Archive for October, 2010

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Drawing GANTT Charts and Project Management on Linux, (Microsoft Project substitute for Unix)

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

I'm studying Project Management, right now. In that spirit of thoughts I and a couple of other guys are building a Project Plan.
As it Project Plan it's necessary to put a GANTT Chart in it to show visually the project timeline (the phases), the duration and the inter-relation between the different tasks which leads the project to an actual completion.

After a bit of thorough research online on available software to deal with project management and particularly, ones that are capable to build a GANTT charts on Linux / BSD.

I've come with the following list of software capable to be a substitute for the Microsoft Project software.
Redmine GANTT Chart

GANTT chart Redmine

1. Gantt Project
GANTTProject chart GANTTProject Chart

2. Gnome Planner
Planner GANTT Gnome Chart Planner GANTT Chone Chart

3. Task Juggler Project Manager with GANTT Capability for (KDE)
Task Juggler

4. JxProject – This software is not free, though it can be considered almost free
Take a look also at:
5. Trac , though it doesn't really support GANTT charts it's a lovely software to be used for PM.
Trac Project Management

Another option you have is to try out:
6. PHProjekt

Update 20.09.2016 – PHPProject Old download link is no longer active

It is this link http://www.phprojekt.com/, but the page doesn’t seem to be active any more. I thought you might want to update.

If you are looking for an alternative please check out http://wiht.link/PHProjekt-PM, it may make a suitable replacement.

Kind Regards,
Tom Wilcox


That piece of softwre really looks promising, especially if we consider that it's web based and how much essential is today to have an anline tools for doing the ordinary desktop jobs.

You can even check an online demo of the PHPProjekt software here

If you're a type of KDE user you definitely has to try out Kplato

As I've tested the software the software is easy to be used, however it still is missing some essential parts that Microsoft Project includes so it's not 100% substitute.
Also it's not able to open Microsoft Project (MPP) files, neither able to save the charts in the .mpp format.

Moving ahead I've came across DotProject DotProject Gantt Chart
DottProject Gantt Chart

I haven't took the time to test it myself but however, as I go through the software website the project looked quite good.
Lastly you can take a look at: 7. PStricks as a mean of project management, however I think it doesn't support GANTT chart building.
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Posted in Business Management, Curious Facts, Everyday Life, Linux | 1 Comment »

What to do if you don’t receive Adsense PIN letter via post service on your home address

Saturday, October 9th, 2010

What to do if you haven’t received your adsense confirmation PIN letter after 2 PIN requestsI’m running a Google adsense account for some time and I have some adsense advertisements on my website to make some money to at least pay my home internet.
Everything went fine with Google authorizing my website for adsense , however after I’ve filed all the data in my Google Adsense account in account settings , yet I needed a Personal Identification Number (PIN) that is usually sent by google by a normal post services (as a letter).

As I’ve already filled in my address details in Google and requested a PIN to be sent to my mailbox, usually I had to receive it in about 3 to 6 weeks time as Google manuals prescribe.

Nevertheless that was not the case with me, I haven’t received anything from Google for about a month and a half time, then I decided to request a second PIN confirmation.
Anyways the second one didn’t arrived again for about 1.5 months, so once again requested the Google adsense PIN to be re-sent to me in order to be able to laters withdraw my money via Western Union.

Today after logging to my Google adsense account I red the following unpleasent text:

Your pages are displaying Public Service Advertisements (PSAs) because you haven't yet verified your PIN and/or phone number. See the Payment History page for more details.
I also realized no money are generated to my google adsense account for clicks and impressions anymore!

What a shit man, what a shit!

Now google’s pocket is filling with my website advertise clicks money …
That’s definitely not cool!
What was really even stranger is that actually my account was disabled with a Total estimated earnings = 36.68 EUR
That’s strange because in the google adsense documentation it’s stated that the account will start showing the Public Service Advertisements (PSAs) after it reaches 70 EUR ?

Afterwards, I’ve used Google’s Adsense help to request Adsense Phone Verification

And now I’m waiting for theim to call me on my mobile phone.

If you have the same problem you can read a very helpful article on the topic of problems with getting adsense PIN letter here

Moreover it seems it is possible to
request an adsense PIN code via email from this link

Anyhow if you use the above link to request your Google adsense PIN via email, you will have to attach also a copy of your ID next this email and some other information as requested from google.

Another helpful tip that I’ve red while I was investigating on the alternative ways to get your PIN in a quick way is to send as less emails to the google adsense account as possible.
I have to say that Google were really quick in their answer they answered in 7 hours time after I’ve reported the problem and requested that my PIN be mailed to me.

I’ve received the following email from Google adsense support

Hi,

Thanks for your response. I understand that you’ve been unable to receive
your PIN.

In order to resolve this issue, please respond to this email and attach adigital image of a government issued ID card, bank statement, or telephonebill displaying your payee name and mailing address as it appears in youraccount. Please note that we’re only able to accept information printed inone of our supported languages. You can find a list of supported languagesat https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=9727Once we receive your response, we’ll review the information you’veprovided and update you on the status of your PIN verification.For additional questions, I’d encourage you to visit the AdSense HelpCenter ( http://www.google.com/adsense_help ) or the official AdSense blog( http://adsense.blogspot.com?utm_source=txft ). Alternatively, feel freeto post your question on the AdSense Help Forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense?hl=en ).Sincerely,

I’ve replied to the above email with attached electonic scanned copy of my Personal ID, now all left for me is to wait until I receive the answer from Google that attaching my scanned Personal ID is enough for them to mail me the Adsense confirmation PIN on my e-mail
Hope this is helpful to somebody.

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Posted in Everyday Life, SEO, Various | 11 Comments »

Removing scheduler_proxy.exe that hangs for nothing on Lenovo 3000 N100

Friday, October 8th, 2010

I’ve just had to fix a Lenovo 3000 N100 notebook, some it’s drivers weren’t installed properly for some reason.
Thanksfully the notebook contained a driver installer copy on it’s hard drive.
Here is the time to say that the Lenovo notebook was equipped with Windows XP (SP2) some kind of release optimized for performance.
It’s language setting and language pack was Spanish.

Besides that an annoying popup with an error was appearing during Windows boot up.

The exact error that appeared on boot up was:

Scheduler_proxy.exe - No se puede encontrat el componente

Error al iniciar la aplicacion porque no se encontro MSVCR71.dll.
La reinstalacion de la aplicacion puede solucionar el problema.

The exact location where the scheduler_proxy.exe was installed into was:
C:Archivos de programaArchivos comunesLenovoScheduler

Since scheduler_proxy.exe wasn’t really helpful I decided to remove it to load on start up.

To do so I’ve had to launch msconfig by pressing Windows Flag Button + R and then typing msconfig , then I had to navigate to the 5th menu which in Spanish reads Inicio and find the scheduler_proxy and untick it.

Doing so will prevent the program to load up on your next boot up.

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Posted in System Administration, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »

How to view yearly days calendar in console (terminal) / Check Eastern date from terminal on Linux

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Recently while I was browsing for some random information I came across, something really handy that you can do with the simple text based command cal / ncal .
It appears there is a text based (console) way to check for the weekly date calendar as well as to check the whole calendar in weeks for a whole year.

1. Here is how you can check for instance the dates numbers as well as the weeks of the day:

hipo@noah:~$ ncal
October 2010
Su 3 10 17 24 31
Mo 4 11 18 25
Tu 5 12 19 26
We 6 13 20 27
Th 7 14 21 28
Fr 1 8 15 22 29
Sa 2 9 16 23 30

2. If you want to check just the calendar for a particular month exec the cmd:

hipo@noah:~$ cal 11 2010
November 2010
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

3. To see the Julian Calendar (where each day of the year equals to a number between (1-365) issue:

hipo@noah:~$ cal 11 2010
November 2010
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

3. To see the Julian Calendar (where each day of the year equals to a number between (1-365) issue:

hipo@noah:~$ cal -j 2010

This will list you the days for the whole year, the 2010 parameter actually should be substituted to the year for which you’d like the calendar to appear.
4. Another very handy thing is that from your terminal / console on your Linux you can check the day for Eastern both in the (Orthodox Church & the Roman Catholic Chuch).

hipo@noah:~$ ncal -o 2012
April 15 2012
hipo@noah:~$ ncal -e 2012
April 8 2012

When I was playing with ncal’s capabilities able to display the dates for Eastern for Western Roman Catholic Churches and Western Roman Catholic Churches, i’ve came across another interesting fact.

Like in 2010 in 2011 the date for Eastern for both Orthodox Christian Churches as well as the Roman Catholic Western Churches coincides.

In the upcoming year 2011, we’re about to celebrate the bright feast of the Resurrection of our Saviour and God Jesus Christ on April 24 2011

5. To display a whole calendar with dates and days for the whole current year issue:

hipo@noah:~$ ncal -y

So I hope this info is helpful to somebody.

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Posted in Linux, System Administration, Various | 1 Comment »

Three minutes Philosophy on Pythagoras

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Few posts ago I’ve posted a few videos of a crazy guy who tries to compress the wide teachings of the most important considered philosophers in just 3 minutes. Where he avaluates through the major ideas of each of the Philosophical teachers, the thought school born by the philosopher etc.

While I was browsing in youtube through the rest of the 3 minutes philosophy of S. Peter Davis, I’ve come across an interesting one about pythagoras.
Check it out below:

Three minutes of philosophy on Pythagoras

If you don’t consider the vulgarism and the bloody scene some of the concepts presented about pythagoras and their determination as a “cult” seemed interesting to me.
Another interesting idea that the video discusses is the Renessance and the huge influence of Renessance by the Pythagorian’s ancient philosophy.
Well as I’ve heard it from old people in Bulgaria: “Everything new thing is actually a good forgotten old one”, guess this is pretty much the case with the pythagorian’s movement about perfection through numbers.
It’s obvious that Pythagoras was the most influential philosopher on today’s world, most of his ideas and discoverias are essential in ever most of our today’s activities.
So I guess he deserves a bit more credit than the video grants him ? 🙂

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Posted in Business Management, Various | No Comments »

Barcoder for Nokia 9300i (finding a product origin through the barcode)

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Barcoder nokia mobile

Have you ever wondered on how you could check the product bought from the store origin by it’s barcode?
Every product produced nowadays has a barcode sticker somewhere on it’s cover.
In the economically developed countries, almost 100% of the products has a barcode. This barcode is a identifier on where does a certain product origins from.
Barcodes does facilitate the process of tracking a product as well as finding some more information about a certain product.
It also helps in speeding up the product identification, it also speeds up the time necessary to mark the product in stores.
I guess almost everybody has been into a store where they use a barcode reader device to mark your bought products.

Barcodes has subliminally become a very essential part of humanity daily life.
Thus I found handy to have a program on your smartphone mobile to read barcodes.
I haven’t done a thorough research on the barcode number reader programs online, however I’ve came across a Russian program called BarCoder which is able to read barcode numbers sequence to be found below the barcode strip lines.

The BarCoder program is very handy especially in stores where you buy food, technical equipment, ironware, electronics … you name it.

May products nowadays doesn’t include a country or region stated where the product has been produced.
However the products still contain the barcode, by entering the barcode number sequence into Barcoder , the program reports where the product was produced.

You can download the barcoder freeware here

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Posted in Mobile Phone Apps & Games | 1 Comment »

Good old fashioned hexedit for your Nokia communicator mobile

Monday, October 4th, 2010

Some of you might remember the glorious day of the hexeditors. As a PC geek I used to make quite of an use back in the days.
Especially with the MS-DOS old days having a hexeditor was completely essential piece of software.
Hexeditors were used for general debugging of software changing certain message texts of application and games which were hard coreded as a text within the executable binaries.

In that manner of thoughts I just recently came across a hexeditor software for my Nokia 9300i Communicator phone

I find it really handy to have a hexeditor able to allow me to edit my nokia phone binary files and change chunks of text encoded information in the binary.
Back in the old days the hexeditors were also seriously used for crackin I haven’t tested if the hexeditor on mobile phones is able to be used for the same simple task, however I think it supposed to be capable of being used for such a purpose as well.

Apart from that the hexedit mobile application for the Symbian S80 is a freeware and that makes it even more attractive piece of soft to install on your mobile.
Here is a screenshot on how hexedit looks like when editing a binary file.

Nokia Communicator 9300i, mobile hexedit
Hope this wonderful piece of soft is helpful to someone else out there.

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Posted in Mobile Phone Apps & Games | No Comments »

DROS (Use DOS like command shell) on Nokia mobile phones

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

DROS nokia mobile ftp screenshot
Ever wanted to have the good old fashioned DOS command like prompt on your Nokia 9300i mobile?
Hopefully you do, just like I wanted. The DROS mobile phone application written in MIDP, the install application is actually a jar.
If you’re a console (shell) freak like me you will certainly value this handy app.
What makes things even better is that DROS is able to run simple BATCH files (e.g. has an embedded BASIC interpreter)

Some of the other many nice features that DROS has embedded in it are:

1. DROS contains a media player that can be used to play mp3 files
2. DROS have embedded command line FTP client
3. DROS includes a very basic file text editor
Using the DROS text editor you can write basic batch scripts and execute them to automate stuff on your mobile.
DROS comes with a very good written documentation (MANUAL)
It somehow brings memories about the good old days of the 80s command based computing, this kind of “presence” fits very well with the Nokia 9300i Communicator mobile 🙂
Some of the other Mobile phones which are supported by DROS are as follows:

Nokia 6630, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 9300, Nokia 9500, Nokia N70, Nokia N80, Nokia N90, Nokia N91, Nokia Series 60, Sony Ericsson P990

If this app catched your interest then follow the DROS download link
Installation of the program is very easy and comes to clicking over on the java executable (jar file) using the Nokia’s File Manager.

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Posted in Mobile Phone Apps & Games | 2 Comments »

How to use a Nokia 9300i as a Torch at Night time or at dark places with DiscoLight

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010

I do own a Nokia Communicator 9300i for some time I’ve been looking for a while for an application for my mobile phone enabling me to transform the normal Nokia 9300i phone capabilities into a torch (flash light)

Many telephones come with an embedded software or hardware light led, that gives the option for the phone user to use his / her phone as a torch in the dark.
However with Nokia 9300i by default there is no such led to be able to emit bright light neither through a feature integrated with the mobile’s hardware nor through it’s embedded pre-installed software.

The phones torch I see as a very essential and handy feature for every mobile phone, so I have to say that it was rather strange why the flash light wasn’t decided to be made an integral part of the Nokia 9300i Communicator

It took me a while until I finally found an application able to show a brigh light on my phone Nokia 9300i internal screen and therefore allow the mobile to be used as a torch in the dark.

Anyhow the effort of spending an hour of Googling around was awarding 🙂
The software that allowed my Nokia 9300i to have the Torch capabilities is called DiscoLight / (Disco Light)

Here is a download link to discolight I’ve found online
I also made a mirror of the discolight app that can be downloaded here
Discolight is actually not actually planned to operate as a Torch for the Nokia 9300i, it is just a program able to either fill your mobile phone screen with a colors you might choose from (e.g. white light, flash sequence, auto color, standard flash) or do a sequence of colors (like in the discoteques I guess that’s where the name of the application comes from).

To use the DiscoLight program as a torch, right after the program is launched press the 5 key on your Nokia communicator keyboard.

Another very simple program that is able to transform your Nokia Business class phone to a Torch is FlashLight

Both DiscoLight and FlashLight are written in Java and works perfectly fine with the 9300i mobile.

The only disadvantage about using my Nokia 9300i as a torch is my Nokia communicator inside panel has to be opened, e.g. I had to walk with the phone cover opened to use the torch.
Anyways still I find this feature very handy for me, hopefully it will be of an use to somebody else who is looking for the same functionality on his mobile.

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Posted in Mobile Phone Apps & Games | No Comments »

Modern day business (Black & White Strategy)

Friday, October 1st, 2010

As I’m following my business studies, I’m more and more convinced that business studies are pretty much marketing.
I’ve been recently introduced to a Business Strategy called The Black & White strategy

One of my tasks was to incorporate that strategy to one of my business projects.

Let me tell you in short what do they refer as Black & White Strategy

They decided to call the option for a solution to a problem which will be either to act or not to act, to say “yes” or “no” for a certain decision is a strategy.

“Yes” or “No” a strategy … eerr what? where? how?
Immediately after I was introduced to the “innovative” concept I googled online to see if there is somewhere some kind of official definition for the black & white strategy.
Well you can guess, I couldn’t find anything as an official definition of a Black & White strategy.
In the mean time the concept of black and white and the simplicity involved is something really worthy, but come on “how can you call it a strategy?”.

Let’s suppose I’ve been asked, do you want to eat and I answer with a “yes”, then according to this black & white strategy thing I made a strategic choice because I won’t be hungry for another 6-8 hours? What the crack of bullshit thinking is that? Is it a thinking at all?

I leave you to decide on that, it made me laugh out loud seriously ! 🙂
Anyways my attempt to find an official definition for the coined term of Black & White strategy walked me to this interesting article is under the very same name (Black and White Strategy)
The article explains how minimilastic approach towards problems and corporation structure is the most efficient one and how it worked well for a few of our well known global companies like General Electric (GA) and Wal-Mart.

From the article I just extracted one I would say very fabulous saying:

"People always overestimate how complex business is. This isn't rocket science; we've chosen one of the world'ss more simple professions."

– Jack Welch

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Posted in Business Management | No Comments »

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