Planet BeClan

Frank Silye: A review of Locly, a Geosearch application for iPhone

frankps — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:03:49 +0000

I’m currently working on a web project at work, where one of my tasks is to look in to trends. One of the trends I have looked in to is smart phones with great web experiences and another is mashup technologies. During the project I came over an iPhone application called Locly.

Ask yourself, how many times have you been in a new place and had no travel book or map with you. I guess your answer would be quite a few. Locly is an application that can find attractions, cafes and shops near by you, by making use of the inbuilt GPS of the 3G iPhone, or your local base station data if you have the first generation iPhone. With Locly you can also look at local photos from Flickr, and pull up Twitter or Wikipedia entries that are close to where you are now. Locly is reported to work in many countries throughout the world, but I can only say that it has worked surprisingly well for me here in Oslo, Norway.

Locly is simply the best combination of geobased searches and mashups I have seen so far, and that not only on mobile devices.

The mandatory screenshots are of course published on Flickr.

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Bezilla Blog: Crosscompiling Firefox

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:15:09 +0000

I was too tired yesterday to complete my wiki article on crosscompiling Firefox for Haiku, but it's almost all there except for the patches needed. I will try to finish it this evening.

Anyway here is the article: Crosscompiling Firefox
Have fun, and don't hesitate to ask anything.

Update:I think I'm done so go ahead and try it out. Note that the PrNetAddress patch is quite important and should probably be used in BeOS as well. It might be what breaks ssl for some. The structure was smaller than it supposed to be on BeOS/Haiku probably from R4-4.5 porting.

Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): I want the audio book.

Matt — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:09:04 +0000

Here’s a great clip I found via BoingBoing of Richard Dawkins reading his hate-mail (as punctuated) aloud:

EDIT:

Context from a BoingBoing commenter:

#4 posted by MykReeve , August 25, 2008 8:02 AM

This is a clip from a three-part documentary that Dawkins presented on Channel 4 in the UK to highlight the genius of Charles Darwin. As I recall, this clip was included to illustrate the hostility that Darwin’s views still elicit 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

You can watch the whole documentary in 10-minute YouTube chunks on Dawkins’ website here:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,2925,On-TV-The-Genius-of-Charles-Darwin-Presented-by-Richard-Dawkins,Richard-Dawkins-Channel-4

Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): A million times better.

Matt — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:55:10 +0000

I don’t know why I never saw it before, but a friend just stumbled on my favorite hex joke and his answer was so much better that I’m now going to be asking this:

If only you, me and dead people know hex, how many people know hex?

Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): Oops.

Matt — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:58:05 +0000

Apparently my recent update broke AuthImage so you can’t comment. I’ll look into this someday.

Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): “Besides Lamb, what’s your favorite Christopher Moore novel?”

Matt — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:22:36 +0000

The title of this post is a question I received as a tweet, to which I promptly (upon reading at the very least) replied “Other Christopher Moore? In a tweet? This will require a blog.”

I love Christopher Moore and while I think Lamb is a standout as his best piece that’s more for the entertainment I receive from the concept of the story than for how much better the actual story is than his others. When I received the tweet I did have three initial impulsive responses:

and I think these three are my suggestions and I could have fit all three titles in a tweet, but no explanation would have fit and, well, when giving suggestions the explanation can make a big difference.

Just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything I did go back over the Christopher Moore quotes I’ve collected here, and I found some quotes from books that aren’t on the list, but my recommendations hold. Now for the explanations.

First of all I think I should say that my second favorite Christopher Moore novel, without much thought, is The Stupidest Angel; it’s such a fun little novel that’s absolutely absurd and I can’t get enough of it. It’s lacking the profundity of Lamb and Fluke, but it’s a simple joy to read. Why, then, you might ask, don’t I just suggest that my friend, or anybody for that matter, read this after Lamb? Inside jokes. Although I’m sure you could read, and enjoy, The Stupidest Angel without reading any other Christopher Moore you’d miss out on the history of the characters involved. If you’d already read Island of the Sequined Love Nun, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, and Lamb you’d already know the characters involved in this story and it just puts their actions in a context which makes the story that much more enjoyable. I should say here that both Island of the Sequined Love Nun and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove are great novels worth reading, but I wouldn’t mark either as my second favorite.

My next impulse is A Dirty Job. I only remember one brief crossover character appearance, but knowing who it is won’t add anything to the story, just that “hey, I get the inside reference!” thrill for a second. Really want the thrill? Read either of the Sucks series (Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck—though I believe the moment in question is actually referred to in You Suck as well as A Dirty Job) to figure out who the mystery character is. Do not, however, take this comment as an endorsement for either Suck book; they are actually my least favorite of Moore’s work (not that I actually dislike any of it). Back to A Dirty Job: If you’ve seen the fabulous TV show “Dead Like Me” you should feel right at home with A Dirty Job (apparently Moore and “Dead Like Me” creator Bryan Fuller developed their ideas concurrently and, since the TV show came out first, Moore tweaked A Dirty Job to be less like “Dead Like Me”). If you aren’t familiar with “Dead Like Me” consider this: What would life be like if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that souls are real and you were responsible for making sure that they moved along? A highly entertaining story that, given the lack of reference to characters in previous novels, should be an easy pick for second favorite as it is, once again, a bizarrely fun read.

The reason I can’t say to read A Dirty Job as my second favorite is because of Coyote Blue. Honestly, I can’t say why this book pops up so high and I now think I need to reread it. I remember that it was absolutely bizarre in that disjointed and inexplicable way, but it’s stuck with me. I think it’s something in the story itself that I really enjoyed. I do, however, remember reading it and thinking that it didn’t move along as well as it could (I find this common in some of Moore’s earlier novels—Coyote Blue being his second).

There you have it: My jumbled choices for Christopher Moore’s second best novel.

Frank Silye: Shazam recognizes music

frankps — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:17:03 +0000

I was down at Platekompaniet looking for some new CDs, and I heard a cool song being played as I entered the shop, and got thinking of one application that I have on my iPhone. I fired up Shazam and made it listen to the song playing. Within half a minute the song was recognized and the album presented to me. I could then go to the staff for a private listening.

And yes, I ended up buying the album. To make the tool even more useful, the results page includes shortcuts to the iTunes WiFi Muic Store, allowing you to buy the song directly from your phone, and to related content at YouTube.

The Shazam application enables you to tap into a vast database of nearly 5 million tracks giving instant satisfaction for those times when you want to know the tune that is playing, learn more about the artist, buy the song immediately - or simply add it to your playlist.

Shazam doesn’t only work on iPhones, but also other mobile phones. The company has their headquarters in London, U.K., but have their service running in 45 countries, by more than 50 mobile carriers. The service is currently available to over 500 million mobile phone users worldwide. In U.K. the Shazam is used in the following way, you “Shazam music” by calling 2580 from your mobile phone, your network operator standard call charges will apply (calls usually cost no more than £0.12 max) and the results are sent to you as SMS. Each successful identification costs £0.50, including VAT (unless you are a subscriber to Tag Club which gives you up to 300 successful Tags for £2/30 day month). A social web site is built up around the service, listing various charts and reviews.

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Bezilla Blog: An experiment

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:23:25 +0000

Just for fun, I rebuilt glib and libIDL under Zeta, overriding the configure script to force -03 and i686 optimization. Oddly, builds of Firefox (also O3 i686) seem more stable than without.

Bezilla Blog: A little meeting?

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:49:50 +0000

I've been busy with other things lately, and havn't talked with you in a while.

Maybe it's time to have a little meeting with an agenda and some coffee and cookies?
Even if it is only over IRC.

Things to discuss:
Crosscompiling
Firefox for Haiku Alpha 1
Patches for Firefox 2
Cairo
Trunk
Embedding

What do you say? Time, place and topics are up for discussion.

Edit: Added embedding.

Frank Silye: Geotagging Photos: A Review of Sony GPS-CS1 and HoudahGeo

frankps — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:13:39 +0000

I have since spring this year been working with trend analyzes on where the Internet is going. There are many great Web 2.0 applications out there, and some of them combines great hardware, desktop and web applications in ways that 2-3 years ago were unthinkable.

On Friday I bought a Sony GPS-CS1 at FOTOVIDEO. So why this device? GPS-CS1 officially only comes with support for Windows, but being a USB device that mounts on your desktop like a USB Pen Drive, should make it close to platform independent! No advanced Bluetooth driver is needed. I’m keeping my private photos on my MacBook Pro, so for me MacOS X support was a need. Having said that you might get problems with mounting the device on older versions of MacOS X, but Apple have confirmed that the latest Mac OS X Leopard release, from 10.5.3, has support for the device. But I don’t want to only use it to geotag my photos, I also want to use the device to track my bike trips - http://www.mapmyride.com/.

Sony also only list support for various Sony cameraes, but the device syncs well with non-Sony cameras as GPS location data and jpeg metadata (EXIF 2.1) are standards. I used an old Konica Minolta camera for my first tests, and will later test it with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX35 camera. The unit weights 55 g and can store your geographic position four times a minute, which makes about 15 days worth of trackpoints on the 31 MB of internal memory. Battery life should be about 10 hours on AA batteries. GPS-CS1 make it a great deal for those of us who only want a photo tagger, don’t need a full-size GPS unit, and don’t want to buy a GPS camera.

The GPS-CS1 device lets you attach it to a backback or belt loop, so that you carry around while you shoot. It records your GPS location and this information can later be synchronized with your digital images to provide a map of where your photos were taken, by using date and time information stored in the image headers. For this reason it’s important to make sure the clock on the digital camera is correctly set. No setting is needed on the GPS device because the time is also transmitted on the satellite signal.

I use Flickr for photo sharing. There’s a setting there that you have to manually change before you upload EXIF-geotagged photos; once you do this, it’ll map all newly-uploaded photos automagically! I have long wanted to arrange my pictures geographically on Flickr. This can of course be done manually, but that is taking a lot of time. With a GPS you can import the logged data in to Flickr, but first you must enable “Import EXIF location data” in your account settings (see screenshot above).

I chose HoudahGeo as my preferred application for merging photos with geo dato. The application has a lot of potential, and I find it to be the best one available on the Mac platform. And the price? Yes, great software rarely comes for free. The application costs 25 euros, and is worth every cent! I have a few words about their support service as well. I fired of a question to their published e-mail address last Sunday morning, and got it answered a few moments later. Unexpected and very pleasant! I have a few suggestions for improvements of the application that I have included in this blog entry.

The first button lets users import photos directly from iPhoto. The window that appears should be familiar for all users used to using the iLife applications. A great feature is that drag and drop from iPhoto is supported too. Even the name and comments fields from iPhoto are imported too! Photos can also be imported by clicking on the second button in toolbar.

HoudahGeo synchronizes the images on your digital camera with the latitude, longitude and time readings from several GPS devices (Garmin, Magellan and Wintec) over Bluetooth, but it can also read the data from files from devices mounted with USB (as the GPS-CS1 device). The Sony device stores the geo data in .log files, so it’s just to choose the correct file:

Adding the geo data to the photos are done in a matter of one or two seconds, and you are then ready to go the three last buttons in the toolbar. The first button writes the saves the geo data to the pictures, the second exports the EXIF data and the pictures to Google Earth or Google Maps, and the third one uploads the photos with geo data to Flickr.

HoudahGeo supports upload of selected photos to Flickr. You can also set it to only upload photos that have been geocoded. Just as the official Flickr Uploadr, you can define the maximum image size (resolution) for the photos when uploaded in Flickr. The last option “Include machine tags” shows the geo data as metadata in Flickr.

Before it starts uploading the photos to Flickr, you are asked to authorize HoudahGeo as a trusted Flickr application (the app can later be deleted in your Flickr settings.

I would like to see a better integration with Flickr. I truely miss not being able to add the photos that I am about to upload to an existing set or create a new one. It would also be great to add other tags than machine tags.

PS! You don’t need to purchase a GPS device to enjoy the wonders of HoudahGeo, the application can also be used to manually add geocoding to photos by using Google Earth or Google Maps.

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Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): “Beef up your burger with bacon”

Matt — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:05:50 +0000

The title is from a sign behind the counter at Jim’s Burger Haven; we’re not sure of the author’s intentions.

On a mildly related note:

David Reid: Sydney

david — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:33:03 +0000

The flight here from singapore was ROUGH. The bumps started almost as soon as we crossed into the southern hemisphere and continued for over 2 hours. They hovered around the annoying level for most of the time, but made frequent, if irregular, trips into disruptive levels just to keep our attention.

Sydney itself is as I remembered it, if a lot colder. Last time I was here it was summer, and in all honesty too warm for me. This time around, it’s a little too cold. Maybe I’m just too picky? Back to Singapore tomorrow, hopefully with a smoother flight!

David Reid: ToDo List manager?

david — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:03:31 +0000

Anyone got any suggestions for a ToDo list manager for Ubuntu? I know Sunbird has one, but I’d rather have a simple little app that was based on the desktop.

David Reid: Bye Bye Twitter

david — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:54:01 +0000

I started using twitter a long while ago. It was interesting, but not hugely useful - until I started getting tweets to my mobile. Suddenly it became a much more useful service. I could keep track of friends without any additional effort from wherever I was.

Of course, sending out so many tweets over a mobile carriers network is expensive, so it was always destined to be a service that had an end - albeit that date wasn’t one we were concious of.

It turns out that date was earlier this week. An email announcing the change arrived and suddenly twitter is no longer the useful service it was. The initial withdrawal is now past and I’m finding my need to check on what people are doing subsiding nicely.

Without the updates to my mobile it’s just not worth the effort. People will no doubt argue I could use a web browser on my mobile (yes, even though it’s not a jesus phone it has a web browser that works quite well) but that’s not as convenient or as easy as having the tweets as text messages. No, I think the most sensible plan for me is to kick the habit! The “cold turkey” stage is over, so it’s all downhill from here.

Maybe I’ll start writing more here? Who knows, might happen!

Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): Fitting

Matt — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:57:37 +0000

Frank Silye: Back from Hungary with 3 Hungarian Movies

frankps — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:42:29 +0000

As always when I am in Hungary, I try to find myself a few Hungarian movies. This time I bought Állítsátok meg Terézanyut! (2004), S.O.S. Szerelem (2007) and the last one was Kalandorok (2008). All three of them available with on DVD with English subtitles.

Lets start with the last one first, Kalandorok, it is made by the same people behind the classic Üvegtigris (2001 and Üvegtigris 2 - 2006). I hoped that they had found a great story, that I could really laugh from, but sadly not, the movie was a tragedy. I cannot on Earth understand how this movie could win prices at the Hungarian Film Week and Transilvania International Film Festival.

I am a great fan of Sándor Csányi, so one of the movies that I hoped to be buying this time in Hungary was S.O.S. Szerelem. In short, Peter is the head of a high-tech matchmaker company which organizes dream dates for wealthy costumers. Then comes Tamás, an ambitious businessman that can’t find a way to get close to Veronica, the woman of his dreams. Peter comes up with a spectacular plan: He rents a mansion in the country for Tamás, and he and his colleagues pretend to be his family in the hope of winning Veronica’s heart. However, Veronica is attracted to Péter instead of Tamás, and develops a strong bond with his daughter. Is Veronica going to follow her heart or will an unfortunate event from the past determine her decision? All in all, a quite so enjoyable movie.

Állítsátok meg Terézanyut! was a great movie, that made me laugh lots of times. The movie has several promising actors and actresses, that I have seen in Kontroll, Szabadság, szerelem, Csak szex és más semmi and Konyec. The plot was simple, Kata, in her 20s, loses her boyfriend and her job on the same day. She’s been indulging in fantasies of a more thrilling romantic life, and the cold water of being alone and unemployed doesn’t entirely dampen her imagination. She’s egged on by three girlfriends who get together to talk about men and sex. Kata has possibilities: She meets David (Sándor Csányi from S.O.S. Szerelem), a medical student; there’s Tamás, a stranger on a train who might be good for a relationship and a job. There’s also Miki, her brother who’s had serious drug problems.

The actress that did Kata was new to me, Gabriella Hámori. She won the award The Best Hungarian actress of the year in 2003, and I can only say that I hope to see more of her.

Make sure to read what I have written about other Hungarian movies.

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Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): My mother ruined me

Matt — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:46:22 +0000

I can clearly remember being in the fifth grade and reading to my mother an expository piece who’s exact content escapes me now (though I believe it was about eating a slice of cheesy pizza) and reaching the end when she filled me with a hauntingly profound critique: I hadn’t described a situation so much as told the reader how they would react. How could I know this? How could I tell other people what they would feel or do? This is something that struck me first as crazy criticism of me, but has grown over the years into a crazy sensitivity to the use of “you” (in the “you would” and “you will” connotations) by artist, reporters, and politicians. I am me, and I might not.

Frank Silye: No LDAP client for iPhone :-(

frankps — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:59:43 +0000

As written in the last post, I have recently upgraded the ROM on the iPhone to v2.0.1 (and earlier the iPod Touch, which I more or less till now haven’t had the time to play with). I was surprised to see that there is still no LDAP client included. I have Connect Fritid subscription giving me free Internet access between 17:00 - 08:00, and I find myself sending quite a few emails from the iPhone (for example when sitting on the subway).

I searched in the application repository over at iTMS and also the web, and didn’t come over any released client. A developer at Oracle played with the iPhone SDK, and made his own little client in about two hours, but sadly doesn’t plan to release it!

Anyone up for the challenge?

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Frank Silye: IBM to release Lotus iNotes for iPhone later this year

frankps — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:55:38 +0000

I guess that I must admit with Ars Technica that Lotus Notes is the office software everyone loves to hate. Despite that I am happy to read that I will be able to access my e-mail, group calendars, and contacts direct from my newly upgraded iPhone.

Having been involved in projects the last year, and therefor running to and from meetings most of the time, there have been times where I have had to make use of the web client called iNotes to access Notes info remotely. And I must say that the latest version has gotten a great facelift.

IBM has now announced that they are to add an iPhone-optimized web client for Notes, called Lotus iNotes Ultralite, later this year. The client is built on the IBM Lotus Domino Web Access infrastructure. Screenshots are available on their website.

Full article can be read on Ars Technica.

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Bezilla Blog: More Cairo

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:02:50 +0000

mrmdls emailed to let me know he has successfully built Cairo on Zeta and built FF2 with Cairo. I've suggested he might want to focus on BONE because it allows Haiku compatibility. Maybe he can comment on his results to date.

David Reid: Wordpress Upgrade

david — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:24:45 +0000

Wordpress seems to have a lot of updates. Almost every time I come to write a post (which isn’t as often as it used to be I admit) I’m being told to upgrade. Upgrading isn’t as easy as it should be, so I’ve sometimes been a bit slow to perform upgrades - never a good idea given the security implications that can result.

While looking at this recent upgrade I came across an article explaining how to use SVN to install/upgrade wordpress. Given the advantages this would bring I figured it was worth a try.

The instructions were clear enough and in around 5 minutes I had moved this blog over to using the subversion tag for 2.6 and performed all required database upgrades. Nice and easy!

Hopefully this will lead to me keeping the blog more up to date than it has sometimes been in the past!

Frank Silye: Scarecrow Amy scares the birds

frankps — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:04:38 +0000

A brilliant story if you ask me:

A Norfolk farmer who was struggling to come up with a fearsome enough scarecrow struck on a novel, and terrifying, idea… Marlon Brooks modelled his scarecrow on singer Amy Winehouse - and says she’s scaring off the pigeons that kept attacking his sugar beet.

She’s the best scarecrow we’ve ever had and she’s doing a brilliant job. In fact she’s doing a better job scaring the birds than she is singing at the moment.

For the full story…

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Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): Hitler in art

Matt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:21:25 +0000

On a mildly related note: One of my favorite books is Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian

Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): Starting XKCD from the beginning

Matt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:54:19 +0000

Matt Henkel (guildencrantz): Note to self:

Matt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:51:28 +0000

Things which rely on MySQL (like this blog) run better when MySQL is actually running.

Michael Davidson (slaad): Cover Art

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:47:41 +0000

So, as of March 31st 2008 you may have noticed that the SoundPlay InfoPopper plug-in ceased to download cover art. The service it used was officially turned off (having been closing since early 2007)....

Frank Silye: 2000 people evaquated a long the river Tisza

frankps — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:41:45 +0000

The weekend got came to an fast end as the water level in Tisza started increasing fast in North-East Hungary. 2000-2200 tourist that was living at vásárosnaményi-gergelyiugornyai camping. The area is inside the dikes, but 650 cm high water surrounding it. The top is to be reached tomorrow, 740 cm.

I wonder how high the water level get on the beach in Mindszent some time next week, and was closed for swimming today. Perhaps cause the higher stream in the river.

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Frank Silye: Hungary preparing for floods (3 roads closed)

frankps — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:16:17 +0000

When my parents are enjoying a beautiful summer at home in Oslo, with temperatures close to 30′ C, I have had a week of rain down in the south of Hungary and more is to come. A quite different holiday then what I had last year, with heat record and temperatures above 40 degrees. As I am the admin of the Global Environmental Change and Human Security (Gechs) site, I thought about writing a few lines about what I have seen on TV and read in newspapers.

After the flood Hernád river (in Slovakia - Hornád) had in 2004, Hungary has collected hydrological data performed by twelve District Environmental Protection and Water Authorities (DEPWA) functioning under the supervision of the National Environmental Protection and Water Authority. So when I now write that disaster management staff the last couple of days have been reinforcing dams along northern Hungary’s flooding Hernad river, it’s because the government early could state a third-degree flood alert. The area in danger is a 71 km part of the river Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county that still doesn’t have dikes, and the top of the flood is expected tomorrow (740 cm). The top in 2006 was 943 cm! At the Hungarian-Slovakian border the top of the flood was 415 cm, and the last hour the water level dropped with 6 cm.

Spokesman Csaba Csont told the press that the level of the water had risen from the first degree alert to the third degree in the course of ten hours, due to the exceptionally wet weather of the past few days. At noon on Friday the river flooded the road between Novajidrany and Vizsoly and it was closed for traffic. Though no villages have been cut off as yet, it is expected that further roads will be rendered unsurpassable in the coming days. Csont said that 100,000 sand bags and 5,000 cubic metres of sand were being amassed along the river for flood defence operations. Hernad’s dams are being reinforced and raised at Mera, Ocsalanos and Gesztely villages, while the municipalities of affected settlements are checking the flood protection dams around residential areas.

Floods are also reported in Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania. Sadly two people are reported dead cause of the flood so far in Romania, 2 in Slovakia and 4 in Ukraine. About 70 villages are striked by flood and some of them isolated and only accessible by helicopter in Romania and 120 villages in Slovakia got evacuated.

The pictures are taken from Duna TV.

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Bezilla Blog: Is Cairo on BeOS ready for prime time?

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:22:39 +0000

A new bug has been filed to remove references to gfx for BeOS. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446675
Has anyone proven the BeOS Cairo port stable enough to make this a safe thing to do? Does it even matter since we can't build trunk for BeOS and by the time we can, we may be able to port Cairo more easily to Haiku?

Frank Silye: Moblogging from my iPod Touch

frankps — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:05:55 +0000

1-2-3 testing. It’s great fun to see how advanced the first versjon of the Wordpress editor for the iPhone and iPod Touch is.

Working with it is straight forward and it couldn’t have bern much easier. My only complaint is writing longer articles sith the onscreen keyboard, AS writing with a thumb is nor fast or easy!

Adding pictures to an article is also in seconds, and tou can even take pictures that you add directly to the blog entry.

This blog entry was written on my iPod Touch and I can’t wait to upgrade my iPhone to v2.0.

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Bezilla Blog: Firefox 2.0.0.16 builds completed - on BeBits

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:32:11 +0000

The usual batch of builds: R5, BONE and Zeta. BONE builds have fyysik's Haiku patch applied (second version). I had some spare CPU time sitting around, so I've also posted Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 and yes, updated builds of Sunbird 0.9. BeBits has 'em all. Enjoy!

Bezilla Blog: Firefox 2.0.0.16 builds delayed

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:43:13 +0000

Seems either my HD is failing or maybe my (passively cooled) northbridge is overheating due to warm weather here. Either way, I'd just started building 2.0.0.16 when they system decided to reboot, then not boot at all. Posting this from the Xubuntu box in the garage. Hopefully this will be quickly rectified.

Update: so much for the "quickly" part. Somehow it seems all of my BFS partitions are hosed, as is the grub/boot partition on my HD. Very odd. I booted the machine from the Zeta 1.21 live CD and could read (and backup) all data from my NTFS and EXT2 partions. The BFS partitions are all there according to DriveSetup but the file system is unrecognized. Diskprobe shows the files appear to be there also but I have no idea how to save them. May be starting over on a few things...

Update 2: only the boot sector was trashed. Zeta 1.21 livecd doesn't have a BFS driver, as pointed out in the comments. My ignorance strikes again! Machine is happier now.

Bezilla Blog: Bots here

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:42:39 +0000

Hello, people. What do you think about switching CAPTCHA technology on here even for registered users?

(There is new trend here in LJ in last 2-3 days, lot of spam-bots created and activated. They try to post on topic, more or less, using theme recognition, but actually are bots with advertasion in single posting or info page)

Bezilla Blog: Haiku Firefox and Thunderbird available now

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:55:35 +0000

Sorry for the delay, fyysik. I had to test a bit; Thunderbird caused KDL Crash with r26384. I had to make sure the build wasn't bad but works fine under r26375.
Firefox for Haiku
Thunderbird for Haiku

These are (manually) reordered packages, ready to unzip and run. If anyone wants Sunbird, please reply and I'll build that also.

Edit: forgot to mention, these also have a version of tqh's revised NSPR. I don't know if it's the latest. tqh doesn't love me any more and hasn't sent his latest. ;-)

Bezilla Blog: Haiku-compatible FF with Haiku-specific "launch-kill" fix.

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:52:21 +0000

If someone needs Firefox which doesn't close other Mozilla apps and won't to be closed itself by others, there is such build for download - until Tigerdogs publishes full set of of Mozilla apps.

Works also on R5-BONE. As it was built on my own development code, it fixes problem with mouse sticking (lost mouse-up events), features filtering in File Picker, proper file-type recognition and also adds Postscript printing.

Also here is download for SeaMonkey users (Haiku, R5-BONE) with same critical fix and mentioned features.

I think those fixed version will be safer for use also in R5 and Zeta - as that bug with ports may lead to unpredictable things in BeOS-based OS-es too.

Look at older messages for solved problem explanation, e.g.
http://community.livejournal.com/bezilla/281777.html
http://community.livejournal.com/bezilla/282356.html

Bezilla Blog: Mozilla and Haiku-OS kernel kit - who's guilty?

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:15:49 +0000

That's again about misterious bug described in ticket 2049 - where launching some Gecko-based app instantly closes another running at the moment.

I got fix for that, at Mozilla code level, but actually this is Haiku problem - or feature?

We use for internal Mozilla communication BeOS ports,
and to have access for those ports from different components and threads we assign to ports name, which must be unique.
For that purpose we're using "current thread" identifier printed in octal form as port name - at stage of port creation. Then when we need somewhere to communicate, we are getting port by find_port - again, using portname created from current thread "number.
- see
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/xpcom/threads/plevent.c#382
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/widget/src/beos/nsAppShell.cpp#122
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/widget/src/beos/nsToolkit.cpp#93

To get current port ID we use methods PR_GetCurrentThread() from NSPR (NS runtime kit):
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/nsprpub/pr/src/bthreads/btthread.c#417

and there is something wrong. I'm not so competent yet to analyze btthreads code, but once I replaced all calls for PR_GetCurrentThread() in 3 places mentioned above,
plus this one (NB!!!, may be quite important, as it uses another PR method - mGuiThread = PR_CreateThread(PR_SYSTEM_THREAD,*)):
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/widget/src/beos/nsToolkit.cpp#231

with simple native find_thread(0) - all started to work as "expected" in Haiku - mozilla apps can now run simultaneously.

Bezilla Blog: Firefox 2.x branch End of Maintenance is December 2008

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:40:07 +0000

I just read, Firefox 2 is going to be maintained only through the end of 2008. Since the platform is already pretty stable and most holes appear to be patched, it'll have to work for us until Haiku is ready and we can resume development of trunk builds using gcc4.

Michael Davidson (slaad): Open Hello!

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:51:59 +0000

Pier Luigi Fiorini has just informed me that InfoPopper now "works and runs on Haiku". Now you can be notified of all sorts of snazzy things whilst using Haiku. Neat! Updated code is avai...

Bezilla Blog: Fixing simultaneous execution under Haiku

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:36:33 +0000

As already discussed, starting one Mozilla app under Haiku closes others already running (see ticket 2049. Discussion in the ticket suggests separate ifdefs for each app in this code. If someone can provide a little more guidance, I'll try to add the ifdefs.

Bezilla Blog: Firefox 2.0.0.15 now on BeBits

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:50:05 +0000

Branch code has been frozen and spun off for Firefox 2.0.0.15. I went ahead and pushed to BeBits, even though 2.0.0.15 does not appear to have been pushed to main platforms yet. My calendar is getting full and I didn't want to miss it. No major BeOS updates, just a couple of security and cross-platform fixes.

Bezilla Blog: Rewriting NSPR for Haiku

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:49:10 +0000

Haiku has some nice locking primitives, I have an older rewritten NSPR. Both should improve speed quite a bit.

Oh, and how about dropping support for BeOS and Zeta?

Update:
NSPR is working fine and fast, only thing left is switch to Haiku locking primitives.

After that it is probably time to figure out how to run the packaging script while crosscompiling, and that damn redraw problem.

Bezilla Blog: I suspect that we may have a reader!

Thu, 29 May 2008 21:45:29 +0000

I think that Stippi is reading this blog from time to time, so I'm sending him a message :)

As Axel increased BLooper's message queue to 200 today I was curious if that might not be what is the big problem behind our redrawing issue under Haiku. This because we may take a lot of time when dealing with messages which may allow it to fill up faster than we can manage. (Shame on us).

Luroh who had a freshly built version of Haiku tested and he said he didn't experience any redrawing issues. Update: Apparently it's still there.

After that we went for punch and pie. Not really, but this is my story. Anyway I suspect that this might be the case and I will probably run some tests. Feel free to come with ideas, fix the issue or just not read this post :)

David Reid: Ubuntu 8.04

david — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:47:15 +0000

As much as I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but 8.04 is still not as usable for me as 7.10 was

The biggest annoyance is that usb devices aren’t automounted. Stick in a USB memory stick, formatted as fat32 or ext2, and nothing happens. Looking at dmesg shows it’d detcted and devfs does it’s thing, but then nothing. In previous versions of Ubuntu it would be mounted - exactly as you would expect and hope. Sometimes running “gnome-mount -d /dev/xxxx” will mount the device, but not always. Annoying

I do find it quite amazing that the Ubuntu team have released 8.04 with such a serious flaw, but looking around for solutions it seems I’m not the only one to experience this problem. Sadly my searching hasn’t found a solution and I’ve seen reports that people still using Ubuntu 7.10 have had the same problem, so reverting to that version probably isn’t an option

This is the first time I’ve run into serious problems with Ubuntu on the desktop, but I hope it’ll be the last!

Until recently an encrypted volume I was using was automounting, but now it’s the same as my other USB devices When i try and use gnome-mount to mount the drive, I get…

x40:~$ gnome-mount -vtd /dev/mapper/luks_crypto_xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx gnome-mount 0.8 ** (gnome-mount:17095): DEBUG: Mounting /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_part_1_size_0 GConf Error: Bad key or directory name: "/system/storage/default_options/(null)/fstype_override": `(' is an invalid character in key/directory names ** (gnome-mount:17095): DEBUG: Mounting /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_part_1_size_0 with mount_point='', fstype='', num_options=0 ** Message: Mount failed for /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_part_1_size_0 org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod : Method "Mount" with signature "ssas" on interface "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume" doesn't exist

Any Ubuntu folks have solutions or suggestions?

Bezilla Blog: 2.0.0.15pre for use with Haiku

Mon, 26 May 2008 01:20:01 +0000

I've created BONE builds from the latest branch for use with Haiku.
Thunderbird
Firefox

Enjoy!

Bezilla Blog: Branch Building Broken - or not

Sat, 24 May 2008 19:35:36 +0000

Hello all!
I'm now settled into the new job and will hopefully be able to focus a bit more time on Firefox. As I updated my 2.x branch code this morning, I noted a rather large number of commits coming down the line. It seems bug 419030 now has the 2.x branch picking up changes in the security components that were being missed.

Update: As usual, changes to the code have broken BeOS building. Here's the latest problem.

Update 2: ...or not broken. I restarted a clean build and everything was fine. Very odd; may point to bfs weirdness on my HD, as fyysik diagnosed once before. At any rate, updated code builds cleanly. Looks like this was a system error.

Bezilla Blog: Why firefox looks strange in Haiku

Thu, 22 May 2008 19:45:18 +0000

Michael Lotz gave this hint in #haiku today:

the fonts in firefox are not broken, it just uses the wrong ones
it uses the "extra light" versions of dejavu
if you delete those firefox will look normal.

So how Firefox chooses fonts or the order returned by Haiku needs looking into.

Fyysik?

Bezilla Blog: Is it needed to URL Encode ";" in file name on directory listing of file scheme ? (bug 412428)

Tue, 20 May 2008 06:38:44 +0000

I filed bug of directory listing that does not URL Encode ";" in file name on file scheme.
It is bug 412428 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=412428).
And I already wrote patch for the bug.
But, I don't know how should we handle ";" in filename on BeOS.
Current patch does not URL encode ";" in file name on BeOS.
Is it needed to URL encode ";" on BeOS?

David Reid: Server Issues

david — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:19:46 +0000

My main server lives, like many others do, in a dark, cold room protected by locked doors. It’s a lonely existance, but one that it seems to enjoy - rewarding me with a relatively trouble free few years. On sunday morning that run of good uptime came to a crashing end.

The problems started after a reboot. The box came up, but none of the networking was configured. The people from the hosting company managed to get the interfaces configured (after initially omitting adding a route) and I was able to access it via ssh. Something wasn’t right though and there was a raft of odd behaviour.

The OS was in need of an update, so as the machine was being monitored and the network KVM was still attached, it seemed like an ideal opportunity to upgrade. After backing up all the required files I installed the kernel and rebooted - to be met by silence. A phone call confirmed my fears, but the guy from the hosting company simply asked how he could help - very cool and collected After a session of trying a few simple things we managed to get the networking working sufficiently to let me login via ssh. After a 30 minute session of head scratching and puzzling the machine was rebooted and came back perfectly - much to my relief.

It’s been a frustrating couple of days, but the server is now working and the various ports have been upgraded.

This gets me from an old, old version of FreeBSD (4.9) to a slightly newer one (5.2). I’m aiming to get it to at least 6.3 so I can use the newer binary updater to try and avoid all these issues in future.

Full credit to my hosting company, Positive Internet for their help and support.

Bezilla Blog: Haiku 404

Sun, 18 May 2008 16:31:32 +0000

Hi guys,

I'd like to change the usual error message, replacing it with a random haiku, like in NetPositive. What do you think?

I tried some things, but I don't have knowledge enough to make it work properly. The page opens, but nothing is seen.

I found out how to modify that page here.

Then I adapted a JavaScript that I found. Here's the code (sorry, but I can't attach the files):

//netError.xhtml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head> <title>Page cannot be reached</title>
<script src="haiku.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="chrome://global/content/customerror.css" type="text/css" media="all" /> </head>

<body>


<script LANGUAGE = "JavaScript">
// this you put into you html doc where you want your quotes to appear
document.write(haiku[rand(haiku.length)])
</script>


</body>
</html>

---------------------------------------------

// haiku.js file

// JavaScript Document
function makeArray(len) {
for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) this[i] = null;
this.length = len;
}

// you add as many quotes as you want here just make sure to change the makeArray(number)

haiku = new makeArray(38);
haiku[0] = "The web site you seek\u
Lies beyond our perception\u
But others await.",

haiku[1] = "Sites you are seeking\n
From your path they are fleeing\n
Their winter has come.",

haiku[2] = "A truth found, be told\n
You are far from the fold, Go\n
Come back yet again.",

haiku[3] = "Wind catches lily\n
Scatt'ring petals to the wind:\n
Your site is not found.",

haiku[4] = "These three are certain:\n
Death, taxes, and site not found.\n
You, victim of one.",

haiku[5] = "Ephemeral site.\n
I am the Blue Screen of Death.\n
No one hears your screams.",

haiku[6] = "Aborted effort:\n
The site, passed this veil of tears.\n
You ask way too much.",

haiku[7] = "Morning and sorrow\n
404 not with us now\n
Lost to paradise.",

haiku[8] = "Not a pretty sight\n
When the web dies screaming loud\n
The site is not found.",

haiku[9] = "Site slips through fingers\n
Pulse pounding hard and frantic\n
Vanishing like mist.",

haiku[10] = "The dream is shattered\n
The web site cannot be found\n
Inside the spring rain.",

haiku[11] = "Bartender yells loud\n
Your site cannot be found, boy\n
Buy another drink.",

haiku[12] = "Chrome megaphone barks\n
It's not possible to talk\n
Not yet anyway.",

haiku[13] = "Emptyness of soul\n
Forever aching blackness:\n
"Blah.com not found."",

haiku[14] = "Click exciting link\n
Gossamer threads hold you back\n
404 not found.",

haiku[15] = "With searching comes loss\n
And the presence of absence:\n
The site is not found.",

haiku[16] = "You step in the stream,\n
But the water has moved on\n
The site is not here.",

haiku[17] = "Rather than a beep\n
Or a rude error message,\n
These words: 'Site not found.'",

haiku[18] = "Something you entered\n
Transcended parameters.\n
The site is unknown.",

haiku[19] = "Stay the patient course\n
Of little worth is your ire\n
The server is down",

haiku[20] = "There is a chasm\n
Of carbon and silicon\n
The server can't bridge.",

haiku[21] = "Chaos reigns within.\n
Reflect, repent, and retry.\n
Server shall return.",

haiku[22] = "Won't you please observe\n
A brief moment of silence\n
For the dead server?",

haiku[23] = "First snow, then silence.\n
This expensive server dies\n
So beautifully.",

haiku[24] = "Seeing my great fault\n
Through darkening dead servers\n
I begin again.",

haiku[25] = "Visit the home page\n
It can't be done easily\n
When the site is down.",

haiku[26] = "Cables have been cut\n
Southwest of Northeast somewhere\n
We are not amused.",

haiku[27] = "Site is silent, yes\n
No voices can be heard now\n
The cows roll their eyes.",

haiku[28] = "Silicon shudders\n
The site is down for the count\n
One big knockout punch.",

haiku[29] = "Yesterday it worked\n
Today it is not working\n
The web is like that.",

haiku[30] = "Errors have occurred.\n
We won't tell you where or why.\n
Lazy programmers.",

haiku[31] = "The code was willing\n
It considered your request,\n
But the chips were weak.",

haiku[32] = "Error reduces\n
Your expensive computer\n
To a simple stone.",

haiku[33] = "The ten thousand things\n
How long do any persist?\n
The file, not there.",

haiku[34] = "A file that big?\n
It might be very useful\n
But now it is gone.",

haiku[35] = "Server's poor response\n
Not quick enough for browser.\n
Timed out, plum blossom.",

haiku[36] = "To have no errors\n
Would be life without meaning\n
No struggle, no joy",

haiku[37] = "Login incorrect.\n
Only perfect spellers may\n
Enter this system."

// The random number generator.
function rand(n) {
seed = (0x015a4e35 * seed) % 0x7fffffff;
return (seed >> 16) % n;
}
var now = new Date()
var seed = now.getTime() % 0xffffffff

-----------------

Bezilla Blog: 2.0.0.14 Coming, now here

Thu, 01 May 2008 05:01:20 +0000

I've completed builds of the next Firefox 2 point release, version 2.0.0.14. I am not able to post to BeBits. It seems the password for the Bezilla account is different than before. Anyway, for those who read this blog and want the latest in security updates, here are links to the usual three versions:

BeOS R5
BONE, Dano and derivatives
Zeta (requires i686 or later CPU)

Update: now posted to BeBits

Michael Davidson (slaad): Bye bye waves

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:04:27 +0000

Something I've wanted to do for a long time is to get rid of the InfoPopper. It's not that I don't like it - I can't live without it - but it just doesn't belong in the IM Kit repository any more. I s...

David Reid: Calendar Server

david — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:33:22 +0000

I’ve played with various approaches to shared calendars for the last few years - largely without much success. The lack of progress in this area has been strange and annoying as it’s really a service that many people need but most businesses need. The dominance of Exchange Server in this area may explain some of it, but I don’t think it can explain everything. I’ve watched the emergence of CalDAV with some interest but until recently hadn’t bitten the bullet and done anything about it - until this week.

The Mozilla Sunbird client works well and runs on Linux and Windows. It supports CalDAV and so running a CalDAv server shouldn’t be a problem so I figured this should move me away from the hacks I’ve tried before and get me to a point where things simply worked without constant intervention.

Having gotten this far, it was time to find a CalDAV server. Given how long the specification has been around I figured there would be a few to choose from. As usual, I wanted an open source solution and one that wasn’t Java (sorry Java weenies) and would run on Ubuntu. Naively, I didn’t think this would be too hard!

After a few web searches with a variety of keywords I was going round in circles. Every search gave me the Apple CalendarServer as the first or second result with a mixture of others - most of which I’d not heard of before. When I came across a post about running the apple server on Ubuntu and seeing someone I know from Apache was involved in the project, I decided to give it a go. There didnt seem to be a package available, so it was time to grab the source and build.

Getting the source proved easy enough, but building it revealed a lot of missing packages form the machine, each quickly solved. [ I had to edit some of the files as they included the Python.h header by using 'Python/Python.h' which didn't work. using just 'Python.h' worked fine. ] Finally I had a built server. Running the quick test showed it to be working OK. Now I needed to install it.

Running the install command proved to be a disaster the first time round. For some reason the installer ignored all the usual conventions (well it is Apple I shouldn’t have been surprised) and stuck the required files into an odd folder. I removed the folder and debated what had gone wrong. Eventually I ran the installer again using ’sudo ./run -i /’ and things seemed to end up in more sensible places. The location for the installed config file was /usr/caldavd. Hardly where I would have expected it, but possibly not a bad choice given that this is still highly experimental. in keeping with the experimental nature of this I decided to use that directory for the configuration, data and documents.

The next step was to configure the server. This is done by the caldavd.plist file, which is just a slightly odd xml file. Apparently the file is considered straightforward enough not to need any documentation - but I didn’t find it that way and struggled a bit to get things setup the way I wanted.

I added a user, caldavd, to run the service and below are the steps I took to get the various directories and the config file ready. This probably isn’t the ideal way of doing things and I’m sure once there is a debian package available things will move, but this layout does keep things together to allow easy removal for when that happens. Comments or suggestions for improvements welcome

sudo mkdir /usr/caldavd/conf
sudo mkdir /usr/caldavd/data
sudo mkdir /usr/caldavd/documents
sudo chown -R caldavd:caldavd /usr/caldavd
sudo mkdir /var/log/caldavd
sudo vi /usr/caldavd/caldavd.plist
- Set DataDir to /usr/caldavd/data
- Set DocumentDir to /usr/caldavd/documents
- Set Directory Service xmlFile to /usr/caldavd/conf/accounts.xml
- Set SudoersList to /usr/caldavd/conf/sudoers.plist
- Set AccessLogFile to /var/log/caldavd/access.log
- Set ErrorLogFile to /var/log/caldavd/error.log
- Set ServerStatsFile to /var/log/caldavd/stats.plist
- Set PIDFile to /var/run/caldavd.pid
- Set UserName to caldavd
- Set ControlSocket to /var/run/caldavd.sock
- Set Twisted deamon path to /usr/bin/twistd
- Set PythonDirector pydir path to /usr/bin/pydir.py
sudo caldavd -f /usr/caldavd/caldavd.plist

At this point you should see warnings about a missing accounts.xml file. This file needs to be created in /usr/caldavd/conf/accounts.xml. The format is reasonably easy to follow.

<accounts realm="xxxxx">
  <user>
    <uid>david</uid>
    <guid>david</guid>
    <password>xxxxxx</password>
    <name>David Reid</name>
    <cuaddr>mailto:xxxxxxxxx</cuaddr>
  </user>
  ...
  <group>
    <uid>family</uid>
    <guid>family</guid>
    <password>xxxx</password>
    <name>Family Calendar</name>
    <members>
      <member type="users">david</member>
      ...
    </members>
  </group>
</accounts>

You’ll also need to add the sudoers.plist file (though I’m not sure what exactly this does to be honest and the documentation I read didn’t throw any light on it). The format of this file seems to be as follows.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>users</key>
    <array>
      <dict>
        <key>username</key>
        <string>superuser</string>
        <key>password</key>
        <string>superuser</string>
      </dict>
    </array>
  </dict>
</plist>

The mailing lists for the server could do with a fully searchable archive, and if one exists then a link somewhere on the site to it would be helpful. They do represent a useful place to look, but the lack of documentation has really been frustrating. Thankfully there are several other useful blog posts around that have allowed me to get this far, so maybe this will help someone else.

David Reid: Domain Moved

david — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:48:41 +0000

I’ve been toying with the idea of moving my domain from the old server t the new one for a while now, and finally yesterday pressed the button. As usual, DNS took a while to resolve and then as this blog was the first user of PHP on the new machine a few settings needed to be tweaked - hence the downtime

I’m also taking the opportunity to reorganise my site, so if you’re looking for something that’s not there , let me know and I’ll sort it out. The basic plan is to have a spring clean and remove a lot of the old content and move the site into source control so I can better keep track of it’s current state

While making the move I’ve upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 and initial impressions are mixed. The new admin styling is nice, but some of the functionality isn’t as easy to find as the previous incarnation. I think I’ll hold fire for a while before upgrading the other blogs I look after.

David Reid: Strobist Meetup

david — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:01:11 +0000

Like a lot of others I’ve been bitten by the strobist bug. Thankfully there is a small support group in Edinburgh - which met last night to have a session.

The venue was the old ruined chapel on Salibury Crags, Edinburgh. Organising an outdoors event in April in Scotland is always a slightly risky proposition due to the unpredictable weather and last night proved to be no exception. The forecast at the start of the week was for rain and wind - hardly ideal conditions - but by Wednesday it had changed to a few showers and windy. Warning people to wrap up warm, we pressed ahead and had a really enjoyable night.

A slideshow of all the pictures can be seen here.

As Rosie and I were both setting up and taking shots it did highlight that despite the (some would say) excessive amount of strobist kit we have, we don’t quite have enough as we kept having to wait for the other to finish. Perhaps a few small purchases will be upcoming to correct this in the coming weeks.

It was amazing to see how much kit the group do now possess though as for much of the evening we had at least 3 simultaneous setups running (1 using PW’s and 2 using skyports for those interested in such things). What was also good to see was an impromptu tutorial session run for a someone who wanted to learn more. 2 of the people attending simply took enough kit and wandered off to one side for around 30 minutes - true peer to peer learning in action.

We’re hoping to make these events a more regular occurrence, but given how cold it was we may have to be more conservative in our locations For anyone in the east of scotland who’s interested the organisation is done via the East Scotland Strobist flickr group.

David Reid: Community disfunction…

david — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:33:12 +0000

I’m faced with a dilemma. Suggestions about what to do next are welcomed!

This involves a flickr group, which is in effect a mini community. The group is known as Photography Guide to Edinburgh and can be found here. I’ve been a member for a long time and know a lot of the members of the group - in fact I’ve even attended one of their meeting and have kept trying to attend subsequent ones.

With no prior notice, though, I have found myself removed from the community and any mention or note of my participation removed! It’s as if I never existed! What did I do to warrant such radical rewriting of history?

I’ve had no official notification of my crimes against the community, so can only assume I touched a nerve with a short post about the slowly reducing number of members of the group. Surely any community should care about a rapid reduction in its membership, especially when it follows an especially nasty and very personal thread about whether to allow video content to be added to the group (which has now been deleted).

Let’s face it, all communities go through such growing pains, but ignoring them and removing those who bring them up can’t be the right approach - can it?

So, what do I do next? I’ve rejoined the group, but haven’t dared post any comments on any threads for fear of being removed again? Should the admin who removed me (who remains anonymous) have sent me an email before simply kicking me out? Is removing all evidence of my contribution justifiable? I find myself in the odd position of not knowing what to do next!

Suggestions via the comments to this blog or direct email please!

Bezilla Blog: absent for a while now...

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:42:18 +0000

sorry I've been absent for a few weeks. I've been monitoring the blog and am very happy to see the great progress mmadia is making with reordering. I'm about to begin a new job, so I may be scarce again for a while. Everything is great, just very busy at the moment. I'll start building again as quickly as time allows and will definitely try to keep up with the .point releases if nothing else.

Bezilla Blog: Experimental Re-Order .so , .so.stub Builds

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:31:12 +0000

Some hosting has been provided by Master199 at http://bezilla.beuser.de
Right now, It's just a file repository.
A new BeZilla BeBits entry page has been created: Experimentally Built BeZilla Builds

As there are builds for FF, SM, TB, SB, and XULRunner,
I didn't want to litter all of the individual application pages.
Also, any problems that occur in one build, should occur in the others.
eg, reaching the 32mb add-on limit in R5 or incorrect *.so, *.so.stub placement

Once we feel reasonably confident that these builds do not introduce new issues,
that bebits app page can be deleted and links moved to their individual pages.

All comments are enabled for now.

425962 - re-order *.so

Testing and feedback on R5Bone is needed!

Bezilla Blog: another note about embedding

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:15:00 +0000

It seems XULRunner is the current method of embedding gecko.

quote:
Roll your own browser - An embedding HowTo
From MDC

Note: this document is out of date. According to Benjamin Smedberg: "build XULRunner and use that for all new embedding. You do not need/should not use embedding/config".
:etouq
linky

Main XULRunner dev page

here's a random email about embedding with xulrunner 1.8
link

Michael Davidson (slaad): Whoops!

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:13:23 +0000

So in that previous post of mine where I claimed I was going to spend at least a day over the weekend on BeOS projects? I lied. I realised about 3 hours after that post that my capstone was due on Nov...

Michael Davidson (slaad): Whee!

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:46:27 +0000

Earlier today I sent off the abstract for my capstone and indicated I would like to be assessed for a Distinction / High Distinction. I still have a lot of work to do on my capstone, but writing the a...