Wine tasting today with my colleagues! Its very di
08/06/2005 02:53 | Categories: Moblogged | 1 Comments
Wine tasting today with my colleagues! Its very difficult, but its very nice too 
Hell froze over... AGAIN.
07/06/2005 06:36 | Categories: Apple | 7 Comments
Well it looks like hell froze over once again for Apple and today Steve Jobs annouced Apple's switch to Intel processors. Let's see how it goes, though we won't see anything based on Intel coming from Apple probably until around this time next year.
Apparently IBM wasn't producing G5s fast enough and with enough clock-speed for Apple and Stevie got tired. At that point, where was he going to look at? There are no more major players in the CPU arena other than IBM, Intel and AMD so ruling IBM out, Jobs chose Intel (what about AMD?)
However, there are a few things to notice:
- Jobs said that future macs will run on Intel processors, but he did not say that these processors were going to be x86.
- They've already said that OS X on Intel will not run anywhere else but on Apple's computers.
- Linux on the desktop will be dead starting when the first OS X Intel machine is launched. Who will bother customizing and configuring Linux when there already is a cute-looking, well-working, integrated Unix-like OS for Intel out there, which can run Office 12, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and GarageBand?
- Finally Apple laptops will be able to catch up speed-wise with their x86 counterparts. If Apple manages to get some of those dual-core Pentium-M into a Powerbook casing, the laptop market will be theirs to eat.
As a relatively new Mac user, I do not really care what's under the hood in my Powerbook. For all I care, it could run on banana skins. As long as Apple manages to keep things as smooth as they are, working well with each other, Unixish and integrated, I will be a happy camper.
On the other hand, I am a bit upset because this will reduce a lot the resale value of my Powerbook. Who will want a 2nd hand powerbook in a few years time, considering that the PPC architecture will be dead? I wasn't going to sell it anyway next year (I am hoping it will last at least 3-4 more years!), but it'd have been nice to sell it for a nice price...
pLog goes mobile!
06/06/2005 01:25 | Categories: LifeType | 0 Comments
I have been working on and off for the last couple of weeks on a mobile version of plog. At first I thought about integrating it with the core (in the next major release, 1.1), but I eventually decided to implement it as a plugin: those who want this feature can have it now and those who don't need it, don't have to put up with the extra code
The plugin adds a new entry-point to plog, mobile.php which handles all the incoming requests from mobile devices. It implements its own action classes, views and more importantly, it implements the terminal detection.
Terminal detection in the mobile version of pLog is done based on the User-Agent string that all browsers send when making HTTP requests. The plugin is built so that every terminal 'group' can have its own custom templates, and each terminal is identified via a regular expression check against its User-Agent (take a look at the default terminal.properties.php file) This also means that all mobile versions of blogs share the same common look (only one mobile template per device)
I have only implemented support for Nokia Series60 phones (specially for the Series60 version Opera) because I do not have access to any other phone People are probably going to request WAP support but I will leave it up to them to do that... WAP is really a pain to work with and I have nowhere to test it. Other possible platforms include PDAs, Treo phones, iMode, etc, so I hope users help a bit here.
Last but not least, the mobile version of this blog is accessible via the "mobile version" link that you will find at the top. At the moment all requests will use the same template, a lighter HTML 4.01 page that allows to see posts and comments (both paginated) with no category listings, search engine or anything like that. It does not allow to leave comments yet but that is not a critical feature considering how annoying it is to type in mobile devices...
The plugin will be available shortly, as soon as I can document it in the wiki and upload it to Sourceforge.net
On open source and people's expectations...
02/06/2005 16:01 | Categories: LifeType | 4 Comments
There's this guy in our forums who's apparently got a bit annoyed with our behaviour. Browsing through the plogworld.net referrers, I found a link to this:
http://www.bloghoster.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=689He's apparently considering switching from pLog to BlogHoster (a similar solution but not free and not GPLed)...
A pearl from the link above:
I am currently using open source code as the base for my blogging site, however lately have been becoming very frustated with the lack of customization options without first editing or adding core class code changes.
And another one:
I have used them [pLog] for about a year now, and have steadily grown tired of the lack of insight the Devs have, as they only want to see things from a Dev point of view and refuse to see things from a 'Normal' user or 'Community' point of view."
Do we really lack insight? From whose viewpoint is that assertion made?
Note that this is the same guy who came up with a less-than-optimal new layout for his admin interface, totally and absolutely confusing, and then said that Jon never likes anything he does because he told him it was confusing. Perhaps if he actually knew what he was doing...
He's also the one who requested buddy lists a while ago. He did a good writeup about it (credit should be given where it is due) in the forums but that was it. Was he really expecting that we'd implement his wishes right away? How about our own roadmaps? How about we first fix issues that really need to be addressed?
For the record, this is the guy who promised me a while ago to create a nice tutorial for end-users, showing how to post, how to add files, etc. Needless to say, I am still waiting for those documents.
Open source is really starting to feel annoying because of this. People think they can demand everything from the development team and they cannot be bothered to make a small effort to achieve their goals. Heck, we've got a Paypal donation link in our home page for half a year now and we haven't even collected 100Ä yet.
I know this post probably sounds like I am an elitist bastard, but this kind of attitudes really annoy the hell out of me.
The funny thing is that when he posted the list of plugins he's currently using, one of the BH's forums moderator was really surpirsed at the amount of extra features one can get with pLog... No shit!, we haven't spent so many hours working on a extensible architecture for the sake of working on it!
And this brings me to another point: no matter how many things you give users for free (moblogging? gravatar integration? anti spam measures? guest books? content filters? comment moderation?), they will always remember you by what you do NOT offer...
Finally i am going to watch Star Wars Episode III.
02/06/2005 01:58 | Categories: Moblogged | 2 Comments
Finally i am going to watch Star Wars Episode III...