For all QUT undergraduate and non-research degree students who have @connect.qut.edu.au email addresses,

• Username: \firstname.lastname@connect.qut.edu.au
• Server: pod51000.outlook.com

For QUT staff email accounts that end with @qut.edu.au,

• Username: qutad\USERNAME
• Server: outlook.qut.edu.au

I’m doing my PhD at QUT, and all HRD (ie PhD and Masters Research) students have a different type of emails (similar to staff emails) which end with @student.qut.edu.au,

• Username: qutad\USERNAME
• Server: outlook.qut.edu.au

Setup QUT Student, Staff Email on Android Devices is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

There are many obvious reasons for someone to migrate (back) to Gmail from a Google Apps mail account. Google Apps mail is used by many organisations, schools, etc. Thus, when we leave from that organisation, it becomes a necessity to migrate all our emails elsewhere.

So lets jump into this quick tutorial on how to migrate all emails from Google Apps mail to Gmail. There are few other mechanisms suggested across the internet, but the one that works smoothly is using “imapsync”.

“imapsync” software is a command line tool allowing incremental and recursive IMAP transfers from one mailbox to another. It is useful for Gmail account migration or account backups.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

• “imapsync” was a free tool, but now the author is charging almost $45 for a copy. It is affordable for commercial use, but for personal use the price is an overkill.
• The earlier versions of this software can be found on the internet and still be used without copyright violations. (DOWNLOAD the earlier version for FREE).
• This guide is based on a Windows installation. The use can be easily adapted to Linux and other platforms as we will be compiling from the Perl source code and running the software. (Those who are on Linux, you could simply follow the install instructions with the download file).

Step 1: Install Perl

1. Download and install “Strawberry Perl”. (Install to the default install location).
2. Double-click and Run the “update_env.pl” batch file to add the environment variables.

Step 2: Setup the Prerequisites

1. Open “CPAN Client” under Start Menu -> Programs -> Strawberry Perl -> Tools.
2. Run the following commands individually:
• install Mail::IMAPClient
• install Digest::MD5
• install Term::ReadKey
• install IO::Socket::SSL
• If this presents a warning with “Net::SSLeay could not find a random number generator” and “Do you REALLY want to continue? [Default: no]“, give “yes” and continue.
3. install Date::Manip
4. install File::Spec
5. install Digest::HMAC_MD5
6. install PAR::Packer
7. At this point you should be all set with the Perl setup and the following command should not give any errors.
• perl -mMail::IMAPClient -mDigest::MD5 -mTerm::ReadKey -mIO::Socket::SSL -mDate::Manip -mFile::Spec -mDigest::HMAC_MD5 -e ”

Step 3: Install ‘imapsync’

1. Download the earlier version of ‘imapsync’ for free from here (or buy the latest version from here).
2. Extract the downloaded file, if you can’t extract a tar.gz, use 7-Zip.
3. Open the “build_exe” batch file in a Notepad and change the folder path to the extracted folder.
4. Run the “build_exe” batch file.
5. This should have created a “imapsync.exe”.

Step 4: Using ‘imapsync’

1. Open “Command Prompt”.
2. Change directory to the ‘imapsync’ folder.
3. The basic ‘imapsync’ command is,

• imapsync --host1 mail.oldserver.com --user1 theoden ^
  --host2 mail.newserver.com --user2 'theoden@newserver.com'

4. For Gmail, change the following command with your Apps mail login and Gmail login details.

• imapsync ^
  --host1 imap.gmail.com --port1 993 --ssl1 --authmech1 LOGIN ^
  --user1 theuser@oldmail.com --password1 password4user1 ^
  --host2 imap.gmail.com --port1 993 --ssl2 --authmech2 LOGIN ^
  --user2 newuserid@gmail.com --password2 password4gmail ^
  --split1 100 --split2 100 ^
  --reconnectretry1 30 --reconnectretry2 30 ^
  --noauthmd5 --noreleasecheck ^
  --timeout 1200  --allowsizemismatch

5. Paste the modified command into the Command Prompt, ‘imapsync‘ should sync you mail accounts accordingly.
6. It could take, hours (or days) to complete the sync, based on your internet connection speed and the amount of email in your mailboxes.
7. For more ‘imapsync’ command reference run,

• imapsync --help

8. Once the sync is complete, you could also setup a forward all mails to the new Gmail account from the old Google Apps mail account.

This guide can look a bit more technical and for the ‘geek-handed’. If you follow the steps it should be straight forward.

However, if you are afraid you might burn your computer by doing this, just ask your friendly geek-next-door, and s/he should be happy to help you.

Happy migrating back to Gmail…!

Back to Gmail: Migrating emails from Google Apps mail to Gmail is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

This is a simple “how to” for conveniently using Notepad++ as the editor for LaTex (using MiKTex) on Windows.

• Install MiKTeX
• Install Notepad++. (This comes with syntax highlighting for LaTeX, but for BibTex add the user style.)
• Create a .bat file with the following code:

  :: Called from Notepad++ Run
  :: [path_to_bat_file] "$(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)" "$(NAME_PART)"
   
  :: Change Drive and  to File Directory
  %~d1
  cd %1
   
  :: Run Cleanup
  call:cleanup
   
  :: Run pdflatex -> bibtex -> pdflatex -> pdflatex
  pdflatex %2
  bibtex  %2
  :: If you are using multibib the following will run bibtex on all aux files
  :: FOR /R . %%G IN (*.aux) DO bibtex %%G
  pdflatex %2
  pdflatex %2
   
  :: Run Cleanup
  call:cleanup
   
  :: Open PDF (Script updated based on comments by 'menfeser'
  :: START "" "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" %2.pdf
  START "" %2.pdf
   
  :: Cleanup Function
  :cleanup
  :: del *.log
  del *.dvi
  del *.aux
  del *.bbl
  del *.blg
  del *.brf
  del *.out
  goto:eof

• Add the batch file as a run command:
  • Notepad++ -> Run -> <PATH_TO_BAT_FILE> “$(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)” “$(NAME_PART)”
  • (Note the surrounded ” before and after CURRENT_DIRECTOR and NAME_PART)
  • Create a keyboard shortcut for this.
• Now create a LaTeX file in Notepad++, Save and Run (using the short key defined).

Note:

1. MiKTex should be added automatically to Windows “path” when it is installed, if not add “WHERE_MIKTEX_INSTALLED\miktex\bin” to path manually.
2. This is just a work flow that works for me, you can modify it to suit yours.
3. Plagiarised from various sources on the Internet.

LaTeX on Windows with MiKTeX and Notepad++ is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

PHP has got and extensive set of functions that can be used to manipulate XML (RSS feeds or even HTML) files. PHP DOM library is one of the handy libraries that can be used to parse RSS feeds in PHP. DOM (Document Object Model) is a standard way for accessing and manipulating XML documents. XML documents can be represented in tree-structure (a node tree), with the elements, attributes, and text defined as nodes.

Below you can find the script for parsing a standard RSS feeds:

// Create a new DOMDocument object
$doc = new DOMDocument();
 
// Load the RSS file into the object
$doc->load('http://feeds.feedburner.com/talkouttrojans');
 
// Initialize empty array
$arrFeeds = array();
 
// Get a list of all the elements with the name 'item'
foreach ($doc->getElementsByTagName('item') as $node) {
	$itemRSS = array (
		'title' => $node->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->nodeValue,
		'desc' => $node->getElementsByTagName('description')->item(0)->nodeValue,
		'link' => $node->getElementsByTagName('link')->item(0)->nodeValue,
		'date' => $node->getElementsByTagName('pubDate')->item(0)->nodeValue
	);
	array_push($arrFeeds, $itemRSS);
}
 
// Output
print_r($arrFeeds);

The getElementsByTagName method is used, within the loop of the item nodes, to get the nodeValue for the title, description, link and date tags. The nodeValue is the text within the node. An array is used to store each set of values and each array represents an entry in the big array that holds our structured RSS data. At the end of the script all the data will be hold by the $arrFeeds array, which is well structured and can be used to display or further manipulation.

One drawback of using the DOM library is that it reads the entire XML document into memory, and then we use the functions for manipulating the data. Thus this method is that is not recommended for large XML documents, which would take too much memory to build the model of the document.

Anyway, usually the feeds we are dealing with are of normal size, and this won’t be an issue at most occasions.

Parse RSS feeds with PHP is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

header('Content-Type: image/png');
// Text to be converted to image
$text = 'Hello World';
// Font to use, give accessible path from script
$font = './arial.ttf';
 
// Convert HTML entities into ISO-8859-1
$text = html_entity_decode($text,ENT_NOQUOTES, "ISO-8859-1");
 
// Create the image
$im = imagecreatetruecolor(160, 160);
$white = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);
$black = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
 
// Create some colors
imagefilledrectangle($im, 0, 0, 160, 80, $white);
 
// Add the text
imagettftext($im, 12, 0, 20, 20, $black, $font, $out);
 
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
exit;

GD can also be used to create and manipulate image files in a variety of different image formats, including GIF, PNG, JPEG, WBMP, and XPM.

Limitations:

• Though GD supports Unicode text inputs, it doesn’t support complex text rendering
• Complex Text Rendering is required for properly displaying many language texts, such as the Arabic alphabet and scripts of the Brahmic family, which includes Tamil and many other Indic scripts.

There is a alternative for this using Pango and Cairo in PHP. I’ll post a detailed update on that in my next post.

Text to Image in PHP with GD is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

1. In your XAMPP Start Page, go to phpinfo, look for string oci8. If string found it indicate that connection to oracle is available, otherwise to activate connection do the following steps:
2. Open the currently used php.ini file by looking at the phpinfo, from the XAMPP folder.
3. Find string ;extension=php_oci8.dll. Remove the semicolon (;) ahead of the string to activate the oracle extension.
4. Save the php.ini file.
5. Download the “Instant Client Package – Basic” for Windows from the OTN Instant Client page. Unzip it to c:\instantclient_11_1
6. Edit the PATH environment setting and add c:\instantclient_11_1 before any other Oracle directories. For example, on Windows XP, follow Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables and edit PATH in the System variables list.
7. Set desired Oracle globalization language environment variables such as NLS_LANG. If nothing is set, a default local environment will be assumed. See An Overview on Globalizing Oracle PHP Applications for more details.
8. Unset Oracle variables such as ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID, which are unnecessary with Instant Client (if they are set previously).
9. Restart XAMPP (or Start if its not already started).
10. To make sure that connection to oracle database has successfully activated, go to phpinfo. Find string: oci8. If found, then XAMPP can now communicate with Oracle Database.

The steps to do the same in a Linux box are almost similar, except there you will use the Linux versions of the packages and setting PATH variables would be different.

You can ping me back with a comment if you run into any issues, I might be able to help you or I can learn from you.

Reference:

• http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/notes/technote_php_instant.html

Activate Oracle on XAMPP for Windows is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

So how did I get my Google Voice number from outside US… Yeah I live in Sri Lanka, and I have registered my Google Voice number and use it without any restrictions…!

Google Voice is a wonderful service that functions like a virtual phone switchboard, and you can manage calls and route them to your various phones, voice mail, etc. It gives you a free phone number that can receive regular phone calls and route them to any other actual phones you have connected to your account.

Unfortunately, currently its forwarding abilities are limited only to US phones. Also you are not allowed to access service registration when you are outside US. But I was able to do some workaround with the help of couple of online guides to create my own Google Voice number.

How to signup to Google Voice?
Currently its only by ‘invite mode’ but you can get an invitation within a week or so. During the signup process you will be required to verify your account via a US telephone number.

How to access the Google Voice website for signup from outside US? (After you are signed-up you are allowed to access even from outside US)

1. Get a friend of your’s in US to do this.
2. Use a SOCKS Tunnel to access. (I won’t suggest this as its risky, also web based proxies won’t help)

How to get a US number and verify it when you are outside US?

1. Get a friend of your’s in US to add his home number and verify it for you.
2. Buy a US number as a CallIn number on Gizmo, or any other similar providers, (priced around 10 – 20 $). (Callcentric, Voxalot)
3. Get a free US number from IPKall (forwarded to Gizmo or any other VoIP service) that can be added to Google Voice signup.

How to connect this with Gizmo?

• Register for a free Gizmo account and get your Gizmo number (which is a SIP number, that can be used on any SIP client, on PC, on mobiles, on ATA devices)
• Add your Gizmo number in your Google Voice settings page.
• Add your Google Voice number in your My Gizmo page.

What I have got now?

• I have a Gizmo account I can add to any SIP enabled device.
• I have a IPKall number which is also a US phone number forwarded to my Gizmo account, but I’m not going to use that at all.
• I have a Google Voice number (thats what we wanted to have…!).
• Any one can call my US number 540-IMN-IMAL (540-466-4625), and it will ring in my Gizmo phones, SIP applications or any other device. Its free for me.
• I can call any US (& Canada?) numbers for free, (at least for 3 minutes).

Thats how I got my nice Google Voice number. I’m ready to help you if you want to get your own Google Voice number, just leave a comment.

Further Reading:

1. Gizmo Voice – A mashup using Gizmo5 and Google Voice
2. Adding a Gizmo number to Google Voice
3. Taking calls from Gizmo
4. Google Voice from Wikipedia

Free calls to US using Google Voice & Gizmo (with IPKall or a Friend in US) is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

• Use –exclude when files to be excluded are given as a pattern on the command line.
• Use –exclude-from to introduce the name of a file which contains a list of patterns, one per line; each of these patterns can exclude zero, one, or many files.

When using –exclude=pattern, be sure to quote the pattern parameter, so GNU tar sees wildcard characters like ‘*’.

For example, write:

$ tar -c -f <em>archive.tar</em> --exclude '*.o' <em>directory</em>

tar does not act on a path name explicitly listed on the command line if one of its file name components is excluded. If files that end with ‘*.o’ are excluded when creating an archive, but explicitly name the file ‘dir.o/foo’ after all the options have been listed, ‘dir.o/foo’ will be excluded from the archive.
Only shell syntax, or globbing will work with exclude options in tar. The command might fail if regexp syntax is used to describe files to be excluded in the command.

Reference:

• GNU tar User Guide – problems with exclude

Using the ‘exclude’ option with ‘tar’ is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Solution (I found): VirtualBox can be given higher priority using nice command. Also renice command can be used to change the priority of a running process, which will also be useful.

nice -10 VBoxHeadless

Gives the VBoxHeadless process 1.5 times priority than the normal process, calculated as (20 – -10)/20 = 1.5

nice -20 make

Executes make at maximum priority.

renice +20 2222

Changes the priority of process 2222 to +20 (minimum priority).

renice -10 -p 13013

Changes the priority of a running process by specifying its process ID, where priority can be,

• 1 to 20 : Runs the specified processes slower than the base priority.
• 0 : Sets priority of the specified processes to the base scheduling priority.
• -20 to -1 : Runs the specified processes quicker than the base priority.

References and further reading:

• nice (Unix)
• Linux Command Directory: nice
• Linux Command Directory: renice

Being Nice on a Linux Box – Process priority with ‘nice’ & ‘renice’ is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Solution:
Using grep -C <# of lines to show above and below> <search> <file>

The following prints the matched line, along with the 5 lines surrounding it.

$ grep -C 5 "search" sample_text

Also we can use grep -A or -B to display number of lines above or below the matched line.

The following prints the matched line, along with the 5 lines after it.

$ grep -A 5 "search" sample_text

The following prints the matched line, along with the 5 lines before it.

$ grep -B 5 "search" sample_text

Reference:

• man grep
• Live filter a log file using grep and show x# of lines above and below

Shell – How to get surrounding lines of grep result? is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.