How to Think like a Computer Scientist

A beautiful little ebook for folks who love python programming. A recommended tool if you are new to python and would like to start learning the basics.

The book has all the topics neatly covered so that can be understood by a new or seasoned programmer. When I teach programming, I prefer showing a few examples of how to write a python script and then ask the person to try the rest using some reading material.

This book is the ideal teaching guide to help a python newbie become productive quickly.
If you love any other language - Java or C++ or Action Script, try this !!

Python rocks ....

Self-Driving Car Test : Steve Mahan

A driverless car which talks to me and more than anything, can respond to my voice command is the next generation of car technology. Steve Mahan who is currently impaired with partial vision, can travel with a computer-assisted car without depending on any one else.

Driverless Independence !!

Reference :
PC Mag Coverage of Self-Driving Car Test

iCal

Calendaring on Mac has several options - iCal (Primary), Outlook & Thunderbird being among the strongest contenders.

Currently iCal is the best tool which comes bundled with OSX, just like Mail (for email) and works fabulously with both Microsoft Exchange & Google Calendar services.

Other than Microsoft and Google calendars, it also integrates with Yahoo! & CalDAV (protocol) calendar services.

If you are a corporate user and tend to interact with the Miscrosoft Outlook users, you may face a few challenges in sharing calendars using iCal.

iCal format does not play well especially with the Outlook Web users, since iCal is not recognized by the OWA (Outlook Web App) Browser Client.

References : The Best Calendar App for Mac

Credits : Image Concept of iCal Watch by Mac (Macoto) Funamuzu

Type Safe

A company behind a rapid development framework for Java and Scala.
Tech : Play Framework, Scala, Akka and a bunch of supporting tools.

One of the reasons for taking a close look at it would be a curiosity on what James Ward has been working on lately. Considering he was a technology evangelist for Adobe Flex & Heroku.

Windows on Mac

Windows on Mac using Virtual Box has always been the cheapest & safest Virtualization option.

In cases where you need best productivity its probably better to opt for Boot Camp or a better Virtualizaton tool like Parallels / Fusion to use Windows on a Mac.

For some time Apple introduced Boot Camp which allows you to dual boot Windows (or any Linux/OS) and Mac without loosing productivity.

Currently evaluating Parallel for a trial of 14 days and soon after plan to test out Fusion for a trial of 30 days.

Fusion vs Parallels

• Wikipedia Comparison : Provides a tabular comparison on a bunch of features.
• Benchmark Showdown : Gives us comparisons for multiple options with weights.

There is a price point to consider while using Fusion or Parallels.

In case of using either of the applications, you could perform a dual boot using Boot Camp and point Parallel or Fusion to use the Boot Camp Partition when its needed within Mac OSX.

In case of Parallels expiring, we can install Fusion and convert the Parallel virtual machine into a Fusion equivalent. That way you could evaluate both the virtualization tools.

Once you have evaluated both, consider purchasing the one that works best.

Boot Camp
In case you do decide to install Boot Camp, please ensure you don't delete or format any of the partitions other than the Boot Camp Partition.

Especially the ones which are 100MB (which is the OSX Parition Table) & 200 MB (which is the OSX Recovery Disk) partitions. Both these are necessary to boot back into OSX.

In case you ever have an issue where you have lost your OSX partition and it would boot only into Windows Boot Camp partition, use TestDisk to recover your partition table.

Credits : Image from MacObserver.com

Questions on FOSS Licenses

Q1. Can I really use open source software for commercial product development ?

• Well the real answer is absolutely you can use it without fault. 
• The company that uses the software needs to adhere to the license given provided with the open source software. 

Q2. Can I really use open source software for distribution under a commercial license ?

• Now that depends on the license of the open software that you would use.
• Non-copyleft licenses or Permissive licenses permit you to re-distribute the software with the new changes. 
• They play well with commercial licenses as long as you adhere to the open source license

Q3. Do I have to pay anything to the company that released the open source software ?

• If the software is provided with source code under any of the open source compatible
• licenses then there is no payment to the parent company. 
• The companies usually maintain 2 versions of their software - Open source and Commercial version.

Q4. Which license permits me to modify the open source code and keep the changes closed ?

Non-Copyleft licenses : 

• Apache 2.0 License
• Berkley Sockets Distribution (BSD) License 
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) License
• Other Compatible licenses

These licenses are usually compatible with other permissive Non-copyleft licenses and commercial licenses.

Q5. Which license requires me to submit the changes done back to the community ?

• GNU General Public License (GPL)
• GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
• GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)
• Mozilla Public License  (MPL)
• Other Compatible Licenses

Reference : 

1. Licensing HOW-TO by Eric R. Raymond

Unreferenced Articles :

1. Businessmans' Guide to Open source Licenses by Kristof Kovacs (new - good read)

Mou Markdown

Mou, the missing Markdown editor for web developers.

An excellent tool that converts your markdown into HTML if required. Its a wonderful open source tool for OSX which can be used as a Weblog tool.

Its wonderful to writer's tool to create well formatted articles for online publishing.

Tables

A simple table looks like this:

Blog Name	Description	Url
Techie Hacks	Software, DIY Stuff, Hacks etc.	techiehacks.blogspot.com
Pyscho Foodie	Recipes, Reviews, Restaurants etc.	psychofoodie.blogspot.com

Finally I'm through having to use the browser plugin's or other some-times-works-sometimes-not type of blog tools for OSX. Mou embeds links, creates cool tables & more than anything, gives me the cleanest html possible !

Customize the CSS to ensure your blog theme is not disrupted.

Written using Mou