2008.06.27

Negroponte Unveils an OLPC Laptop E-Book

Negroponte of OLPC fame, unveils the 2nd Generation OLPC Laptop, which is an E-Book. I'm not sure I'll get one (or even if I'll be allowed to buy one 1), but I like the idea. I'm still quite happy using my Gemstar (RCA) REB 1100 for all of my e-book needs.

While I like what the OLPC organization has done and continues to accomplish, there are a couple sticking points for me. First, their laptop is very under powered by today's standards. Although that is probably fine for their intended audience, it does make me not want to own one myself. Plus if you use it as intended, you're using their SUGAR interface which is new and limited — in the sense that you can only run applications specifically designed to run under SUGAR.

Some great things have come out of the OLPC project. They were very innovative with the display technology, which requires a lot less energy to power than normal laptop screens. Also, their mesh network concept seems like a good idea.

On a bad note, they've recently decided to support Windows on the OLPC devices, which I think is a very bad idea. A main point of the OLPC project was to foster openness and freedom, two ideals that Windows does not support — at least from a technical perspective.

On the e-book topic, researchers at Maryland and Berkeley Universities have created an interesting e-book reader that lets you flip the pages. That's a feature I don't think I need or want, but it's interesting.

1. The original OLPC laptop cannot be bought directly. You may buy them for children in other countries, or donate to the project only.

Dew knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl mistakes.

2008.06.23

Purity Comic

Another great entry from xkcd. I remember a real version of this science scale presented to me in college, but the professor labeled the sciences on the left as weak sciences and the ones on the right as strong sciences. It seems that Engineering and Computer Science have been left off — on purpose I suppose, since they would be pretty close to Mathematics and thus ruin the joke.

Change is the essential process of all existence.

- Spock, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", stardate 5730.2

2008.01.29

How to Get Started Learning Emacs

I do realize that I'm probably quite biased on the topic of editors, but be that as it may, Emacs is simply the best editor, IDE, environment, platform, lifestyle, etc. there is. And it's high time you learned how to use it.

First a quick aside... I used vi and vim for 10 years or so before I finally decided to bite the bullet and take the time to learn Emacs. It probably took me 6 months of playing with Emacs to really get comfortable with it. Hopefully these suggestions will help lessen that amount of time for others.

I'm assuming that you can figure out how to find and install Emacs for your system. You may read how to obtain Emacs from the GNU Emacs site.

...

Here are some good sites for more information about Emacs:

The problem with the GNU coding standards is they ASSUME that everyone in the world uses emacs. If that were the case, free software would die because we would all have wrist problems like RMS by now and no longer be able to code.

- Knghtbrd

2007.12.25

ASUS EEE Sub-Notebook PC

ASUS makes this pretty cool looking sub-notebook PC called EEE PC. Even though this computer has been out for a while, I just recently learned of its existence. It seems like a good competitor to the OLPC.

It has a 900MHz Intel CPU, either 256MB, 512MB, or 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and either a 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB flash drive depending on the model. They all have a 7 inch screen with 800x480 resolution and built in 802.11g wireless. With no moving parts for the hard disk, this PC should be very quiet.

It comes installed with a customized version of Xandros Linux which can be updated from Debian repositories. It can also run Windows XP, which can be purchased for $40. The default install boots in (a very impressive by today's standards) 15 seconds.

Even though the price range was supposed to be in the $200 to $300 range, it seems that the middle range models are selling for around $400 at Amazon and Best Buy.

WikiPedia has more information and here are some reviews that go into more details about the device:

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

- Bilbo Baggins [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Fellowship of the Ring"]

2007.12.11

Android Software Development Kit

Google along with The Open Handset Alliance has released their very cool software stack for mobile phones. There is a lot of hype behind this project and a lot of people think it will be the next big thing for mobile phones. Personally, I'm very excited for the future of mobile phones as they go away from being a closed and tightly controlled environment to an open one.

Here are a few videos introducing Android:

If you are interested in programming for the Android platform it is very easy to get started. Download the SDK and follow the instructions. I recommend using Eclipse with the Android Plug-in. It comes with some example applications that are interesting to look at.

Here are some videos that give a technical overview and a programming example:

I've mentioned the OpenMoko and Qtopia Greenphone projects before, which have similar goals, but lack the backing and hype that Android has.

I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say "Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?"

- Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

2007.10.26

Exploits of a Mom Comic

As a database developer I found this comic to be hilarious. It was also a good excuse to mention the very funny (at least to geeks) comic strip xkcd.

Some other notables:

Today is the last day of your life so far.

2007.10.21

Rockbox Open Source Jukebox Firmware

After hearing me complain about Apple's move to deliberately block non approved software from interfacing with their iPods, a friend/coworker of mine recommended I try running Rockbox on my iPod Photo. So about a week ago I installed it and gave it a try.

It was easy enough to install, although I couldn't get the RockboxUtilityQt installer to work. I followed the directions on installing manually from Linux, copied the files to my iPod's root directory, ran the ipodpatcher program to install the new boot loader, then rebooted my iPod.

I found Rockbox intuitive to use, and so far everything just works as I would expect. It has different font themes including one that looks like the original iPod font. It plays music very well, has play lists, and a bunch of fun games. It supports over 15 codecs, including MP3, Ogg, AAC, WMA, Real Audio, etc. Also, it coexists with the normal iPod firmware, so you can switch back at boot time if you like.

I haven't played around with the play lists yet so I don't know how they compare with Apple's Smart Play Lists that I've become addicted to. One nice feature is that you can create play lists and name them on the iPod itself.

There are many features that improve upon the regular iPod firmware. For example, the volume has more range and goes a lot louder. The buttons have more functionality — combinations as well as long presses do different things.

I have noticed one thing that might be a show-stopper for me... battery life is awful when running Rockbox. However, this is a known issue and a fix is in the works.

CNET has a nice write-up of Rockbox.

Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

- Steve Jobs

2007.09.27

Qtopia Greenphone from Trolltech

I just read this article in Linux Journal about Trolltech's new Greenphone and the Qtopia SDK it comes with. It looks like yet another Linux based cell phone is coming on-line. This can only be good for the Linux community trying to have cell phone options and compete in a cell phone world of corporate control and commodity hardware. linux.com also has an article about the phone.

It looks like Trolltech is only targeting developers for the time being since you can only buy the phone with the SDK. You may choose from the Professional, Light, or Community (GPL) versions. With prices ranging from $695 and up.

The specs include a Marvell PXA270 312MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, 128MB Flash, 320x240 QVGA touch color screen, Mini-SD card slot, Tri-band GSM, Bluetooth, and a 1.3 mega-pixel camera, with Qtopia running on Linux kernel 2.4.19.

Even though the Greenphone looks pretty sexy, it's pricy for what you get. Plus after reading some of the reviews it seems to have some hardware issues. I think I'll stick with my plans to get an OpenMoko device for now.

Agent Gates: I hate this place. This GNU. This open source. This license, whatever you want to call it. I can't stand it any longer. It's the free software, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your GPL. And every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.

— fishbonez

2007.09.11

Basics of the Unix Philosophy

Even though the title of this entry is Unix Philosophy, every programmer needs to read this if they are not familiar with it already. A while back I read a great book called The Art of UNIX Programming which may be read free online or purchased in paperback form. While the whole book is good and relevant for any programmer, one section really stood out in my mind.

In chapter 1 there is a section called Basics of the Unix Philosophy that lists a few different versions of programming rules by different authors. I feel that each of the lists are valid and should be considered by any software developer.

The first one is from "Doug McIlroy, the inventor of Unix pipes and one of the founders of the Unix tradition": 1

1. Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

2. Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don't clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don't insist on interactive input.

3. Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don't hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.

4. Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you've finished using them.

These rules were also summarized as: 2

This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

The next list of rules is from "Rob Pike, who became one of the great masters of C": 3

1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is.

2. Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.

3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)

4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.

5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

6. There is no Rule 6.

"Ken Thompson, the man who designed and implemented the first Unix" adds:

When in doubt, use brute force.

Finally, the author, Eric S. Raymond, offers the following rules: 4

1. Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.

2. Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.

3. Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.

4. Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.

5. Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.

6. Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.

7. Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.

8. Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.

9. Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust.

10. Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.

11. Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.

12. Rule of Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.

13. Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.

14. Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.

15. Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.

16. Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for "one true way".

17. Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.

Even though all of the rules are important some of the ones that have helped me a lot when programming are: (1) modularize your code and (2) write clean obvious code, or if you can't, make sure you document it well.

Rules that I see a lot of commercial programs fail to adhere to are: (10) they don't do what you expect them to do (like forget your preferences every time you upgrade) and (11) annoy you with pop-up dialog boxes when everything is fine (Success! Press OK to continue.). These issues often occur in Windows applications, however, I'm now noticing some KDE/GNOME applications that do the same thing.

Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity.

— Dennis Ritchie

1. The Bell System Technical Journal. Bell Laboratories. M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson, and B. A. Unix Time-Sharing System. 1978. 57 (6,part2). p.1902.

2. Peter H. Salus. A Quarter-Century of Unix. Addison-Wesley. 1994. ISBN 0-201-54777-5.

3. Rob Pike. Notes on Programming in C.

4. Eric Steven Raymond. The Art of Unix Programming. Addison-Wesley. 2003. ISBN 0-131-42901-9. (ch1s6).

2007.08.27

Human Sized Origami House

I just stumbled upon this and thought it was pretty cool (even though it's a few years old). These guys made a one room house out of paper origami. This video shows their progress as they worked on it. I'm not sure I have that kind of patience.

Duct tape is like 'The Force'. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.