BITobsessed, confessions of a geek

Visual programming on a whole new level

2010-08-17T01:13:00.000-07:00

Usually when you talk about visual programming, you bring up the Visual X or Visual Y adaptation of a C variant or (god forbid) Basic. But that's not really visual programming. It lets you drag and drop some buttons, but the programming bit is mostly done at the keyboard by writing actual code. That looks like it might change, and soon.

A while back, Bryan Lunduke over at Lunduke.com described his goal of creating a completely visual way for writing programs with LEGO like building blocks. At the time I thought he was a bit crazy. Don't get me wrong, crazy in a good way, but crazy nonetheless. What's worse he actually started to work on a bit of software to do it, so he wasn't just talking the talk but walking the walk and coding the code. When Google came out with it's App Inventor, showing interest in creating a really visual way of programming, I got the feeling maybe there's something to this whole malarkey.

As Google's App Inventor is still not open to the public, I tested out Bryan's Illumination Software Creator and proceeded to slap myself repeatedly for not having thought of doing this myself (probably true of most good ideas). It basically just takes the flowcharts taught in beginner computer programming classes and gives you a way to actually run the resulting program. But it gets better as you can also export the code for any supported platform. At the moment of writing, ISC supports Python for Windows, Mac and Linux as well as Maemo devices and Adobe Flex. What's more, the developer is constantly adding new platforms and functionality (a prerelease of version 2.1 should launch today with full Android support). Writing your code once and having it run on any platform is, to anyone who has had to port, a dream come true. Letting the computer do the heavy lifting of actually writing the code while you just draw the flow of the application is pure fantasy.

I'm not saying that all programming should be done this way, but learning? Heck yeah! Most Computer Science programmes contain about half a year faffing about with flowcharts and pseudocode. Put them in front of a piece of software like ISC and within minutes they will be able, not only to set out the logic of an application, but test it and even get a look at the code to learn how to write it themselves.

Since it's inception, programming has gone from writing bits, to assembly languages, to high level languages and frameworks upon frameworks in an attempt to make the code independent of the OS and hardware it's running on. Maybe it's the kool-aid talking, but isn't cutting out the code the next logical step?

PS: Illumination Software Creator is on a "Name Your Own Price Sale" right now, so get it while it's hot. Even if you don't plan on buying it because you're a real programmer and the only software development platform you need is emacs and a compiler, you should at least check out the trial to get a taste of the future.

iOS love-hate

2010-08-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

My relationship with Apple products is, like that of many people, one comprised mostly of love and hate: I want to love them and they seem to hate me. When I first got my iPad I truly did think that all had changed.

The idea of having a thin and light piece of hardware that could do almost everything I wanted and look pretty while doing it had me hooked. Unfortunately after using it for a couple of months I realize that although Apple position it as a netbook alternative, it just isn't. I've had netbooks (two of them in fact) and they managed to really do anything I threw at them, including saving my behind in a Computer Networks class where I ran a virtualized Windows 2003 Server as well as two XP clients on my trusty MSI Wind (hackintoshed at the time). The iPad would just laugh in your face if you suggested it try something like that.

Don't get me wrong it's a brilliant piece of hardware and the software, for what it does, is almost decent apart from some stability issues. For what I wanted it to be, the iPad is like a biscuit with delicious cream filling spoiled by being just a bit dry.

The Cream Filled Bit:

As a reader it's probably the best thing since sliced bread. When I say reader I don't strictly mean books. It's also good at the internets, email, magazines, comics, movies, music, podcasts and (especially) games, and if you think that covers everything, get one, you'll love it.

I said especially games. The iPad managed to built on the potential of the iPhone OS and is now Apple's gen 1.5 gaming console. As far as consoles go it's a perfect launch. More than 5,000 titles at launch as well as a back catalog of 15,000 titles is a great start for any gaming platform, and since the launch things have only gotten better. Publishers like EA, Ubisoft (through Gameloft) and Namco have joined the bandwagon and are releasing a steady stream of titles for the platform. All in all, a brilliant bit of kit.

The Dry Biscuits That Ruin Everything Bit:

Leo Laporte keeps calling it a media consumption device and that's 9,000% more accurate than the netbook substitute Apple deems it to be. In fact, although they may not want it to be true, the iPad is just the Apple TV mark II. Oh sure, the form-factor may have changed a bit, and you can now take it with you, but it's not a computer. It's no more a computer than a Motorola RAZR or you mums TV.

Let me give you an example. If I wanted to load some books onto my HTC Hero, I'd put them on Dropbox or an FTP server, grab them with the phone and use a file manager to move them wherever I wanted then import them into my eBook reader app. That may sound complicated but the process takes about 2 minute and that's including choosing what book to take. On the iPad I can use iTunes on a computer that it has already been synced with, import the book into iTunes, connect the iPad, go to Books and check the book I want, click sync and it's done. It takes about 1 minute. So it's better because it's faster, right? Not in the slightest. It's faster but it relies on a real computer to do the heavy lifting. In that sense, it's more peripheral than PC.

And here is where things break down. The Amazon Kindle is an eBook reader. It does one thing, and it does it well. The iPad is an eBook reading, movie watching, game playing multimedia powerhouse. But it's not a PC. And the closest thing to getting a computer out of it, will be if someone ports Android to the thing.

Finally a good use of the ipad

2010-04-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

QR Madness

2010-03-11T23:50:00.000-08:00

Everybody loves them and now they're very easy to make if you head on over to the QR-Generator, so why are you still here?

The new tablet we can all be excited about

2010-03-11T00:49:00.000-08:00

Starwars Origami

2010-02-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

What more could you possibly ask for?

Tomorrow's the big day

2010-01-25T23:39:00.000-08:00

Apple will be hosting their now legendary event and the internetz are all aflutter with rumors of an extraordinary new device. This game-changing tablet, that has not been announced by any official means and that nobody has managed to take even one clear picture of, has been the main topic of discussion for a few months now.

I just want to say that blurry cam pics and renders do not a tablet make. While, in my capacity as geek, I do want the rumors to be true, a part of me just wants Apple to come out with something completely different and say: "What? And you believed the dumb rumors we started to cover what we're really launching?"

Tomorrow we will all know for sure, but until then Geek And Poke have put it best.

EDIT: And if they do come out with a tablet, wouldn't it be cool if they called it the Newton II?

EDIT2: It's out, it's called the iPad, it's a big iPod. The END

Short but sweet

2010-01-18T13:36:00.000-08:00

Flash... I think most people will agree that it basically sucks (cpu cycles that is), but it's a necessary evil. It offers developers a quick way of adding interactivity to their sites. Unfortunately, that interactivity isn't exactly currently supported under optimum conditions with the 64bit variants of Ubuntu: aka da' clicking don't work, dawg!

Now you could disable Compiz, and that would work just fine, but let's be honest, you don't want to do that. You could uninstall the flashplugin packages and install from Adobe, but you don't want to do that either.

What you want to do is open up a terminal and:
sudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer
And then add the line: export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 before the last line of text.

And it's done. Who knew that bug reporting forums actually had useful stuff in them?
[via Launchpad]

A new year with the obligatory keynote madness

2010-01-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

Happy new year everybody (a bit late, I know), hope everyone had a good time with the holidays and all.

But just because it's a new year, it doesn't mean that business is any less booming, and by business I mean tech news (cause, ya' know, CES is out there). A whole lot has been happening in tech circles and the only way to try to keep up is by hunting down this years big CES keynotes.

For the moment here are the Palm, NVIDIA, Sony and Microsoft presentations.

I'll be adding my findings to this post so stay tuned.

If Star Wars had Facebook

2009-12-29T05:43:00.000-08:00

Lately the internet has been a buzz with Star Wars stuff. This is either an incredibly brilliant viral campaign for the release of some new Star Wars property (perhaps a TV show?) or simple coincidence or geeks being geeks around Christmas.
Whatever the case may be, we can all enjoy the effects.

More geekery

2009-12-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

If you too need more than just some dry numbers to know what it's like outside and refuse to simply look out the window, then give the Star Wars Weather Forcast a try. Star Wars Weather is a subsidiary of Star Wars Channel 5 Action News, coming soon, to a galaxy near you (as opposed to one that is, say for example, far far away).

[via Lifehacker][via DownloadSquad][via gHacks]

Sadly this ends here

2009-12-20T01:36:00.001-08:00

Sadly, after using the Hero for a few weeks, I can't, in good conscience, say I'm a fair enough judge of the phone's shortcomings anymore. The Hero may not be perfect for all, but it fits me like a glove.

The guys over at the Engadget podcast probably put it best while describing the Android OS. To paraphrase: the iPhone is like a modern German car, while the Hero is like a 60's muscle car. Sure most people will choose the Audi, but those who choose the Mustang would not have been happy with anything else.

So, as I can't finish this review with any shred of journalistic impartiality, I can only refer you to the very in-depth GSMArena article.

HTC Hero Review - Part 2

2009-12-05T11:31:00.000-08:00

As promised, here is the second installment of HTC Hero Review. Will Antonio betray Esmeralda? Will Jose find out that Antonio is really his mother in disguise? Find out in HTC Hero Review - Part 2.

You, up front!
If you are coming from an iPhone background, the front of the Hero will seem to be festooned with a veritable plethora of buttons. Heck, even some Windows Mobile phones have less buttons. This is not really a bad thing, as the Hero actually has only what's required of it as per Google's Android guidelines. Right beneath the screen (on the metal band that surrounds it) there are four keys Call, Home, Menu and End. Beneath them, centered is a trackball to the right of which there is a rocker button that serves the Search/Back functions.

There are only 2 issues with the buttons on the Hero. The first isn't a problem for me since I'm left handed, but apparently the placement of the Search/Back rocker is not well suited for right-handed people as it requires triple jointed thumbs. The other issue is with the trackball itself. It's not always precise. It's almost like you have to press it half way for it to register some times. It's by no means a deal-breaker and it's easy to get used to, but if you have a light touch it does crop up from time to time (ie: when navigating the home-screens and switching directions).

The trackball does however act as notification LED and the cool factor of that mitigates a lot of things. I know you've all probably seen it in videos. Fact is, it's way cooler in person. The first time you're in a meeting/classroom/library with your phone on silent in front of you and the trackball begins to slowly pulsate to tell you you have a new SMS you'll think to yourself: Why yes! My phone IS awesome!

The screen, Boss! The screen!

I'm guessing we've danced around the subject long enough. Probably 90% of what makes or breaks the experience when using a touchscreen phone is, well, the touchscreen. You can all relax on that point as the Hero's is damn good. Not only does it display crisp images and have rich colors, but the touch part is precise and responsive.

Multitouch (in the supported applications) works very well, although it does feel somehow different from the iPhones. I can't tell if it's better or worse, it's just different. I can only advise you to go to the store and play with both to see how they compare. The problem with multitouch on the Hero isn't one with the Hero itself, but rather with the underlying 1.5 version of Android which, technically, has no multitouch capability. With any luck Hero users will soon be getting the 2.0 or 2.1 release of the firmware, as those versions have built-in support for all our greasy fingers, but as it stands, multitouch on the Hero just means you can pinch'an'zoom in the photo viewer and browser.

To be continued in part three (hopefully the last one) with benchmarks and a software overview.

HTC Hero Review

2009-12-01T01:58:00.000-08:00

Also known as the T-Mobile G2 or the Droid Eris (more on the Eris later) on Verizon Wireless, the HTC Hero is HTC's flagship Android device. There are 3 main hardware SKUs:

The unlocked, standard HTC Hero also known as the GSM Hero.

The Sprint Hero, which is pretty much identical to the original Hero on the inside and out, except for doing away with the controversial chin.

The Verizon Wireless Hero. This is perhaps the worse version, since although it adds a proximity sensor it has the disadvantage of being on a CDMA network coupled with a slightly smaller battery.

All in all though, apart from button placement and case design, the three Heroes are pretty much identical. Since I've only had the opportunity to play with the European version, that's the one this review will be based on.

Part one: Form and Function

The first thing you notice about the Hero is the design. It's something quite special with straight lines keeping to 90, 45 and 15 degree angles that make it look like something you'd see in an 80's Sci-Fi movie. Although you may not agree, I think the design manages to be retro without once making you think it's old.

The 15 degree angle of the chin serves 3 roles. It brings the buttons towards your thumb, it angles the phone so that the mouthpiece is in a good position to catch your voice and last but not least it makes the device look like an badass Tricorder (and honestly, can you ask for more?).

Apart from having to chose between versions, you also get a choice in color with European Hero, as it is available in Black, Gray Steel, Brown and White. All models have a metal band around the screen, and the metal seems to reflect the color of the device (darker finish of the metal band of darker colors). The only thing I'm not crazy about is the black border around the screen. It's not noticeable when using the device, but it doesn't look all that awesome, especially in contrast with the finish of the white model, while the device is turned off.

Connector-wise there's great, good news and bad news. The great news is that you get a 3.5mm headphone jack. The good news is that while HTC use a proprietary connector it is downward compatible with any microUSB cable you might have laying around. The bad news is that while the Hero does offer a microSDCH port for with support for cards up to 16GB, that port isn't easily accessible (you have to remove the back cover to get to it). I know that on some phones you have to remove the battery to get to the memory card, but it would have been awesome to get hot swapping that much easier.

On the back of the device you get a F2.8, autofocus, 5MP camera and a loudspeaker and a "Teflon coating" that is supposed to make the device more dirt resistant.

The camera gets clear and vibrant shots as long as you have the right light and the time for the autofocus to do it's thing. On the other hand, you can also get blurry, out of focus, dark shots in anything more than a light shade. To be fair it's better than most phone cameras and at least it doesn't fall into the classic "set ISO to 2.000.000" mistake and manages to get some above average shots. I just wish that they'd have included a flash of some kind and more onscreen control options with the standard camera app since, as it stands, you basically just have "tap to focus", "zoom" and "take picture".

The loudspeaker on the other hand is, well, loud and pretty clear though I do get the feeling that the entire backplate starts to vibrate a little when the thing is at full volume.

One last thing about the exterior of the device worth mentioning is the amazing volume rocker. It just works. It's big enough that I can make use of it even through my coat and camera pouch at the same time, and yet it has never went off by accident. It's just one of those details that show lot of thought about usability has gone into the design process.

To be continued...

Stay tuned for the next installment, when we'll be wrapping up the hardware side of the review with a look at the the front of the device, build quality and some geeky figures about processing power, ram and storage options. We'll also be delving a little into the software of the beastie, both as regards Android in general and HTC's custom Sense UI.

A ton of free books

2009-11-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

What's better than a good book, you ask, well two good books of course. And better than that? It can only be an entire library with some of my favorite authors like starting with David Weber and Eric Flint, in the good company of John Ringo, David Drake and Keith Laumer along with some Mercedes Lackey thrown in. Basically, what I'm saying is: go HERE and read.

If the plethora of choices are too intimidating, I'd recommend The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint if you fancy some of the best humor ever to take place in a fantasy setting, or On Basilisk Station by David Weber for some epic sci-fi, space opera action.

[via "the fact that I'm re-reading The Philosophical Strangler"]

Star Trek dentist

2009-11-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

In all the hundreds of Star Trek episodes I've watched, they never once visited the ship dentist. I think the mystery is finally solved, don't you?

Free MacHeist Madness

2009-11-07T04:54:00.001-08:00

Ok, most of you Mac users out there know all about the crazy-good prices of the MacHeist bundles but this is just ridiculous. They are now giving away 6 apps for free. So go get them while they're hot. As of now there are 5 days left and 5 programs unlocked. If they get to 500.000 participants we all get the 6th program, Mariner Write, for free.

Still not motivated? The bundle includes WriteRoom. In my mind, it's the only text editor almost as good as nano, so get it while it's free.

[via Cult Of Mac]

I'm just saying

2009-11-06T01:37:00.001-08:00

Someone is overcompensating for something...

Meet Octy

2009-11-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

The propeller beanie wearing octopus. Not much to say except thank God for Java courses and I promise to start doodling at a higher resolution (I didn't think people would actually care but apparently they do).

PS: I've gotten a few questions about what graphics program I use. The answer is that, like any self respecting graphics expert, I use the most advanced program out there. I'm talking, of course, of none other than the glorious and most exalted graphics powerhouse: MsPaint.

Yes please

2009-11-04T00:36:00.000-08:00

For a few years now, racing games seemed to gravitate more and more towards the arcade end of the spectrum. Being a simmy kind of guy, that meant that I was stuck playing old versions of Toca and the like but no more. The last year has seen a rebirth of the sim genre and even some staples of arcade racing are getting in on the fun (NFS Shift... here's looking at you kid). What's even better is the fact that developers have started to realize that you can make sim games fun. Optional driving aids, having an onscreen racing line (finally) and other little tweaks mean that you can show your less experienced friends how fun realistic driving can be and once they're hooked they'll start disabling the extras themselves.

That long-winded introduction is precisely why I'm so excited about this, as it's another barrier of realism broken down: since we have realistic cars with realistic driving models why not get realistic tracks as well?

PS: Granted, the sim-ization of the Need For Speed franchise could just be EA's bid to cover all venues since they are already cleaning up the arcade marked with Burnout.

[via Engadget][via BBC News]

Scarry Pie

2009-11-01T04:31:00.000-08:00

Halloween is over and done with and I have managed to hide from the one truly scary thing out there: Pumpkin Pie. (Well it's scary good, but that still has scary in it)

On a serious note, this pic is proof that English class is good for something...

A new free book

2009-10-25T01:07:00.000-07:00

While my love hate relationship with Windows 7 tends, as with any Windows, to revolve more and more towards hate, there's no denying that knowing how to deploy it is going to be a necessary skill. So without any further ado here's the link to Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine

What I'd like to call proof of an Apple tablet but can't

2009-10-24T08:12:00.000-07:00

Since everybody's getting so hot and bothered over rumors, renders and other non-proof beginning with the letter R, I thought I could throw in my 2 cents with what could be circumstantial evidence.

GQ is getting a digital edition for it's November 18th issue and the means of publication will be iTunes. Whenever Apple brought in a new device it was pretty much aimed at a new type of media. The iPods, Apple TV and even iPhone (long videos weren't really viable on iPods) are all aimed at a section of iTunes and what better way to enjoy large color issues of magazines and books (possibly comics?) than on iTablet/iPad.

EDIT: And let's not forget about iTunes LP's...

Told you so...

2009-10-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

I always knew that MC Hammer was a Klingon. Don't ask me why, don't ask me how, I just knew. And finally, years later, I have proof.

And a German Klingon at that.

[via GeekDad][for more Klingonized songs go here]

Nighttime photography

2009-10-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

To paraphrase Douglass Adams, time is an illusion, nighttime doubly so. Still, makes for some new pics so you'll get no argument from me.

I prefer the first one but if you must have color...

And finally, the obligatory long exposure weird shapes with lights.

More Microsoft Mischief with MUIs

2009-10-13T13:06:00.000-07:00

Ok so the guys in Redmond do some nice things. For example, they give away a lot of their software for free to students all over the world. That software includes both Windows 7 Professional and a language pack DVD in case you want to use Windows in your native tongue (or in my case use handwriting recognition). Of course they could just give out copies of Enterprise and/or Ultimate since they have internationalization built-in, I'm just saying... they could if they wanted.

Microsoft however can't do something well to the end. And so, the Language Pack DVD contains a bunch of useless .cab files with no installer in sight. You might be thinking to yourself: "Aha! You have to extract the .cabs and then you'll be able to..." and you'd be as wrong as I was. "But wait, surely the answer is on Technet!" and you'd still be retracing wrong steps, as the only pertinent instructions I was able to find on Technet were on how to make a redistributable image which included the MUIs.

This option also had the "advantage", one might even say the "genuine advantage" of requiring one to download tons stuff for the Preinstalation Environment and Automated Installation Kit and muck about in the command line for three years. In any case, rebuilding the DVD and reinstalling Windows was not exactly ideal. But have no fear, polish forums to the rescue:

1) Run CMD as admin
2) CD to the directory that contains your desired language pack (for example cd c:\langpacks\ro-ro\)
3) run DISM /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:lp.cab (I mean really, who wouldn't think to do this!)
4) Celebrate, as you can stop now if all you need is support for the language

* As I only needed handwriting support and would probably commit seppuku if forced to use a localized version of any OS, I can't guaranty that steps 5-7 work. If they turn your computer into a radioactive hamster from a planet near Mars, don't come crying to me.

5) Run the commands bcdedit /set {current} locale ro-RO and bcdboot %WinDir% /l ro-RO
6) Run the regedit program as admin and remove the key en-US from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlMUIUILanguages
7) Reboot into your localized copy of Windows

Why we couldn't have just had a install_languageX.exe I'll never know. It probably would have been against their religion. I like to think it was proposed and the discussion ended something like this: "Make using our OS easy for people!?! That's blasphemy, kill the apostate!"

Happy birthday Hitchhikers!

2009-10-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

Few things have influenced my life as much as reading the Hitchhiker's Guide for the first time. It was an amazing experience for a much younger me, who was still getting to know what I did and didn't like when it comes to books. After finishing the final page, two things were certain in my mind. The first was a realization that "Hey I like this reading stuff!" and the second breakthrough soon followed "I need more!".

Reading every scrap of the unique brand of Sci-Fi that Douglass Adams ever wrote soon led to reading Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and from them on the world was my bivalvic mollusc. So in effect, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was and remains a gateway drug into the joy of reading and I dare anyone who hasn't read it (both of you!) to do so and say I'm wrong.

PS: I think this is the only book series in the world that people call "a trilogy in five parts" with a strait face.

[reminded by GeekDad]

The model of the new media model

2009-10-05T00:29:00.000-07:00

TWiT Founder Leo Laporte, recently gave a talk about the old media-new media-next media paradigm. If you're a Leo fan, like myself, this is definitely worth a watch, if only to gain some insight on his thought pattern and where he plans on going with the TWiT network. If you're not a Leo fan, head on over to TWiT.tv and spend some time there. You will soon become one.

via [Smarterware] via [News Innovation]

A really neat game

2009-09-26T02:44:00.000-07:00

Visually gorgeous, with a great soundtrack and above average voice acting, Dirty Split just goes to show that the point-and-click adventure genre is far from being dead. The puzzles are a bit on the easy side, but the story makes it fun and even thought you'll probably go through it in one short sitting it's a worthwhile experience because of the game's brilliant atmosphere. Oh, did I mention it was free?

So give it a go, and please let me know if I'm not the only one that downloaded the soundtrack after finishing the game.

Finding a different perspective

2009-09-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

A daily doodle is a blog I've only been recently turned onto. The aesthetic is way up my alley and to the left so I can't not mention it (Always wanted to use a double negative). I'd recommend you all give it a shot.

The Monday Ogre

I especially liked today's since it was almost too accurate a depiction of Mondays in general.

Avast, there!

2009-09-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

Did'na think I'd forget yee bunch of bloomin' land lubbers! So listen to this special day's anthem and embrace the geekiness by singing along.

So hoist up the mainsils and shut down your brain cells,
They only would get in the way,
Avast there, me hearty, we're havin' a party,
It's "Talk... Like... A Pirate" Day!

Haiku hits alpha - Installing - I remember Be

2009-09-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

Ok so my haiku is terrible, but this OS isn't. It's been in pre-alpha for a while, but this is the first time you can actually get a CD that installs onto hardware (you could previously only get drive images).

So why is this open source operating system so special. Well it's not a linux distro for one thing. It's a reconstruction of Be Inc's BeOS and that means crazy speed.

I remember trying it almost a decade ago and it left a mark. It did some amazing things with multiprocessor support. To the extent that you could add and remove processors on the fly. My experience was limited to a single CPU machine but while Windows booted in a couple of minutes on my machine, Be would be up and running in seconds. I didn't have internet access at the time so, with literally no software outside that bundled with the OS, it never got the chance to stay on my 2 GB hard disk, but it started my exploration of alternative OS's.

Haiku, formerly OpenBe, is a project to rewrite and replace the codebase of BeOS, while keeping alive the concepts and principles that made it great in the first place. I'm not saying that this release is perfect. It's still lacking power management and a WiFi stack, but it's an old friend, that I haven's seen in a long time. So now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get reacquainted.

EDIT: For a more in-depth presentation check out this link.

What a day to forget my camera

2009-09-17T03:07:00.001-07:00

Windows 7: Et tu Brutus?

2009-09-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

It would seem that I spoketh too soon and Windows Updates struketh again. All the 'th's are because Windows 7 got medieval on my hiney. A word of advice to anyone with a HP 2710p tablet and thinking about upgrading to the glorious new OS: DON'T!

After the original install in which almost every single thing worked out of the box, Windows Updates have taken away the ability of using the integrated fingerprint reader after suspending, and the ability to start hibernation at all.

So I can't log in, or save battery power in any way on a laptop. But surely, the vastly superior power management features will make up for that by boosting the original 6 hour battery life of the machine to a staggering... 2 hours and 15 minutes.

I'm now convinced that Microsoft doesn't want me to use their products. There can be no other explanation. The fact that there are forums full of people with similar problems is just a side effect of my being targeted by Redmond based software assassins.

PS: It's only paranoia if they're not out to get you.

D&D online joins the Free2Play category

2009-09-11T03:13:00.000-07:00

Is it a wise move for MMO games to switch to a F2P price model? Apparently Turbine Inc. couldn't decide either, so they chose to include a Free2Play model, in witch you pay for items, as well as a subscription model, that grants unlimited access to items. Will they actually gain something from this? Well, I for one am going to check it out and I think the free-ness assures I won't be alone.

[via Wired]

I am not impressed

2009-09-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

The 09/09/09 Apple event is over. All we got from it is a video recording, FM-radio equipped Nano, updates to part of the iPod Touch lineup (as I understand only the 32 and 64 GB get OpenGL ES 2.0 and a faster processor) and a new version of iTunes that's Out Now.

If they'd have at least come out with a Touch that did video, it would have been a different bag of potatoes. As it is, move along people, nothing to see here.

PS: I get that they probably didn't add a camera to the Touch since that would most likely cannibalize iPhone sales, but it still would have been nice.

UPDATE: Apparently the camera is as bad as expected if not worse. Hit up Engadget for the hands-on.

Bits and bobs

2009-09-09T04:29:00.000-07:00

The last remnants of my vacation pics.

This is my personal fave in this pack.

Be honest, that bulb thing is just plain freaky.

For some reason, I'm really into this "detail in the lower left corner on simple background" style of photo. It's probably because I'm left handed or something. I'll try switching things about in the future.

Egalite, fraternite and all that Jazz

2009-09-07T01:39:00.000-07:00

After spending so much time on the Mac side of computing, I jumped at the chance to give Windows 7 a run for it’s money. Let’s get some preliminaries out of the way, so you know where I’m coming from. The version I’m testing is the final release of Windows 7 Professional 32-bit off MSDNAA. Also worth a mention is that I’ve been using Windows 7 in both Beta and RC so it’s not exactly new to me. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive review, just a documenting of my personal experience and feelings about the OS.

Onto the meet

The first time people will notice something new about Windows 7 will probably be in the store. No more 50 versions to pick between. Only 3 versions will be geared towards the average consumer: Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. Another great thing is that you won’t have to be as careful in your choice. For example if you paid more for Windows Vista Business you’d have to live without the Media Center in Home Premium. That was just ridiculous. This time around each edition is a superset of a cheaper version, adding new features without taking stuff away.

There is also a Starter Edition, but it will only be available to OEMs and also, it is so dumbed down that it’s supposed to be like riding a retarded donkey: it won’t get you where you want to go, but it will embarrass you all the way there, or so I’m told. I haven’t played with it so I’m not in a position to talk about it especially after hearing stuff like, you won’t be able to change the wallpaper. I’ll believe that when I see it with my own eyes.

Once you’ve made your choice, you get to go home and install it and … A lot of stuff will work. Since it’s not a total departure from Vista, most of your stuff will keep working. And that’s a good thing. It almost feels like Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are brothers in spirit of not in blood. Both are iterations, giving that one final polish the the previous version, but honesty compels me to that admit Windows 7 adds a lot more to Vista than Snow Leopard adds to it’s sibling.

The interface tweaks are mostly good, though I fear they will confuse some users. The new taskbar is more flexible (I can finally have it on the side without Windows making me feel guilty about it) and the Libraries make keeping stuff organized less of a chore. Worth a mention is that adding all these little touches didn’t have a negative impact on performance.

Along with compatibility and looking pretty, another couple of ticks in the Good column are the added speed and stability. If, like me, you’ve had the misfortune of using an low voltage CPU with Vista, you’ll rejoice after installing Windows 7. It’s given my hardware a new lease on life without forcing me to upgrade the hardware or downgrade the software to the dreaded XP of death.

I could go on but suffice to say overall I really like this version and I hope things keep going in this direction. It’s may not be perfect:
- things in the Control Panel have been moved around a bit, but it still makes little sense to the likes of me
- there is a still an utter and complete lack of support for keyboard customization
- shoddy window management *
- lack of multiple desktops **
But it’s the best Windows yet. And it's gotten to the point where I could live with it... if I had to.

* Window management is only half done and after using it for a little while all the unpolished edges start getting to you
** It's two thousand freaking 9! The Amiga had this, OS/2 and BeOS had this, the Linux and Mac operating systems have this. Get a clue people!

The most comprehensive review of Snow Leopard

2009-09-05T03:31:00.000-07:00

John Siracusa of Ars Technica has posted a 23 page review of Snow Leopard that really delves deep into the new APIs and improvements of Apple's latest OS. Most of the article is geared towards developers and giving them a heads up, but I found it a fascinating read and I'm sure most power users would like it, if only for clearing up why their favorite apps aren't working anymore.

New batch, fresh from the oven

2009-09-04T05:11:00.001-07:00

You guessed it boys and girls, it's picture time, again.

Lately, I've found myself attracted to photographing graffiti and other signs of humanity (no pun intended) and trying to take them out of context, either by framing or zooming in on one detail. It's mostly about my wallpaper obsession, but also a bit about trying to get out of my comfort zone (pretty flowers and such).

Can you see the two people in the picture? I'll give you a hint: they're in the boat :P

Snow Leopard is out

2009-09-03T00:31:00.001-07:00

I'm sure you've already seen 450,007 people, each with their own opinion about this OS. Some say it's not that different from Leopard and that it could have been a service pack. Others say that new features like the transition to 64-bit, OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch will make this the definitive Apple OS.

I've found the truth to be somewhere in the middle. As an end user, all the "new technologies" don't really affect me much, at least for now, since few if any non-apple applications take advantage of the changes. On the other hand, I can see how we can't expect a complete rewrite of the underlying code to be free.

I will say this though there is one killer feature in Snow Leopard, that makes forking over the 29$ a no-brainer for me. Exposé finally works. Not only does it work better with native applications, but it finally recognizes X11 windows. If you'd have shown me a bit of shareware that added that functionality for the same price, I would have been more than glad to pay for it. On top of that, the rewrite lets you use the Dock while in Exposé. The fact I get a bit more battery life and a tad more speed, is just icing on the cake.

I just can't express how happy I am that Gimp finally works right in OS X! The only quibbles I have are that smcFanControl and CyberDuck don't seem to be compatible just yet and for some reason, iTunes appears to be running in 32-bit mode.

With these tweaks I think the window management in OS X is finally up to snuff and a bit more. Too bad Windows 7 tried copying the dock model without also copying Exposé (I have nothing against copying as long as it's done right).

PS: Don't mind my comment about Windows 7. I'm just bitter since I have to do a clean wipe and reinstall... again

Vacation pictures part deux: La vengeance

2009-09-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe I went a little bit overboard with the title. So I'll stick to showing you guys these photos of the most gorgeous dog in the world. His name is Ludvig in case you were wondering.

His owner says that's how he puts on his beach camouflage... While that could very well be the case, I like to think he just likes rolling around, but hey, maybe I'm projecting...

It's been nice

2009-08-31T08:32:00.000-07:00

The seaside rocks! Peace and quiet for a change has done me a whole world of good, and you guys get more pics, so I'm guessing it's a win-win sort of situation.

Since it was rather short don't expect tons of new wallpapers but I think there should be about 10 decent photos in the bunch I shot. As soon as I sort them out, crop and resize and so on, I'll post some more.

In the meantime...

More free research stuff

2009-08-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since the last post and this one's not going to satisfy most of you but here goes anyway.

I'm a great believer in lectures as a form of learning. Even seeing a recording of a lecture is, at least for me, far more engaging than reading a book on the matter. This is especially true when the subject isn't something I'm familiar with, since I tend to find an excuse to stay in my comfort zone when reading. With lectures that changes. I love listening to people who are passionate about what they do show me what makes them love their areas of expertise.

That meandering preamble out of the way, Roger Parker is one of those people and Gresham College have been kind enough to make a number of his lectures available to the public. If you're interested in classical music at all you can download his lectures here.

If music isn't your thing, you can still get lectures on a variety of different subjects from The 17th century plague to City and Business Ethics. Think of it as a free summer school ;)

Away from civilization

2009-08-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

If only for a few hours, I managed to get away from city life. While I strongly trust that my personal schedule is fascinating, it may (surprisingly) not interest some of you (weirdos) so instead, here's a smattering of new photos.

I've found myself playing with the manual focus a lot lately so ready yourselves for some pretty out of focus pics. It's not that I need the extra control, it's just that the macro focus on my camera happens to fall somewhat short of a stellar performance. I know I really should try the CHDK and I will... someday... when the macro focus stops being the only gripe I have with it :D

I've also been playing more with the levels and controls in iPhoto. They're surprisingly decent although I sometimes feel like things were stripped out to justify the existence of Aperture (RGB individual levels would have been nice for example).

Because, honestly, who doesn't take their laptops with them in the forest only to then take pictures of sed laptops?

My obsession with tree trunks and branches continues.

Well that's all for now. Here's hoping I get another chance to do something like this soon. It's not that I had a blast, I'm just thinking about you guys... (*cough*) yeah, that's it...

Free book

2009-08-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

If you know me, you know that I like free stuff and I like books. So what could be better than a free book? Pie possibly...

But seriously this particular book saved my hide with some research, so if you need to know about almost anyone music related before 1918, this is your man or rather pdf.

Keep in mind that it's a hefty (110mb) download so if you don't need to have it on you at all times you could just browse it here.

Thank you www.archive.org!

PS: if you don't like yellowed pages you can also download this version.

I know , I know, the subject matter is cliche... Moving on!

2009-08-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

Most of the pics I post are true to life or, at least, true to camera. They may get cropped a bit and framed a bit more, but they're essentially served as is. Not so with this one, since the water looked more like liquid rust than anything. Another departure from my normal pattern is that I'm not going to say Gimp to the rescue but rather iPhoto.

Still, despite its departures from the norm, I quite like this one. It's probably because of that leaf in the corner...

PS: I know it needs a bit more touching up to remove some of that noise, but I sure as heck don't have that kind of time :))

Free magazines

2009-08-03T23:39:00.000-07:00

Well, Lifehacker's done it again. They found more free stuff. If you're into reading on your PC screen head over to the link in their article and read away.

A sad, sad day for birds everywhere

2009-08-01T07:05:00.001-07:00

I finally got some free time and decided to play around with the new version of Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3. Since it's still pretty early in the development life-cycle, I understand that nothing's set in stone... but... but... they took out Pidgin as the default IM client.

What with Ubuntu being the juggernaut that it is in the Linux community, I fear that removing Pidgin from it is removing it from the limelight. Let's just hope that doesn't happen since for many of us, Pidgin has been a lifeline to the non-Linux world and the Libpurple API is the base code on which a lot of other IM clients are built: Adium, Apollo IM, Finch, Instantbird even Meebo just to name a few.

In the end I realize it's their distro and they did this in response to popular demand and that running sudo apt-get autoremove empathy && sudo apt-get install pidgin is not that much of a chore. I just hope that the rumors/plans of replacing Rhythmbox with Banshee doesn't come true or else the whole world might implode... also Banshee crashes a lot (at least for me).

Mac Apps Part 2

2009-07-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

Text Wrangler

Being a Linux user for a while now, I'm used to being spoiled for choice when it comes to text editors. My favorite editor of all times is still Geany but Text Wrangler is very close. Not as lightweight but very customizable and with the added benefit of AppleScript integration. Not as useful if you don't do any programming but even then it's still handy if you need a relatively light and fast text editor. If you want to give it a go you can find it here

Cyberduck

What can I say. It's an FTP client. It's fast, it's clean and it doesn't get in the way. These things are important of course but its best feature, in my mind at least, is that it integrates with Text Wrangler, and it allows you to edit pages live. Also... best app name ever. Go on, you know you want that icon in your dock. Get it here.

Perian
This one's just so you don't think I've forgotten that there's more to life then programming. Basically a codec pack for Quicktime. Of course, you could use VLC but it's nice to know you can open an AVI or DivX in Apple's player, especially if you've already spent the money to upgrade to the PRO version of QT. Check it out here

Free music

2009-07-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

I don't usually do this but I just had to link to this Lifehacker article. Don't necessarily agree with their picks but still... 1000 songs... there's got to be some good stuff in there.

Edit: I suggest downloading the mp3 version since the m4a's use album artwork as MS ads.

New pics

2009-07-21T22:20:00.001-07:00

I just realized I'm not sharing the very pictures I'm using for my wallpapers. Not very Creative Commons of me. So here are my current wallpapers.

Mac Apps Part 1

2009-07-21T09:49:00.001-07:00

Maybe it's just me, but the biggest hurdle I have when switching Operating Systems is not getting used to the UI changes or even coping with the file-system layout. No, my biggest problem is finding alternatives to the programs I've grown to love.

So this is the first of a multi-part compendium of apps that I use day to day. Some will be things anyone can use, others might get a bit esoteric but here goes:

Adium

The quote from the official website is:

Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.

Long story short I hate Yahoo Messenger with a vengeance, so I use Pidgin on Windows and Empathy on Linux but never touch the YM! hell. Adium is sort of like Pidgin with a heap of plugins pre-installed and all the power user options right at the tip of your fingers. For example setting up an autoreply in Pidgin is buried pretty deep. In Adium you just have to set a new custom status.
I simply love this little program and recommend it to anyone.
http://adium.im/

Growl
One of the things I both love and hate in Ubuntu 9.04 is the new unified notification system. I love the way it looks but I hate the fact that it's dog slow (sorry dogs, it's just an expression). Growl has been around for 4-5 year and it's really really polished. It may not be supported by all applications but it's still worth it for the ones that do.
http://growl.info/

On a side note Adium does integrate with Growl *wink, wink* *nudge, nudge*. I'm still discovering these alternatives so bear with me.

Here are some more pics

2009-07-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Not exactly thrilled with the way these two turned out since I messed up the focus with the first one and I'm not crazy about the framing with the second one. The only problem is I'm starting to run out. That might mean I'll have to get a life again and start taking some more photos. I dunno if my fragile little brain can handle that! That being said I'll try to select something better for the next batch ;)

Time for some Apple bashing

2009-07-16T05:41:00.000-07:00

Since I've never had a mac, you may have noticed that my bashing of the company was kept to a minimum BUT that's all about to change...

So my master plan was completed. I finally had enough cash to get me a brand spanking new MacBook (R)(TM)(SRLY?) (and not the plastic one ether). Hurray for me, right? Well not really. Once I got it, right smack in the middle of the screen a pink pixel. Dead or stuck, this should not happen. So I called and told them (apcom - the Romanian Apple store) about the problem, and they were extremely nice about replacing it. I got the new unit and went on a bit of an early weekend.

Once I get to a plug I get the MagSafe (R)(TM)(C)(?) and plug it in and boot and... notice this one has 2 dead/stuck pixels. It's a freaking LCD guys. Not rocket science. I mean you can squeeze a square ton of battery into the machine and make it perform really well but you can't make a screen?

Over the course of the summer thus far, I've handled a gazillion (well 15) PC laptops. None of them had any problems with the screen or otherwise. None of them were more than half this expensive. I don't even know why I bothered getting the damned thing. I was better off with my trusty hackintosh tablet.

That being said I called apcom again and (amazingly) they were nice again and agreed to let me exchange the second one on Monday when I'll get back home. Here's hoping third time's the charm. Or that the pixels magically unstick by then.

Damn. I just realized this whole thing didn't sound all that angry! What the fudge's wrong with me!?! Must be getting my car back. It's made me all soft and mushy. Time for some coffee with red bull GRRRRRR

In conclusion if you want to buy a rubbish laptop from some nice people give apcom a try I guess. Or just buy a PC and be done with it.

Drag race?

2009-07-16T00:28:00.001-07:00

Sure! What are we dragging?

It's probably tradition by now

2009-07-10T11:57:00.001-07:00

So what the hey! It seams that every weekend I gather up the energy to upload a couple of pics so here they are, images from a time when I actually had a life... those were the days...

The following picture is not photoshoped in any way shape of from (well scaled down in gimp but that's hardly digital trickery) so the next person to say it's a fake gets written down in my little black book... just as soon as I buy one.

Dead tired

2009-07-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

I may be, but I realized I wasn't keeping my promise. Continuing the theme of 2 for one, more wallpaper-ish photos, enjoy.

By the way, the tea is Earl Gray, which happens to be my favorite. If you're a coffee person because you think tea just doesn't have the juice to keep you awake, you should really try it.

Also my laptop died, yes the same one that keeps doing it. So expect angry rants. You have been warned.

On the road again

2009-06-28T22:30:00.001-07:00

Being 'sans voiture' for a week now, I'm really starting to appreciate having a PSP. Not for the games, mind you, but load the sucker up with podcasts and you get a decent little player.
PS: I'm not done with the wallpapers yet so stay tuned :p

ATI suck! (AMD too, by association)

2009-06-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

The upcoming release of ATI Catalyst 9.3 will be the last driver to provide a monthly driver update for graphics products predating the R6xx series. What that means is all R300, R400 and R500 series products will be moved to legacy support status - meaning they will be removed from the core Catalyst update and QA testing will be reduced. Moving forward, these products will receive critical fixes if needed as well as updates on a quarterly schedule rather than the monthly schedule adhered to for current products.

Legacy support status is typically reserved for non-current products that have reached a point at which existing drivers optimize performance of the graphics product in question and further driver updates will yield little to no performance improvement. We continue to support non-current products well after drivers have reached this optimal state in order to ensure support for new applications and games.

By moving pre6xx products to legacy support status, we will be able to focus more of our software engineering resources on current and future products, operating systems and applications.

The following is a complete list of products moving to legacy support status:

ATI Radeon 9500 Series
ATI Radeon 9550 Series
ATI Radeon 9600 Series
ATI Radeon 9700 Series
ATI Radeon 9800 Series
ATI Radeon X300 Series
ATI Radeon X550 Series
ATI Radeon X600 Series
ATI Radeon X700 Series
ATI Radeon X800 Series
ATI Radeon X850 Series
ATI Radeon X1050 Series
ATI Radeon X1300 Series
ATI Radeon X1550 Series
ATI Radeon X1600 Series
ATI Radeon X1650 Series
ATI Radeon X1800 Series
ATI Radeon X1900 Series
ATI Radeon Xpress Series
ATI Radeon X1200
ATI Radeon X1250
ATI Radeon X2100 Series
ATI FireGL X1-128
ATI FireGL X1-256
ATI FireGL X2-256
ATI FireGL X2-256t
ATI FireGL X3-256
ATI FireGL Z1
ATI FireGL V3100
ATI FireGL V3200
ATI FireGL V3250
ATI FireGL V3300
ATI FireGL V3350
ATI FireGL V3400
ATI FireGL V5000
ATI FireGL V5100
ATI FireGL V5200
ATI FireGL V7100
ATI FireGL V7200
ATI FireGL V7300
ATI FireGL V7350
ATI FireMV 2200
ATI FireMV 2250

Maybe they don't realize it but YOU CAN'T STOP SUPPORT FOR PRODUCTS STILL ON THE SHELF!!!
Maybe it's me but I keep running into the X1250 on low end laptops that friends have bought in the last 6 to 12 months. Checking a couple of online stores I got about 5-15 results of laptops with that specific model that are in stock.

I have an X1400 that ATI drivers never worked on (they didn't like the vendor tag) so I'm not in that big of a hurry to download the last "supported" version, but still... What really hits me is they're dropping linux support and not opening the specifications to aid the development of a decent open source driver for all the *nix platforms.

I honestly don't even have the energy to properly moan and groan at ATI. So I just have this to say: Dick move guys. I'm never buying your sh*ahem*stuff again.

Another one bites the dust

2009-06-21T23:42:00.000-07:00

Here's another couple of pics that are wallpaper material, if I do say so myself.

Oh and yes, things do get a bit noisy on automatic settings, but I nearly got run over twice taking this next one so cut me some slack.

New obsession

2009-06-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, well almost all the time if I'm to be honest, a song gets stuck in my head. This is just the latest one: Honor by August - Only in Photographs

Sorry about the video but it was the only one with decent audio:

To make up for the last post

2009-06-19T23:53:00.001-07:00

This is my current wallpaper on the MSI Wind (it may be small but so's a Porsche, get it?). I was with a couple of friends when we passed by this old, 60' era convertible Porsche. Lucky thing that I had my camera on me :D

PS: I have to admit, this one's been gimp-ified a bit since the car hadn't seen a wash in a while, so I apologize in advance to all you purists out there. To all those who don't want bird poop in their wallpaper... you're welcome.

Long winded story with no point but to vent some geeky anxt

2009-06-19T23:33:00.000-07:00

So I decided to make an iPhone app as my project for the final year of college. Pretty sweet, right? Well it would be if I actually had a Mac to do it on. No problem, I'll just hackintosh. I'm the proverbial starving student, I'm sure almighty Jobs (get well soon btw) wouldn't deem it fit to smite me. After struggling with the 10" screen of the MSI Wind for a while, I got my hands on the sweetest little tablet and decided to switch my development to it in the hope that windows would actually fit on the screen with this one.

Surprisingly almost everything worked, the 2 major things that didn't were wifi and the touchscreen. After reading about tabletmagic, I decided to give it a go. At the same time I tried installing the os x 10.4 drivers for my trusty d-link dwl-122 usb wifi thingy.

This is where things get weird. Neither worked. Tabletmagic didn't see the serial0 port that has my digitizer and the wifi drivers didn't do anything on leopard. So I uninstalled the wifi drivers. Lo and behold the digitizer connects.
It's not that I'm not grateful, but... WHY? HOW? and last but not least WOOHOO!
I don't see any connection between removing a prefpane and detecting /dev/tty0 but then again maybe it's just me.

Oh and before you go on a rant about legality take a step back... and shoot yourself. It's just an experiment for the sake of journalism. A test to see if you can learn programming for Mac platforms before taking the step of selling a kidney to buy one.

And still they keep on comming

2009-06-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

More wallpapers for all us wallpaper obsessed people out there.
This time two for the price of one... I made a little joke 'cause they're free :P

PS: One of these works great with the dark themes in Ubuntu. I'll let you guess which one.

Finally a tutorial of sorts

2009-06-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

Just because it happened to me today and it's a pain. If you ever get the the 644 .dmrc error in Ubuntu just open a terminal and type in these two commands:
sudo chmod 644 .dmrc
sudo chown USERNAME /home/USERNAME
Of course, replacing USERNAME with your... you guessed it... user name.
More wallpapers are still to come so just chill ok!

The SECOND wallpaper

2009-06-18T00:07:00.000-07:00

I honestly didn't think I'd make it this far, and I think it shows great determination. Not 1 but 2 whole posts. That's almost enough to make a ...flock of posts? At the very least we're on the way to a gaggle or something.
I kid, but here's another snappy snap

The first wallpaper

2009-06-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

Hope you like it. It's not my best work but I'm going through my collection chronologically, so expect better things in the future.

I will NOT apologize

2009-06-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. It's been a while. I do have excuses (well 1 excuse: work), but I won't go into them. What I will do is reward you, the few and faithful that are reading this message.
What reward? Is there an iPod under my seat? Is the chicken soup done?
These are all questions you might be asking yourselves. Fear not, for I shall explain. Every time I get some time (even 15 minutes) I'll try to upload a high quality, non-watermarked photo for you to use as your wallpaper.
(waiting for thunderous applause...)

Trek Yourself

2009-04-11T08:02:00.001-07:00

Now I'm not saying this isn't geeky.. but... oh, right, there's no but about it

BTW is it wrong that I tried to make Sean Connery talk like Shatner?

The Mac OS X Netbook (or why is apple not doing it)

2009-03-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

As most of you probably know by now, my love for my MSI Wind netbook knows no bounds. Because of that, a general feeling of boredom and a need to tinker with everything until it breaks I decided that I could and would install OS X on the machine. A journalistic exercise if you will. See how far I could come without:
a) Killing myself
b) Messing up my partition table
c) Smashing my beloved netbook to pieces
d) Ruining everything with system updates

Apparently the answer is pretty damned far. Here's what you can expect:
Working:
Video(accelerated in every whichway)
Sound playback(internal speakers and headphones with a tiny hack)
Both CPU cores
Webcam (although your mileage may vary)
Wifi (requires custom Realtek application, not detected as airport)
Ethernet
Pretty much everything else
Updating to the latest version (with some care and an external usb mouse, preferably a keyboard too)
Not Working:
Internal Mic and the Mic/line-in jack
Weird artifacts in a couple of UI controls (probably graphics related but I can't seem to pinpoint it)

That being said: When is Apple coming out with a netbook already? It's clear that the OS is well suited being tailored for low end hardware (the iPhone/Apple TV are said to run stripped down versions) so why not just do it already. I know, I know. They "want to provide the optimum Apple experience" and they kinda backed themselves into a corner with the whole Macbook Air fiasco, but seriously guys. You don't even have to say you were wrong. Just make a damned netbook.

Yes that is a cookie

2009-03-21T11:41:00.001-07:00

My mom knows how to pamper a geek. First the laptop cake, now this... I am so lucky!

Don't trust your eyes

2009-03-19T12:51:00.001-07:00

It may look like a squirl but it's really a rat in a wig.

Making the best of it

2009-03-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

Well it was nice to have my laptop again, while it lasted. But it's back to the shop, and it's back to the netbook(sorry Psion) lifestyle for me. Don't get me wrong, I love my little MSI Wind to bits but I'm starting to miss watching movies on a normal screen. Ah well.

The good thing is that, with movies out of the way, I get to do a lot more reading. And what better way to celebrate a reading spree and life in general than with a rereading of the Harrington series by David Weber. The series can loosely be called military Sci-Fi but goes beyond most Sci-Fi universes by having the science behind the fiction and the socioeconomic forces behind the battles very well thought out. I realize it's light reading but a bit of fun never hurt anyone.

The bad news is I'm halfway through them already.

To get free digital copies of some of the books as well as other authors and series go here (click on the series button and scroll down to get to the first 10 Honor Harrington books).

DISCLAIMER: I am a bit of a David Weber nut and I tend to read, love and rereread everything the man does. If you do like the books, you might also want to check out the Empire of Man series written in collaboration with John Ringo (no relation with The Beatles although his middle name is said to be George Paul :P )

Got my mojo back

2009-02-11T01:57:00.000-08:00

Also, my laptop is back from the shop. When I say my laptop that might be an exaggeration since they only kept the screen, proc, ram and the hard disk as far as I can figure. Still, it's running just fine, no more overheating. The bad news is that I found out one of my new ram dimms is busted so I'm stuck with the 1 GB it came with, for the moment at least.

The news news is that I, like most other self respecting geeks out there, am beta testing Windows 7. The open beta is over (I just barely made it) but I'm sure there's a torrent out there... somewhere ;). Overall I have to say I'm impressed. Yes it's Vista, but with enough optimizations made so that it's quite speedy, even with 1 GB of RAM. And the newish UI elements are well implemented. Also worth a mention is the fact that it's been rock solid up to now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not switching from Ubuntu/Gnome to this crap, but for a Windows release, it's surprisingly decent, inovative even. I'll keep testing and try to make it cry uncle with some games. If it handles that it stays if it fails, back to full Ubuntu and the PSP for gaming.

A geek sans laptop

2009-02-02T09:27:00.000-08:00

So I had to take my big Inspiron 1505 back to the service shop (for the third time!!!) with overheating issues. That left the MSI Wind as my only computer right now. You guys do realize I had to upgrade to 2GB of RAM, after trying to load Miro with my 115 podcast feeds (since it kept crashing, go figure).

But still, the desk looks all empty with just one computer on it... sad, sad geek panda

Alpha testing

2009-01-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

So like any man with something important to do, I decided to waste time by installing unstable software on my only production machine. Smart eh?

The software was Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3.
Now I've tested Ubuntus before, actually I haven't missed an alpha for the last 3 or 4 versions. So you could say I have a bit of experience with the usual funk that comes along with unhatched herons and the like. Surprisingly the system worked almost perfectly on my MSI Wind U100.

The only problems with the system after install were a bit of a decrease with graphics performance, probably due to the lack of updated Intel video drivers since the 2.6.28 kernel is supposed to upgrade performance by 50% for 915 chipsets and the predictable lack of wifi drivers for the inbread retard some people call the Realtek r8180 card.

These were things I could live with. The real show stopper was the fact that many of the repo apps that I use day to day (miro and gnome-do most notably) refused to work properly since they were not up to date.

Now usually I would have gone through the trouble of compiling them from source so I can tinker with the system and maybe even help others get theirs to work, but quite frankly what's the point. All the major things are taken care of so I might as well just wait a couple more months and enjoy the finished product.

I fear we've come to a point in Ubuntu/Linux development where the system "just works". What's up with that? Now I need to find something new to play with, I'm even considering going back to games for my entertainment.

If anyone's interested in a feature list or downloading it for yourself, click here for the alpha3 release notes and downloads. If you want to see what they want to do with notifications, click here.

PS: The new Live CD installer freaks itself into a loop if you want to dual boot OS X... I just happen to know this... it's not like I had leopard installed or anything... well maybe just a little.

Dumbphones are the new smartphones

2009-01-25T10:02:00.000-08:00

I've been planning on this for some time. And I made the switch almost a month back. This is a roundup of choosing and settling in with my dumbphone. Maybe I should clarify what I consider a dumbphone(R)(TM)(C)(WTF). Any mobile device that fulfills 3 or more of the following:
a) Does not make you look like a dweeb while you are using it
b) Does not make you look like Batman while you have it on your belt
c) Is actually usable
d) Does not run any version of a spreadsheet program
e) Does not require the development of "m4d sk1llz" to make a phone call (aka c) again)
f) Does not have a proprietary application installer format (cab, pdb, sis, iTunes are bad, jad/jar is good)

Most phones these days have all the smarts a pda had just a few years ago. Granted full qwerty keyboards and touchscreens are still smarthpone territory for the most part but T9 has come a long way and you really can get used to a phone keypad if you have to.

The decision
Renouncing my Windows Mobile smartphone/pda/gps device thingie and switching to a phone that only does a couple of essential things. An unusually tough decision. But I felt that getting rid of the smartness in my phone would help me by limiting the time I spend tweaking it, formating, testing new software and so on.

The main thing I use my phone for, except for making actual calls, is listening to music. So my choice range was not really limited since most phones can play back mp3 files these days. I was however tempted to get a music phone that was designed with music in mind. In my search I stumbled upon a top 15 list of music phones. Three of the top five in that list were Sony-Ericsson Walkman phones, and after playing with a friend's I was sure that my media playback requirements would be meet by one of these quite well.

After a bit more research, both into the phones and what was available on my network of choice (no free publicity unless they give me a free unlimited internet plan) I settled on the W910. A year old slider with Walkman 3.0 series software and a decent feature-set (3g, motion sensor, light sensor) and decent battery life (9h talk time is advertised).

Never knowing when to stop
So I moved all my stuff over (music, podcasts and so on) and installed a couple of fun games that the cell provider who shall remain nameless decided to strip from their custom firmware and all was good. I set up my data plan on it, and it was also good, or at least no more horrid then usual.

At this point I should mention that I had not used j2me apps, since I had a brick of a WM6.1 phone on me at all times (almost). As a neophyte you may think that my revelations are rather crude, fair enough I say, at least they were revealed.

After setting up the sucky data plan mentioned above I was cruising, and while setting up bookmarks for my musthave sites (or their mobile counterparts) I found 3 pieces of java goodness that have made me wonder how I could ever live without them.

The first two are Gmail and Google Maps. Probably predictable picks for anyone with half a brain but... let's not get personal, ok! The third however may be the red herring to make you forgive and forget.

Wattpad is a service that delivers free books to your phone. And it doesn't do it in any stupid word by word funky way. It actually lets you read the book like a webpage or, you know, a book. I'm not sure it's legal since the content is uploaded by the users, but damn is it ever useful. For example. The other day I was stuck without a computer, and I wanted to show somebody a bit of Cory Doctorow, just so she could get a taste. I just pulled out the java app, searched for "When sysadmins" and it was there. I didn't have to go online and search for it, download and convert it for my phone. I didn't have to wait for it to download ether, since it downloaded just the 3-4k of text I was actually viewing, so my sucky data plan, that I will mention until it is fixed, didn't have to suffer.

The foregone conclusion
The plan was to give myself more time by playing less with my phone. Yeah like that's ever gonna' happen. Epic fail... but at least I'm getting a few good books out of the bargain.

Oh and dumbphones are not that dumb, they have them new fangled calculators in them now :P

PS: Thank you for caring how much punctuation I use, it means a lot to me

Back to school

2009-01-08T08:57:00.000-08:00

Well it was nice while it lasted but schools back with a vengeance and the first week (almost over now, thank God) was a killer. I did get the time to ponder some ponderings that might be worth sharing though: Why do educational systems insist on teaching outdated software?

I mean how often would you use FoxPro to build a database? That's right, never. Same goes for Visual Studio 6 C++ for writting an application. You wouldn't use it, since it relies too much on gets() and oldschool syntax iostream.h and others. And if the flaws in these programs are so glaringly obvious even to a neophyte programmer such as myself the question begs to be asked: Why the stone-age tools?

With the availability of free, modern, cross-platform and did I mention FREE software such as mysql or gcc (pertaining to the previous examples), why are we being forced into learning to use outdated and ... let's face it relatively useless programming IDEs.

If somebody would propose that all students would be required to learn to code in assembly or something they'd probably be beaten to death with their own tie-rack since:
a) only the sort of people with tie-racks would make such a dumbass suggestion
b) it's an accepted fact that low-level programming languages are not requisite general knowledge even for CS majors

So why, if we accept the passage of time and the progress it entails, do we kick all that away when it comes to letting go of a system that we've become complacent with. Flawed pieces of software who's only "advantage" is that "I payed good money for that back in '95"

Holiday cat

2009-01-03T08:06:00.001-08:00

Even though the holidays are gone, their spirit lives on with some of us...

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T05:35:00.000-08:00

There's something very special apparently, about the Earth completing another revolution around the Sun since a randomly attributed date. Well I guess it's not every day that we, the Earth and society as a whole, traverse 583416000 miles. It's once every 365.2422 days :D.

But hey, who am I to judge since I have names for all my laptops (Stephen Lynch joke, I don't have names for all my laptops... not for all of them). So I figure I'd get the obligatory new year resolution out of the way nice and early: Eat more bananas. Why bananas you may ask? Well:

They are delicious
They are shaped like boomerangs
They have a somewhat funny name

And finally, I'm sick of making resolutions I tend not to keep so my reasoning is make a promise I can live up to, a promise I can be proud of, a promise I can tell my grandchildren about... well maybe not the last two but I can still do the eating so "live up" to is ok.

So Happy New Year one and all,
And yes, I'm trying hard to stall
Since I can't find a decent rhyme.
... ah well, perhaps another time

Happy thingamagig

2008-12-28T00:12:00.000-08:00

Happy nondenominational end of year holidays one and all.
Now I know this isn't the politically correct thing to do but for those of us who are celebrating Christmas, the guys over at linuxscrew have put together a list of wallpapers you might enjoy.

Better Blog

2008-12-21T03:52:00.000-08:00

There are, though it is hard for me to admit this, better sites out there (shocking, right?) and one of them, that I've recently been turned on to by a mate of mine is Tinker Nut. Though it's more a video podcast in blog form than what I normally consider a blog it's good enough that what it is pales in comparison to the fact that it just is.
Some of the posts are obvious but if you search a bit I'm sure you'll find some real gems like this one.

Pidgin fix

2008-12-15T10:34:00.000-08:00

This has been driving me bonkers for the last few weeks. Yahoo! (R)(TM)(C)(and all that jazz) switched up their messenger servers scs.msg.yahoo.com so that they don't exist anymore, so spelled out that means no Adium, no Empathy, and worst of all no Pidgin. Thankfully someone thought to try the ip adress of the servers (the old one) and figured out it actually works. Sure this is just begging to be exploited but for the moment: 66.163.181.166 is the way to go.
Be sure to check out the details on the link if you're unsure of the procedure, just scroll down a bit to get the instructions ;)

Misconcepiton about netbooks

2008-11-30T05:41:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a lot of confusion around the net as to where exactly netbooks come in. Are they supposed to be laptop replacements or complements to your existing system. Do they play the role of portals to the internet (thus explaining the name 'Net'book) or are they something more.
Now I don't pretend to be an expert but I did own the original EeePC from Asus and have since replaced it with a MSI Wind. I have also convinced a bunch of people to get netbooks so you could say I am at least somewhat invested in the format.

An Intel spokesman recently stated that netbooks with 10" screens are good for about an hour's worth of usage. Some retail chains aren't even calling them computers. What do people have against the netbook format? If you offered the same computer a couple of years ago at about 5 times the price calling it a 'subnotebook' businessmen from around the world would flock to your door asking why it was so cheep.

But I digress. As far as I can tell most netbooks can be what you want them to be. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you should sell your gaming rig on eBay and just buy a netbook but take a moment to think about what most people do on a computer. They surf the net, listen to music, write some documents maybe watch some movies or TV shows. Well, these are not overwhelming tasks even for low power machines (except for HD movies perhaps) and you can do most of these with CPU cycles to spare even on a Via C7m's or low end Celeron's let alone the Atom and Nano platforms.
So if those are your only computing requirements you could use a netbook as your only computer, if your work or play requires beefier specs you could use it as a second, more portable system in an almost PDA-like fasion (for example I always have my netbook along to take notes in class with).

On somewhat of a side-note I've recently had to take my main laptop to be repaired (just a faulty keyboard, nothing fancy) but I was still stuck with no other machine at my disposal except a netbook and a 4 year old desktop. I never even considered turning on the desktop. I have to admit that I do most of my gaming on my PSP anyway so that wasn't a problem, and in any case I managed to install Guild Wars with little hassle even under Wine. Whenever I needed a bit more reel-estate than the 10" screen could provide I just hooked up an old LCD monitor and got plenty of space for all my movie/TV needs and even managed to get a fair bit of graphics work done with no problems other than having to wait a bit for things to render. The point is I had to use a netbook as my only laptop for a couple of weeks and I can see no problem in a lot of people using it as their primary/only computer.

On a final note people seem to be under the misapprehension that netbooks are all 600Mhz Celerons with 2GB of SSD and 256MB of ram and barely 7" of screen that look like some kind of Toys'R'Us rejects. To those people I say stop looking at obsolete models. Yes I know they're barely a year or so old but this is a new, thriving market in which change is constant. Instead take a look at what Asus is doing with their N10 and S101 lines or at the MSI Wind u100 and u120 or even the Dell Mini 12, though that barely qualifies as a netbook. These are the current generation and not the prototypes that the EeePC 701 4g was. They not only bring new features and real processing power, the Mini 12 offers dual-core Atom processors, the N10 has a dedicated Nvidia that's even handled COD4 and the u120 has integrated WiMAX 3.5G support, but they bring you all these features in undeniable style.

Back in black

2008-11-29T11:09:00.000-08:00

For the moment at least I'm back into blogging, as far as time permits since it's exam season for us at RAU. The one thing that brought me back is a book I've been lent by a friend. It's Ubuntu Kung Fu by Kier Thomas. The book is basically a list of tips some more obvious, but a few obscure ones found their way in. Even though most of the stuff in it can be found around the net, it's nice to have it all in one place, repository style ;)

I can't say I agree with all of the tips in it, but it does give a discerning user a chance to get his geek on and tinker with the belly of his/her system.

Ubiquity

2008-08-27T04:52:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's seen me working for any period of time has realized that I hate having to leave the comfort of my keyboard to use something as crude as a pointing device, be it a touchpad or mouse. That's why gnome-do/launchy/quicksilver are one of the first things I install on my machines.
The fact that I can launch an application without digging into any menus or having my environment cluttered by shortcut icons is great, but even greater is the functionality that can be gained by adding plugins.

When I browse is the one time that I need to use a cursor. I have to go to the search bar go back to the text go to a different tab and so on. But no longer.
Ubiquity is a Firefox extention or rather a extention/framework.

Lately some of us at Mozilla Labs have been experimenting with graphical keyboard user interfaces in Firefox. Our current work-in-progress is something that we’re calling Ubiquity for the time being, though the name is by no means set in stone.

It's difficult to describe it but if you watch the video you'll understand both the name and the likeness to gnome-do:

If that's wet your appetite, click here to install the extention. A restart of firefox will be required to make it work.

Edit: To learn more about the functionality go to:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial

Ubuntu mac

2008-08-18T02:00:00.001-07:00

After trolling through a month's worth of unread RSS feeds I came across something that caught my eye.
http://maketecheasier.com/turn-your-ubuntu-hardy-to-mac-osx-leopard/2008/07/23/
Now I'm not saying that all linux distros should look like mac os. Nor am I saying that Ubuntu should. All I'm saying that linux (gnome actually) can mimic Leopard quite closely after a bit of tinkering and that it might be a cool little project. I'm not all that crazy about how the mac looks so I took the liberty of using a differit theme (actually I only kept the mouse cursors and wallpaper)

If anyone is interested I used the kde-4oxygen gtk2 style and window border and oxy-gnome icons

Zenwalk review part 2 - the conclusion

2008-08-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

Well I gave Zenwalk a bit more than a month.
After using it exclusively for this period I can't say I'm going stick with it. At least not for now. Don't get me wrong it's a great little distro. The problem stems (for me anyway) from installing programs. While there is a ton of stuff in the default repos and the programs install and run well for the most part, the default configuration for them is not what I'd like it to be.
If I'd have the time to set up each and every program for about 10-20 minutes I'd be using Gentoo.

So I guess it's back to Ubuntu for now (mainly due to a well deserved memmory upgrade for all my machines)

Review of Zenwalk 5.2 Part 1

2008-07-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

This my first review of a distribution so go easy on me.

First off, a bit about my linux use and the hardware used in this review. I've been using various linux distros since about '97. A few of years ago, I finally found happiness with Ubuntu Warty and have been an almost religious advocate of that distro for newbies and pros alike.

Lately however, a few portables without much power have come into my posession, and while Ubuntu may be a wonderful distro as far as user friendliness is concerned, no one is calling it lightweight.

My first thought was to stick Xubuntu on and be done with it. But upon closer inspection of my thought process, I realized that that would just be cheating. Sure XFCE is lighter than Gnome and just as usable, but the underlaying system would still be the same and the temptation to "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" would be to great for my fragile little mind to handle.

So I figure I'd attempt using a lightweight, speed optimized distribution based on Slackware (speedy in and of itself). That basically meant choosing between Zenwalk and Vector. Since Vector is KDE based, and the only QT application I use is Skype, the choice was made for me.

The computer I've been testing on is a Dell Latitude X300. Basically a Pentium Mobile 1.2 (Banias) with 640 MB of DDR. A bit underpowered, but thin and light enough to make it worth it.

On a final note. The way I decided to test it is.... to USE it. Use it as my only machine for a month. And be productive during this period. That means no wasting time getting everything 100% perfect if it can't be easily obtained by an average user.

A bit about zen computing

Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics:

Modern and user-friendly (latest stable software, selected applications)

Fast (optimized for performance capabilities)

Rational (one mainstream application for each task)

Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment)

Evolutionary (simple network package management tool - netpkg)

That's the sell point (possibly not the best choice of words on my part since this is free software) on the www.zenwalk.org website. I think they've managed to cover most of these aspects. The only one that's still not optimal is the "evolutionary package management tool" since apt-get remains package management nirvana IMHO.

Zenwalk is based on Slackware linux, one of the oldest distributions still under active development. Slackware is meant to be both simple and stabile. That also happens to make it one of the quickest distributions out there so it's a popular choice for lightweight spin offs.

Since lightweight is the key word in this case, here are the system requirements for the Standard 5.2 (latest at time of writing, released 2008/6/7) cd that I used:
Pentium 3 class processor
128 MB of RAM
2 GB Hard disk

Considering the 2.6.25.4 kernel XFCE 4.4.2 on top of Xorg 7.3 these are lean specs.

The install

Unlike most distributions these days, Zenwalk doesn't come with a livecd install as standard (though a Live version is available). In stead it uses a text based install, and while that is staying true to it's Slackware herritage, I still wish it would have taken a hint from Slax's (another Slackware alternative) book and offered both livecd and install on the same disk.

To be fair, the text based installed is viewed in a graphical way, it is very efficient in actually installing and the pdf manual on the site, though a bit outdated, does a great job of guiding you through.
http://manual.zenwalk.org/

Still, text based installers have a tendency to scare the socks off users new to linux and/or Slackware. In the end it comes down to personal preference, and I didn't mind that much.

One other thing worth mentioning about the installer is that the default filesystem it selects during the partitioning process is XFS and it uses LILO as a bootloader.
During the initial setup, you will be asked if you agree to the ipw2100 2200 licenses and the Adobe Flash License. If you agree you get both pre-installed, which I thought was a nice touch.

Post install

After the installation has completed, I'm happy to say that I was left with a 90% functional system. Since I am testing this on a laptop the first things I tested were power management support, and I'm happy to report that both suspend and hibernate work perfectly. The things that did not work were bluetooth and wifi adapters as well as the volume keys.

The wifi adapter is a Dell Truemobile one, that uses the bcm4306 chipset. The wiki offered clear instructions about how to fix the issue both natively and with ndiswrapper.
http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php?title=Broadcom_bcm43xx_native

Instructions that didn't work unfortunately. Or didn't work completely, I should say, since the b43legacy and (especially) ssb modules still get loaded causing the system to see the card but not be able to do anything with it. After following the instructions on the wiki, an easy and lazy fix was to edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless script and add the following instructions to the top of it (right after the comments):

rmmod bcm43xx
rmmod ssb
modprobe bcm43xx

To keep the b43legacy module from loading you simply have to blacklist it. Just add the following line to the end of the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file

blacklist b43legacy

Do a reboot of the system and you should be good to go. This has worked for me on most distributions with a kernel newer than 2.6.22. It's apparently caused by incompatibility with the ssb module.

The bluetooth is still unresolved (for me) for the moment. After a bit of investigating I found that no bluetooth packages are installed by default. This is a good thing in my opinion, since it isn't something that the majority of people have, and it would be going against the Slackware grain to install something "just in case".

Conclusion of part 1

After the installation and bcm43xx tweak you get a system that's nearly perfect. The only complains I have so far are that some programs are not set up to integrate well. For example Pidgin, the default IM client is set up to use the console-beep for sound. That doesn't work on most systems, in my experience, so you have to go into the sound preferences and switch it to "command" "aplay %s". Honestly, I don't see the average user figuring that out easily. That being said. These little blemishes should not put you off. If you're looking for a distro with speed as a main goal, a decent set of apps pre-installed you really should give Zenwalk a try.

One last thing worth mentioning is the look of the distribution. XFCE was always a good looking window manager IMHO, however the Zenwalk team have done a great job of integrating a great theme with a great desktop with a beautiful login manager theme with a LILO theme and bootsplash. The attention to detail they've showed is simply amazing. I have to say that this is one of the best looking distributions out there (or maybe I just like blue that much :P).

Long pause, no reward for waiting

2008-07-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to be on holiday, but no such luck. I've had to build a website around what I believe to be the crudest overlay of three images... in the world. Let me tell you one thing. CSS does nothing to fix an acute lack of care, and possibly interest, on the gfx designer's part.

Well that's enough bitching.

On to the news:
- banshee 1.0 is out, and I can't manage to compile it (running a slack based distro called zenwalk)
- gnome-do has also come out with a new version, but I can't manage to compile it (same as banshee)

I guess I still had some angst in me :P

To be honest I haven't spent that much time trying so it might just be something simple (I've managed to trace the fault in banshee to the mono-addins dll). I'll post a tutorial somewhere if I manage to fix it. (I know I keep promising tutorials, I will write some, scout's honor)

In other linux news. Puppy 4 is out and greater than ever, you really should give it a try (I plan on installing it on the old eeepc myself), and Intrepid Ibex alpha 1 is also available as alternate-cd download.

http://www.puppylinux.org/
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily/current/

I'll be back on a regular posting schedule after the 10th (not that I've ever been on one before but it's nice to hope...)

Ubuntu on Acer AS5715Z

2008-06-15T03:15:00.001-07:00

What works.
Everything seems to work out of the box. It doesn't really. That's the trick.

What doesn't work
The wifi (atheros ar5006), the video card (intel gma x3100), the onboard microphone, the Empowering button and web button

The wifi
Ndiswrapper fixes it easily. You have to:
apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 ndisgtk
Download the windows drivers from
http://www.atheros.cz/download.php?atheros=AR5006EG&system=1
Extract the zip file you get to a folder somewhere and go to ndisgtk (system/administration/wifi...) and add the driver file (it's the one with that ends .inf but doesn't have an X in hte name)
Edit the file /etc/modules to add the line: ndiswrapper
Ok, just one more step to go.
Edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist to add the lines:
blacklist ath_pci
blacklist ath_hal
Now just reboot and your wifi should be working

The video card
Edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Go to the section for the Configured Video Device and add the line
Driver "intel"
before the endsection for the video device
Reboot or restart X and you'll get 850 FPS in glxgears in stead of 350

The sound card
Open the folowing program in a terminal
alsamixer
This opens the alsa control panel. Now hit Tab to go the the capture settings. Use the up arrow to set the boost for the mics to 50% and set the capture source to front mic

The two buttons are still not working for me. If you get a fix drop, me a comment please.

PS: These fixes worked for me under a standard Hardy with the Medibuntu repositories added.

Woohooo!

2008-06-14T05:43:00.000-07:00

Got some free time so I installed Ubuntu on a couple of laptops (one for me and one for a couple of PC noobs), more importantly I found out how to make them work with Hardy. I'll post tutorials for both of them when I muster the brainpower.
For the moment I'm chillin' on my PSP, more about that on my gaming blog: http://www.gamespot.com/users/derred_seven/

PS: The laptops are a my Dell Latitude X300 and a Acer Aspire AS5715Z with some weird atheros wifi card and a video tweek needed.

Roadtrip day today.

2008-06-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

No computingz on teh internetz 4 me :(

And I only took 1 laptop with me for music listening and blogging purposes only *wink,wink...nudge*

Damn

2008-06-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

The result was predictable but sad nonetheless. Ubuntu booted, I set up the new resolution/video card, it even detected the new wireless card and connected to my network.
Windows wasn't so easy. It booted and told me I had to activate my copy of windows. Ok. No problem. Except it would only let me do it by phone since I couldn't connect to a network since I didn't have the network drivers installed. And it gave me a phone number 555-555-555 or whatever. Great! Except I'm not in the US. I'm in freaking Romania. And I don't want to call international just to boot into Windows which I wasn't planning on keeping anyway.

Ubuntu flash drive ON!

On vacation

2008-06-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

So since I'm on vacation I get to do all the things I've been putting off for the last 5-6 months. Basically move some hardware between my laptops and install Ubuntu on every piece of electronics in the house (yes, the Ubuntu clock is one of my dreams)

For a start I'm installing hardy on my Packard Bell Easynote c3300 junkbook. This install will be a bit different than others though. I'm estimating it'll take about 2-3 minutes since what I'm planing to do is swap it's hard drive (40gb with a few miles on it) with that of my Dell Latitude X300 (30gb with many more miles on it). The Dell already has Ubuntu installed on it's 30gb HDD while the PB has Windows XP home on the 40gb one.

So it's off to the races, to see what hapens when two operating systems get switched around. Whitch one will come out on top.

PS: I have oem licences to run Windows XP on both laptops so don't bust my chops over the legal side