November 17, 2009
Im Wintersemester 09/10 führt der FIT unter dem Slogan FIT4Jobs die Exkursionsreihe zu etablierten IT-Firmen weiter. Auf dem
Programm stehen diesmal PTV AG, CommaSoft und Computacenter. Ziel dieser Reihe ist es, Studierenden einen Einblick in das Berufsleben eines Informatikers zu geben sowie potentielle Arbeitgeber und deren Betätigungsfeld aber auch deren Anforderungen an einen Absolventen kennenzulernen.
Die Teilnahme an den Exkursionen ist kostenlos und steht allen Studierenden - auch Nichtmitgliedern des FIT - offen. Da die Teilnehmerzahl begrenzt ist, wird um eine rechtzeitige Anmeldung gebeten. Dafür müsst ihr nur das Formular ausfüllen, das auch ausgedruckt vor dem SCI (48/226) ausliegt, und im SCI, bei uns in der Fachschaft oder im Sekretariat von Prof. Nebel (48/657)
abgeben.
Eine Kurzvorstellung der beteiligten Firmen sowie eine Beschreibung des jeweiligen Besuchprogramms findet ihr auf der Homepage des FIT.
November 12, 2009
Auf der gestrigen Sitzung des Studierendenparlaments hat sich der AStA quasi aufgelöst, das heißt auf eine kommisarisch agierende Rumpftruppe reduziert. Jan Olbrecht hat die Sitzung live protokolliert. Ihr fragt euch, was das für euch bedeutet? Nun, die Fachschaften sind formal sowas wie Zweigstellen des AStA. Hört unser AStA auf zu existieren, gibt es auch keine Fachschaften mehr, zumindest nicht in der bisherigen Form. Ich kann die Konsequenzen auf studentische Mitwirkung in der Hochschulpolitik nicht übersehen, aber der Service, den Fachschaften heute bieten, ist jedenfalls gefährdet. Über die Aufgaben, die der AStA selbst wahrnimmt, brauchen wir gar nicht zu reden. Es ist im Sinne aller, wenn der AStA existiert, stabil und produktiv ist. Daher ergeht folgender Aufruf zur aktiven Mitarbeit:
Sehr geehrte Studierende,
Während einer Sitzung des Studierendenparlaments vergangene Nacht sind 2/3 des Asta zurückgetreten.
Ein Rest-AStA unter der Leitung von Jan Olbrecht wird bis auf weiteres die Geschäfte übernehmen.
Veranstaltungen im Kramladen finden nicht mehr statt. Um dies zu ändern, bitte ich alle Anwesenden, amMontag, 16.11.2009, um 17.30 Uhr im grünen Hörsaal 46-215
an der Vollversammlung der Studierendenschaft teilzunehmen.
Ihr habt eine Stimme, ihr seid die TU!
Nachtrag: Die Formulierung, die Fachschaften seien Zweigstellen des AStA, ist offenbar zu harsch. Der Fachschaftsrat ist verfasstes Organ innerhalb des Fachbereichs und ist nur den jeweils vertretenen Studenten verpflichtet. Allerdings werden derzeit die Gelder, die den Fachschaften für ihre Arbeit zugehen, über den AStA abgewickelt.
November 10, 2009
For my diploma thesis, I use a simple continuous integration system. It doesn’t keep logs except mailing me, but it works fine for the simple one-person setup I have. 
Wer baggert da so spät noch am Baggerloch?
Advantages:
- Makes sure my project can be checked out from SVN and then “just works” using Ant.
- …so everything is checked into SVN.
- …it builds using Ant (I usually use Eclipse)
- …there are no rogue dependencies from production code to test.1
- …and it’s harder for me to forget how to setup the project, of course.
How to do it:
- Create a new SVN checkout (Git clone, Perforce Client, …) into a directory named
continuous_buildor similar. - In this directory, create a shell script like the one shown below.
- To your (user) crontab, add the line
00,15,30,45 * * * * cd /home/guenther/continuous_build/ && sh continuous_integration.sh. (Note that crontab automatically sends the script’s output to the user via email.)
Update: I just couldn’t resist to hack this together as well: Have a look at the new build status indicator on my diploma thesis homepage. (Click, if you’re in the university subnet.)
Here’s the source code for continuous_integration.sh:
#!/bin/sh
# Run from same directory!
# JSR 308
export JSR308=`pwd`/jsr308
echo "================================="
echo " Configuration"
echo "================================="
echo "JSR308 : $JSR308"
echo "JAVA_HOME: $JAVA_HOME"
echo "PATH : $PATH"
echo "================================="
echo " SVN Update"
echo "================================="
svn up
cd jsr308/checkers
echo "================================="
echo " Clean"
echo "================================="
ant clean
echo "================================="
echo " Build"
echo "================================="
if ant all-tests; then
echo "WIN"
DISPLAY=":0.0" xsetroot -solid black
else
echo "FAIL"
DISPLAY=":0.0" xsetroot -solid red
killall rhythmbox
mplayer -really-quiet /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/dialog-error.ogg > /dev/null 2> /dev/null
fi
Insert whatever it needs to draw your attention in the “fail” block.
Footnotes
1 I regularly fall for this one. Eclipse doesn’t check it, and sometimes I just forget to hit Ctrl-Shift-O after cleaning up.
All the electric power generated from renewable energy is good – no additional CO2 is produced. Saving energy in general is also a good idea – what you don’t consume, you don’t need to produce. But energy savings require you to understand your own energy consumption – you can’t improve what you can’t measure. A simple energy cost monitor is available for 10 Euro, but it requires you to plug it into different appliances in order to figure out what a specific device consumes. And only the more expensive ones log the power consumption over time, which is pretty interesting.
An alternative to the simple energy meters are smart meters. In Germany, utility providers need to offer their customers the replacement of old (typically black) meters with shiny new digital “smart” meters. Actually, there is nothing smart about them – they just transmit the energy consumption of the household via powerline or other technologies to the utility provider. The utility provider does not need to visit the household in order to get the reading. And, in some cases, customers can have a look at the realtime energy consumption of their household.
The benefit of the realtime data is that you can assess the impact of your actual energy use very quickly. Google.org is offering the PowerMeter, which works for example with the smart meters offered by Yello Strom. An interesting open-source alternative is the Flukso.
The Flukso is a little WLAN router with some additional circuits to measure your power consumption. You install it in your breaker box. Depending on the configuration of your breaker box you need one or three current clamps. These clamps just go around the cables that supply your household – it is not necessary to re-cable the breaker box. I have a three-phase supply, so my installation consists of three current clamps and the Flukso itself. David Rowe has a nice writeup on the installation.
The Flukso then measures the power and transmits the data over the WLAN to the Flukso website. Once you’re logged in you can see your own energy consumption as a realtime graph. It is quite fascinating to find out how your energy consumption is composed. Here is one of my charts:
The graph shows time on the X-axis and my energy consumption in Watts on the Y-axis. The peak (1) shows that I was getting up in the middle of the night, preparing some tea and switchin on my computer. I had a pretty decent jet lag that night. In the morning I got up again around 8:00 (2). Apparently I used my coffee machine and switched on some lights, but I left shortly afterwards. The regular power consumption (3) originates from my fridge which draws power in regular intervals. Around 18:00, I got home again, switched on lights, prepared tea etc (4).
The graph is very interesting and really helps to improve your energy usage. But it also scares me – as I demonstrated above, a lot of information is stored in such a graph. Honestly, I don’t want my utility provider to know this. And I definitely do not want Google to know that much about my life. Or would you like to see advertisements for sleeping pills after a night of jet lag?
The picture at the top is CC-BY BK59 on flickr, thanks!
November 09, 2009
KDE 4 has this nice plasma widget called ‘device notifier’, which shows attached devices such as USB flash drives, CD/DVD drives, or digital cameras.
Device Notifier
Clicking on this icon shows all attached devices, in my example it is a single USB flash drive named ‘256MThFisch’.
Device Notifier plasma widget
Clicking on such a device brings up a list of possible actions, e.g. to browse the files with Dolphin or Konqueror, downloading all photos with digiKam, or playing music titles with Amarok.
List of actions with device
Well, this is quite nice for users relying on KDE software only. But what happens if you are a power-user, using terminals such as Konsole? Whenever you want to mount a device, you have to start an application such as Dolphin, Konqueror, or digiKam even if you do not want to use it …
Adding your own Action for Mounting
As KDE4 is very configurable, you can improve this situation. In the System Settings you can configure which action are available when a storage medium becomes available. Here, we are going to add our own action which ‘just’ mounts a device.
System Settings - Advanced
Configuration of Actions for Devices
To add you own action, click on the ‘Add’ button and enter a name for the new action, such as ‘Mount’.
Adding a new action
In this new action, you can an icon which resembles that action of mounting. In my case, I chose emblem-mounted.png from the emblems directory in the Oxygen icon set. For the command to execute, you can enter any command you like. If you want to see no feedback, use /bin/true. In my example, I used /usr/bin/kdialog --msgbox to get a message box showing a confirmation once the mount process is complete.
Next time you plug in an USB drive, a new option will show up to ‘just’ mount you device without starting any bloated application.
List of actions, 'just mount' option included
Once you activate the ‘Mount’ option, it takes 1-2 seconds and a message box pops up confirming the mount operation. The device is read to use in any application.
Message box
Current Issues
The current approach has some minor issues which may get addressed in later improvements:
- Cases where the mounting operation fails are not handled
- The message box does not show the devices name, type or mount point
Still, good luck with testing this ‘hack’
Wer macht mit?
Last updated: November 20, 2009 10:42 PM GMT