Laptop goodies wish list

Lately I’ve been discussing with some friends what kind of new features the next generation of laptops will bring.
Not things like more memory or huge disks, that is a given, but things would make the same kind of impact as the DVD-recorder or the integrated Wi-Fi or Bluetooth did.
Opinions are hard to give since we really can’t foresee how things will change. One year ago (more or less) it was more or less apparent that the main revolution would be wireless ubiquity, but now we are a bit hard-pressed to come up with the next killer tech.

But we did come up with some things, even if they already exist in one way or another.
And one of the things I see coming (and would rather enjoy myself to tell the truth) would be built-in cameras with decent image quality in every laptop. Not the kind you use to take pictures of your surroundings but a fixed camera that points straight at the user and that would be used in video-conference (much like the integrated microphone that most laptops have nowadays).
I know that some of Sony’s Vaios laptops have had this for years, but I am talking mass-market here and the Vaio, sexy as it is, is still a niche-market product.
Now the funny part of it is that we had this conversations oh, a week or two ago and today I got pointed at this piece of news which comes along to prove that we weren’t all that off the mark.
Very nice. I wonder how long until Apple starts integrating something like this on their excellent laptops? Probably ages I would guess…

Oh well, good things loom ahead of us.

Now the other feature I would love to have would be for my laptop to have a built-in GPS receiver. Yes, I know, probably not much market for it so not much chance of it happening, but still I would rather like it.

Validation

The easy part is done.
The main pages of all the components already validate on both the HTML and the CSS validators.
So now everything that doesn’t go according to plan must really be the fault of the browser, right? Heh… :-)

The changes involved where somewhat substantial, I really missed the part of the “id” being unique and the “class” being a “common” “id”. Obvious, right? duh!
But the interestingly surprising part was that even though they where substantial they weren’t all that hard to do.
Lets hear it for well structured code!

Tomorrow I’ll start changing parts of the design to a table-based one. It kind-a breaks my heart to have to do this, but I guess I have no choice. Well, not one that would be easy enough anyway.

Making a copy of an audio CD on my iBook.

Today, for the first time, I had to duplicate an audio CD on my iBook.
My server’s CD writer has been shot for quite some time now and I haven’t yet had the need to do this kind of thing so I had no idea how to go about it.
Well, obviously I knew I could use cdda2wav and cdrecord just like on the Linux server, but I knew there had to be a way to do it which was more Mac-oriented (i.e. a mouse-engineering approach).
It turns out there is such a way but, contrary to what I’ve come to expect from this platform, it is not all that obvious, it doesn’t even involve the Disk Utility, but instead iTunes and some preferences tweaking.
I guess they don’t like people duplicating disks, but I don’t like using my original discs on the car stereo either…

So I googled for it and I came up with one page that explained how to do it in several ways, including the good old-fashioned mouse-engineering way.

Since the page is rather long and contains loads of other stuff I’ll summarize it here for future reference:

• Insert the original disk on the drive and either wait for iTunes to open automatically or fire it up yourself;
• Open the preferences page of iTunes and on the Importing pane choose “Import Using: AIFF Encoder”;
• Still in the preferences go to the Burning pane and choose “Disk Format: Audio CD”, “Gap Between Songs: none” and de-select “Use Sound Check”;
• Import the CD in the usual way;
• Insert the blank CD on the drive;
• Burn the CD on the usual way;
• Delete the songs from iTunes and if you really want them on your Mac import them again with your preferred encoder which probably compresses them and doesn’t waste so much space.

This procedure is a bit more detailed than the one on the page I mentioned earlier and it does work for me.
You get an identical copy of the CD that’s even recognizable on CDDB.

Surprise, surprise, Internet Exploder borks it…

Well, I’ve been trying the site out and so far:

• tried it on Safari and it works great. But then it should, since I developed for it;
• tried it in FireFox for Macintosh and it looks great with one minor hitch I will have to look into: the navigation on the right (context-dependent navigation) sometimes gets one or more extra lines between the “boxes” and sometimes even loses the line at the bottom. It may be a badly designed CSS but I really don’t think so and since it is only FireFox that does this I’m blaming the browser for now. But I do keep an open mind! :-)
• tried it in Opera for Linux and it works great except for the relative positioning of the pictures and the text in the main picture list. That’s it, I’m leaving CSS to where it matters and sticking to tables here, I’m mainly interested in having the site working, I don’t want to spend ages just tweaking CSS in order to get what is, essentially, a tabular content right. I really wish I didn’t have to do this but I’m fed up with it;
• then I tried it on Internet Exploder 6. Oh my GOD! I don’t even know where to begin! As usual it must be the rest of the world’s fault, but the fact is that every other browser did it (mostly) right but Exploder didn’t seem to be able to center the pages, to deal with invisible PNGs, to position the navigation buttons consistently, why even the background image of the header only appears on some sections of the site and the code used to render it is exactly the same!

So basically what I’m saying is: everything is as expected, nothing too alarming but I will have to take drastic steps to deal with Exploder. Man this just plainly and utterly sucks! I don’t want to spend any more time on looks and design than I absolutely have to, I want to start writing stuff on my wiki, but this looks like it is going to last for a while… :-(

New look, new sections

I’ve been thinking about what to do with this site for a while. Not just the weblog but the whole of nunonunes.org.

My main concern was about the content and the type of things I will want to put up in here. Then I thought about integration of all the sections and finally a little about the design.
Now I’m not in the least an artist and I am really bad at design. But I didn’t like it the way it was before so I had to do something.

As for the content I’ve decided that for now I’ll want to have a weblog, a photolog separated from the weblog, a photo gallery and, maybe most important, the rest of the site is going to be one big wiki.

So I had to start somewhere and I’ve already covered the weblog and photolog. I’m using Movabletype 2.64 for both of them and I don’t anticipate a move to version 3 anytime soon, but that may change as new plugins start to appear for that version.

Overall the HTML generation is quite acceptable to me, to the point where I can view the whole site perfectly well without any CSS whatsoever. This was my first goal and I think I’ve achieved it by now.

Then I just added some CSS on top of it to make the design part. It isn’t exactly a piece of art, but I don’t think it sucks heavily either.
I decided to make it viewable in 12’ screens without side-scrolling so it is just a little over 800 pixels wide.
I’m not exactly an expert on CSS and there are probably a few major problems with the site right now. In fact I launched this new look without even trying it out on an Internet Exploder but I do have the HTML pinned down (for the most part) so I’m not overly concerned about the rest. I’ll just have to find me a good designer to tweak the CSS for me or maybe create a whole new look and apply that over the existing HTML, no sweat.

The photolog is a first experience as I like to sometimes post pictures just out of the blue and I don’t think it is a good idea to put that kind of content on the weblog. It already has a few pictures which I used mainly to test out the way the site would handle like but I expect to have more content as time progresses and especially I hope to pin down the sections. As of right now all the existing sections are there only for the tests I made and I’ll have to see how the content evolves in order to figure out what sections make the most sense.

Now overall there is one item which really baffles me and that is typing. Not typing entries, mind you, but the art of choosing the right type-face for each portion of the site.
I am fully aware that the right type at the right place makes all the difference in the world, but I am utterly ignorant as to type choices so I’ll have to play around a bit more until I find something I can really enjoy.

Right now I just wanted to put something up and use it for a bit to see how I feel about it and we’ll see how it goes.

As for the missing sections of the site, well, I’m still not sure what I’ll use for the photo gallery section, I’ve discussed it here somewhat in the past and there is a new possibility in the horizon -photobuilder- and as for the wiki I had my mind set on tikiwiki until a few days ago, even knowing it was clearly overkill and maybe a bit more work than it would be worth, but then Melo got me looking at kwiki again. When I last looked at it it was still only CGI::Kwiki and it was a rough sketch of what it is today, but now it looks just right for integration in my site and so, soooo flexible…

So expect the odd broken link in the immediate future and if someone out there has a windows machine and can test out the main sections of the site I’d love to hear from you. Really, I’ve come to the point where I don’t have a single windows machine available that easily.
I’ll iron out all the small problems I expect to appear and when that’s finished I’ll start taking care of the wiki section and I guess I’ll leave the photo gallery for later.
I could have waited a bit longer for the design to settle down and to integrate the wiki before putting this new version up but it will take a while for me to do that and I do think it’s best to put something up and iron it out later than it is to delay further.

On with the show, then…

Faster photo downloads

Up until now I’ve used either my camera’s built-in USB interface or my USB card reader to download my digital photos.
With the 128MB memory stick I use in my Sony DSC-P5 this works great but with the 512MB CF cards on my Canon EOS 10D this tend to be a bit more troublesome.
The epitome of this troubles came about during my recent Scottish trip when I needed to download one and some days two full CF cards each night and, because I didn’t bring my USB card reader I spent almost two hours in the process of downloading these cards and the Sony’s memory stick (my wife used this camera).

So I decided it was time to put an end to this suffering and today (at long last) I bought a SanDisk ImageMate FireWire CF reader.
Granted it is not as functional as the Dazzle USB Multi-card reader, but my main problem is with the CF cards the Canon fills up, not with the small memory stick and the new CF reader is so small and lightweight I’ll carry it just about anywhere with me.

So then I had to make some measurements to justify this purchase to myself (yes, you guessed it: I’m an engineer!).
And the numbers are quite impressive.

First I shot some photos around and filled a 512MB CF card (a SanDisk ultra II) with roughly 477MB worth of images.
Then I downloaded the images with each of the three methods.

The numbers are presented below and, I think, speak for themselves, but before we get into them I would just like to make a quick note regarding the method of downloading them from the camera. It is a fact that this method involves using software to get the images from the camera and this software does some computing and, therefore, introduces some delay in the process, but the fact is that this is Canons own software and I’m not aware of any other software which reduces the downloading time significantly. I can shave off a few minutes with other programs but it really is beside the point when you look at the other numbers.

So now for the number-crushing geeks out there here it is:

• Downloading straight from the camera using Canon’s Image Browser: 2738 seconds (roughly 45 minutes);
• Downloading with the Dazzle USB multi-card reader: 573 seconds (a little under 10 minutes);
• Downloading with the SanDisk ImageMate FireWire CF reader: 81 seconds (a little under one and a half minutes).

Need I say more?

Na esplanada

Nesta altura do ano está-se muito bem a almoçar numa esplanada da Expo. Ambiente agradável, muito menos gente do que o é costume e se for com boa companhia ainda melhor.
Pena mesmo é ser tão longe para mim…

iTunes and the Party Shuffle algorithm

Maybe it’s just me but isn’t it just plain weird that the Party Shuffle algorithm of iTunes chooses to play the exact same song twice in a row?

And no, I don’t have multiple copies of it in my disk.

The song is rated 4 starts and I have the “Play higher rated songs more often” option turned on but I do have a lot of high-rated songs (makes sense, right? duh…) and I do have nearly 800 songs in my library at this time (after a most drastic spring cleaning).

Oh well, things will improve in time, I guess.

Diogo

A vida às vezes é muito injusta.

Parabéns Diogo.
Pelo primeiro mês e por teres continuado sempre a lutar.

Parece que em breve te vamos poder conhecer.
Mal posso esperar!

Upcoming changes

I’ve been very silent here lately for a very good reason. Actually for a number of good reasons, but the most interesting one is that my “blogging” time is limited and I have to make some choices sometimes.
So right now I’m more dedicated to the form rather than to the content.

What this means is that I have been working hard on nunonunes.org’s design lately and, therefore, haven’t had all that time to blog or worry about the content.
It’s simple, when your time is limited you either do design or you do content, one or the other.
And since my main target is usually content I have decided to do a major revamp now and get it over with never to worry about it again. For the next year or so. I hope… :-)

But seriously, I am really tired of the weblog’s look and I never quite got the rest of the site to look any good. So for some time now I’ve taken everything off-line except for the weblog and I have been working on making something which is clean, easy on the eyes, organized and consistent across the whole of nunonunes.org.

So far the major design decisions are taken, the weblog is almost done, the photoblog (yes, I couldn’t resist making one -if for nothing else then at least to spare my usual readers the download of all the pictures I sometimes throw here) is coming along nicely (if I do say so myself) and a couple of other pages are well thought over. The hardest part will be integrating the wiki into all this.

Yes, the site will be wiki-based. I’m not going into that right now (too late for that, I had a long day) but that is the only way I see it really taking off.
Now I would prefer to use some sort of wiki I could consider a good bet for the future but it hasn’t been written yet and I am not about to wait for me or someone else to write one so, for now, I’ll just make do with the one I found most promising so far - tikiwiki.
The bad news is that I haven’t even begun to look at how I can integrate it. The good news is that nowadays everything can be integrated, it is just a matter of effort, and the features it provides are very good for what I want to do so that’s that.

On the (more traditional) photo-album front things are still a bit shaky. Album is a very acceptable bare-bones possibility, I’ve used it somewhat and like it’s simplicity, but it does lack in some useful features. Gallery is more powerful, but it is a bit too much web-oriented. IDS is a bit too much on some issues and not quite enough on some others. Yes, I know I’m very picky but: “It’s my site and I do what I want to, do what I want to, do what I want to. You would do too if it bellonged to you!” (So now I’ve lost the two readers who have gotten this far. Great work Nuno!).

What I would really like to have was a system based on a number of ideas I’ve already discussed a bit. Since having written about them I’ve polished things a bit and I now know pretty much what I would like this system to do and it will feed both the photoblog, all the pictures used on the weblog or other pages on the site and the photo-album, but again, if I wait until I write it I’ll never have the site up and running, so for now I’ll go with one of the former contestants (or some other I find along the way) and we’ll see how my system develops.

OK, I’m tired, off to bed now. Hope to have at least a part of the new site up until the end of the week. Once again, lets see how it goes.

Up, up and awaaay!

Again the space elevator story.

Things haven’t changed much since the last time this issue was mentioned, but it seems the subject is far from being dropped.

Now even more “experts” are meeting and beginning to tackle the issues, one by one.

It seems we only need to solve a lot of major technical issues to get to the political issues and then the economic issues (or is it the other way around?).

Still, there is no doubt that the whole space elevator concept is cool and if the technical issues are indeed solved it could prove to be very interesting, economically speaking.

Yes, I know, political issues will most likely make the whole project flounder. But we can still dream, right?

Random geekness

Well, sometimes I just feel like it and this is one of those times.

So here goes:

• Get your Monty Python’s Holly Grail costumes here, complete with helmets and swords. And if you doubt that it is real, just check the last picture at the bottom of the page. A group of fans bought the full gear and are posing for it. Neat! Especially the robes, really beautiful. Can I hold myself from buying one? My oh my, it would be really difficult to explain, that one… :-)

• Just saw this on someone’s .sig and rolled over laughing. Yes, it’s extremely geeky but I find it extremely funny, especially since we have a history of singing variations from that same song here at work sometimes. Well, anyways, here it is. Are you ready for the anti-climax? “Old MacDonald had a PC, with EIA I/O”. So what? I think it’s funny!

• People are starting to “find” and install Tiger all over the place. I’m not going to! I’ve just got tired of installing the OS du jour and having to deal with every little quirk it has. So I’m simply going to wait until the official release (and even then I’m probably going to hold off until the first update comes out). Let the kewl kids do the bug hunting and fixing, I’m getting too old for that stuff. Sad isn’t it, when you start to value your life more than the geekness in things?

• Also, people are drooling all over PLC. It looks like it will save a few cables, leaving only the ones you just can’t live without (the power cables). Once I have a few more reports about it I might get interested but for me, at least for now, Wi-Fi still looks better. Although both can surely coexist.

• There are already a few services out there who are taking a shot at this and so far I am using Mimír and having a great experience with it. The service I’m talking about (one which I fell in love with) consists in the (rather obvious) mixing of RSS and IM. Mimír in particular uses jabber to deliver news in real time. I just login to a web page where I can choose from a number of feeds available (more may be available on request) and then whenever any of those feeds get updated I get an instant message with the source, the item’s URL and the description of the item. Contrary to what I feared it doesn’t really spam the hell out of me and it is really useful. Highly recommended.

• It’s been a fruitfull day up until now, but now I’m betting it gets better, as I’m going to read the (much anticipated) fourth chapter of Designing the Band - the essays about the design process by Keith Robinson. Funny how I’ve actually been looking forward to it. It’s not anything remotely related to my job or anything I ever did or knew but I find it strangely compelling to be on par with what’s going on in the design world. Me of all people, who cannot draw or design a single line to save my life… Go figure… :-)

• Oh, but before I go I just got word (ain’t IM grand?) of a way of using external programs to “filter” text in gui text boxes in OS X and the most remarkable thing is achieved by piping the text to xvi (or your editor of choice) and then getting the text you edited back when you are finished with it as explained in this particular comment. Bloody brilliant! Of course what I really would like is for it to work with vim, not xvi, but Pedro is already on it, so it shouldn’t take long…

Glub, glub…

A parte boa de ir nadar depois da hora tradicional de almoço é que já não ha quase ninguém na piscina e consegue-se ter uma pista só para nós. Fixe! :-)

Já me tinha esquecido como era bom nadar no Estádio Nacional… Agora é só recuperar a forma perdida entretanto, normalmente fazia entre 1.500 e 2.000 metros em 45-50 minutos, hoje nadei meia hora e fiz uns míseros 700 metros.

Por outro lado com este esforço (que já não é normal) e o parco almoço que se seguiu devo ter dado cabo da barriguinha…

Olha não, ainda não foi desta. Bolas!