Monday July 31, 2006 Seapegasus Blog
Monday July 31, 2006 Here comes the second part of last week's cartoon.
PS: Thanks to Tim B. for saying something funny about "cosmonauts saved by webservices" recently.
Posted by seapegasus ( Jul 31 2006, 12:59:12 PM CEST ) Permalink
Sunday July 30, 2006 How Much RAM Does Your Mobile Have?
TastePhone is a useful Java ME application that displays virtually everything that can be detected about your phone. Most people vaguely know what version of CLDC and MIDP their phone supports -- But have you ever wondered how fast you phone would be if it was a PC?
Now I know my phone's (Nokia 6822) Java virtual processor speed is 0.7 Mhz, which allegedly is equivalent to a PIII at 12.6MHz! :-D My RAM heap is 512kb, of which 466kB are free after startup, and it can read and write about 0.370 MB/sec from and to memory. The screen supports 4096 colors, and TastePhone gives you an overview of which keys are used for what in a mobile game (like UP, DOWN, FIRE, etc).
It has some minor bugs, such as claiming my time zone offset is -3600000 (oops, my Time Lord identity has been revealed!); and it also says my phone does not support audio and video recording, which is does, admittedly in bad quality, does that not count? :-P
Still a pretty useful piece of software if you're programming for the Java ME platform and need more detailed benchmarks than what the brochure at the store gives you, not only about RAM and speed, but all that crazy stuff like whether you can use PointerEvents, PointerMotionEvents, RepeatEvents, or whether the device can run a Midlet in the background or supports a double buffered screen. This app detects more features than I knew existed...
Posted by seapegasus ( Jul 30 2006, 05:39:41 PM CEST ) PermalinkIf you had control, what would have been your perfect Eighties TV show? I'd go for KITT and Patrica McPherson from Knight Rider, teamed up with MacGyver instead of D.H. Bonnie is a hacker and gets some real dialogue, and KITT is the ambivalent cyberpunkish AI in the background. The setting is Earth and sometimes the secret base, Battlestar Galactica, hidden cleverly on the backside of the moon opposite a nuclear dump, whose explosion (caused by MacGyver with a piece of bubblegum) blasts the moon on a journey through the galaxy after a breathtaking cliffhanger at the end of the first season. The bad guys are played by Nimoy and Landau, while KITT may or may not be pulled over to the dark side by Matt Frewer. At the end of the second season (that's the one in space), McPherson disapears under mysterious circumstances, and is replaced for one season by Jessica Steen, who has been heroically saved by MacGyver from an annoying life among alien robots. The title theme is of course from Doctor Who. ... See! It's so easy to come up with good ideas. Why didn't they record a show like that 20 years ago, hm?
And look! I found another thing from the eighties(?) that needs fixing, my old harmonica. Sorry harmonica, this blog category is labled Hacks, and this means I have to take something apart, and this time it's you. I found it again in a box and (despite never having learned how to play) I tried to elicit some notes. Turns out that some notes didn't sound anymore. At least not more than a faint eep. Bummer.
But since we live in the age where information's at your fingertips, I go check out a webpage by a harmonica enthusiast and am told that the problem's obviously due to the reed gaps being to wide. Of course! It's that obvious! ... Alright. ... What are reed gaps? Only one way to find out. >:-) *Takes out Swiss army knife*
Look, reeds! And gaps! Everywhere! So what I learned this weekend was: The perfect reed gap must be as wide as its reed is thick. It may be a fraction wider if you play loud, and a trifle less, if you play softly. Also I learned that the reeds on the outside produce most of the sound when you inhale, and the ones on the inside when you exhale. Oh, and if the base is on the right side, and the high notes on the left, the cover is the wrong way round. >:-) *Takes out Swiss army knife again*
Posted by seapegasus ( Jul 30 2006, 04:51:21 PM CEST ) Permalink
Monday July 24, 2006 More Cities, More Code, More Fun
What a slogan. ;-) Together with this nice tagline, the first bits of late-breaking information are coming through: There will be another NetBeans World Tour 2006/07, and it will come to each of the following 12 cities (hopefully) near you:
- Seattle, WA, USA
- Shanghai, China
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Seoul, Korea
- London, UK
- Hyderabad, India
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Atlanta, GA, USA
- Prague, Czech Republic
- St. Petersburg, Russia
- Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Mexico City, Mexico
Sunday July 23, 2006 I've Got No Mouse But I Must MacOS
My Mac's mouse died. Not the fancy green Apple mouse, a plain gray 3-button-mouse that I had bought in the old days when I installed some PPC Linux on a spare partition. (But then I messed up the boot-loader and I haven't seen it ever since. I wonder what became of this partition?) The mouse had already been displaying signs of unwillingness to discern between dragging and clicking for quite a while, so it did not come as a surprise when it stopped clicking for good. Still, I couldn't find the original mouse, and hadn't gotten a new one yet...
So I'm facing the question one night -- how do I use MacOS without a mouse until I get a new one?
I just wanted to check my email, so I hit shift-command-A in the Finder, the shortcut to the Applications directory, where I could select and open the Mail application with the arrow keys and by pressing command-o. (Why not use command-tab for selecting applications in the dock? Well, that only gives focus to applications that are already running.) Luckily, I was reading my main inbox before I quit Apple Mail last time, so the focus was on the right mail folder -- because I had no idea how to select another folder without a mouse...
If you now say "Dude, hit Alt five times and then ctrl-F1" -- you're so clever you're not even kidding! Yes, after a while, I actually remembered that crazy trick. It results in a gear-like sound that makes you expect a Myst linking book to appear in a hidden compartment. But instead it (ta-daa) activates MacOS's hidden Accessibility features. (If pressing those keys doesn't do anything for you, you need to permit its use in the System Preferences.)
Accessibility gives you some pretty cool keyboard shortcuts -- Who needs mice anyway! :-P Need a menu command? Hit ctrl-F2, and then the arrow keys and return to select. Wanna start an App from the Dock? Hit ctrl-F3. Need to switch focus to another window? ctrl-F4. Need to select GUI elements like buttons and textfields within a window? ctrl-F5 and then the spacebar to press a button (But only Apple programs seem to support that feature, e.g. Firefox doesn't).
But for the live of me, I can't figure out how to jump to the next pop-up menu in the preference panels, since the arrowkeys keep on selecting items from the first pop-up -- any ideas? In these cases (and to reach a mail folder or to move a file in the Finder), I still need to move the cursor and click -- I use the numeric keypad and I'm cruising along happily, completely mouseless. Groovy. Did you know MacOS could do that? :-)
Posted by seapegasus ( Jul 23 2006, 02:16:41 AM CEST ) Permalink
Sunday July 16, 2006 More Nokia Theme Silliness? This way
Hi and welcome to my new readers. Yes, I mean you guys who google for "free Nokia NTH theme download". *waves!* Let's get started. Today's topic is science fiction. After much popular demand by my one reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) I hacked us a Doctor Who theme for S40 Nokias. Oh and (hold on to your mobile!) while I was at it, I made a third one, for Firefly/Serenity fans.
Tadaa: Groovy little DIY themes for Series 40 Nokias
 Dr Who download |
The choice was clear: I went for the ninth doctor, Christopher Eccleston and some Daleks. Don't you agree the theme music is just brilliant? I watched the first black&white Dr Who episode, from the Sixties, and it had the exact same theme! Talking about timeless. |
 Firefly download | Yupp. Cowboys with spaceships. Unsurprisingly, the tune has a slight country touch. But not too much. (Your mobile renders boths banjos and fiddles as beeps anyway, so don't worry about your reputation). |
 Tori's Winter download | That's the first one from last week again, for completeness' sake. Tori Amos, 'Little Earthquakes' art, and the Winter tune. No science fiction here, sorry. |
How to install? There are two ways:
Either, download the NTH files to your hard drive under Windows. Use a cable or Bluetooth to access your phone's memory in the Nokia Phone Browser: drop the NTH files into the Themes folder. That's the safest and cheapest method.
Or, if you feel like making experiments, you can go the Phone's Web menu, select Download links > Theme Downloads > Options > New Downlaod Link > Enter Address, and enter
http://ruthless.zathras.de/mobile/to access a direct download page for various files. Note that your provider will charge you for GPRS (even though the files are free!), also some phones (or providers?) have download limits that will prevent you from successfully downloading! Hypothetically, it works with WAP/wml too, but I can't test it and I don't know whether our server even handles WAP/wml requests.
Friday July 14, 2006 Don't Write on the Backside of Paper (2)
Last April or so, I blabbered about 3D desktops. Today I find a prototype: BumpTop. Thanks, Canadians, that was quick. "But oh, you, like, forgot the file names! :p"
Of course this prototype is still far from being useful, but I think it doesn't hurt to experiment with the idea. One needs to start somewhere. If it at least results in a one nice photo browser or something I would already consider it success. Maybe over time, the idea refines and develops, who knows. I mean, come on, somebody must be able to come up with something. Whatever it will turn out to be, it will be named Sun Java Cubeform Third Dimension Plug-Around Module Pack for NetBeans ID3. Or maybe — 3Doogle.
Oh. Wait. I am suddenly worried. About support phone-calls. And written documentation. Hm... The more intuitive and less textual interfaces get, the more difficult it gets to describe an interaction in words... 8-| Neglecting the fact that you shouldn't, it's easy to explain to a beginner on the phone how to type in "R M blank minus R F blank star, now press return-key". And yes, sure, the most unspeakable mouse gestures will eventually be given handy names, in much the same way as complex facial gestures were given concise names like LOL, Argh, or Duh. But still — do you want to be the guy explaining correct mouse gestures to the panicky businessman who just accidentally swished his live's work into the dark little hole in the corner of the screen where the screensaver lives? Well?? See! *shudder*
Posted by seapegasus ( Jul 14 2006, 12:52:20 AM CEST ) Permalink Comments [3]
Wednesday July 12, 2006 Don't panic. Roumen isn't blogging! He's on holiday on some wild exotic offline island and is probably argueing right now with his breakfast to determine who eats who here. So I'm just making sure that you really all heard about the NetBeans chat this Thursday!
Like last time, NetBeans users meet for an hour using the built-in NetBeans Collaboration interface to discuss code, tools, the weather, and why the dog ate their homework. Just for kicks, Jiri offers a little prize to the one who answers two of his questions during the chat. Note however, that non-technical stuff such as "So like, where are you from?" and "WTF?" don't count as questions in this context.
So, mark your calendars: The chat will take place tomorrow, on Thursday, July 13th 2006 at 5:00 p.m. CET (click for other timezones) in a room appropriatly labeled netbeans. (for Australians and Japanese, that time is probably already a bit Friday-ish.) See you there!
PS: Dang I missed the quiz because I was stuck in a meeting. :( But here's the chat transcript!
Posted by seapegasus ( Jul 12 2006, 05:48:57 PM CEST ) Permalink
Friday July 07, 2006 The new iPods will either have a phone keypad, a scroll/touchpad, a biometric fingerprint pad, or a Nintendo game controller, or no controller at all (which of course suggests speech recognition capabilities above and beyond the current state of the art). In any case, they will definitely come with two bodacious zebra stripes! Woot! Or maybe not... Maybe Apple just quickly trademarked each and every design they could think of. Just in case... ;-p
Posted by seapegasus ( Jul 07 2006, 01:16:59 PM CEST ) Permalink
Wednesday July 05, 2006 Herr JButton, Ve Haf Vays to Make you Talk
A couple of you went through the Connecting a GUI to a Database tutorial. But then you thought, wait wait wait... Matisse is cool and all, and databases too, sure. But, how do I just hook up basic functionality to a Java Swing GUI in the first place? How do I make buttons respond to clicks, and how do I read input from text fields, and make results appear, and all that stuff?
Well, thanks to NetBeans community member Saleem and GUI guru Tomas Pavek, we now proudly present: Adding Functionality to Buttons: A Beginners Guide. Yes, it's here! The tutorial we all have been waiting for. Note that Saleem does not give autographs today. And the queue for the movie rights starts over there. -> . Thank you.
Posted by seapegasus ( Jul 05 2006, 06:06:57 PM CEST ) Permalink
