Planet INdT

Pastebin (Old) Update and Kinetic

2008-11-11T11:37:11+00:00

It has been some time now since I updated the Pastebin applet and I didn’t have enough time to write this small post telling you the news: there is now a imagebin server implementation for the pastebin applet. This means that you can just drag your images there and it’ll post to imagebin server and you can share images with your friends easily =) I even heard today an use case of people taking snapshots with ksnapshot and draging the picture in the pastebin applet…that’s really nice!

Another very good news is that the Kinetic project is “on the streets”. Now you know what we were doing in Oslo by the time of this post. We gave a little help for those guys and soon we’ll keep working very close with those guys. We just have to finish another small project first…

Besides that I’m really happy that KDE 4.2 is almost on shape (at least for me hehe). Every day it becomes better and better. I also have to mention that applications like Marble and Digikam are getting even better also…

From the development side, hopefully I’ll be able to help closing some Plasma’s bugs until the release.

That’s it for now =P Cheers!

Mensapocalypto

2008-11-10T03:42:05+00:00

Existe essa associação chamada MENSA, ela aceita apenas as pessoas muito inteligentes como membros. Os candidatos fazem uma prova, parecida com aquelas de Q.I., e apenas os 2% melhores são aceitos.
Reza a lenda que o governo dos EUA levaria os membros da MENSA para abrigos nucleares especiais de onde sairiam para ajudar a reconstruir a civilização.

Então um dia alguém da Junta de Chefes declara DEFCON 1. Todos os gênios cadastrados pela MENSA são arrancados de suas casas por caras do serviço secreto, deixando pra trás seus menos dotados entes queridos. Lógico.

Depois do choque inicial os escolhidos passam o tempo comendo comida enlatada, jogando xadrez e montando cenários hipotéticos do que iam encontrar quando saíssem do bunker.

Qual o sistema de governo ideal? Como gerir a economia para garantir crescimento e prosperidade para todos sempre? Como manter as pessoas inteligentes e instruídas? Como manter alguma categoria de pessoas burras enquanto não desenvolvem robôs trabalhadores braçais?

Nenhuma surpresa que o excesso de testosterona intelectual mais a falta de pessoas menos inteligentes com as quais ficar se medindo levou à atritos. As rusgas iam desde a instituição de fábricas de bebês perfeitos ao uso de *really* smart drugs até mesmo a criação de notas de 42 dólares.

Quando todos estavam prestes a se matar eis que os indicadores dizem que é seguro sair e as portas se abrem automaticamente. Os geniosinhos mimados correm para fora onde encontram destruição mas também uma multidão maltrapilha. Os do mundo exterior ficam curiosos a respeito dessas pessoas de aspecto tão bem cuidado dadas as circunstâncias e se interessam por sua história. Os cabeçudos tentam todos contar a história ao mesmo tempo, cada um se considerando mais capacitado para tarefa.

Alguns dias depois a multidão acampada finalmente consegue discernir o sentido do que os escolhidos representam e da sua proposta. Sendo assim tomam a atitude mais inteligente que uma multidão de indivíduos bem adaptados o suficiente para sobreviver ao pior de uma guerra atômica sem toda a parafernália tomaria: matar a todos numa frenética orgia de sangue, vísceras e cérebros. Muito feio de se ver, mas pessoas têm de extravasar depois de serem lançadas num inverno nuclear enquanto tentavam levar suas vidas, não?

E pra história ficar mais freak ainda, imaginem algo como um final do He-man ou dos Thundercats, onde todo mundo pára pra dar a moral da história. Isso mesmo, a moral da história! Essa coisa meio vitoriana que de alguma maneira ressurgiu nos desenhos dos anos 80. Vejamos…

Um dos sobreviventes maltrapilhos olhando pra câmera, o festim sangrento ao fundo. Ele sorri, brincando com um coração em suas mãos vermelhas: “Crianças, lembrem-se de também pensar com o coração.” Ele sorri, pisca, e corre em direção da animação.

Jack of all trades, master of none

2008-11-07T18:02:58+00:00

Pau pra toda obra (Brazilian Portuguese)

Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada (Spanish)

devyni amatai – dešimtas badas (Lithuanian language)

Well, that is what reminds me some of so called portable/platform independent software we have around Linux environments. It sounds amazing specially in Brazilian Portuguese (literally, "wood for every construction") doesn't it? Just as in OpenOffice.org as it can be used in many platform a thing not even Office could do, so you can edit proprietary formats in many platforms including on the very own proprietary ones, really exciting don't you think?

When it comes to cross-platform everybody is interested, like recently from Linux userspace key Developers Aaron Seigo and Christian Schaller there was even a dispute between Phonon and Gstreamer where multi-platform shines like a popstar. Great so I can use Phonon with some proprietary framework on Windows or even better use Gstreamer as even it does work on windows too.

Oh, lets not forget Mono, the rockstar of the cross platform, wood for every construction even for those constructions that doesn't need wood, just a snake.

There’s a Starman waiting in the sky

2008-11-04T01:20:18+00:00

Conversa com minha filha, deitado com ela num banco e olhando pra um céu de poucas estrelas.

ela: “Olha, tem uma estrela ali.”
eu: “Só tem uma.”
ela: “Não, tem mais duas, mas são bem pequenininhas.”
eu: “É mesmo. Sabia que elas podem estar mais longe que essa que parece grande? Pode ser que chegando bem perto a pequenininha seja mais brilhante que essa maior. Só tem que chegar perto.”
ela: “Eu posso ir num foguete.”
eu: “É, um foguete pode servir.”
ela: “Ou um avião.”
eu: “Um avião que voa no espaço.”
ela: “Não, um avião que voa de noite!”

simple ideas. Powerful ones.

2008-10-31T17:58:29+00:00

Why games are a major source for inspiration :)

The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

and I have always an excuse to my wife :)

Good reading: Samsung Instinct Process

2008-10-31T16:57:13+00:00

I wish it was not a chaotic week around here to write more on the subject and to explain some of my “aggressive” ideas on the subject, but the reading of this document was a quite good moment for me:
http://sender11.typepad.com/sender11/2008/10/design-of-the-s.html.

It explains not the design of the UI/Ux but goes into the organizational changes that were made to accomplish a more “UCD” or I would say a Design by Genius project in record time.

A lot of things needs to be done in the phone, but some of the main rules for any Ux team are there:

a. Leadership definition
b. Team proximity
b. Consistency through code not wireframes, More software / Design less documents
c. Independence and backup from higher management : to protect the product from feature owners.

Viagem à Africa do Sul :: Chegada e Impressões Gerais

2008-10-25T03:22:28+00:00

Confira o post inicial: Viagem à África do Sul com o índice de todos os relatos da viagem realizada em dez/2007-jan/2008.

No domingo, 16 de Dezembro de 2007, chegamos ao Aeroporto de Joanesburgo, África do Sul. Já havíamos passado por ali em conexão rumo à Angola, mas agora era hora de desembarcar e encarar a cidade e o país pra valer.

Nossa passagem de volta estava marcada para o dia 04 de Janeiro e por estarmos no pico da alta temporada, nossa agenda estava quase toda definida com reservas em pousadas, parques e passeios.

Assim que chegamos fomos recepicionados por nossa recém conhecida amiga e couchsurfer Antoinete. Extremamente receptiva e prestativa, ela foi até o aeroporto nos esperar. Fizemos um rápido tour pela cidade no caminho pra sua casa onde um quarto estava arrumado nos esperando.

Embora a maioria das pessoas associe África à pobreza e à vida selvagem (como vistos na TV), a África do Sul destaca-se pelo seu nível de desenvolvimento. O país conta com uma ótima infra-estrutura turística e uma organização que lembra alguns países da Europa. E mesmo após tantos anos sob o regime do Apartheid (que findou em 1990), há poucos sinais de preconceito ou discriminação. Como era de se esperar há várias regiões pobres com problemas de desigualdade social, mas presenciamos um convívio muito pacífico entre as diferentes etnias.

Aos longos dos próximos posts detalharemos mais aspectos do país, mas por enquanto é suficiente dizer que ficamos muito surpresos (positivamente) com tudo o que vimos.

Algumas curiosidades sobre o país:

O principal idioma é o Inglês, seguido do Afrikaans e outras 11 línguas oficiais;
As pessoas são muito simpáticas e receptivas, principalmente nas pequenas cidades, vilas e áreas populares. Quando nos identificávamos como brasileiros, isso ficava ainda mais expressivo;
Há uma grande diversidade cultural nas diferentes regiões do país. A maioria das vilas mantém algumas de suas tradições, vestimentas e línguas originais;
80% da população são negros, 9% brancos e 11% mestiços/asiáticos (simplificadamente);
A variedade geográfica é muito grande: em uma área pouco menor que a do estado do Pará, o país tem lindas praias, serras montanhosas, desertos, áreas florestais e algumas regiões onde há neve no inverno;
Os africanos adoram cores… e gostam de pintar os telhados de suas casas de cores variadas.

Localização da África do Sul no continente Africano

Joanesburgo em particular é uma cidade mais industrial do que turística. Sendo a maior cidade da África do Sul e vizinha da capital Pretória, as principais atrações são históricas (residência original de Nelson Mandela, Soweto, prédios governamentais, etc). Infelizmente não conseguimos encaixar uma permanência mais longa em nossa agenda, então Joanesburgo ficou em nossa memória apenas como a porta de entrada e saída da África do Sul.

Já na segunda-feira dia 17 partimos para 4 dias de safari no Kruger National Park, mas isso é assunto para o próximo post…

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Post tags: africa, pessoal, viagem

Redenção em Shawshank

2008-10-24T21:03:35+00:00

Numa madrugada dessas da vida assisti um filme aleatório, se chamava “Um Sonho de Liberdade”, e é baseado num conto de Stephen King, mas só reparei no autor muitos anos depois. Eu pensava que ele só escrevia histórias com horrores alienígenas. Esse filme é um desses que se ninguém avisar você não dá nada por ele, pelo menos assim me parecia na época, passando na sessão guarda noturno/insone crônico.

É a história de como o rico banqueiro Andy Dufresne pegou vinte anos na prisão de Shawshank por assassinar sua amada esposa e o cara que estava comendo ela. Na verdade ele não assassinou, mas ora, todo mundo é inocente em Shawshank.

Ele então conhece Red (que eu teimo em chamar de Morgan Freeman e, cara, se você quer fazer um filme bom ficar melhor, coloque Morgan Freeman na narração, mas tenha o cuidado do casting parecer casual, ou as pessoas dirão “putz, o diretor quis Morganfreemizar o filme”), que é um muambeiro em Shawshank. Red não ficou muito impressionado com Andy

“Tenho de admitir, não achei grande coisa de Andy a primeira vez que pus os olhos nele. Parecia que uma leve brisa podia soprá-lo pra longe. Esta foi minha primeira impressão sobre o homem.”

Toda prisão tem tarados (deve ser um esquema de cotas), e estes sim acharam grande coisa de Andy, que era mesmo ruim de briga. Ele foi ruim de briga por cerca de um ano. Depois muita coisa que você só vai saber assistindo acontece, e tudo culmina (atenção spoiler!) na fuga de Andy da prisão descrita assim por Red:

“Andy rastejou para liberdade por quinhentas jardas de merda tão fedida que nem posso imaginar. Ou talvez eu só não queira.”

Foi mesmo uma fuga espetacular. Mas o legal do filme é o tema de como os muros da prisão ficam mais na cabeça dos detentos do que ao redor deles. Como Brooks, que é liberado com seus 70 e tantos anos, a maior parte vividos em Shawshank, e não consegue se adaptar no mundo exterior, logo cometendo suicídio. Red tem medo que isso aconteça com ele, mas sente que o processo já começou. Andy é o único que mantém a integridade psicológica, ele é o único que nunca esteve preso ali, e foi capaz de executar um plano de fuga de quase vinte anos. Não seria nem uma fuga, ele só estava indo embora.

Outro personagem interessante é o Tommy, que vivia de pequenos delitos e roubos pouco habilidosos, entrando e saindo de prisões e reformatórios. Ele não conhecia outra vida, provavelmente nasceu com os muros da prisão na cabeça. Andy diz que ele é um ladrão muito incompetente e sugere uma mudança de carreira, se propondo a ajudá-lo a tirar um diploma supletivo. Numa conversa Tommy conta uma história que ouviu de um condenado em outra prisão que esteve, uma informação que poderia inocentar Andy. Então acontece uma tragédia… ah! Vá ver o filme do cara que rastejou por um rio de merda saiu limpo do outro lado.

E 500 jardas são 457,2 metros.

Crysis Warhead

2008-10-24T14:26:56+00:00

Hoje devia ser um dia muito especial. Comprei Crysis Warhead. De verdade, na loja, de papel passado, diante de Deus! É a primeira vez que tenho um hardware decente pra jogar seriamente e não só ficar olhando nas revistas (é faz muito tempo, nem tinha internet quando eu já não podia jogar os melhores jogos).

Podia ter baixado o jogo como todo mundo faz, mas agora que a vida não está mais tão porcaria pensei ser interessante não mais agir de forma porcaria e pagar pelo jogo. (Esse pensamento foi um tanto marxista.)

Voltando ao raciocínio, isso era pra ser muito especial. Digitar serial é coisa que eu nem lembro pra que serve (só uso Windows pra jogos, o resto do tempo é “apt-get” ou “emerge”). Levou um longo tempo pra instalar a bagaça, fiquei pensando nos reviews que vi no YouTube, na diversão de jogar o primeiro Crysis por 7 horas seguidas no computador do dandrader. Cara, foi esse jogo que me fez comprar esse monstro de máquina cara com placa GeForce foda praticamente trazida do futuro pelo Conan! Depois de tudo pronto, o dedo coçando no mouse, essa porra de jogo me diz que as cinco instalações que eu tinha direito já foram feitas e por motivos de segurança o jogo não ia rodar. Segurança de quem CARALHO?!

O que fode tudo, tudinho mesmo, é que meu ódio poderia matar plantas, fazer vacas de duas cabeças nascerem e o Galvão Bueno pedir desculpas por todos esses anos sendo um idiota. Mas tuda essa energia não tem qualquer direção. Não é culpa da moça que me atendeu tão simpaticamente na Saraiva, não é culpa dos game designers, dos programadores, nem do hardware. Provavelmente é culpa de algum advogado de direitos autorais filho da puta que foi abusado quando criança por rottweilers num filme que só foi apreendido pelo FBI depois que todo mundo da escola dele assistiu. Um desses colegas de escola deve ter dividido quarto com ele na universidade de direito.

Bem pode ter sido outra pessoa. Não importa, ela é inatingível pra mim. Eu não posso ligar esporrando pra ninguém, tudo que posso fazer é baixar um crack no torrent com minha conexão sofrível e torcer pra que dê certo.

Claro que posso devolver na loja, pegar meu dinheiro de volta e minha reclamação débil subir a cadeia de consumo até algum lugar misterioso nos Himalayas. É como levar uma surra de olhos vendados. É tão broxante que não dá nem pra se masturbar como atividade compensatória.

Caras do DRM, vocês podem se achar o máximo mas vocês são todos filhos da puta e… pensando bem, eles não devem estar lendo isso aqui porque estão com as cabeças enfiadas em seus próprios cus. Então essa é pra você programador/game designer/etc aleatório que está lendo isso: NUNCA ponha ou deixe que outros coloquem DRM nos seus jogos. Toda vez que você faz isso um fã morre e seu árduo trabalho vira merda.

Update: consegui jogar o treco burlando o DRM e enfim jogar “as it meant to be played”, como diz o logo da NVidia. Baixe esse DLL[1] e coloque no diretório bin32 sobre um DLL de mesmo nome, lá onde o Crysis foi instalado. Ele vai quebrar o esquema de DRM e deixar você se divertir com seu jogo legalmente comprado com seu dinheiro honesto. Mesmo assim depois vou trocar o dvd lá na saraiva.

[1] http://rs498.rapidshare.com/files/146438698/tdm-cw.zip

Missing hidd when trying Bluemaemo on Ubuntu (Fixed)

2008-10-24T13:42:51+00:00

Hi!
I'm writing this post from bluemaemo :D For those who doesn't know, bluemaemo is a very cool application for maemo devices which uses bluetooth's HID capabilities to transform your device into a wireless keyboard/mouse of your computer! This is great because now I can let my laptop using my TV as video output and my N810 as keyboard/mouse, so I can use it from my bed, for example ;)

In order to install the "missing" hidd binary that was supposed to be in bluez-utils package, you need to install bluez-compat package. Follow the steps below:

1. Open a terminal (e.g. gnome-terminal).

2. Issue the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install bluez-compat

3. Now pick up your maemo device and open bluemaemo. Ensure the bluetooth is on.

4. Now, back at your computer, search for your device using hcitool:

$ hcitool scan

Console output should be like this:

Scanning ...
00:1D:6E:9D:36:6E Bruno N810

5. Use the bluetooth MAC address from your device to issue the final command:


$ sudo hidd --connect MAC_ADDRESS

Done!

ps: I have tested this on Intrepid Ibex only. I'm not sure if bluez-compat package is available on Hardy!

Beware of a really bad english… but here’s my talk at the Summit

2008-10-22T00:39:18+00:00

Marcelo Eduardo - “We are not the Users” from Jamie Bennett on Vimeo.

Real thanks and Kudos to Jamie Bennett for the recording, editing and massive work of doing that for all the talks at the Maemo summit 2008 in Berlin.

It’s always funny to watch yourself, and specially funny for me as I am able to see / hear all my mistakes in gestures and spoken language.

I really need to study English for real :) self taught english has clear limits, specially if you don’t live in a English language based country.

Notebooks com/with Linux & Fenix Systems

2008-10-20T21:33:37+00:00

* English Version below *

Versão em Português:

Este será meu primeiro “post” escrito em Português e em Inglês ao mesmo tempo, a fim de atingir o maior número de leitores para esta minha crítica. Os usuários desse “Fenix Systems” provavelmente se sentirão mais confortáveis lendo em Português e talvez alguns donos de empresas ou investidores prefiram em Inglês.

Minha namorada estava procurando um notebook para comprar e eu como um computeiro devia ajuda-la. Nesta procura eu fiquei feliz de ver que havia muitas marcas vendendo notebooks com Linux. Não que isso fosse uma novidade para mim, mas é legal ver de perto uma quantidade imensa de notebooks com Linux nas prateleiras. Fiquei ainda mais feliz ao ver que ela estava disposta a comprar e usar o notebook com Linux. No final, ela comprou um Notebook Intelbras com Linux.

Ao liga-lo vi que o sistema era um tal de “Fenix Systems” e achei q fosse mais uma distribuição Linux. Antes fosse. “Fenix Systems” é uma gambiarra completa. Eles pegam uma distro qualquer e enchem de tranqueiras deles que não funcionam direito e inserem muitos erros e problemas. Neste caso, era baseado em um Ubuntu, mas ouvi dizer que antes disso eles se baseavam no Kurumin.

Eu irei enumerar os erros encontrados:

1 - Tudo é muito feio, desde o primeira imagem de “splash screen” até o fundo de tela.

2 - Durante o boot várias mensagens de erros exibidas.

3 - Video mal configurado. Não usava a resolução indicada e fazia com que as letras ficassem embaçadas.

4 - Ambiente muito poluído com uma mistura dos ícones de desktop do MS Windows com uma mesa do MacOS X

5 - E o mais tosco de tudo: Um HD de 120Gb com apenas 12Gb acessíveis, decorrente de um particionamento mal feito.

Pelo amor de Deus, quem é que me vende um produto sem estar configurado a 100% da sua capacidade? Uma empresa que não liga para seu consumidor ou uma empresa que acredita que 100% dos usuários só irão comprar o notebook com Linux pelo preço e depois instalar um MS Windows pirata nele?

Além disso as empresas contratadas para colocar o Linux deviam se preocupar mais em entregar o produto a 100% do que a colocar seus gráficos feios. E isso seria bem simples: Instalar o Ubuntu/Kubuntu como eles são.

Após passar algum tempo brigando com o “Fenix Systems” eu desisti e instalei o Kubuntu com a instalação padrão e magicamente tudo estava funcionando a 100%. Mais simples, não?!

English version:

This is the first time that I use Portuguese and English at the same time in order to get lots of readers. Probably the Fenix Systems users will fell comfortable reading it in Portuguese and maybe some company owners or investors prefer English.

My girlfriend was looking for a notebook to buy and I as a computer guy should help her. I got happy when I saw lots of brands selling their notebooks with Linux on it. Ok, there is nothing new on it (at least here in Brazil), but it is cool to see by yourself a huge quantity of notebooks running Linux on the shelves anyway. I got happier when I noticed that she was willing to buy and use a notebook running Linux. In the end she bought one.

When I turned it on I noticed that Fenix Systems was running on it. I thought it was yet another Linux distribution. I’d prefer that. Fenix Systems is a complete workaround. They get any Linux distributions and put their trash that doesn’t work properly and add lots of errors and problems to this system. In this case it was based on Ubuntu. I heard they used Kurumin in the past.

I’m going to enumerate the problems I faced:

1 - Everything is very ugly, since the first splash screen image up to the background image.
2 - Lots of error messages during boot.

3 - Video was not properly configured. It wasn’t using the best resolutions and the letters was blurry.

4 - Polluted environment using a mix of MS Windows desktop icons with MacOS X table

5 - And the worst thing ever: A 120Gb HD with only 12Gb accessible due to a bad partitioning.

For the God’s sake who the hell sells a product without being at 100% of its capacity? A company that doesn’t care for its clients or a company that believes that 100% of them will buy the notebook running Linux by the price and will illegally replace Linux by MS Windows?

Besides the companies hired to put Linux on it should worry about delivery a 100% functional product instead of put their ugly images. It would be simple: Install Ubuntu/Kubuntu as they are.

After spend some time fighting against Fenix Systems I gave up and installed Kubuntu using its default installation and magically everything was working at 100%. Simple, isn’t it?

Mamona HowTo in pt-br

2008-10-20T04:17:18+00:00

For those who can read in pt-br, here’s a link to a Mamona how-to that Jorge Pereira made.

It has some good instructions explaining how to start playing with Mamona.

And remember, in case you need/want to understand Mamona better, just access Mamona’s Trac.

See ya

New wave of Mozilla coming: Fennec

2008-10-17T15:45:46+00:00

Woot !!!

The first alpha of Fennec (Mozilla Mobile) is just out of the closet, aiming mainly to get feedback about the user experience ... If you have a n800 or n810, give it a try and file bugs on it.

Check a video of it in action here.

One-click install available here. Localizers, addon developer and whoever do not have a device in hand, desktop (x86) builds are available as well for Linux, Windows and Mac.

Performance is now under attack.

Stay tuned.

--Antonio gomes
tonikitoo at gmail

Carman: New release

2008-10-17T11:18:38+00:00

The source of new Carman based on Evas already available in garage. The packages is comming...

Take a look:

Great News from Rasterman

2008-10-14T01:59:08+00:00

Raster is probably the kind o developer that is an invaluable partner to a Designer. (I had the luck to work with another one like that: Barbieri). He not only seems to respect a lot the designer’s work (as he also does a lot of work on that field) but he seems to be one of the Developers with the best understanding of the Designer’s drawbacks for today’s UI designing and development tasks while still maintaing the things simple for the developer on the other side.

Just a quick glance on his latest news, makes me happy to know that he’s doing something that would make my life way easier. Such a shame that my paid work is not QT based. Both a quite good solutions, but after Canola, Carman and others I became a fan of Edje and Raster work .

http://www.rasterman.com/index.php?page=News

Don’t forget to download the videos and check out a little piece of his work :)

The post also points to what I have been twittering : Operators moving towards own phones. While most of people think of it as a natural movement to increase profits I think how the market will adapt to the Service-Device possible scenário coming with this movements.

The proof that is not a Nokia only Problem : Sony Ericsson Xperia

2008-10-13T11:33:59+00:00

The video again says it all. The boards changing and moving slowly, the completely useless stack mode (the grid mode is indeed useful if fast enough) and the ridiculos windows menu on top left on the main screen must be making Apple heads laugh a lot.

Why? The question is Why to release something clearly behind it’s time. I know there must be Share Holders pressure, market pressure but releasing phones with shallow, slow, or I would simply say “desperate” UI is not the solution. The solution is to focus on consistency not on let’s do something to match the iPhone. Companies shouldn’t try to be an iPhone. They are not Apple, and they have way more than one phone/OS to build / maintain thus the complexity and needs are way higher than at Apple. Also most of this companies are not Design oriented, but instead Developer oriented.

I think the designers will take the blame for something that is clearly not their fault (time to market, pressure, hardware design etc) but it has been a hall of shame, that the slightly better one still HTC. They released the lame touchFlo, but now they are improving really fast the experience. I think the only problem to them is Window Mobile. If they manage to bring the same ui on top of Android, then I think they will for sure gain enormous speed on developing really great experiences.

Using wired connections from you tablet.

2008-10-06T20:31:32+00:00

This hack was originally needed mainly because I am usually under a proxied network at work, and for some security issues this connection can not be broadcast'ed by access points or routers, but I do want my tablet connected to the same wired network of my desktop.

So that is my way of doing that:

1. On the desktop, setup an adhoc connection manually using the pc's wlan interface (eth1).
2. And enable ip_forward in order make it to bridge to the wired network interface (eth0).

For (1) and (2) I use to use the following bash script (to be ran as root):

modprobe iptable_nat
iwconfig eth1 essid tonikitoo mode ad-hoc key off
ifconfig eth1 10.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

3. Set an ad hoc connection in the tablet as following (sshots taken by using system's Connection Manager):

Note is to be replaced by whatever name here.

Note: the SSID (also 'tonikitoo' here) has to match to the essid value set in line #2 of the pc script above.
Also note the value 'ad hoc' in 'network mode'.
Note2: Set proper 'Security method' here.

If your wired connection is under a proxy, set the same proxy address for your adhoc (in Advanced Settings palette).
Note: if the wired network requires no proxy, just ignore this step.

Set your ip, router and dns.
note: 'IP address' has to be in the same network of 'Router'.
note2: The IP set in 'Router' has to match the IP set in line #3 of the pc script above.
note3: 'Primary DNS address' has to match your pc's one (run 'cat /etc/resolv.conf' on the pc to check that).

Maybe this can help someone else, maybe not ... Maybe someone wants the tablet to be adhoc'ed to his laptop and also sharing its connection (wired, ppp, usb), maybe not ...

--Antonio Gomes

Nokia 5800 : The videos say it all

2008-10-03T13:22:47+00:00

Nokia 5800

While It’s probably clear for me that the 5800 is not an iPhone contender, and I think it’s not even supposed to be, it’s clear some of the details that makes the iPhone stand out from the competition. Don’t matter if it’s Nokia, Samsung, LG. The problem is always one:

It is not about putting touch and transitions. It’s about the whole package. It should be consistent, responsive, integrated and with visual clues to whatever you’re doing.

If you take time to look at the videos :
http://gizmodo.com/5058503/nokia-releases-5800-xpressmusic-tube-full-video-tour

What will strike you in the first seconds are several minor things that unfortunately ruin most of the experience, even the whole device / software looking quite solid:

a. Lack of responsiveness : 2 presses? Press and nothing happens for more than 1 second? Touch to zoom and it takes half a second?

b. Still carrying the past on it’s shoulder: Focus when there’s no focus? Ok, if you want to mix hardware controls with touch controls you can focus on another features but not on the list.

c. What is that pick? I am a guitar player, but to kill the stylus by putting a pick that is funny :) The portrait qwerty, the full qwerty the T9 and recognition are hitting that spot : Let’s try to please everyone. At least for me, IMHO this is where things get really ugly. Trying to please everyone is one of the most dangerous decision a design team can make.

d. Build on top of legacy: Ok you need to maintain S60 compatibility, but come on, s60 was not made for touch. Even with series90 the touch was not planned for fingers. Legacy is the worst nightmare of all.

e. the icons. Oh, the icons. The GUI icons for Camera, Video player and so on are really bad. I hope this are not the ones in the final package, but that looks so amateur :/ What is that recording light?

f. Transitions where is not needed, missing when needed : From one screen to the other a simple fade, but the selected item title slides up and decreases size to fit the former title space’s. Complicated.

g. Keyboard flying around? Consistency at least in the input method is key. The keyboard is supposed to be in the same place always, but if you look when adding a feed to your favorite friend, the keyboard goes to the middle of screen, with buttons bellow. Not good.

So, there’s a lot of things going on in the video, but they are there. At least Nokia didn’t trying to make the videos be something the device is not. The real deal seems to be there, and you know what you’re getting.

I will for sure try to use one soon, and post here if my impressions based on the video are right, and see if I can at least detail in really fine-grain level some of this small things, somebody can be reading and can be helpful!

Got love the Thumbs :)

2008-10-03T11:48:27+00:00

We like to do UI for thumbs, but this is way too cool for school :) Nice work by the Panasonic guys. I specially like the thumbs on the screen. It’s sort of an cartoon-rendered-augmented-not-so-reality and it rocks :)

I need to visit some Asian technology event really soon :)

Da Terra dos Testes Bobos

2008-10-02T17:02:26+00:00

Which Programming Language are You?

Which OS are You?

Trolls, QEdje and Plasma

2008-10-01T01:28:40+00:00

Last weeks I was at Qt Software’s (formely known as Trolltech) office in Oslo working a little bit with those amazing guys. I would like to thank everybody there for everything . It was an awesome time!

Well, talking about Oslo it’s obvious to say that I had a lot of time during the flights to hack Plasma! It was very good because I could understand a little bit more about Plasma script engine’s API and could finally make the QEdje Script Engine work 100%. Hmm…ok, maybe it need some love during package install to avoid the install of invalid files, but I’m working on this right now, right Aaron ? (just commited this fix: revision 866487)

It’s really nice to have a way to easily select an edje file and it automagically(tm) becomes an applet that can be used as a gadget. Of course QEdje needs some more love in order to support some more features from the original Edje as gradients and some other stuff, but the current version supports the most common use cases. Hey, and don’t be shiny…just git clone qedje (instructions at http://dev.openbossa.org/trac/qedje) and contribute to the project too =D.

While finishing the script engine I found some problems with Qt’s proxy widget. After some discussions with Alexis (darktears), Aaron and Thiago I finally understood the problem and was able to fix the segmentation fault: first I applied Alexis’s patch on Qt (it’s inside qt-copy now) and then used valgrind to understand the next problem I had. With that I just followed Aaron’s tip about setting the proxy’s widget to 0 (zero) just before deleting it in the script’s destructor. Just worked \o/ =D.

So, after some test and review it just went to kdebase as our friend CIA-54 (aka bot) told us:

<CIA-54> asouza * r866456 workspace/trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/ (6 files in 4 dirs):
<CIA-54> QEdje Script Engine arrives to kdebase
<CIA-54> Working version. Still needs improvements on package install to avoid
<CIA-54> install of invalid files.

Screenshot showing a lot of the kde logo edje animation on my desktop as well as canola’s deepblue theme (the player group) with it’s settings window (it has a preview so you can see what it’ll look like if you select that group).

my desktop

Next steps ? Wallpaper API !!!

Cheers!

Sending patches using git-email

2008-09-28T13:10:35+00:00

If you work on a project that uses GIT as repository, you should probably need a simple way to send your patches to others in a simple, clean way. For this, I've started (for a while now) using a very cool tool called git-send-email. For Ubuntu users, It is available on the git-email package (sudo apt-get install git-email) and provides a way to send patches through email to others. See HOWTO below:

1. Install 'git-email' package:


$ sudo apt-get install git-email

2. Add these options to ~/.gitconfig:


[sendemail]
  smtpserver = "yourmailserver.com"
  smtpuser = "user"
  smtppass = "abc123"

3. Now suppose you have a local patch that needs reviews/acks. Pick up
its hash with 'git log -n 2':


$ git log -n2

commit a268d86e547dffe73c9f7b4633913ffdf91b1a8e
[..]
commit bf14b2f140fc84a57f61c7f59efae294b2a9a1df
[..]

4. Pick up commit hashes and create a formal patch file using 'git
format-patch -C ..':


$ git format-patch -C bf14b2f140fc84a57f61c7f59efae294b2a9a1df..a268d86e547dffe73c9f7b4633913ffdf91b1a8e

A new file 0001-Added-tracer-header-version-architecture-check.patch is
now created.

Note: If you want to pick the last patch you've commited locally, you can easy this step by doing the following:


$ git format-patch -n

Where n is the number of last patches you want to pick (e.g. 1).

5. Almost there! Now send your patch to mail list using 'git send-email':


$ git send-email --to "mail@list.com" 0001-Added-tracer-header-version-architecture-check.patch

Done!

[]s

iPhone Released in Brasil: Hate to say I told you so…

2008-09-26T18:23:02+00:00

Apple’s jewel was launched in Brazil in plans even worse that I believed:

Couple of weeks ago, I wrote about it here, here and I actually believed that it could exist a “free” iphone in really expensive plans. Poor me. I was really naive. More or less I was right :

Now, what about a 500 USD phone? Even with the 199 USD you can compare with other eletronics: the Wii costs 249 right? Here in Brazil it costs 1.599, or 1000 USD :) So the best price for the iPhone will be something at 500 USD WITH contract (I’m putting here that the carrier will make it free, but it will have to pay the taxes to import the phone) and the minimum salary is 2 times lower than this :)

The cheapest iPhone will be way more than the any price out there. around 999 + monthly fees of more than 300 Reais. this is actually USD 550 for the device when paying more than USD 200 monthly. And please don’t forget that we are talking about a country with minimum salary of about USD 210. (of course those people are not even near the sight of the iPhone, only when they become second hand phones - but this is a subject for another post)

So, if you decided to pick the less expensive plan? this is what you pay:

For the iphone 8gb: 1499 ( USD 822) and the montly plan 52 ( USD28) but this gives you only 50 minutes of calls.

So you can compare it to the USD 199 8gb model in the US.

What About the data plans? No unlimited internet as expected in Claro, and the most expensive plan in the Claro carrier is for 200mb only. That’s a easy to beat limit. I would suggest do the math before joining because to pay 1.499 + 150 monthly and have only 200mb it’s really a turn off. If you go vivo the plans are way better, and there’s even the unlimited option for BR$ 308 (USD 169). Believe me it’s not a joke.

PyQt4 for Maemo - released

2008-09-24T14:13:23+00:00

Today we released PyQt4 for Maemo. It is port based on Qt4 for Maemo libraries. Instructions on how to install can be found at project's webpage. Hope all you enjoy it!

G1 coming

2008-09-24T00:56:42+00:00

While I don’t need to say that I don’t have information to agree with this post, I need to admit that the phone is looking quite interesting.

For now I will only talk that a lot of ui design challenges that we faced are solved, and it was kind of funny and informative to see how google ui guys solved it, because there’s always a couple of ways to solve a problem:

a. The easiest, most obvious way. It works but has most of the time a higher cost in experience WoW
b. The medium way, where you try to bend the rules, increase the average experience and can make the difference
c. The really bold, where you will suffer critics to be really different, but those are the ones who can really make your product have personality and stand out from the crowd with a king.

Of course in the same proportion the risk of doing a incredible crap thing comes with the choice but you need them in today’s market, where the iphone is the standard for user experience.

The g1 seems to be on most of the time on the a, and just a little bit on b. You can see that most of the decisions are more on the safe side for obvious reasons, and while I disagree with a lot of details they are not in any way the “problematic” ones.

I think the point is that I was expecting more from google than the usually do, and what they do it exactly what they did with their other projects: really simple UI and sometimes (ok a lot of times more than sometimes) sparks of greatness that really can make the product be loved by a lot of users.

Now it’s time to wait to put the hands on the phone, but not being fan boy it will be for sure a real contender in the market :) The regular cellphone guys will soon know how much should they worry with the G1.

plumbers conference

2008-09-22T02:50:04+00:00

LPC was amazing, I might say it was the best conference I've attended so far. Im not a kernel hacker as someone may thought but even a userspace developer can say that we need more conferences like that. Let me summarize some talks/bofs I've been present at:

Audio

Lennart handled the audio miniconf which turns out to show how some alsa limitations, especially in its API documentation. The conclusion was that there are far too many project trying to solve but none offer a good pcm API which application could rely on. The audio bof was basically Lennart making sure Takashi know his alsa issues list. In addition to Lennart's list we also told Takashi we would like to have support for 'virtual' devices such as bluetooth headsets.

Video

Video miniconf was very interesting too, most about v4l2. In the driver area it seems that some common code is being duplicated so there is a plan to create an API to be used as core of new drivers. But for me the most interesting was the idea of user space daemon very similar to Pulse but for video which should solve most of the problem when trying to use a webcam on user space.

Boot

WOW I must say this miniconf was the big show of the conference, at least for me, the very first thing was a netbook booting on 5 sec. If there is something that can grab the attention more than a fancy ui demonstration that is a very amazing boot time. Im pretty sure that this presentation might change what most distros are doing nowadays, especially when the super read ahead (sReadAhead for short) code was released.

Power Management

Another pretty good minconf, olpc guys showing how they handled power managment on their device. Basically XO doesn't have an acpi so all is handled directly, sometimes they even turn off some chips to gain more hours of usage. In another presentation it was discussed that the more drivers support power management the more we salve power, although this may sound very obvious the real idea is to make more drivers power aware instead of just quality of a few.

DBus

Ok, that is my area, and as all the other it went pretty well. It started with discussion how to improve desktop experiency. Basically how DBus is changing the daemons around the linux desktop offering a better support/service to applications. Then the presentation about upstart 1.0, it was pretty cool to see the API for jobs on upstart, this might be usefull for most application/daemons that do want to spawn processes. After a small interruption the presentation continue with Marcel Holtmann talking about DBus on kernel, the reception of the audience was very good with few concerns, the fact of upstart requiring DBus to be started early during boot process may make the idea even more compelling than before.

10/10 for LTC

Next, BlueZ meeting.

Maemo Summit 2008: Just great

2008-09-21T16:34:26+00:00

The Summit ended yesterday, We are waiting a couple of minutes to get the taxi to the airport. Tired but incredible satisfied. These days were the perfect opportunity to get to know a lot of people that I only knew through the web, and man… having a face on the nickname really improves the communication for me. Big thanks to the guys that didn’t get annoyed with me talking really heavily, as usual!

I hope the guys there liked my talk, where I presented more than the usual about us at Openbossa, the new brand debuted, and better than I expected, Ellen from KDE usability project and openusability was there :) As really a pleasure to meet her and to be able to talk a lot about how to take some of their projects also to Brazilian universities that we work with.

See you Monday night, already back to Brazil. The taxi just arrived :)

Lantern Pr0n!

2008-09-21T16:15:53+00:00

Aqui em Recife tem uma rede de lojas chamada Atacadão dos Presentes. É uma daquelas lojas que vende tudo: material de construção, ferramentas, brinquedos, papelaria, equipamento de proteção individual (onde eu passo boa parte do tempo, deve ser alguma perversão porque eu não preciso de óculos pra solda nem máscara de gás) e a prata da casa: coisas inúteis.
Uma das coisas que sempre me chamou a atenção foi a lanterna movida à energia animal: enquanto você ficar apertando o “gatilho” a luz permanece acesa. Suponho que essas coisas autosuficientes fascinem pessoas fissuradas em futuros do tipo Mad Max.
Depois de meu lado depravado sufocar a vozinha medíocre que dizia “gastar com coisa que você não vai usar?!”, levei duas delas pra uma noite de tórrida lá em casa. Daí produzi as fotos pornográficas que seguem:

ainda vestida

toda aberta

ela tem uma bateria como fonte de energia opcional embutida. safada!

a engrenagem preta transformam o movimento de apertar o “gatilho” em movimento circular transferido pro dínamo gerador de energia (a coisa branca)

agora tudo espalhado e o dínamo todo arreganhado

bolinação

testando sem a bateria de lítio (pra saber se era opcional mesmo — depois das olimpíadas confio ainda menos nos chineses (exceto o Confúcio)).
O multímetro diz que estou gerando 250mV

E fica melhor! Vídeos pr0nográficos:

girando o dínamo com o dedo

medindo a tensão com o multímetro

É bem legal essa lanterninha, perfeita mesmo só se armazenasse energia, mesmo que por pouco tempo. Um capacitor poderia servir.
O exercício físico pra operar a dita me lembrou uma conversa com tia Dany (não essa conversa) sobre que seria muito mais estimulante ir pra uma academia se a energia gasta lá fosse armazenada pra uso posterior. Além de ter noção numérica do que estava fazendo: “hoje gerei 100Wh (ou 360.000 Joules, que na minha cabeça é mais julioverniano; ou ainda, 86kcal) lá na esteira”. Como diz o Salveti, fica a dica nerd/saudável.

The JavaScript wars have begon...

2008-09-19T10:46:43+00:00

Ha! I deserve it :) Delays, delays and delays

2008-09-18T20:33:43+00:00

So, as every single time I tried to guess a date, the team found some critical (segmentation fault) bugs in the newer versions (updated EFL libraries) and then we are delaying the launch.

At least I will be announcing the counter point to that on the Maemo summit :)

Sorry again, and I can tell : we are actually moving now everyone from both teams along with other members to fix everything to make it less problematic. We will not rush to break devices :)

Canola2 Beta10 & New Carman Release plan

2008-09-17T08:37:37+00:00

Hi,

I hate when I need to excuse myself. Specially when it’s about delays. It happened in the first release of Canola2, and it is happening now. Canola should be out in august and we are reading to a middle sep. release that I am not confortable with.

Reasons (I also hate justifying, but people deserve at least an explanation):

a. New team is finally reaching a good speed of development
b. They had the complex task of fixing some old, core level bugs
c. We are implementing the new development process / project leading process remotely, so you can imagine the problems.
d. Teams are smaller. (again!)
e. Carman needs EFL, so deeper testing

And what about Carman?

a. Carman is now EFL based, like canola, so it needs some libraries so testing is intensive
b. The first team guiding it faced some heavy problems and it was replaced “during flight”

What about a date now?
I again hate to give dates because they always go wrong, but if today’s build is ok from both projects both projects will go live tomorrow :) * I hope so

New Prism-Maemo repository

2008-09-14T10:31:38+00:00

INdT has got me some space for my personal stuff, including prism-maemo port. So, please if you are interested in Prism-Maemo, use THIS REPOSITORY for newer updates. Obviously, the two previous repositories won't be updated any further (due to technical problems w/ the server).

Sorry about that.

--Antonio Gomes

Avoiding conflict with Scratchbox

2008-09-12T19:00:41+00:00

We noticed that many people are giving up to try Mamona due to 2 reasons:

We were requesting the user to install a qemu compatible version. Of course this can bother people that use Scratchbox or another emulated system. Even Scratchbox has its own qemu you need to register the right interpreter on kernel through binfmt_misc and this registration is system-wide.
There were many scritps to set/fetch/setup Mamona stuff and the help was distributed in many pages. All of this scripts were located (hidden) in tool.git repository and the documentation was a set of small pages with pointers between them asking for a “segmentation fault”

So we decided to make the things easier to the user creating mamona-installer. It includes all Mamona scripts, our own qemu-arm static binary and do the dependency track. You just need to get the deb, rpm or tarball package and install Mamona.

The installer includes mamona-cputransp script to easily switch between qemu-arm interpreters in your system. Now you can have Mamona and Scratcbox in your machine and use them one at a time.

The mamona-installer is included in our just released Mamona 0.2!!! Wooow!! See our Release Notes and enjoy our completely rewritten documentation

Suggestions and bugs, please report to us!

Mamona 0.2 released

2008-09-12T18:54:44+00:00

Mamona, an OpenEmbedded based platform that I’ve been worked on for the last year, has a new release. The Mamona team are proud to announce the Mamona 0.2 that represents a huge step forward. The main news of this release are:

Glibc - 2.5
GCC - 4.1.2
Full Python 2.5 support
Enlightenment Window Manager
USB Networking
Bluetooth support
Noemu Packages
Mamona SDK
Patched QEMU (user mode emulation) for Mamona SDK
ARMv5te (N770) and ARMv6 (N8X0 and Omap 3430sdp)
Machines Supported:
- Nokia 770
- Nokia 800
- Nokia 810
- Omap 3430sdp
Web browsers: Firefox 3 and Midori (recommended)
Virtual Keyboard
Xephyr support on SDK
SystemTap enabled kernels for Nokia devices
Full Emulation
Network Manager working with dbus API
Command line interface for Network Manager
Easier installer, including deb, rpm and tgz “packages”
Completely rewritten wiki documentation

Check the release notes at http://dev.openbossa.org/trac/mamona/wiki/Releases/0.2/ReleaseNotes.

Mamona 0.2 is out!

2008-09-12T18:43:50+00:00

Mamona Logo

I’m really happy to announce the final release of Mamona 0.2!

We’ve been working very hard to accomplish what we wanted for the final release, since the 0.2-Beta release.

We could not delivery everything we wanted, but this is a major improvement from the latest release.

Some of the main highlights for 0.2:

Improved SDK
Xephyr support on SDK
Full Emulation
Virtual Keyboard
Wireless Network with Network Manager API
Command line interface for Network Manager
Web browser: Midori
New installer, with our own Qemu (don’t need to mess up with your system anymore
Completely rewritten wiki documentation
New Enlightenment wallpaper

See more at the Release notes, and the complete list of what changed at the Change Log.

You can find the installation instructions and much more at the Documentation wikipage.

And, as always, features planned for the next release:

Rebase to the latest OE repository
Push Mamona’s patches to OE
Full support of QT 4
Initial support for KDE 4
Something to report the battery status to the user
More machines: beagleboard
ARMv7 support
a newer gcc, glibc and other applications.
more applications
MDM - Mamona Device Manager

We’re also planning to make new releases more often, so wait for the next release soon

Please, try Mamona 0.2 and give us some feedback, so we can improve the platform for the next release.

And finally, a big thanks for everybody who helped making this release possible

Mamona Release 0.2

2008-09-12T18:43:44+00:00

It has passed a while since my last post here, but nothing better than great news to get back to write.

I’m so proud to announce the Mamona 0.2 release.

The entire team has been doing a great job spending efforts to make it usable and stable, providing new installer scripts and new packages; supporting new machines; writing a better documentation and many other features.

Please, read the complete feature list at Mamona 0.2 Release Notes.

Lambdas em laços for

2008-09-06T23:57:05+00:00

Duas vezes num espaço de pouco mais de poucas semana me deparei com duas situações em que o programador era vítima de uma característica pouco conhecida da instrução lambda de python.

Ambas as situações envolviam usar lambda dentro de um laço for para criar funções dinamicamente de acordo com o valor fornecido pelo for naquela iteração. Seria algo mais ou menos assim:

for x in range(10): algo_assincrono.connect(lambda : foobar(x))

No caso, o programador queria que a funcao foobar fosse chamada para cada x gerado no for, enquanto que na prática a função é sempre chamada com o último valor atribuído a x. Isso acontece porque a instrução lambda de python não é exatamente igual às outras lambdas de outras linguagens.

Em python, lambda é apenas uma mandeira simples de encapsular uma expressão dentro de uma função anônima, sem resolver os nomes das variáveis em tempo de definição. Ou seja, lambdas de python não possuem um escopo (espaço de nomes) próprio, trabalhando no escopo em que foram definidas. E como o laço for também não cria um espaço de nomes próprio, a variável x no caso acima estará com o último valor atribuído a ela até o momento da execução do lambda.

Uma alternativa para esse problema é usar aplicação parcial de funções, disponível como a função partial no módulo functools. Ela trabalha recebendo como primeiro parâmetro a função alvo e em seguida os argumentos que devem ser aplicados parcialmente, retornando uma função que receberá apenas os argumentos restantes. Por exemplo:

>>> def foo(x,y,z): … return x+y+z … >>> foo(3) Traceback (most recent call last): File “”, line 1, in TypeError: foo() takes exactly 3 arguments (1 given) >>> from functools import partial >>> bar = partial(foo, 3) >>> bar(4,5) 12 >>> bar(4) Traceback (most recent call last): File “”, line 1, in TypeError: foo() takes exactly 3 arguments (2 given) >>> bar(0,0) 3 >>>

Voltando para o exemplo inicial, utilizando partial, ficaria assim:
for x in range(10): algo_assincrono.connect(partial(foobar, x))