Category Archives: Computing

My thoughts and works in computing and programming.

Looking Forward: Ubuntu’s App Store

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Ubuntu developers will be releasing the beta of the next major version of Ubuntu Linux: 9.10 sometime in the next two weeks.  Yours truly, plans on upgrading my main home system to help with the beta test.  With every release I’m expecting a rather incremental improvement.  However the real interest feature (which I doubt will show up in the Kubuntu side of things just yet), is the new Ubuntu App Centre.  On the face of things, it will be an improvement over the “over-techy” Synaptic and friends, that most Ubuntu users are used to.  Also it will look and feel more polished, so that will be a very welcome change.

The potential game changer comes into play with the possibility of buying software, for Ubuntu.  This buying does not imply that a deluge of proprietary software will sweep into Ubuntu.  But rather buying can also mean donating money to upstream projects, and that will help resolve the long standing issue of how to fund open source/libre software projects.  An option to buy software, would also create incentives for the software industry to create professional software for Linux.  What really excites me is this: I envision that the Ubuntu App Centre, doing for Linux gaming what Valve’s Steam has done for Windows gaming; providing a convenient platform for digital distribution and marketing which will be HUGE for independent gaming studios and small software houses.

Additional Sources: FLOSS Weekly episode on Ardour and the issues of funding FLOSS development

Web Play Made Fun with ExtJS

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At work I’ve started working with ExtJS for the user interface for the web application I’m helping develop.  I’ve always had reservations about using Javascript.  Or rather I’ve always hated dealing with inconsistencies in DOM handling in browsers.  Whenever I deal with CSS, I always hate dealing with cross-browser checking.  Fortunately with increased popularity of Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla Firefox) and Webkit-based browsers (Google Chrome), I have to deal with headaches of a browser incompatibilities less often.  However writing pure Javascript can be a bit daunting, and a library like JQuery or ExtJS comes in handy.  So I’m still not sold on the concept of building everything in a RIA (Rich Internet Application) context.  However using a Javascript library sure makes my website coding-hacking more palatable.

Meet My Next Phone

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I’ve been a huge fan of the Maemo system, since I got my hands on a N810.  Now I can hardly wait to get my hands on an Internet tablet with phone capabilities: N900.  The price is a bit prohibitive, and I have no clue when I’ll be able to get one up here in Canada.  But the specs look amazing: http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/

I can not say how excited I am by this phone.  It matches up with what I’ve wanted from both a phone and a tablet.  While I really enjoy using my 5800XM, the OS it uses: Symbian S60v5 and its hardware makes the device lag a bit.  The N900 on the other hand, is built on an awesome platform (Maemo), has great hardware and processing power to do what I need it to do.  It will really be mobile computing device that you can use heavily, while carrying it in your pocket.  I wish Nokia luck with selling N900s like hotcakes. 🙂

Drupal Dreams

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I love my WordPress powered blog.  For a blogging site, WordPress is the way to go.  However there are site that require me to step beyond the paradigms of a blog.

Back in the day, I used to hardcode all my sites using XHTML & PHP.  I’d make them elegant, minimalistic and W3C compliant.  I also wasted a good deal of time doing so.  So now…  when I need to set up a site, I reach for Drupal.  Now thats a fun application to work with.  By no means is Drupal “simple”.  It is a freaking CMS for crying out loud.  Simple and CMS don’t go together.  And it does have its weaknesses.  Getting an image gallery set up in Drupal 6 is non-trivial.  But once you know where things are and how the components work, then you are all set.

Mental Shards: Ninjas, Stacks and Menus

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I’m a huge fan of checking out RSS planets, especially with the technologies I love to use.  Now I use Google Reader to aggregate and handle these hundreds of stories.  Every so often, a story grabs my attention and gets me thinking.  I’ve starred hundreds, only to never look for them again.  I found that even thought I can e-mail myself these stories, they get lost in the giant abyss known as my e-mail.  So for fun, I’ll post the blogs that caught my attention in a new section on my blog: Mental Shards.  (Yes, you guessed it… it is a play on the name of my upcoming novel.)

Lydia Pintscher writes about dealing with people who communicate in various forms and degrees.  I’d probably fall into the communication ninjas group.  In fact at one point thanks to my Internet tablet, anyone could reach out and touch me over instant messenger.  This became terribly distracting, and even thought I could the same with my cellphone… I’d rather not.  Well actually in theory if I acclimatized people to the concept of on MSN, but may not respond in an instant we’d be good.  Still it is a good reminder, that not everyone feels compelled to feel embedded into the Internet cloud at all times.

Oops… I forget which KDE developer mentioned the Stack Overflow site.  This looks like an excellent resource for developers, especially when dealing with open source technology.

Richard Dale, another KDE contributer writes about the GCDS talk about Moblin.  Here’s a thought: menus are useless.  I’m a bit reluctant to agree.  Most menus are huge and a pain to navigate around.  I’d prefer a flexible tool/toolbar system.  Maybe not quite a ribbons design though.  I am a strong believer in keeping UIs simple, clear and pleasant to use.  However menus seem a necessary evil, for large complex applications.  However the argument, on why do we need large complex menu-driven applications rather than smart intelligent, flexible ones those hold much merit.

Congrats to Celeste Lyn Paul for winning the KDE Akademy Award for Best Non-technical Contribution.  Her work and writing inspires me to one day get into usability, user interface design and (human-computer interaction) HCI myself.  Once things settle down in my life, I plan on looking into doing a Masters in HCI.

And on Phoronix we have: News of a Game Going Free Culture.  Should be an interesting experiment, I wish the developers luck.

A Tiny Update

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It is Friday.  Feeling tired from the irregular sleep cycles of this past week.  I didn’t move forward as fast I wanted to this week.  I’ve felt distracted, tired and could not focus.  Still the minutae of this week didn’t tie me down.  Thanks to a friend my Polish writing improved in leaps and bounds this week.  No regrets this week, and many things moved forward.  And thanks to the same friend, I can see a positive glimmer of hope in my future.  I plan on focusing on making my schedule sane again, and living a fairly active but normal life.  No updates on the writing past a few notes, and ideas.  No code updates either, aside from a steady tinkering with the justCheckers website.   Enjoying using the new Firefox 3.5.  It feels so much sleeker than before.  Oh and thanks to the fine folks at Fido for having simple and sane contracts.  Guess whose service is gonna get recommended to friends?

The Chrome and the Cloud

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Google today announced their Chrome OS project.  The details are sketchy for this announcement.  This Chrome OS apparently stems from the Chrome web browser that Google released last year.  A sort of instant-on netbook operating system, that meshes the hardware with the Internet cloud.  Google claims the OS project differs from the Android stack that runs on cellphones.  And thats all we essentially know about this Chrome OS.

So left me put on my futurist hat and predict what Chrome OS will be.  If I were building something like Chrome OS, I would grab an existing OS (say Linux).  I would then strip out all the unnecessary extra services and applications.  Then I would modify the desktop shell to essentially run a web browser (Chrome) connected to the web.  I would include an internal web caching application (Google Gears anyone?) to handle the off-line situation.  So there you go, netbook running Chrome OS would essentially act as a smart thin client (dummy terminal for you readers who remember the 70’s).  And the server would live on the Internet cloud.

Wonder how such a device would feel like?  Grab a Nokia N810 or N800 and you’ll have a closer feel to a mobile cloud computing device.  Congratulations to Google to helping bring true heterogeneous cloud computing and its advantages to the common man.

New Site for justCheckers

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I’m setting up a new site for the justCheckers project.  The only real good reason for my working at all on this project, is simply to build a portfolio.  As a software developer, I want to show to others that I can code.  And that my code is clean, elegant and professional.  I also want to show that I can write my own web applications.  So I am writing the justCheckers website as a PHP, MySQL DB enabled application.  All using proper XHTML, CSS and a touch of AJAX.  The site is a work in progress.  I’m not planning to build an entire flexible CMS, rather I plan on building a custom site.