What is Subversion?

So your latest project requires that you use Subversion (or SVN for short). What the heck is it? Subversion is a version control system that allows its users to keep track and manage changes to documents and files. So for example, if you create a website and track it with Subversion, you will be able to keep track of different versions of your HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, and revert to earlier versions if you need to.

If it’s a team project, you can split the work with different people and work on the same files at the same time. So if there are 2 people making changes to style.css, you can merge the different copies with Subversion to create the latest version. Cool huh?

Install Subversion and svnX

To get started the first step is to install Subversion on your Mac. You can do that by downloading the latest Subversion binary from here:

http://www.open.collab.net/downloads/community/

Next, download and install svnX. This is an open source (free) application that allows you to work with Subversion in a GUI, rather than from the Terminal or command line. Download the latest version of svnX from here:

http://code.google.com/p/svnx/

Basic Subversion concepts with svnX

Repository a.k.a. repo

A Subversion repository is the central place where all files are stored. This repo usually resides on a web server, or a computer in your intranet. The latest version of your project is always on the repo, so if you and your team mates’ computers all crash the project will still be safe. In this tutorial, I’m assuming someone has already set up the repo for you.

Now you need to connect to the repo. Launch svnX and look for the Repositories window. If you don’t see it, press Shift+Command+R. Click the plus button to add a new repo. Fill in your SVN login details and click on the repo name to finish.

Now double-click the repo name. If your login details are correct, a new window will appear and show you the contents of the repo. In the example below, my Demo Repository is still empty because it’s brand new.

Click for larger version

Checking Out

To start editing the project files, you need to download them from the repo to your computer. This is known as checking out the repo.

Working Copy

When you checkout a repo, it gets downloaded onto your computer as a Working Copy. This is where you make your edits and changes. To checkout and create a Working Copy of the project, click the Checkout button in svnX and choose where you want to store the project files.

This will also automatically create an entry in svnX’s Working Copies window.

Updating your Working Copy

Updating your Working Copy syncs your local files to the repo and ensures that it is at the latest version. Remember to update often so that you are working on the latest version of the project files.

Adding files to SVN

If you want a file to be tracked by Subversion, you must first add it to the repo. Let’s assume that I’ve created a file called hello.txt and added it into my local working copy demo folder. svnX will now see the file and highlight it in blue indicating that it has detected a new file. Select the file and click the Add button. hello.txt is now being tracked, but not yet uploaded to the repo.

Committing files and changes

When you make changes to the project – either by adding new files or editing files – the changes have only taken place on your local files (Working Copy). To share this changes back to the central repo, you need to commit the files and changes.

Before committing, be sure to update to the latest version. svnX will then highlight new files that you’ve added and changes. Select the highlighted files and click Commit. A window will appear for you to enter a Commit Message. These are notes to explain the changes in this commit. Click Commit and svnX will send your changes up to the repo.

If you open your repo window you will see the revision number, the date of the commit, the person who made the commit and the commit message. Now if my team members update their working copy, they will get hello.txt.

All of us can work on hello.txt at the same time. When we commit our changes, Subversion will automatically merge them so that hello.txt in the repo will incorporate all the changes and always be the latest version.

Ignore files

Finally, you may want to ignore files in your Working Copy. Let’s say I create a file called _reminders.txt and I place it together with the other files in the Working Copy. svnX will show that there’s a new file and keep nagging you about it.

Fortunately, you can tell Subversion to ignore the file. First, switch to the tree view. This will allow you to see the directory structure. Select the folder the file you want to ignore resides in. Since my _reminders.txt is located in the root of my Working Copy, I have to select the root folder, which is named ‘.’ in svnX.

Next, click Properties and the property dialog will appear. From the dropdown, choos svn:ignore and type in the name of the file(s) you want to ignore in the space at the bottom. Finally click the plus sign. svnX will ask you to confirm that you want to ignore the files. Click OK and svnX will no longer track these files, and will not commit them to the repo.

Click for larger version

Now you try it

The above should be enough for non-programmers to get started with Subversion. I hope that the tutorial was useful. Feel free to ask questions in the comments!

They dressed up the hotel’s ballroom and had 3 giant laptops in the front, and there were slick, dressed-up hostesses with face paint who were taking pictures with guests.

The two pics above from TianChad.com – see his post from the event.

Why the face paint? Coz that was the campaign creative:

P1 W1MAX-1NSiDE Review

I was also lucky enough to get a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 which had the new embedded WiMAX chip to test out for 2 weeks. I don’t have any pictures of the device itself because the review is more of the WiMAX service (and also because the Dell still had the cling wrap on it).

So how is the performance of P1 WiMAX on the go? Here’s a speedtest I did from The Curve in Mutiara Damansara:

I was impressed at the sustained download speed of nearly 2Mbps. It’s as good as my DSL Streamyx connection at home.

Here’s another one I did from Kota Kemuning (where I live):

Holy frickin’ crap!!! That’s a sustained download speed of more than 9Mbps. I’ve never seen that on any local broadband provider, so that really blew my socks off (No, I haven’t tested out Unifi yet) and live up to their claims that the service can achieve speeds of 10 Mbps.

Granted, the tests are to servers based in Malaysia but it’s still pretty impressive. Many of the popular sites that I visit with a decent CDN (Content Delivery Network) like Yahoo, YouTube and Facebook loaded really quickly.

Who Needs W1MAX-1NSiDE?

I’m not the target market for these embedded WiMAX devices. I work mainly from a single location (my home office) – plus, I’m a Mac

However, I think these WiMAX-inside netbooks and laptops are great if you

1. Spend lots of time in cafes and on the go. If you mainly use your laptop on the go you’ll find that you’re pretty much tethered to places with WiFi. With WiMAX you don’t need to squeeze into crowded cafes and share the WiFi with everyone else. And on the occasion that you are out of WiMAX coverage, you can always fall back to WiFi since the devices are both WiMAX & WiFi capable.

2. You are a minimalist who likes to travel light. I prefer my MacBook but maybe you like something that is half the weight. And you don’t want to carry extra USB dongles to connect to 3G or WiMAX. These additional dongles also drain your battery faster, so another plus point for embedded WiMAX.

3. You are sick of Streamyx. I have a pretty good Streamyx connection but it’s not very reliable. Just 2 days ago, I had problems connecting. Turns out, apparently someone stole TM’s cables.

Where To Get W1MAX-1NSiDE

If you want to find out more about these embedded WiMAX netbooks and laptops, head on over to www.wimaxinside.com.my.

On the site, you’ll find out details about the plans and the locations where you can buy the devices. They even have an introductory promotion where you get the first 3-6 months WiMAX subscription free and pay a discounted rate if you continue later.

Finally…

Happy birthday P1! Packet One Networks turns 2 today. They’ve done a great job to push innovation and competition in the broadband industry. Thanks for inviting me to the launch and providing me the review unit, and I wish you all the best.

Lately I’ve been telling many of my friends to be very careful about Facebook because they don’t take our privacy seriously. This past week another company joins that list – Google. In addition to privacy, their business practices also make me highly suspicious of them.

Google’s recent actions have made me stop trusting them. I admit, these are very geek reasons that many of my friends won’t understand, but they’ve made me seriously reconsider my relationship to Google and how much I should support them.

Here’s the short version. They’re a great company but they hide behind their unoficial motto of “Don’t be evil” when they are clearly happy to be a little evil. I hate it that they’re two-faced, because I can’t trust people that are two-faced.

So now, if you’ve got a little time to listen to me rant, here’s why I stopped trusting Google:

Privacy

1. Google CEO Eric Schmidt dismisses privacy

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” said Eric Schmidt.

After recently reading Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, I’ve got a new appreciation of the importance of privacy and it makes me very concerned that the company that handles my email, calendar, search and more seems so unconcerned about privacy.

I highly encourage reading EFF’s editorial on this: Google CEO Eric Schmidt Dismisses the Importance of Privacy. Here’s a great quote:

Google, governments, and technologists need to understand more broadly that ignoring privacy protections in the innovations we incorporate into our lives not only invites invasions of our personal space and comfort, but opens the door to future abuses of power.

2. So many privacy “blunders”.. maybe they’re intentional?

Google does not have a good track record when it comes to handling our private information:

• Molly Wood: Google Buzz privacy
• Why Google keeps your data forever, tracks you with ads
• BBC: Google rapped over privacy by 10 nations
  

In the last link, a watchdog group sent an open letter to Google. Here’s a quote from the letter:

Launching a product in ‘beta’ form is not a substitute for ensuring that new services comply with fair information principles before they are introduced

Business Practices

Google was probably my 2nd favourite company after Apple. However, I began to lose my adoration of them once they started competing directly with Apple in the phone space.

3. Google copies iPhone design

Google announced their Android project a long time ago. At that time Eric Schmidt was a member of the Apple board. After Apple introduced the iPhone, Google changed it’s direction for Android.

According to a former Apple employee, the day that the Apple-Google relationship started to crumble was the introduction of the T-Mobile G1. According to him, Steve Jobs and Apple Mobile Software VP Scott Forstall had only seen Android prototypes that looked like Blackberries. The new form factor was “way too similar to the iPhone for Jobs’ tastes”.

Sure, there’s no direct evidence of Google stealing Apple’s ideas, but I think it’s pretty obvious. Google has terrible design sense, and their phone OS suddenly gets lots of similar features to the iPhone. All the while, they’re taking potshots at Apple.

4. Google sells internet users out under pretense of ‘better internet’

Google and Verizon put together a proposal that they want the US Congress to ratify that would split the internet into the “public internet” and “better internets”. This would open the door to ISPs being able to charge you more money for premium content and services on the “better internets”.

On principle I hate the idea of a tiered internet. It should be open for everyone. But what really gets me is Google’s 180-degree turn of their stance on this tiered internet (net neutrality issue). Ars Technica put together a great paper trail of betrayal: Google’s net neutrality collapse.

Also read:

• How the Google/Verizon proposal could kill the internet in 5 years
• Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

Stop Being Two-Faced

Ultimately what I have come to realise is that Google is just a super two-faced company. Like MG Siegler says, “Google, Just Cut The BS And Give The Gordon Gekko Speech Already“. Seriously.

Google, you were one of the good guys (or at least so I thought). I don’t mind you wanting to make money. I want you to make money so you can continue providing us great products.

But please don’t pretend to be the goody-two-shoes with your “Don’t be evil” mantra and then turn around and stab us in the back later. Because when you do that, people who don’t know better fall into your trap, and along the way you spoil what’s important to geeks like me.

And that’s why I’m so disappointed, and I can’t trust Google any more.

Update: Another article from TechCrunch that captures what I’m feeling: Google Is Anakin, Verizon Is The Emperor, And The Dark Side Is Winning

Zack was exhausted after all the effort in rolling over

You can’t imagine how proud Pei Chyi & I are as parents

So I’ve had my iPad for a little over a month now. By far the thing that I do the most on it is to read ebooks. In fact that was one of my main motivations of buying the iPad in the first place. In this past month, I’ve read at least 3 whole novels on my iPad and this blog post aims to share my experience of using the iPad as an ebook reader.

Books on the iPad comes in many forms, from PDFs that you read with a PDF reader, to apps that only contain a single book, to library-style apps which allow you to download and manage entire book collections. The reading experience depends a lot on what you use to read the text of the book and my review is based on 2 library style apps – Apple’s iBooks app and Amazon’s Kindle app.

(Click on the images for larger versions)

iBooks

Kindle

iBooks vs Kindle

iBooks is a beautifully designed application which makes reading on the iPad a joy. The Kindle app is good enough. Both have some common features:

Automatic sync reading location and bookmarks across all devices that are reading the same book

• Multiple font sizes & colours
• Change screen brightness
• Search
• Table of contents & bookmarks
• Highlights & notes

Additional iBook features

• More fonts to choose from
• Much better highlighting and notes feature
• Pretty much a lot better looking

Additional Kindle app features

• You can also read your Kindle books on other Kindle platforms – the Kindle reader itself, as well as PC or Mac, Android and Blackberry phones.
• You can turn off the page flip (I feel that it’s a bit distracting).

I prefer iBooks’ reading experience over Kindle. In iBooks, the line-height and spacing are a lot better, and it has a helpful ‘X pages left in this chapter’ at the bottom of the page. I can’t understand why the Kindle uses a gray background instead of white. If Kindle switches to a white background I would automatically like it twice as much.

Where to Get Books

Unfortunately, getting books into iBooks and Kindle is a bit tricky.

iBooks & iBookstore

iBooks supports ePub and PDF books. ePub files can be copy protected – meaning you can’t email the files to your friends. ePub is also a popular ebook format that is supported by many online book stores. The bad news is that the iPad can only read copy-protected ePub files from the iBookstore. This isn’t Apple’s fault, it’s a feature that publishers require all ebook readers to have.

Luckily, there are places you can find ePub books that are not copy protected. Manybooks is an example of a directory where you can find legal ePub books for free. I’ll let you figure out how to find illegal ePubs on your own

Finally, iBooks also supports PDF. Unfortunately, PDFs don’t enjoy all the same features like a regular ePub. For example, you can’t take notes and resize the text.

If you download ePub or PDF books from the internet, you can easily transfer them to iBooks by importing them into iTunes and syncing with your iPad.

Kindle & Amazon

Being an Amazon product, the Kindle mainly to help Amazon sell paper-less books, and thus Amazon is the main way to get books for the Kindle app. You simply go to Amazon, find the Kindle version of the book and click the ‘Buy now’ button. Next, launch your Kindle and the newly purchased book will download into your iPad. Pretty magical. The other advantage is that the Kindle boasts the largest ebook library in the world.

The Kindle actually also supports other formats like PDF and copy protection-free ePub files. However, you’ll need to email these files to Amazon and pay them to convert it to Kindle format for you. Bummer. I haven’t tried this feature out myself – I’m not about to pay to get my book converted when I can read it in iBooks!

The difficult part is to create an Amazon account that has access to Kindle books. Amazon only has rights to sell ebooks in certain parts of the world, and Malaysia is not on that list. So if you want to use your Kindle, you need to convince Amazon that you are in a country where they can legally sell you ebooks. It’s a pretty complicated process, so I’m glad that I created my Amazon account long ago before these shenanigans. If you want to create an Amazon account today for use with Kindle, you’ll need to do a little research. Here are 2 articles that may be helpful:

• Lowyat forum post: How to use Amazon Kindle 2 in Malaysia, The What, the Where, the Hows
• Michael Yung: Buy Kindle 2 from outside US

Conclusion

Amazon’s Kindle Store beats Apple’s iBookstore hands down in terms of the breadth of the library. The Amazon website offers more browsing and rating features to help me decide which book to buy.

However, in terms of reading experience and the ease of transferring books to the iPad, iBooks comes out on top.

Personally I prefer reading with iBooks. If I can find an ePub or PDF that is not copy-protected I’ll read it in my iBooks. After all, you don’t buy everything you read right? With real books you can borrow from friends. If not, I’ll buy it from Amazon and put up with the bearable reading experience on Kindle. Hopefully the process of creating ePubs will become easier and more and more independent publishers will release their ebooks in ePub format.

I hope this review helped you in your research!

Gallery

I honestly thought I was dreaming. She woke me and said, “I’ve got a surprise for you. But you can’t leave the bedroom.” And thus I enjoyed my 1st ever breakfast in bed.

This was followed up with an amazing lunch with chocolate fondue for dessert.

Mmm.. now you know why I’ve put on weight since getting married.

Pei Chyi took a day off for my birthday so we went out to run a few errands, and I got a back massage in Circle Art of Massage at The Curve. First time I tried them and I was pleased with the results. Don’t let the demure Chinese female masseuse fool you – she’s really strong. I also managed to write a blog post about Friendster Group CEO Ganesh Kumar Bangah.

My birthday felt like a nice little holiday in the middle of a crazy busy period at work. Thanks Pei Chyi, I really enjoyed it and spending time with you and the boy.

Goo goo gaa gaa

Thank You Internet (and Real Life) Friends

I received Facebook wall posts and Tweets all day long from all of you. Like I said, I thought I got attacked by spammers when I woke up yesterday. I know that I don’t meet up with you often enough so I want to say thank you publicly on my blog.

I’m really lucky to know all of you and I appreciate our friendship. Thanks for being part of my special day yesterday. Cheers!

This year’s Father’s Day was extra special. It was the first time I celebrated Father’s Day as a son and as a new father. With only 3 months of experience I’m not the most experienced dad.

My experience to date has mainly been cradling baby to sleep at all hours of the day, pulling boogers out of baby Zack’s little nose (don’t ask), baby baths and poop disasters. It’s been quite a ride and can be pretty exhausting. For example, my Father’s Day was met with baby Zack waking up 3 times at night.

Despite the lack of beauty sleep, fatherhood has been wonderful. Every time I look at baby Zack peacefully sound asleep my heart just melts.

I’m looking forward to many more happy Father’s Days to come.

I’ve been wanting to stop buying paper books for a while now. I’ve also been buying ebooks in PDF and ePub format. Reading these ebooks have been less than ideal because I’ve had to read them on my computer (inconvenient) or on my iPhone (too difficult).

Knowing that I was getting an iPad, I started investigating iBooks–Apple’s ebook solution. The other contender was Amazon’s Kindle application. I couldn’t test iBooks since it only works on the iPad (which had not yet arrived) so I thought I would buy a Kindle book. I planned to start reading the book on my iPhone and finish it on the iPad.

I bought Daemon by Daniel Suarez which I had heard rave reviews about and started reading on my iPhone. I found that I was reading more because I always had my phone with me and could whip it out to read anywhere–in the backseat of the car, in the dark room while waiting for baby Zack to sleep, at the in-laws when there’s nothing to do. If I had a hardcover book, I wouldn’t even have bothered to bring it along with me. By the way, I ended up liking the book so much that I finished it in 3 days and immediately bought the sequel, Freedom.

The other really cool thing about the Kindle is that you can send yourself samples of a book. I’ve downloaded tons of samples that I can read before deciding if I want to buy the book. Reading reviews of books isn’t really the same as reading the 1st few chapters, so this feature is really great for me too.

I’ve already started to read more with my Kindle service. 2 books in the last 2 weeks already and already itching to buy a few more. Compare that to the 3-5 books I have sitting on my bookshelf (which I bought!) that are still not read. The amount that I read has greatly decreased since finishing university and in the meantime the only things I read are articles on web sites and blogs which have completely spoilt my attention span and comprehension, so I’m definitely looking forward to reading more books on my iPad.

Quick comparison to iBooks–Apple’s solution also allows you to download samples. However it’s more difficult to buy books (from Malaysia) because you need to have iTunes credit. Amazon also requires a work around but it’s generally easier to buy Amazon credit which I use to pay for the books. Plus, Amazon’s catalog is much wider and slightly cheaper. On the plus side for iBooks, the application is a lot more polished and it’s also easier to import books from other sources. Long story short, eBooks (digital format books) will hopefully get me reading regularly again.

I’m sure that many of your friends and family has asked you “What’s this blogging thing?” or “Can you help me with my blog?”

And then.. you want to help them but sometimes they have so many questions and you need to go off and do your own thing but you’re paiseh to say no to them because this is your friend / favourite auntie…

If that’s ever happened to you before, I’d like to ask you a favour. Please send your friends and family with blogging questions to me, or more specifically my upcoming workshop called Blogging Your Way To Success. Here, I even made a video to explain what the workshop is about.

For those of you who prefer to read (or you’re experiencing #streamyxsucks), here are the highlights:

• We’ll start at the basics – how to create a blog & write posts, upload images, etc
• We’ll learn about WordPress 3.0, the latest and the greatest
• We’ll learn how to get more readers, promote your business and everybody’s favourite topic – how to make money online!
• The workshop is suitable for beginners with no experience, people on Blogspot who want to switch to WordPress, those who want to launch a blog shop and those who need a simple website but have no budget

If they have questions, please direct them to my Buzzmedia website to find out the full details & to contact me – http://buzzmedia.com.my/events/nst-blogging

If you don’t have anyone you can think of to recommend to attend the workshop, please go to the event page and click the Facebook Like / Recommend button. At least your Facebook friends will see it and can decide if they want to come.

And if you do refer me a few friends, I will do something nice for you. Maybe I can buy you lunch, or help you with your blog theme or buy you Problogger’s book – I’m open to suggestions.

Thanks! You’re the greatest

Sincerely,

David a.k.a. @blogjunkie