Compiled Thoughts by John Ciacia » Software Review

Coding on the Cloud

John — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:29:42 +0000

A couple weeks ago I wrote about my experience using the Cr-48 for a week. The conclusion was that the Cr-48 was not ready for John the programmer, but could potentially be the main platform for John the student. This wasn’t because of ChromeOS, but it was due to the lack of third party software for developers, namely an integrated development environment. In my search for a cloud IDE I stumbled across Mozilla Skywriter (formally known as Bespin), Kodingen, and Cloud9IDE. Although Kodingen seems to be the most advanced, its not opensource. Skywriter is pretty freaking awesome, and I am super excited that Skywriter and Cloud9IDE have teamed up to bring coding to the cloud.

Earlier today @cloud9ide announced a closed beta, with Cr-48 users having preference. I immediately took advantage of the opportunity and signed up. An hour later, my account was approved and I was coding on the cloud.

The layout looks like a typical IDE, it offers syntax highlight for JavaScript, CoffeeScript, CSS, (X)HTML, XML, Python, and PHP. It comes bundled with several different themes, a built in JavaScript debugger, a command line interface, and full support for git. It also appears to work with node.js, a technology I have yet to fully explore.

The motto is “A JavaScript IDE for JavaScripters by JavaScripters,” which is great, but I’m PHPer. I would love to see support for pushing files to my server/private cloud using ftp/sftp rather than my public GitHub repository.

This project looks very promising, and I look forward to watching the continual development of Cloud9IDE. Keep up the good work guys.

A week with the Cr-48

John — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 19:04:18 +0000

Within five minutes of unboxing my Cr-48, I was on the internet and all my plugins, bookmarks, and passwords were automatically synced. I have always been fond of living on the cloud, but this was almost utopia.

However, Chrome OS definitely requires a paradigm shift that I am not sure I am ready to take. As a web developer, I have crafted a very intimate relationship with Zend Studio, Photoshop, and a local *AMP stack. Although I have found alternatives to almost all desktop software floating somewhere in the cloud, most of these alternatives are not (yet) as powerful as their desktop counterparts, and severely hinder my productivity (almost as much as Facebook). That being said, John the developer probably won’t be using Chrome OS as his main operating system for a while, but John the student feels differently.

The eight hour battery life, (fairly) small footprint, the a/b/g/n and 3g wireless card makes it ideal for taking notes in class on Google Docs or browsing Facebook when the professors accent is just too thick to understand. I think this is exactly what Google was looking for. Chrome OS doesn’t work for John the developer simply because the applications aren’t up to par, not because of the operating system itself.

In the past week I have made every attempt to use the Cr-48 as my primary computer. For the most part, it was an enjoyable experience. Although, at times, it was a bit slow at switching between tabs. I’m not sure if this is due to the hardware, or if it is a glitch with the operating system itself. Below is a list of my likes and dislikes:

Likes

The battery life. Although, in the netbook scene 8 hours is not a lot, it is significantly more than my laptop.
Two finger scroll. A few weeks ago one of my roommates purchased a MacBook Pro and I fell in love with its tracpad. So I was delighted when I was able to scroll with two fingers. I would really like to see gestures in future releases of Chrome OS. Perhaps a two finger swipe to move forward and back in your browser or between tabs, a three finger swipe to move between workspaces, and pinch to zoom.
The wake up time. It is literally one second.
3G Card. When I don’t have access to WiFi I can enable the cellular modem. However, cellular data is expensive, and at this time, Chrome loads pages normally and eats through data pretty quick. It might be worth adding an option to allow users to switch their UserAgents and allow them to load mobile optimized pages.
Living on the cloud. It is very nice to be able to go to any computer in the world and have access your data. Plus it puts an end to the misfortune of a hard drive crash.

Dislikes

The shell. I have been a Linux user for four years and have grown very familiar with BASH. The shell provided with Chrome OS is complete crap (granted, its probably not a high selling point for the average user). I would really like to see a more powerful shell with the ability to use ssh keys, navigate through your html local storage.
Living on the cloud. At this current time, it is impossible for me to abandon.

Universal Netboot Installer

John — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:43:41 +0000

The first thing I did when I received my new Asus F6Ve-B1 was download Ubuntu 9.04 and ready myself for a clean installation of a decent operating system. I burnt the ISO, rebooted my PC, and entered the Ubuntu installation menu. Shortly after I was presented with a screen full of errors.

[ 57.764316] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 22

This means that the CD cannot be read. Either because of faulty or misconfiguration hardware or faulty media. After a quick Google search, there appeared to be several solutions. The most popular ones being “Try a new CD ROM drive” and “Burn your ISO at a lower speed and verify the md5 signature.” I opted for neither of these solutions, an instead did a USB install. A very useful piece of software to aid in this process is UNetbootin.

UNetbootin can create a bootable Live USB drive, or it can make a “frugal install” on your local hard disk if you don’t have a USB drive. It can load distributions by automatically downloading their ISO (CD image) files, or by using existing ISO files, floppy/hard disk images, or kernel/initrd files, for installing other distributions.

This is a must have piece of software for your toolbox!

SSHMenu

John — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:53:41 +0000

Until today, my installation of Ubuntu was not working well, and due to time constraints I was forced to fall back on my Windows Vista installation. I should have known that the two hours it would have taken me to fix Ubuntu would have been a lot less than the time and patients required to put up with Vista’s crap. To say the least, I am back on Ubuntu now. During my short sabbatical from Ubuntu, I opted to use PuTTY as my ssh client. One of the features I grew fond of was PuTTYs ability to save sessions, so the first thing I did when I booted up Ubuntu was:

sudo apt-get install putty

After aptitude was done installing PuTTY, I gave it a shot. I am not really sure what prompted me to quickly remove it, but perhaps it was its hideous looking interface or the idea of using an xterm emulator in Linux. I was determined to find a piece of software to manage my ssh connections, and after some googling I found SSHMenu. A piece of open source software that managed my ssh connections, integrated with gnome, used the native terminal. Exactly what I was looking for.

You can download it here or if you use Ubuntu you can take advantage of the repositories by following these instructions or just by simply typing

sudo apt-get install sshmenu-gnome

SFTP Drive

John — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:49:42 +0000

In Linux it was easy to mount a network drive using sftp. However, Windows does not provide an easy method. ExpanDrive, formally known as SftpDrive, allows you to map a remote network drive using the secure file transfer protocal.

ExpanDrive gives you perfectly transparent access to open, edit, and save files with your favorite programs, even when those files are on a server half a world away. Transparent means that you won’t even notice you’re operating on remote file server—it will act like it’s an USB drive you plugged directly into your own computer.

ExpanDrive seamlessly integrates with Windows explorer. This is a must have Windows application for anyone who manages files on remote servers.