Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
I got so fed up of trying to understand what the bloody hell was going on with these forms on my huawei MT820 ADSL modem that I ended up buying another router to control the firewall settings and do a number of other stuff too of course. Hopefully I'll be poping out live mixes again.
When I upgraded to the latest version of Kdenlive a free software non-linear editor which runs on every platform except windows. I was honestly shocked, it was clean, crisp and professional. There's little doubt that open source and free software has somewhat left user experience and interface design concerns closer to the bottom of the pile but this is radically changing. I'm hoping to show some of the new look applications which are worthy of another look and your attention, starting with the new look Kdenlive.
I love hak.5, its the perfect example of niche content. Every episode has something new and interesting in it for someone like myself. The ESXi virtualisation stuff has been pretty good, and the WPA hacking (i mean) self-evaluating almost got me writing. But what killed me was Kon-boot. I looked it up on darknet.org.uk and found this.
Kon-Boot is an prototype piece of software which allows to change contents of a Linux kernel (and now Windows kernel also!!!) on the fly (while booting).
In the current compilation state it allows to log into a Linux system as ’root’ user without typing the correct password or to elevate privileges from current user to root. For Windows systems it allows to enter any password protected profile without any knowledge of the password.
It was mainly created for Ubuntu, later the author has made a few add-ons to cover some other Linux distributions.
Entire Kon-Boot was written in pure x86 assembly, using old grandpa-geezer TASM 4.0.
How do you stop this happening? Add a BIOS password and Encrypt your hard drive. But look out, the cold boot hack is becoming actually possible for the seasoned IT professional. Shocking stuff, well done to the hak.5 guys for covering this stuff well.
At last Google App Engine is available in a Java flavour. This might not seem like a big deal for most of you guys out there but (I think) for me this means I can carry on doing my development in cocoon and hopefully be able to scale up my code if needed.
The Java environment provides a Java 6 JVM, a Java Servlets interface, and support for standard interfaces to the App Engine scalable datastore and services, such as JDO, JPA, JavaMail, and JCache.
Some of you maybe saying, but hold on Ian. I didn't know you were a Java developer. No I'm not, but the key thing here is the Java Servlet interface, which if I'm reading the documentation correct, means I can deploy servlets/webapps to Google App Engine? I can create these in Cocoon 2.2 which now uses Apache Maven instead of Apache Ant. If this is all true, then excellent, another reason to get back into writing stuff in Cocoon. If I'm wrong, I'll be very disappointed.
I guess the only way to find out for sure is to just build something very small in Cocoon and spend some time playing with Google App Engine.
People keep getting at me about my Apple hating. “Why is it I'm not a Mac fan?” On paper I should be a fan and should own some of its hardware. So what happened? Here's some history which you may find interesting, even from the point of pure nostalgia.
So with a background in design and running a ST computer back in the early 90's I really wanted to get a Mac. I mean the mac as symbolised in that famous 1984 advert was about breaking the mold, not being a boring grey suit, yadda, yadda. Well at that young age, I was amazed and wanted one. In school they only had boring RM PCs running Windows 3.1 and trust me that added to the myth that PC's were so boring. After leaving school, I had pushed my ST to its limit and I landed a job working for a local newspaper working with Adobe Photoshop 2.x and Quark Express 3.1 while at college. The work place had macs for most of its output and the college had macs for the design school, and pcs on the other side of the campus to this thing called the internet. So there was this dilemma, should I want to do any work, I'd have to use the macs if I wanted to download or check out the web I had to go across the road to the business school and use there pcs. After about a year or so they finally hooked up a sub-powermac (think it was a quadra) with a 28.8k modem and you use the internet on that one machine, but only a few months later they also put in a load of 486's in the room next to mac design suite. They were unlocked and we were able to find software like paintshop pro to put on the pcs. So although the macs could do some amazing things like video editing (we had a couple of powermacs 132's with miro dc030 cards in them, they were no match for the lure of the open internet.
About this time I was big into POV Ray and being able to run this on the pcs was great. I was even able to run it on the PC's really easily, plus late at night I could run super complex scenes over many machines in parallel. It was really liberating. I also discovered with other friends that the UWE (University of the west of england) had a 24hour computer lab with 486's and super fast (at the time) internet over 2 rooms and 40 machines in each one. And security was really lax, so lax that after a while we got to know the security guards and we would just pop in and out without being asked for ID ever. Anyway, this is about the time I also got into PC networked gaming with Quake and learned how to build myself a PC with the help of a guy from the Newspaper called Mike. I need a new computer as the ST really wasn't cutting it any more, and I did crazily consider getting a Silicon Graphics 02 with all the money I could scrap together but thankfully couldn't afford it with everything I had, So the next best thing was a mac but it didn't happen because it was so much cheaper to buy and make a PC. But the Mac had a lot going for it. Quicktime for example was untapped features in it which I'd wished I had more time with at the time. I remember being so amazed with QTVR, that I ended up buying a book on it, which I still own today. At one point I borrowed a Mac from my friend Carl while he was on holiday somewhere and although I did enjoy it and never felt like quite like my own. But I digress,
At the time Intel and AMD were neck and neck but Intel was seen as the enemy, so I made a 200mhz AMD K6 because only the Microsoft fans would pick the expensive and slower Pentium chip. (I also remember this was not long before the whole CPU benchmark thing where Apple compared the G3 to a Pentium 3 but never a AMD. This further fuelled my dislike for Apple, I mean the AMD's were beating the Intel chips on everything non MMX or SSE based. Once I learned how to build my own, that was pretty much it. I customised my PC, by pained the case black replaced the leds with blue ones and played with stardocks object desktop to create insane hacker (the film) type startup screens etc. Software was easily available and sharing it was currency. Life was all good.
So running Windows was my prefered choice but it gave me more alleged freedom that a mac. I did try switching over to linux at some point but decided it was too command like, and I wanted something more visual like the mac desktop. So I choose BeOS which was around at the time and was still a viable alternative. Obviously that all went down the pan, and I only ever installed it on a spare machine thankfully.
I can't remember exact times or dates, but here's a few things which put me off Apple even more over the last ten years. I remember the imac, it was loved by everyone in the community but when I tried to actually use it, it was shockingly slow and troublesome. The round pluck like USB mouse really got to me, I think it was about then I become aware of the Steve Jobs approach to design and products. Maybe it was also the software OS8 and 9 but I saw people on there knees over the look of the imac and general use was anything but good. Apple sold this and all other mac since as aspirational machines, when frankly there anything but. The religion of the Apple Mac really rubbed me up the wrong way, even with the serious mistakes of OSX/Classic. It wasn't till OSX.3 when things starting getting good enough again. But back to the cult of the mac, remember those Mac vs PC adverts. Apple totally shot themselves in the foot with me. And to double back Microsoft's advertising campaign, I'm a PC is pure genius.
Funny enough this Guardian Article sums up my thoughts till OSX.3, adding FreeBSD is the only saving grace.
I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.
PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis
octor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.
The Mac and Apple always stood for creativity and thinking differently, even now there are some amazing software created by its insanely dedicated community which can't be found on other platforms. I've never even looked at development in Cocoa but there's certainly heard good things about it. I also think OSX is actually not bad with its BSD backbone but I'm not keen on the Gui. The whole iPod and iPhone thing drives me totally insane. Most companies create different versions of consumer electronic products to capture the market, but Apple don't do that. Fair enough but to argue that Apple products are better that anything else and thats why there's only one type or two types is simply arrogant. A while back I looked into getting a new laptop and did consider a Mac book but for me the size was a little too big, general ports very low and actual spec not as efficient as the many models by Dell, HP, IBM, etc. I'm not saying there better but I am saying my requirements are different to Steve Jobs. For example the iphone still has not got stereo bluetooth support, for most people this is a who cares? But when you already have 2 sets of headphones and a set of speakers at home with Bluetooth support, this is a deal breaker.
To finish, I already touched on the snobbery of most Mac users. But there's something equally strange about this snobbery. Maybe in the same way there's iphone socks and macbook screen protectors. Most PC users have a love/hate relationship with there machine. Well this seems to be less so with Mac users. Is this because the fisher price machine does exactly what its told to do or maybe because the Mac users have self brainwashed themselves into believing the hype? I think I know which one it is but thats for another post. I'll leave you thinking with this.
Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because “they are just better”. Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul – that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.
Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow “define themselves” with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that “says something” about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe – but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like – unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.
Wow who would thought Geeks could drink so much? So The Ubuntu launch party in Manchester supported by BBC Backstage went very well. We had about 60+ people turn up and enjoy the night. Thanks to Lucy for arranging most of the event. There's quite a few photos around the place including Flickr.
I decided not to upgrade my laptop at the party, instead I decided to upgrade it when I got back from the party. Upgrading was very straight forward and within one hour I had new Ubuntu login prompt. Unfortunately thats where the start of the problems started.
I've been having problems with the firewall on my machine for a while now but in 9.04 it broke and thankfully got fixed by flushing all iptables. But then I noticed my Dell's wireless isn't connecting to my wireless point, correctly. So its connected but there's no signal for some reason. Interestingly enough, it gives me a 10.x.x.x address while my actual network is based on the simple 192.x.x.x class of addresses.
Finally Compiz Fusion isn't working at the moment, once again this wasn't actually a upgrade issue. It wasn't work a while ago due to a display driver update. For all the moaning and problems, ubuntu 9.04 is faster. Startup times are quicker, login time is quicker and i've noticed Ubuntu is making more use of my vast amount of laptop memory that 8.10. The growl like notifications are very nice and I look forward to seeing applications like Twirl taking advantage of them soon. I've yet to convert the hard drive to the new Filesystem EXT4 but I've already had some experience with it via my brief time with Fedora 10.
I fixed the Wireless problem, I worked it out from a comment left on the picture. Daemon.log.0 pointed out that the wireless was set in Adhoc mode for some reason. So I switched it and its all good now.
Yep thanks to Steve Clayton the geek in disguise. I now own about 50 “I'm a PC” stickers. So if you see me with my laptop bag, ask me for a sticker. I'll be at quite a few places in May, so do tap me on the shoulder and say hi.
Today I was watched the Gadget Show, while cooking dinner. Part of the show includes a section called the technology wall of fame. In the past they have had interesting rivals like the boxbrownie vs the polaroid (instant) camera. However this time around it was the Sinclair Spectrum vs the iMac.
Now frankly I can't believe they even bothered with this because hands down the Sinclair has done more for the computer industry that the imac. Yes the imac was back then pretty, dropped legacy ports in favour of USB ports and made it easy to get online. But the Spectrum started a whole industry, it stretched peoples imagination and creativity. Comparing the two is a joke. You could argue that the imac does deserve a spot in the hall of fame but not at the expense of the ZX Spectrum.
…Newsgator would port there software to Linux. Even if they don't, surely someone has build a client which takes advantage of the newsgator api? Nope not a single application on the linux platform. I've gotten so fed up of the whole problem, that I generally read more on my phone or fireup a browser and read it online. I know this is very lazy web but come on somebody, use the newsgator api and give your rss aggregator a huge advantage over all the others in the market. This actually really winds me up because I can't even use wine to run rss bandit and rss reading is not the kind of thing you want to do in a VM. Hell if someone could quickly write a Adobe Air application for this, I'd be happy.
…Evernote also fits into the same category as Newsgator. Runs on almost everything else even Windows Mobile and the iPhone but can we get some linux support? Not a chance. Evernote does play ok with Wine but its ugly and very slow, not the kind of thing you want to start up for a quick note or have hanging around on your computer all day. Like Newsgator Evernote also has a public API which could be used to create a evernote client for the linux platform or even something like Air. I'm still liking the idea of some conversion between evernote and tomboy notes which runs natively on the gnome desktop. Then you got the speed and easy of a native app crossed with the flexibility and ubiquity of Evernote. I actually think Conduit could do this with ease, if only I could write Python.
Why is it there is still no decent Blog editor for Linux? I use to use Wblogger then switched to … when still using Windows. Now having tried almost all the linux blogging apps, I settled on Scribe Fire which runs out of Firefox. I was surprised to find there is little in the way of blogging apps on the air platform.
Don't get me wrong I love my switch to Linux/Ubuntu (I say while slowly converting all my Freenas drives to a format which Ubuntu understands). But sometimes I think the talented developers who work on great linux software miss some of the obvious flaws. I did recently found out that Liferea the RSS reader for Linux did include Google sync support with Google Reader which is tempting me over. However when I finally did install Liferea again, I found it included the next best thing to true sync. The ability to sync the OPML file. So at least I got my subscription lists sorted.
Its also worth noting there are loads of applications which are unique to the Linux platform which are amazing such as Gwibber (which if it was a little more stable I would use everyday), Specto and the already mentioned Conduit.
Steve Clayton the geek in disguise has named me in his I'm a PC sticker distribution plans. Although I'm a Ubuntu Gnu/Linux user, I do support the PC ideology. People already know my thoughts on the Steve Jobs ways of doing things…I'm proud to say I'm a PC and i'm happy to distribute the stickers. So come up and ask me when you next see me. Steve do you think 10k of stickers is going to be enough?
Via Technometria, I would suggest that if you swap Mac for Ubuntu, you've got some very solid advice.
Todd Ogasawara has some good advice for Mac Switchers that might keep you from lamenting your move. I switched in 2002 but had never really been a Windows user (Sun mostly) and I knew Unix cold, so switching wasn't such a big deal for me. But if you've been a long time Windows user and think a Mac might be fun, read Todd's advice first. I love number two:
2. If you do go cold turkey, don't drag your wife, girlfriend, significant other, parents, child, best friend along for the ride until you begin get comfortable with Mac OS X yourself.
From A Brief Guide for Mac Switchers/Try-ers
Referenced Wed Jan 07 2009 07:32:21 GMT-0700 (MST)Wait until they ask. That's the best way. And they will ask if they see you having fun on your new Mac.
Apple has dropped DRM from iTunes — and is offering to remove their DRM from music you already bought for the low, low fee of $0.30 per song.
Why the hell should people who have paid for there music legally have to pay again to take the DRM off? I can't work out what's worst, buying DRM music or having to pay again to have the DRM taken off. Someone is taking the living piss out of the consumers who try to stay on the straight and narrow path.
Actually this reminds me of something else I saw the other day. Considering a life of crime by Euan Semple. Euan talks about how iPlayer and Audiable's restrictions are weakening his grip on the straight and narrow. Hey no wonder Usenet usage has grown exponentially. There's also estimates (not from the BBC of course) that the recent special of Top Gear was watched by over three times the amount of people online and outside the UK that on tv and iplayer inside the UK.
I got to say I also don't understand the point of paying 10 pounds a month for higher quality streams from iplayer. Something jars with my net neutrality thoughts, specially when I'm already paying over the odds for premium bandwidth and most isp's are not even giving you what they advertise let alone tricking you with there acceptable use policy.
Everyone knows i'm not the biggest fan of Apple products and services. So it was a shock when I went out and bought a Apple iPod Touch. I struggled from day one to do anything with it except turn it on due to the crazy notion that you must pair it with iTunes before it will actually work at all. There's a ton of tweets I sent out of frustration of this process. But how have I been doing since?
Well I tend to carry it with me everywhere because it slips into my pocket really well. I did have a shock when I saw the Sony eBook Reader on sale for 189 pounds the other day because I was thinking hummmm maybe i'd be better off with that. But then its not as portable and although it has a RSS reader, I doubt it can cope with my requirements.
The iPod Touch's shining and worst feature is the Apple App store. Its good being able to download apps quickly over a Wifi connection but its also painful to search (25 items at a time) and there's not enough information for somethings. For example I was looking for a decent RSS reader and the only way to really tell the difference was to try them out. So I tried out the Free ones and then spent 1.19 pounds (the only money I've spent on the App store to date) on a pay one which I used for 2 days.
Its also worth noting that many app authors create a Free version for you to download to get around the lack of a demo option on the app store. On Windows mobile you get apps like PC apps, demos which are time locked or cut down till you enter a serial number.
Then I switched over to Netnewswire because of its ability to sync with Newsgator on the web and on my Windows mobile phones. So I never end up reading the same news twice. But now how do I get my 1.19 pounds back for the app which I hardly use? I'm also upset about the choice of ebook readers, maybe I need to pay out a load of money to test the paid for versions. But so far each ebook reader has its own storage container, so any new apps can't see the already uploaded ebooks!!! Yes maybe someone might create a decent ebook reader, but how would I ever know?
Multitasking on the iPod touch is painful!!! I hate this device for this thing. Here's a example of why, so I see a good news item and I want to email it to someone. I click the send via email button and it launches the mail app which I have setup. I send the email to the person (its usually stored in the outbox because I'm not online) then I have to click the one button to go back to the app menu then click the netnewswire icon again to re-start netnewswire. I have to do this everytime I want to send a message from Netnewswire and I got to say it becomes a bit tiresome after a while. Some real multitasking wouldn't go a miss, specially when I decide to have a ebook open and want to update my rss. Or even during the night, when I got the alarm set and want to use the ipod as a bedside night clock but also pull down rss during the night time.
I still can't put music on the device even if I wanted to because I'm not using iTunes and nothing I've found on Linux supports the iPod Touch v2 firmware even Hipo, Rhythmbox, Amarok, etc. When I connect it via USB it comes up on desktop as a camera device which Fspot wants to manage although it doesn't actually have a camera.
The keyboard input is still painful to use for me and I generally dread putting in my password to get updates from the app store. I also got to say the way it asks you if it can use your location is good but it would be nice to have a don't ask me again option. For all the fuss about the multi-touch I have used it a couple of times in my current ebook reader to zoom in a bit. Some apps like the first RSS reader I had don't even allow you to do it so its a real inconsistent experience. Something I'm sure Apple would love to stomp out.
The Wifi can be spotty too, sometimes my Windows mobile devices can see wifi that the iPod doesn't, but whats worst is if you get a wifi point which requires web page authentication like BT Openzone, The Cloud, Tmobile, etc. Safari will not attempt to navigate to that holding page. Instead it sits there like a lemon moaning theres no internet connectivity.
So overall, the iPod Touch makes a reasonable RSS reader device. Its true I'm reading tons more RSS that ever before but the move to Newsgator also had its part to play in that (although now i'm looking for a Linux Newsgator compatable reader). The screen makes a good ebook reader but the software is far off the mark. The best I can find can open pdfs and text files. I then have to use another app for chm ebooks and another one for .mobi ebooks. The first one doesn't even support reformatting of PDFs, so you can't really zoom in for that super fast reading. Once this is solved, I'll be happy and the ipod touch will have done everything I've bought it for. Although I got to say if ebook reader hardware got better and more open, I'll trade in the ipod touch no problem.
I've been reading this fantastic ebook on my ipod called Security for People and Computers by Neal Puff. I had assumed because the cocoa application (what do you call ipod/iphone apps?) was free it would be available somewhere else as a PDF or another free format. However it seems like you can only get it free on iTunes, which really sucks. Because I really want to send all my computer literal friends this book. Its the kind of book I could give to my parents and they might actually make sense of. Its written as a refresher for people like myself and a overview for people who care less about computer security. I have a list ranging from my sister to friends who are still using Windows in a bad way, who NEED to read this very short book.
I noticed you can buy it too but its not cheap at 19 pounds plus shipping. But it might be worth buying a few copies for friends and family next time its there birthday. Its a shame because turning ebooks into ipod/iphone applications is almost like a DRM of its own. I totally get what Tom Peck is doing turning books into apps but I would much prefer he write a app which reads PDFs/RTF/Text files well instead. Anyhow, here's the description of the book…
This book is meant as general knowledge for people who want to live a safer and more secure existence in today's environment, covering both basic Internet safety and general advice for non-technical parts of our life. While this book was previously sold commercially, it is offered here at no charge in the hope that it will be of some benefit to help people in their daily lives.
Actually just going back to the ebook application as a DRM a second. I also saw, Project Gutenberg will be releasing Mobile eBooks. Great I thought till I found out there going to create *.jar files (java apps) which play the book rather that mobile versions of the books in pdf, text, etc. So once again, this sucks because I'm constrained to one player and the player is attached to the book. This means my ipod can't read it and my older ebook reader on my phone can't be used either. Can someone please just create a Ebook reader for most platforms including Windows Mobile, Symbian, Java, Blackberry and Apple which is open source and reads all types of free/open textual format
Technorati Tags: security, people, computers, nealpuff, ebooks, ebook, pdf, iphone, ipod, apps
Well I'm selling mine on ebay over the next few days. Starting price of 150 pounds for my upgraded Netbook. I did record me doing the memory upgrade but it was 45mins long and the netbook wouldn't start properly afterwards because I hadn't pluged in the Solid state drive, But trust me its all working fine now, I just don't need it now I got a ipod touch.