Don’t Panic! We’re just moving!

That’s right, you can now find the content of this blog at my new site:

serkokatsikian.net

sensorMote for Android released!

UPDATE: Just released a demo video. Here it is:

Just an hour ago I released my first Android app on the Android market place. sensorMote is a sensor-based remote controller which allows you to control your media player (Vlc) from your phone using simple hand gestures. For more information visit the application’s main page at http://sensormote.weebly.com

In memory of the Armenian Genocide

I know this is a highly political subject and I don’t tend to talk about politics in this blog, but every now and then I feel the need to put down a few lines of thought on issues of great importance to me. One of those is the Armenian Genocide.I am not going to go into the details of the historical evidence that backs the claims of the Armenian people – one can find a lot of great resources with some quality search on the internet – but I will provide a brief historic background and some personal thoughts on the matter.

The Armenian Genocide refers to the systematic extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and after WWI. It is believed to have been the first genocide of the 20th century. The starting date of the genocide is considered to be the 24th of April 1915 when hundreds of Armenian scholars and intellectuals were arrested and murdered. The following months millions (est. 1.5 million) of Armenians of all ages and sex were deported and forced to march to their deaths towards the vast deserts of what is now Syria.Their bones can still talk of this historical massacre. The stories of people who survived the events of 1915 are shocking. Today, 95 years after that murderous period, the Turkish government continues to deny that any kind of massacre took place. Unfortunately for them the historical evidence to back the claims of the Armenians are overwhelming. The issue is less controversial than many Turkish politicians make it out to be. It would take nothing less than a careful examination of the historical documents of that period from an non-biased mind to realize what exactly happened. It is not a coincidence that a lot of countries and international organizations over the world have officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. I understand the reasons behind Turkish denial – they mainly fear that if they recognize the Genocide they will be forced to pay compensation to the Armenians around the world. That does not necessarily have to be the case though. Most Armenians want the Genocide to be recognized out of respect to the millions of its victims. It’s the least to expect when a whole nation is literally driven out to its death. Over the last few years more and more Turks are voicing their concerns about the fact that denying the Armenian Genocide is unethical, wrong and essentialy a distortion of historical accuracy.

It is my utmost belief that Armenian and Turkish people don’t have that much to divide them as they have to unite them. Not too long ago they lived as brothers and sisters in their communities and dealt with their everyday difficulties by helping each other out. In fact Armenians, Turks and other countries’ people for that matter, have more in common than their governments would want them to realize. It fits perfectly with governments’ and politicians’ needs to have their people live in fear and feel that their neighbors are their enemies. However most people no matter where they live have to deal with the same kind of difficulties on an every day basis. Armenian workers, teachers, scientists, artists -you name it-  have to deal with the same issues that their respective Turkish citizens have to deal with in their every day lives. My point is that the Armenians and Turks – the people – have nothing to divide between them. If they were to unite their voices in requesting of their governments to be more ethically motivated, more truthful and more responsible in their actions, then there is a small chance they might actually listen to them… The more we stay divided the more we will be drawn in unreasonable conflicts and the less we will learn from the historical truth that surrounds us.

[images from the genocide]

Priceless

Bye Bye Twitter

No more proprietary microblogging for me! I have just closed down my twitter account. Actually deleted it altogether.Identi.ca is such a better place to be and it’s also free as in freedom! Unfortunately a few microbloggers I’d like to follow such as Cory Doctorow are not on identi.ca! It’s sad really that people who are all about digital rights, software freedom etc, and have so many followers which might consider moving to open platforms like identi.ca with them, keep supporting proprietary platforms like twitter. Well, that’s it for me anyway, so…..so long and thanks for all the fish!

How to solve “network unreachable” problem when installing the Android SDK on Gnu/Linux

When I was trying to get the Available Packages from the Android SDK and AVD Manager, I kept on getting an error saying

"Failed to fetch URL http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml, reason: Network is unreachable"

Apparently others had the same problem as I had when trying to get the Android SDK to work on my Gnu/Linux box and I found the solution here.

All you have to do is edit the /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only.conf file and change the line

net.ipv6.bindv6only = 1
to
net.ipv6.bindv6only = 0

and reboot since the kernel needs to read this option before booting

Get gnu/linux hardware information

I just found this cool tool called dmidecode which “decodes your computer’s DMI (some say  SMBIOS) table contents in a human readble form” and basically spits out detailed information of your system hardware. For example to see what type of RAM memory you have on your motherboard just type as root

dmidecode –type=17.

Similarly if you want to check your processor’s details

dmidecode –type=4

The type parameter can be set to a specific number depending on the hardware you want to investigate. The full list of supported types is found in the dmidecode manual accessible through > man dmidecode. You can use the command without specifying a type in which case you’ll get a really long list of information.

UPDATE:

You can also get the similar information using keywords. For example

dmidecode –type=memory

is the same as using type=17.

The supported keywords are
bios
system
baseboard
chassis
processor
memory
cache
connector
slot

Change system-wide default browser on Debian

Type the following command as root:

update-alternatives –config x-www-browser

This will present a list of installed browser from which you can select the one you prefer.

[credits]

Disable ipv6 on Debian

A few days ago I got my girlfriend’s old PC and set a Debian unstable on it. After installation Iceweasel was taking too long to do the DNS lookup of websites that I was typing into it, something I have never encountered before. After searching over the net, most people seemed to suggest that Debian (for some reason) defaults to ipv6 and apparently when its ipv6 requests don’t resolved properly it falls back to ipv4. So disabling ipv6 should fix the slow DNS lookup problem. Here’s how to disable ipv6 on Debian

-> open /etc/modprobe.d/aliases
-> find a line that says : alias net-pf-10 ipv6
-> change it to : alias net-pf-10 off ipv6

and reboot the machine.

If the problem still persists, go to iceweasel/firefox and type about:config in the url bar. search for “network.dns.disableIPv6″ and set it to true.

Hope this helps anyone else with similar problems.

In memory…