blog

Another StatusNet client for Nokia N9/N950

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

I’ve been working on a Qt identi.ca/StatusNet client for some time now, called Yaics1 (since Dec 1, 2010 according to the git log). When I got an N950 for loan (see my blog post on Heebo) my first experiment was to get my StatusNet client to run. To my disappointment the graphical user interface didn’t work at all, everything had to be rewritten in QML. Well, I did it, and now I can run my StatusNet client both on the desktop and on the N9/N950.

So, when Mike Sheldon recently published his great StatusNet client for MeeGo/Harmattan I realised I should probably finish mine as well, and put it out there if someone wants to use it. I’ve been using it myself for a few months now, but I’ve been putting off actually publishing it. Well, it’s been up on gitorious for a long time, but most people want a ready-made package I guess

It’s far from perfect, especially the backend, which still uses the old Twitter-compatible API. Also it doesn’t use the Harmattan event feed yet. And the code is pretty crufty C++, QML and JavaScript. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to spend the effort to clean it up enough to publish it on the Ovi store or on Apps For MeeGo. But for now you can just get it here:

Download: yaics_0.1.1_armel.deb

Update 26 April, 2012: Updated to version 0.1.1 which potentially fixes a crashing bug. Potentially.

Some features of the Harmattan (N9/N950) client include:

Works with identi.ca and other StatusNet instances.
Shows context of dents if you tap on them.
Reply, repeat, favourite dents.
Fetches and caches avatars.
Should work with private messages (although not heavily tested).

Not yet implemented (and might never be…):

Using the Harmattan feed view.
Posting attachments.
Displaying attachments.

The code is up on gitorious, which also includes the desktop client. To build the MeeGo/Harmattan client, take a look at build-harmattan.sh – you probably need to fix some paths, though. And, at least for now, report any bugs to me via e-mail to mats@sjoberg.fi.

Yet Another Identi.ca Client Something – yes it’s extremely funny. ↩

Pygame for MeeGo

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Since making Heebo, which was mostly in JavaScript, I’ve wanted to try some other dynamically typed high-level language, but with a bit more structure than JavaScript (e.g. strongly typed). I thought Python might be in turn. I did some Python development 15 years ago (is it that long ago!?) but there has been some changes so I needed to read up a bit on the language. I used O’Reilly’s Learning Python back then, so I got the newest edition in a DRM-free ePub format. Turns out the book has grown from about 350 pages to more than 1200 pages! I thought Python was supposed to be simple!

Anyway, Pygame was recently ported and officially supported on the MeeGo platform, so I decided to try that out. Also Pygame works on the desktop and even on Android (although I haven’t tried that out yet), so I’ve got an exit strategy…

Python is really easy to install on the Nokia N9 or N950 and the development cycle is much quicker, since you don’t need to create an installable package and install it every time you want to test something. Still, at some point you need to make real .deb package, e.g. if you want to publish you software somewhere. The PySide community (“Python for Qt”) have a handy tool called pyside-assistant which works fine for non-Qt Python stuff as well. Just follow the instructions on the MeeGo wiki.

In addition, you might want to make sure that most of your files are installed under /opt/yourappsname as is expected of applications e.g. in the Ovi Store. I struggled a bit to figure this one out, but it is actually very simple. Just add a file called setup.cfg in your project’s root directory with the following contents:

[install]
install_lib = /opt/yourappsname/lib
install_scripts = /opt/yourappsname

Where, naturally, you should replace yourappsname with the name of your application. Then you might want to edit the .desktop file to point to the right place for the binary, and you are (more or less) set to go!

FSCONS 2011

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100

I just got back from FSCONS 2011 late yesterday. FSCONS is such a cool conference since it combines both technical, social and political issues. For instance, during Saturday’s social event I discussed (among many other things) Free Software in education, the problems with privatisation of the public sector in Nordic countries, instruction sets of different processor types, if what the “Anonymous” group is doing is an effective and justified method of activism, and how the cryptography in the PS3 hardware was cracked.

I’m not going to mention all the talks that I liked, because that will be such a long list. I’ll just highlight Smári McCarthy’s talk about how cryptocurrencies (read Bitcoin) are at odds with taxation and current welfare systems. That was a very interesting topic that led to interesting discussions, and it also highlights the convergence of the technical and societal themes of the conference.

Even though Richard Stallman didn’t say anything I haven’t heard before (I’ve seen many videos of his talks on the web), it was still fun to see the closest there is to a “rock star” in the Free Software movement. Also, he signed my copy of his book

I took a few very shoddy photos as well.

Heebo

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100

I had been following the roller coaster1 that was Nokia’s Linux-based smart phone operating system effort for some time, when an old friend2, Johan Paul, loaned me an N950.

I was, at first, really disappointed that Nokia’s MeeGo (Harmattan) didn’t support the native Qt UI at all, but that everything had to be rewritten in QML. QML required at least a minimum of JavaScript, and at some point I had heard that there were at least some good parts to JavaScript, so I decided to dive in, and just for the fun of it, write an utterly simple JavaScript-only game for Harmattan/MeeGo!

The game itself is a regular “Match 3” puzzle, where you have to get three or more blocks of the same colour in a row. When the basic gaming functionality started to be more or less in place I asked an old friend of mine, Niklas Gustafsson, if he was interested in replacing my ugly place-holder sprites with some actual graphics. He was, and after that the project was more of a joint project – like in the good old days of DOS games

We finally decided that we needed to release something, and on Saturday, October 29, 2011 we put version 1.0 of “Heebo” up on the Nokia Ovi Store – on Monday it was accepted and went live. Today, when I last checked, it had over 1400 downloads and a 5 star rating by users. It was in third place of all free games for Harmattan phones (N9 and N950). That’s the largest distribution of anything that I’ve ever made as far as I know. So, that’s pretty cool.

Ovi Store page: http://store.ovi.com/content/216045
Heebo web page: http://www.sjoberg.fi/mats/software/heebo.html

The “roller coaster” is a popular amusement ride, although I didn’t find it very amusing. ↩
When I say “old friend” I don’t mean that my friends are old, just that I know them from way back… which kind of implies that they are old doesn’t it? Well, never mind then, forget I ever said something. ↩

Improve font rendering in Debian

Tue, 31 May 2011 00:00:00 +0200

A recent identi.ca discussion led me to notice that font rendering in Debian “squeeze” is still not on par with other distributions. It seems that there are patches to the libcairo2 library that would improve that, but they have for some reason not been applied.

Fortunately there is a really easy way to do this without any compiling: if you’re using the mozilla.debian.net version of Iceweasel 4.0 (Debian’s rebranded Firefox) you may already have a patched libcairo2. I currently have 1.10.2-1.1~bpo60+1 from their squeeze-backports/iceweasel-4.0 distribution.

After realising this I still wondered why my fonts looked bad. Turns out you still need to have a ~/.fonts.conf file with the following contents to enable it:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
      <const>lcddefault</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

You might need to log out and in again for the settings to take effect in Gnome. Many thanks to Eric for pointing these two things out in his blog post.

Comment on this blog post in this identi.ca conversation.

Trying some 'flashy' netbook distros

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200

I’m a very happy user of Debian “squeeze” on my main computer (a Thinkpad X61s), however, inspired by this identi.ca conversation thread I started thinking that I should run something “flashier” on my EeePC 901 netbook, which might possibly inspire others to try out GNU/Linux and free software.

I want my main computer to just work and I don’t want to mess around with it too much. Hence, Debian. However, my netbook is the computer I mostly travel with and take to meetings – i.e. a lot of people see me using it. So, to give a good (and not so “geeky”) first impression of Linux I might just try something more “cool” on my netbook…

Trisquel Mini 4.0

First up was Trisquel and specifically it’s Mini edition. Trisquel is a relatively new (to me at least) Ubuntu-based distribution that is endorsed by the FSF. The main edition of Trisquel is really nice looking and the Mini edition is not bad either. The Mini is based on LXDE and has replaced many applications with more light-weight alternatives. Trisquel Mini was indeed very fast and snappy on my otherwise somewhat sluggish netbook.

Unfortunately there was one big snag: my Eee PC 901 uses a Ralink 2860-based wifi card which requires some non-free firmware to function. This is not supported by Trisquel (otherwise it wouldn’t be endorsed by FSF). I might get a USB wifi as a replacement, but I haven’t yet found one that would work with fully free drivers and still be very small and compact. This is an issue I will look more carefully into next time I’m buying a new computer.

Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition

Next up was Ubuntu’s recently released netbook edition with the new Unity interface. Being a recent convert from Ubuntu to Debian (for largely the same reasons as Bradley Kuhn) I was somewhat weary going back to Ubuntu, but I was really intrigued by the Unity interface, and it sure would look fancy on my netbook.

Initially I was quite impressed with the Unity interface, and I started configuring my environment, but after a while the interface started being quite slow and some weird user interface bugs annoyed me. Finally the dock on the left side disappeared, or at least the icons did. So, I decided that even if I was looking for something more experimental than Debian this was going a bit too far Unity looks promising but the bugs still need to be ironed out.

MeeGo 1.0 netbook

Finally I decided to go for MeeGo netbook edition. MeeGo is an open-source project created by Nokia and Intel, merging their earlier Moblin and Maemo projects. MeeGo netbook is mostly a continuation of Moblin.

In fact, I had tried MeeGo before and I was really impressed with the boot-up speed but I stopped using it because of an annoying problem which meant that one could not disable tap-to-click on the mouse pad and that the repository of applications is very limited at the moment. Having tried all the other distros above I decided that MeeGo would still be the best choice for me. It looks nice, is reasonably stable and works with my wifi (yes, with non-free firmware unfortunately). I’m confident that the tap-to-click bug will be fixed soon and maybe not having all the applications in the world might enforce some computing “minimalism” on my part

MeeGo comes with the proprietary Adobe Flash plugin pre-installed, which I promptly removed. (A good idea not just for principled reasons, but also because of security concerns – just listen to Security Now and you’ll understand.) I compiled a few essential applications by hand; the newest GNU Emacs (the one in MeeGo’s repos has an old org-mode with different keyboard shortcuts from what I’m used to), KeePassX and gPodder. Most of the required libraries were available in Meego, except for some Python stuff.

So let’s hope that MeeGo with it’s quirky looks and cool UI will attract some new people to GNU/Linux and free software

I'm going to FSCONS

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200

I travel yearly to scientific conferences in my research field, but I have never been to a conference outside of my research (and payed from my own pocket). Well, this November I’m going to FSCONS 2010 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The topics seem really interesting and the location isn’t that far from Finland. So, I thought, why not go and see what it’s all about?

What I really like about FSCONS is that it is not only about the technical aspects around free and open source software (aka FLOSS), but more broadly about the societal issues around computing. Check out the FSCONS programme.

Why I sold my iPhone

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0200

My one year iPhone contract with Sonera ended recently and I had a chance to reassess my mobile phone situation. I had long been unsatisfied with the iPhone because of two reasons, one practical, one philosophical.

The practical problem was that since I had switched to use only Linux I had no way of synchronising with my computer, or even simply copying over some files. I partially overcame the last problem by using a podcast application on the iPhone which downloaded new podcast episodes directly over WiFi. But if I wanted to transfer new music I had to borrow my girl friend’s Windows-laptop and use iTunes.

There are some efforts, partially successful, to enable free software systems to talk to the iPhone, however Apple seems to actively prevent any third parties from syncing with their devices, so any successful syncing might break in the next iPhone operating system (iOS) update. Contrast this to most other phone companies, who generally do not support Linux, but also do not actively prevent the use of third party software.

My second gripe was that of controlling the software on the device. As a programmer I often wish to solve a problem by making my own programme, e.g. I could never find an alarm clock application to my liking and wanted to make my own. In order to make an application for the iPhone, I would need to pay Apple $99 each year for the iPhone developer programme, even if only to run it on my own device. I might afford that sum, but it is a matter of principle that I should be able to control the software on a device that I own without any further permissions or payment.

This kind of control is frightening, especially in combination with Apple’s efforts to bring the same controlled environment to more general purpose computing devices such as the iPad. This was one of the reasons which got me thinking more seriously about software freedom and switching all my machines to Linux. (At the moment my Thinkpad and my Mac mini both run Debian “squeeze”.)

The iPhone was kind of the “last hold-out from the old era” for me. For economical (and partially ecological) reasons I just didn’t want to throw it away – so I stuck with it for some time. Then a co-worker offered to buy if from me since it was unlocked now (officially by Apple, since my one year contract had expired).

So now I’m back to my old Nokia 6290. It runs the horrible S60 variant of Symbian, and I consider it mostly as a “dumb phone”. The operating system on the device is probably as non-free as the iPhone (even if Symbian itself has been open sourced recently), but at least it works with my Linux system, and I can develop and install free software on it.

I intend to use this phone temporarily until a suitable, more open and software freedom-friendly phone turns up. Hopefully one that runs mostly free software. At the moment I am waiting for the upcoming MeeGo operating system, and the first devices based on that. Nokia is said to be working on one for this year. If that turns out badly, I’ll probably start looking at Android-based phones. There is a project called “Replicant” which tries to create a 100% free software stack for Android phones.

Finally, below, I have listed some nice free software that I have installed on my new (old) S60 phone:

Symbian OggPlay is a GPLv2 licensed music player that supports ogg and flac and many other formats. It scans the phone for supported music files, very handy.

Mobidentica is an identi.ca client for S60 under the Apache License 2.0. The author, Tommi Laukkanen, has a lot of other cool free software for S60 on his website.

Feels great that I can at least install software now without first asking permission from Steve Jobs!

Notes on eCryptfs PAM problem

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0200

I recently noticed that I can no longer create new users or change passwords on my laptop running Debian “squeeze”. I get an error message indicating that

authentication information cannot be recovered

After some digging around I realised that the problem is connected to the PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) system and some changes I made earlier to its configuration in order to encrypt a ~/Private/ directory with eCryptfs. I had followed the instructions in the Debian reference. It turns out that those instructions are outdated, the problem was fixed by removing my changes and running pam-auth-update where I just selected the ecryptfs module.

A parallel of principles

Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200

I stumbled across an interesting blog post by Benjamin Mako Hill from last year. It discusses the dichotomy between “open source” and “free software”, i.e. between those within the FLOSS community who emphasise the practical benefits of the distributed, open development method and those who talk about the users’ rights and freedoms. Benjamin Mako Hill makes an interesting argument in favour of talking about software freedom instead of “open source”: software freedom is about the statement of principles while open source makes empirical claims which may or may not be true.

To put the argument more pointedly: if you are a FLOSS enthusiast, are you ready to start supporting closed source systems if research shows that the closed development method in fact produces better software? For example, security expert Steve Gibson recently argued persuasively on his podcast that there is no real difference in security between the closed and open source software development methodologies.

To make a quick personal aside, the reason why I initially switched from Windows 98 to Linux, and later from Linux to Mac OS X as my main operating system was purely from this practical standpoint. I liked Linux and open source, but I found Mac OS X to be even better quality-wise, e.g. with better usability. However, my recent switch back to Linux was made from a principled standpoint, since my priorities had changed. I know the usability won’t be quite as good as on the Mac and I might have to work harder to get things to work, but since my priority is now software freedom I can live with that.

My main point, however, is to make a parallel that I thought of while discussing politics with a friend over a few beers recently. My friend lamented how political discussions are nowadays always framed around economic arguments, hiding or perhaps forgetting the original values of the political groups involved. In the typical argument, a certain policy should be adopted because it will increase economic growth or reduce expenditures, not because it is the most just or ethical alternative. This is especially distressing for the democratic left – which I believe has the strongest ethical arguments. Organising a society in a way that distributes wealth more equally might be an economically superior solution, or it might not (of course it also depends on how you measure economic success). In the end the goals are not economical or technological superiority but social justice and software freedom. These are statements of ethical opinion, not empirical claims. I think this is important to remember, both in software and politics.

Installing Linux on my Apple TV

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I have an Apple TV with the unofficial (from Apple’s point-of-view) XBMC add-on, but it is still running inside the Apple-provided system. Well, I recently inadvertently OK’ed an Apple TV update which of course broke the XBMC installation, I would have to install it all over again.

This is when I decided to take the “logical” step and replace the Apple TV system (some version of Mac OS X) with Linux since I was not using it anyway. Also, I always had to start XBMC via the Apple-provided system – in Linux I would be able to start XBMC directly.

I basically followed the steps from these notes on wiki.eple.us. Currently the newest Apple TV update (needed in the Boot EFI extraction stage) seems to be:
http://mesu.apple.com/data/OS/061-7495.20100210.TAVfr/2Z694-6013-013.dmg

There were some minor errors in the documented steps, which are easily identified while doing them. Unfortunately I have already forgotten what they were Also be careful with the dd commands so that you don’t overwrite your harddrive instead of the USB stick! One should never blindly copy-and-paste super-user commands (i.e. running as root or prefixed with sudo).

The only problem I really had was getting XBMC to start after installing Ubuntu. I incorrectly diagnosed the problem as related to X and the Nvidia driver. In fact it turned out that XBMC was missing a library and was leaving crash-logs where this information could be easily found! After realising this, it was easily remedied by installing the missing library.

Otherwise the process was time-consuming but not hard. However it is still not for the faint-of-heart, you could be messing up your Apple TV Anyway, I’ve had my Ubuntu+XBMC system running now for a few weeks, and it works very nicely!

Making the great switch

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I have always been a fan of open source software, and I used Linux as my main operating system for several years around 2000. However at some point I started using Mac OS X more and more (first an iBook, then an iMac and now a Mac mini). It had the same nice unix-features that I had become accustomed to in Linux but everything was more nicely designed and with great usability.

Recently I have however started to think more about the ethics of free software and decided to switch back to Linux, or GNU/Linux as the Free Software Foundation prefers to call it. It is not the most pressing ethical question of the day – compared to wars, poverty, and human rights issues – but it is one close to my personal interests and one that is quite easy to do something about.

I have always been using Linux, at work, and on one or both of my laptops. But I wanted to switch my main system: the Mac mini. I tried a triple-boot setup, since I also had Windows XP installed for (very) sporadic gaming. I never got the booting to work as I wanted (i.e. in just one level of selection) since the Mac has it’s own strange EFI system instead of the BIOS of PC’s and a BIOS-compatibility mode is needed for the other operating systems. Finally, when I at some point managed to make the Linux system unbootable, I decided it would be easier to just wipe the drive and have only one operating system: Linux

Ubuntu on a Mac mini

I am now using Ubuntu 9.10, i.e. the “Karmic Koala” as my only operating system on the Mac mini. I try to use only free software on it, but unfortunately the graphics adapter needs a proprietary driver by Nvidia. It works quite well on the Mac mini, however I haven’t tried the wireless since I don’t need that (it would also require another proprietary driver, which Ubuntu offers to install).

The only problem was the sound which required adding model=imac24 to the options snd-hda-intel line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf. (The helpful tip is from this blog post by Victor Costan.)

Transferring my stuff

The next challenge was to import all my stuff from my Mac backup. I had everything important backed up using Time Machine to an external drive. I thought this would be easy since it seemed to make a complete snapshot every time with hardlinks for files that had not changed. It turned out to be much more complicated. Read this blog post by Carson Baker on Time Machine on Linux. I contemplated making a Perl script to go through all the linked steps, but I realised it would be easier to start up the Mac OS X installation CD and use the tools from there to copy the newest snapshot to a regular directory structure. This worked nicely, the OS X installer allows the user to start a terminal session before installing anything.

Another minor hassle was to copy around the modified and original versions of photos from the iPhoto structure. The iTunes file structure is pretty straightforward so no problem there. Only that I could no longer find the iTunes database as an XML file for which I had a Rhythmbox conversion script (see itunes-to-rhythmbox-ratings and scroll down). Fortunately I had a Rhythmbox database on my laptop for a slightly older version of my database, so perhaps only a few hundred of my stars ratings got lost.

An unsolved problem is how to open iWork files. The files are very verbose XML documents so it should not be impossible. The text from Pages documents I simply extracted by a short sed command removing all XML-tags. Unfortunately the numbers from Numbers are not so easy to extract, they seem to be given as properties to the XML elements. I don’t have anything important in those files fortunately.

Also the e-mails from Apple Mail are stored as separate emlx files which neither mutt nor Evolution seem to be able to import. Again, the files themselves are easily readable and searchable with for example grep, so that is good enough for me.

Interfacing with my other Apple devices

I also own an Apple TV which requires that you run iTunes in order to be able to sync with it. Fortunately the XBMC project solves that dilemma. A much bigger problem is my iPhone which is similarly locked to iTunes. But I seldom actually need to sync my phone with the computer. I don’t need to sync my contacts, and if I did I could use my Google account or similar. The same goes for the calendar. Also podcasts can be downloaded directly to the phone.

The only problem is if I buy new music on my computer. Maybe it’s time to start revisiting those old classics in my music library and save some money Using iFuse and libiphone it should be possible to do syncing with Linux, but unfortunately this broke since Apple changed the format of the internal music database with the iPhone OS 3.0 release.

Conclusions

Summing up, the switch to Ubuntu Linux worked pretty well. Of course it would have been easier had I planned this beforehand, then I could have exported for example the iWork files to more compatible formats. Also I might have taken a “flat copy” of the Time Machine snapshot. In my future technology purchases I need to make sure that I only buy stuff that works with Linux and preferably has free drivers as well.

Thoughts on the iPhone

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0200

After much deliberation, considering the alternatives, I finally bought an iPhone 3GS when they became available in Finland late this summer.

I had given up hope on Nokia because of the horrible S60 operating system. Google Android looked promising, but the handsets available were not very good, and the OS still needs some maturing. The Palm Pre with the webOS made me hesitate for a while, because the user interface seemed very well thought out. I had the opportunity to try out the Pre while visiting Florida this summer for a conference, and I have to say that the hardware felt very cheap and plastic. Also having used an iPod touch for some time I didn’t feel that the choice of third party applications was even close to that of the iPhone.

Getting the iPhone I had to transfer my phone number from the old operator to Sonera, which currently has a monopoly on iPhones in Finland. Sonera for some reason did not start the process of moving the number until I had physically received the phone (and called to complain!), so I was stuck with a glorified iPod for more than a week until my number was transferred. Not very smooth operation, Sonera …

Now, after a few weeks of using the iPhone as my sole phone I am still very satisfied with it. Trying an old Nokia N95 for a few minutes last week felt like going back in time at least a century, even though technically the N95 has similar specs to the iPhone. The user experience is really very important, even for a geek like me I find myself using the “smart phone” features much more often than in my previous phones simply because it is easy and fun to use.

My main complaint about the iPhone would be the restrictions and how the development platform is closed. As I understand, even if I want to develop an application only for personal usage, I would have to pay the $99 fee for the iPhone Developer Programme. This is why, as a developer, I still root for the more open platforms such as Android, and potentially Nokia’s Maemo. Maybe, in time for my next phone purchase in 2—3 years time, these platforms will be mature

Naomi Klein in Helsinki

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

I went to see Naomi Klein when she held a lecture last week (5.6.2008) in Helsinki University Metsätalo. I was there fifteen minutes early and the room was already full and we were told that they cannot let people in anymore, it would be too “dangerous”… well after a while they still let some more people in so I managed to squeeze in

The talk was really good, however nothing new if you have read the book. Here is a description of it if you understand Swedish. Professor Heikki Patomäki was there as well joining the discussion and offering some critique even though they agreed on the central issues.

My new iPod touch

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

My old 4th generation (click-wheel) iPod finally died. Its hard drive started to give me problems, every second iTunes-sync or so it failed. I had been waiting for a 16 GB iPod nano, but it still seemed to be far away. A friend at work had bought an iPod touch and its user interface seemed very nice… and a 16 GB version was available. So I finally decided to get one!

I have to say, now after many weeks of use, that I am pretty satisfied with this iPod. The interface still seems “wow” after so many weeks, and it functions nicely as my music player, calendar, notepad (when I don’t have my paper notepad close by) and e-mail and web surfing when away from my computer (and WLAN is available). I also watch an occasional video on it. Using VisualHub it is very easy to convert for example DivX videos which are then directly copied to iTunes and synced to your iPod the next time. VisualHub is not free, but it’s very easy to use. The conversion of course always takes some time…

Also the Google Maps software is really nice, and it works without WLAN if you have previously checked the same spots on the map. This is very handy if you need to recheck some streets when you are out-and-about.

If I have to pick some negatives it would be the lack of any tactile controls for the music player. At least a real volume slider or wheel as in the iPhone would have been nice. Also why can’t the notes application sync for example with the notes in Apple’s Mail?

Now when I have this device, carrying around an additional phone seems a bother. The iPhone now seems like a much more attractive idea… maybe when my Nokia gets “old”

Civil war in Gaza was planned

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

David Rose, “The Gaza Bombshell” in Vanity Fair, April 2008:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

An interesting side-note is that Elliott Abrams was convicted for the Iran-Contra scandal, and later pardoned by George Bush Sr. It has also been alleged that he was involved in the failed coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002 [The Observer, April 21 2002].

UPDATE: The story as reported on Aljazeera: ‘US plot against Hamas’ revealed.

My new laptop: Thinkpad X61s

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0200

So I finally bought a new laptop computer, which I have been planning to do for some time now. I was first thinking of buying another Mac (my previous laptop was an Apple iBook), but then a friend introduced me to the Lenovo Thinkpad X61s which I finally picked. I did think about it for some time, both models had their pros and cons.

The MacBook of course runs my favourite operating system, Mac OS X, on the other hand it’s white and a bit too large and heavy since I was really looking for an ultraportable computer. I know that you can get it in black, but I couldn’t get over the fact that you have to pay a premium for that. Not so much that I couldn’t pay it financially, but than everyone would know that I had paid for “just a colour”

The Thinkpad on the other hand is very light and small, just the optimal size for me. And it’s black Maybe not as stylish as a MacBook, but I do think that Thinkpads are one of the better looking PC laptops out there. The biggest minus is of course that there is no Mac OS X.

One further reason for picking the Thinkpad was that almost “everyone” nowadays seems to have a MacBook – when I had my iBook years ago I was one of the few in my workplace. So I guess I have to be different again Another reason is that I have been testing Ubuntu a bit on my PC at home and I wanted to use it more. I guess I have been missing the geeky adventure of using Linux

In a later blog post I will describe my experience of using Vista and Ubuntu on my laptop. And some Linux tips as well

Flying Dog Beer!

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 21:00:00 +0200

I hadn’t noticed before that they have Flying Dog beer in Kaisla in Helsinki. It was really good! Thanks to Johan for pointing this great American brewery out.

The Flying Dog brewery has a strange connection to the writer Hunter S. Thompson as well. As you can see their porter is called Gonzo Imperial Porter The guy who makes their labels, Ralph Steadman, has also illustrated many of Thompsons articles and books.

[Photo by Niklas.]

Work, buy, consume, die

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Join a hilarious adventure of a life-time! Photo of cool stencil art. [Photo by Niklas.]

I graduate, finally!

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0100

Now I have it on paper! Master of Science in Technology (MScTech) is the complicated degree name in English