All - Leonid Mamchenkov

Gmail gets Tasks/TODO

Many of us, Gmail users, have been waiting a really long time for this, but now the wait is over. Gmail blog announced task manager / todo list in Gmail via Labs extension.

We put your tasks in the same kind of window as chats, so they’re visible while you’re scanning your inbox, reading mail, or searching (and in Settings, too!). Just pop your list out into a new window to use Tasks outside of Gmail.

To enable Tasks, go to Settings, click the Labs tab (or just click here if you’re signed in). Select “Enable” next to “Tasks” and then click “Save Changes” at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the “Contacts” link, you’ll see a “Tasks” link. Just click it to get started.

Excellent news for this morning.

The other day I went to see “Body of Lies“. I know that some people just can’t take the same actor playing similar roles in two consequtive films – in this case Leonardo DiCaprio being an undercover agent – but if you can get past that, you are probably to enjoy the film. At least I did.

Yes, it had enough cliches and stereotypes and all, but it was also somehow fresh. It wasn’t all that predictable, and it carried a good mix global propaganda with personal drama and plain old action. Good acting, good shooting and explosion, twisty story, nice character development, nice camera work – all make it into a worthy film. If you have a chance to catch it on the big screen – use it. You’ll get some extra.

Overall, a 7 out of 10.

Fixing RT3 on Fedora 10

We upgraded our development server to Fedora 10 over the weekend. Among other things, it runs RT3 – excellent support, issue management, and bug tracking tool. Once the upgrade was over, we ended up with a semi-working setup of RT3. The emails were going through just fine, but the web interface was giving out a blank screen with no content or errors or warnings.

Googled a bit, but that didn’t help a lot. Went through server logs and found an out of memory shout from Storable.pm:

2325:Callback called exit at 
../../lib/Storable.pm (autosplit into ../../lib/auto/Storable/thaw.al) 
line 415.

Googled for that, but it turned out that quite a few people have the problem with this module running out of memory. And not only in RT3.

So I left it where it was and had some good night sleep. And it helped. In the morning, englightment came in, and I tried reloading the page with cookies and cache cleaned. It worked. And then it didn’t work again. Cleaning cookies was helping for a couple of page views. So I dived back into the RT_Config.pm file to see my options. There it was.

=item C<$WebSessionClass>
C<$WebSessionClass> is the class you wish to use for managing Sessions.
It defaults to use your SQL database, but if you are using MySQL 3.x and
plans to use non-ascii Queue names, uncomment and add this line to
F<RT_SiteConfig.pm> will prevent session corruption.
=cut
# Set($WebSessionClass , 'Apache::Session::File');

Once I enabled Apache::Session::File, the problem went away. We are now back to work, enjoying the new web 2.0 round corners interface, pastel colors, and more.

Google Reader updated interface

Google updated the design and interface of the RSS feed aggregator – Google Reader. Here is a really small screenshot of how it used to look (stolen shamelessly from Google Reader front page – it seems like they forgot to update it):

And here is a really small screenshot of how it looks now (I made this one, you can make your own):

In my opinion, the old interface was much better. Colors and borders helped to visually separate the sidebar from the main content area, as well as news items from each other. The new design is much “separated”. Also, there are a few minor quirks and bugs here and there, which will hopefully get fixed in the next few days. However, one thing is great about this new release – speed. The new Google Reader is much faster than the old one. Extra responsiveness can’t hurt, especialy thos of us who go through hundreds and thousands of posts in a fast paced manner.

Second monitor

Being so much at work during the last few month, I’ve noticed that many IT guys enjoy working with a two monitor setup. I never paid much attention to that fact and thought that those really need a second monitor are a few and that its mostly the show off for the rest.

Last week, in a very spontaneous move, I decided to try it out. We had a few of those 19-inch AOC monitors around, so I wasn’t exactly robbing anyone or anything like that. Within minutes I had unwrapped, connected, and configured in my Gnome, and I have to say that that is one of the best technology experiences I had in the last few years! It’s totally awesome!

Now, having two monitors configured as one huge desktop, I can either keep my browser separated from my consoles, or more code than every before in front of my eyes without switching virtual desktops, or have all my instant messaging at hand without polluting my main workspace. That’s brilliant, I tell you.

Downsides? Yes, sure. I haven’t yet learned to handle the setup properly, so I have to logout of my graphical interface and log back in every time I take my laptop home. It would have been so much easier if just plugging the monitor in would work. I hear that a docking station might improve the situation, but that remains to be seen.

And what I want now? More monitors. I’d love to have another monitor at work, and I’d really want to have at least one more at home. But there is no place to put it at home (I’m working on a dining table), and I’m not sure there is a way to connect two additional monitors to a laptop at work. But overall, multi-monitor setups is definitely an area I need to investigate more.