Paul's Time Sink

29 Apr, 2009

I have been doing some php development in emacs.  I have been missing syntax coloring and indenting.  php-mode adds this functionality.

Technorati tags: php, emacs, php-mode

29 Apr, 2009

This blog post has a link to a program to install elisp program from within emacs.

Technorati tags: emacs, el

28 Apr, 2009

I mentioned before that I am using Seesmic Desktop as my Twitter client.  The Seesmic Destop client web site states that it is available for Mac and Windows.  Since it is an Adobe Air application, I figured that I could get it to work on my Ubuntu Laptop.

I downloaded the air file, and then ran the  Adobe AIR Application Installer and selected the downloaded file.  The installation worked, and Seesmic Desktop runs perfectly.

Technorati tags: Seesmic Desktop, Twitter, Ubuntu, Linux

25 Apr, 2009

This page has a good description of using subversion in Xcode 3.0.  The integration works pretty well.

I have found that it is easiest to add a new Xcode project to the subversion repository manually, instead of letting XCode do it.  I just create the project in Xcode, and then on the command line, I run svn add.  Then from that point on, Xcodes integration works well. 

Technorati tags: Subversion, Xcode, svn

25 Apr, 2009

Google recently added the abilty for people who have a Google Account to create a "profile".  This is a way for people to create a page that has personal information that could be shown when a search is done for their name.  This allows the user to specify which information should be shown on this page.  So for example, you can include links to your flickr page or Facebook profile.

In addition to specifying information can been seen by everyone, you can also specify "private" information like email address or phone numbers.  Then you can specify which people you know can see this informaion.  This is similar to the way that most social networks work.

The problem that I have is not with the feature, but with Google's various definitions of who friends are and what a profile.  Currently Google Profile uses the list of the contacts in your Google Talk list as "friends".  But this is a seperate list than the "friends" when using Google Friend Connect.  In addition to the different list of friends, Google Friend Connect also has it's own concept of a profile for a user.

I think it would be great if Google consolidated these into a single friends list and a single profile.  Because until then, these things will not take off.

Technorati tags: Google Profile, Google Friend Connect, social network

25 Apr, 2009

I have just finished upgrading my computer to the 9.04 version of Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE as the default window manager).  I was looking forward to trying the new notification system and the new versiion of KDE.

I decided to do the upgrade online, instead of downloading the CD, and upgrading from it.  The I started the upgrade at 10pm on Thursday, and at 8am on Friday, the download finally finished.  I assume that the slow download was caused because of the number of people doing the upgrades at the same time.

Once the upgrade pretty much everything worked.  I did have to do a few things to make things work

• Install  plasma-widget-network-manager with apt-get.  I needed this in order to get KDE to use my wireless network
• Followed the steps on this page to make sound work well with PulseAudio
• Reset permissions on /usr/lib/libaoss.so*.  I had done this before, but setting permissions fixes audio for VMware Workstation.
• Uses this page as an example to reconfigure my trackpad.  It looks like now, trackpads are not configured in xorg.conf but are not configured with hal.  I was able to reapply my old configuration in the new way

Technorati tags: Kubuntu, Ubuntu, linux

22 Apr, 2009

I have been very happy with the integration with Google Mail and Google Calendar with the iPhone.  Gmail has a good IMAP implementation that works well in the iPhone's mail application.  Google Mobile Sync's Exchange support works well for synchronizing the iPhone's calendars.

The one problem with the integration with the native applications is that the iPhone's applications doesn't support as many features as Google's.  For example, there is no way to send an invite to a meeting to someone else from the iPhone's calendar application.

Google's mobile version of Google Calendar works well on the iPhone.  I can use this to schedule a new meeting, and invite other people, all from the iPhone.  Also, the new version of the mobile Gmail works well as well.  I will not be using these everyday, but when I need a feature that is missing from the iPhone's version of the apps, I will use the web versions.

Technorati tags: Gmail, Calendar, Google, iPhone, Google Mobile Sync

18 Apr, 2009

I have been wanted to be able to cancel our cable service for a while.  The thing that I have been wating for is a good way to get the TV content available on line on our TV, without having to use the a keyboard and mouse.  (And ideally integrated into Windows Media Center)

PlayOn is sotware that implements a DNLA server.  Instead of leting you play local content, you can use PlayOn to play videos from Hulu, Amazon Video On Demand, Netflix, YouTube and CBS.  With just the PlayOn software you can either brows videos on the services, or access your queue.  Playing video worked perfectly on my Xbox 360, with PlayOn installed on my Media Center.

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Technorati tags: PlayOn, Windows Media Center, vmcPlayIt, Hulu, Netflix

16 Apr, 2009

A while ago I was interested in Undercover for Mac OS X.  This application is supposed to help you recover a stolen computer.  It connects to their service periodiocally.  If your computer is stolen, you contact the service and then the next time your computer connects to the service, it takes and uploads a picture of what ever is in front of the computer and the service logs the location of the ip address.

It looks like they now have an iPhone application. It pretty much has the same functionality (I don't think it takes the photo though).  The problem that I see with this solution is that it requires that the person to launch the Undercover application in order for the information to be logged to their service.  I don't see people launching random applications if they steal an iPhone.  Most likely, they will wipe it, and get a new SIM card.  This will make Undercover pretty much useless.

Also, in my case, I lock my phone.  So there is no way that the Undercover application will be launched for the service to log the iPhone's location.

Ideally, for this functionality, iPhone would allow applications to run in the background.  Then it wouldn't require that the user launches an application.  Alternatively, this could be a service that the cellular provider would provide

Technorati tags: Undercover, iPhone

13 Apr, 2009

I use VMware Workstation everyday.  I run Windows XP in it for running iTunes for my iPhone and for playing XM Radio online.  Today I tried out VMware's Unity.  This makes the Windows XP windows appear along side the Ubuntu windows. Also when Unity is enable, the KDE task switcher also shows the Windows programs.

I am happily surprised about how well VMware's Unity works.

Technorati tags: vmware, linux, windows

13 Apr, 2009

I have stopped using Google Friend Connect  for blog comments.  There are several things that Google could add to make this more usuable

1. It should be possible to specify a home page when submitting an anonymous comment
2. It should be possible to configure the wall to not truncate the messages
3. It should be possible for the user to configure the what happens when a user clicks on their urls for their authenticated comment (link to Google Friend Connect profile, or blog)
4. Google should, and maybe already do, process the javascript and index the page using the content of the comments.  There could be a unique comment that someone leaves, and if Google doesn't index it, people will not be able to find the comment.

Technorati tags: Google Friend Connect, blog, comments

13 Apr, 2009

Seesmic Desktop is a pretty cool twitter client.  It seems to me to be a cross between Twhirl and TweetDeck.  It has a nice UI and it doesn't use that much screen real estate.

I am running this on my Windows XP virtual machine.  I haven't tried to run it on Ubuntu.

Technorati tags: seesmic, twitter, Twhirl, TweetDeck

12 Apr, 2009

As I was thinking about before, I have disabled comments on this blog, and enabled Google Friend Connect for comments.  I am interested in finding out how well this will work.  I am still not requiring authentication for adding comments, in the hope that Google will still do spam filtering.

Technorati tags: Google, Friend Connect, social network, comments

11 Apr, 2009

The USASpec adapter was included as part of the iPhone dock install.  The USASpec adapters have several ways of accessing the music on the iPod or iPhone.  You can access the media either by:

• Direct - where you need to select the music to play on the iPhone/iPod
• Folder - where you can browse the music collection by Artist or Album
• Playlist - where you can preselect some number of playlists that will be easily playable on the headunit

I decided to use Playlist mode, as it also offers the ability to play 6 playlist, also "all songs" and a direct mode.  For the six playlist, it looks for playlist named HONDA1 - HONDA6.  If not all six are found, then it will randomly pick other playlists to fill in the missing spots.  If the adapter is connected to the radio through the XM interface, the playlists are accessed by tuning to channels 1-6.  When using CD changer interface, the playlists appear as CDs.

In addition to playing user playlist, number 7 is used to play all tracks.  And number 8 is for direct mode.  (This is the mode that is used if you want to play Pandora.)

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Technorati tags: USASpec, dock, iPhone, iPod, iTunes

11 Apr, 2009

As I have mentioned before, one of my eventual goals of switching to Windows Media Center is to stop paying for cable TV. TunerFree MCE is a Windows Media Center plugin that lets you play video content from various web sites.  In the US this content includes Hulu content.

I installed this on my media center, and it worked fine.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to full screen video to work.  When I selected the "full screen" button, the video appear to be scaled incorrectly. 

The video is too small when it is normal size, and since I can make the video full screen, I have uninstalled it.  I will be watching this project, and hopefully use it to help cancel my cable TV service.

Technorati tags: TunerFree MCE, Windows Media Center, video