A Possible Future of Software Development

 

via Google Video

searching for a delicious client for windows...

I've been searching for a del.icio.us client for windows, and its been driving me crazy!

I download one client, it requires dotnet framework 2, I download another its requires version 1.somethingortheother! What is Microsoft thinking? Why has it become so hard to run windows applications. Who thought this was a good idea for developing desktop applications?

Heck programming applications in Python is easier. At least you can use py2exe to create an executable that will work on any windows!

On google doctype

John Resig does a nice article on Google Doctype.

Update: Here is video of Mark Pilgrim on Google Doctype:

Python and IDE's

Jonathan Ellis has a short run down of Utah Python User group where they talked about IDE's and Python.

He points to a nice write up of the Emacs and Python presentation here.

The write up for the *other* editor is here. :->

failed harddrives

I'm seeing more and more hard drive failures all around. I'm hearing clicking noises from one of my hard drives too. Thankfully I have everything replicated on multiple machines so I don't have to go running to backup.

It was amusing to see two tweets back to back about hard drive failures:

Anybody else seeing hard drive problems? Is it the season for hard drive FAIL?

Python and Unicode

Good presentation here on Python and Unicode.

The most important slide for me says:

s.decode(encoding)
     * <type 'str'> to <type 'unicode'>

u.encode(encoding)
     * <type 'unicode'> to <type 'str'>

Cocoahead videos

 

Debugging with Xcode

Two cool videos from cocoahead. Debugging with Xcode embedded above, and UI Design Essentials which can be downloaded from Scott Stevenson's site.

via theocacao.com

Mozilla, Acid3 and Mark

I'd been waiting for someone more influential than me to comment on the Acid3 test situation. Looks like Mark Pilgrim stepped up...

twhirl memory usage

I've had twhirl running for a while, and the twhirl memory usage is really growing:

Restarting the application brings the memory usage down:

How FreeBSD Project works

via Google video

twhirl adds friendfeed support

I missed this somehow, but twhirl integrates support for friendfeed:

I like twhirl, it seems more stable than alertthingy for now.

warcrafting

I love this game! :)

hardy

Just finished installing hardy heron, and the first thing I notice is Firefox 3 Beta 5 as the default browser.

Servers are under quite a load, so apt-get install build-essential is stuck at 0%.

firefox 3 download status

I've been downloading ubuntu all morning, and I like the way firefox 3 (beta5) status bar shows download status:

ubuntu hardy heron released

ubuntu.com

Downloading it as we speak. Its been trickling in ever so slowly all morning.

I just liked this tweet by Loic so much, I just copied and tweeted the same:

@Scobleizer I really can't find a reason why I should care about Mesh. I am just ignoring it totally :) good night

Also, this comment by Robert pissed me off...

Linux support? What’s that?

Uhhh... yeah... way to go Robert. Dismiss millions of world wide developers developing great quality software. Software that powers most web servers today.

I could go on forever...

disqus

Wonder why its not working?

Y Combinator Startup School

Watch live video from HackerTV on Justin.tv

via techcrunch

Their are more videos here with various other talks that didn't show up for me in the video above.

Here is David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals and creator of the Ruby on Rails framework.


Watch live video from HackerTV on Justin.tv

Here is Peter Norvig who is Director of Research at Google.


Watch live video from HackerTV on Justin.tv

feeds, friends and echo

Looks like friendfeed is getting a lot of me too copies. Their is the german version called freundefeed reviewed by techcrunch.

If you have too many social newtorking aggregators (such as friendfeed and socialthing) you can use friendfeedfeed to aggregate them all.

Oh you want to see what the famous memes on friendfeed are? You could probably use almostfamous.

You want more memestuff... try readburner. Heck, if you want to really follow the echo, you must read techmeme, tailrank, rssmeme and readburner. Make sure to rinse and repeat.

Want even more of the same, try meme13. Ok so meme13 was supposed to get feeds that aren't that popular from the techmeme leaderboard, but I'm sure you're already subscribed to these sites, and are dutifully sharing them on google reader, or friendfeed or heck even facebook now. More of the same stories, Yay!

Make sure you follow a lot of people on twitter. You'll get a lot of pointers to much the same articles from all your loyal friends on twitter.

Even companies are echoing. AOL seems to want to echo Yahoo, unless I'm missing something.

Heck even this blog post of mine is an echo of stories about the blogosphere as an echo chamber which started here.

/sarcasm
:->

Scoble talks tech with Myspace CTO

via Fastcompany.tv

Robert talks with Aber Whitcomb, CTO of Myspace who talks about their data centers amongst other things. Really interesting to see how large websites such as myspace.com are setup.

I messaged Robert that I was missing technical content in his recent videos and he pointed me to this video. This is exactly what I was looking for. Great video Robert, I'd like more! :)

Google Video -- Advanced Topics in Programming Languages Series: C++ Threads

via Google Video

Spotlight on FOSS show

Noah Gift and Jeremy Jones have put together a show that will highlight a FOSS project in each show. You can read more about it here, or watch their first episode here.

Reading about how they put the show together is an interesting as the podcast itself so you might want to read the article first. Their first interview is with Mark Shuttleworth, creator of Ubuntu.

Adobe AIR for linux Alpha

I've been very impressed with Adobe AIR, mostly because of the two applications: twhirl and alertthingy. Also its really easy to get AIR applications installed on Windows and Mac OS X.

The installation is quite manual so far in Linux. First go to Adobe labs and download the alpha release.



Run the commands in the above image to install the runtime. Once installed go to twhirls website and download twhirl.



I clicked on the "Open with Adobe AIR Installer", and from their AIR handled the installation prompting for a few options. The applications got added to the desktop, but didn't show up in the KDE Menu. Once started their are some display issues as you can see below:

I guess the black area around the window is where the shadow for the window should be.

Not as easy to install and get going as in Windows/OS X but the experience is not that bad at all.

kubuntu-kde4 problems

The alpha for kubuntu-kde4 refused to boot on the machine I mentioned in my last post, and the cd I burnt the beta release on was bad.

I successfully installed the kubuntu beta in virtualbox, and kde4 is beautiful. The first thing I did was "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade; reboot". This installed a bunch of packages, and the system rebooted. I login, and their is no kde panel at the bottom of the screen. Turns out klauncher segfaults.

Since I haven't got the beta to install on the desktop yet, I'm not sure if the segfault is a result of the virtual machine, virtual machine additions, or a problem with the kubuntu beta.

Update: Ok this combination seems to have worked for me. Install OS, do "apt-get update/upgrade", reboot. Install virtual machine additions, and then follow instructions on the following page to get the video to a resolution greater than 800x600.

SP1 improves Vista driver support?

I have an old old desktop machine that I use for test purposes. I generally use it to test software in Ubuntu before I move things to my Ubuntu server. I've also tried Vista on it since Vista RC days. Vista was a problem on this machine. The network card (a 3com 3c905b card) didn't have drivers. The sound card (Creative SBLive) didn't have drivers. Older drivers wouldn't work on the machine.

Recently I decided to try Windows Server 2008 on it. As usual the network card wouldn't work after the OS install. However, older drivers for the network card got installed. After running Server 2008 for a month, I had no problems with this machine running as a file server. Windows Vista SP1 uses the same kernel as Windows Server 2008.

"An update to the Windows kernel to bring the Vista kernel (version 6.0) up to date with the version in Windows Server 2008 (version 6.1)."

I figured that if the old driver worked in Windows Server 2008 it would work in Windows Vista SP1. I installed Vista SP1 on the machine today, and what do you know it worked. I had Windows XP drivers for the 3com card on a USB key, which got picked up without a problem. And not only that, Vista even picked up drivers for SBLive online (after complaining that the card was unsupported).

The machine is a 1Ghz, 512MB Ram system, and the system seems quite snappy. Ofcourse I don't have that many applications installed on it yet. Who knows how long Vista will last on the machine. Its a test system after all and Hardy is right around the corner! :)

friend feed client - alertthingy.com

A new friend feed client called alertthingy is out. I had a little problem going online, I think the username is case sensitive.

I love the ease with which Adobe AIR applications can be installed. The two apps I have running right now are twhirl, and now alert thingy. Their is an "install now" button on the web site, which you click. Go through the wizards, and the application is installed. Nice.

Too many places to post though. Their is myblog/marsedit, twitter/twhirl, and friendfeed/alertthingy. Where do I post.

Thats one less tab in my browser.

Watching hak5

Watching hak5live with Hak5Darren (from the right), Jenn Cutter, Hak5matt and Hak5Paul setup for their live show at ustream.

businessweek on windows 7

Reading this business week article, I came across this line:

While Microsoft struggles to bring a kernel-based "Windows 7" to market in 2010 ...

Now you know why Windows Vista has so many problems. Its kernel-less!
Windows 7 is going to be kernel-based, so at least it will boot! :)

How to use Wubi Dualboot Ubuntu and windows

loren and arrington

via 1938media

Javascript in SG1

Ajaxian has this post where they show SG1 using Javascript.

Interesting to see that JS1 is used in the future ;)

SG1 is supposed to be current time, not the future. :)

via Dion Almaer

Some notes on Google App Engine

The Administration console doc notes that if you have a Google Apps account, you need to go the following URL:

http://appengine.google.com/a/your-domain.com

Please replace the relevant parts of the above URL.

It also notes that you can upload your apps using appcfg.py in the SDK.

Speaking of the SDK, the app engine SDK includes a web server that simulates the app engine python environment. More here.

The python runtime is restricted, which is why you should test your code with the app engine SDK. Some modules such as marshal, imp, ftplib, select, socket are empty. More here.

Logging is allowed, and can be viewed in the Administration console.

Google App Engine looks to be tweaked for running web applications only. Application code only runs in response to a web request. This is unlike Amazon EC2 where you can build/upload an image for data processing. If a request takes too long (this is vague, it says more than a few seconds) its terminated and the server returns an error code. Using the Datastore, you have 500 MB of persistent storage space. You also have bandwidth for about 5 million page views.

Python extensions in C are not supported.

During the preview period you can register up to 3 applications.

Currently a query is limited to a 1000 results.

Here is the official Google video on the release:

Scoble interviews Gabe (of techmeme)

Here is the real Scoble (behind the cam) chilling with the real Loren Feldman (guy in chair).

Loren feldman :)

 

via 1938media.com

Google App Engine released

Google released google app engine today.

Sign Up (It says its limited and asks you to sign up. I did, and I just got an invite to start using Google App Engine :)

Project page

SDK Download

Documentation

Application Gallery

Here are Scobles videos of the announcement:

(They demo creating an application, plus Python creator Guido speaks)

 

 

 

I haven't had a chance to read the documentation as I was having problems getting to it. I tried signing up for the service, but its limited right now, but you can download the SDK to start getting ready. You need to know Python (which isn't a problem, I do most of my stuff in Python anyways :).  The SDK is licensed under the Apache license as you can see above. Their are version for Windows, OS X, and Linux.

The readme in the SDK says you have to have Python installed. Once the SDK is installed you can start the dev_appserver in a command prompt:

 

Here is the simple guest book sample application running. The guest book looks like a Python WSGI application (at first glance)that gets run on port 8080.

 

Their are more application you can download from the Application Gallery.

Update: I just got an invite to start creating applications:

Update 2:

I have some more notes from the docs here.

Hak5 releases Season 3 Episode 9

Get more options for download (mp4, Xvid, wmv) and show notes here.

They cover Yahoo Pipes, Powershell GUI and an open source forensics toolkit called Helix.

jQuery Google Tech Talks by 12 year old Dmitri Gaskin

via Google Video

David Letterman Battlestar Galactica Top 10 list

via Laurence Gonsalves

Scoble interview on Google Docs Offline functionality

Video: Serious Design and Coding Advice from Rapper Poetic Prophet

via Wired

friendfeed and twitter

I login to friendfeed and I see this:

Thats 67 tweets from Scoble. When you click on the "65 more", it expands to about 25 of his tweets. I guess thats what friendfeed limits to. Its not like everybody is going to be replying to tweets from thousands of people, so they'll limit it to 25.

Update: Robert says he is following 16000 people on twitter. Insane!

Scoble video on new mozilla based AT&T browser

Browsers and Acid3

Two browsers are saying they have reached Acid3 100/100 today:

Webkit (the Safari browser engine)

WinGogi (Opera internal development build)

That is a screenshot of the webkit nightly running Acid3 on my machine.

Update: So far so good. The webkit nightly works fine on most of the common sites I visit. I tried it with hotmail, but it falls back to its lite version, which it did with the stable safari version as well. Gmail/Google docs work great so far on Safari, even the drop down menu's added recently to Google docs.

Authors@Google: Clay Shirky

Via youtube.com

GTAC 2007: Adam Porter & Atif Memon - Skoll DCQAS

via Daily Life in an Ivory Basement

Darren Kitchen (Hak5) interview by Austin blogger

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Via Austinblogger

Safari on Windows

Anybody else notice that the fonts in safari look really great on Windows Vista. Not sure if this is a change in Safari 3.1 or if it was their before, but I really like the display. Sometimes the fonts look better than they do in OS X!

The double click on tab bar to open a new tab feature doesn't seem that useful though. I usually have so many tabs open that their isn't any space where I could double click.

Update: Their is this brouhaha over Apple pushing Safari via Apple Updates. I think Tom Krazit says it best.

If you don't want Safari, don't click "install."

Please read before you click!

Asa Dotzler talks about trust:

It really is wrong to make cause for users to mistrust, or even worse, to distrust, software update systems.

I disagree. As a security conscious systems administrator, and X-files fan I say "Trust No One!".

Firefox 3 beta is stable

I had been holding out on installing Firefox 3 beta on any thing but a virtual machine for testing. In the past, with version 2, I had run beta's and it had been my experience that upgrading from beta to the actual releases left things a bit unstable. Perhaps the profile had changes that caused random crashes, but it was irritating enough that I stayed away. Reading crunchgear's article might just change my mind though:

Firefox 3 won’t be out of beta until the end of June but Mozilla told Reuters yesterday that anyone can go ahead and download the most recent version and run it without worrying too much. It’s now stable enough for everyone, not just developers.

And I really want to try out the new mac theme (windows/linux themes seem boring comparatively). And I don't think I can wait till the end of June!

The Codebreakers

A two-part documentary, The Codebreakers was aired on BBC World TV during May 2006. It investigates how poor countries are using FOSS applications for development, and includes stories and interviews from around the world. Available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. See http://www.apdip.net/news/fossdoc for more infomation

via Google Video

Get A Bigger Screen

Get A Bigger Screen : Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin:

"‘Hey, I just wanted to let you know that your web site doesn’t look right on an 800×600 screen.’

‘You should get a bigger screen,’ I reply."

I wonder if that is a valid reply what with the proliferation of the Asus EEE PC/Nokia N800/Samsung Q1 type systems that have 800×480 pixels.

friendfeed

Scoble asks if friendfeed is a techmeme killer or the google reader killer?

I still like techmeme, but I moved of google reader a while back... I like river of news style feed reading, and I can use a combination of http://planetplanet.org and friendfeed for that. It takes too long to read my feeds if I am using Google Reader. And then you can star items for later reading and all of a sudden its not fun anymore its a chore. Let the stuff flow in a river and you catch only part of the river when you have time.

The reason friendfeed got my attention is that I can follow all the various RSS feeds generated by people. For instance, Scoble posts in so many different places. He has his Google Reader Shared Items, his blog, twitter and flickr amongst others. It gives me one place where I can view all this content. And I can do this for a number of people. And they can do the same for me. I don't have to go hunting for all these various feeds that I want to read / follow.

The one change through friendfeed is that I'm not subscribed to anybodies twitter feed in my feed reader.

Haiku OS makes it as a Google Summer of Code project

Haiku OS is a rewrite of BeOS R5 as an open source project. I've been watching the project for years as it evolves. They are now participating in Google Summer of Code. If you are a student you might be able to help the Haiku guys out. You can check out the List of GSoC Ideas here.

Cloning Virtualbox VM in OS X

It seems cloning a virtual machine is not as simple as copying the .vdi (virtual disk). Once I had an OS installed, I wanted to create duplicate VMs without actually having to install the OS again. Virtualbox specifies a unique identifier to each virtual disk so you have to use their command line cloning tool to create a clone.

Go to the directory where you virtual disk resides. In my case it was $HOME/Library/VirtualBox/VDI.
Once their you can clone the vdi by issuing the command VBoxManage clonevdi original.vdi clone.vdi. You should see output similar to this:

[ 12:18 PM Sun Mar 16 ] [Session: ttys001 VDI]
==> VBoxManage clonevdi Vista.vdi Vista-Clone-1.vdi
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1.5.51
(C) 2005-2008 innotek GmbH
All rights reserved.

0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%

Once the disk clone is made, create a new virtual machine, and assign it the cloned image.

Scoble with Gabe (of techmeme)

I love techmeme! :)

how I use py2exe

Just documenting this for myself to use later.

I have activestate activepython 2.5.1 installed. Copy the setup.py to the folder with the .py file. The contents of the setup.py are simply:

1 from distutils.core import setup
2 import py2exe
3
4 setup(console=['yourfile.py'])

Run "python setup.py py2exe". Two folders will be created:
1. Build
2. dist

dist should have your .exe and all the required dlls.

Update: Forgot to mention that this is after you download and install py2exe.

Todays Links

JScript Debugger in Internet Explorer 8

The Best Tools for Visualization

Interesting Game

"You know what I really want? I want a web experience like the soon-to-launch game Fez. Check out this video, it gets particularly interesting at :30."

via RWW

Codepad

Codepad is an interesting site. It gives you the ability to post code in a text box, have the code run, and displays the code/output in return. It gives you a convenient URL you can point to later.

Here is a hello world program I wrote in C.

Here is a Python helloworld.

I found out about codepad from the authors post where he mentions how he was having problems scaling the site, and how he solved it using Amazon EC2.

Browsers

Their are a bunch of new/beta web browsers out that I wanted to try. I setup a virtual machine to test these out. I've just installed them so these are just things I noticed starting out.

IE8beta  is out and it looks just like IE7. Their is a button that allows you to emulate IE7 mode. Also while downloading the firefox 3 beta 3 I noticed that the download dialog had an additional note that the download was checked by the Microsoft Safety Filter.  Their were some rendering problems with one of the large pages I viewed but I guess that is to be expected with beta software.

I also downloaded and installed Firefox 3 beta3 which has a new theme for windows that I noticed.  Not sure if I care too much for the new theme. It will be interesting to see the firefox theme for OS X though. One cool feature that I can already appreciate with firefox is the ability to save open tabs when you quit. Their were extensions that let you do that, but this is built in functionality so one less extension to go searching for. 

Flock has released version 1.1 that I downloaded though the initial interface is the same. I've only just installed these browsers, and still have to use them to tell if their are any major differences.

Update: Mozilla labs also has some new Prism stuff that I've installed on Firefox3 beta. I like prism because it lets you isolate some websites as certain applications. Gmail, Facebook amongst others are good examples of sites that I'd like to run with prism rather than as a tab in a browser. The new Firefox3 extension makes it really easy to create an application out of GMail and facebook.

Vista x64

I installed Windows Vista x64 on my XPS 1330 and the install went well. I see their are no drivers for the finger print reader, or for the touchpad. The touchpad is a little hyper sensitive and the only difference from my previous Vista x86 install is the missing synaptic touchpad software. Its quite irritating when typing, focus shifts to different points when you are typing.

IPhone SDK

Just started downloading the iPhone SDK. I don't have an iPhone, but just thought it might be fun to play around with the SDK since its free. Surprised by the size of the download which is 2.10 GB in size. Apple seems to have a lot of documentation and videos to get you started when you first register for the SDK.

Playing with Google Sites

Woke up to find Google Sites has been released for Google apps. Logging in to Google apps I couldn't find where I can start using Google Sites. Turns out you have to add the service from a link right above your existing services. My existing services were start page, chat, web pages, email, calender. I had two more services that I could add. Google Docs and Google sites.

I just had a few minutes to play, looks like a nice wiki tool for your site. You'll find more information here.

Vsp1cln.exe - Vista SP1 File Removal Tool

I've been running Vista SP1 for the past few days, and the system is quite stable. It was time to make Vista SP1 permanent on this machine. I had 45.6 GB free before running the above tool. Vsp1cln.exe is described as:

Vsp1cln.exe is an optional tool that you can run after you install SP1. This tool removes older versions of components that have been updated in SP1, which are stored during the installation in case you need to uninstall SP1 later. Saving these older components increases the amount of disk space that is used. Typically, you should run Vsp1cln.exe if you want to reclaim this disk space after applying SP1 and if you will not need to uninstall SP1. Note, however, that you cannot uninstall SP1 after you run this tool.

UAC asks for permission when running the tool, and a command prompt pops up asking if you want to make SP1 permanent. After the tool had run on my machine, disk space went from 45.6 GB to 47.3 GB. If you're sure you are going to be keeping SP1 this might be a worth while tool to run.

Slashdot or how we will do anything to get clicks...

How in the world does:

"Microsoft has stopped automatically distributing a prerequisite piece of software for Vista Service Pack 1" (emphasis is mine)

Translate to:

"news.com reports that Microsoft is withdrawing SP1 for Vista."

Windows Web Server 2008 and Powershell

Powershell is included as part of Windows Web Server 2008, however it wasn't installed on my machine by default. I had the "Initial Configuration tasks" window open where I chose the "Add Features" option. You can also go to start, search for "Server Manager" and then choose "Add Features". Select Windows Powershell and install it. And thats it. It doesn't ask for your DVD or anything.

Activation

While trying to activate Windows Web Server 2008, I kept getting an error "DNS name does not exist".

From this site, I found re-entering your product key, and then activating fixes the problem, and activates Windows.

Playing with Windows Server 2008

I have an ancient machine, a beige box inherited long ago from a departing roommate. Its a 1Ghz machine with 512MB of Ram that I use for testing things. Ubuntu runs pretty stable on it, Windows Vista installs, but their are no drivers for the network card. Its a 3com 3c905b card, and I've tried installing some old drivers that I found online. In Vista the drivers install, but the network card fails to function with those old drivers. Windows Server 2003 works fine on the machine though.

Windows Server 2008 Web Edition installs on the machine, however like Vista, the network card has no drivers. I tried the old drivers and unlike with Vista, they work. I'm quite impressed with the performance of the operating system. Its quite fast, I can tell no differece between Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. I haven't done much with it yet though. Its just sitting their serving files for now.

Update: Just in case you're wondering why the screenshot shows Service Pack 1, like I was, here is a probable explanation.

virtualbox

I installed the new beta of virtual box for OS X and installed Vista on it for a test. It is quite stable itself, but OS X gets a little unstable. Its the first time I saw OS X freeze up. This happens when removing an external monitor I had attached to the macbook pro. At first I thought it was freezing up completely. However, when playing a video from a DVD, the audio kept playing and only the display seemed to freeze up. I guess the display driver has problems.

Another weird problem is that firefox fails to exit cleanly after I running virtualbox. I have to "force quit".

Other than that, the virtual machine itself is quite stable. Its still beta and I hope they will have these issues cleared soon.

Image Resizing by Seam Carving

via del.icio.us

Windows right click option for "Open in Emacs"

Warning: Be careful when editing the registry!

This article shows you how to add an entry in the right click menu to "Open in Notepad". Its quite easy to change that for emacs. Just change the notepad.exe %1 to:
C:\Program Files\emacs\bin\runemacs.exe "%1" and that should work.

Their is one problem with this. Each time you do this, a new emacs window will open. I'm sure their is a way to not let that happen, I just haven't had time to deal with it on windows yet.

via Lifehacker

ubuntu gutsy on my XPS 1330

I bought a 1330 before the 1330n (ubuntu version) came out. Which means my system has an Intel 4965 AGN card. I was worried this might not work in Ubuntu, but actually it works out of the box. However, I am connecting to a "G" network, not "N". Don't know if "N" will work.

Skype 2.0 beta video works, but the builtin internal mic has problems. Following the instructions from Dell Wiki I was able to get the mic working. However, the volume on the mic is pretty low. Opening up alsamixer and playing with the "Digital" and "Capture" volumes fixed the problem for me. Now I have everything I need working on the machine! :)

I'm a PC, I'm a Mac

via A Solaris guy

Test Gnome-Blog

Could'nt get other editors to work with blogger yet. Trying gnome-blog.

Steve Yegge on Rhino on Rails

 

via google-code-updates

Hak5 3x07

 

via Hak5

Ubuntu 7.10 on the XPS M1330, Ubuntu Coming to Customers in Spain - Direct2Dell

Ubuntu 7.10 on the XPS M1330, Ubuntu Coming to Customers in Spain - Direct2Dell:

"Now Ubuntu 7.10 is making it's way to our XPS 1330 laptop and Dell will begin offering Ubuntu in Spain.

Starting today, customers in Germany, United Kingdom, France and now Spain can purchaseUbuntu Linux 7.10 with built-in DVD playback on the XPS 1330n (in addition to the previously-released Inspiron 530n desktop system. For U.S. customers, you'll have to hold on a week or so."

Great... I finally give in, get a 1330, and they announce a 1330 with Ubuntu as an option. This is really good news though for Ubuntu/Dell fans! :)

KDE 4.0 Release Event Keynote - Aaron Seigo

via digg

scoble with the qik guys

Hey Scoble was with the qik.com guys (Micheal and Bhaskar) in these videos:
http://www.qik.com/video/9038
http://www.qik.com/video/9042

I really like qik because Scoble has been sending videos from the CES and Macworld floors showing us all the goodies. For instance, in this video he shows the NEC screen towards the end (alienware and nec both first showed these screens in CES).

battlestar galatica season 4 preview

MacFUSE Objective-C API talk -- Video

kde 4.0.0 released!!

Release page.

Lots of discussion at planet kde.

Congrats to all involved! :)

Mac OS X Tip: Create a Keyboard Shortcut for Any Menu Action in Any Program -- Lifehacker

Mac OS X Tip: Create a Keyboard Shortcut for Any Menu Action in Any Program:

"Open the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane in your System Preferences and click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Click the little plus (+) sign, choose the application you want to assign a shortcut for from the drop-down, then enter the exact name of the menu bar item you want to execute (for example, I want a shortcut to resize an image in Preview, so I'm using 'Adjust Size...'). Then just pick your keyboard shortcut, click Add, and voilà—you've successfully added a new shortcut to your Mac. When you open the app, you'll notice that shortcut is even visible next to the item so it'll be easy to remember."

Great tip!

10 Questions On Innovation to Alan Kay

10 Questions On Innovation to Alan Kay:

"So the price today is much higher than when mainframe people were calling us crazy for trying to do personal computing. That was nothing. What's harder today is that people think they've got personal computing and they don't really. The analogy here is between the jump from non-literacy to the printing press (which might be fought but the chasm that is to be crossed is clear) vs. the much trickier one of trying to explain to a culture that has the printing press and universities that it is not very well educated and thinks pretty poorly (for example, the US is in this general state -- it has the trappings but not the perspective to see how poorly educated most 'educated people' actually are)."

Emphasis is mine. I just thought it was a really interesting thing to say. I tend to agree with the emphasized quote.

More CES and qik stuff

I've been watching Scoble move around CES showing cool stuff streaming live of his cell phone.
The coolest thing I've seen at CES is Scoble move around CES showing cool stuff streaming live of his cell phone! :)

I was watching the latest pre-recorded video on qik, and the video changed. Scoble was streaming live. Thats good, because that means you won't miss the live stuff while watching an older video. You can always go back to the pre-recorded video. Now if only battery life was longer on those cell phones.

Some other cool stuff from engadget:

A Sandisk 72 GB SSD (can't wait for prices to drop on SSDs).

Bill Gates exit interview.

Intels MID device (interesting form factor).

Alienware's curved display (I want one!)

Also, their is this new concept laptop from Dell at CES. (interesting to me, since I work at Dell)

WiMAX enabled Asus Eee PC (the text of the article mentions 7-, 8-, and 8.9 inch models in the future)

Their are quite a lot of UMPC type devices out their now. They look cool, but the ones I tried at Frys last year seemed a bit slow for my taste.

how to catch scoble live in qik

So Scoble has been streaming live at qik.com and I keep missing his live videos. By the way he is streaming live of his cell phone, how amazing is that?! I was wondering how I can catch him live, and it turns out you just need that channel open and if it is live it will start playing.

So what did Bill Gates say in his keynote?

bill gates keynote 2008
Originally uploaded by awasim

I tried very hard to watch Bill Gates keynote at microsoft.com/ces. I really did.

Lets not talk about the fact that microsoft can't get their web pages to look any good on a mac running firefox. Or get sound to play properly, had to strain really hard to hear anything. Or if you tried to click on "view in default media player" a new page would open and then nothing. But its a microsoft keynote I'm trying to run on a mac, so lets not talk about that.

Lets talk about the web page itself. That has nothing to do with the mac right. Well, the size of the video was so small. I mean live streaming video from a cell phone at qik.com from scoble looks better than that microsoft video. I guess can't really blame Microsoft. They are apparently still trying to catch up to youtube, kyte, seesmic, qik, mogulus and others.

In the picture you see bill gates in that tiny video. On the side is this really big picture of some weird dude. Well that picture kept changing. Over and over and over. How the heck am I supposed to watch that teeny tiny video while those pictures are looping on the side.

But thats not all. You see that purple coloring around the video. It kept changing colors too. Freaking blink tag redux!

I know Microsoft is working at catching up to the internet, but its CES 2008!! When are they going to catch up?

And what the heck did Bill Gates say?

Did you know 2.0

Shift Happens

Web App integration

Just watched the above demo of box.net, and the integration with web services is really interesting. You don't need any space on your own computer. You can do everything online. Isn't this really game changing?

LinuxHaxor.net » What Happens When You Do “sudo rm -rf /”?

LinuxHaxor.net » What Happens When You Do “sudo rm -rf /”?: ""

firefox_corruption

firefox_corruption
Originally uploaded by awasim

I've been seeing this sort of corruption all day today in firefox. Not really sure whats causing it all of a sudden. Its firefox v2.0.0.11. I haven't added any extensions or anything. I've restarted the browser.

Update: its happening in safari as well for this page. Must be something wrong with this web page.

objective-c hello world

I just started learning objective-c and cocoa a few days ago, and here is how I wrote an overly complicated objective-c "hello world" application.

MyClass.h:

#import <objc/Object.h>

@interface MyClass : Object {	
}

- (void) sayHello;

MyClass.m:

#import "MyClass.h"
#import <stdio.h>
@implementation MyClass : Object {
	
}

- (void) sayHello { printf("Hello, World!\n"); }

main.m:

#import <objc/objc.h>
#import "MyClass.h"

int main() {
	MyClass *anObject;
	
	anObject = [[MyClass alloc] init];
	[anObject sayHello];
	
	return 0;
}

I compiled this using the following:

gcc -o hello -lobjc MyClass.m main.m

Windows Vista SP1 x64 EFI support and Intel Macs

If you have been looking forward to trying a Windows install without using a utility like bootcamp, think again. The BIOS was replaced by the Extensible Firmware Interface on Intel Macs. Even though Windows Vista SP1 x64 has EFI support it won't yet work on Intel Macs:

Microsoft has announced that they plan to support native UEFI 2.0 booting in a future service pack for the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. Presently, that excludes all Intel Macs because Apple’s firmware is based on EFI 1.10, not UEFI 2.0. Core Solo and Core Duo models are 32-bit only, and have no chance of using this, ever. Core 2 based models could work in the future if Apple releases UEFI-compatible firmware updates for them.

Friends and Google Reader

Google readers friends feature has been frustrating me all day. All day Robert Scoble has had 25 items and growing, yet when I click on him or all of friends nothing shows up. Please fix this, its frustrating.

Firefox and Dialogs

When signing into my feedburner account, the following dialog showed up:



If I click enter, which button will it default to? Thats a bad dialog.

quicksilver wins over the dock

I hid the dock in an effort to use quicksilver more. I haven't seen the dock in days. The much touted leopard "Stack" feature on the dock is useless to me. Maybe I shouldn't get too comfortable with quicksilver though.

I'm inclined to encourage users to move over to the more stable and well supported alternatives like LaunchBar. Right now QS 54 (ed: the current build) accomplishes everything that I really need, the problem is stability, which for some reason most people seem to be ignoring.

QS is open source, so their is hope.

Cocoacast and the new Leopard dev tools

OS X developer tools have been updated to Xcode version 3.0, Interface Builder 3.0 and Objective-C 2.0 in Leopard. I've been learning OS X development, and I found cocoacast that has three screencasts that cover these changes.

Episode 34 covers Interface Builder 3.0.

Episode 35 covers xcode 3.0.

Episode 36 covers objective-c 2.0.

Google Developers Day US - Theorizing from Data

via Youtube.com

new hak5 episode

Watching a new hak5 episode which can be downloaded from here. I just started watching, but it looks like a really good episode!

In this episode Simon Jakesch from Zenoss joins us to talk about the open source network management suite. Wess shows us the science behind the infrared camera mod. Chris Gerling hacks the Nokia 770 Internet tablet. Darren builds a one-click remote assistance package to help save the holidays, and Will Coppola drops by with an EVDO antenna mod sure to boost signal. Plus details on the upcoming Hak5Live / meetup at the East Coast LAN as always trivia. Grab some hax0rflakes, it’s time for a heavy dose of technolust.

bubble

:D

Django/Bootcamp problems

I first started my day thinking I'd get some django programming done. I created a new django project, got the admin module installed, went to check the admin page, and got an error that django had problems loading the template. For some reason django can't see the installed template file (I was using OS X Leopard). After mucking about for a bit I gave up for the moment. Anybody else have this problem?

I wanted to install bootcamp with windows on my macbook pro. Installed windows, installed bootcamp drivers, had a blue screen while drivers installed. Rebooted, and reinstalled drivers. Rebooted, started windows update, and it says windows is already updating. The progress meter sits their at 0% for half an hour. I decided to reboot. Windows says do not reboot or power down, installing update 1 of 1. Its been sitting their for half an hour!

I guess I won't be getting much done today. :(