I Eat Rainbows

(To the music of Rocket Man, by Elton John. I don’t claim to be a writer, so this is licensed under the GPLv2. Feel free to use, modify, and build upon this. Maybe we can get a proper tribute out of it.)
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(Note: this is part of a series of posts where I publish the essays I have had to write for the International Baccalaureate. I might as well get some mileage from them, right? See the index page for more details.)

For some reason this essay got a C. I still haven’t figured out why, and the IB doesn’t tell you.

This essay is released under the GNU General Public License, version 2. Here is a pdf, and source follows. Read the rest of this entry »

Some updates to HAL and/or dbus were posted to feisty-backports yesterday. After updating my system, I tried to connect my iPod.

No can do. dmesg spouted some random error I didn’t look too closely at. I had school, so I turned off the machine and left.

Reboots do work wonders, including broken automounting, apparently, so everything is fine on that front. On the other hand, seeing about 50 bazillionty thousand new podcasts waiting for sync in Amarok started me thinking.

I use my iPod primarily for podcasts. It seems rather … useless, to me, at this stage in my life, if it does not have fresh podcasts on it. I have formulated a rule describing this, even though this scenario is not the best application of it. Someone else has probably thought of this earlier as well, and it is entirely possible that I have read this somewhere and then forgotten I’ve read it.

Here it is: For any potentially-internet-enabled device, a seamless and usable connection to said internet increases the utility of said device by orders of magnitude.

It can be followed in stages, as with my iPod. It does not have an inbuilt connection to the internet, but it is able to sync with a desktop application, which does. This is near enough to seamless that it increases the utility of my iPod my quite a bit.

(The next stage is obviously built-in Wifi, like in the iPhone.)

My cell phone would seem to have done this, at first glance. However, EDGE networks = waiting ten minutes for wikipedia to load != usable. (It’s nowhere near seamless, either, but this problem is undershadowed by the EDGE).

This can also be extended to future items. Why shouldn’t cars have an internet connection, to automatically fetch fuel prices and traffic info? Why shouldn’t my TV be internet enabled, so I can watch pirated Youtube videos directly on it? Why shouldn’t our Extended Brain Memory Plus Enhanced Interface Embedded Chips (patent pending by Microsoft) be internet connected, so as to query Google whenever the answer wasn’t found in your brain?

Right. Although I have my absolute FINAL NOGOINGBACK THISISITHONESTLY Italian exams in just over a week (one day before my birthday. I’m not sure if that’s irony.), I just had to blog this:

Some time ago, I had a Pocket PC (I still have it). Avevo un PPC. It had a flimsy charging cable, which eventually broke. Ha avuto un cavo magro di ricaricare, che eventualmente ha rotto. So, about two and a half years ago, we bought what was advertised as a “complete iPaq charging solution”. Così, circa due e mezzo anni fa, abbiamo comprato una cosa che pubblicizzava come “un soluzione completo per il ricaricare del’iPaq”. It had: Aveva:

• A cable that went from the PPC to a USB port. Una cava che va dal PPC al USB.
• A car power to USB adapter.
• A power point to USB adapter, with changeable power points (Australia, America, Europe and India). Un adapter, con spini variabili.

It worked very well, and I remember being impressed at the thought and modularity that had gone into it. Lavorava benissimo, e ricordo che avevo impressionato con il reflessione ed il modulare che in l’ha andata. So, when I received an iPod about a year ago, my first thought was if the charging kit would work with the iPod. Così, quando ho ricevuto un iPod, la mia idea prima era se gli attrezzi funzionareste con il iPod. And, I tried it and I thought that it didn’t. E ho lo provato e ho pensato che non lui funziona.

A day ago, I decided to try the car charger with my iPod. Un giorno fa, ho deciso che provarei utilisare la ricarcare della macchina con il mio iPod. And, it actually worked! E ha funzionato stranamente! So I tried the rest of the kit, and it worked as well! Cosi ho provato lo resto degli attrezzi, e funziona anche! I’m not sure why I thought it didn’t originally. Non sono certo perche ho pensato che non funziona. I think at the time I was used to a large “battery charging” icon, and didn’t check the little battery icon at the top right corner. Ho pensato che a questo tempo ho stato abituato ad un grande icona de “recaricare di batteria”, e non ho veduto alla icona piccola nel destra del cima.

I checked, and both USB power outputs are completely standard. Ho verificato, e entrambi de USB sono norma completamente. So now I have a complete charging kit for any USB powered device! Cosi adesso ho un soluzione completo per il ricaricare della qualcosa con carica de USB!

And it came to pass, that on the first day after Lucifer fell from Heaven, he formed his dominion.
On the second day, he summoned one of the angels that were loyal to him. And he spake unto him thus,
Verily, I say unto thee, that God hath a plan for mankind.
And the angel replied thus,
This I know. But God hath not divulged much of it to anyone.
And then Lucifer spake in reply,
But he hath told me, that in the future, he shall bring technology onto the world.
And the angel was surprised, and asked Lucifer,
Technology, Lord? But technology is very powerful. Why does God want to give his children that much power?
And Lucifer replied thus,
This I do not know. But I shall corrupt technology. I shall dumb its power down so much, that people will say,
Why do I need technology?
And the angel marveled, and spake thus,
But that would require much power, Lord. How shalt thou do that?
And Lucifer replied,
I shall corrupt one man. And he shall create technology that is so easy to use, that many people will use his technology. But his technology will not work with other technology, so more and more people will use his technology.
And then the angel interrupted, and spake thus,
The snowball effect. A clever plan, Lord.
And Lucifer continued,
And he shall make his technology so powerless, that no-one will be able to do much. And thus I shall corrupt technology.
And thus it came to pass…
The Book of Lucifer, 1:5

That was a post on my old wlog, at http://sohumonline.tiddlyspot.com.

It’s pretty much defunct, me having ignored it for a while now.

It was my original attempt at a blog, and I kinda liked the feeling that to find a topic to blog about, all I had to do was find an uncreated page.

Ah well. It was plagued by errors, being built on the decent-for-light-usage TiddlyWiki. It had some interesting posts, which I might move here someday.

In the meantime, I really enjoyed that rant against Microsoft reposted above.

Well, jQuery 1.1 is out.
It has native jQuery.noConflict to simplify the integration into other systems.
Unfortunately, I don’t think joR is out yet. The launchpad still doesn’t point anywhere.
On a related note, my other two posts on joR are in the top 5 for a google search for ‘jQuery on Rails’! Somehow! I don’t know how! Yea!
Sorry.
You there, Steve? No more jQuery.js hacking necessary!

I have just discovered PacketGarden (thanks Alex, of Google Operating System).
The first download link is a deb for Ubuntu 6.10.
It is beautiful.
Someone shoot me now, please.

On a ‘harder’ note, so to speak, it reports I’m exchanging data with addresses like 192.0.2.0, and 197.0.0.0. I’m not entirely sure if this is something to be concerned about, as my local network has addresses 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.5, at most. These addresses ‘look’ weird to me, but it may turn out to be nothing.

There goes Jobs’ reality distortion field. Whoosh, it says. Wheee.
In the calm light of a couple of days later, the iPhone doesn’t look so hot — especially considering it won’t be user-developable.
US$500, + a 2yr contract, at minimum for a device with no 3G support.
Locked to Cingular.
In US in June; not in Asia until 2008.
Probably no Skype — Cingular would object.
Maximum 8 GB, for a device that’s supposed to be excellent for video.
Probably no Nike Sports kit
No one but those with Apple’s say-so can develop on it. According to Jobs,

These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them. That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.

I think mark, from [dive into mark], said it best when he said,

Translation: I made this beautiful thing, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you unbeautiful people fuck it up.

Me? I’m holding out for version three, or four. And only then if I can run Linux on it.

Wake up. Yawn.
Sit at computer. Check email.
Check feeds.
THE iPHONE IS OUT AND IT’S COOLER THAN…
Ok, wait a minute. What?
*Gasp* The iPhone! It’s out! It runs *bleep* Mac OSX!
Look, I can’t tell you this in all its awesomeness properly. Go read Engadget’s live — and awesome — reporting.
To wrap up:
They’ve taken one iPod, made it widescreen, with one physical button (home).
They’ve changed the internals sufficiently to run Mac OS X on it. (Awesome feature #4590: True multitasking!)
It does CoverFlow.
They’ve integrated a phone into it. (BTW, if you’re listening to music and a call comes in, it fades out the music! Then, it fades it back in when you’re done!)
It has a 2.0 megapixel camera, WiFi (b|g), EDGE and Bluetooth.
Rechargeable battery.
They’re running Safari on it.
They’ve partnered (well, sort of) with Google and Yahoo, for search, maps, and mail.
It’s controlled with thumb-sliding and a touchscreen (hope the screen’s harder to smudge than my iPod’s).
It syncs with iTunes 8.
It’s only available with Cingular in the US.
It’s available from June in the US, Q4 in Europe, and 2008 in Asia (Take that, Japan!)
4GB iPhone + 2yr contract = US$499. 8GB iPhone + 2yr contract = US$599
No details about other countries (say, Australia? Come on Steve!), but it is GSM, with a SIM card…

The other part I’m interested in? If it runs Mac OS X, who’s to say, with some kernel hacking, you couldn’t run Linux on it?

Excellent…

Christopher Mims posted on the Scientific American blog earlier, talking about Gates’s keynote at CES. Apparently, Microsoft’s vision is:
Everything -> Windows Media Center 2012 -> (Xbox 1080 -> TV)|Zune|Ford|Some other Microsoft product, and eventually, walls.
Everything means all content: movies, pictures, the internet, TV, games, music,…
He rightly points out that this is doable without Microsoft. However, he has an issue with the increasing amount of work people will have to do to set it up. He says that that is why

the core audience for all this stuff remains, and will continue to be, teenagers and geeks–people who either have lots of time on their hands or little else they’d rather do with it. Call me when the computer has literally disappeared into the walls instead of just becoming them; when I can engage it in a clipped, relatively sane conversation about my immediate needs, like in Star Trek or countless other sci-fi visions of the future.

I don’t agree.
I think that people will either
a) be fascinated by this new&better (TM) way of putting content in their lives.
b) be unaware/uninterested, but have it thrust upon them, and therefore will find the nearest (a)-type to do it for them.

This is somewhat similar to his vision, and very similar to what is happening today, but I believe that there will be a ceiling.
Some companies will ‘get it’ earlier than others. But eventually, they will realize that if you have a userbase, 90% of whom are dependent on other people to use your product, you do not have a happy userbase. The poster child today is Apple. There is no five-button iPod because Apple figured out the simplest way to incorporate all the functionality into four buttons.
(Well, actually, if you count the center button, there are five buttons. But since Mims seems to have ignored that, I will as well.)

This is why, eventually, they will become easier to use.
This is why, eventually, people will ‘get’ technology.
This is why, eventually, tech support calls from hell will cease.