: Me, Rune, Sivan and Kryzstof went into the city as tourists, for the first time!! As soon as we went into the city, Kryzstof got lost in the crowd.. we tried to look for him for
some time and then gave it up, feeling not that bad as he can speak the language and he had a flight to catch…. From his Picassa uploads, I’m assuming he is safe and secure in his homeland now..We toured the whole city on the Tourist Bus and then had to bid Rune a good bye  and then the trip to the Musical Instruments store: I bought myself a little plastic flute and Sivan bought himself a harmonica. After that, we hanged around the store and played with the keyboards in there(the Tyros 3 felt awesome)… Also came to know that Yamaha Tyros 4 is coming out next Week!!!!  We soon left the Music Store and headed back to the Hostel when Sivan had to finally leave… so There I was: the last person from the sprint to leave Munich… So slept early that day..
The next day, I Woke up early and then toured the whole city (well as much as I can by foot)… I started at around 10… and moved on and on till 6 … When i finally was tired from all the walking, I was lost and couldn’t find my way back to hostel(the Street Musicians in Munich were so damn awesome that i literally was lost in their music and to add to that I couldn’t read the signs on the streets, so i should say that was bound to happen)… At this point of time, I had a really interesting encounter with this plesant person called Stephen.. He was selling some spiritual books, and he came upto me and started chatting with me about stuff … and he was like “The Lord helps you when you ask for it.. Jesus shows you the path…” … when the talk was over ,the  funny thing is he told me where to go next to find the way back to my hostel… me being an atheist, have decided to leave this encounter as an interesting serendipitous moment(is this the right usage of this word)?? though…but Ya I did wonder what if I wasn’t one…
And then had to go back to the hostel and moved to my new room just .. I was so tired that i fell asleep before even i could go get some dinner… while watching Frasier..And then the last day in Munich… got up early, had some breakfast and some internet browsing and then did some shopping for chocolates last minute souviniers with Obate (I hope I spelled it right, he was one of the roommates of my new room)..and then here I am at the Munich airport charging my laptop and my N900 while wondering why half the Wifi Accesspoints here are paid ones(really costly!!!) when there are Lot many free accesspoints in the same place at the same time!!!!
Cheers 😀
P.S  The most Ironic thing about the sprint: it was the break i desperately needed , for the past 8 months or so…  and (not so surprisingly!) I spent it all on as much techie stuff as I can!! 😀
So here goes my BIG Thanks to Leinir and all the people (especially Claudia!!!) who made my first sprint an awesome experience 🙂
Btw. If you ve managed to read THIS BIG blog post, then do leave me a comment and let me know.. cuz even by my standards, this is a really BIG blog post!!!!
Hi All,
Next week i have my exams, so here i am, putting a pause to my work on syncevolution. Will get back to work after next saturday. Â So what exactly is the current status? I’d say we are 65% there: The backend is nearly ready.Theoretically, it needs :
1) 1 addition so that KDE specific entries of a contact are preserved during a sync.
2) A bug fix, which will have to start the akonadi server if it isn’t already running. Currently The sync operation just hangs up on my ubuntu machine, if akonadi backend is enabled and the akonadi server isn’t running.
3) Need to look for a notes application using akonadi. Right now, we are just storing the Notes as plain text items in an akonadi collection, while KNotes can’t access it.
And apart from these major ToDos , there are little fixes here and there, a lot of testing, a GUI(Work in progress) and a Bluedevil plugin(nearly done) are in store. So once done, All the goodies of a Nokia PC Suite would be available on a KDE desktop.
And for those tired of reading my blog posts and are interested in having a hands on experience on the actual thing, here it is:
git://gitorious.org/meego-middleware/syncevolution.git syncevolution
All the information you need is contained within…
1)syncevolution/README.rst
2)syncevolution/HACKING
3)syncevolution/src/backends/akonadi/README
Beware, Its A LOT of homework to be done , so i seriously suggest waiting for the completed work, which I promise will be here very soon.. I really want your first impression to be something really good, and right now the code is nowhere near that.
To simplify things a bit, here is the moral of the story of the Readme files(feel free to point out if i missed out anything),
Step 1) Install all the dependencies. On my ubuntu machine, this is what i had to install: i might have missed out some or added something extra… especially the build-essentials package and git-core…
sudo apt-get install libnotify-dev libboost-dev libakonadi-dev akonadi-server libqt4-dev kdepim-runtime kdepimlibs5-dev akonadiconsole libbluetooth-dev libsoup-gnome2.4-dev libopenobex-dev libglib2.0-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libtool intltool automake xsltproc libsqlite3-dev libpcre3-dev
Step 2) Get and compile the source code from my git repo:
mkdir SyncEvolution
cd SyncEvolution
#get libsynthesis needed for syncevolution from the repo
git clone git://gitorious.org/meego-middleware/libsynthesis.git synthesis
#get syncevolution
git clone git://gitorious.org/meego-middleware/syncevolution.git syncevolution
cd syncevolution
./autogen.sh
cd ..
mkdir build
cd build
../syncevolution/configure –prefix=$PWD/../dist –with-synthesis-src=../synthesis –disable-shared –enable-static –enable-developer-mode –disable-ebook –disable-ecal –enable-dbus-service –enable-akonadi –enable-qt-dbus –enable-kwallet
make
# Assuming that everything builds perfectly,
# now you will have start syncevo-dbus-server in SyncEvolution/build/src
# and then you can use the command line tool syncevolution in the same directory
Step 3) Configure it and Use it 🙂 (The command line tool will function as advertised in the README.rst
If you get stuck at any point, feel free to contact me on this blog.
Good Luck (Y)
P.S Make sure that you have backed up your PIM data before you try this. (on both the devices). I myself have lost my contacts or ended up with too many duplicates.
Also, additional information could be found on http://syncevolution.org/
[updated to fetch the libsynthesis from the meego repo and to use the syncevolution’s master branch]
Hi Dinesh,
We have processed the evaluation for your project named Bringing SyncML support to Akonadi with KDE.
Congratulations, from our data it seems that you have successfully passed the Final Evaluations. Please contact your mentor to discuss the results of your evaluation and to plan your goals and development plan for the rest of the program
Greetings,
The Google Open Source Programs Team
😀
P.S please excuse me about my blog post I promised: was caught up hunting down some last minute bugs…and there is 1 bug thats still tormenting me. I ll update as soon as it is over 🙂
Here is a sneak peek for what is in store for you next week… (hopefully)
p.s I apologize for my long silence.
AWESOME :D!!! I got into GSoC 2010 🙂 probably the first thing I should do now is thank the really friendly KDE community and my mentor Sascha and my friends (for their support and wishes)!! Also Congrats to me fellow GSoC students 🙂
Before I start, let me introduce myself: I am Dinesh, currently pursuing 3rd year of my Engineering @DA-IICT .
And here I’m,to explain what I will be working on:
“Bringing SyncML support to Akonadi” :
Incase you are wondering what the above statement means, it is to basically let KDE PIM apps exchange information like Contacts, Calendar Entries, Notes, TODO lists with most mobile phones out there in market…
Well, now the first question one would want to ask for such a thing is “Whats the need for such a thing?”
Ah, I m glad you finally asked that question: finally got the chance to speak out this nice little speech of mine:
Let me start with the most obvious use cases:
1. Since you can exchange data with your PC, it would be like taking a back up of your information(about 8 months ago this was the only thing that I could come up with)
2. And since the data is on your PC, you can easily share the data between multiple devices, like say when you bought yourself a new phone or you actually use more than one phones… and hence keeping all of them up to date with each other: the changes made in one will automatically appear in all the other devices (if you wish to do so 🙂 )
3. And NOW comes an interesting point: THE RISE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS!! Whether we noticed it already or not, social networks already have become our PIM services!
Take Facebook, for example: it even offers a Facebook phonebook application, which fetches the information of all your Facebook friends! (look at the brilliance of it! this phonebook automatically gets updated when someone changes their phone number… so even if you havent been in touch with someone for a very long time, and suddenly need to contact him/her, you can still catch them since you are on the same network(provided that they update their number on Facebook too… never will you ever have to bother about updating your phonebook.. so let the government take it’s time in bringing mobile number portability, we are cool cuz we already up to date with people ,thanks to the internet)), also say you even have their Facebook status update in your mobile phone , you actually would know whether to call him or her before you actually call him or her…(you wouldn’t really want to disturb someone who says “I don’t want to be disturbed”, would you?)… and the best thing is all this happens behind the scenes… so once again, you shouldn’t ever worry about checking things or updating your phone book for this… Also, you’ve accepted to attend some event on Facebook, many of your new friends have their birthdays coming up, shouldnt you carry that information along with you, before adding a new task to your calendar on the go(so as to prevent collisions).. and there are many more use cases like this… so essentially, your PIM data is where it needs to be: with you, when you need it! (unless you want to carry your laptop with you all the time)
So naturally one might ask, shouldnt you be building a Facebook mobile app. (with a feature to cache most data, so as to suit the restricted data plans) rather than doing things indirectly!? Simple.. what about point numbers 1 and 2 then?? and also, should one has to lose all the data, when he/she wishes to shut down/ move away from Facebook? And what about the friends who don’t use facebook, but are on some other network?
Convinced about my work? At least I’m convinced enough for me to work on it 🙂 (although the third point needs a lot more work than my current proposal for GSoC, that’s basically what I want to achieve in the long-term, so if anyone with similar agenda,your help here is greatly appreciated! 🙂 )
Now a bit more about my GSoC project: basically this semester(which ends in a week!!), I wanted to implement a mobile application for my software engineering course project, which does take care of the third point. But sadly/thankfully couldn’t take up the project because of certain reasons. so decided to work on it by myself and hence slowly learned about things, (this actually added to the fun of the busiest and awesome semesters i had till now !)
Now a bit more technical stuff on how the project started: first decided to look up ways to transfer stuff to my good old N70 and then learned a bit about SyncML and was looking around for stuff and then found out about OpenSync, tried to use any tricks I found on the net to get open sync running with my Linux desktop and just before GSoC started found out how OpenSync was mostly a dead-end (honestly, their wiki page was really promising), and then came to know about SyncEvolution! and then found out about Sascha’s last year’s GSoC. and then here i am 🙂
Wishing all my fellow GSoC students a very good luck, and especially college mates: Aditya Bhatt(for his face recognition support for digiKam) and Nikhil Marathe(for his UPnP support for amaroK)
Time to get back to tomorrow’s exam prep.
wish me luck 🙂
Cheers
😀
P.S. I might be a bit slow to get back to replies this week. Once after this Tuesday (when my end-semester exams are finally over), I’ll get back to my GSoC project with all my energies.
:D 