Nokia N82 in the house!

I now have the Nokia N82! So far I am impressed. It is a very capable device. The camera is so much better than the E61i, the GPS works very well, and the HSDPA network is nice (and dangerous because of my dataplan). Besides that the device function very much as the E61i which I liked very much. From time to time I miss the keyboard of the E61i, but I have to give it more time to conclude.

The HTC TyTN II is now passed on to a colleague of mine. It worked relatively stable, I just had to reboot it a couple of times. The camera was not as good as on the first TyTN, but still much better than the E61i. I keyboard have an awkward feel - you're not certain you pressed the key, so from time to time I pressed twice by accident. The keyboard on the E61i is much better, but the TyTN II (as the first TyTN) is much more comfortable to hold in your hands.

While the TyTN II works much better than the first TyTN, at least in this short time I have used it, it is still not a device for me. I blame the OS most, but probably have to blame my willingness to adapt as well! More important though, is the fact that the TyTN II and the Oqo O2 is to close in functionallity. I chose to go for a smaller phone and the Oqo O2. Maybe I'll try to get my hands on the Nokia N810 as well, I think that will be a better inbetween device than the Oqo.

One last thing about the TyTN II. The GPS device and the Tomtom software works quite well. Together with the assisted GPS software that get some info from the internet to precondition the GPS, it very quickly locks in and starts showing correct location. I have one small nit though. First time you boot Tomtom you can select and download one free city. I, of course, downloaded Oslo, Norway, as this is where I live. But I got the impression that I could download other cities so far. So, when I traveld to Berlin last week, I thought I just could pay a few $10's and download Berlin. That proved not to be possible. I could have bought the full Western Europe for like $60. Problem was that this was a 1GB download - at the time I figured that out it was too late for such a big download over my ADSL, I would have been on the plane long before it could have finished. So I had to stay in Berlin using the old style maps. This was not as flexible as it should have been!

Stay tuned, I'll report on the Nokia N82 soon!

MacVim on Leopard

I had some issues with the Gvim from Macvim.org, related to the python-version linked in that version of Vim. There is also a version of vim delivered with MacOSX Leopard, but that version does not have the python bindings.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered the MacVim at http://code.google.com/p/macvim/, and when I discovered the python-issues today I figured I could try that vim. Unfortunately, the binary that is available there is built against python2.3 (Tiger), and I like to use the python2.5 on Leopard. Luckily, there are some nice instructions in the wikipages! Without much trouble, I was able to build my very own Leopard MacVim with python2.5.

If someone need a binary, just tell me - I can share!

Btw, if you wonder why I wanted a vim with python2.5, check this page: http://djcraven5.blogspot.com/2006/10/send-gmail-message-from-vim.html. Now I have libgmail in my python2.5 environment, a python2.5 enabled MacVim, and I can send email right from my editor. Neat!

I'm still here!

I have been kind of quiet lately. The main reason is probably that my wife and I have another child to take care of - those folks who follows me closely know that we got anoterh daughter on 8. october. She is sweet and cute and sleeps almost all day, as common for babies. Still, with more kids there will be some more work to do, and while we adapt to the new situations, there will be a bit less writing.

I have some things that I will write up on as soon as time permits. On the Oqo O2, I am testing Windows Vista now. I had some issues with linux, and wanted to test Vista such that I can make a fair comparision. I have run Vista for a full month now, and will write up on that. On friday I also got a brand new HTC TyTN II. This is a Windows Mobile version 6 device, and a nice followup to the HTC TyTN I have used in the past. I will check back on my earlier notes on the TyTN and see if this one is better. I am not supposed to keep this device for myself, as I just check it out for one of the bosses at Simula Research Lab. But that depends of course. If it's bad, I have to keep it, while if it is just good enough, I let the boss have it. If I enjoy the device very much, I buy another one for the boss and keep this one myself ;0

I am also awaiting the new Nokia N82, and will review that device when I get it.

One of the really bad things with the Nokia E61i is the camera. If the camera in TyTN II is close to that in the original TyTN, I might restart my photo-a-day project which I just closed down when the TyTN died as the E61i was just to bad.

I will be back soon! Take care.

Was I dreaming?

Some time ago I read about the new Sony Ericsson K850 phone. From what I remember, the phone was supposed to have edge, 3G and super-3G radio, and maybe even wifi. In additionit has a nice camera and other goodies. But maybe it was just a dream? Now the phone is in the stores. And from what I can tell there is no edge and no super-3G. Come on, Sony Ericsson - data connectivity is important to lots of folk these days. Even for uploading those 5megapixel pictures. And there are still lots of places with poor 3G coverage, so edge is still quite handy.

I was really hoping that the K850 could have been the phone that brought me back to Sony Ericsson, the brand I liked so much in the past. But there are too many errors with it now that it is on the market. So I think I just stay with the Nokia E61i for a while, or I switch to a N95 since I have the Oqo O2 for the occasions I need a keyboard.

Was I dreaming, or was the spec of the K850 changed on the official Sony Ericsson pages at some point in time?

[Update 27.10.2007:] According to reviews on Norwegian it/phone sites (amobil.no), the K850 actually got both Edge and super-3g. So I wasn't dreaming after all. I have to rush to the store to get one...

Ink blogging

Gartner: No New Unix Apps to Emerge After 2009

Gartner: No New Unix Apps to Emerge After 2009
This was a really strange post - to the extent that I really want to comment on it.

What is the definition of Unix? As far as most of the world is conserned, there is no such thing? You have HP-UX, I don't see that going away that soon. Then you have AIX which will probably stay with us for some years. Solaris, Irix, and probably a few more - some are quite dead, others live. If you make an app for any if these, wouldn't that be a unix application.

More important, you have MacOSX which is very much Unix. And you have all the freenixes, including Linux. For all practical purposes, you make an Unix app when you create anything for one of these platforms. I know that there are certain archaic rules that must be fullfilled before an operating system can get the label Unix, but when it comes to the applications, these days it usually only takes a recompile to get your app on one of those if you program with portability in mind.

Ah, enough. The original writer probably live in a Microsoft world and don't have a clue. It's Gartner after all. And I just wanted to write something tonight...

Ikke min oppgave, men noe må da lagres...

For de som ikke aner hva nam er, og heller ikke kjører mc, les videre eller gå et annet sted. Av og til faller noen utsagn i baren som bare bør tas vare på. Jeg er vel kjent med at dette er en oppgave som egentlig tilligger andre, og jeg er stort sett bare en lurker i baren. Men allikevel, noen utsagn må jeg bare lagre. 10. September finner altså Morten det for godt å uttrykke:

Søndag var jeg ute for å ta en liten tur. Nesten den første vårturen. Det viser seg at jeg har glemt å kjøre noe særlig i år. Faktisk har det så vidt jeg husker bare blitt en t/r til jobben etter at jeg skiftet batteri i vår.

Vel, vrir rundt nøkkelen og ser med glede at jeg har nok strøm på batteriet til å få lys i den røde dioden som sier at jeg har nok olje. Jeg prøver om lyset virker, og får da nullstilt instrumentpanelet. Heldigvis er Aprilia 250 uten startmotor. Den røde dioden klarer ikke å
holde på lyset samtidig som coilene skal få strøm, men den starter da likevel. Etter en grundig marinering av garasjen i totaksolje og uforbrentbensin kommer jeg meg avgårde.

Ned til bensinstasjonen for å få litt luft i dekkene, sjekker at bremsene fortsatt virker og at ikke drittungene har skrudd styredemperen min helt til. Ut på tur.

Ikke lenge etter at jeg kommer meg ut på veien legger jeg merke til at temperaturmåleren til kjølevannet viser litt rare verdier. Må RS250 er det en gammel myte som sier at kjølevannet bør ligge rundt 68 grader, og hvert fall ikke utenfor 60-75 grader. Detter krever en del tape på
radiatoren for å passe til varierende værforhold. Denne tappingen er noe man ikke skal holde på med alt for lenge uten at det blir litt hysterisk. Uansett - Responsen på kjølevanntempen er ganske rask. Kjører man opp en bratt bakke stiger den fort noen grader. Ute på E18 legger
jeg plutselig merke til at tempen nå er helt oppe i 83 grader. Jeg ventet at det var litt kaldere nå enn ved første tur i vår, så før start hadde jeg lagt en stripe tape midt på radiatoren. Kunne det ha blitt alt for mye tape? Så la jeg merke til at kjølevannstempen nå var blitt enda
mer følsom for hvor hardt motoren arbeider. Jeg gir bare litt gass, så fyker tempen opp mot 87-88 grader. Så slipper jeg opp, og raskt synker den ned mot 70 grader. Jeg vurderer raskt situasjoen og kommer på at David en gang hadde litt samme problem en gang han hadde luft på radiatoren. Det blir ikke ordentlig gjennomstrømning, så da kjører man jo nærmest uten kjøling. Det kan vel neppe være veldig bra, så jeg bestemmer meg for å kjøre inn på nærmeste bensinstasjon. I det jeg skal ta av legger jeg merke til at tempen nå er helt nede i 50 - urovekkende. Samtidig snur jeg hodet til høyre for å se i dødvinkelen. I det hodet vris tilbake sveiper øynene over det høyre lcd-panelet. Med litt liten skrift står det 67, en liten sirkel og så en C. Dette tyder på at tempen står på høyre lcd-panel og ikke på venstre. Ved nærmere inspeksjon ser detut til at det står km/h bak det store tallet på venstre lcd-panel.

Moralen er: Husk å lese bruksanvisningen før hver gang man opererer kjøretøyet.

(klippet verbatim fra no.alt.motorsykler, bare editert formatering og en opplagt trykkleif).

Hugin auto-align in Qtpfsgui

I am still working on the interface to the align_image_stack program in Qtpfsgui. The maintainer of the OSX-port of Hugin, Ippei Ukay, has been so kind to provide us with a statically linked version of the program that at least work quite well on my computers. I have some issues with making Qtpfsgui picking up the location of the binary automatically, but for now you can download the binary here, and place it in a directory usually in your PATH environment. The directory /usr/local/bin may be a good place to store it, but if that does not work put it in /usr/bin. Qtpfsgui v.1.8.12 should then be able to find and use the align_image_stack program.

[edit:] Remark, after you download the align_image_stack binary, you need to set the executable bit on the file. Open a Terminal and do 'sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/align_image_stack' (assuming you placed the file in /usr/bin).

In the future, the Hugin image aligner will be included with Qtpfsgui, so no extra work should be required to use it - I hope!

[edit2:] You may as well download the align_image_stack binary inside a zip-file - by popular request!
Take care

Two weeks with Ubuntufied Oqo O2

I have now spent about 2 weeks with Oqo O2, and most of that time with Ubuntu installed, so I guess it is time for a status update. I'll focus on the Linux issues with the device as other people are raving about how great the Oqo is - like folks over on gottabemobile.com and other places. I agree with all the positive comments, and like to emphasize that it's truly a portable computer - I carry it with me to places I didn't brought my other computers in the past. Which was the main point of buying it.

As I wrote in the previous post on the topic, Ubuntu works on the Oqo O2, and it works great too. As I have mentioned in a previous post, it take some effort to get there, though, but it is worth it. There are also a few things that still does not work, which I will mention further down in the post. But let's start with the stuff that works.

• Wireless network. Oqo O2 have an Atheros chipset for Wifi of the abg-kind. Ubuntu detects and set this up out of the box, using the ath_pci kernel driver. Remark that the restricted-modules kernel add-on must be installed, as the closed source firmware for the radio is in that package. Usually, reception seems to be on the bad side when looking at the bar-chart in the panel that indicates signal strength. But in practice I don't have any problem with the network connection. My guess is that power is turned down a bit to save the battery. But that is just a guess, and I don't know if it is possible to crank up the power in some way. And as I said, it has not been a problem so far.
• Bluetooth works without any problem. It is some kind of chip set attached to the usb bus, it shows up in the output of lsusb -v. The bluetooth support on Linux is still not perfect, like when I wanted to attach the iGo stowaway keyboard, I needed to edit some config files (according to howtos found online) - there is room for improvement. Now, I like to edit those files so it is not a problem for me personally. But it is a problem when it comes to acceptance of Linux among Joe average user.
  
• Keyboard. The Oqo O2 have quite a lot of special keys, which you get by using the Fn function key in combination with other keys. This includes screen brightness and volume adjustments and back lit keyboard. Most of these keys do work Linux. Some keys that don't work are screen rotation and zoom in/out buttons. I don't care much about those things anyway, but being able to remap the keys to something else would have been nice. So far, I haven't figured that out.
  
• Power management. CPU frequency scaling works great in Linux, and so does the speed scaling for the fan. These mean that most of the time I can run on 25% CPU speed and have the fan running on a low speed causing very little noise. And when I need more juice, the system responds quite fast.
• As far as I can tell, the Oqo O2 don't have a speaker. If it is there, I can't turn it on at least. But headphones can be plugged in to hear sound. I installed the audio driver for linux from www.viaarena.com (but not sure it is needed, as it took me a while to realize that I had to plug in headphones). I have not tested stereo bluetooth sound yet, as I don't own such headset yet. But I plan to aquire one such that I can test this - I think this will be a great plus in combination with thje Oqo.
• For graphics, I have tested a few different drivers. I have tested the drivers from viaarena, the OpenChrome driver from openchrome.org, as well as the via-driver in both Ubuntu feisty and Ubuntu gutsy (still in alfa stage). I have so far ended up with the generic vesa driver. There is a description on the ubuntu site on how to install the experimental OpenChrome driver from source. Bottom line is that there are issues with all of them unfortunately. I have to go deeper into this in order to do a proper review - hopefully I can do a separate post on this topic in the near future. What I can say so far is that the vesa driver does not have any dual-head capabilities, the driver from viaarena has (the package even include an application that can be used to enable/disable different outputs like vga, hdmi/tv-out, and enable or disable Xinerama - this works ok). But the computer occasionally went into deep freeze when using the viaarena driver, and it was hard getting back from suspend. The OpenChrome things I tested up to now seems to be the worst of both worlds.
• When it come to suspend/resume, I said in my first post that it works. I have to moderate that statement, unfortunately. Using the regular suspend on the log-off menu in Ubuntu, I can suspend and resume once. If I try to do it twice, the keyboard turn unresponsive, the fan goes to full speed, and the display stays on. Only solution is to press the power button for a while (10 seconds) in order to trigger a hard shutoff. From time to time, I also have to unload and reload the kernel modules for the wireless card to enable wifi after resume. A couple of times the computer also have went into freeze shortly after the first resume. So suspend/resume is really unusable in real life. Which is very very bad as this is very important for my intended use of the Oqo O2. I have had limited success with the s2disk from the uswsusp package (software suspend), which is a kind of hibernation. This only seems to be usable one time. The s2ram application for suspend to ram from the same package does not work on this computer. The hibernation option from the regular log-off menu in Ubuntu does not work either. So, there are a lot of room for improvement here.
• Wacom digitizer does not work. I can not find the device for it and doesn't know whether it is usb based or serial. I have posted a question to support at oqo to see if I can get more information on this. On the other hand, I can live without the pen although I use it a lot on my Fujitsu P1520 (which have the plain touch screen). I get back to this if I make it work or get some information.
  

If we ignore the bad things for a while, the Oqo in Linux is usable as a small, carry around computer. I even booted it and did some work on a turbogears/mysql application in the waiting room at my doctor the other day, using 3G from my Nokia e61i over bluetooth as network connection. But the vesa driver for graphics mean that graphics probably take more power than it should (more work done in the main CPU), and refresh is sluggish when switching between virtual desktops which really is a must on such a small screen. And the suspend/resume issue is more or less a show stopper. Since it takes more than a minute to boot the thing, the opportunity to quickly catch up on email may have passed before I get online. So I have to solve this somehow.

Hope you got some answers to your questions. If not, please use the comments, and I will try to answer (and test if necessary). If you have suggestions for some of the issues, please feel free to post those to - I'm happy to test things out!

Take care!

Qtpfsgui news!

Hi, Giuseppe figured out the problem with qtpfsgui 1.8.12 on OSX today, and created a sucessful fix. The 1.8.12 version now compiles and runs just fine on the Mac again.

I have uploaded the new version over at sourceforge, please grab it there. In the process of eliminating sources for errors, I have also upgraded my tool chain a bit. There are therefor now newer versions of most of the dependencies, but since most of these are linked directly into the binary you should not need to do anything. I have however updated my version of Qt. I believe that Qt is sufficiently backwards compatible such that this should not cause a problem, but if you get any problem running the new binary, please update Qt by downloading the newest version from this link. You may also visit http://trolltech.com/developer/downloads/qt/mac where the download-link for the diskimage can be found, as well as sources.

Now that 1.8.12 is out the door, I will look into the alignment functionality that Giuseppe have included, to see what kind of problems that pose on the Mac.

Take care.

Oqo-folks, I am impressed!

I have been using portable computers on a daily basis for about 10 years now. Yet, I have never before had a notebook that I was able to use comfortably outdoor in sunshine. I knew already that the screen on the Oqo O2 is bright, but doesn't realize before now how good it is outdoor!

Right now I am sitting on my veranda, and pulled out the oqo to see if I was able to connect my Canon 350D and get some photos off it. For a change, it is also nice summer-weather today, with bright sunlight. And I can use the Oqo O2 just fine. I can even keep the screen brightness on about 50%. This was totally unexpected. I expected it to be possible with some effort, turning with the sun and try to fine some shading, and so on. But I can just use it . Great!

Just had to tell you! Take care!

Ubuntu linux on Oqo O2

In short terms: it works! It even works well.

But if you want to test the same thing your self, you should know that there are a little more to the story. There were some issues during installation, and there are some during use. The main things during installation was:

1. Small screen makes installation harder
2. Necessary modifications to boot the machine right
3. Modifications for X.

While some of these points are rather important, I think it is a quite short list, shorter than I expected when I started on this task. Let's describe each issue in some more detail.

1. Small screen makes installation a bit harder. The reason is that the standard Ubuntu installer (at least for Feisty fawn, or 7.04 if you like) is optimized for larger screens. I'm not sure it is possible to use that installer on the small Oqo screen at all, and if it is it is at least not easy. Tick the checkbox for 'alternate cd' when you download the Ubuntu iso-image from www.ubuntu.com, as that gives you a text-based install instead. And don't be afraid, it is rather slick to be a text-based installer!

Boot from the alternate cd, choose to install the system. For partitioning, I just use the 'Entire disk' option as I like to wipe out the Windows, but you may have other preferences. The whole install takes about an hour and gives you most of what you need.

2. After installation is finished, you may not be able to boot into the new Ubuntu system. I couldn't at least. The reason is that the hardrive, or actually the ide controller, is not detected correctly by the kernel. What I recommend is to just leave the alternate install cd in the drive and reboot. Then you will choose the Rescue mode option, choose your root filesystem according to how you partitioned, and finally execute a shell in that root. Now you need to edit the file /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add a line with 'ide-generic'. This will trigger that the module 'ide-generic' is loaded when grub boots the system, and your drive will be detected. After you close that file, you will need to run 'update-initramfs -u' to update the initrd file.

3. While you're in the shell in the root filesystem, you should also open the configuration file for the X server, /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and add some necessary information for the screen. The lines you need to have in the "Monitor" section are:

HorizSync 30-92
VertRefresh 50-85
Modeline "800x480" 40 800 864 928 1088 480 481 484 509 +HSync

Also, add the mode "800x480" in the Modes line for the "Display" settings inside the "Screen" section.

These are all the changes you need. Exit from the shell, and reboot - remember to remove the install cd from the drive. You should now boot into the Ubuntu system and are ready to go.

As mentioned by others who have tried similar things, the mouse pointer will behave funny in the beginning. Most people belive it has something to do with the data from the touch scrollers. After a short while the mouse pointer settles down and you can use the system. The other thing that does not work out of the box is the wacom pen - so far I have not figured out how to configure that (If someone knows I like to hear!).

Things that do work out of the box: Bluetooth (I am writing this on the ThinkOutside iGo Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard), wireless network (I am connected to the wireless network in my house right now!), wired network on the docking station. Also, suspend/resume works - which makes the mouse problem after boot less important as you really shouldn't need to boot that often. Hibernate does not work out of the box, though, so I still have some research to do there. Maybe I just need to prepare a device or something, I really haven't used hibernation much in the past but see that it may be important on the Oqo.

Now, I will use the device for a while and write up things about my experience with it later on. I guess interesting things will be how I move data on and off the device to have what I need when on the road, battery life, applications, and so on.

Take care!

Linux on the Oqo O2

I'm on to the main task of the week... installation of Linux on my newly aquired Oqo O2.

I started out doing some experiments with Puppy linux to make sure that basic things like the display and wireless network is functional. Puppy linux is a great little linux distribution that can be booted right off a USB pen, very convenient for checking out simple things. Next, I grabbed the latest Ubuntu, v. 7.04, and booted the live-cd to verify that Ubuntu works just as well as puppy. No suprise there. As the screen on the oqo is quite small, only 800x480 pixels, the graphical installer of Ubuntu really does not work so well. By ticking the checkbox for an alternate cd on the Ubuntu download page, you can get an iso image that contains a textbased installer instead. I grabbed and burned that one, and went on to the installation task.

Right now, I have wiped the Windows XP from the machine, replacing it with the Ubuntu. More reports later on!

Take care!

Oqo is here!

Yesterday I picked up the package from Dynamism.com delivered to my office by FedEx, the contents is the oqo I ordered, including some accesories like a docking.

So far I have only tested the operating system included in the package, and I will not say much about that. But expect some linux-info very soon. And some pictures.

Take care!

New stuff comming up!

Soon, the summer of 2007 is in our memory only, as just another summer the goes from future into history. Norway is slowly getting back on track with new energy. Now, the summer hasn't been the best thinking about weather, so if the fall is great it may take a few more weeks before we are really ready for a new long and dark period. At least we are collectively slowly returning to normal life.

And to get up to speed as quick as possible, I finally decided it was time switching some of my equipment. The Nokia e61i does it job just fine, but most of the time I find it is not the right tool for me. There are occasions of course when I type out an email or two using the nice keyboard on the phone, both the gmail app and the web browser are quite functional as well as some of the other apps. But this summer I have still used the Fujitsu P1510 a lot. Not for its size, as it is a bit too big usually (if I really need the big iron I grab the Macbook pro remember). But it has the stuff I need to do serious things, which is the reason I use it so much. But I could have used it more had it been even smaller. The phone however, is just fine as a phone and good for some email and web browsing when I don't feel like bringing the small computer. Still, too often I find it a bit to limited for what I need to do.

As mentioned before, I have looked at the Oqo O2 for some time, but did not find a retailer when I visited US earlier this summer. But there are of course online dealers, and today I finally ordered one. It should be small enough to carry most of the time and really just as powerful as my P1510, as the Oqo has more memory and a comparable cpu. The Oqo will therefore replace my P1510. If I carry the Oqo as much as I think I will, the e61i will also be replaced with something else. I'm thinking Sony Ericsson K850, but I do not want to rush that - I'll test the Oqo for a while first, keeping the Nokia until I am comfortable with my new setup.

All who knows me have probably figure out already that I will load some kind of Linux on the Oqo, so expect some information on linux on Oqo O2 as soon as I have the machine in the door. I probably go for a standard Ubuntu, but I'll keep eye on the Ubuntu mobile project as well.

Let the wait begin! And as always, take care.

Nokia E61i as a modem for Macbook Pro

I had some questions regarding Nokia E61i as modem for my Macbook Pro in the past. I have posted how I got that working as a comment on one of the E61i posts (the one about Nokia and Papyrus, I'll dig up the link).

Please, read my comment, and post further questions here!

Btw, I am posting this from my Macbook Pro connected to the 'net over bluetooth and the E61i. So it works!

update: This is the interesting post!

Take care,

Oqo, where are you...

As I am in Santa Clara, California now, I thought about picking up an Oqo O2 while I am here. Being in the technological center of the world, I supposed that should be possible. Also, since Oqo is San Francisco based, it should be even more possible.

According to the Oqo website, MicroCenter is a retailer for the Oqo, and there happen to be a shop just a couple of blocks away from the hotel I am staying in. So I went to the shop and asked for the Oqo. Unfortunately, they were out. Not even out as in no exemplar for sale, but they even didn't have one on display. The salesperson told me that the Oqo is so popular that they got a list of people waiting for one, and as soon as they get shipments, they call people on the list and the Oqos goes out of the door again. I saved some $2000, which is probably not a bad thing.

I can go buy one on the internet of course, but it is kind of scary buying something I even have not held in my hands. As I have mentioned before, I am happy to this day that I didn't got stuck with the Sony UX50 as it turned out to be horrible in my hands when I finally got to hold it. I think the Oqo O2 is very different, but I have to be sure.

I am visiting Chicago on my way home, maybe I can pick up one there...

Some of you might wonder what's up with the Usenix annual tech conference, as this is where I am right now. I think it is kind of average. Some good talks, some not so good. And nothing special to report like big braking news or anything like that. I got the chance to speak with Guido van Rossum though, which was of course kind of cool for someone like me using Python all the time - I enjoyed that. I have also made some new friends, both from Norway and from USA - which is always good and a main reason for going to conferences. So all in all, it was ok for me to be here. Tomorrow I take off and head east.

Take care!

Well done, Apple!

That was it for this year - the WWDC'07 is history. My first post, based on the impressions from the keynote, was a bit harsh in the tone, so I figured I should say a few more words.

First, I must say congratulations to the folks who put together WWDC'07. Just face it folks, they must have had a big problem. All the announcements were done in 2006, probably under the assumption that everything would have been on the streets this year. Which did not happened. Still, they managed to put together an impressive program. While the keynote was a bit bad, and as a side note - I am not the only one who have that opinion; most of the people I spoke to at the event shared my view - the rest of the event was very good. Unfortunately, all the other sessions are under NDA so folks that did not attend will not know much about that. But because our shared opinion was that the keynote was not outstanding, the people at Apple who was responsible for the program and the content and the presentations deserved a big thank you. Many of the presentations was excellent both in content and delivery. And especially in the developer tools sessions we saw and heard a lot of new things. Which we can not talk about of course. But, developers out there, expect cool stuff :)

Hopefully that set the record straight. I still have to just dream about my favorite 10 inch touch-screen macbook pro though, as now new hardware was revealed. We'll see what they can come up with next year.

Now I am off to the more academic Usenix Annual Tech, and can speak freely again! That does not mean that I have something to say, of course. By the way, I can also still play with my Leopard seed dvd which I must say is quite functional :)

Until later, take care!

Qtpfsgui - new version

Hi guys, Giuseppe have put together a new version of qtpfsgui, and as always, I try to keep up with the version for OSX. As I happen to be at the Apple developer conference, WWDC'07, right now, it's a great time for poking around with this stuff.

So, alas, the 1.8.9 version of qtpfsgui for OSX is out on sourceforge now. Besides that, there is not very much to say, I have not done any special mac-tweaks this time. Check the regular files for general changes.

Again, I do not provide a version with Qt built in, as I have not seen any request for that. Head over to trolltech and get Qt there if you don't have it. I understand that version 4.3 of Qt is out now, but I still put this together with the previous version. I plan to grab the new Qt and check that everything works as it should, but if someone gets ahead of me, please comment on success or failure.

The WWDC'07 keynote

This years WWDC'07 keynote is history. As always it was delivered by Steve Jobs. I have to say it was a mediocre event. The presentation was smooth enough, but Steve seems to be a bit uninspired. And with good reasons, as much of what was delivered was just a repetition of what we heard last year. No new hardware was presented, the shipping date for the "Leopard" is still october and the iPhone is not out yet.

The only new things really was that there will be a new desktop and a new finder (the file browser and management thing in OSX). Not a very big deal, mostly graphics tweaks that people like myself tend to avoid anyway. There was quite a few animated demos on stage, but notting to brag about to be honest. Sure, Leopard will be great and everything, don't get me wrong. But we know most of it already!

There was also announced that EA and id will have more games on OSX in the future, which I guess is great for people who avoid apple due to limited gaming support. And then Apple will start pushing browser to windows users, but I don't care much about that either as I use firefox anyway. It might be good for IE users, though. And it is supposed to be fast, too.

There has been some discussions on iPhone and development tools. This was but was not presented, too. What apple had to say on this is that iPhone will have a full safari engine inside, so people can do web2.0/ajax style applications that can be used on the iPhone. Which is a no-solution solution. It was not mentioned whether such applications can be downloaded and installed or have to be run from a webserver all the time. It was mentioned that such applications should get access to the phone and network services of the iPhone, but nothing specific was presented. I think this was another mediocre part of the presentation. Maybe good enough for some, but certainly not what most developers had in mind when they asked for development tools. It remains to be seen if Apple is right on this one.

What else is there to say? A large crowd was gathered as usual, more than 5000 persons we was told. And apple did the usual but very annoying marketing trick of lining people out before we could get in - had to stand in line for quite a long time. Now, I'm usually not the line-standing kind of guy, but I am still somewhat on the Norwegian timezone as I flew over only yesterday, and couldn't get much sleep after 5:30 in the morning anyway. So I get out of bed, had a shower, went to a breakfast place which was quite nice - Cafe Venue, I'll post the address later on if someone care. And then I went down to Moscone convention center. There I found a long, long, long queue of people waiting to get in. Which is only marketing of course. It was 7:30 in the morning, and a couple hundred people waited to get in as this was a rock concert or something. There where rumours around that someone was getting into the line 3 in the morning. That is simply a freakshow.

So, Apple, I have this suggestion for you for next year. If you don't have anything more to give us than we got this year. Please, just open the doors and let people walk in and get a seat, just as we usually do. No need to be so annoyingly special all the time.

Ok, that's it for now - I'm off to more presentations. While the keynote wasn't that good, I hope the other presentations will be. At least, the rest of the week will have more technical content delivered by engineers. I'm looking forward to that.

Take care!

Travelling from home to SF

As I told you already, I have left safe home for San Francisco, CA, USA, and
the WWDC'07 as well as USENIX Annual Tech in Santa Clara. Leaving home was easy
enough, as my wife drove me to the central train station in Oslo. After kissing
wife and kids godby, I entered the airport express train.

The train starts rolling, but after a few hundred meters it wants a rest. Power
is out, the crew announces. Now, this was easily fixed and after a few minutes
we are rolling again. Nevertheless, I got the feeling that this travel wasn't
supposed to be like every other travel from home to US I have done in the past.

After some 20 minutes on the train, I arrived at the airport and mentally
prepare my self for endless queus, as I assumes I have to check in at the
counter. But, hey man, turns out I can do self service check-in even when going
as far as US. Great! After a quick visit to the check-in station I am all set.
Only that the machine was out of baggage identifying tapes or what you call
them. So, that was unusual event no. 2. I was lucky bumping into some helpful
guy that fixed the baggage for me and after a line with only three others, I
was all set.

Security check at Oslo airport Gardermoen has improved a lot recently. There
was almost no queue at all and I passed through in a matter of five minutes. At
this stage I am impressed and forget all my concerns about the unusual travel.
But it is not supposed to last. Next thing coming up is a delay. The flight to
London Heatrow is 35 minutes late. There should still be enough time for the
transit at Heatrow, but we better be in the air after those 35 minutes. And we
are - the pilot even manage to get some extra speed out of the stylish Boeing
737 so we are only about 20 minutes late when we arrive at the airport of every
nightmare, London "Nightmare" Heatrow.

Everything looks just fine when we enter the terminal, but after following the
"flight connections" sign for a few minutes, I see a looong queue in front of
me. I assume that queue is something not concering me and walk by on the side.
To be sure, though, I show my ticket to some airport person and ask where to
go. You guessed it right - back at the end of that queue is where I belong. So
I line up, check the time, and start moving very slowly. Wondering why there is
such a queue - must be something unusual I think, stupid me. Clock is ticking,
I should be at the gate 13:30 and when it passed 13:00 I know for sure that I
will have to run thorugh the terminal. It's the security check of course. Don't
get me wrong, I have nothing against the security checks, I am all for safety
on board. But here they obviously squeeze everyone just using Heatrow for
connecting one international flight with another thorugh I bottle neck of only
four scanners. That is way to little. So all the hundreds of people have to
line up, sweat, become warm and angry and mad and every other silly thing. Not
me, of course, I just observe the madness. Still, I may have one or two thing
to say to the managere of "Nightmare" Heatrow. This does not cut it at all. I
hope they have something in the works. For the record, I will say to everyone:
Avoid Nightmare-Heatrow for connections if you can!

After finally getting through the checkpoint, I am a bit behind schedule as
clock has ticked passed 13:30. I start walking as fast as I can, looking for
places to check gate information and try figuring out in my head which flight I
am supposed to be on. "Flight is closing" blinks on the screens behind UA931 to
San Francisco. I walk faster and almost run and find gate 27 in terminal 3 and
it's still open. Turns out that flight is delayed to. So, thats probably
unusual thing no. 3 - only this turnes out to be helpful! I get on the plane
and stay there for 11 hours. Nothing particular interesting to say about that!

And with that I have had my share. I was prepared for a similarily long queue
at the US border check, but apparently there was mostly US citizens arriving at
this time, as there was only a very few persons in line at the non-us visitors
counters. My bag appear on the belt rather quick, and after a quick ride on the
BART metro system, I arrive at the hotel. Next thing is checking in at the
event, but that will be for another post.

Take care!

On my way to WWDC

I am taking off to WWDC right now - I'm looking forward to see what
this year will bring to the table; will some of mine or the numerous
others expectations out ther be met? Will it be good?

I will do some reporting here, if you have questions, please don't
hesitate to use the comment function! And to all of you that will also
be there, hope we can get in touch :)

Nokia E61i and Papyrus

Hi, I got some questions about the E61i and Papyrus. To be more exact, the question was if it was possible to see detailed notes on tasks and events. Today I have downloaded and installed a trial version of Papyrus for Symbian S60, v.9.1. The version of Papyrus I have installed is 1.2.13, as the latest version, 1.2.14, use some funny language when used on my E61i with Norwegian menus.

I can at least confirm that the longer notes does show up when Papyrus is used. So you guys out there who want the notes and like to use Papyrus - you can go ahead and make the purchase.

Besides that, thanks for the tip about Papyrus. It looks some much nicer than the default calendar application! I guess I have to buy it in order to test it as default calendar application (now, I have to open it each time I want to look at it). Comments are appreciated on that.

Take care,

More on FoneLink and phones

A couple of days ago, I raved about the FoneLink program from novamedia, a very slick program for transferring information between my nokia E61i and a OSX machine. After a few more days of use, I realize that iSync still has its niche - the everyday simple syncing is probably better than with iSync. Bur for transferring documents, sounds, pictures, and in general organizing the content on the phone, FoneLink is better.

After blogging about FoneLink here, I got in touch with novamedia. I obtained a bit more information from them about a few issues that I and maybe someone else wonders about.

First, the note or description on events and todos. The reason this does not appear on the E61i and similar phones is that it is not supported by the default calendar app from Nokia. We can beg Nokia to fix this, or we can maybe use something else like papyrus (which I still have not got around to evaluate). At least, FoneLink can not solve this problem.

Further, I had to more questions for the FoneLink guys. As most of you know, the smartphones from SonyEricsson has really terrible support on OSX. So my follow-up to novamedia was whether support for the smartphones (like M600i , P1 and so on) from SonyEricsson was planned. On this question I was told that it is in the works, and probably available in about 3 months time. That will be really great - maybe I can go back to my favorite smartphone :)

My other question was about combining usb and bluetooth for syncing a device with FoneLink. Usually, you just want to connect with bluetooth for the everyday syncing, but from time to time you have larger amount of data you need to transfer. Today, a device in FoneLink is a combination of the device and the connection, so my E61i over bluetooth and the same E61i over usb is two different things. This mean that I can not choose the connection to use dependent on the amount of data I need to transfer. Now, there are ways around this but it will be rather neat if it get supported out of the box. I was told that novamedia is working on this, although I did not get an estimate on when we can expect this to be available.

So much about FoneLink and the great guys at Nova Media doing this fine application.

I have another problem with my E61i - predictive text. With all the smartphones I have had the last years, I have been able to start typing a word and the application I use, whether it is email, sms, or some other text, will suggest matching words from the dictionary. This is something I just expect to be in place, so I didn't gave it a thought at all when buying the E61i. After fiddling with settings and buttons quite a few hours, and reading manuals as well, I went to google. Just to find out that there are no predictive text support on this phone. Some claim in formus and the like that you don't need this on a phone with qwerty keyboard. But they are plain wrong. The M600i from Sony Ericsson for instance, have this - and a full keyboard, and I wrote messages much faster and more comfortable on that one than I do on the E61i.

So if someone hear me - please!

And while I wait for the perfect device, I note that every small device has it strengths and weaknesses. Maybe the manufacturers do this to have people like me hunt for the perfect all the time. I have been on the search for 10 years now, and I am still searching.

For a few days my plan was to replace the Fujitsu Siemens P1510d I am writing this on with the Oqo O2. But now I read online that there seems to be some quality problems with the oqo, which gives me some doubts. The most recent device seems to be the Everun from Raon. In addition there is the new Q1 ultra umpc from Samsung which seems to be interesting, as well as the Fujitsu U8240. I doubt any of these are the perfect device, but maybe close enough that I am willing to give them a try... The big question is of course how well they can run Linux, as I am allergic to bad operating systems.

Take care, folks!

Nokia E61i and FoneLink

Today, there was a post on JKonTheRun about a product named FoneLink. This is supposed to be a better piece of software for syncing information between a Mac and a Symbian S60 based phone.

As I have both a Mac (actually, a couple of them) and the Nokia E61i, I wanted to give it a run. I grabed the demo version at the webpage. Installation was OSX-smooth as usual, and then I launched the application. And, man, this was a smooth experience. It quickly figured out which was the relevant phone among my bluetooth connections, and started collecting information after my confirmation that this was the right device to collect from. It went stright away making a backup of all the information in the phone, but it is also possible to put the backup procedure into the background to perform other tasks at the same time.

I just mess around in the application for a while. This works really smooth, and seems to be so much nicer than the iSync. If I can get this to sync my Mac and the Phone regularly whenever those are close to each other bluetooth-wise, I think this is a keeper.

For those who like to know such things - the notes in events and todos does not seems to be synced over to the phone with this application either. Have to look more carefully into that (and have not got around to test papyrus yet, as suggested in comments here).

This was just a short notice, I have to go to bed now. More on FoneLink if I buy it!

Notes on Nokia E61i

A few weeks ago I switched smartphone. The last 6 months I have used the HTC TyTN on a daily basis, and was satisfied with the hardware although I of course have a hard time with the operating system. As I already have written up something on the HTC, I don't want to go into any detail on that. But as you already know, I switched to the Nokia E61i, running the 3rd generation of the S60 system - a old and well proven operating system, but still new to me. As I now have used this phone for a few weeks, I want to write up some of my initial impressions. Just be warned, this is not a proper review. Consider it more as a random stream of thoughts.

Let us start with the conclusions! The e61i is a solid phone, with a solid operating system. So far I have had to reboot the phone just a couple of times to fix problems with some applications, but not by taking out the battery as I had to do each other day with the TyTN; only third-party applications was locked up and the phone was still functional. So reboot have only been a convenience thing. Other things on the positive side is good messaging functionality, easy access to, and well-functioning wifi system, and great selection of software due to the S60 system. So all in all I am satisfied, and will probably keep it for a while. But read on, there are quite a few things on the negative side as well. For instance, the camera is totally crap.

The S60 system

In the past I have used Windows mobile 5, Sony Ericssons Symbian/UIQ (P800i and M600i), as well as the more regular Sony Ericsson system. While these systems are quite different, the Symbian S60 can be compared to the first two. It is obvious that the S60 have been around for a while, with a lot more bugs nailed out. It feels more solid. Maybe not super-fast all the time, but it does the job. On the negative side, though, there are often too many steps to go through to complete an action. If I want to send an SMS, for instance, I have to go through 5 steps (depending on how you count) on the S60, while on the Sony Ericsson UIQ there are only about 3 steps if you want to send to someone you send to regularly. I haven't done a scientific comparison as I should as a researcher, but in general I feel I have to use more time to perform the same action on the S60 compared to the other two.

On the positive side, you can't get past the large selection of software available for the S60. Maybe comparable to WM5, and far more than what's available for the UIQ. The putty ssh-client is very usable. I also use Fring for Skype/MSN/GTalk and the Gmail application. All work very well. Also, S60 is generally better supported when it comes to sync/desktop access than the other two. While the situation in general is good for all the systems if you use Windows on your computer, the S60 is far better if you are either a linux or osx user like me.

The E61i hardware

The E61i is light, and it is slim. While the form factor is a bit unusual, it is easy to carry around either in a shirt pocket or in your jacket. I even stick it in the back of my jeans if I have to. But generally I carry it in a Krusell pouch with a belt-clip. As the weight is so low, I hardly recognize it's there.

The display is very good. It's bright in almost any light condition and have better colors than I have had on any phone in the past (and as you know, I have tested quite a few...). While the resolution is not extremely high considering the size of the screen, I have find it to be sufficient for all my needs.

When it comes to the keys, I have to say they are good. The feedback is nice - when I type messages I rarely mistype. As there are many keys on the phone, there are also room for a few shortcuts which helps out with problem I have with to many steps to perform certain actions in the S60 system. But, there is a big downside for me here. It is not comfortable typing on the phone. While the phone is wide for a phone, it is still to small to hold and thumbtype comfortable with my not so very big hands. The TyTN have the keyboard as a slide-out in "landscape" orientation. Hence the keyboard is wider, and much more comfortable. My hands starts aching even when I type moderate sized emails on the E61i, so I rarly do that. Still, if I have to type a message, the system is very capable, and works all the time. So compared to the other smartphones I have used, I have to rate this above them.

I will make the story on the camera supplied in this phone very short. Nokia had some left overs on the shelf. They put it into the E61i. Period. It's too crappy. To be honest, though, I am not sure whether it is the camera it self, or the totally crappy, horrible post processing done in the phone after a picture is captured. It seems that they sharpen every image beyond any reasonable imagination, and bump the saturation as well. Does not look good at all.

Other thoughts

The Nokia E61i is equipped with Wifi, Bluetooth, 3G/UMTS, Edge, gprs. A lot of connectivity. From time to time I am not sure which one of these is being used. Probably this is just some details in the S60 symbian system I have to figure out. An example: I open the E-mail application, and connect to my IMAP account on wireless lan in my house. I leave this running in the background, and open the webbrowser to check something. In this case I have recognized that the webbrowser from time to time use either the UMTS or the Edge connection instead of the wifi, althought wifi is already connected. I can not explain what is going on, and whether the fault is mine or Nokias. Maybe I am even mistaken... At least, there are things to be sorted out here.

The conclusion was already given above, so I stop here.

In other news, I have start looking for a replacement for my Fujitsu Siemens P1510 (which I write this on). I am looking at either the oqo O2, or some of the newer UMPCs. Fujitsu Siemens is also out with a small thingy. But I'm not in a hurry on this.

Also, I will travel to WWDC'07 and then USENIX'07 (in San Francisco and Santa Clara, respectively) in mid-june. If someone want to meet up and discuss Qtpfsgui on Mac, small devices, have a flickr-meetup, or something else - please drop me a comment!

Take care.

New version of qtpfsgui!

Hi folks, it's been a while. I haven't had to much intersting to blog about lately. I have been busy doing other things instead, like cutting down trees in my garden, compiling software, chopping trees, fixing brakes on my car, more garden stuff, on so on... Anyway:

The 1.8.8 version of qtpfsgui for Mac is out, and I have compiled a version for Mac tonight. You get it in the regular place, our at sourceforge. New with this version on OSX is that the Documentation from the Help menu in the program should work, even if you put the application bundle somewhere else than in /Applications. Giuseppe is also working on internationalization, and I have tried to get this to work on OSX as well. How sucessfully that attempt is remains to be seen. I work on Norwegian translation, by the way, but that is far from finialized.

The last few releases, I have created a package which includes the necessary Qt libs. I have not got any feedback on this, and I really do not know if it is of any use to anybody. I can continue preparing that kind of image, but I don't see the point spending that extra time if no one use it. So, the release I have created this time requires that you already have Qt installed, or that you head our to Trolltech, and grab the Qt libs there. If you want me to continue creating the image with qtpfsgui and Qt bundled, please tell me to do so!

Please, go to sourceforge and grab the new qtpfsgui!

Take care!

Nice to know - MacOSX

The print subsytem on MacOSX is simply CUPS!

For a long time I have had one simply, but nagging issue with my Mac computers - printing from the command line. But it hasn't bothered my enough to actually solve the problem. Today, however, one of our Mac converts (or at least wannabies) entered my office with the intention of insulting the Mac. He started like "I want to run acroread from the command line," remember, his background is Linux. No problem I said, you just use open -a AdobeReader.app. No, no, he goes, I just want to process some PDFs into postscript. Why do you want to do that - the Mac handle pdf quite well? And the reason was that, because we didn't knew how to print from the command line, he send jobs to printers through a Linux server. And the Linux server needs postscript.

Aha, great opportunity to solve the cli printing issue. Now, I know of course that lpr is available. Problem is, though, that if I use that from the commandline, I don't know what the names of the printers are supposed to be - the argument to the -P option. And by default, the printing system thinks everything should go to the printer in Letter format, which does not work very well with our European printers. They want A4. And I know how to change paper size to A4 in the GUI, but this will not be the default anyway. At least not when you print with lpr from the command line, should you be lucky enough to hit the right printer.

I have heard some whispering about the print subsystem just beeing cups in the past. So I just gave it a shoot, typing in http://localhost:631 in my browser. And I just goes wow, wow, wow. Because what I see is just the regular, no-frills, cups admin system. With all the printers listed. And selecting "configure printer", I have the option of changing default paper size. I can even see the names of the printer queues. So, selecting one I like to use, changing the paper size, and then try out lpr -Pprinter file.pdf, and run off to the printer. And what do I see? The file.pdf appears as it should, on A4 paper and everything is just fine.

After clicking around in the cups admin system for a few more minutes, I had the printer I like to use most set as default and the paper size set to A4 for the most important once. I also figured out that I can do a grep on the file /etc/cups/printers.conf to get the list of available printers. Looking at the names, it is quite easy to figure out the mapping from printer to queue name. The grep commando I use is this one:

sudo grep "<Printer" /etc/cups/printers.conf | awk "{print \$2}" | sed "s/>$//"

Hope this of some interest to someone out there in the void!

Take care,

Qtpfsgui 1.8.7

I have uploaded a couple of new dmg's of qtpfsgui, v. 1.8.7, to sourceforge now. The one named qtpfsgui.1.8.7.dmg contains only the program itself with core libraries. For this to work, you need to install Qt4 from trolltech. The other version, qtpfsgui.1.8.7.qt.dmg, has Qt4 bundled in, but unfortunately I am not sure how well it works. Feedback is welcome!

Take care, and have fun!

Qtpfsgui 1.8.5 with Qt bundled

Seems like there might be a problem with the qtpfsgui image that have Qt libs bundled in. When using the version without Qt bundled, and a full Qt installed, everything works fine. Using the other version (on another Mac without Qt installed globally) everything works fine until I try to save the tonemapped image. Which does not work.

So, for now, go to trolltech and get the full Qt (Get it here!), and use the qtpfsgui 1.8.5 without Qt.

I report back when I have fixed the problem!

If you need hypre on your Mac!

[This piece was originally written for the hypre support mailing list. I guess this can be of some use to people in the same situations, so I also post it here. If you don't understand what this is all about, you can visit the hypre webpage at LLNL, or you can just move on...]


Hi hypre-list,

As far as I can tell, MacOSX (Darwin) is not supported by hypre. We are however building a piece of sotware at Simula Research Lab, Norway, where we have added hypre as one of the dependenices (mainly for BoomerAMG), and since we need to support MacOSX, I went through the necessary steps for building hypre on MacOSX. I share it on this list as plain text now. If you in the future want to support Mac, and want help with testing or anything (patches?), just contact me!

I have to admit, some of my changes are a bit hack'y, my motivation was to get things going; I'll see if I can clean up things later. For reference, I am working with hypre-2.0.0 as downloaded from http://www.llnl.gov/casc/hypre/software.html in mid-april 2007.

This is how I run configure:
LDFLAGS="-framework vecLib -flat_namespace" CXX=g++-4 F77=gfortran ./configure --without-MPI --enable-shared --prefix=$HOME/software/hypre --without-fei --without-superlu --without-mli --with-blas --with-lapack


* First, I needed to add a "Darwin" section in the script src/configure, around line 9885:
---8<---
Darwin*) FFLAGS="${FFLAGS} -fno-common -fPIC"
CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -fno-common -fPIC"
CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS} -fno-common -fPIC"
BUILD_F77_SHARED="${F77} -flat_namespace -dynamiclib -undefined dynamic_lookup"
BUILD_CC_SHARED="${CC} -flat_namespace -dynamiclib -undefined dynamic_lookup"
BUILD_CXX_SHARED="${CXX} -flat_namespace -dynamiclib -undefined dynamic_lookup"
;;
---8<---

* Next problem was with multiple definitions of symbol 'final_innerprod_result', which appear as a global symbol in both src/struct_mv/struct_innerprod.c and src/struct_mv/struct_overlap_innerprod.c. To fix this, I changed the symbol to 'final_overlapinnerprod_result' in src/struct_mv/struct_overlap_innerprod.c.

* The common way to use blas and lapack on MacOSX is with the '-framework vecLib' LDFLAG. Because of this, the variables 'LAPACKLIBDIRS' and 'BLASLIBDIRS' in config/Makefile.config contains 'null' after finished configure. This is probably something that should be fixed in config/Makefile.config.in or in the configure script, but for now I just removed 'null' such that those variables read:

LAPACKLIBDIRS =
BLASLIBDIRS =

* There are some paths that seems to be hardcoded that end up in LDFLAGS in Makefile.config; after configure I have '-L/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/3.2.3' in there. On Darwin, gcc exit with an error if non-existent directories are passed in with -L flag, so this path must be removed. Also, /usr/apps/libs and /lib are in there. I removed all three in the configure script.

* On Darwin, dynamic libs should have the suffix .dylib, not .so. Unfortunately, .so is hardcoded into the hypre buildsystem. I tried to do something such that the same buildsystem could do both .so and .dylib, based on platform, but it took more effort than the hour I was willing to spend :) Renaming the compiled .so into .dylib seems to be sufficient, at least to compile and run some of the tests. So, while this is something that have to be fixed if Darwin is to be supported, it is not a showstopper.

As far as I can tell from the notes I made during my work on this, you'll have a working hypre on MacOSX after working through these steps.

Hope this can be of some help!

Qtpfsgui 1.8.5 for MacOSX

The new version of qtpfsgui, v.1.8.5, for MacOSX can now be downloaded from the qtpfsgui page at sourceforge. New with this release is that you have a choice. You can either get a small package with just the qtpfsgui program, or you can get a larger package that bundles the necessary Qt libraries. I know there has been some confusion about this in the past.

If you want to run other Qt applications as well, or you already have downloaded and installed Qt v.4 from Trolltech, you can choose the small package, names qtpfsgui.1.8.5.dmg. If you just want to run this, and don't want to care too much about dependencies you can grab qtpfsgui.1.8.5.qt.dmg.

New with this version is also that I have put the manual into the application bundle. Unfortunately, the path to the manual is hardcoded in for now, so it will only work if you place the qtpfsgui application bundle in /Applications. If you do that, you can open the manual directly from the Help menu.

For other, non-Mac related, news for the program, check out the sourceforge projectpage.

Go create some HDRs! And comments are welcome, as always!

How I get the Nokia E61i working for me

These are some notes a made while setting up the Nokia E61i phone such that it works for me.

My main requirements are:

• Beeing able to call people from my phone (!)
• Reading email, both my company imap account and GMail.
  
• Syncing events and contacts with my MacOSX computer
• Ssh from the phone
• Using phone as modem for the Mac
• Using phone as modem for my linux laptop
  
• More secondary, IRC, GTalk, MSN, etc. from the phone.
• And probably some more

During the first day, I just poked around on the phone, tried to figure out the Nokia S60 system. As I always have been a Sony Ericsson guy, this is all new to me. But fortunately quite easy to figure out. And I was of course able to call people and send SMS right away.

Email

Setting up email for my company account took me a few minutes. First time I started the email application on the phone, it asked me whether I wanted to set up an account. Sure, I did, so I went through the wizard, entering in imap and smtp server, account information and so on. After that, nothing works. Of course, I knew that our server requires SSL/TLS, but as I was not asked about security during the wizard phase, I just assumed it detected these things by it self. But it didn't. After consulting the booklet that came with the phone, I figured out where to go. After turning on SSL/TLS for both in- and outbound messages, and entering account information for our smtp server, I can send and receive messages. It even supports the concept of selecting a subset of folders on the imap server for synchronization, and actually just shows me thoses selected folders when I open the mail application. A life-saver for me. Now, I have set the phone up to automatically download email from 3 different folders, every day of the week between 16:00 and 02:00, every half hour. That should cover my requirements just fine.

Then I moved on with GMail. First, I opened the webbrowser using the WiFi connection we have at home. Entered in http://gmail.com, and on the top of the GMail page I was asked whether I want "Faster GMail for phone". Of course I want faster GMail, so I followed the link. This downloads a S60 (or maybe Java?) application that works quite nice on the E61i. So far I have to select the internet connection to use for the GMail application each time I start it, but I guess this is something that can be adjusted.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is of course working flawlessly on this device. New to me was that I had to go into the Bluetooth system after pairing a device to mark it as an authorized device. On devices I have had in the past, this was a question during the pairing phase. But as soon as I figured this out, it really doesn't matter - just different ways of doing things.

After sending a few pictures to the desktop Mac just to see that Bluetooth is working, I proceed to the syncing issue. Actually, I attached the usb-phone cable first, and started iSync, but scan for new device in iSync does not find the phone. So I went to goole instead, and found this page at Nokia where it is possible to download an iSync plugin for many Nokia phones, the E61i beeing among them. As told on that page, I closed iSync, installed the plugin. Then I used the "Setup new Bluetooth device" in the Bluetooth system on the Mac, and put the phone in discoverable mode. The phone was detected just fine, and I had the option of selecting it for iSync use and as a modem. I selected both. Now iSync started up in the configure new device mode, with some reasonable defaults. I adjusted which calendars in iCal to synchronize with the phone and did a few other adjustments. Then I pressed the "Sync Devices" button in iSync, and suddenly all my events and all my contacts are on the phone. Quite nice.

As I selected the phone for use as a modem during the Bluetooth setup, that is probably ok already, but it remains to be tested.

Other connectivity from the phone

Ssh from the phone is coverd by installing PuTTY for S60. As stated on the s2putty page right now, I went for the "unofficial build" of PuTTY, as some nasty bugs on v.3 of S60 have been clean up in some recent builds. This PuTTY works very well. Actually, I went to the s2putty page using the browser on the phone on my WiFi connection, dowloaded a zip with the application. Within a minute, it was downloaded, installed, and running. As the E61i have a full keyboard, even with a Ctrl key, I can connect to a linux server at work, attaching a screen I have running, and instantly chat on irc channels and read news. And do all sorts of other things I regularly do in a shell.

As I want to be able to use Skype, GTalk and maybe even MSN from the phone, I also installed fring. The installation and getting started part is very nicely covered on that webpage, so I want say anything more about it. Just go there, type in the required information. You will then get a text message with download instruction, and in just a few minutes you have all the internet-phone and chat connectivity you ever want.

From time to time I may want to IRC directly from the phone. To cover this, I installed mIRGGI. It just works. Probably, I will usually use PuTTY, and the screen on my linux server, if I need to use IRC, but you'll never know. It is nice to have.

As you can see, most things are comming along quite nice. I guess there will be annoying things creeping up when I dig deeper down, but so far I am happy with the E61i. I will get back with a review on how it works for me in the daily life after I have used it for a week or two.

Stay tuned, and take care!

Already there!

My new phone showed up today! Stay tuned for more information.

Have to move on...

It feels like it was yesterday I bought the HTC TyTN. Of course it was not, it was back in November 2006 according to the archives in this very blog. Back then I threw out the Sony Ericsson M600 due to lack of support for MacOSX, and bad support for Linux too. Although I have been quite happy with the TyTN during these months, there are some issues of course.

First it is the OS. I have never had a phone in the past I need to reboot that often. Sorry Microsoft. In the past I just told everyone that you are bad, and that people should choose something else (Linux, MacOSX, Symbian, Whatever). Now that I have actually used a Windows Mobile for some months, I can put so more momentum into those statements. Sure, WM6 will fix all the problems. Right, I don't believe it. And there are no WM6 upgrade for TyTN out there yet. When the phone is working it is quite ok, though. Even though I can not get the Imap client to just show me subscribed folders, and the camera freeze quite often (easily fixed with a reboot...), I can read and send messages, receive and call contacts and listen to music, snapping photos (as you can see over at my photoblog) and browsing web quite well. So the TyTN is not that bad. And the full keyboard is a life saver, the best I have ever had on phone or pda so far. Based on all the nice things with the phone, I can actually live with the bad OS, and keep it.

It is the second problem that make me switching again. The hardware is not holding up much longer. Every other time I switch the phone out of standby now, the screen just goes white. Turning on and off again usually fix the problems, but from time to time I also need to pull out the keyboard and push it back in again. Then there are the keys on the front. Earlier I could scroll with the directional buttons and press the mid button to select. But this does not work so well any more. Some of the other keys have problems as well. I suspect the reason to be the connection between the bottom "keyboard" part and the upper "display" part. There must be some weakness in the design there. Maybe this can be fixed by sending the phone off to support, but in the long run I can't live with this stability. When I get a new phone probably check out what support can do for me - if they can fix the problem on the TyTN I'll probably keep it as a backup; and for use on HSDPA networks...

The big question is then - where should I go now? Back to the SE M600i is not an option, as it is still not supported very well on MacOSX. That throws out the rest of the SE smartphones as well. And I do not want a Microsoft WM5 or WM6 device. That rules out most of the other smartphones on the market, at least with a qwerty keyboard, which is one of my requirements. And as you all know, iPhone is not out yet. And it will not have a real keyboard anyway. But Nokia have something - the revised version E61i which has a full keyboard, all the connectivity I need but the HSDPA, which is not that important yet anyway, since it is in general not available. MacOSX support also seems to be quite ok for Nokia S60 phones, and there are ssh client software available.

I have therefore ordered a Nokia E61i today. As it is on stock, it should appear already tomorrow or on monday. A report will appear here shortly after that.

So long folks, take care.

If you ever make my mistakes!

Recently, I created a quick and dirty webapplication using Turbogears and SQLObject. During the initial phase, I had some problems with unicode strings, but figured out that I could use UnicodeCol in SQLObject, and append '?sqlobject_encoding=latin1' to the dburi setting for the turbogears project.

Later on, a new requirement for the project came up. Someone had to be able to download a file with infomation in an excel file. From before I had created excel files from mysql data in PHP and Perl using the SpreadSheet::Writer module (and the PHP equivalent). I just assumed this to be a walk in the park, recreating the same functionallity in my turbogears site. As you might expect (or even know), I was wrong. To this date, I can not find the same or a similar well-working module for Python. As an old (not that old really) Perl hacker, I have at least some amounts of the right lazyness. I can of course just reuse my old PHP solution, using some suitable rewrite rules in the apache2 config for the turbogears site. And this is where my problems begin. Getting things up and running is easy enough, we are only talking reading mysql data here, and figuring out the tables in mysql that the SQLObject based model is using is simple. But, and this was the hard part, I figured out that I had done something stupied. The mysql-tables is actually latin1, as I have told SQLObject in the dburi setting. But the texts inside these latin1 tables is encoded by Python in some unicode form, using latin1 characters. Which mean that when I read mysql data in PHP and feed into an excel file, I don't get the right thing. Using default values, I get garbage. Trying to set either latin1, iso-8859-1, or utf-8 as character set for the excel file also yields garbage.

Somehow, I have to translate the encoded unicode strings (by Python) into something that at least works in PHP, which in the next step can be put into an excel file and still be readable.

And then, by accident, I stumbled upon the solution. There is a function in PHP called utf8_decode. It's purpose is to convert a iso-8859-1 encoded unicode-string into single-byte iso-8859-1. Which happens to be exactly what I was looking for.

It took me a couple of hours of googling and experimenting before I ended up there. Now that I know the solution the whole thing is of course obvious. But if you make the same mistakes as me, you may like to read this, and save a few hours.

The right solution, of course, is to use utf-8 all the way. If the unicode data have been stored in unicode mysql tables as unicode, the whole thing should have worked right out of the box. So doing that may save you from the whole problem. Good luck!

Truffet av en bil!

For all my faithful english readers. This is about the crach I had today. On my motorcycle. And I keep it in Norwegian this time. Sorry. You can just learn Norwegian, though. Right.

På vei hjem fra jobb i dag skjedde det som ikke skal skje. Jeg ble truffet. Truffet ganske så brutalt. Rett bakfra. Litt bakgrunns-informasjon er nok på sin plass. Jeg kjører motorsykkel. Og som alle andre motorsyklister liker jeg veldig dårlig at noen
får lyst til å kjøre i meg. Det kan nemlig gjøre vondt. Veldig vondt. Vondt for sykkelen, og vondt for meg. En sykkel skal kjøres når det er vår, den skal kjøres når det er sommer, og den skal kjøres når det er høst. Den skal ikke stå på verkstedet. Når den får vondt må den på verkstedet. Derfor liker vi veldig dårlig at den får vondt.
Og så var det føreren da. Han får også vondt. Ryggen verker, er øm og er stiv. Han får slenge innpå noen piller som legen har gitt. Så får han ta en tur på røntgenstua. Der sier de forhåpentligvis at alt er bra. Men om det skulle bli plager i etterkant er det fint å ha noen papirer å vise frem, om at man ble undersøkt. Forsikringsselskapene vil nok like det.

Nå lurer du veldig på hva som egentlig skjedde. Denne syklisten er for lite EBS. Det var det som skjedde. Hadde han vært skikkelig EBS hadde han nok kjørt på det grøde lyset. Men han var rolig idag, var på vei hjem fra jobb. Solen skinte, det var vakkert vær å kjøre i, og han stresset ikke. Utover Mosseveien. Der hvor Ljabruveien tar av er det et lyskryss. Han kjører her hver dag, så han vet det. Før han kommer til lyskrysset møter han noen blinkende oransje lys. De blinker ikke hver dag, bare av og til. Og idag gjør de det. Lyskrysset like der fremme, rundt svingen, er i ferd med å skifte fra grønt til rødt. Han bremser. På høyre side av veien står det noen fotgjengere. De vil over, og har trykket på knappen. Motorsyklisten gløtter i speilet, ingen der, bremser greit raskt ned, og stopper. Beina settes i bakken. Da hviner det, før det smeller, før han ligger der. Hva skjedde, tenker han. Setter seg fortumlet opp, ser på sykkelen som ligger slengt. Glass rundt omkring. En bil veldig nær. En fin bil er det, men ikke nå lengre. Sykkelen var også fin, men ikke nå lengre den heller. Ikke starter den engang. Og skjermen bak og setedelen er ødelagt. Er hele sykkelen blitt skjev? Det kan se sånn ut, men det gjenstår å se. Og hva med han bilføreren da? Så han ikke lyset? Nei, han gjorde vist ikke det. Han så noe annet, eller satt i andre tanker og så ingen ting. Han så ihvertfall ikke den sinna Hornet'en som sto der, med en not-EBS som tar seg bryet med å stoppe for rødt lys, oppå. Sånt kan skje en vakker vår dag.

Så nå sitter jeg her da. Sykkelen er satt på verkstedet. Der har de vår-kjør med vår-puss av syklene til alle de som er alt for sent ute. 3-4uker sa han, det vil det minst ta før han kan begynne på min. Så der ryker April. Kanskje litt av Mai også. Ikke rart sykkelen er lei seg, den vil jo være der ute på veien. Der det skjer. Ikke stå inne i en mørk garasje.

Mens sykkelen står inne skal nok jeg skaffe seg ryggskinne. Det hadde jeg nemling ikke. Jeg hadde ryggsekk med en Macbook Pro oppi, men det er dumt å la den være ryggskinne for mange ganger. Kanskje oppgradere forsikringen litt også, det var vist ikke noe veihjelp med der. Og så må jeg vel ringe med forsikringsselskapet og mase om oppgjør, sende regninger for bilberging, konsultasjoner og medisiner. Og håpe at alt går glatt. Tross alt sto jeg stille på rødt lys, så det skulle være enkelt for dem dette. Håper jeg.

Det var dagens historie. Jeg får komme tilbake til saken når jeg vet noe mer. Om sykkelen som står der i den mørke garasjen. Om forsikringen. Om skrotten min, om den er like hel og fin, bare den får slappet av litt. Og om bilisten, stakkars, som fikk ødelagt sin fine bil. En spesiell bil var det. Jeg kan ikke si mye om den, det blir alt for identifiserende. I guttedagene var det en slags drømmebil det der, bare synd at jeg skulle stifte bekjentskap med den på nært hold på den måten. Men jeg er jo ikke noen guttunge lengre heller, og tross alt var det bare et bur. Som alle andre bur.

Programming GPU!

I'm attending a short introductory course on parallel programming on graphics processors (GPGPU) today. There is a writeup of some of the stuff I learned over at my tumbler-page.I keep it over at tumblr as it needs to be cleaned up a lot to make it reasonably interesting for other people. But if you read and think like me you may find it interesting!

If I ever do some real GPGPU my self, I may write up something here :)

iPhone release date

As reported "all over" the net now, Apple will go public with iPhone on 11. June. And that is not a coincidence, as that's the same day Apples developer conference WWDC starts.

And guess what - I ordered my tickets for WWDC yesterday - I will be there in the middle of the buzz, and report back right here on the blog on what's going on. I also figured out that Usenix Annual Tech will be the following week in Santa Clara. It is high time I go to the Annual Tech, so I will probably rent a car and drive down there, at least for a few days.

I'm looking forward to it already - it is always nice to be in San Francisco.

Btw, I don't think I will buy an iPhone. Really. It's probably not usable over here in Norway anyway, and it will lack a few things I really need. We'll see what happens if I get to hold it in my hands....

On SQLObject

I have recently used SQLObject in a few projects. My first encounter of SQLObject was as a component of TurboGears, a framework for creating web sites. But I soon realized that SQLObject can be quite handy on its own.

What is SQLObject then, really. I don't want to do a full tutorial on SQLObject, so please head over to the SQLObject website to familiarize yourself with it. In short, it is a object oriented wrapper to SQL databases, for Python. You can freely choose among several different backends, like SQLite, Mysql, Postgres, and so forth, and most of the details of the particular backend you use will be hidden within SQLObject. If you want to create a table with SQLObject you simply say

class MyTable(SQLObject):
name = UnicodeCol()
date = DateCol()

(assuming you have done from SQLObject import *, which you of course have not). SQLObject takes care of all the SQL woodoo, and you can go ahead saying things like

mt = MyTable(name="someday",date="2007-03-28")

To get rid of the entry again, you just say

mt.destroySelf()

In addition to get rid of the object within your Python code, this also removes the corresponding row in the table on the sql server.

So far all good, and quite stright forward. Next, you want one-to-many relations, or maybe many-to-many relations. No problem, SQLObject can handle those as well, using MultipleJoin or RelatedJoin, together with ForeignKey. Assume that you wants a many-to-many relation between the MyTable above, and some other table:

class FooTable(SQLObject):
 name = UnicodeCol(alternateID=True, length=50)
 mytables = RelatedJoin('MyTable')

To get symmetric behaviour, you also wants

  foos = RelatedJoin('FooTable')

inside MyTable. With this setting, you can still use destroySelf(), and SQLObject figures out the right thing. So, that was many-to-many relations.

Now, I had a one-to-many relation in my code, like this:

class Foo(SQLObject):
 name = UnicodeCol(alternateID=True, length=30)
 mybar = ForeignKey('Bar')

class Bar(SQLObject):
 name = UnicodeCol(alternateID=True, length=30)
 foos = MultipleJoin('Foo')

So, this is a one-to-many relation, as Bar may have many Foo's, but Foo only link to one Bar. Then I did something like:

b = Bar.byName('mybar')
b.destroySelf()

Only to discover that I got errors next time I tried to do anything with the Foo's. Reason was that there was Foo's still linked to the Bar I destroyed. Thinking about it, this make perfectly sense. It also shows that SQLObject is not perfect in some sense. It does what you tell it to do, even when that is evil. This can be both good and bad, depending on how you look at it. Fortunately, the fix is quite easy:

if len(b.foos) > 0:
 print "There are still Foo's linked to this Bar"

Then of course more lines, if you want to deal with it in code - like relinking the Foos to other Bars, or just leave the user with that message - probably followed by some raise to signal an exception.

If you go out there search the blogs, you will find people telling you that SQLObject is not good. They are probably right. But to me, it felt just right from the very beginning. When I dig deeper into it, I will probably complain too. But so far I am happy. Nevertheless, I see that something called SQLAlchemy is mentioned together with turbogears now, and I guess SQLAlchemy is a replacement for SQLObject. I have to check that out, maybe it is even better. Until then, I stick with SQLObject, at least for non-turbogears apps, because I think it does its jobb very well.

Take care folks, and keep that Python code flowing from your hands.

Could it be a favourite?

Now, this is something. Spotted this over at Gizmodo today:

HTC Shift is the UMPC for UMPC Haters - Gizmodo: "HTC Shift is the UMPC for UMPC Haters



It surprises even ourselves when we say that HTC's Shift should be the UMPC device that makes us—who were mild on UMPCs before—a fan of the platform. Instead of using a split keyboard or a *shudder* on-screen circle pad, the Shift makes like the Advantage with its sliding and flipping screen. With the input problem solved, you can really enjoy the 7-inch touchscreen, 30GB hard drive, Tri-Band UMTS/HSDPA, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, and Windows Vista."

Look at those specs! With a 7" screen, this shouldn't be far from my PictureBook in size, which I have blogged about earlier - go search if you wonder what that's all about. Size should be just right for an ultraportable, the built in connectivity looks like what I have missed on all my small computers (except the HTC TyTN) so far. And the ability to run Vista probably make it possible to run a real OS as well, like linux. And the device even have a nice look.

I am so close to order a Flipstart as soon as that will be possible, as I really need a modern small computer. But this looks much more like what I am after.

Q3 of 2007 is ETA. That's way into the future. Can I wait, or do I need something in between?

Here we go again

What should I say - you know the drill now. It's a new version of qtpfsgui out. The upstream maint. working really hard, so I have to keep up. So, v.1.8.3 of qtpfsgui for mac is out. This time on sourceforge, where it really should be. But sourceforge is a crazy system, I think I did it right, but it is hard to tell.

If sourceforge does not work for you, you may also grab qtpfsgui at my other site

Take care!

An updated dmg of qtpfsgui 1.8.2

I recompiled the qtpfsgui v.1.8.2 today, with debugging info turned off; that is enabled Release mode in Xcode. I also added the icon used on the Linux version, such that it shows up in Finder and Dock. Enabling release mode actually reduced the size of the binary to 1/4 of the original size . I was quite suprised that the difference was that big. The program even feel a lot more snappy.

So, reminder to self: Turn off all the debugging before I throw apps at folks, at least if I don't want them to debug for me!

Go grab from at the usual place. I see if I can get it up on sourceforge as well. But I also realized that 1.8.3 of the app is already out, so there will probably be another update on this before I can call it a day :-)

Take care folks, and let the HDR flow from your Macs!

Flickr: Popular cameras

Flickr: Camera Finder: "Most Popular Cameras in the Flickr Community
% of members

* Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT
* Nikon D50
* Canon EOS 20D
* Nikon D70
* Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi"




Flickr shows this graphics on their site in the popular cameras section. I think it is in particular interesting to observe the trends of the XT compared to the XTi. When XTi first is out, the curves for XT and XTi continue increasing - XT owners keep their XT and discusses with spouse about switching gears. Flickr attract a few of the new XTi owners. Then suddenly the XT curve starts dropping almost with the same rate as XTi increases; XT owners have made up their mind, or convinced the spouse - lets go for the new stuff. The decrease in XT isn't as fast as the increase in XTi in this period, as some of the new XTi flickr memebers keeps the XT around because it still works, and they are more familiar with it. After a while, this stabilize - some XT owners think XT is good enough, some thinks the new XTi isn't good enough and decide to wait for the next one, some keeps both, etc...

It is also interesting to see that this whole story is completely decoupled from the other cameras, like the Nicons and Canon 2oD/30D. Different camps.

Now, what about me? I (or my wallet (or my spouse)) have decided that I wait until the next one. Really, I want the 40D i guess, whatever that will be. I presume EF-S mount (x1.6 crop), DigicIII, better high-iso/noise ratio, etc. But I'm not sure what my wallet (or my spouse) decide.

That's enough for todays observation. Take care, folks!

New version of qtpfsgui!

Hi there,

Giuseppe Rota has released a new version of qtpfsgui over at sourceforge, it's now at version 1.8.2. I have compiled an universal binary, but have not packaged it up yet. Stay tuned, it will appear here, and hopefully at sourceforge as well, tomorrow. For now, adventurous people can grab a zip-file with the app.

The problems with my 1.8.1 on PowerPC was presumable due to some alignment problem, and should be fixed in this version. For those of you who know what I'm taking about, I'm happy to get some reports!

Update 19.03: One user reports that the colorproblem on PowerPC with the 1.8.1 version is fixed (by upstream maintainer, Guiseppe Rota) in this version.

Second update 19.03: The dmg for v.1.8.2 is now up at one of my other places. There seems to be a problem with sourceforge tonight, but as soon as that is sorted out I will make this as a release there. Future releases of the MacOSX version of qtpfsgui will probably only be at sourceforge, but I will continue to comment on it here.

Python, flickr, and Unicode

I found a script the other day, for generating a wallpaper based on images from flickr. In its original form, the script expected one or more tags as argument and get a number of random pictures from flickr that have these tags. I wanted to make it a bit more interesting, so I looked at API at flickr to see what is available, and discovered the getHotList method. I added this method to the python wrapper of the flickr api I am using (one of those listed under Python at the site), and changed the logic slightly to fetch the 3 most popular tags during the last day if no tags are given as argument.

And now comes the interesting thing. The getHotList gives you tags in unicode, looking like u'mus\xe9edelelys\xe9e' (one of the popular tags today). But when this tag is fed into flickr.photos.search to retrive urls for some images, an exception is thrown, as the method can not use this tag format. More or less obviously, it needs to be on an urlencoded form, as we are communicating through http. Reading documentation here and there, I figured out that unicode was expected, but more on an ascii form. The tag mentioned here should look like 'mus%C3%A9edelelys%C3%A9e'. After quite a few minutes with google, I figured out a possible solution:

tag = urllib.quote(tag.encode('utf-8'))

Looks kind of funny to me, but it works.

Lesson learned: Unicode is not unicode is not unicode.

Maybe I should reconsider

I haven't bother to look very close into the 802.11n topic. As all of you know, we have for some time now been able go to our store and buy Draft-n equipment. That is supposed to be hardware implementing what is now know as the draft 802.11n specification; the new fast Wireless network. And further supposed to be easy upgradeable or cooperative with final Draft-n (or just -n) hardware.

My position on this up to now has been to not buy Draft-n stuff, because of 1) can I be sure it will actually work with final-stuff, 2) there isn't much of client support yet, and 3) I expect the final stuff to be just around the corner. I truly belived that, until I read over at extremetech today:

Draft 2 of 802.11n Standard Sails Through: "Following those changes, Draft 3.0 is expected to emerge in late 2007 and gain approval by early 2008. The IEEE says Draft 3.0 will, for all intents and purposes, be the 'final 802.11n' in all but name, and that the final spec is now expected in April 2009."

April 2009! That's not just around the corner. I'm not sure I can wait that long. At least that is a problem if we want to go for VoIP on WiFi at work. Not that we are seriously considering that at the moment, but it is really something I like to be able to do not very far into the future. I probably have to go back to the place, which I do not know where are, where I can think long and uninterrupted thoughts, figuring out what is the best thing to do. Should we go draft-n now? Should we go draft-n when it is really Draft-2.0-n or is it best just waiting.

Besides, draft-n is popping in on clients all over the place now. Apple have it, thinkpad-which-we-dont-like-after-lenovo-takeover seems to have some new models with it in the pipe, Dell have cards, Engadget have reported on Asus laptops with it, which we do love more than lenovo these days. And the list will go on and on, and I do not want to be left out in the slow and cold dark.

That was just a few thoughts an evening in the middle of march.

Take care, folks!