Category: technology

Right I found it again, if anyone asks me about newsgroups or p2p tools.
Go to Slyck's guide, I only wish he'd sort out his rss feed because it keeps crashing my aggerator.
Oh I dont forget zeropaid too, there rss feed also does the same thing!

Man I feel so lame sometimes, there is so much to read online and I dont ever have the time to sit and read it. I thought having a personal aggerator would be a good way of filtering the noise. And it is but I'm finding so much I cant run through it because there not rss feeds.

Now my solution to this problem is using cocoon's aggerator generator, I can grab a html page, tidy it into xhtml and extract the bits needed for a valid rss feed. And I can see it working, but its alot of hardwork for a simple job.
_life is ment to be hard_ says me.

Anyway the sites I would start off with, phrack and ntk.

If you dont know phrack, then your've never heard of 2600 or anything like that, its time to learn. It describes its self as 'a Hacker magazine by the community, for the community' and yep they've been there since the mid 80's believe it or not. I still remember getting there txt files from bbs's and ftps on my old st. Anyway they always have the fresh news of exploits and hacks, all rounded up in a humourous not too serious container. Its spot on, trust me.

Anyway, they have put all there archives and all new issues online in grabble txt files within logical folders. Even though everything is in txt i should beable to do simple aggeration like pulling all the txt files together into one large one. Perfect for reading on my ipaq.

NTK is a odd one, I like it but I dont. There content is great and so fresh, but there style and presentation is enough to put me off from reading it regularly. Anyway Dave usually tells me all I _need to know_ from NTK. Hehe.

But anyway, yes I like your content and I want to represent it in something less html and more xml based so the presentation is very seperate from the content.

Now one of the things I could do is grab there main pages and tidy it then turn it into rss. But have you seen the mess which is there pages? Yuk, span elements everywhere. Oh well at least its not like there menus which are full of dont tags.

Anyway, if I get time I may write the xsl to do the transformations, sure others would be interested.

http://www.applematters.com/comments.php?id=87_0_1_0

Thanks Poly dude (nick)

So the W3c have a working draft of InkML and looking at the authors there is no sign of Microsoft at all. Interesting enough HP, Corel, Apple and IBM as well as others are there.
I can see why Apple and Corel would be very interested.

But whats this xml spec do?
This document describes the syntax and semantics for the Ink Markup Language for use in the W3C Multimodal Interaction Framework as proposed by the W3C Multimodal Interaction Activity. The Ink Markup Language serves as the data format for representing ink entered with an electronic pen or stylus. The markup allows for the input and processing of handwriting, gestures, sketches, music and other notational languages in Web-based applications. It provides a common format for the exchange of ink data between components such as handwriting and gesture recognizers, signature verifiers, and other ink-aware modules.

Which you must agree with me, is highly amazing and I cant wait to see how this blends with other standards such as rdf, svg, etc. Theres already talk of SMIL.

A photo taken with a digital camera can be annotated with a pen; the digital ink can be coordinated with a spoken commentary. The ink annotation could be used for indexing the photo (for example, one could assign different handwritten glyphs to different categories of pictures).

Once again a dual category post = Tabletpc and XML

Good blog about using the Tablet PC outside of the usual work flow. Also made me think using rather than my ipaq for general use.

I wrote a reply about how people are not ready for computers outside of the work place, quite yet.

I dont know it kills me everytime. Its a struggle and I'm just lucky to be young enough to see it as a challenge, I guess…

How long do these people in a creative sector such as design expect to exist in this field if there ignorance of technology is what it is? I cant answer that one at all. I wont go into detail, protect the innocencent and all that.
But ravensbourne prides its self on its technology influence, I mean its core to the colleges mission statement. And we want to bring this the fore front with the move to greenwich by 2006.

So why oh why do these people see _technology_ as a extra bit? It drives me nuts, then it only gets worst. Miles said it best today when he pointed out a example. The example is difficult to explain in the abstract, but consists of people pretending to embrace the technology (would be more than there jobs worth not to) but then fighting the rapid change of technology in there usual hours of work.

Its nasty to believe the percentage of such people! Anyway, I hope its all making sense.
I just wish these people would do there research, you know try and understand, try and learn even a little. Not just dismiss everything as thats too technical or thats coding.

Anyway, yes it will be very interesting to now see how things go now the educational boards are asking for information online and the like. I even got passed a document on the 'freedom of information act'.
See if these people did there research they would natrually understand how things are moving forward. Open source movement and open exchangable format. Is there anything else to get?

So yesterday evening my college bought me a HP 5550 ipaq with pocketpc 2003, 128meg update and a 256meg sd card. Which honestly is far more than I expected. Thanks Niz and Miles

Anyway, i'm honestly going to blog it from now on, which will make up my report if I have to do one later on.

First thoughts, the screen is so beautiful and bright specially when compared to my old compaq 3630 ipaq. The colours have jumped to 16bit from 12bit but the contrast is perfect now. I never get enough glare to not see the text, even when reflecting the suns position into my own eyes.

At last I have wireless and bluetooth in the same compact framework and with the 128meg upgrade and sd card, I have enough memory to run anything I want. So now I use wifi when i'm in range and bluetooth with my t68i mobile phone for a slower gprs connection. See this is the reason why I needed my 3g phone to be bluetooth! Then I could dialup with that instead.
Oh and also you can redirect all mic and audio to a bluetooth headset! So if I cant get my old one working again, I'll buy one of 3's branded ones as there only 59 pounds and all i need.

There are some neat little things in pocketpc 2003 besides connectivity. At last theres a built in spell checker! Which makes a massive difference to someone like me.
Everything is so much quicker too, I played my old megadrive emulator on both ipaqs side by side and the new one can be alot faster than the old one but also generates the kinda of framerates i didnt think were possible.
I would also like add the biometric scanner is very good and at last I can secure my ipaq without using some complex unlock sequence. It would be nice though if you have the choice of strong password or biometric scan. At the moment i'm using pin or high security biometic (default). Tried out very strong biometric security but you got to get it perfect each time which isnt possible when performing normal tasks.

Found the new ipaq is compatable with the old jackets so I can still use my compact flash cards too. So imagine 256 + 128 + 60 = 444 meg of available space! And I got a 80 meg cf card spare too.

Anyway this also means I can plug into ethernet using a network pcmcia card, which is useful for friends houses and non wifi areas.

In my portable triangle the weak link is now battery life. Which I have yet to try out. As wireless and bluetooth has to be banging the battery for power. Which is good because the main battery is now removeable. Maybe I should have asked for a spare battery too? Well at least the usb cable charges and syncs as standard now.

I was a little disapointed with the software built in as standard, but have quickly realised that it doesnt matter because I have so much memory unlike the old ipaq where i had to put everything not needed by wireless onto the cf card.
But yeah i did think the remote control software would be there as well as the voice over ip software. Maybe there on cd I forgot to take with me?

My own dilemma is what to do with the old ipaq, as my wife wont use it for more than a couple of days. I dont want to sell it as I will get nothing for it and i dont know if i can keep this new ipaq (i'm pretty sure i can). So for now I'm going to retire the old ipaq and put it back in its box. Once i finish transfering files over bluetooth of course.