Writing a plugin for Statusnet : Part 1

My work is getting into microblogging – both internally and to the outside world. We had previously considered using Twitter and even tried using Yammer for purely internal posting but there were concerns about privacy – the data is stored ‘out there’ on somebody else’s server and we were at the mercy of any future changes in service terms and conditions.

In the end we opted for the StatusNet engine which also powers the Identi.ca microblogging service. Its Open Source, can be installed locally and has a Twitter-like API which meant that we could integrate it with our internal systems like our CruiseControl.NET build server.

But that’s not the end of it – StatusNet is extendible as well. With a little knowledge of PHP and knowing which ‘hooks’ to use (or how to find them) it is possible to intercept most (if not all) of the important events in the world of statusnet, like posting a notice, and injecting your own logic.

Well it has come to pass that the company decided not only to implement an internal microblogging platform but to create a presence ‘out there’ as well. But the question is “how to do it in the most effective way?”, I mean there are loads of social networks out there and we don’t want to have to repost manually on multiple sites. Well the good thing is we don’t need to!

Using a service called PingFm it is possible to post to a vast number of services including microbloggers like Twitter and Identica as well as LinkedIn and even blogs like WordPress, all from a single application.

Now the crunch, getting users to post when they are up to is one thing, asking them to do it through two services (StatusNet and PingFm) is another thing altogether. But hope is at hand, StatusNet has a plugin architecture which allows new functionality to be added quite easily. Read the rest of this entry »

Installing Eclipse and the Android SDK on Ubuntu 10.04

As previously posted I have recently bought myself a nice new Android phone – a HTC Hero to be precise. One of the main reasons for buying it was so that I could look into developing applications for this new platform, thus expanding my skill set.

I had been playing around with installing the Eclipse IDE (arguably the best Java IDE around) and the Android SDK on my previous Ubuntu installation and basically made a hash of it a few times. Having refined my process I’ve decided to write it down so that I don’t forget Read the rest of this entry »

Now, how do I upgrade to Ubuntu Server 10.04 using the Command Line?

Like most Ubuntu ‘geeks’ I have a box running the Server edition, just to play around on – mine is in the garage and performs some of the mundane tasks I’ve blogged about in the past, e.g. updating my OpenDNS and DynDNS settings when my external IP address changes and pinging the kids computers so I know when time the ‘really’ shut down last night.

However, I’m a worlds away from a sysadmin who works in the command shell all the time – I like my GUIs and tend to tread around the command line like its a bad tempered dog. So without the good old Update Manager and not wanting to blow the whole installation away and start again, how do I upgrade my system to the recently released 10.04 Lucid Lynx? Read the rest of this entry »

Moving to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

With the release of Ubuntu 10.04 on 29th April I was keen to blow away my existing installation (Ubuntu 9.10) and perform a fresh installation. Not because there was anything wrong with that release but as I am still finding my feet with Linux in general there were numerous redundant packages and general cruft laying around.

With my /home folder fully backed up onto an external HDD (and to my Amazon S3 account) I duly downloaded the .iso, burnt it to a cd and set about the installation. Read the rest of this entry »

Syncing my iPod with Ubuntu

In a previous post I listed some of the things that I still do in Windows that I needed to be able to do in Ubuntu before I could truly consider it to be my Operating System of choice – one of these was to be able to sync my music and podcasts onto my iPod Nano. Now as every iPod owner knows, these things are simple brilliant – but Apple do not provide a version of iTunes for Linux so what are we to do?

Well as ever the Open Source community has a number of answers and there are some fine iTunes alternatives out there. We all use our iPods differently and mine it mainly used for listening to Podcasts during my daily commute (about 40 minutes each way). I do have some music on the device but this is normally pretty static – when I get bored of what is on there I normally blitz the lot and start again.

iTunes is a good application for managing Podcasts because it will not only download new episodes as they become available and automatically sync them to the iPod when I plug it on, it will detect which ones I have listened to and remove them – freeing up space for new content. To consider another application to be a genuine replacement it needs to do the same. Read the rest of this entry »

New Year Resolutions 2010

In my first post on this blog I declared an intention to learn non-Microsoft languages and technologies so that I was equipped to handle both sides of the fence (hence the blog title). During the last year I have been looking at learning PHP using Drupal as a platform for my development. This is progressing well and I have a few mini-projects underway – more about those in future posts.

However, I think that the main thing I have gotten out of this last year is a better understanding of Linux (Ubuntu in particular) and have realised just how far it has come on since my first encounters with Red Hat 8.0. So much so that I am currently using Ubuntu as my primary Operating System – the Windows 7 installation on my other partition rarely gets a look in. My previous post highlights my disappointment with Windows 7 and my intention to reconfigure my laptop to move Ubuntu to the larger of the two partitions and revert to Vista (which never gave me all the problems others complain about) on the smaller one – just in case I find I need it for something. But there’s the thing – why would I need it? What do I do on a day to day (or even week to week or month to month) that means I have to have a Windows system at my disposal at all times – just in case? Read the rest of this entry »

Ok – that’s it. Windows 7 is outta here!

In an earlier post I detailed the upgrade of my Vista partition to Windows 7 Eval and how smoothly the process went. Well I’m afraid that the shine has gone off Windows 7 and after looking at the upgrade prices I’m hacked off enough to say that I’ll not be bothering.

I upgraded my laptop from XP to Vista because I was starting a new job and it’s what they used – so I thought I should get up to speed before I started. I later configured the laptop to Dual Boot with Ubuntu but Vista was always my default Operating System – if I wanted to boot into Ubuntu then I had to remember to wait around for the Boot Menu instead of just turning it on and walking away. Recently I was lured into installing Windows 7 and at first I was quite impressed and do admit that it is a massive leap from XP (and probably Vista). As most people say, it is what Vista should have been. Read the rest of this entry »

Making an Audio version of the Ubuntu Podcast

I listen to a number of podcasts on a regular basis, mainly programming related, during my 45 minute commute to and from work every day. Now almost all of them are downloaded in audio format but recently the Ubuntu Podcast as stopped posting these formats. In a recent episode (#32) Joel and Nick explained they reasoning behind this and I fully support them in their decision – I mean, it’s an overhead for them in terms of time and storage/bandwidth. Add to that the fact that I can still subscribe via iTunes and some would wonder why I’m making a fuss (which I’m not btw!)

Well the fact of the matter is that it both illegal and dangerous to watch a video podcast on an iPod Nano while driving at 70mph down the motorway. Add to that the fact that each of the main episodes is 500MB and my Nano has ‘only’ 8GB to play with and i have a few reasons for wanting an less-heavyweight version. Read the rest of this entry »

Sending EMail from the Command Line with Ubuntu Server

In a previous post I wrote about the problems I had encountered while trying to configure my Ubuntu Server to send emails from the command line (actually from a script but it amounts to the same thing). I overcame the problem in the short term by using curl to send messages via Twitter but I really wanted to work out how to end emails instead. Well after a bit more research and some testing I have cracked it

What I didn’t understand was that I needed two components to be able to send an email in this way, a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) and an email client. For my solution I have used Nullmailer as my MTA and Mutt as my Client.

Nullmailer is not a full blown MTA like Postfix but then I didn’t really need something that heavyweight for my purposes. Nullmailer is a ‘minimal mail relay’ – it doesn’t handle local mail delivery or download message from other servers, it just passes email from the local machine to a mail server for delivery.

Mutt is a small but powerful, text-based email client which can send email from the command line but also has a GUI (of sorts). I was only interested in the command line interface for this little project. Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping OpenDNS Updated with Ubuntu Server

In a previous post I explained how I configued my Ubuntu Server to send a tweet whenever my external IP address changed. Well I found that no only did my external IP address change with startling regularity but it was also causing my OpenDNS settings to become out of sync.

Basically in the house we have a single PC and the rest are laptops. Now I have the OpenDNS updater on the PC and this will syncronise my external IP address with OpenDNS when it is turned on – but what if the IP address changes and that PC is not turned on.? Answer, all my parental controls go out of the window!
Now I could install the OpenDNS updater on the laptops but the problem I see there is that if one of them connects to another network, via WiFi for example, then my OpenDNS settings will be updated with the networks external IP address – not what I want!
Read the rest of this entry »