May 31, 2007
hackday cometh
Just now, in my inbox:
We’d like to confirm that you’re coming to the Hack Day at Alexandra Palace on the 16th and 17th of June and that we’re looking forward to seeing you there!
Hurrah!
Previously: links for 2007-05-27
Technorati Tags: computing
plazes shoots own foot off
I've been using plazes for ages to track where I am and what I'm doing, etc. Some time in the last few days they've:
- broken the rss feed
- broken the widget on my blog
- removed the desktop tools from their site
- reworked the website maps to be less friendly
I'm pretty sure that's removed every single useful piece of functionality that drew me to their service in the first place.
I just updated the plazes desktop tool I had, and it's been replaced with some half-baked twitteresque GUI nightmare. Hey, Plazes, you're not twitter, and that's why I liked you! It took me a while to figure out how to connect in the GUI, it occupies more screen real estate than before, and it's removed the client map feature that I liked.
I just signed back in to their website and was asked to re-enter information that I'd already provided them with (my IM details, my web presence, etc).
I've been looking round their site for a replacement blog widget, with no luck. Plazes, here's a hint: I'm only going to edit my blog template once. If there's no drop-in replacement, the edit will be to delete plazes altogether. Your loss. And if I'm not able to display my location on my blog, I'm not likely to continue using the service.
The neat URL that I used to be able to hand out to people: http://plazes.com/whereis/andrew now no longer works. It's replaced with the delightful http://plazes.com/users/5812 -- I'm a person damnit, not a number! I'm not even going to make it a clickable link, or hand it out to people. Did they never read Cool URIs Don't Change?
Awesome work, plazes :-( I thought plazes getting funding would improve the service, but from these actions I guess it actually means you can now afford to alienate your users.
Now if the dopplr folks could add some of the plazes features, I'd be happy.
Update: Plazes responded ... see comments.
Technorati Tags: gis, maps, mobile
Leaky ships
I'll have a tomtom to sell shortly after buying my iPhone. See around 4 minutes in on this video of Jobs and Gates at D.
Kinda ironic, as I was only thinking the other day "what if Apple did the iSat?". The current tomtom gui and desktop app is seriously lacking polish, and stands out as one of the worst end-user experiences on my Mac.
Combine the iPhone with the technology that can tell what you're pointing it at and you have a winner...
Technorati Tags: computing, gis, haptic, maps, mobile, apple
May 30, 2007
Dive dive dive
It's rare that I say "oh boy, Microsoft got it SO right!", but this is one of those times. Check out Microsoft Surface. I think this is going to steal a lot of Apple thunder at the WWDC, where I've been somewhat expecting to see all the Apple displays to be touch-enabled.
Notice on the site that there's a lot of social and background information on show - the origins, the developers behind it - this release feels like Microsoft are trying to be much more personal.
It'll be interesting to see how the patent issue will pan out for this - since Apple are doing similar stuff with the iPhone, and it all stems from Jeff Han's work. See also multitouch; minority report.
Technorati Tags: computing, haptic
May 29, 2007
A sense of place
Sam is right when he says that 192.com blows google maps out of the water - at least for satellite views at street level. Zoom in on 192's map of my house versus google's map of my house, and you can really see the difference. It's a shame the zoom is inconsistent though - once you zoom out beyond a certain point, it switches back to road maps rather than satellite imagery. It's still pretty cool though.
Technorati Tags: computing, gis, maps
OS 9 Emulator
I love this: The OS 9 Emulator You Never Knew You Had:
Everyone longed for the opportunity to sit back and relax while everything rebooted.
I remember expressing incredulity when told I needed to reboot after helping someone through an OS 9 crash, and carrying on regardless - until one after another all the machine's apps fell over.
These days I use Saft to recover my tabs and swiftly get up and running after one of the regular Safari crashes. Not even time to get a cup of coffee!
Technorati Tags: computing, macos, browser
May 28, 2007
May 27, 2007
May 26, 2007
Orange notwork
One more reason to believe that Orange are incompetent morons. I'm connected to Orange NL, trying to use the Orange UK GPRS connection details, and it's failing:
pppd 2.4.2 (Apple version 233-13) started by root, uid 501
Nokia 3G CID1
Making network connection
Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/cu.Bluetooth-Modem
PAP authentication succeeded
Connection terminated.
Mind you, I know this sort of thing regularly fails with other networks, too (it was failing with Vodafone back in 2005), so it's not just Orange that's bad this time. Somehow the telcos are still completely missed out on the internetworking part of the internet.
Meanwhile, there's a KPN "all you can eat" 3G data card sat on the other side of the room, but it's PCMCIA so I can't use it in my Macbook :-(
Technorati Tags: mobile, orange
May 23, 2007
May 21, 2007
May 18, 2007
May 17, 2007
What is this word 'inclusive' that you speak of?
Ah, Orange, how I love thee.
I bet you thought you'd heard the last of Orange, didn't you? Following on from the saga of my incorrect phone bill, I never managed to get out of my 12 month contract. They basically refused to let me go to arbitration and held my phone number hostage, demanding I pay the remaining 8 months' worth of service plan charges before they'd let me migrate to another telco.
I simply haven't had the time to chase this through the courts, so I left it (which is exactly what their business model is, I guess). But this morning, I was amused to read through my latest incorrect invoice from them and see the following entertaining information:
Data Summary
Inclusive megabytes used 46.7721
Additional megabytes used 0.0025
Total megabytes 49.7093
Data charges
Orange network 49.7068 £57.591
Netherlands Orange 0.0025 £0.016
Total £57.61
From the Orange FAQ:
Your Service Plan charges: The amount you pay for your chosen Service Plans.
Inclusive: Minutes, messages or megabytes that are included in your Service Plan.
Right ... so despite almost all the data being 'inclusive', I'm still billed for it. And unless I'm mistaken, there's some distinctly dodgy arithmetic going on there. The total megabytes should be 46.7746, not 49.7093 ... or maybe "additional megabytes" are slightly larger than "inclusive megabytes", in the same way that an unformatted hard disk is bigger than a formatted hard disk?
Something's rotten in the state of Orange. But then we knew that already.
I phoned up Orange just to double-check I wasn't going mad, and was informed by the person at the other end that I've never had a data plan, that I dreamt the 1gb trial data package they put on my account at the start, and that if they recalculated my bill I'd have to pay a lot more than the £57 they'd billed me so far. Ahh, the happy sound of scaring your customers into acceptance.
The good news is that they told me I'm free to move my account away from them in a little over a month. Which is great news indeed, since Orange sucks: they have awful phone reception, broken billing systems, an abusive approach to customer care, and are now firmly ranked as the worst telco I've ever had dealings with (which is saying something, as I've had problems in the past with Vodafone and O2 as well).
I'll probably go back to Vodafone, as they are the only ones with somewhat consistent phone reception in the UK.
Technorati Tags: mobile, orange
May 14, 2007
Subversion in a multinational context
Working in a multinational context is not without challenges, and sometimes it's not the cultural barriers or the language that gets in the way. Sometimes the simplest things can go wrong, like character encoding:
$ svn update
subversion/libsvn_subr/utf.c:466: (apr_err=22)
svn: Can't convert string from 'UTF-8' to native encoding:
subversion/libsvn_subr/utf.c:464: (apr_err=22)
svn: foo/bar/?\226?\128?\147v.1.3-1.xls
The SVN book is quite comprehensive on the subject of svn localisation (even though they spell it with a 'z'), providing both technical and sociological advice:
The solution is either to set your locale to something which can represent the incoming UTF-8 data, or to change the filename or log message in the repository. (And don't forget to slap your collaborator's hand—projects should decide on common languages ahead of time, so that all participants are using the same locale.)
Nice idea, but I don't think it's entirely reasonable for me to demand that everyone on a multinational team switches their default locale to English, especially in their own working repositories. A far simpler technical solution is just to switch to UTF-8 myself, via a modified version of Torsten's hint. Before the switch:
$ locale
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL="C"
And the switch to Great British English (now added to my .bash_profile):
$ export LC_ALL=en_GB.UTF-8
$ export LC_CTYPE=UTF-8
$ export LANG=en_GB
And the result:
$ locale
LANG="en_GB"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL="en_GB.UTF-8"
Now SVN at least seems happy. And lo, there was much rejoicing and repository updating. Hopefully this won't break everything else.
May 7, 2007
Back from Apachecon
Made it back from Amsterdam safely on Saturday evening, and I've pretty much been asleep since then, as I try to recover from an intense week of mental and social workout - in particular, the end-of-week beers with the Hippo crew, which I have only a hazy recollection of but that I'm sure was a huge amount of fun. I remember karaoke and a painful ride on the back of a bike, more bitterballen than any single human should eat in a lifetime, and a seemingly endless amount of beer. Pretty much a typical night out with my Dutch friends, then!
They say the best way to learn something is to teach it, and doing a talk is always an excellent example of that. Over the last few months I've been poking and prodding Cocoon 2.2, and now I have a much clearer understanding of what it can do. Over the next few days I'm going to try and communicate that to everyone else by updating the documentation, and by rehashing some of my presentation into a "2.2 Howto".
Meanwhile, there's a mountain of mail and news still unread, and a house that's definitely showing signs of neglect. Back to work ...
Technorati Tags: amsterdam, apachecon
May 1, 2007
The build up to Apachecon
I deliberately arrived a little early for Apachecon this year, so I could take part in the annual Dutch celebration, Koninginnedag. I was here for it last year, and it was tremendous fun. This year was no different. The night before was spent running round the city drinking in the atmosphere (and just a little bit of beer), and the following day was spent shuffling through the crowds and marveling at how good the Dutch are at partying.
Someone foolishly nominated me as Apache tour guide du jour since my 6 months here last year means I should somewhat still know my way around (thanks Thom), so given the challenge of "8 people; somewhere to sit, somewhere to eat, somewhere to drink", we fought our way across the city to the Vondelpark, taking in the crazy scenes on Leidsegracht and the ridiculously packed Leidesplein en route. We chilled in the park for a while, soaking up the sun, before taking on the challenge of finding somewhere to eat on the busiest day of the year.
Heinekenplein seemed like a good plan, and I headed for the ribs venue from last year's Cocoon GetTogether. Bad choice! The food there has definitely deteriorated since last time. Although there were plenty of seats, after sampling the food it was easy to understand why. After the food we were all somewhat exhausted, so it was time to head back to the train station via a few more tourist sights.
When I got back to the hotel, there was just time to fire off a few shots out of the window before collapsing into bed. My favourite is below, and I'll try to get a better version this evening. For now, it's back to polishing my presentation for Friday, Web 2.0 with Cocoon 2.2. And trying to make sure Cocoon 2.2 works!
Technorati Tags: amsterdam, apachecon