Cruisemaniac.com

A lot of us have a multi-PC setup these days. Be it at work or at home, the cables and the multiple mouses are surely a confusion!  Well, a way out exists… infact, an open-source and completely cost-free way out of the mixup exists.  Say Hello to Synergy, the opensource, multi-OS compatible Keyboard and mouse sharing application.

Download Synergy from the sourceforge website here.  Install it and have it running without a reboot.

The configuration for Synergy is very simple.

1. You choose one of your multiple PCs / laptops on your table as your server.
   
2. Next up, you would need to configure the positions of the other PCs with respect to the PC acting as the Synergy Server. Eg: Laptop is to the left of PC.  EeePC to the left of Laptop.  Laptop is Right of EeePC, et al.
   
3. Start off Synergy on the server
4. Hook on the clients to the server by providing either the hostname of the server or the IP address  and voila..
   
5. You can haz one keyboard and one mouse for multiple peeceez!!!
   

With respect to my setup as above, synergy runs on the Ubuntu desktop.  The Keyboard and mouse from the desktop is used by both the laptop and the eeePC.

For the ubuntu fellows, synergy is available in synaptic package manager. Just apt-get it as:

sudo apt-get install synergy

The package manager installs both the synergy server (synergys) and the synergy client (synergyc).  Synergy server needs a configuration file named synergy.conf which needs to be pointed to when starting the synergy server.  A very detailed help document for writing the synergy.conf file and for starting the client and server on ubuntu is here.

Well… thats that about Synergy.  Looks like i covered an app I liked a lot in pretty much good detail… and oh… yeah, you can share the clipboard across PCs… Ctrl+C on ubuntu and Ctrl+V on windowsXP! Kickass!! B-)

The answer to the question: “Wordpress”.

Well, thats about one of the main reasons why we moved away from the system of the Wiki that has always ruled the BCB systems till BCB8.

The other main reason why we felt that wordpress was better suited than Wiki is thus:

A wiki, is a collection of documents linked to each other.  There is only one hierarchy to the structure… and its FLAT.

Wordpress on the other hand is multi-leveled AND allows for a relationship that has always ruled the Barcamp like scenario:  A content provider AND the content provided.  Which when translated to the BCB scenario relates to:The Speaker and the content associated with the person’s talk / discussion.

So there goes, wordpress it was!  And then started the work of tweaking it to make the Content Management System manage the content and the content-providers and participants the bridge.  And what resulted at the end of it is what we have on the BarcampBangalore website currently.

The best learnings out of working on this whole thing, in my opinion is thus:

1. Mixdev IS GOD!!! He is one of the most complete and most awesome of coders I’ve come across!!!
   
2. There is a plugin to achieve every conceivable functionality in wordpress!!! <<  Tip from @mixdev and @the100rabh.  And yeah, I vouch for it!!!
3. There is no touching the subsystem that has been done in making this website.  All that you see on the website is completely delivered by just the theme! <<KICKASS>>
4. Following and achieving point 3 hence makes sharing the code that much easier!!! And that much less code to understand and modify.

The code of the barcampbangalore theme (for lack of a word for the theme name, thereof) has been put up for download and further work and development on Google code here.  There are some bugs, as there is always with very good quality code and since it is open to all please feel free to spread the word around and have people use it and do leave comments and tell us how amazing we are

And there goes 2 hits with one stone:  My first wordpress theme AND my first Opensource project! W0000t!!!