Colin Charles Agenda

play. food. code.
Maybe it isn’t 42. There’s been an insane number of uploads in the last couple of days to Flickr for me… fast upload speeds help. Boy do I dread going back to 256kbps uploads on Optus.

Just a quick note to say that the MySQL Forge Wiki looks like the rest of the Forge, and there’s now SpamBlacklist installed. If spam still persists (you know you’re popular when spam’s abound, right?), we might have to install captchas. From an accessibility perspective, I don’t quite like this idea, so lets hope the spam stays under control nonetheless.

Maybe inflammatory, but I don’t quite remember spam on the Fedora Project wiki. Do Python-based wikis suffer less spam (or no spam) than the PHP-based ones? (otherwise known as MoinMoin vs. MediaWiki)

I dusted off the N770, and installed the new Maemo 2.0 Internet 2006 Tablet edition (probably worth reading the update guide – make sure you have the 2.0 Flasher). While I was at it, I set up scratchbox again.

In the sbox environment, if you need to install something, remember to use fakeroot (just pre-pend it to the command you’re running).

I must admit that I’m quite excited with the GTalk functionality. Holding the 770’s speaker to my ear, the microphone is just where my mouth is. Rumor has it (upon opening it up) that the mic is exactly the same as the one used in mobile phones that Nokia make. The quality of the audio is actually surprisingly good – I’m quite happy with the fact that I now have a VoIP WiFi phone. The other good thing about GTalk is that I can be connected on OS X, Linux, as well as my 770 – I like the idea of having multiple presences. If only more people used GTalk (as opposed to MSN)! (reach me at ccharles@gmail.com)

All the telephony options become even more interesting with Gizmo Project and their recent release of the 770 ARM client. I’ve had an account with the Gizmo Project almost since they started offering a Linux and an OS X client (I think the latter came first). I’ve hardly made much use of it, mainly because a lot of the folk I know are still connected to Skype. SkypeOut is also something I use from time-to-time, but now, it seems that the Gizmo equivalent is also not too bad. SIgning up with them gives you a little free credit, and I still had it after all this time, so a test call via the Nokia 770 proved to be useful.

My mother, some 4,500 miles away from me heard me loud and clear. Again, I’m hooked, and wish more people were on the Gizmo Project. Best part about it is you don’t actually need to even fire up the client, you can use standard SIP phone software, like Ekiga, to get things working. I don’t know if this works for dialing out to non-Gizmo Project users, but it’s on my to-do list to give it a go. Another boon is the fact that I can be logged in via OS X, Linux, and on the 770 – again, multiple presences at work. If only more people used the Gizmo Project (as opposed to Skype)! (reach me at colincharles)

One complaint that I have with the Gizmo Project is that you need to install not just one file, but three – it forces Bonjour on you (even if you have howl, it doesn’t seem to care), and you need a separate sound library (that can either be OSS or ALSA based). I guess this is where Skype wins with the one-file installer.

The other complaint is that when making a Gizmo-to-Gizmo call, the interface seems clunky enough to not allow me to pick up the phone call! On OS X its Growl, I click the answer interface and it doesn’t work. On Linux, its the same deal. On the 770, I pick it up and nothing happens. I seem to have problems making Gizmo-to-Gizmo calls, anyone had any success?

After visiting the Canadian embassy to get myself a visa yesterday (yes, I’m going to Ottawa Linux Symposium (OLS) – see you there?) I decided to take a trip to Low Yat, and the surrounding area to take a gander at computer hardware out there.

I ended up picking up a bunch of disks and external casings, and a USB webcam (cheapest Logitech, I wonder if it’ll work with Linux – RM80 down, the salesman looked at me funny when I said Linux, but I have faith). Then I decided to scour the place for Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition. To my dismay, I found it for sale, nowhere.

The cheapest I was going to get was a RM300 copy of Windows XP Home. However, most of the retailers were quite happy to point me to the RM5 pirated copy of Windows XP Professional.

These pirate shops also sell Fedora Core 1, Ubuntu PowerPC edition, and more, for RM15/CD. I wonder why Linux costs more than Windows?

It brings me back to thinking about Software Freedom Day (maybe last year or the year before) where Aizat, Khairil and Ditesh stood at Low Yat and distributed free CDs, that were Ubuntu based. After all, Canonical do ship it for free, why not give it away for free?

Malaysians love free gifts, and a Live CD, that can be installed and distributed, for free, just sounds like a winner.

Or more likely a dress code is daft. This is Malaysia. Its a tropical country. Be thankful I’m already wearing a pair of jeans and donning my “I’m Feeling Lucky” Google t-shirt.

Wearing sandals, should very much be allowed. Bloody hell, so should I being in a pair of shorts. Beware, those that want to visit the Rum Jungle (nearby KLCC). Be warned. Stay away from it.

(in the end, the bar opposite, a certain Poppy got a lot of money from us last night)

After years of abstinence, I actually loaded Windows XP Home on my Thinkpad. Reason really being I found my recovery disks from IBM, and figured that I might as well pop the Windows license back on it, so that I can experiment with this OS that’s oh-so-popular.

Man, Windows took the better part of the afternoon to get installed. If that’s not bad, it rebooted only like four times. Its funny how the whole install happens in FAT32, and then to make my life miserable, it converts it to NTFS on its final reboot. Why?

Installing all the updates, and getting up to Service Pack 2, took the remainder of the afternoon. One thing I’ve found interesting, and a must install is: Google Pack. For good protection from all those Windows virii, AVGFree seems to make the most sense. And OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 is just out, and is the smallest download of all the OSes it would seem.

Then I reboot to find that Windows XP SP1 support ends on October 10th 2006. I believe there are some benefits to becoming genuine (or Microsoft is trying hard to sell me that). Its a good thing the upgrade to Service Pack 2 just takes time (in the form of a download) and is also completely free.

Now to figure out backups…