Niklas Saers' blog

My thoughts on VR today

Lots of companies are working on VR, and we’re led to believe that this is the defining technology of the near future. I’m an optimist when it comes to new technologies, so I wanted to try it out to get a status of where we are today.

My background in VR is not great - I tried a giant helmet once in the 90s at a technology fare. It was a very pixelated rollercoaster, it was all very interesting, and nothing became of it. I tried a VR setup in a Medialogy lab ca 2007, and it looked better but it was mostly a very expensive way of doing storytelling with better immersion.

The reason I find VR interesting today is that it has become cheap, because you can use your smartphone for all the tech and just add some lenses via Google Cardboard. A DIY kit can be had for a dollar or two on Amazon, and complete headsets can be had for $20. To really give it a shot, I bought what I thought was a high-end one for $59, that according to the reviews I read had the best immersive experience. It was the BoboVR Z4 from HyperShop

The BoboVR Z4 comes with a headset for 3D surround sound (how this is not just plain stereo, I don’t know), and the connector was neatly tucked on the left hand side of the device, very easy to connect. That requires, though, that the iPhone 6S Plus that I connected is oriented in one orientation. Such a shame that virtually every app I installed required the phone to be oriented the exact opposite way. Oh well, I ordered an extension cord from Amazon and that was that. It also comes with a button I can tap on my helmet, but that button was extremely unreliable, working the first tap or two and then working less and less. But it’s the wrong place for a button anyway, so I ordered a game controller via eBay that I can hook up. I have no idea if this is the preferred setup for VR, but this is what I explore the VR world through.

Now, what do I want from VR? I’m a developer, so I’d love to treat it as a giant monitor and have a window manager that would let me juggle terminals and text editors in a more productive way than I do at my 5K iMac today. I expect this VR experience to be roughly the VR equivalent of what fvwm and xterms were for a desktop experience back in the days where X11 was my environment.

Other than that, seeing videos in 3D, or where it makes sense, 360 degrees videos, would be interesting. And although I’m not much of a gamer, I know there is much VR exploration going on there, so I’d love to be blown away with a good game that really utilises the immersiveness in a (to me) novel way.

I searched the App Store for VR and downloaded about 200 apps and games (for the rest of the post I’ll just call them apps), some paid, some free. I wanted a good mix to see what was going on in this landscape. I won’t call out many apps in particular, but give you my general experience.

There are many not particularly good apps in the app store, and the VR apps are no different. I expect there is a blog that could help me sort to the cruft, but I had already dived head first in before thinking of this. ;-)

Input is something that needs working on, especially head input from head movement. Most of the apps I got expected you to do rather large head movements. That means more work for the user, more chance to bump into things, and you needing more space. I want more fine-grained control with smaller movements, so that I can do most things sitting on my couch instead of having to stand beside my couch to be able to turn all the way round.

Even though mobile phones aren’t heavy, wearing it together with lenses and headset feels a bit heavy in total. That limits how long a user can use a VR application before being fatigued. Speaking of fatigue, wearing a setup like this for an hour is both eye straining and warm. I have no input on how that could be solved, so for now, doing serious work on a virtual 3D-space of terminal windows seem illusive.

While the idea of using a mobile phone to power the VR experience seems good, it won’t be really good until the operating system on the phone embraces VR. At the moment there are annoyances to downright interruptions from having notifications come in, the occasional vibrating of the phone when a mail arrives, or even worse - people calling you (it’s a phone - that’s what people do). So to get a good experience, you need a dedicated phone for VR apps, which totally defeats the purpose of a cheap entry-level VR system.

Another part where the need for OS-level VR integration is glaringly obvious is that many apps move back and forth between VR and non-VR interaction. This is really bad, because that means taking the headset off, putting my glasses back on, opening the headset, disconnecting the audio cable, taking the device out, fiddling with the interface while holding the headset, putting the device back in, connecting the audio cable, closing the headset, removing my glasses and putting the headset back on again. What kinds of stuff do they require this for? Clicking away from an ad, choosing a new level or scene, settings, etc.

Lastly, I have a QR code that about half of the apps want me to scan on first launch so they know what headset I have and can configure accordingly. The OS should know, and I should not have to carry a QR code around. To fix that last issue, I’ve glued it to my VR headset. Guess what headset doesn’t look all nice anymore? ;-)

Remember I told you about the giant pixels in the 1990s? Well, the pixels are still here. Not as giant, but still very, very visible. I was using an iPhone 6S Plus which has a Retina display of 1920x1080, or 401 DPI. Retina is marketing speech for not being able to see individual pixels in the distance you’re expected to have the device from your eyes. Having the device in a VR headset changes this distance dramatically, so this is not a Retina VR experience at all. So we should expect the resolution game to continue at least until we reach Retina level for VR. This must frighten my iPhone 6S Plus, because when running VR experiences, it runs pretty hot doing all this GPU work - and I just told it that it needs to do a whole lot more. And it needs to stop running as hot, because VR is quickly eating up my battery. That needs fixing too.

One experience I liked a lot is apps that use the camera to give me an augmented reality experience. This can become nice a whole lot nicer when we get more wide-angle lenses on the phone and photo sensors allowing more wide-angle video than what the current crop of phones do.

So this is what I’ve found so far. My experiment is of course not done yet, so I’ve ordered a VicoVR Sensor that has an estimated delivery time in november 2016. For wanting more fine-grained motion for input, attaching a full-skeletal tracking system is probably going the wrong way, but it’ll be interesting to try out.

The 12" Macbook for iOS development

I’m an iOS developer at Snapsale, and I spend some time on the road, either travelling to our main office in Oslo, or to conferences. For my out-of-office work, I chose the entry-level Macbook.

The specs were not very powerful: a 1,1Ghz dual-core Broadwell Core-M with 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. But then again my expectation was mainly to do meetings and notes, UI review and the occasional Xcode hacking. Thus I chose 12” to optimize for being able to “comfortably” work from the flight seat and the coach seat, and retina for working on UI together with our designer.

Optimizing for the screen is something I would not have expected to do five years ago, and I must admit to being a bit hesitant to how the Macbook would deal with Xcode. The answer is: surprisingly well. What I had not factored in was that the SSD is actually a quite fast SSD, and since development work is quite I/O intensive, that made a significant difference.

One of the big benefits of this Mac that is easily overlooked is no fans. I actually didn’t notice for the first couple of weeks until my colleagues Macbook Pro spun up to a whine. Of course, the worst part is that the CPU is not powerful enough to need those fans, but buying a Macbook, you should be very aware of this going in.

So how is the Macbook for Xcode? It’s decent: I’d say about half the speed of my Skylake iMac (2015 model). The amount of stuff on my screen is of course limited, but laptop development work usually has this drawback, and dealing with that is not hard.

So instead of only occasional Xcode work, I use it heavily for Xcode even when I’m not travelling: at home when I don’t want to go into my home office but be in the living room, and even in my office when I want to run another branch of the git repo in parallel.

With this in mind, I expect to be able to recommend a Skylake Macbook (the rumoured early 2016 model) as an all right Xcode environment.

Original content

Welcome to my website. The reason I have a website is that I like to maintain a space where you can find my content. But the way I use the internet, which is not so different from so many others, I leave much of my original content in places like Facebook and Twitter. I don’t mind sharing, if I did I’m sure this content would have been behind a paywall and no-one would read it, but I do like to remain in control of it. When I give it to Facebook and Twitter, they can do more or less what they would like with it.

I’d therefore like to put it out there that I’m investigating options to have what I write there appear here also. Either as a carbon-copy, or even better, with this space as the original source. I could do that as a separate micro-blog feed, but I think that I perhaps prefer embedding it between the blog posts. We’ll see, that’s what I’m thinking so far anyway

Let me know what you think and how you deal with this, preferably as a post that you have full control over on your own site :-)

Treadmill - millionth step

I started using a treadmill under my desk August 21st 2015. Today, January 6th 2016, I did my 1.000.000th step at the end of my working day. (or 425 kilometers in 45 days - yes I have been travelling much)

I wrote about my first impressions of using the treadmill, and since then I have really been loving it. I’d like to use this opportunity to give you my impressions one million steps in. :-)

First of all: I’m being at least as productive working while walking on a treadmill as I was before. I believe I’m being more productive, but if that is because of the treadmill, better tooling, better architecture or what is hard to say.

My ambition was 15.000 steps a day, but my daily average is about 23.000 steps a day, and that is a little less than 10km a day. I’ve settled in to a speed of around 3.5 km/hour, but I vary from 2.8 km/hour to 4.5 km/hour. So you can already guess my biggest surprise, it is that I don’t get more hours walking than I do. Apart from obvious stuff like bathroom- and coffee-breaks, I stop the treadmill often while debugging, while having meetings and while talking on the phone. Then I stand on the treadmill instead. I haven’t lowered my desk to sit since the end of August.

I used to be very happy to work from home, so if the weather was bad and I didn’t have a specific reason for being in the office, I would just work from home. Since getting the treadmill, it is not that I make a point of going to work, but I actually really want to get to work so I get to use the treadmill there. I’ve switched jobs in this period, and this want to get in has been the same in both places.

My iPhone still doesn’t get all the steps I take since it’s on my desk and my Apple Watch is on my wrist and my wrist is resting on the desk. So my move metrics are often way below what they actually have been. This sucks, but I have stopped caring as much. I hope a good solution will present itself, preferably as an integration from the treadmill software. The included Lifespan treadmill software is still rubbish.

The treadmill is just as loud as it used to be, even after being lubricated well. However, I’ve found just how much difference the office can make to the sound. I used to think my former office wasn’t that resonant, but now that I’m in a larger office, the treadmill doesn’t sound as bad, even though the treadmill itself hasn’t changed.

While I did get a bit sweaty when I began using the treadmill, I don’t find I do that anymore. I attribute this to it being winter now and I started using it in the summer, we’ll see if half a years time.

I’ve become a big advocate for the treadmill, and I really do think it is one of the best things I’ve done for my work life. If you are nearby Tarp, come by and try it and see how you like it.

Device Setup

November 2nd I started working at Snapsale as the head of iOS development. At the moment that means the head of me, so I get to do all the fun stuff myself. :-)

In that context I’m setting up an iOS test lab, that I’ve called “Snapsale iOS Lab” (yes, I’m that original in my naming). For my own sake, to remember with future devices, and to inspire other iOS developers (this might even apply to some degree to other mobile app devs), here is the list of tasks I do for each device.

When setting up a new iOS device:

Set it up with the labs iCloud account
Set no TouchID or PIN code
Turn off key sound
Give it a name with the template “iOS Labs [iOS/iPhone/AppleTV] [modelNumber] w/iOS [version]”
Turn off automatic screen lock
Turn on automatic downloads and updates of apps
Set up email with Gmail account associated with the labs iCloud account
Download all the purchased apps from the app store, remembering especially
- TestFlight
- Facebook
- Instagram
Install the latest apps from TestFlight and say yes to notifications
Set up Facebook
Set up Instagram
Attach to test server, remember to trust the device on the Mini and the other way around, including Watch if paired
Grab the device UDID and register in Apples Developer Member Center
If this was the last device, update the developer and ad-hoc provisioning profiles to all registered devices. Download the provisioning profiles, put them in the servers “Provisioning Profiles” Dropbox folder, and replace them in the repos that have them committed

I expect the last two steps can be automated through Fastlane.io, but I haven’t come around to that yet.

I also expect that many of these steps can be fast-forwarded by taking a backup with encryption enabled through iTunes on the test server and then restoring it onto the new device

How I take control of legacy code

I’m leaving Trifork to start working on Snapsale at Skylib. I will be taking over their iOS code base. I’ve taken over maintenance of many codebases before, and I thought it was time to describe my process.

I have two goals for this process:

learn the code that is there
make sure I end up with a maintainable project

This piece is a bit lengthy, and I’m not saying I’ll need to do it all on Skylibs code, nor should this be seen as a fixed guide to any project. I do recommend following the same steps for anyone taking over code that I have maintained at Trifork, so it is also not meant to be any judgement. It is simply a description of my current process for accomplishing these two goals. With that said, let’s go through the steps:

Step #1, the most important step, is to gather a list of features and use-cases, so I understand what the app does. So far I have never been able to complete this step, I always come back to add to this list later, and I really wish I could become better at this step. It really helps every step going forward.

Step #2, does it compile? Very often it does not. It depends on something installed on the developers computer he or she took for granted (hello protobuf), not everything was committed because of a too loose .gitignore file, or the project simply hasn’t been maintained for long because the customer was happy with it being in the store and did not want any expenses maintaining it without there being a “fire” or a new business-critical feature

Step #3, run and read all the tests. Do the tests cover the list from step #1? If so, I am forever in the debt of the author I have taken the project over from and he or she is now my personal hero. And I’m happy to say I have a few of these heros.

Step #4, get the certificates and accompanying private- and public keys and put them in a separate keychain file (without a password) that I’ll commit to the repo. If you have been granted access to the repo, I’ll want you to have this information.

Step #5, are there any build scripts? If so, do they run? Do they work? I’m no wizard at reading shell scripts, but I need to understand what’s going on during my build.

Step #6, is there a build server? If so, make sure I have access to it and that I can trigger a build and understand the process of what is happening to it.

At this point, I have gotten to know the project a bit, and I know what makes it tick. Now I will begin pruning away what I don’t think belongs in the project and improve on the code, in order to improve maintainability. It being more maintainable will help me understand the code more in-depth later. So let’s get at it!

Step #7, take control of dependencies. All too often I get a .xcodeproj with a lot of external code and libraries thrown in and hacked together into the build. This is no way to live! If I’m lucky enough to be able to talk to the original author, more often than not I get the line “I used to be a Java developer, and I got stuck in Maven hell”. I feel for you, bro, but this is not Java, and managing dependencies does not mean downloading the internet Maven style. And doing it by hand is probably not managing the at all.

CococaPods is great for managing dependencies. So I will gather a list of the dependencies, and write the list of them in a Podfile. Then I will use CocoaPods to manage these dependencies and remove them from the .xcodeproj. Usually the dependencies that were there are embarrassingly out of date, often exposing know security holes or just not supported any more by their service providers. Yes, I’m looking at you, AFNetworking, Facebook, Flurry and Fabric. So I will try updating them all to the latest version and see if it compiles with only minor modifications. If it does, great. If not, I’ll evaluate whether I should back down a couple of versions, or whether I should accept that the app is now broken and work to fix that. And even if they work, I’ll need to compare it to what was in the release we had at step #6 to see if this has given unintended consequences. If it has, back down to the original versions (although still in CocoaPods) and make a ticket for upgrading these in the task management system I use.

Yes, I will check in the Pods directory into the repo. I want to be able to check out the repo and have it compiled on any Mac with Xcode installed - I don’t want to depend on neither CocoaPods nor the internet.

CocoaPods is great at compiling a list of acknowledgements in either plist or markdown format. Too often these are not reflected in the app, so I’ll make a ticket to include them, either in an About page or in the Settings bundle.

Finally, if Core Data is a dependency, I will usually add mogenerator and Magical Record - my go-to tools for making Core Data easy to handle and maintainable. And yes, I’ll include the Mogenerator binaries in the repo.

Step #8 is cleaning up the Xcode project and git repo further. I’ll remove any accidentally committed userdata, .DS_Store files, .bak files and other temporary files. I’ll add entries in the .gitignore file so they don’t reappear.

I’ll remove code that has been commented out. If I’ll ever need it (probably not), it is in the repo and I can look it up there.

I’ll turn TODOs, FIXMEs and the like into warnings. If it’s an all Objective-C codebase, I’ll turn them into #warnings, if there is Swift in the project I have a little script that will turn these into warnings at build time.

Lately I’ve explored having a scheme that will build with the latest SDK as a project that will only run on the latest iOS version. I’ll run this on a build server, and this will make any deprecated methods or constants light up, so that I can be sure not to use them anymore.

Step #9, readable code. I’m sure the code you write is consistent and easily readable. While that is my goal too, it is hard to be consistent. But code is written to be read, and having a high degree of consistency and low variability accross projects makes for an easier read. That’s why I love Uncrustify. Uncrustify will take a config file of how the code should be formatted and apply that. This means that all code will read the same, making me only having to read what is actually going on in the code, instead of parsing different syntax from code to code.

But Uncrustify can’t do it all. So after that I’ll go through the ivars and make sure they have an underscore as a prefix, just like we’ve been taught. It makes it really easy to see what are ivars, without having to resolve to workarounds such as prefixing them with self->. At the moment this is the only task I’ll take out AppCode for. I probably should spend more time with AppCode and find other areas for it, but for now, this is where it shines in my toolbelt.

Step #10 is reducing the number of targets. Targets are high-maintenance. They drift apart and have buckets and buckets of options. Chances are you only want every few of those options to diverge. This is why I prefer configurations and schemes instead. If there is some variability I cannot fit into this, I’ll use my PreBuild tool, and with this in hand I’ve been able to deliver many apps that share a code-base but diverge in both features, looks, app store details and languages. The benefit is that this is just configuration, expressed as JSON, and thus easily followed over time in the git repo. In contrast to your project.pbxproj.

Step #11 is grouping functions belonging to a protocol together. For each Objective C class, I’ll run use #pragma mark for each protocol, and for Swift I’ll use class extensions.

Step #12, while grouping functions, this is a great time to remove dead code, meaning code that has been commented out, that can never be reached or which isn’t included in the compile.

Step #13, another thing that I’ll do at this time is looking at the class interfaces and see if only what should be public is public, and possibly refactor parts into a protocol. Then I can begin writing missing tests to ensure that I’ve understood the code correctly.

This step is one of those usually-never-complete steps, and I’m not going to be too rigorous about it. If I can devote a week or two in a medium sized project, this is usually well worth the effort. It’ll increase my knowledge of the code base, and reduce technical debt at the same time

Step #14, understanding how State is managed in the app. Usually this is too intertwined in the code to reasonably be done anything about, but at least I should understand it. Then as I write new code, I’ll probably transform it slowly and try to bring those changes back to the old code. If there is one thing I’m really holding my fingers crossed for when entering a new project, it is good state management. And to be perfectly honest, I haven’t quite figured out what that is myself yet. But I’m confident that I’m on a good path.

Step #15, warnings. Another thing that is good doing at this stage is fixing all those warnings that either were in the project already, or that cropped up because of TODOs and FIXMEs. Also, rigorously running build & analyze probably yields interesting code paths. And finally, run instruments to check for leaks and other memory buildup, high CPU or GPU usage, and framerates dropping below 60 FPS on the target devices.

Step #16, dependency injection. Scary word? Not really, it’s just creating properties that can be populated by whoever creates an object, and that will be used instead of the singletons that too often litter an iOS project. This is usually counted as minutes per class, and makes the classes so much more testable.

Step #17, when refactoring, if there is no logging framework beyond print() in Swift and NSLog() in Objective-C, I’ll probably include CocoaLumberjack. Also, if there is an analytics library, I’ll probably add the ARAnalytics wrapper so that it is easy to add another one if it provides interesting metrics and services. My current gang is Flurry and Fabric.

Step #18, move graphics into asset catalogs, and make sure all the graphics are there. Way to often there is just the @2x.png file, which of course is no good as it’ll slow down slow non-retina devices, and look blurry on @3x devices. More often than not I will ask the designers to re-create all the files as PDFs, and use them in the asset catalogs and have Xcode create PNGs for the different resolutions.

Finally, step #19, is to move code into components. There are three parts to this: if there are any parts (usually custom controls) that can be moved into a CocoaPod, this should be done at once. I’m not saying it has to be open sourced, having an in-house repo is just fine.

Then the code that can be shared between extensions and apps for other platforms such as Apple Watch or OS X should be moved into a framework.

At last I’ll move the rest of my app code into a framework. I do this so that I can import it into a Playground and use the Playground to work with views and animations instead of having to do compile-and-run to show a proof-of-concept or navigate to the place in the code where it is being used. This should make me more efficient when working together with the designer.

Wow, that was a lot of steps, and a lot of important work to do. Some may be redundant because it has already been done, others may be deprioritized because of project constraints. Sometimes it is fine incurring more technical debt in order to get to market. But if I get to do it my way, this is what I will do - and I’m sure I’ll have a better understanding of the project, and a more flexible project for it. Which means being able to more reliably deliver those new features and versions month after month.

Then and now

I’m setting up my travel computer for work, the retina Macbook, spring 2015 base model. It’ll be my travel Xcode companion. It’s the first 12” laptop I use since the one I Fujitsu-Siemens I bought in 2000 before travelling to Australia. The Fujitsu-Siemens was an ultra-portable Lifebook S-4510, by far slimmer than the average laptop of its time - I knew no-one who had a slimmer one for years. So I thought it was time to compare dimensions. And, well, this laptop was thinner in my memory than sitting side-by-side the Macbook

Time to learn photography again

Live Photos is one of the most interesting new features of the iPhone. The iPhone is the most used camera I have, because it is always with me. And until now I have been quite all right at taking the photos I want. Live photos adds a time dimension to my photos, and this means I have to re-learn what it is to compose a photo, what it is to frame a photo, what it is to shoot a photo.

Right of the bat, the first thing I wanted was to bring a tripod with me. Because even though I could capture the movement in the situation, I actually caught a lot of movement in my hand. And this is on the iPhone 6S Plus that has image stabilization. Obviously I’m not going to carry a tripod around, but it means I have to re-learn how to hold the iPhone while shooting a photo.

Apple proposed that this feature gives context to the photos, but the fact it can be used for a lock screen and as a Watch face means that the entire live photo is your composition, not just a photo with context. I think I’ll read a bit up on how people shoot short video clips to get a couple of pointers for framing and composition.

So, time to learn more photography

iPhone upgrading

Today my new iPhone arrived. Upgrade time!

First failure - don’t back up to iCloud, it’ll take forever. Back up to your Mac. Remember what Mac it is you back up to. And enable backup encryption. Because if you don’t, it’ll forget all your health data and all your passwords, and apparently also apps that require encryption. News to me.

Before this, though, unpair the Apple Watch from the phone. Because, it turns out that this is the only way to back it up.

So by unpairing (it takes about 5 minutes) you get a backup on your phone. Then you can backup your phone to a Mac, remembering to have it an encrypted backup, and THEN you can restore your old phone on the new, and only have half the apps be gone for no good reason.

Now you’re just a confused panda, compared to the sad panda you’d be if you did it any other way.

Did I mention that the process around switching iPhones really needs improving? Apple engineers, I would expect you guys are doing this three times a day. Why is this not worked through? Let me just set up the new phone with a nod to the old phone, have all my info moved over securely, including the Apple Watch pairing and pairing with all other devices, and then have the old phone know it is now only a backup until at some point it is cleared out?

Treadmill - first impressions

It’s now been four working days since the treadmill arrived, and it’s time to go through my first impressions.

This treadmill is heavy! Delivery didn’t go as smooth as I had expected, the delivery guy placed it in front of the wrong side of the building and never called me to ask where to deliver it, so I had to carry it through the building and up some stairs together with a co-worker. That was some real exercise! But on the other hand, that also means it is very, very stable. I have not have it move accidentally even a millimeter.

I do use it almost all the time. And it took no time getting used to working this way, even though I had expected it would take some getting used to. I find it easy to focus and consentrate on the task at hand. It does make it more obvious to me those little breaks I take when getting water, coffee, or going to the bathroom, because I have to pause it first.

The treadmill comes with a dashboard that should be mounted under the desk, close to my belly. I found that weird, and even though that means I can’t use the safety release strap, I have placed it on my desk, just in arms reach. With an average speed of 2.6 km/h I think I’ll be fine safety-wise. :-)

I had set a goal of 15.000 steps a day. I thought that was ambitious, but I find I should be able to up that to 21.000 steps a day. My goal of 12 km a day is still a stretch goal. In actual fact I’ve been going more like 7 km/day. So that reveals two insights: I take smaller steps when walking on the treadmill than when I walk outside. And, I don’t get 6 hours of walking a day. I haven’t yet figured out where the rest of the time goes, and I expect to get back to that later.

I was not prepared for how loud this treadmill is. It is really noisy when I walk on it. Noisy enough to annoy my collegues. So I’m better at closing my door, and if I forget or need to get fresh air in, they will close theirs. I find I can ignore it quickly enough, but I’m not sure if this will be a problem long-term. However, this is not a good thing for close cooperation.

A treadmill is also really not good for pair programming, even when it’s turned off. It’s in the way. This can be solved easily enough by using the other persons computer, but that just means that not everyone can use a treadmill, or there will have to be treadmill-free zones where we can bring laptops to pair. More frustrating is when I quickly want to show something to a collegue. It’s like asking them up on a podium, and I’ll quickly climb down to let them have the space. But it’s absolutely odd. Also, when someone comes in to chat I prefer to climb down to be at an even level as the other - the extra height of the treadmill really makes it feel like you’re standing on a podium.

What I did not expect is that I build up a little bit of a sweat. But hey, it’s still early days and I’m experimenting with finding a speed that is comfortable - not to slow but not something that’ll make me sweat either.

The only basic treadmill functionality I was very surprised not to find, was walking at an angle. I wanted to set it to a 10 degrees climb, thus walking uphill. When I couldn’t find out how I should set that, I contacted my supplier, who told me that it could not do this. As far as I understand, tilting it manually is not recommended and could reduce its lifespan. So no climbs or descents for me, even though I have never seen a treadmill that does not provide this.

So apart from being limited to a 0 degrees climb, the basic treadmill functionality is good, and I’m happy with it. I must say that I really enjoy using it, and look forward to coming to the office, and going for a walk. The main drawback, apart from the noise that makes me isolate myself a bit, is all the bad puns I come up with during the day.

Now, what I’m not happy with is the extra-functionality that it provides: Bluetooth pedometer. I hit Bluetooth pairing and asked my iPhone to pair with it. The iPhone said no thank you! Really!? I mean, this is 2015, it is a really expensive device, and its makers haven’t bothered either getting the MFi certification for it, or adding BLE to it and have it comply with a basic service such as the pedometer service? That is crazy! So what they want me to do is pair the treadmill with my Mac, download and run a separate application that will take the input and upload it to a “customer club”. It duplicates some basic stats that the treadmill display are already showing, and for more basic information (such as how long have I been using the treadmill for today? How many steps have I made? What distance have I walked?) I have to press a button to be taken to a website. I don’t want a website. I want the information to be captured and entered into my Health app, the Health app that has come together with every iPhone for quite a while now, and where all my other health related information from my iPhone, from the BLE heartrate monitor and my Apple Watch are gathered. But alas, all LifeSpan can tell me is that an app is coming later this year. I asked my vendor if that means the console will have to be updated, since it doesn’t pair with my iPhone, but he assured me that it will work with my existing console. I wonder how that’ll work, and will be sure to write a review after it has arrived.

But this issue with the Health app integration has me wondering - how does it work when multiple sources track the same data? I already wear my Apple Watch, and it tracks my steps. So does my iPhone when it’s in my pocket, and I’m sure they coordinate fine. But when I’m on the treadmill, my hands are resting on the desk and my iPhone is connected to my Mac on the desk. So the only thing tracking my steps is the treadmill. That is, until there is something I need to read. As a developer, I read an awful lot during the day. Especially code. And for that I may fold my arms, leading the Apple Watch to start tracking my steps. Now there are two sources tracking my steps. How would they figure out when they overlap? I don’t want to say that during office hours, only use the data from the treadmill, because I’d like to count the steps to and from the coffee machine as well. So how these would integrate, or how it already now integrates with all kinds of devices that count steps, is a mystery to me at the moment.

Settings on the treadmill are horrible. I knew I could go into settings to turn of the beeping when I press a button and to have it start at the speed I had last set it to. But settings was a set of options that were called F001 to F021. More than half of them were undocumented, and some options were 0 or 1, in the case of setting it to English or Metric, they were En or Si. What is Si? But the four out of 21 settings that were documented in the manual were fine: I got to turn off anoying beeping sound, set it to metric, make it remember the last speed I entered and don’t bother about the safety pin I didn’t see the reason for. I have no idea why all of this was not default. After I set it the first day, though, I did not have to set anything again.

In conclusion, I love the walking - much more than I expected I would. I look forward to walking tomorrow. The first day, I walked 15.000 steps and got used to the mode of work almost right away. I feel I’m doing something good for my body and for my health. And that is awesome, especially since I do it while getting my job done at least just as good as I used to. Cooperation around my desk will be affected, but I can work around that. And I’m hoping that lubricating the belt with a silicone spray as the manual suggests will reduce much of the noise. And finally, I can’t wait for an app that will integrate with the Health app.

Treadmill - step 1

Hi,

I’m a developer. I write software all day, except for when I do my role as scrum master. Then I talk on Skype or write text documents and emails. But most of the time I read and write code. In front of a computer. That is on a desk. In an office. Almost every working day. All day. And I’m actually very happy about it.

However, this is not great for my health. Sitting all day in front of a desk. So I gave up sitting nine months ago and have been standing at my desk since then. However, standing all that time isn’t great either. It’s better, but not great. So I was ready to take the next step: to walk in front of my desk.

Yes, walk. I had heard a lot about this at conferences and read blog posts about it. Yes, I realize replacing one monotonous posture with another isn’t solving everything, but it’s a step, right? And it sounds very interesting, so I ordered a two-week trial today, with the intent of buying an under-the-desk treadmill. This post is my thoughts before trying it out.

There have been a lot of in-betweens, of course. For many years I’ve raised my desk and stood a while and then sat a while. I’ve had issues with my arms when I was younger and had a physiotherapist guide me to good sitting positions where I rest my arms. However, I’m getting older, and my back is noticing this more and more, leading to me using a chiropractor. That’s been quite good, really.

Where I’m at today is that the standing has become harder on my heels and my knees. So I’ve bought shoes that I hoped would relieve part of the stress, and then higher heels when I noticed that I really was standing wrong. I was standing too much on my heels. So I fully expect to have to do the transition gradual, and perhaps need to mix in some sitting again. Just so as not to over-do it, and to let my current aches heal.

I’m wearing an Apple Watch, and my daily average active energy is 717 calories, including 8,7 km walking/running distance and 9.947 steps. My goal, without doing too much research in how feasible this is, is to add 15.000 steps by walking 6 hours a day at 2km per hour, after having used the treadmill for two weeks. I honestly do not know if this is a too ambitious or too low goal. We’ll see.

Also, my goal is to keep using the treadmill for three years. I’m sure the move goals will change once I get settled into the routine, but being committed to this kind of working sounds good to me. Things I will not regard as breaking my plan is walk-and-talk meetings, travel days when visiting customers, and attending conferences. Also I have no plans to change my weekends and holidays, since this should already be impacting the majority of my days. But it’ll be interesting to see if there will be some spillover effects.

Well Tempered Chronicles - Marketing and launch

This is the sixth and final installment of the behind-the-app series, showing the making of Well Tempered version 2.0.

Marketing and launch

When Well Tempered was first launched back in early 2009, the way I had understood the app store proposal was this: Apple would host and market my app, and take 30% of the sales. Boy was I wrong. The app store was never a marketing tool, and very few apps are promoted by Apple at all.

With version 2.0 coming up, I knew I could not expect Apple to do my marketing. Also, since this was not a new product, but an update, it would be a hard sell to get peoples attention. So this looked like an up-hill battle.

Many people will tell you that you should think of the marketing both before you start making the product and all the way through your development. I had been thinking very much of the user experience, and to me the marketing I had to do was to communicate this.

So while Well Tempered was finishing the localization job, and I was iterating through versions together with my beta testers, I began approaching bloggers and influential musicians to get them interested and want to tell people about Well Tempered and write about the app.

App marketing, building those relationships, is probably the job I have done least well at during the development of Well Tempered 2.0. Because after all my effort, on launch day and the following days, it was announced in four places. That made for the best sales day in Well Tempered history, and its top placement: 55th grossing app in the music category of the Danish app store for that day.

After the first day, it went downhill, and by the fourth day I was not selling any copies of Well Tempered. This was despite having my marketing material localized in 9 languages, despite having focused on accessibility, despite being a universal app, despite (in my humble opinion) being the best tuner out of the many tuners I had tried in the app store, and despite supporting the latest iOS technologies, including the Apple Watch. My marketing strategy needed a new angle.

So far, I had been focused on making the best tuner, especially for early music players, but also running it by rock and jazz musicians to make sure it worked well for them. I had reached out to 60 or so bloggers, members of early music societies, conservatory teachers and people I thought have an influence on people. Surely, having made Well Tempered really well would make them like it and tell people about it?

Well, some reported publicly about it and told me about a bit of the feedback they got from others. But for the most part, they never installed Well Tempered themselves. Apparently I could not get them excited enough to tap the link so that they could redeem their free copy and try it out. This part really surprised me, and going forward I think I will need to work at this slowly and steadily, so that for future updates, at least they will want to try it out.

I decided to try advertising. Advertising is one of these things I see every day, yet haven’t tried much myself. I ended up trying Facebook, since there I could target very specifically whom I wanted to reach. So I made an advertisement for my app where I included my video, and let it run for a week. The demographic was very narrowly defined to harpsichord players in English-speaking countries. The result after a week was depressing: I had seen no new sales. 1010 people had seen it on average 1,9 times, and 12 of them had bothered to play the video and 3 had decided to tap “like” on it. At the very end of the campaign Facebook told me it could be credited for one sale - but with no sales in that period, that was incorrect.

So now I had two failed strategies, and close to no downloads from people who found it in the App Store. The last point is no wonder, if you search for instrument tuner or chromatic tuner, chances are you won’t even find it, at least not for the first 15 pages of apps! I’ll need to do some research into how to rank better there, but this just confirmed my first point in this installment, I can’t expect the App Store to do the marketing for me.

For my third alternative, I tried giving away as many copies as I could, hoping, like I had at first, to generate some more awareness of the app, that people would talk about it. Also, I started posting more about Well Tempered in relevant Facebook groups. I was super-nervous about this: since I did not want to come across as spammy, I made sure to post in just one or two groups every other day or so, and be careful to follow up on comments I would get in those groups.

This actually turned out quite well: I would get a nice spike in my sales, and people were interested, asking questions and “liking” my post. This also led to a lot of support requests coming in as personal Facebook messages. I had not been expecting this amount of a support burden on an overall small amount of sales, but oh well, I would not let my customers down.

While most of the support was easy to help out with, a few of the comments I did get back were really helpful to make Well Tempered better. I was already in the process of making version 2.1, but the support messages gave me an attention to choices I had made that perhaps were not the best ones after all. And this was issues that I would have expected to be alerted about in the beta testing stage, so I must admit I was a bit embarrassed when I discovered they had a point. So version 2.1 will hopefully relieve most of their concerns.

This taught me a lesson about marketing apps that I don’t think I have heard before: even though I’m working on issues that I’m embarrassed about in the current version, I should not stop marketing the current version. I know the updates are coming, and all customers will get the improved version for free. Most of the new customers will not notice the issues I’m improving, and like the tuner. For those who do, well, an update is under way. So even though I was working on version 2.1, I continued to post to different Facebook groups.

And now we have reached today, but absolutely not the end of the journey. Well Tempered 2.1 is under way, and parallel to that I’m working on an update for iOS 9. And I’ll do my best to blog about it, so you can follow along on my journey. Thank you for having followed my series, and do contact me for any questions - I’ll do my best to blog my answer. :-)

Full index:

Well Tempered Chronicles - Localization, Accessibility and Testing

This is the fifth installment of the behind-the-app series, showing the making of Well Tempered version 2.0.

Localization

If you care about your instrument being in tune, and in tune being a tuning system that compliments your music, I really think you should use Well Tempered. That’s why I made the decision to localize Well Tempered so that it would be native to at least 70% of people with an iPhone or iPad, and then the second language to most of the rest. I thus localized the application to English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Thinking about localization, I found two really hard questions:

Do I localize the name?
Do I localize the data?

Starting off with the name, Well Tempered could be thought of as a brand name. If a French speaking person reads a review on an English blog and wants to try it out, I really want that person to find Well Tempered. Calling it Bien Tempéré would make that harder.

Then again, the name is based on Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, and that name already has a translation to French: le Clavier bien tempéré. And of course, the English name is a translation from German: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier. Keeping the enlighs translated name in German seemed absurd. In other languages, such as Korean, I was told by the translators they would use the English name. So I ended up with a mix: in some languages I kept the name, and in some languages it was translated. I was curious to see what difference it would make.

The data in my app is temperament names and temperament calculations. I was curious whether I should translate all the names, but since I had so many temperaments, where some perhaps had appropriate translations and some did not, I chose not to translate them. I have yet to get any feedback on this from my users, so the question still stands.

Apart from these questions, the translation process was smooth enough. I used Tethras that I already have a good relation with, and I think the level of service I got was excellent compared to the price I paid. After that I wanted to use my network to get musicians who had that language as their native tongue to look over the end product. This didn’t go very well as I still miss hearing back from most people that I asked. If something is amiss in a language, I expect I will hear about it.

Accessibility

I have been impressed by how much effort Apple has put into making iOS accessible to people with disabilities. With them making it so easy to make my app accessible, it was only natural for me to implement this for Well Tempered. Not only would I make sure it was accessible, but I would also make sure the accessibility labels were localized the same languages as the interface in general.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get people with disabilities in my test group - I would really have liked to have more input on this. So I ended up testing it myself, and I shipped something I was happy with for the languages I understand. I really hope to hear back from users with disabilities, preferably in many languages.

Testing

A side benefit of making Well Tempered accessible, is that this makes it more easy to make automated tests for it. I have earlier used Calabash a great deal, but for this project I wanted to use UI automation, since I wanted also to use it to prepare my screenshots for the App Store. I had found that I could use snapshot from fastlane.tools to take screenshot based on my UI tests.

If you have ever used UI automation, you’re probably rolling your eyes now, and you would not be surprised to know that this was my biggest mistake. I would make my scripts, and spend a good time making those scripts since I got no feedback from the editor. Not a good experience at all. While working on the script it would lock up midway, and after finishing it, it would not reliably run again. Some runs it would not complete, some it would only take black images.

So instead of getting frustrated and wasting time, I should have made real tests and used that to take images. I would explore going back to Calabash every now and then, but I didn’t get how to change the language of Calabash and how I should write my scripts for an app where also the accessibility was localized, so in the end I ended up without UI tests.

Well, in the end is perhaps overstating it, a little while later Apple released UI testing with iOS 9 and Xcode, so this is what I will be using now. It even allows me to test with localized accessibility labels. :-) And Felix who is behind fastlane.tools is already working on UI testing and screenshots for snapshot. I had a bit of an issue about how to launch my app in different languages, but that has been solved now, so I can build my comprehensive test set that I hopefully can reuse for the UI testing.

Thanks for following me this far. In installment six I’ll cover the launch of version 2.0, and talk about app marketing. Stay tuned!

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Apple Music - initial impressions

Apple Music was released today, and just like the entire internet west of Androidia, I updated my devices so I could try it out. Here are my initial impressions. They will surely be moderated with time.

Getting started was easy. That’s great. And browsing through the music catalog is very nicely designed. Unfortunately, the first tracks I browsed to were broken. Not because of something Apple did, but because the publisher didn’t pay enough attention when he ripped the CD!. Long story… I know the guy… but I wish Apple would have some algorithm in store to detect these weird anomalies.

I had heared good things about “For You”, so I fired it up. I like baroque music. That is what I want it to find. So I got the circles, and the closest match was Classical. Ok, double tap on that and Next. Then my only choice was Bach. Really?! Oh, there’s a “More artists” button (Artists? You mean composers, right?), and that got me one more: Vivaldi. But it insists I had to choose three. And there were no more baroque composers to choose from. Also no renaissance, early 16th century or even Rococco. Bah. So I chose Beethoven. I don’t plan to listen to much Beethoven. Nothing against the guy, but I wanted to listen to baroque music.

So I hit done, and for the first screen there is absolutely nothing that is classical music! Also nothing for the second screen, and by the end of the third screen there’s Brahms. Really? He’s no baroque composer. Fourth screen, nothing classical ethere either. And at the end of the fifth screen, there’s Beethoven. I guess “For You” is not for me. Apple Music has a lot of great baroque music. But it lacks discovery of this at the moment. I look forward to it being added.

Well Tempered Chronicles - Implementation

Implementation

This is the fourth installment of the behind-the-app series, showing the making of Well Tempered version 2.0.

In Well Tempered 1.0 I explained how Well Tempered got to be an iPhone app. For version 2.0 I wanted to make sure I integrate with all relevant parts of the iOS ecosystem. That meant implementing it so it would work well on all iPhone sizes and on the iPads, and if it made sense, also integrating the Apple Watch.

Version 1.0 had been compatible with the original iPhone, but keeping compability is expensive. So for version 2.0 I gave myself a clean slate, and set the current platform, iOS 8, as a base line.

I chose to make the app universal, meaning that it would support any iOS formfactor. While working with AutoLayout, I have not used size classes, preferring to have the UI shrink and grow and only change a little bit to accommodate the different sizes. I think this worked well for the different iPhone sizes, while there is perhaps still a little bit too much free room on the iPad.

An important part when designing an application is finding its logical units, and how they will compose. Up front it was important to me that defining your temperament should all be done on the main screen. So the topmost part of the screen was designed for that, leaving the bottom part to either the pitch pipe or the tuner. To make this modular, I implemented this as two view controllers within one main view controller. I must admit I am surprised on how non-trivial this was, or how hard AutoLayout would make this for me - especially if I wanted to recompose during rotation. I trust, though, that stack views in iOS 9 will do much to relieve the pain experienced there.

I chose to write my entire application in Swift. This was at a point in time when Swift 1.2 had just come into beta, and CocoaPods support for Swift was not entirely complete. My first patches for AudioKit were thus support for CocoaPods, and bug reports to Apple about the upcoming Xcode 6.2.

Using Swift is of course not only about changing the syntax of one language to write Cocoa in to another. With Swift came new concepts - or rather, concepts that I got to use more than what I was used to. Three to mention in particular are value types, protocol oriented programming and functional programming.

My interest in value types came out of Andy Matuschaks presentation at Realm. In short, it is about using structs instead of classes to store model data, thus letting data be just data. I thought this would be especially beneficial when implementing state restoration, something I view as an important part of being a good iOS citizen, yet something that many app developers find too complex in their apps and choose to neglect. I discovered, though, that I had to serialize them myself, having no good JSON or plist serializer at hand. However, I think my work paid off well when it came time to pass the application state to my Apple Watch companion app, and I learned a lot. I expect I’ll be encapsulating all my model data in structs rather than classes for the next few years.

I also found it really nice to encapsulate my model functions together with my structs, as well as having my structs conform to different protocols. Apple described this later, at WWDC 2015, as protocol oriented programming. That, btw, was a really good video, and you should see it. Thereafter, of course, you should read Crustys reply.

Functional programming, while not new to me, is much more natural to embed into my code when writing Swift than writing Objective C.

Finally, I thought I should write an Apple Watch extention to be able to remote control the application. I did this while reviewing Pearson publishing’s Learning WatchKit Programming book my Wei-Meng Lee. His book about WatchKit 1.0 is a brilliant starters guide. When I finally got an Apple Watch to try it out on, I was surprised by the speed of it - or rather the lack thereof. It had been intentionally slow on the simulator, and I was expecting Apple to have overdone the slowness. I did not expect that the real-life experience of the app would be even slower. Or rather, that the communication between the app UI and the app extension would be as slow as it was. I am definitely looking forward to reworking the Apple Watch companion as a watchOS 2.0 app.

In the next installment, I’ll talk more about implementation, and in particular the implementation of Localization and Accessibility.

Full index:

Well Tempered Chronicles - Design

Design

In the first installment of this series, I told you that I had done the design for the first version of Well Tempered myself. But the design didn’t look great, and the logo was not selling the tuner either.

For this version, I wanted to have a better design. Not having learned, I thought I’d become a better designer and went to work, but having spent enough time with my sketches, I found that I should call in the professionals. I looked at a lot of designs people had made and asked for some quotes, providing my initial design, my wishes, a history of the project and its economy, and codes to be redeemed in the app store for my old version.

Out of a total of eight designers that got back to me, I chose to work with two. I really wanted to have multiple inputs, and was even contemplating doing two distinctive versions of the app. Oh boy, what a load of extra work that would have been! One of the two quickly became silent, though, so I ended up working only with Aleksandar from Serbia.

Working with Aleksandar was really a lot of fun. We did all of the work through 99designs, and I can really recommend it as a collaboration tool for design projects. 99designs concept is to solicit many designs and only pay for the one I really like. I opted not to go with this concept, trusting more in me finding designers and thinking I would feel bad for all the designs I would choose not to pay for. But 99designs got their cut by having the collaboration tools and by holding the payment until the end of the project.

Aleksandar isn’t a musician, but we had fun iterating through the designs. Whenever I thought something hard to explain to a non-musician, I would just shoot an iPhone video, put it on Dropbox and send him the link. I’m sure he knows a lot about how to tune an instrument now. He also ping-ponged with his musician-friends, and delivered a design that I thought looked really good. I’ll admit, it was in many ways very close to my initial sketches, and that worried me, as I’m not a skilled designer. But running it by other musicians, it got good feedback, and thus I went ahead with that.

But here was the first stumbling block - I got so caught up in ping-ponging about the design that I waited with implementing it. Yes, implementing right away before something is mature makes for code that is best thrown away, and has the risk of locking you into that design since it is easy to start resisting changes knowing the extra work it will bring. But in retrospect I really should have implemented parts of it, because as I started implementing the final design, I noticed there were lots of usability issues that we hadn’t worked through. I very was happy with the responsiveness with Aleksandar, even after we thought we were done, but I also reworked parts of it myself and asking for his thoughts on it.

Come back for the fourth installment of the Well Tempered behind-the-scenes story.

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Well Tempered Chronicles - Audio Frameworks

Audio Frameworks

I ended the last installment of the Well Tempered behind-the-scenes story saying that the 1.x versions were live from early 2009 to mid 2015. It taking so long for version 2.0 to come out was never my intention. Well Tempered was my first released app as an iOS developer, and I don’t have count of how many applications in different versions and variations I would release until version 2.0 of Well Tempered was finally in the app store, so it wasn’t because I had stopped developing for the platform. Far from it. If anything, it was probably that I wanted too much - the second system syndrome was strong for this project.

I really wanted to deliver on making a tuner that would listen to what people played and told them how flat or sharp they were. I already had done the calculations to know where the target was with the pitch pipe, and I had implemented my own spectral tuner back in 2006, so how hard could it be?

Well, the original iPhone wasn’t a great place to calculate FFTs in real time. I believe the Accellerate framework (which I seem to remember was called VecLib at the time) was available with iPhoneOS 2.0, but I could not get it to perform well on my iPhone 3G, which still ran the original iPhone hardware but with a 3G modem.

When the iPhone 3GS came around, I did have a rudamentary implementation that would perform, but AudioQueue wasn’t that nice a framework to play ball with, and I never was able to get a precision I could accept. The code I wrote for this was hard to maintain, and debugging it and experimenting with it to try to increase precision drained my energy and interest from it so much so that I abandoned the code, not wanting to build a new release upon this.

The reason AudioQueue was written in C was not to have the overhead of Objective C. The overhead wasn’t much, but there was little room to spare. Since there was really no alternative to AudioQueue, I built some Objective C wrapping around it of my own, but was never happy with the performance. That is why I experimented every time I would see a new open source audio framework for the iOS platform. There were in particular three that drew my attention:

libPD, a Pure Data engine for iOS, was something that I gave a lot of attention. My original work had been done with Pure Data and Max/MSP, so this was a world I knew, and I was hoping I could bring over my earlier work and base a version 2.0 upon that. While I still find this project very interesting, I must admit I have yet to ship something built on that. I have used it for demos, both by myself, with friends and with co-workers, but never shipped anything with it.

The second project that I found amazing was novocaine, which provided a nice block-interface on top of AudioQueue, making a nice compromise between performance and convenience. But alas, I never could compute the frequencies just right with it, and after a bit of testing I discovered the examples wouldn’t play a clear sine tone. In the end, I abandoned it.

The third project that got me excited was AudioKit. AudioKit looked like a really nice framework on top of Csound. I was surprised to find I could use it in real time, as I’ve always seen people render sounds and music with it that could be played back afterwards. And with the nice examples that came along with it, I could easily prototype that I could get pretty far in what I wanted, enough to give me confidence that I could build my version 2.0 upon it.

AudioKit has a great maintainer and a very inclusive community with an active mailinglist. If you want to write audio software for iOS, you really should check it out. I hope to use it in many later projects, and plan to continue using it as the basis for Well Tempereds audio and audio analysis.

Come back for installment three of the Well Tempered behind-the-scenes story.

Full index:

Well Tempered Chronicles - Well Tempered 1.0

This is the Well Tempered Chronicles, a behind the scenes look at the development and continued life of my tuner for the iPhone and iPad, Well Tempered.

Well Tempered 1.0

I wrote the first version of my chromatic tuner, Well Tempered, back in january 2009 when I was between jobs because of a non-compete clause in the contract from my old job. In my old job I had got to spend some time with the iPhoneOS betas, and when my boss decided there was no market for that, I continued in my spare time.

The choice of working on a tuner that specilaized in different temperaments came from my research on the topic while I was preparing to do a PhD in Medialogy at Aalborg University back in 2005. The funding for the PhD never came through, and I left to become an IT consultant.

My background for wanting to do a PhD in Medialogy was that even while I studied for my Cand. Scient in computer science at the University of Oslo, I devoted a whole lot of time to my music. I had started playing around the same time I started programming, around the age of 7, and the two had always competed for my attention. I always wanted to become an engineer, except for when I wanted to become a composer. So in the end I did one year of composition, a 5 year Cand Scient in Computer Science, and a 5 years diploma in recorder playing.

But lets forward back to 2009 again. iPhoneOS 2.0 had been out for a little while, and I wanted to apply my skills and data collection I had done during my research in 2005-2006. The OS contained the C-oriented audio framework AudioQueue, and I would use this to make a pitch fork that I could make different sounds with in the precise frequencies that were needed for tuning scales in different temperaments.

Although many users later asked for a tuner that would listen to a tone and then tell how sharp or flat it was, I really felt that having a reference tone to tune after was far more precise, so this is where I chose to focus. Working with musicians that played in other settings than the chamber music I was used to, or musicians that played instruments with other tone qualities than the harpsichord and recorder at my disposal, I explored different sounds to include with the pitch pipe that would suit tuning different instruments better.

User interface wasn’t something I knew much about, and honestly, the App Store was a mishmash of different UI attempts. I was very fascinated about Core Animation, and was delighted that I could make it look like I rolled and unrolled a parchment scroll, that I would use to display a description of the chosen temperament. Temperaments were chosen in a picker view. The name sounded like the obvious choice, but alas, the experience of choosing a temperament was not great. And the rest were buttons, labels and textfields, on the background of a baroque painting that I’d blur a bit here and there to match the background better.

All in all development was done in less than a week, and I was excited to see how life in the app store would be.

Back in 2009, not many people had an iPhone. I soon discovered that my target audience, musicians playing early music instruments, didn’t have an iPhone, seeing it as an interesting but oh so expensive device that was outside their budget. So sales were always slow.

While working on bug fixes and adding temperaments, I had two main requests: adding a tuner that would tune by sound and display if the played tone was too flat or too sharp, and keeping compability. When I would update to requiring iPhoneOS 2.2.1, people who had not upgraded would complain. I don’t remember exactly why, but there was a lot of resistance to upgrading back then. So it was radical for me to scrap compability with iPhoneOS 2.x when I released Well Tempered version 1.3, the last version of the 1.x series. But nothing too radical, though, I would still keep compability with the original iPhone.

Marketingwise, I had totally misunderstood the deal with Apple. It was my impression that the 30% cut of the sales that Apple would take included marketing. I clearly remember Scott Forstall saying that in the videos. I could be mistaken, I will admit I have not gone and looked it up to have a reference for you. So I did very little marketing outside the app store, and so my quirky-looking, under-marketed tuner intended for early music players who couldn’t afford the iPhone did rather poorly in the app store, probably selling around 300-400 copies from early 2009 to mid 2015.

While the first version of Well Tempered didn’t sell much, I still consider it a success, since the people that did buy it spent an average of almost 15 minutes when they did use it. And while I have bought many tuners since, I always ended up using it myself. So in terms of scatching my own itch, it was absolutely a success.

Come back for installment two of the Well Tempered behind-the-scenes story.

Full index:

iPad on the Danish westcoast

Dear Neil,

thanks for episode #8 of the Above Avalon podcast (blog article here). I really enjoy the show, and this episode in particular I would like to add some comments to. It’s really a follow-up to my previous article about the iPad.

Here on the west coast of Denmark, I have been surprised to see a lot of iPad Airs 2. The model I usually see is the silver 64gb with 4G, which has surprised me as this is not an inexpensive model. The other one I see a lot is the iPad 2 32Gb wifi model. Apart from that I see very little of the others, and remarkably, I haven’t seen anyone actually owning the current generation iPad Mini.

The fact that the iPad Air 2 is so strong has surprised me, as it didn’t seem like such a big deal. The reason I’ve concluded is that a lot of people are upgrading from the iPad 2, which I think must have been a great success seeing how many are out there. But also, about 1/3 of the people I’ve spoken to who got an iPad Air 2 were new to the iPad.

So I’m more optimistic on the numbers. Yes, the west coast of Denmark probably isn’t very representative of Apples market, but it’s the data point I see, and I thought I should share it with you.

Teach-a-million

My friend David has long podered how to change the world. Everyone agrees that education is the key to peace and less poverty. But how can we give more of the poor an education?

The linked video shows his first experiment with getting poor children an education. David has paid the woman in the video to teach children who don’t already attend school. She receives $6 an hour, and there is some cost to transferring the money and supplying teaching materials.

Davids goal is to teach 1 million children, who otherwise would not have had any kind of schooling, in english reading and writing. It’s an experiment, but it’ll be an interesting experiment to follow. Do write him if you want to participate. Of course, I’ve chosen to participate myself, in addition to spreading the word.

If you want to send a contribution, you can do so by PayPal to da@ebogholderen.dk, via the Danish system Mobile Pay to number 2334 2254, via his Danish bank account 5379 315028. His plan is to send you a video in return within two months, which the teacher will dedicate to you, so you can see the result of your contribution.

I vouch for David myself, this is something he’s been planning a while, and something I find to be very socially innovative. I know David well, and can vouch for that he does not make a dime doing this, all your money will go to teaching, minus, like I mentioned, a bit of money transfer fees and teaching materials for the kids.

Have a look at the video from a village outside Calcutta (tap the image to see the Youtube video)

You can also visit the Facebook page for his new organisation Teach-a-Million.

Here are two more movies, I’ll link to more as his effort continues (tap the images to see the Youtube videos). I really hope you’ll join me by donating and spreading the word

Quick update: within the first day, teaching a class for 40 hours plus teaching material was sent in 10 contributions.

iOS apps on the Macbook Air 12” (2015 model)?

I think someone at Apple said “Wouldn’t it be cool if iOS apps could run on OS X”? And I think what we get is the Macbook Air 12” (2015 model). Here is why I think so:

Apple is often very good at leaving clues about the future. The clue I find the most interesting is what Tim Cook said with the introduction of the A7 processor, and Apple has repeated many times since: “it’s really a desktop class CPU”. And with the iPad Air 2 I must admit, I’m using it much like I would a desktop - and I’ve added a keyboard for it:

Of course, with Apple you have to sort in what comments to lay weight to. The last reference I’ve found to a touchscreen Mac is from october 2014 where Craig Federighi said “We don’t think it’s the right interface, honestly, […] Mac is sort of a sit-down experience.”. Since I at the same time kept unconsiously touching my desktop screen and my laptop screen, my reactions tell me that this is no longer true.

Right now, the rumour mills are full of speculations around devices with a 12” screen, both a 12” Macbook Air and a 12” iPad Pro have been predicted. I really think these are the same device. Apple has at times made two identically sized but still different screens, but they usually don’t. The iPad version of iOS is honestly not as well adapted for its interface as the iPhone version, so I think making a 12” version of iOS that isn’t just a scale-up version, would be stretching already thinly stretched resources too much.

I also don’t think Apple would just scale up a larger interface: Apple has already shown this by giving developers an iPad simulator with a resizable width and height. Resizing would make sense if it was used for having two apps run side-by-side on iOS. It would also make sense if iOS apps were running in a window on OS X.

By going the route of a 12” touch screen display for the next Macbook Air, and adding an A-series chip such as the A8 into the Macbook in addition to the expected Intel chip, Apple could let any iOS apps run on the Mac, without emulation. It’s not like they haven’t done it before: when Apple was switching to the PowerPC I was told (by my neighbour at the time) it would be able to run both Windows (3.x) and Motorola Mac applications. We’ve also had the two OS’es in one Mac situation with Rosetta, allowing Mac OS 9 to run together with OS X.

In material costs, Tech insights estimated that the A8 processor cost $37 at the time of the iPhone 6 launch, a small extra hardware price for a spectacular integration point.

The motivation for doing this, apart from great integration opportunities, are to mac the Mac a more interesting platform. All the sudden it has everything you have on iOS! Even more important, it would instantly make the many iOS developers Mac developers!

When I began developing for iOS back in the beta days of iPhoneOS 2.0, my plan was to use it as a stepping stone to build Mac apps. I still haven’t released a single Mac app, having only made a few to help me automate my build processes. I am sure I am not the only developer in this boat, and I know of many developers that have complained about the AppKit framework missing features UIKit developers take for granted.

To add to the argument, Apple released size classes for iOS that help us, together with AutoLayout, span the range from 3.5” to 10” devices. With the Apple Watch I expect it’ll bring us down to 1,25”: could that be a key to span up to 27”? At least beginning with 12” as an incremental step would not seem unreasonable.

An argument against, of course, is that the examples of using AutoLayout and size classes to span the existing range in a manner that feels optimized for each screen size are far between. How do you design a responsive UI anyway? The web guys tell us they have been doing it for ages, yet I have not seen anything that meets my criteria above: “feels optimized for each screen size”.

The second argument against, is Android. It has also been able to be make responsive UIs for a long time, and also there I can’t think of an example that meets my criteria above. And, I’ve been able to run Android and apps based on that on my Mac for a while now, and I can’t say that I’ve really taken good use of that.

The scary part of the scenario, is of course the consequence for Mac Apps. The iOS apps would probably all be vended through the iOS App Store, with it’s 30% cut to Apple and low prices. If the Mac App Store was joined together with it, it would probably impact the pricing on Mac apps, instead of what many developers are trying for - bringing Mac style pricing over to iOS.

So that is my speculation for the 12” Macbook Air / 12” iPad Pro/Plus. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’m looking forward to seeing how well this matches what Apple will actually bring this spring.

Praising Amazons Customer Service

Amazon’s customer service was really great to me! My wife and I had bought a nice christmas present for my father, a book he’d long wanted, printed in 1976. We couldn’t find it half-decently priced new copy in Europe, but we found one through Amazon in the US. Order placed, postage charges being as much as the book, we waited for it to arrive. But when it did, it was clearly used. Not badly used at all, but a couple of ear marks, pencil lines in the book and… sigarette marks on the cover. Disappointed we took pictures of it, and contacted Amazon.

Against my fears, they didn’t object to our description at all, and didn’t even want to see the photos I’d taken. They told me I should return it, they’d refund the shipping charges for me sending it back to the US. They refunded the book and since it was through a 3rd party, we could opt to buy a new copy, which they’d then refund 1-day shipping for. That’s an awful lot of shipping! Much more than the price of the book, even though the replacement we got was a bit more expensive. Also, the amount of communication that went back and forth, where they were very clear but where there were some minor complications since it was sold by a 3rd party, absolutely has taken a bit of their time. It leaves me wondering how much this eats into their margins. But, this experience made me realize how happy I am as an Amazon customer, this being the first time anything unexpected had happened since I started shopping there in 1998. And when something unexpected happened, how quickly and nicely they solved it for me, even though it cost them in the short run. In the long run it must be worth it for them, because I became even more confident buying through them, and even felt like writing their praises here. :-)

Carthage

Open source code is legacy, buggy code. Closed source code is often worse, having had fewer eyes inspecting it. Including it in my projects would be a really bad idea if it wasn’t for that (1) they have spent time thinking about how to solve problems I have and (2) my code is at least as buggy and is going to be legacy code in just a few hours, with few people probably ever reading it again. With these odds, it’s no wonder that 80% of my time as a developer is debugging code.

With this in mind, let’s have a look at Carthage, the new dependancy manager for Cocoa. It takes the open source projects you want to use, and compiles them into a binary framework that you can then include in your project.

Cocoapods, on the other hand, will wrap your project in a workspace where it will provide another project with all the source code for the open source stuff, and the compiled frameworks if you choose to include closed source projects.

While Carthage is a more clean approach, there is one very big drawback: when I am debugging my project, I’ll meet assembly code as soon as I start using the open source projects. As a developer in Apples ecosystem, this is of course nothing new, as you meet assembly code as soon as you hit Apples frameworks.

Is this a problem? Do I really want to debug the projects I’m importing? Aren’t they too complex and don’t I have enough work debugging my own code?

Yes, I think it’s absolutely a problem. I have identified and patched countless bugs in open source projects. Some have resulted in my patch being accepted, some have resulted in me keeping a branch with my fix so I don’t have to deal with that bug again myself until the maintainer of the project will either accept my patch, fix it themselves, or a patched fork will take over in its place.

More often, though, going through the code, following the execution path along, will tell me something about how that project expects its surroundings to be, and in doing so, shows me what I’ve done wrong when I was using it. So this is a great tool for solving my bugs. And lastly, it will show me what opinions it has of how the world should be. If I don’t share those opinions, I can either write changes that enforce my view, or use this to find an alternative that is closer to what I want.

High up on my wish list is for Apple to open source its Cocoa libraries. Then I could have the benefits listed above through my entire project. That is actually the only really good thing about Java projects: whenever I want to, I can follow the execution path all the way through the libraries.

I have learned many good practices and coding skills by reading good code while debugging. I have deep respect for Apples work, and expect there to be much good code that I can learn from. Then again, they are only people as well, and they will have written bugs. I will want to write around them, and by having the code I will save ages learning how to work either with or around that code. And I will probably submit patches - and Apple will probably reject most of them becuase I either misunderstood, wrote errors myself, or am going down a different path than what they would prefer. That’ ok. Please, Apple, set your code free.

But brining it back to Carthage, I really don’t want to close down the open source code into a compiled binary. I want the source all the way until I compile and send it to the device, and even there I want the source to see what’s going on. Only when I ship would I like it to be in binary form. And honestly, that’s only because I want it to be as efficient as possible. I’m sure I could reap big benefits of my source being available in my production code, so that I could have crashes well documented right away, instead of re-symbolicating a binary. But for now at least, compiled and compiler-optimized code outweighs these benefits.

So I’ll stick with CocoaPods, where I can see the open source code the entire while. Those are real, important benefits to me, and I can deal with project wrapping and other odd artefacts they may introduce. CocoaPods is well maintained, and they know very well what they do to my projects today, and work hard to do less to it tomorrow and the day after.

Having said that, I appreciate Carthage being there. I do like there being competition, and I’m sure having an alternative out there will improve the exchange of ideas, making both Carthage and CocoaPods even better than if either of them was alone out there.

SSD Review

Following up on my little SSD series, today I finally got my Seagate GoFlex thunderbolt enclosure from customs. The SSD arrived around two weeks ago, and I had already done a SuperDuper copy of my home-made Fusion drive to the SSD via USB 2.0. Three days later, I could start using it, via USB. First I preferred the extra speed from my Fusion drive, but pretty soon I took the quiet of the SSD over those extra MB/sec.

Speed-wise I was surprised to find I would get about 34 MB/sec via USB 2.0. I guess I under-estimated USB 2.0 a little bit, assuming I would get ~20 MB/sec. The Fusion drive solution would give me bursts of 114 MB/sec write and 180 MB/sec read, but over time I would often get around ~30 MB/sec. I must admit I had forgotten exactly how slow magnetic disks can be, I assumed I would get around ~80 MB/sec from it, but I was wrong. So resolving my over-estimating magnetic disk speeds and under-estimating USB 2.0 speed and enjoying the quiet, the last week was spent running of the SSD via USB. That meant that taking it out of the USB dock and into the GoFlex thunderbolt adapter took a few seconds and I could boot.

I’m sure you guessed it, as had I, but wow! Thunderbolt is fast! Even though I knew it only performed a bit more than half as quick as what the disk is capable of, starting up Photoshop was 7 seconds (vs 23 seconds before) and other apps are similarly responsive. Using Lightroom is soo much smoother. :-)

The final result was that I’m getting a pretty consistent 355 MB/sec write and 383 MB/sec read of the disk, which is better than the 330 MB/sec I was expecting, but far from the 550 MB/sec the disk can deliver. I still have found no answer to why all those enclosures won’t push the disk speed further, even Thunderbolt 1 has bandwidth to spare at this speed. But since I knew that going in, all in all I’m very happy. :-) And hopefully, this is where my SSD story ends, until I’ll transition to my next iMac in two CPU generations time.

US/EU trade

“They” are working on a proposed trade agreement between the US and the EU, and to my mind, it cannot come quick enough.

I like buying stuff online. But I do my best not to buy stuff from the US. I would buy a lot of stuff from the US if it wasn’t for the trade barriers in place, the big administration of adding nothing to something of low worth. Sounds crazy already? You bet!

I wanted to fix my espresso machine not long ago, and needed to order some gaskets. After a while searching online, I found them in a little espresso-shop in the US. I ordered them and some clips, it all could fit nicely into an envelope. Knowing administration and postage would be expensive, I added a bit more than I thought I needed. But all in all, postage via UPS was about as expensive as the items bought: $25. I’m sure that was cheap for sending an envelope half around the world 90 years ago, but today this felt crazy to me.

Crazy was still to come, though, because as the envelope arrived in Denmark, it was held up for customs. For 7 days! Then they sent me a letter saying there was no toll, but I needed to pay 25% VAT. On top of that, they charged 180 DKK, or about $30. So $25 worth of spare parts to fix my espresso machine had become ($25 + $25) + 25% + $30 = $92,50! What it should have been, to my mind was $25 + 25% VAT + $5 postage = $36. Needless to say, when I needed a few more spare parts, I was very happy to find a shop in England that sold them for more or less the same price, VAT included, a low shipping fee and no administration fee and week-long hold-up.

But hey, like I wrote about not long ago, I just did it again, buying a Thunderbolt external enclosure via eBay from New York. ($159.99 + $30 shipping) + 25% VAT + $30 processing and 9 days of waiting! Just because it so happened that it was the enclosure I wanted and I couldn’t find it locally (meaning all of EU and Asia. I’m sure I did not look close enough).

And yes, I meant including Asia. I’m sure we don’t have a trade agreement, but I cannot remember ever having the $30 processing fee and long delay on shipments from China, Hong Kong, Singapore or elsewhere in Asia.

So for my online shopping preferences, I cannot wait for the administration fee and long delay to go away, hopefully being replaced by an easy way of paying my VAT. After that, we need to have a discussion with the US postal service and the alternative carriers, because shipping costs are just crazy! (just like the 200 DKK the Danish postal service charged to send a book back to Amazon in the US)

Incidentally, do you know what’s the cheapest way of sending a post card to someone from Denmark to someone in Denmark? Posting it from India…

Glances

How do you deal with incoming calls or similar disturbances while driving the bicycle? Today a bicyclist in front of me demoed his reaction, taking up his phone and trying to interact with it while almost creating an accident with other bicyclists. More proper would be to ignore it, and if you felt it was important, find a place to stop and check it.

Glances provide a second option: you can have a glance on your watch. It’s a disturbance, but better than fumbling one-handed with your phone. But there can be no interaction: your other hand is firmly on the steering wheel and the hand on the watch arm cannot interact with it. So there all the sudden the interaction that is making a short glance into a long glance comes in. Looking at the watch a bit longer can provide additional information about the disturbance, making it easyer to make the call of whether to stop and take care of it, or keep on cycling.

I’m curious to see how long a long glance is, how well glances and bike-riding or car-driving works together (probably still a better idea to focus on what you were doing), and how we can use touch-less interactions initiated by a glance.

What's in an app...

When the iPhone launched, and for the first versions of the iOS SDK, an app was a bundle, a directory with metadata if you will, with the suffix .app. System- and 3rd party apps were all contained in each bundle. No app was in multiple bundles, and no bundle was multiple apps.

Already I’m simplifying, because there was one more thing to the app bundle: optionally, you could add a settings bundle, which would load into Settings.app and allow the user to change the settings from your app, from outside your app.

Since then, things have become more complicated. To start with, you had universal apps: it was still an app, but now it had the complexity of targetting two platforms, the iPhone and the iPad.

Following that, we got extensions, which could (and in my opinion should) be seen as apps in their own right: little plugins, if you will, to the share panel, to the today panel, to the keyboard panel, and to the photo editor. Many apps that used to be limited to living in their own app, now live more hosted in other apps than in their own. But still they are packaged together with “the app”. And sold together. Being in the same bundle you cannot delete one without the other also being deleted.

With the Apple Watch, we get three more extensions: glance, notification (with short glance and long glance), and the watch app. These are supposed to provide windows into your app, but I think that again we will find that for many apps, this is more the app and the main iOS app is. And again, if you’ll delete the main app, these extensions will also disappear from your Apple Watch.

I’m working on a hobby project at the moment, and I think it’s a good illustration of what is bundled with the app now:

It has the app, that is a little bit different depending on what size of a screen its running on
It has a settings bundle
It has a share extension so that you can share items with it
It has a today extension so you can see what has changed since last you logged into the app
It has a notification extension to notify you when new stuff you could be interested in has happened, together with a long glance and a short glance
It has a glance that doubles the today extension for functionality
It has an Apple Watch app where you can do the basics of the iOS app Oh, and I should probably add that the functionality of the app isn’t all that advanced. But this only goes to show how many aspects to this app will be here. For my app, it fits well with the iOS app being the centerpiece which the extensions interact with. But what if you’re a storage container like Dropbox? What it you’re a timetracker? What if you’re a health tracker? What if you’re a currency converter? For all these things, the main app in most cases becomes a sidekick that can give you a more advanced look into your data, but which you’ll probably interact with very little compared to the extensions.

What worries me the most is that the main app is required. And if it’s not the centerpiece, then people would not be sure why they would pay for it. That’s very different to me from if people could buy a kick-ass keyboard, share extension, photo filter, Apple Watch app or similar on its own.

The other thing that worries me is what will pay for all these extensions. As you could see from my hobby project, it’s a whole lot of extra work that comes on top, and that honestly is more or less a basic requirement. If my app were a paid app, I don’t think people would accept an in-app purchase to allow the Apple Watch extensions to be made available. I don’t even think Apple would allow me to submit an app with three extensions that by default don’t do anything. And making something that doesn’t do much and then open up functionality seems like something that would be just as bad. Also, showing ads on this little constrained device would probably not sit right with many people as well: you’ve just spent, let’s say $500 on this piece of jewelry, and now it’s plastered with ads most of the time. Nope, that’s no good.

I think the “everything is in the ‘app’ bundle” approach we have now does a lot to cement, or even make worse, the hard situation for people to make money of their apps alone, and I really think this is unfortunate. I would love for this ecosystem to become something people can make a good living of by making good things. If people can make a living selling good wax candles, why should they not be able to make a living selling great digital tools? For now, the only good business I know is for the wax candeleer to use the apps as an entry into his candle-shop to sell more, and perhaps more custom, wax cendles.

Extensions are the new browsers?

For WatchKit extensions, I’ve used the parallell of puppeteering: the app makes the extension do things, but the extension itself has close to little logic. Others use the parallell of the browser, and I do like this. Like the browse, the iPhone serves up state in a context upon a remote screen, the app can project state in a context upon a extension (remote view controller).

Continuing on yesterdays post with the idea that hosting extensions (I really prefer the name remote view controllers like we saw in iOS 6) is something that can be opened up, let’s take it to the extreme and say it was proposed as an open standard, much like HTTP. All the sudden, this could become the new browser, allowing any app to project their content into it.

That would be absolutely awesome! Think about it all the opportunities for device integrations! That could possibly allow me to treat a 5K iMac as a dumb terminal, having all my personal information, documents and state on my phone, and interact with it through a beautiful desktop experience. No compromises, all integration! At the same time, you’d have the Apple Watch integration, with extensions being able to run of the same iMac integrating with it when they are near. Having third parties such as keyboard makers being able to integrate a little screen, or Google Glass taking it to the next level, even having other platforms participate together, making for a seemless integration. This would be a dream of devices coming together, much like we experienced it when having disks formatted for Mac, Amiga or PC was no longer a thing. Data was just data. Now state in a context can be state across a shared context, optimized for the best interaction on each device.

Having thought that thought now, please Apple, propose extensions as an open standard. This would make our devices so much more integrated, redusing hassle and really delighting. Would this be a competetive advantage for Apple? I’d argue yes. Sure, not for people like me who get the whole stack already, but for people like my mother who has a PC, an Android phone and an iPad. She’d have such an amazing upgrade of her experience, that I’m sure she’d be much more likely to buy again from Apple if she didn’t have to consider what ecosystem her new device would integrate with and what system it would not.

Remote view controllers everywhere

Back in 2012 I wrote about the private framework around Remote View Controllers, hinting that developers should keep this in front of their mind. Through iOS 8 this became extensions, and with the Apple Watch, this is the main interface for Apple Watch, at least until WWDC 2015.

On the Debug podcast episode 57 Guy & co mentioned that Apple TV is a prime target for extensions, and I agree, but let’s think it over. For my case, I have a kid and no time to watch TV. I use the TV mainly to stream music just like I would with an Airport Express (why, oh why, is this not in the Airport Extreme and Time Capsules! And why, oh why, has the Apple TV and Airport Express not merged yet? And neither have they been updated in forever. Sigh….). What is a killer feature here, and I really did not expect this to be anything of interest when I bought it, is that if I turn the TV on while playing music, it will also show the most recent photos I’ve taken with my iPhone, which means up-to-date photos of my kid. That’s really awesome, and makes both my wife and I stop, look and enjoy. Oh, and my boy likes it too. :-) The second big thing is AirPlay, being able to share my screen on the TV. And this is the niche that the Apple TV Extensions could carve out a niche in, as I see it.

Take Adobe Lightroom. I love that they have brought it to the iPad, as I have my 160k photos stored and arranged there since around Lightroom 2.0. There is tons I would want them to work on in the app, and of course, showing photos on the TV is a part of that. At the moment, my only choice is AirPlay, making what I do and what my parents see while visiting the same thing. We´ve had presentation tools like KeyNote and PowerPoint give us the option of separate screen output for ages, so this seems klunky today.

But when would the screen extension fire off? With extensions on your phone or mac it’s easy, just fire when it seems appropriate. With the Apple Watch, if you’re it’s close by, you’re wearing it and the phone can show stuff there. But with the AppleTV, most time when I’m nearby the TV is off, or it is not the source being displayed. So there needs to be some mechanism of alerting the app when it would be proper to use it, or for the app to request to be able to use this display.

That got me thinking, where else would I like content to be displayed? Sure, Google has shown that glasses is a valid target, HTC has shown the same for phone covers. I can imagine a lot of places, and not all places are places where I think Apple would get into. Would it be worth it to Apple to allow third parties hosting remote view controllers (sorry Apple Marketing, extensions). That would for instance open up the possibility that my window manufacturer could allow apps to project something into my window. Or refrigerator. Or whatever. Would that be a thing for Apple, just like with MFi, and would that give me as a customer value?

WatchKit - first impressions

Yesterday, WatchKit became available for us developers, and as far I can tell, open for the entire world to see, which is a first for Apple at least since the iPhone introduction. I thought it’d be good to share my first impressions.

I remember the second day the first official iPhone SDK had entered beta. It was new. It was fresh. At the same time it seemed well thought out. It was opinionated. It laid a path of where we would go. And it was a very nice framework on top of BSD. I was thrilled!

WatchKit doesn’t quite feel this way. The first thing I noticed that “the way it’s done” in iOS is not the same on WatchKit. For instance, there is no autolayout. Autolayout is THE way to do dynamic layout, Apple has been pushing it hard. Yet it’s nowhere to be found on WatchKit. It’s older brother, springs and struts, is also missing in action. Instead we have a swing-like layout system of stacked elements, either stacked horizontally or vertically. Heights and widths are explicit, yet the watch comes right of the bat in two screen resolutions. So there’s the interface dynamicism out the window.

Despite Apple pushing Swift heavily, the first examples they choose to show, being the examples in the demo video at http://developer.apple.com/watchkit, are all Objective C. Sure, they provide demos in both Objective C and Swift, but I’m surprised they’re not keeping the message focussed.

Controls are not UIViews, and they don’t seem to be layer backed. This means no Core Animation, and the result is that all animations have to be a series of pre-rendered images, rather than smooth images set up to be run on the fly. And yes, that means pre-rendered animations in two sizes, for 38mm and 42mm.

Is it running BSD? No idea. This is probably only important to my nostalgia as I can’t remember having dived directly to the BSD layer the last year. So it’s probably just my security blanket, but I like it being there and being available to my native app. But the WatchKit apps are not native. They are resources pushed on the phone and managed by the phone. All the logic is on the phone, the watch will only show resources already there, plus a tiny little bit of content generated on the fly by the phone and pushed over via what I expect is Bluetooth. So it’s not native, it’s more like a puppet theatre. That’s why map components in our apps cannot be dynamic. I’m sure Apple’s apps are native, so we’re really back to the iPhoneOS 1.1 situation where we were only allowed to make webapps. I hope Apples apps have the BSD layer available. But I would very much like to have that too. Perhaps with version 2.0?

But yes, we got a lot more than we expected. What I and many with me expected was the ability to make “glances”, but we also got notifications and we got these puppet-theatre apps. That gives us an awful lot of tools to begin with. Truth be told I can probably implement all the ideas I had so far with this. It’s going to need more work than I expected with the resolution-dependent layout, but much can still be done and I expect we’ll see a bunch of awesome apps.

The limitations, though, make me even more curious as to what kind of computer the S1 chip really is.

One thing I found really interesting is the UITableView replacement. UITableView is an old beast that’s been our bread and butter for a very long time. I look forward to giving it a run and see what kind of abuse it can withstand. With no scroll views, this one looks to be a target for an awful lot of experimentation in the months to come.

SSD Conclusions

I decided on what to do about the iMac harddrive situation mentioned in Finding a good Thunderbolt disk: I ordered a Seagate GoFlex thunderbolt adapter and caddy, containing a 1TB drive, which I’m going to replace with a 1TB Samsung 840 EVO drive.

That means that I’m not going to get the 550 MB/sec of the Samsung drive, but about 330 MB/sec where the SATA/Thunderbolt adapter caps out. I’m sad about that, and I’m also sad that I couldn’t find a SATA/Thunderbolt 2 adapter at any half-decent price (not that anything Thunderbolt is decently priced, but I mean not ridiculously stupidly priced)

It was a toss-up between the Lacie and this one, but believe it or not, the built-in Thunderbolt cable came in as a minus for the Lacie, as I don’t know how I’d go further if it would break. Also, the Lacie didn’t disclaim what disk was in there. With my combination, at least I know I can move the disk into the computer or into another enclosure if it turns out I am really sad about the performance drop. I expect to keep the disk around longer than the enclosure.

So, waiting for the mailman to come, and dreading the stupid US/EU import-tax (I expect to be writing about that later) and taxing charges.

Next stop: Phoenix

I was happy to run into José Valim at Goto Aarhus this year. I asked him about the many web frameworks for Elixir and which one to choose. His response was that most are abandoned in favour of Phoenix. Phoenix was on my shortlist from before, so I will be spending some time writing myself back to Elixir with Phoenix.

Finding a good Thunderbolt disk

Wow, the 5K iMac is a beauty! Like so many Mac users I’ve been dreaming about a retina iMac since around the iPhone 4 days (man, was that only 2011?) expecting my 2011 Sandy Bridge iMac to be ancient history for long. Now that it’s here, I’m not getting it. My iMac is still great, and I want to hold out for the Skylake architecture (thus even giving Broadwell a pass).

My iMac has an SSD that I used to build a custom Fusion Drive, but I still am not happy with the performance. So I want a more modern SSD, more precisely I want a Samsung 840 EVO0. I was holding out until after the October event to make any decisions, but now it’s time.

I could open my iMac and replace the spinning disk altogether. However, that will make the temperature sensors go nuts and spin up my fans that I then will have to override in software. That’s viable for me, I guess, but would impact resales opportunities if I wanted to trade it in at some point. (not sure I will want to)

I could get an internal enclosure, remove my Superdrive and replace it with the disk enclosure. Again I’d have to open my iMac and do modifications that will impact resale opportunities. I don’t use the superdrive much, so it’s a tempting solution.

More tempting, though, is to have a Thunderbolt enclosure with the SSD and boot of it. Thunderbolt should be able to reach the ~540MB/sec I/O of the SSD and have capacity to spare. If I popped it into a Thunderbolt 2 cabinet, I’d have a lot of future options. Yes, I expect this solution to be pricyer, but I can then take ’my machine’ with me and hook it up to other computers to boot of if I’m travelling and prefer to have my own setup. Not a bad idea. And when I get my new iMac in 2016 or so, I can use the disk there.

Problem is, where are those Thunderbolt 2 enclosures? I’d like one that’s BUS powered, since that should be able to drive the SSD just fine, and preferably I’d like two ports for daisy-chaining if possible. And a USB3 port just in case would be neat, although I don’t expect to be needing it.

I have found a couple of enclosures that look tempting: Buffalo Ministation3, Lacie Rugged2 and Seagate GoFlex1. What they all have in common, though, is that when set up with the Samsung 840 EVO, they run at ~340 MB/sec. This is what I expect for Serial ATA 300, not Serial ATA 600, which the disc is. Can it really be the case that all three adapters run with Serial ATA 300 instead of Serial ATA 600? If so, where is the Thunderbolt 2 case with Serial ATA 600 I am looking for? Is no-one making that? For a reasonable buck, anyway?

So I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

Mi3 Developer mode

I just received a Xiaomi Mi3, chinese Android phone, for a work project, and wanted to put it in developer mode. Most guides are for Android 4.2 and 4.3, but this one had version 4.4.2. The guides advice to tap 7 times the Android version, but that will just give you a really weird easter-egg. Instead, tap the build version seven times, and it will go into development mode.

Calling 2011

Now that I’m working on my blog, I get to go through my previous blog posts. It’s kind of having a chat with the me from the past. :-)

I’d like to have a quick comment on Minus points for the 2011 iMac. All I said there holds true. And you know what? I got a couple of Mac Minis added to that office. And they are gone again. First I used one for my TV, then I had one in my closet as a scanning server. I detached it. Now, I must admit, I don’t know where it’s gone. It’s been gone a while. Probably to a better place where it’s actually used.

I also got the MacBook Air. It was a fantastic machine! I would use my iMac as a screen. Then I would boot my iMac of the Macbook Air via Thunderbolt. Then my Air wouldn’t boot, and finally the hard drive gave in, in all its SSD’ish glory. There was no Air to pick up its place, since i had gotten more picky in the process. So now I’ve had a Macbook Pro for a year. And I still use my iMac daily.

My iMac is a decent computer. I even made it a home-made Fusion-drive since I had the SSD. These days, I’m really considering extending its life with a 1TB SSD (Samsungs 840 EVO probably). I’m not quite sure on how to handle it, though. I wanted it to boot of Thunderbolt, but for now it looks like perhaps I’m taking out the DVD drive instead and using the space for that via OWC.

Back to Node

By now I have gone through a number of Elixir web frameworks, a web framework in Cocoa, and not really been able to release my homepage in a way that I liked. So what would be more natural than to drop the code and try something else, perhaps something that I’ve worked on before and found wanting? Hello Node.js (+Express & CoffeeScript).

One of the issues I’d had last time I worked with Node.js was that debugging was hard, or console.log based. This time I found that someone had made a Eclipse distribution with Node.js support. Turns out, syntax highlighting and debugging CoffeeScript is still flaky. But I can step through most of the dependencies I use, so that helps, and a lot more people are using this, thus searching the net for solutions is better. Stuff I’m really missing from the earlier approaches, though, are

the actor model
GCD or other nice threading
a crash only being local to a piece of the code and being restorable

What was really nice, was that I got up to where I’d been in both Elixir and in Cocoa fairly quickly. Also, I have a feeling I will be able to complete it this time. ;-) So onwards we go, at least writing posts is quick and easy with the approach I’ve tried to enforce through these different implementations. And that, after all, is where I expect to have my “big win” when my page has finally been deployed.

Migrating to Cocoa

In my last post, I was exploring new web frameworks to migrate to, while learning more Elixir. I attempted a few, but learning a framework can be uphill, especially when not being fluent in the language. The main frustrating point was not being able to understand the errors I was getting. They were usually in one, long, truncated line. So not only was it formatted poorly, it didn’t give me all the information that was intended for me. I didn’t really find a good way of getting better error information or analyzing the errors I was getting, so finally I gave up… for now.

So I went back to what I know, and I know Objective-C and Cocoa really, really well. And there are a few webservers for it. I grabbed OCFWeb, thinking perhaps I could add exploration of Objective-Cloud to the task. This way I knew I would be able to understand the error messages I was getting, I had a debugger I could set breakpoints with and step through, and I would be comfortable.

With the advice of Christian Kienle I switched my templating language to Mustache. I forked it to update Mustache to a newer version and still be able to use OCFWeb as a Pod. That worked fairly well, but of course it’s a new framework to learn, just like all the other web frameworks I’ve tried so far. It isn’t much used, which means searching the web didn’t give many results, and thus I had to dig through the source exploring how the pieces fit together when I didn’t understand how to do something or why it behaved another way than I expected. That, of course, was a good opportunity to contribute, but it also exposed a weakness with my Cocoa-approach: the recompile-restart-reload cycle of seeing the results of my changes was rather longer than what I wanted. Of course, the content could be modified by having it outside of my application, but the routes and logic could not. Or at least I didn’t think of a way where I could keep it outside the server app.

So for now, I won’t be deploying my website as a Cocoa app either. Coming up next, back to Node.js

Choosing a new web framework with Elixir

My first “real” Elixir project was to build my own homepage with my blog and portfolio. I wrote it using Dynamo. Not the best of choices, since it now recommends I look other places. The options I’ve found so far are:

Project	Commits	Last	Watchers	Stars	Forks	Contributors	Elixir version
Charlotte	71	Sun Mar 2 07:51:01 2014 -0700	4	5	0	1	pre 0.13
Phoenix	328	Mon Jun 16 19:20:17 2014 -0400	46	274	37	23	0.14
Plug	157	Mon Jun 16 11:50:37 2014 +0200	27	98	25	14	0.14
Sugar	161	Wed May 28 23:53:53 2014 -0400	10	75	4	2	pre 0.13
Weber	603	Fri Jun 13 08:11:04 2014 -0400	36	263	41	24	0.14

The four of them depend on Plug, and thus on Cowboy. When I started my work, 0.13 had just come out. A week ago, 0.14 was released, so it’s great Plug, Phoenix and Weber are all updated already. At least as long as all of your other dependencies are at least up to 0.13, anyway, if not they’ll probably be broken now.

So, since I’m getting Plug anyway, do I want it the Phoenix way or Weber way? By reading their README.md, I don’t really have a preference. They seem to be very similar. Both have one main maintainer, two “leutnants” and many with a commit or two. Both have one-digit open issues and 3-digit closed issues.

When it came down to “mix test”, Phoenix had significantly more tests, and they gave no warnings, where I had 25 warnings when running Webers tests. So with lots of probably insignificant data points, this was the one that tipped the scale to let me try out Phoenix first.

However, my run with Phoenix was short. I had expected to be able to reuse my .eex template files from my Dynamo project, but there was just no documentation or examples to support this. Not even an itty-bitty template file in the generated scaffold. I could see from the dependencies that there is support, but it looked like I would have to do quite a bit of work on that on my own.

So I tried out Weber. Generate the scaffold and launch. Fine, there’s HTML on launch and it seems to be taken from a view file. The HTML includes a link to the Weber site, which is 404. Now that is reassuring…

Remote View Controllers in iOS 8

What really excites me the most about iOS 8 right now is Remote View Controllers, which I mentioned around iOS 6. Right now they are presented as something you use to implement services (extensions in iOS parlance), but combine them with auto-layout and adaptable view controllers, and you have a setup for presenting your app on an iWatch or an embedded display, for instance in a smart cover or an AppleTV widget. Embedding widgets accross iOS and mac devices is also an avenue I hope we developers soon get to explore. :-)

Follow-up on Erlang and Elixir

Dear John,

thanks for the great show (ATP), I look forward to every episode the three of you do. In the episode I listened to today (#53) you guys talked about ObjC moving forward, and you mentioned Erlang a few times.

Two small disclaimers first, (1) I’m very new in the world of Erlang, and (2) the company I work for has subsidiaries that only focus on Erlang, and shares in companies whose products are built on top of Erlang. I like to believe I’m not influenced by this, but I am influenced, amongst others, by my CTOs passion for the ecosystem.

Erlang is two things: a VM called BEAM, and a language. The language is not to my taste, but I really like the VM. Lucky for me, there is a new language called Elixir that runs on the Erlang VM as a first class citizen.

What I really like with writing for this ecosystem is that it launches a ton of green threads instead of GCD threads, and these processes do true (shared nothing) message sending between them. The actor model is back!

Elixir has other fun stuff too, such as piping function calls as if they were commands in the terminal. So far, I find myself writing a bunch of pattern matching for the work I want it to do, in a more terse yet easy-to-read way than I’m used to coming from ObjC and the usual suspects of languages before that.

I think you’d find it interesting diving into the Elixir and Erlang VM combination. The take-away I’ve got that I’d love to bring back to ObjC would to be (1) even tighter on making everything immutable, (2) introduce green threads where for instance singletons can live, and (3) make a objc_msgSend that sends messages between threads not containing pointers to data, but an actual message, and having the sending process being able to continue with its logic until it needs the answer back where it can block and wait if there is no reply yet.

This was a bit longer than a 140 character tweet, but there you go. Oh, and to tie this together with the news, I only noticed Whatsapp because they sponsor conferences and give talks on how they built their backend in Erlang.

Remote View Controllers

Dear iOS dev,
if you haven’t already read Ole Begemann’s article on Remote View Controllers (and part 2 and part 3), you should do so now. I think and hope this will be one of those bread-and-butter features of iOS 7, so now would be a great time to think of where XPC and remote views fit into your existing and upcoming apps.

Fusion Drive on iMac 2011

Last week I made sure I have good backups of my iMac. I usually do, but I wanted to make doubly sure, as this weekend, I would nuke my disks to make a fusion drive on my iMac from 2011.

When the iMac was released in 2011 with the Z68 chipset, a SSD and a magnetic disc, I was excited, as I was sure Apple would exploit the caching part of the chipset, using 64GB of the SSD for caching. Alas, they didn’t. So I had to move files to “strategic places” and try to get my computer to act as quick as it could, trying to have it rely more on the SSD than the spinning disc.

The announcement of the fusion drive made me very happy, as it seemed that Apple would 1-up the Z68. The fusion drive would keep what was used a lot on my SSD, and use both drives as one combined drive, so no more moving files around manually and symlinking in between. Yay! But, alas, this would only be for the iMac 2012 and the Mac Mini 2012. Luckily, within long, Patrick Stein had shown us all how to use Core Storage to make our own fusion drive.

Creating the fusion drive was easy: boot from a USB stick with Mountain Lion 10.8.2, switch to Terminal and do

diskutil cs create Fusion disk0 disk1
diskutil cs list
diskutil cs createVolume <UUID> jhfs+ Drive 2288g

The hard part was finding out what would be the best amount of disk space to set up for the drive, but luckily it was equally easy to delete the fusion drive, so after a few iterations I had made my setup as close to 100% as I thought was good. (26.5MB left)

After completing that, I wanted to restore from Time Machine, but alas, that did not work. So I did a fresh install of Mac OS X instead, and then restored from Time Machine. Much better, that worked without a hitch. The only thing to think about there was that while I had backed up two drives, I now only had one drive, so it restored one drive, and I had to move over the data from the second one. No problem, but worth noting.

At this point, I had my iMac from 2011, a 3.4Ghz i7 with 16GB RAM, booting from a fusion drive built of the 256GB SSD and 2TB drives it was shipped with. This is an awesome setup! The sound from my 2TB drive has always been quite noticeable, and it has been quite silent this weekend. I’ve been running “iostat -w 1 disk0 disk1” all the time, and the 2TB drive has roughly 1/80th the amount of disk access that the SSD has!!! That is amazing, and a whole lot better than what I achieved with my manual setup!

Also, I’ve had two kernel panics during the weekend. I cannot confirm that this is because of the fusion drive, but in the interest of full disclosure, I think I should bring it up. Patrick was very clear to say he would not recommend using this in a production system. I use it now on my home system, and I probably will for a while, but I have great backups, other machines to work on if this one fails, and a habit of living on the cutting edge.

My conclusion is that you should read Patrick’s writings and make up your mind if this is something you want to do. For my part, I have an iMac now that works exactly the way I want it to work, especially if I don’t get any more kernel panics. Of course, Apple doesn’t support this one bit, so if they make an update next month that kills of support for older macs, I’m out of luck. Don’t use this if you don’t have great backups, and don’t use this if you can’t afford your computer to be offline while you reinstall it and restore from backup. I have great backups and fall-back, so I’ll be using this setup, and report back on my dealing with it.

A last resource to mention is Andres Petalli’s write-up, there are a couple of good comments there as well.

Fix for Safari not loading google.com and many other sites

I had the weirdest problem: Safari couldn’t load most HTTPS sites and many others. It hadn’t for many days, even though Chrome, Firefox etc worked fine. Turned out it was all solved by deleting ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.revocation.plist

Properties in Cocoa and OOA&D

The past month or so I’ve reviewed a lot of code, and one issue is cropping up all the time: too much use of @property

Suppose we have the class AlbumViewController that extends UIViewController, and is used to display information about a music album. In the view, we want to display a title, and some artwork. So we make our storyboard, and drop a UILabel and UIImageView into a view controller of the class AlbumViewController. Now, how do we hook them up? We’ve got really four alternatives:

Instance variables in the interface declaration

Properties in the interface declaration

Hidden properties

Instance variables in the implementation

Objective C, in Apple’s incarnation, doesn’t have any sense of private, protected and public variables and methods: everything is public.

Instance variables are accessible only to the class, and its subclasses.

Properties are accessible from any object that has a reference to the object that exposes these properties. This is the main reason for having properties. The second reason is if you want to have the getting or setting of a property to have some side-effects.

So, in the example above, if we choose properties, hidden or explicitly public, we invite other objects to manipulate these properties directly. Thus we need to inspect our interface: does it make sense to expose the UILabel and UIImageView directly? Can the class AlbumViewController handle that other objects will manipulate these views? Probably not.

Properties that would make sense, from a class interface perspective, would be setting the album title and artwork. Then you can keep the presentation of these as an implementation detail:

This way you have nice encapsulation, and thus make your class easier to use for the next person coming in to your project, or your self next week.

My issue with alternative #2 and #3 is that they are really the same: they expose the properties to the world, even though alternative #3 tries to obscure it a bit. If you write any kind of dynamic code using just the tiniest bit of class introspection, the methods will offer their service straight away. So unless your interface is to expose these properties, don’t use that. The only thing you’ve gotten extra out of this is having to ask people not to use your properties, and a slightly added cost to accessing your instance variables.

Alternative #1 is good if you want the instance variables to be available to subclasses, and make it clear that these should be considered. Again, there’s not all that much difference between this and alternative #4, but #1 is more explicit and readable, so it’s a great place if you expect it to be useful for subclasses.

Alternative #4 is my preference for everything that is just something I need to get my implementation of this class done. And I really think it should be yours as well, and is what should be taught in basic iOS training. Unfortunately, surprisingly many go for alternative #3, cluttering the interface with lots and lots of “hidden” properties, that aren’t hidden at all, especially not at runtime.

So to sum up: think about your interface and what you want to expose to the world. Expose only this, keep everything else as an implementation detail, unless you expect the class to be subclassed. Then you can expose some of the instance variables in your interface as well.

As a final PS, we’re not doing the compiler any favour going into these details, it will get its work done anyhow. But this is so that we can keep a clear interface when communicating with other developers coming into the project, using the project, and to your future self that is working on the project.

Now that I’ve posted my view, I would love to hear your opinions, especially because I would love to hear some good arguments in favour of alternative #3.

We\'re expecting a boy this Christmas

Dear Friends, Followers, and random people of the internet,

Christina and I are expecting, and we just found out yesterday: it’s going to be a boy! The doctors think he’ll arrive December 27th, we expect him to be a bit early.

We’ve been through all the usual tests, and everything looks good. He’s alive an kicking! So we couldn’t be happier, and it’s going to be an amazing change of life.

Cheers

Christina & Niklas

Auto-stack and auto-process HDR in Lightroom 4

My camera marks HDR images quite clearly: They are a sequence of images, where the first second one and third one are equally many stops removed from the first one, and they’re usually within a couple of seconds from one-another, with all other settings the same. That sounds like something that should be easy to stack in the import-process, right? Preferably followed up by a rendering to a 32-bit pr channel image straight afterward that is set as the stack top image.

Unfortunately, I don’t know Lua, so I won’t write it myself any time soon. But such a trivial plugin should exist after all these iterations. Heck, it should be a core functionality!

As for grouping, possibly even a quick pre-rendering, I’d argue there should be a similar Panorama function.

Can anyone recommend any plugins?

Alertview steps

Today I needed to work with an alertview, so here are two steps for pressing them:

`Given /^I press alert button (\d+)$/ do |index|
touch(“view:’UIAlertButton’”)[index]
end

Given /^I press alert button named “([^”]*)”$/ do |text|
touch(“view:’UIAlertButton’ label text:’#{text}’”)
end
`

My reusable Calabash steps

As promised, here are my reusable Calabash steps. Now, some of these are probably more inspirational than reusable (or ignorable, if you like ), but this is ALL the steps I use SO FAR apart from the standard steps. Like I said before, there are so many great steps already defined, so check them out. Anyway, here they are, all 134 lines:

`Given /^I press the “([^\”]*)” tableviewcell button$/ do |cell|
touch(“tableViewCell button marked:’” + cell + “‘“)
end

Given /^I press the “([^”]*)” label$/ do |label|
touch(“view label text:’#{label}’”)
end

Then /^I enter “([^\”])” in the “([^\”])” (?:text|input) field$/ do |text_to_type, field_name|
set_text(“textField placeholder:’#{field_name}’”, text_to_type)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
end

Given /^I press the “([^”]*)” segment$/ do |label|
touch(“segmentedControl segment marked:’#{label}’”)
end

Given /^I see the text “([^”])” to the right of the text “([^”])”$/ do |right, left|
leftRect = query(“label {text LIKE ‘#{left}‘} parent view:’PdfThumbnailView’”, :frame)[0]
screenshot_and_raise “Text \”#{left}\” could not be found” if(leftRect == nil)
leftX = Integer(leftRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.)}/,1].split(“{“)[1])
leftY = Integer(leftRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.*)}/,2])

rightRect = query(“label {text LIKE ‘#{right}‘} parent view:’PdfThumbnailView’”, :frame)[0]
screenshot_and_raise “Text \”#{right}\” could not be found” if(rightRect == nil)
rightX = Integer(rightRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.)}/,1].split(“{“)[1])
rightY = Integer(rightRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.*)}/,2])

screenshot_and_raise “The following texts should be on the same horizontal line: \”#{left}\” \”#{right}\”” if(leftY != rightY)
screenshot_and_raise “The text \”#{right}\” is not to the right of the text \”#{left}\”” if(leftX >= rightX)
end

Given /^I see the text “([^”])” beneath the text “([^”])”$/ do |bottom, top|
bottomRect = query(“label {text LIKE ‘#{bottom}‘} parent view:’PdfThumbnailView’”, :frame)[0]
screenshot_and_raise “Text \”#{bottom}\” could not be found” if(bottomRect == nil)
bottomX = Integer(bottomRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.)}/,1].split(“{“)[1])
bottomY = Integer(bottomRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.*)}/,2])

topRect = query(“label {text LIKE ‘#{top}‘} parent view:’PdfThumbnailView’”, :frame)[0]
screenshot_and_raise “Text \”#{top}\” could not be found” if(topRect == nil)
topX = Integer(topRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.)}/,1].split(“{“)[1])
topY = Integer(topRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.*)}/,2])

screenshot_and_raise “The following texts should be on the same vertical line: \”#{top}\” \”#{bottom}\”” if(topX != bottomX)
screenshot_and_raise “The text \”#{bottom}\” is not beneath the text \”#{top}\”” if(topY >= bottomY)
end

Given /^I don’t see the “([^”]*)” button$/ do |expected_mark|
res = query “button”, :accessibilityLabel
index = res.find_index {|s| s == expected_mark}
screenshot_and_raise “Index should be nil (was: #{index})” if (index != nil)
end

Given /^I scroll to “([^”]*)”$/ do |searchText|
res = query “TableView index:1 TableViewCell label”, :text
row = res.find_index {|s| s == searchText}
scroll_to_row :tableView, row
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
end

Given /^given I import “([^”])”, “([^”])”, “([^”])”, “([^”])”$/ do |datasource, maindir, subdir, file|
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’All files’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’#{datasource}’”)
macro %Q|I wait until I don’t see “Loading…”|
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’#{maindir}’”)
macro %Q|I wait until I don’t see “Loading…”|
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’#{subdir}’”)
macro %Q|I wait until I don’t see “Loading…”|
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’#{file}’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’All files’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
end

Given /^given I import “([^”])”, “([^”])”, “([^”]*)”$/ do |datasource, maindir, file|
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’All files’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’#{datasource}’”)
macro %Q|I wait until I don’t see “Loading…”|
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’#{maindir}’”)
macro %Q|I wait until I don’t see “Loading…”|
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’#{file}’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“tableViewCell label text:’All files’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
end

Given /^I remove all my documents$/ do
docs = query(“view:’PdfThumbnailView’”)
docs.each do |pdfView|
touch(“button marked:’EditCards’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“view:’PdfThumbnailView’ index:0 button marked:’card function delete’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“button marked:’Delete file’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“button marked:’EditCards’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
end
end

Given /^I remove all my folders$/ do
if(query(“label marked:’My folders’”).count > 0)
titleRect = query(“label marked:’My folders’ parent view”, :frame)[0]
titleX = Integer(titleRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.)}/,1].split(“{“)[1])
titleY = Integer(titleRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.)}/,2])

count = query(“tableViewCell”).count
i = 0
while i < count do
cellRect = query(“view:’FolderTableViewCell’ index:#{i} view”, :frame)[0]
cellX = Integer(cellRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.)}/,1].split(“{“)[1])
cellY = Integer(cellRect[/{(.), (.)}, {(.), (.)}/,2])
if(cellX == titleX && cellY > titleY)
touch(“view:’FolderTableViewCell’ index:#{i} view”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“view:’FolderTableViewCell’ index:#{i} button”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)
touch(“segmentedControl segment marked:’Delete folder’”)
sleep(STEP_PAUSE)

break
end
i = i + 1
end
end

macro %Q|I remove all my folders| if(query(“label marked:’My folders’”).count > 0)
end

Given /^I playback recording “([^”])” at label “([^”])”$/ do |movie, label|
playback movie, {:query => “label text:’#{label}’”}
end`

Automatic UI Testing with Calabash from #nsconf

As promised, here’s the link from automatic UI testing. And here’s the PDF.

March iOS predictions

Everyone else is doing it, so I figured I could play “bingo” as well.

My predictions begin with “one more thing” on the iPad event: iOS 6 and AppleTV are tightly linked. Developers will get access to iOS 6 betas within two weeks from the announcement, with another event where they go through all the cool stuff. But the AppleTV will be updated with an A5X processor and third party applications installed via the AppStore, and will sport Siri and iCloud integration in a way that makes it easier to use than ever.

The iPad 3 will be announced with an A6 processor, which has enough RAM to power the retina display. The A6 will be more or less identical to the Tegra 3. The iPad will ship with iOS 5.1, and will, together with the iPhone, get iOS 6.1 support this summer, iOS 6.0 will be AppleTV only. The iPad will of course get Siri support.

The main newcomer on the software platform will be Microsoft, shipping a full Office line (excluding MS Access) for iOS, multiplatform for iPhone and iPad, and with a tight AppleTV integration for presentation. The presentation will also focus on Microsoft and Apple having a great relation through iCloud.

iCloud will begin acting like more Dropbox in that it will let you share documents better between iOS apps and Mac apps, bringing iWork and iLife on the mac better integration with their iOS counterparts. This increases need for space, but the iCloud free space will rise. The iLife and iWork updates won’t be mentioned, but will come as a software update quietly a day or two after the show.

Compile Protobuf for iOS

For a project I’m doing at work, that I hope will eventually be open source, I needed to have protobuf compiled for iOS. A colleague of mine showed me how it had been compiled on iOS 4, using these scripts, but with iOS 5 I ended up with binaries compiled for the arm architecture instead of the armv7 architecture.

Be aware that the iOS 5 SDK actually ships with a version of protobuf, but it’s a bit old, being version 2003001. And it only ships the binary, not the headers.

To compile protobuf, grab the latest source (which is 2.4.1 at the time of writing this) and run the following script (download script):

After running this, you should have a directory called /tmp/protobuf/arm that is compiled for your iPhone or iPad with the armv7 architecture. Copy that into your project and start using protobuf

Glædelig jul og godt nytår

Kære alle

Kalenderen viser tydeligt, at julen atter nærmer sig med raske skridt. Vi skriver i dag den 4. søndag i advent og der er nu mindre end en uge til juleaften. Julegaverne er da også indkøbt og juletræet er købt, sat på fod og pyntet, hvorefter Silver har pillet de kugler og julehjerter ned fra træet, som han kunne nå. Som et af billederne viser, er vores juletræ således mest pyntet fra toppen og ned til midt på træt. Men det ser nu også meget sjovt ud med en kat, som kommer rendende med et julehjerte i munden eller bruger en julekugle som bold

Silver er også en flittig gæst på klaveret, når vi spiler julesalmer, ligesom han elsker at sidde i sofaen sammen med os og se julekalender på tv. ”Ludvig og julemanden” har faktisk vist sig at være en overraskende god julekalender, og et par enkelte nostalgiske kig på Nissebanden på Grønland er det da også blevet til…

Den første weekend i december stod også i julehyggens tegn, da Niklas og jeg var på en weekendtur til Lübeck, hvor vi selvfølgelig fik både smagt og købt en del hjem af det berømte Lübecker marcipan. Desuden erfarede vi, at tyskerne er rigtig glade for juledrikke med en del spiritus i, hvilket medførte, at vi måtte vente et par timer ekstra med at køre hjem fra Lübeck om søndagen, da stort set alle de drikkevarer vi fik fat i på julemarkedet om eftermiddagen havde en del alkoholprocenter…

Sidste weekend bød på julefrokost, tangoworkshop, juletræspyntning, familiebesøg og den næsten obligatoriske gåtur til dyreskoven for at fodre dådyrene og kronhjortene med æbler, gulerødder og rugbrød. Desuden gjorde Niklas en god gerning med julehjælp i JCI regi; det er altid godt at kunne hjælpe de familier, som har det hårdt med lidt julevarer her i december.

I denne weekend har vi for alvor påbegyndt julefejringen, da Christinas mor og far, Hanne og Kjeld, havde inviteret os til ”førjul” i deres hyggelige sommerhus på Sjælland sammen med Christinas storebror Rasmus, svigerinde Anne og niecerne Freja og Emma samt vores tilsammen 2 katte og 1 hund. Dejligt at være samlet igen, og fint at kunne sprede julefejringen over flere dage.

Selve juleaften og 1. juledag tilbringer vi sammen med Hanne og Kjeld i Hjerting sammen med vores to katte, Dumbo og Silver. Den 27. december kører vi om morgenen af sted til Norge for at fortsætte julefejringen med Niklas’ familie og venner, som vi også fejrer nytårsaften med inden vi atter sætter kurs mod Danmark den 2. januar.

Det bliver dejligt med en lang juleferie efter et travlt år, der har budt på mange spændende oplevelser både privat og arbejdsmæssigt. På hjemmefronten med huset og vores ferier til Nice, Sardinien, Korsika og Norge samt vores fritidsinteresser, hvor dans fylder meget. Arbejdsmæssigt har Niklas skriftet arbejde, og er nu i Århus et par gange om ugen, mens han i det nye år skal starte en Esbjerg afdeling op for IT-firmaet Trifork. For Christinas vedkommende har det i efteråret og i december stået på omorganisering i kulturafdelingen, og efter adskillige timers oprydning og flytning rundt på næsten alle personers arbejdspladser, bliver det spændende at se hvad det nye år bringer af nye samarbejdsrelationer og opgaver.

Ligeledes bliver det spændende om der kommer sne igen i år til jul eller om regnen og blæsten fortsætter? Om ikke andet kan vi vel håbe på en hvid nytårsfejren i Norge med gode skimuligheder

Uanset om vi får tilført julestemning via sne eller ej, ønsker vi jer alle sammen en rigtig glædelig jul samt et godt og lykkebringende nytår.

På gensyn i det nye år!

Kærlig hilsen

Niklas og Christina

Application-switcher not responding

From time to time I get the same problem: the application switcher (command-tab) stops responding. It usually takes closing a lot of programs or restarting to get it working again. Today, I seem to have found the gangster: Screen Sharing. When I closed it, application switching started working again. It must have taken over the control over a couple of keys too many.

Ubiquity.framework

ubd wanted to connect to windows.net, so I looked it up, and it belongs to Ubiquity.framework, that is a part of the iCloud integration. Hmm…

The man-page says this: “ubd is the ubiquity server process. It is primarily used for “Mobile Documents. There are no configuration options to ubd, and users should not run ubd manually.”

Silverkat

Quick plug: my wife, Christina, just started her first blog, about our cat: Silver. Visit Silverkat and follow her blogging journey and our cat

My build setup

Tomorrow I begin work at Trifork! There I’ll be doing iOS development, so before I begin I thought I’d like to share a bit about how I do my development now.

First of all, I use GitHub and Beanstalk for source control, depending on what client the work is for (for my own projects, I use GitHub). Mercurial is nice, but git and svn just work with XCode, so I stick to that.

Since I have source control, I can have continuous delivery. For that I use Jenkins. Jenkins is not good enough. It’s not great. It’s not beautiful. It’s not intelligent, easy, friendly, intuitive, or all those other nice words. But it works! I use the Clang Scan-Build, Github OAuth, Github, Pre SCM BuildStep, Redmine, SICCI, SSH Slaves and Xcode integration plugins, even though I’d get most things done by just adding a shell script. That gives me a build per commit, which is nice and reliable and brings the pain forward. Jay pain!

Of course, having this infrastructure in place begs for tests. Now I think tests for iPhone applications suck. Bigtime! The reason is that I hate deployment cycles. It takes time, and that time I’d rather use writing code, thinking about the application, solving real problems for my customer, preferably before he knows about them. If not that, I’d rather drink coffee, do chores in my home, or clean my pipes, rather than waiting for build cycles. It’s just an enormous waste of time. And tests for iOS drain time, as there’s no such thing as a unit test for iOS. Everything is an integration test or a user acceptability test. You always fire up the entire application before running any test.

So now I have that rant done, it’s great that I can leave my tests to Jenkins. It will perform them, and the output will get converted to what looks like a JUnit test so that it can get picked up by Jenkins’ tooling and be presented nicely. Jay!

Then we get to deployment. My clients communicate with me. A lot! This should be different like so, I changed my mind about this, I’ve found a bug if you do like this and that. It’s great! I love my users for this! It creates such a momentum! So how awful wouldn’t it be if I said “I’ll collect everything and give you a beta in three weeks”? Continuous delivery isn’t just delivery to me, it is to the users as well. For this I use HockeyApp. They’re a great bunch and really responsive, and while they just don’t support iOS 5 well enough yet, there is so much good there. My app gets auto-deployed up there and my client sees the new release, hits install and boom! Now he’s running the latest build! Crash reports get sorted by build numbers, and the guys at HockeyApp have told me they’re working at making the crash reports even more awesome! Jay!

So how do I follow up on these things? I have to admit, I’m a cheapskate, so I use Redmine. I would use Basecamp, and I hope to be using it, it’s so awesome, but so far it’s not been worth the extra cost. The day it is, I’ll run and buy it quickly. My problem with Basecamp and Redmine? I just haven’t seen how I’d integrate it with my scrum sprints. Yet. I’m sure they both can, and I hope to learn from people that are wiser than me in this regard.

Finally, after a deployment to the appstore, I use Flurry to keep track of where my users are at, both in version of the app (why don’t they upgrade! This new version is awesome! I need to tell them more about it!) and the OS (really? They’re still on iOS 4?? iOS 5 has been out a month now! Oh well, not everyone is like me). Also, I’ve rolled my own crash reporting that, should I have failed horribly, the users can get in touch with me or the client, with a detailed log of what went wrong.

So, that’s my work setup this far, and I’m quite happy with it. It still needs better scrum integration. It’s still too many pieces that don’t talk sensibly together. But it’s getting better knit together, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Trifork does it, how I can improve based on what they have to teach, and how I can improve the way they’re doing it. It’s going to be great! Those guys are brilliant, and I love working with brilliant people.

Finally, if you’re in the Esbjerg area, working with iOS, get in touch with me. If you’d love to start working with iOS, get in touch with me! There’s an NSCoder Night coming up soon, biweekly I hope.

Steve Jobs biography

I’m such a sucker: now I’ve bought the Steve Jobs biography for Kindle, to be delivered tomorrow. I hope the book is great. I borrowed my last book of the kind to someone, but I don’t know who.

Play 2.0

It’s great seeing that Play 2.0 is on its way. Play is my favorite Scala playground, but it’s always felt like a second class citizen there. With 2.0, it’s a first class Citizen, and they’ve even thrown Akka into the mix. So, as with anything I’m especially interested in, I’ve signed up to submit two bugreports.

In defense of Dart

Ok, everyone, let’s all calm down. There’s been so many blog posts and podcast debates all over the net about what’s wrong with Dart. The only problem with Dart, the way I see it, is that Google is too good at marketing: too much hype before we got to see the product.

The way I see Dart, it’s another language for doing client-side web application programming. Luckily, it’s not another Flash or Silverlight with its plethora of languages. It would like to be a part of the browser, but for now it contends itself to being a language that compiles down to JavaScript. That puts it together with CoffeeScript and Objective-J, to name but a few. See a long list here. As you can see from the list, this is nothing new.

The only problem with Dart is that everyone had their hopes up for the perfect language that would contain all their pet features. And of course, the set of preferred combinations is probably as big as the number of developers in the world.

What I find to be one of the strong points of Dart is that it uses the actor model as its concurrency model. I remember it well from my days at uni, thinking it was a model leading to waaay to much overhead. Surely, the Smalltalk guys must be mad! But as time has given us more power, I’ve come to believe that this is a great model, which has lead me to Scala and Akka. Although GCD is very powerful, I find myself looking into using actors in my language of choice, Objective-C, all the time.

So where does Dart go from here? Well, that depends on what kind of backing it has from Google. Google hasn’t been very clear on how well the Dart support is grounded in the organization. But if it gains a good community of libraries and evolves a good community, it could become the preferred way of writing Android apps, letting developers re-use code for their web-app and mobile app. If not, it could become shelved like Go.

Personally, on this front I’ll brush up my ancient JavaScript skills and look more at SproutCore the next couple of weeks, probably along with CoffeeScript. Then in a month or two, if there is any momentum going for Dart, I’ll probably write something where I can exploit Darts actor model and see if we become good friends. 2011 will be interesting still.

JENKINS-11370 & JENKINS-11372

I’m working with Xcode & Jenkins, and as part of that I’ve filed https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-11370 for pre-scm-buildstep

The clang-scanbuild-plugin fails on install, so for that I’ve added https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-11372

5DmkII vs 4S

Yes, the 4S is a great video camera. The 5D still has the edge, but also the bulk. This device is going to be great.

iPhone 4S / Canon 5d MKII Side by Side Comparison from Robino Films on Vimeo.

The buying a computer experience

My inlaws’ computer hard drive died the other day, so I offered to help them buy a new Windows computer at the local shop. The specs were easy: Windows, Core i5, 4GB RAM and ~500GB drive.

Going in, I expected lots of extra sell-ins. And there were. What I found to be a very funny options, was to have them de-install all the extra crap-ware that comes pre-installed on the system. That’s funny! They get probably a few bucks from the software guys to have that pre-installed, and then they get a few bucks from the customer to de-install the software. That must be a great deal for them

Rest in Peace, Dennis Ritchie

To quote Jan Eggum: “Kor e alle heltane” (where are all our heroes, for you non-norwegians). Dennis Ritchie passed away today. That is Richie as in &R in K&R C, or The Book. Without Dennis, I’d probably not known my good friend Dag-Erling. I’d probably be writing Pascal. I’d probably given up on computing after having led the DemOS project in assembler and Pascal. Dag-Erling would not have been a FreeBSD committer. I would not have written my thesis about the FreeBSD project. There would be no Mac OS X, or iPhone. At least not the way we know it. There would be no /dev.

It was a sad moment when Steve died, and although Dennis was allowed to live many more years, it is too soon to see another giant in our industry go away. I am deeply thankful for what he has given our community, and for what he has given me, and most of the people I know in our industry.

There have been many obituaries, but the one I liked the best is written by Poul-Henning Kamp at Version2 (in Danish).

The economy

It is curious how the economy is described bad all over the place, yet the tech sector is growing and growing. The mobile phone app business is exploding, and Google today announced a 33% jump in revenue to $9.72 billion. This disconnect has been going on for a while, and doesn’t seem to have much of an end. Tech just isn’t stopping to watch governments that overspend struggle or bankers who made arrogant bets sweat.

So I make my “arrogant” bet: keep working hard to innovate in tech. The mobile revolution today is like the early days of the web. And this is even before the rest of my house is connected and all my life becomes GPS tagged. We have an amazing decade in front of us. Let’s keep doing great work, with attention to detail and love for our customers and craft, hopefully without any investors starting new bubbles, and let’s make great things happen.

SproutCore used for iCloud?

Looking through the page source for iCloud.com I couldn’t but help how much SC was all over the place. That rang a bell. Apple has been helping out the SproutCore project before, so could it be that iCloud is based on Sprout Core? I bet it is Time to put in that work to learn SproutCore that I had planned on doing a few months ago.

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs

Dear Steve,
you have shown us that we don’t understand what we think we understand, and must redo what we think is done, in order to go forward. You’ve tought us not to accept mediocracy, not from ourselves and not from the world around us. Strive for passionate perfection, every day, with love. Love for what we do and those that surround us.

Rest in Peace

iTunes movie purchase and rental available in

Finally, after having sent mails to people high up at Apple, signing petitions, joining groups and blogging about it for many years, iTunes movie rental and purchase is coming to Scandinavia, possibly the world. That is great, we have been missing it for ages. Thank you, Apple, for allowing us to send you money Like many other people, I’m looking forward to trying out this service, especially the rental service.

But what this makes me really happy about is that I now am actually optimistic about iTunes Match being not only a US product. So far, we have had no access to iTunes movies, tv-shows, Apple’s iBookstore and probably other similar features I forget. It even took for ages for the AppleTV to get to Denmark, I bought mine in Australia. But iTunes Match is exciting, and will hopefully be a really great showcase for iCloud. October 4th will be exciting in its own right, but the movies becoming available makes me excited that there will be less US-only services and more open-for-the-world services.

Mercurial tagging for XCode

I’ve used many version control systems, but this week has been the first time I’ve used Mercurial for anything more than a bit of testing. It looks good to me, so I read a bit around to see how people are using it in their projects, and I came accross Lajos Kamocsay’s post about how he includes Mercurials branch and revision information in his Xcode projects that I think deserves a shout-out.

Updating an Address Book record

When updating an Address Book record in Cocoa, I read that I had modify the record using ABRecordSetValue(). But it wouldn’t change. Even if I called ABAddressBookSave() afterwards, it just wouldn’t change. It turns out I had to call ABAddressBookAddRecord() also. There is no ABAddressBookUpdateRecord(), but it turns out that the ABAddressBookAddRecord function does the same. I expected that it would give me a duplicate record, but it does not, it updates the existing record. Glad to have that sorted out, I hope this helps you as well.

A quick & comprehensive guide type guide

I’m sorry if this is all over the net today, but I really find this a great info graphic, by Noodlor. I link directly to his graphic:

Android isn\'t open source, what now\?

So Google’s admitted that Android is not open source. Some parts are, some parts are not. That’s the same with iOS. Many parts of iOS are from open source projects (I’ll mention cups, the printer stack on many Linux systems, that is very much supported by Apple, even though it’s GPL). Heck, even Microsoft Windows has components from open source projects (the ftp client being my favourite example). To me, it’s not so much about these projects being open source, as what do they give back to the open source projects.

The kernel and userland of both OS X and iOS is based on various BSD systems, I believe for the most part FreeBSD, and put into their own BSD system called Darwin. Darwin is open source and under the BSD license. Now, I’m sure Apple makes many changes that are so specific for their use and their scenarios that you don’t necessarily want these changes committed back as they may be a diversion from the project rather than something that’s good for the project. However, I’m sure they make great improvements to the OS, and for me the real benchmark of their openness is how fast these changes flow back to the originating changes and thus become a benefit for all parts. Unlike cups which is under GPL, Apple isn’t required to send this code back. I don’t mind that at all, but I still hold that my benchmark for their openness is how much useful code they volunteer back to the originating project.

I’d love to hear how many changes made by the Android development have benefitted the originating open source projects. I have an idea about how much Apple has committed back to the FreeBSD project, but I don’t have any solid facts at the moment, so if anyone does, that’d be great to hear. Hey, even hearing how much Microsoft’s mobile offering has led to improved code being committed back to open source projects not originating at Microsoft would be great hearing about. I’m looking forward to reading your comments

Extending iMessage

I hate instant messaging. Not because I don’t like talking to people, but because there are so many networks I have to be part of, and once I’m signed up I have to use this program or that program, which means I have to have a ton of programs running, or I can wait a while and get a program that does a half decent job at implementing many different networks and then have a few more programs running to open what that program doesn’t support. So I log off, and never log back in again. I would really like to use IM, I would really like to be more available that way, but it’s such a hassle.

That’s why I have big hopes for iMessage. If Apple were to open iMessage for extension, the providers of the IM networks themselves could extend it to support their network. Then I could have all the chats in one place, and be signed in to these different networks so that if there’s an incoming Skype call, I’m available on Skype, without having the app open (or knowing that I do), and if I get an instant message from something as ancient as ICQ, it gets into the message list. Grouping accounts together on one contact would be nice also. No more logging in and out of IMs, just always on, and perhaps set a do-not-disturb mode for whenever I go to sleep. Man I hope they open up iMessage for extension, that would be awesome!

Tapptics

I thought I’d give Tapptics a little plug. I love writing nice applications for the iPhone, but taking on a graphics artist for pet projects is sometimes a bit hard to justify. But a while ago I read about Tapptics and saw their site and bookmarked the article so I could come back to it when I had a project where I needed some graphics. That time has come, so I signed up and it’s just a bucket full of resources, both nice tutorials and guides, and a lot of excellent graphics to use in my app. There were, however, two glyphs that I wanted that weren’t there, but no sooner had I enquired about them, had Jen whipped them up: two gorgeous glyphs that will have a prominent position in my app. The price is well worth it, so go check Jen’s site out today. If you’re an app developer and need nice graphics, you’ll love it!

The state of iOS Open Source

I just quickly want to plug The state of iOS Open Source – and what to do about it! by Fredrik Olsson. It’s a great little piece of advice for all us iOS developers

Converting OCUnit output to something Jenkins can understand

I’m working on setting up my continuous integration system to work with Xcode. I’m using Jenkins on a separate Mac Mini, and I found this great article by Christian Hedin where he introduces his ocunit2junit.rb utility that converts the output of OCUnit to something looking like JUnit, thus making it easier for Jenkins to pick integrate with the build.

The Sims 3 in Lion

I don’t play that many games, but one that I’ve enjoyed for a number of years has been The Sims. Now that Lion is out and we can talk about it, I found the answer about what to do when it fails with an Unknown Error: Go to ~/Library/Preferences and delete the com.transgaming.* files and the “The Sims 3 Preferences” directory. This will make the game run again.

Minus points for the 2011 iMac

Some of you might have thought that I’m perhaps a bit too happy about the iMac, and of course too cheap to get a Mac Pro. (Yes, I’m just as excited as anyone to see what the new Pro will be like now that Thunderbolt is a great bus-alternative, but that’s for another topic) Let me dedicate this post to the minus points for the iMac.

To be clear, my complaints are with the top-of-the-line 27” i7 3.4 Ghz iMac with 16GB of RAM and SSD disk. Yes, my delivery agent messed up and it’s “only” 1GB of VRAM instead of two, but if you wanted to know what’s the trouble with the top-of-the-line iMac, this is it:

Heat, heat, heat…. yes, every computer I’ve had has been pushed to its limits, and this one will be no exception. But heat isn’t bad while running doing some crazy 8-virtual-core video-encoding with Handbrake, heat is a problem when the monitor is turned on! Try holding your hand on top of it after having used it for a couple of hours: I dare you! It’ll be scorched in no time!

The top of the monitor is where the heat vents are, and it gets crazy hot. My office is on the first floor, so it’s the hottest place in our house to start with, having a couple of other hot-running macs there to begin with doesn’t help, and my 24” Dell really knows how to warm up a room. But this iMac has really added a couple of centigrades to the room temperature. To make it short: I’m adding some vents to the room!

Next up: reflections, reflections, reflections…. man do I look good! I get to look at myself the entire day if I want to!! If I don’t want to, I need to look away, because the iMac is a 27” mirror! I’ve always gone with the matte / anti-glare options, except for the iPhone and iPad where it wasn’t available. I love using my iPad, and it doesn’t reflect THAT much, so I didn’t think much about it, until I packed the iMac out and turned it on! Crazy! I need to go shave!!!! A quick shave later, what I see on the screen looks way better, but it’s still me. I’ve got my Dell 24” matte display next to the iMac, and it takes the full blow of the window and the window-lit me, but still I see no reflection. On the iMac, though, did I mention I use it as a mirror, without turning the camera on?

But these, and the lack of a thunderbolt/USB KVM, are really the only objections I have. Throw in a 24” Dell in 90 degrees rotation, one of the upcoming MacBook Airs for using XCode on the road and a Mini and one of those nice HP airprint printers, and you have yourself a great both home and office setup!

So expecting the upcoming Mini and Air soon, and already knowing Lion and iOS 5, there is really no reason not to work with this and enjoy its benefits full time. This is an awesome setup for developers, media producers and probably your average Mac gamer alike.

Replacing iMac 2011 memory

Back when the new iMacs were released in may 2011 I ordered one with 4GB RAM, expecting to replace them with 32GB. However, getting four 8GB blocks turned out to be incredibly hard, and very expensive, so I settled for 4x4GB blocks for a total of 16GB RAM 1333Mhz SO-DIMM RAM. Two sets of 2x4GB from Crucial was very inexpensive (about 800 DKK plus tax), and they arrived a couple of days before the iMac.

While almost all servicing of parts for the iMac starts with having to remove the display and risk getting dust stuck under the glass, replacing the memory was very easy. Remove three screws on the bottom of the screen (surprisingly not Philips 1 screws, something a bit wider), take out some easy-to-use handles and pull. I was surprised at how hard I had to pull, I was afraid I’d break the handles, but no problem there, they didn’t even seem the least bit strained when the old memory came out with a pop. Gently take out the old memory, replace it with the new memory (again, push a bit harder than what I expected), screw it together again and voila, one memory maxed iMac. Very easy, and very cheap.

So what is performance like with this memory? Well, I’m not a good case for comparing with as I run too much early-stage pre-release software, too much software at all and generally abuse my computer. And since I transferred my MacBook Pro setup to the iMac (after first deactivating Adobe’s CS5 suite) it’s just as messy as my setup always is. But it works beautifully. No lock-ups, and all the memory is in use! Perhaps a bit surprisingly, but I had 14GB of inactive memory before I started writing this post. That is, it’s loaded and ready to go, but not in use as I’ve quit whatever was using it. So a waste perhaps? No way…

Using the computer like this has been a breeze so far, but let’s see. Custom is that I’ll max out the memory within three months of using the computer. Yes, 16MB RAM in a 486DX was great, can’t remember what my Pentium 90 had, nor many of the AMD machines. The “lamp” iMac was also filled as much as it could (that was good fun servicing), as were my Powerbooks and subsequent MacBooks and Minis. That’s why I always wanted a Pro, but always opted for something else. Cheapskate me

Relocating your svn repository in-flight

Once upon a time I used a beanstalk repository in http mode. By that I mean I had it checked out from a http:// address, rather than the usual svn+ssh:// because Beanstalk didn’t support svn+ssh:// . Since then, no-one had touched the project, but today I wanted to do some changes. I went ahead to make them, and before committing I did a “svn up” just in case. It told me:

svn: Repository moved permanently to 'https://xxx.svn.beanstalkapp.com/project'; please relocate

Beanstalk had deprecated http-mode. Sounds like a good idea, really, I don’t remember why I was using http in the first place. But, if you, like me, have used SVN for a long time without really learning it, and get into the same pickle, this’ll be for you. To relocate, simply run

svn switch --relocate http://xxx.svn.beanstalkapp.com/project https://xxx.svn.beanstalkapp.com/project

That’s it. A “svn up” and “svn commit” later, the new changes are checked in.

32GB RAM for new Mid-2011 iMacs

So today they released the new iMac. Still no reviews so I have no clue whether I was right or wrong about the chipset. So I’ve started looking into another pet topic of mine: RAM. I really would like these machines to take a bucket-load of RAM, but Apple still limits themselves to 16GB.

OWC shipped 32GB kits for the last version, and in this blog comment they confirm they expect it to work well on the current iMac as well. In fact, they already sell 32GB kits for the 27” iMacs, but at almost $3000!

So far I haven’t seen people report on the previous generation iMac any brand of RAM that would supposedly work but didn’t, and Amazon has a kit for $817 that I would expect to work. But no reports yet, so this’ll have to be investigated.

Update: Disregard the amazon-link, the iMacs need 204-pin SO-DIMM DDR3 RAM running at 1333 Mhz. The Amazon link was 240-pin

vmc push\'ing Java/Maven/Spring projects

I’m just getting started with Cloud Foundry. So I grabbed Springs samples and compiled hello-spring-mongodb doing “mvn package” and then “vmc push -no-start”. That got me:

Would you like to deploy from the current directory? [Yn]: The input stream is exhausted. /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/highline-1.6.1/lib/highline.rb:601:in `get_line' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/highline-1.6.1/lib/highline.rb:622:in `get_response' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/highline-1.6.1/lib/highline.rb:216:in `ask' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/vmc-0.3.10/lib/cli/commands/apps.rb:369:in `push' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/vmc-0.3.10/lib/cli/runner.rb:426:in `send' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/vmc-0.3.10/lib/cli/runner.rb:426:in `run' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/vmc-0.3.10/lib/cli/runner.rb:14:in `run' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/vmc-0.3.10/bin/vmc:5 /usr/bin/vmc:19:in `load' /usr/bin/vmc:19

Probably that’s not what it should look like on a Mac, so I’m investigating the cause. Do shout out if you have an idea. I’ll update with my progress.

Update, question posted at http://support.cloudfoundry.com/entries/20072196-beginner-question

Digital film

Wow, I remember back in 1998, me and another photo enthusiast were discussing DSLRs vs digital film. I was holding out on DSLRs until there was a camera that could fit my lenses and was as good as the Canon 500N I had at the time. Turned out I’d be waiting a while, the first one I got (matched the requirements!) was the Canon 20D. Anyway, my friend showed a links on Slashdot and a few papers on “Digital Film”, and I had to agree: that was probably a much better fit for the time.

Well, digital film didn’t materialize, until now (or rather, soon) hopefully: Tom’s guide has an article where they describe Park Hyun Jin’s concept:

While in my mind the right time was 1998 and the wrong time is 2011, I would still love a “roll” for my analogue camera, and I might even get a few more old systems for the pure joy of using them

Intel Z68 chipset for the iMac that\'ll be released tuesday May 3rd?

Fair warning: This is speculation on my part

Fact 1: The Intel desktop chipset Z68 will be released in a week or two to the general public.
Fact 2: Apple cares about user experience
Fact 3: Intel has given Apple preferred access to its components before

The iMac, Apple’s Desktop offering, is long overdue. I had my bets for a refresh in February, that never happened. In March it would be logical to release an update with Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt. That in itself would he a huge gain.

The Intel Z68 chipset will allow Apple to let the user have a small SSD drive for caching, so that all frequently run program data will be there. That’s not that different from what Samsung (and I’m sure others) already do on regular hard drives: keep a small bit of SSD for caching so that data that is frequently accessed is faster available than it would be reading from a drive. Except for this: the SSD drives used with the Z68 would typically be 64GB or around there.

Toms Hardware has a nice benchmark of using this chipset with SSD drives and whether larger drives make a substantial difference: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68-express-lucidlogix-virtu-ssd-caching,2888-4.html

Adding this would make the iMac the fastest Mac there is, at least when it comes to user experience, another blow to the Mac Pro for sure. It should also have a refresh, poor thing.

So while this is just speculation on my part, I think it makes sence, timing wise and logically. And, I really need a new Mac, so with the speculation about a special happening on May 3rd, with Apple Store employees being required to be present there, an iMac happening after “let’s get back to the Mac” makes very much sense to me.

PS, Apple, please allow me to add 64GB of RAM this time

Update: Yes, I was right on this one!

The setup of a Spring project

One thing that I seem to forget from project to project (after all, you only need to take care of this once pr project) is that a deployed Spring project is two parts: model, business and controllers is one part, views are another.

This means that in your web.xml you’re likely to have two parts defined, the org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener servlet which contains model, business and controllers, and the org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet that contains your view resolvers and views.

This distinction is important, if nothing else than because it’s easy to set the url-pattern for the view servlet too broad, for instance to /*, and this will surely mingle your requests so that you don’t really know if it goes to the controller or to the view resolver.

NoQL space

These days I’m heavily looking into the NoSQL space, and I’ve currently limited my learning to the document space of CouchDB, MongoDB, key/value space of AWS SimpleDB and Cassandra, and the Neo4J graph space. For the projects I’m involved in I’m most excited about Couch & Mongo, even though I’d love to host it in the AWS space and therefore should be looking at SimpleDB.

If you’re exploring this space as well, I’d love to hear from you and your thoughts. Many more posts are bound to come

The identity \'iPhone Distribution\' doesn\'t match any identity in any profile

Today was the time for my yearly developer certificate renewal. After invalidating my old certificate and making a new one, removing all old profiles, I got the error above. It took me a little while to figure it out, but while I had generated my Ad Hoc distribution profile, I hadn’t actually installed it, so I had my certificate set up for distribution but no mobile provision profile. Just my little d’oh moment, I hope it helps you figure out yours

Finally iPad 2

When the iPad was announced, we got to hear we had to wait until the international launch date. So before it was even morning on the date of the international launch I ordered mine online, black 64Gb with 3G. I expected Apple to prioritize their own sales channel, but it turned out I had to wait 33 days from I ordered it until Apple expected me to have it!

To reduce the wait, I went by many stores, and finally I came by a Virgin Megastore in Nice, and the salesman there said unfortunately, they only had one model, and it was exactly the one I wanted, so I quickly bought it, set it to update and sync and went about my day.

Later that evening I got to play with it, but the home button really needed to be pushed very hard to work, and that really affected the pleasure of using it. After much thought, I decided to return it. The day after, I went back, and of course the man talking to me was strong and had a habit of pushing buttons hard, so while I reproduced the problem all the time, he managed only once. But he saw the problem, and would love to exchange it for me, but by then they were sold out. So I got a refund.

Luckily, the day before I had tried to cancel my original order, but they were about to ship it that day, so they couldn’t cancel it but asked me to send it back when I got it. So now I’ll have to wait patiently for it, and then hopefully it will have no issues, just like my last iPad had no issues.

Written, unexpectantly, on my iPad 1

Solution for "com.apple.transporter.util.StreamUtil.readBytes(Ljava/io/InputStream;)[B"

March 27th I had this problem that whenever I submitted an app to the app store with the App Loader or Xcode, that would pass verification mind you, I got an error: “com.apple.transporter.util.StreamUtil.readBytes(Ljava/io/InputStream;)[B” I wrote Apple to tell them about it, but I got an error due to a disk being full, so I figured nobody’s perfect, it’s probably a disk-full error, and tried the next day. The 28th, no luck either. Wrote them a mail. Didn’t hear from them by the 31st, so wrote another mail. But by now, results had began to come up on my radar via Google, so I thought I’d share what I found.

With Xcode 4 it seems many people are having this problem. The advice I found first was to downgrade to Xcode 3.x or Application Loader 1.3, but by this time Xcode 4.0.1 was out, and for some reason I’d missed installing it on my dev box.

After installing XCode 4.0.1, this problem was solved and an updated version of Well Tempered is now awaiting approval.

Påskebryg by Ørbæk

Påskebryg by Ørbæk bryggeri was an instant hit. It has quite a strong taste, with a surprisingly lack of after-taste. It has a very nice foam, has lots of spice and hop, and is moderately sweet.

In color its dark, and you can’t see trough the glass, it’s too misty / unfiltered for that. It has an average amount of gas, and will go well with most kinds of food. This beer is an excellent replacement for a good glass of wine, and can be had by itself. Only weird thing is that if you served this to me as a christmas beer, in my ignorance I wouldn’t know better than to call it an excellent christmas beer as well.

All in all, a great beer that I’ll definitely have another of. And many bonus points for the nice hare on the label

Willemoes Påske Ale

I’m a big fan of Willemoes which is Coop’s brand by Bryggeriet Vestfyen, so when they had an offer too choose three for a reasonable price, I got two of Willemoes Påske Ale and a Påskebryg that will be reviewed another day.

Willemoes is funny as it’s called after Peter Willemoes, a Danish naval hero who captured Nelson and his ship in the war with England in 1801.

As with so many of Willemoes beers, this was an instant hit. It is nice and dark, but transparent. Its nicely filled with spice, it’s sweet yet still fresh, and has a moderate amount of gas, yet very little foam. As with Ørbæk’s Påskeale, it could just as well be a christmas ale, and works fine by itself. It goes well with food as well, especially heavy food. Only negative is that it has a hint of metal taste. All in all I think it’s a good alternative to for instance a Leffe Brune

Hornbæk Påskeøl

While many of the other easter ales actually could be great christmas beers as well, the Hornbeer Påskeøl is all flowers and “yellow” in taste, a very fine easter ale. It is a bit darker than a classic, cloudy with a nice white foam. The first taste is of spice and flowers, but not heavy at all. Very fitting for spring and easter.

This beer works probably best with food. I was drinking it slowly, and while it’s getting warmer it looses its gas fairly quickly, so while this is no problem with many easter ales, you should probably drink this one fairly quick.

The etiquette is probably the best part of this beer, it’s great! Made by Gunhild Rasmussen, who makes most of the labels, called “everything has an end”.

Best all-time april fools day pranks

I’ve stopped doing april fools pranks, hoaxes and jokes, since unfortunately my jokes had a tendency to become true. “Dude, we’ve got a tax-misunderstanding” led to half a year of explaining why nothing was wrong. “DHL wants us to pay a strange import fee” wasn’t fun when DHL called three days later. I talked to your boss and hear Microsoft has bought your company… a couple of days later… you get the picture.

But, that doesn’t stop me enjoying aprils fools day, my favourite came early with the EU requiring online retailers to refund their customers before getting the merchandise back. Let’s have a look at great april fools jokes and pranks:

In 1957 a show called Panorama announced that a mild winter had increased the Swiss spaghetti harvest (see YouTube)
The BBC had a commercial for a documentary of Antarctica’s colony of flying penguins
In 1980, the Big Ben was reported to be switching to digital, and the clocks hands would be sold to whoever called in first
Branson’s hot air balloon that resembled a UFO in 1989 was a great one (video below)
What I’m sure would tame many flamewars online was also an april fools joke: the proposed law that it’d be illegal to use the Internet while drunk from 1994
The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from ~3.14 to the Biblical value of 3.0

See these great clips:

Do you have other april fools jokes, hoaxes or pranks that are worthy to be included in this very informal all-time best list? Leave a comment

The Danish easter ale story

I’m “imported” to Denmark, and guess what: so is the Danish easter ale tradition. As far as I’ve understood, the tradition started at the end of the 19th century when a few pubs in Copenhagen around easter would import double-bock beer called Salvator from the German order of Paulaner. This was a beer the monks had been allowed to sell since the 1780s. Whether it was actually the beer of the Paulaner monks is somewhat of a mystery, as this brand was so strong that all the Bavarian stouts were simply called Paulaner Salvator. Serving these beers turned out to be a huge success, so in 1905, Carlsberg, the big Danish beer brewery would make their own easter ale and sell it on tap. The year after, Tuborg, their arch rival, followed with their own easter ale on tap.

Today, there are many small breweries all around Denmark, and each brewery with respect for themselves will have their own easter ale. Some will have them a pinch lighter than a christmas ale, some will have a bottle of pure summer. Speaking of christmas ale, it’s actually the easter ale tradition that has given us the christmas beer tradition, not the other way around!

Påskebryg - Ørbæk - Ecological

Next up is an ecological beer from Ørbæk.

The first thought was that this beer aspires to be a trapist, yet isn’t as rich in the flavour. It has a pleasant darkness (I prefer dark beer), is well balanced, nice foam and it goes well with cheese (we tried that) and chocolate. It could have a bit more notes of flower and spice, it’s easter ale after all, but I get the impression this is a beer I wouldn’t mind serving guests all year around, perhaps except for christmas.

On a minus note, it has a faint metallic smell, but apart from that, this is a beer I can fully recommend, and I’ll be sure to buy a few more of. I should add that the hints of coffee were a nice plus. The label is nice, but I believe that previous years they used to have an easter bunny. In short: go bunnies!

SQLite for the iOS SDK, two years later

It’s been two years since I first wrote on using SQLite for iPhone SDK. Since then, iOS has come a long way, especially when it comes to storing data. But still, much remains the same. For instance, FMDB is still a great way of accessing SQLite databases directly, and if you’re most familiar with SQL and don’t want to learn too much new stuff (learning Objective-C and Cocoa can be enough by itself), this is a great way to write your first apps.

But, with iOS 3.0 came Core Data, and I was so happy when it did. Marcus Zarra wrote a great book with PragProg that I wholeheartedly recommend: it’s easy to read and thorough at the same time. I followed his workshop at NSConf ‘09, which was great, and I understand people have enjoyed the videos he and Scotty produced over at iDeveloper TV. I use Core Data in all my projects now, and its backed by SQLite, so I get a great mapping while having the performance of the database.

It being the year of the NoQL-databases, though, a post wouldn’t be complete without saying you can now ditch SQLite all together and use CouchDB. CouchBase have made a developer preview of CouchDB for iOS that I’m looking forward to try out. CouchDB has great replication, but I still need to learn more about how to handle security and access to data so to not give all my application users the keys to the “castle”.

Happy coding

Påskeæg - from Thisted Bryghus

As you might have noticed, I’m trying out different kinds of content on my blog lately. It’s all stuff I love doing, just interesting trying out new stuff. Next up on “new ideas” is “easter ales 2011”, where I thought I’d introduce this years crop of easter ale available in Danish supermarkets.

First up is Påskeæg, økologisk påskebryg by Thisted bryghus. It’s much like a traditional pils, so if you like a classic pils you’ll love this beer. It’s slightly sweet from the malte, but the hop taste is prominently bitter.

A bit too light for my preference in easter ales, but not a bad start on this short series. I’m usually a big fan of Thisted Bryghus, so I think I’ll stick with some of their other beers.

Cheap quality-lenses for Canon EOS DSLR cameras

In this first video blogpost I follow up on my two blogposts from 2005, I show you how easy it is to put a Pentax m42 mount lens, one of the most popular kind of lenses from the 1950s up until the late 1980s, on a Canon EOS DSLR body. Back in 2005 I used the EOS 20D, now I use the EOS 5DmkII, but it’s just as easy.

The lens I put on the camera is a Helios 85mm f/1.5, second generation, meaning that it has a 42mm screw-mount instead of the original 39mm. The adapter is a m42 EOS AF confirm adapter that you can find on eBay for around $15.

BOSE Companion 5 Review

I’ve been looking for a great-looking and great-sounding speaker system for my Mac. And just so we’re clear: great-sounding is for classical music, and I expect equal or better than my Celestion/NAD system I bought for ~10.000 NOK when I was 15. My problem has been that either the speakers filled too much in my office space (3.5 m2), and/or they looked really bad.

My brother-in-law recommended BOSE, and specifically the Companion system. I didn’t find anywhere to hear them, but I took a gut decision and ordered one. They simulate a 5.1 system, and in that they actually do a quite good job. The tweet/high frequencies isn’t all that great, but if you’re playing computer games, watch movies or listen to something else than classical and jazz, I’m sure out of the box you’ll have no problem with it.

What’s funny is that I’ve grown used to them, and having set the equalizer in iTunes to boost the high frequencies a bit, they actually do a fine job. For sure, I still prefer my HiFi system, but it comes pretty close at a third of both the space and price. I still believe there’s room for great-looking speakers that are worthy of a low-end HiFi system (meaning the equivalent of a relatively cheap Denon receiver with some not too expensive stereo speakers) that can outperform the BOSE, but until they come around this is a quite nice setup. They don’t fill much and listening to Fontana’s Sonata Secunda with one of my favourite recorder players is pleasant. Not like a HiFi system where it feels like the performers are in the room, but still really nice. And for those occational games, the 5.1 emulation works great.

IRIScan 2 review

A while back I bought an IRIScan 2, a little scanner that could be laying in the kitchen drawer to scan incoming bills. It’s not a very fast scanner, it doesn’t have battery for very many pages, but for incoming mail, perhaps some music scores and such, it’s quite good.

It scans to color JPEG which makes the files a bit large and gives many shades of white and black, and light bleed from the surroundings is actually a bit of a problem, especially in paper folds. But this is all forgiven with its ease of use: turn it on, insert paper, and it’s saved to either the internal storage, an SD card (my preference) or a USB key. The reason I prefer the SD card is simply I had it laying around, and it’s easy to take out and insert into a card reader.

The reason I use a card reader is simply that the device doesn’t transfer the images quickly off it. But if you’re not in a hurry, that’s even easier. When connected to your computer, it will only charge or transfer files, there’s no way to hook it up to a scanner program, and if you start scanning, it will eject the storage area first. This was a surprise to me, but no problem. The only problem I have with it isn’t even with the device, but with my iPad. For the iPad to recognize the images on the SD-card through the photo connector, you first need to rename the scanning folder to DCIM. It would be nice if either the iPad would look through more folders on the SD-card, or if IRIScan had a possibility of calling the folder DCIM. Then it would REALLY be portable scanning

All in all, I’m very happy with the device. I use it for incoming mail, and it’s quickly done. Please find attached a letter scanned that has not been processed in any way.

iPad 2 delivery status in Denmark

Like many of you, this morning I went on the Apple Store online and ordere my iPad 2. I’ve had a chat with many shop keepers today, both Eplehuset, Elgiganten and Humac. What seems to be the genereal consensus is that less than 10% of the iPads they had asked for have been delivered. So there is a major shortage. My idea was that Apple would prioritize their own channels, but my order from early this morning when they opened is scheduled for delivery in more than a month! So I guess I was wrong, and just like so many others I’ll just have to wait…

Mis-update

Whoops, I seem to have killed my themes, plugins and uploads dir when upgrading… not good. So there might be some dead links that should have had content around. For that I apologize. I’ll do my best to restore them, but should you discover anything missing while surfing around on my blog, do tell.

The state of SOAP on the iPhone

I’ve been developing apps for the iPhone since the early betas of iOS 2.0, and one of the things I’d like back then was to use SOAP services. Back then, Apple had an old, half-implemented command-line program called wsmakestubs that you could use to generate some stubs that half worked. That program has not been updated, nor has any more SOAP support been added to iOS itself.

What has changed, though, is the eco-system. First off all, we can talk about it and share experiences. Secondly, people have made and shared interesting stuff. One of my favourites is SudzC. It’s very interesting, but has been stuck in alpha for a while. Commercial offerings such as WSClient++ are also interesting, but what I’ve found is that, for the most part, I don’t need all this support I was looking for.

Hand-crafting the XML is easy enough. Just grab SOAP Client and fire of a request, then get the raw request and modify that XML. Likewise, check out the raw response and use XPath to grab the parts of the answer you need. Fire off the request with ASIHttpRequest just to make it easier. All in all, getting hooked up to your SOAP service shouldn’t take long.

For examples of using XPath, check out this example at Stack Overflow.

So back to the topic, the state is that it’s not well supported, but it doesn’t need to. Doing it yourself has become easy with great supporting frameworks for requests and XML handling in the iOS eco system.

Nice iPhone simulator theme

@adurdin has made a skin for the iPhone simulator that may wear less on your eyes when you’re sitting there developing all day: .
Visit his blog for instructions on how to install it.

Hidden Java pitfalls

The kind of errors I hate the most are the ones you cannot even find in the documentation. When you get no compiler warnings, and even an incentive from your preferred auto-completion tool to go straight into them.

Todays such error is the following:

byte[] buffer = /* something that fills the buffer with the contents of a string*/; String stringBuffer = new String(buffer, Charset.forName("UTF8"));

What’s wrong here?? Compiles fine, looks fine…. let’s read the doc… fine. Except, as it turns out, for long buffers, it will truncate the string and add a trailing …. So you need to do something like this instead

String stringBuffer = new String(buffer, 0, lengthOfBuffer, Charset.forName("UTF8"));

That gives you a correct string, not truncated and not with a … at the end. *sigh*

libpd for iOS with Cyclone support, sample project

I mentioned libpd for iOS a while ago, and now I found that it’s ready to be played with. But as soon as I wanted to play with spectral analysis, I started missing tools, so trying to get cartopol~ and poltocart~ to work, I ended up putting in support for all the Cyclone objects. When the work was done (it compiled and ran fine) I put it on GitHub: https://github.com/niklassaers/PdTest02WithCyclone. Many thanks to Richard Lawler for giving me some guidelines about how to do this. (If I made no sense in the above, you should check out Pure Data)

Nå trykkes hva som helst i avisen

Seriously cool vacuum cleaner

Mac and AirPrint printing with the HP LaserJet 1020

Today, let’s get your iPad/iPhone printing from the HP LaserJet 1020. The 1020 isn’t officially supported by Mac OS X but always has been able to print using the 1022 driver. In my case, I’ll have it connected via an Airport Express, but this works fine also if it’s connected directly to your Mac. Having it connected to the Airport Express another place in my house just makes it more fun.

First of all, we need to have AirPrint Hactivator (make sure that you’re running OS X 10.6.5 or later and have iTunes 10.1 installed) installed to do iOS’ AirPrint. Leave that to last and you have to remove and add your printer once more, and we don’t want that.

Then get the drivers from Apple (~350mb download, ~560mb installed) and install them.

Finally, have the printer connected to the Airport Express (or your Mac) and turned on. Go to System Preferences, and hit the ‘+’ button on the lefthand side. Select your printer (which will have ‘Kind’ say ‘Bonjour’ if it’s connected to the Airport Express, or ‘USB’ if it’s connected to your Mac via USB). Select the printer (HP LaserJet 1020), in the ‘Print Using’ dialog, select ‘Select Printer Software’, and select ‘HP LaserJet 1022, 1.3.0.261’, not any of the Gutenprint versions. The 1022 printer is virtually the same but also has a network interface of its own. When you’ve selected that, hit ‘Add’ to finish adding your printer.

Congratulations, you can now print from your Mac and your iOS devicie! (assuming, of course, that your device is on the same network as your Mac is)

Rejseberetning fra Christina og Niklas i Queensland, Australien

Kære alle

Så har jeg omsider fået tid og mulighed til at skrive videre på Niklas og min rejseberetning fra Australien, nærmere bestemt Queensland.

Vi fløj fra Sydney til Brisbane den 10. november, og boede de første 3 nætter hos Patrick, en af Niklas venner fra studietiden i Brisbane. Hyggeligt for Niklas at møde sin australske ven igen, og Patricks hustru var også meget gæstfri. Desuden havde de en lille søn på 5 måneder, og to dejlige siameserkatte, så det føltes meget hjemligt. I Brisbane var vi bl.a. i Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, hvor jeg prøvede at holde en koala samt håndfodre kænguruer og vi betragtede alle de andre mange dyr, ikke mindst den meget aktive platypus, der var svær at løsrive sig fra igen. Niklas fik selvfølgelig taget en masse billeder af alle dyrene, der var mere eller mindre fotogene

Da Niklas boede i Brisbane fra 2000-2001, havde han en god fornemmelse for hvad vi skulle se og gøre i Brisbane sammen, så nogle af aktiviteterne var gåture i den botanisk have som ligger lige ved siden af universitetet, samt gåture langs South Bank Parklands, hvor vi også havde en fælles barbeque med nogle af Niklas venner. Der er ganske mange dyr i parkerne, og især om aftenen og natten kan man være heldig at opleve de vilde dyr på nært hold. Vi fik bl.a. fodret opossums og set adskillige øgler i forskellige størrelser.

Efter Brisbane kørte vi til Noosa, som er et virkelig dejligt område med skønne strande, nationalparker og gode shopping muligheder. Vi så koalaer i træerne, da vi gik i nationalparken ud til havet og derudover er det altid skønt med en tur i regnskoven eller i bølgerne ( i hvert fald når vandet som her er over 20 grader varmt).

Fra Noosa kørte vi videre nordpå til Rainbow Beach, der har fået sit navn efter de forskellige farver sand på standens klitter. Her legede vi atter med bølgerne og desuden oplevede vi en smuk solnedgang på Carlo Sandblow. På vejen fra Noosa til Rainbow Beach kørte vi dog først forbi Great Sandy National Park, hvor jeg benyttede chancen til en ridetur i bushen og langs stranden. Ikke en billig fornøjelse, da jeg som øvet rytter skulle have en tur kun sammen med en instruktør, men det var pengene værd at galoppere af sted langs vandkanten på en kæmpelang hvid sandstrand. Desværre har jeg kun billeder af hesten, som hed Amber og jeg i skridt, da Amber var en af Equetons hurtigste heste, så instruktørens hest kunne på ingen måde følge med, og Niklas kom først ned på stranden, da vi var på vej tilbage.

Mens vi havde vores bil parkeret ved vores guesthouse i Rainbow Beach tog Niklas og jeg på en to dages guidet tur til Fraser Island, verdens største sandø. Her havde vi to fantastiske dage med Woody, vores forrygende guide, der sørgede for perfekt timing til alle øens mange smukke naturoplevelser. Det var virkeligt dejligt og forfriskende at bade i ferskvandssøerne, og vi fik set dingoer, havskildpadder og en masse fugle samt selvfølgelig en masse mere eller mindre stikkende insekter. Slanger har vi faktisk ikke set nogle af endnu, men som vores guide Woody forklarede os, så gemmer slangerne sig i 95 % af tilfældene sig for menneskene, så de fleste slanger ser os, men ønsker ikke at komme i kontakt med os, så vi ser ikke dem. Desuden er det mest slangerne på jorden, man skal være bange for, så man behøver ikke at spejde efter slangerne i træerne eller i vandet. Mht. edderkopper bor de mest giftige enten i huller ved trærødder, ( de er sorte, behårede og noget støre end en 5 krone) eller også laver de spindelvæv i hjørner, hvilket gør sig gældende for Redbacks. Edderkopperne ønsker heller ikke nærkontakt med menneskene, så medmindre man er så dum eller uheldig at komme til at genere dem, er der ikke særlig stor risiko for at blive bidt.

Toiletoplevelser i Australien kan dog af og til være en spændende oplevelse, da man aldrig helt ved om der kommer til at være edderkopper, øgler, kakkelakker eller andre store insekter til at holde en med selskab. Tilsyneladende er træer, planter og insekter såvel som nogle dyrearter væsentligt større her i Australien, hvilket betyder, at her er der en mellemting mellem fluer, hvepse og myg, der er på størrelse med en humlebi og som desværre stikker væsentligt hårdere end myg, og ligeledes har det med at forfølge deres ofre meget insisterende. Så jeg har for en stund sat min næstekærlighed til stikkende kæmpefluer på standby, og har opdaget et hidtil ubenyttet talent for at klaske fluer. Faktisk var jeg den absolut bedste til denne disciplin, da Niklas og jeg for et par dage siden var på den guidede tur sammen med 10 andre personer på Fraser Island. Meget underligt at blive betragtet som personen med den mest dræbende præcision og timing, men vi har vel alle sider af os selv, som kun sjældent dukker op til overfladen. I øvrigt kunne fluerne bare have holdt sig væk fra mig – de havde fået en advarsel…

Nå, men før jeg begynder at fortælle om alle diverse typer dyr og insekter i Australien, må jeg hellere komme tilbage til rejseberetningen (sorry, men interessen for dyr og naturen generelt er også et af mine fremherskende karaktertræk;)

Afslutningen på Niklas og min 2 dages tur på Fraser Island, blev nemlig ganske dramatisk og mindeværdig. Fraser Island er som sagt verdens største sandø, og køreforholdende er mildt sagt vanskelige med løst sand, tidevand og klipper. Adskillige busser og jeeps er derfor i årenes løb kørt fast i sandet, og når de først er det, bliver det sjældent med et heldigt udfald. Tidevandet tager hurtigt køretøjerne og efter en omgang saltvand samt tonsvis af sand, er det de færreste køretøjer, der klarer at starte igen. Stor var hele gruppens spænding derfor, da vores bus kørte totalt fast i det våde sand tæt ved strandkanten med indkommende tidevand. Med kun én skovl til at grave bussen fri var opfindsomheden stor, og der blev brugt hænder, sandaler og pinde til at grave med. Efter et par forsøg lykkedes det på et hængende hår med tidevandet og bølgerne i hælene at få bussen kørt væk til stor jubel.

Da vi kom tilbage til Rainbow Beach igen og fik hentet vores bil, gik turen efter lidt mislykket aftensmad på en cafe, der havde puttet enorme mængder af chili i min salat, videre til vores næste overnatningssted, en lille hyggelig kystby ved navn Burrum Heads, hvor alt tilsyneladende lukker kl. 20 om aftenen. Men vi nåede at få aftensmad for anden gang og fik derefter en god nats søvn i en meget rummelig hytte med plads til 6 personer.

Formiddagen derefter blev brugt på en solid omgang brunch, gåtur langs strandpromenaden, samt træning i kørsel i venstreside for mit vedkommende, der modsat Niklas ikke tidligere har prøvet at køre i venstre side af vejen. Til de af jer som endnu ikke har stiftet bekendtskab med vestreside kørsel, kan jeg oplyse, at det er ganske uvant at skulle skifte gear med venstre hånd og at blinkeren er i højre hånd, mens vinduesviskeren modsat er i venstre hånd. Man bliver lidt højre/venstre forvirret, så forhåbentligt starter det ikke forfra igen, når vi er kommet tilbage til Danmark

I går, fredag den 19. November, ankom vi til Town of 1770, som er opkaldt efter det år da kaptajn James Cook, som den første brite gik i land i Queensland. Meget passende har vi derfor valgt at bo i en cabin i Captain Cook Holiday Village, hvor der ifølge Lonely Planet skulle hoppe adskillige kænguruer rundt, men indtil videre har vi nu kun set fugle i træerne samt rigtig mange kalkuner, hvilket er et yderst almindeligt syn i Queensland.

Aftenen i går blev brugt på at se nærmere på området, så vi gik ned til stranden og marinaen og spiste aftensmad. I nat begyndte et forfærdeligt regnvejr, som desværre har varet hele dagen. Heldigvis havde vi planlagt at skulle begynde dagen med at vaske tøj, og derefter fik vi planlagt vores videre rejse nordpå til Cairns. Vi booker overnatningsstederne efterhånden som vi kommer frem, men det er bedst at have gjort det nogle dage i forvejen, da man ellers kan risikere at det ønskede hotel, guesthouse eller hostel har alle dobbeltværelser optaget.

I eftermiddags benyttede vi regnvejret til at besøge et lille museum jeg gerne ville se, da the Miriam Vale Historical Society Museum bl.a. havde uddrag fra Captain Cooks dagbøger såvel som aboriginals nedfældede oplevelser af det første møde med Captain Cook i Queensland. Min interesse for historie og fremmede folkefærd fornægter sig ikke, og da jeg i 2003 skrev bacheloropgave om mødet og de positive relationer mellem pelshandlere/opdagelsesrejsende og de indfødte i nordvest Amerika, var det et kærkommen gensyn med Captain Cooks dagbøger.

Sidst på eftermiddagen trodsede vi regnen og blæsten og kørte op til det yderste af Josephs Banks Conservation Park for at gå en tur. Et smukt sted og det er altid fascinerende at kigge på de voldsomme bølger, der slår imod klipperne nedenfor. Jeg holder mig dog altid på behørig afstand af klippekanten – ikke noget med at snuble og falde 100 meter ned!

I morgen tidlig kører vi af sted til Airlie Beach, hvorfra vi den 22.-23. November tager på en to dages bådtur rundt til Witsunday Islands. Fra båden kan vi snorkle i koralrevet og ellers kommer vi i land på de forskellige øer, der byder på mange skønne oplevelser.

Den 23. November om aftenen kører vi til Eungella Holiday Park, hvor vi skal bo tæt ved Eungella Nationalpark, der er et af de bedste steder af se Platypusses, og derudover er der mange skildpadder og fugle.

Den 24. November om eftermiddagen kører vi videre til Townville, hvor vi har booket tre overnatninger i et guesthouse, så vi har tid til at opleve byen, se Harry Potter 7 og komme et smut til Magnetic Island.

Den 27. November om morgenen kører vi op til Cairns, der er vores sidste destination. Før vi atter sætter kursen mod Danmark og en 36 timers rejse den 29. November, skal vi dog først opleve lidt af Cairns samt på en bådtur til Green Island. Men de sidste oplevelser må I høre om en anden gang. Der er nu kun 10 dage til Niklas og jeg er tilbage i Danmark, og det virker surrealistisk at vi nærmer os den 1. December, her i ”sommer” varmen. (Dog ikke mere surrealistisk end at jeg har købt en juleCD med gamle juleklassikere, som jeg allerede har hørt på min Ipod, men nu har jeg jo også altid været lidt af en julefreak).

Vi glæder os til at se jer alle sammen igen, og ikke mindst vores kat Silver

På gensyn i Danmark, Norge eller hvor i verden I bor ?

Vi har vedhæftet et alsidigt sortiment af billeder, der viser et udpluk af vores oplevelser. God fornøjelse

Knus og kærlig hilsen fra

Christina & Niklas

PS) I er meget velkomne til at videresende e-mailen til venner, familiemedlemmer og kollegaer, som vi ikke har e-mailadresserne til her på ferien.

PPS) Pga. manglende internetdækning er denne mail sendt med en dags forsinkelse.

Rejseberetning fra Christina og Niklas i Hong Kong og Sydney

Kære alle

Her kommer en rejseberetning fra Hong Kong og Sydney:

Niklas og min månedslange ferie begyndte i søndags (den 31. oktober) med, at
vi kl. 9 om morgenen tog en taxi til Esbjerg Banegård, så vi nåede toget i
god tid. Efter de obligatoriske forsinkelser fra DSB pga. sporarbejde og
andre forhindringer, nåede vi kun 30 min forsinket frem til Kastrup
Lufthavn, hvor vi skulle med flyet til Hong Kong via en mellemlanding i
London.

Flyveturen forløb fint, selvom det var en laaang tur, men jeg fik set et par
film, samt afprøvet diverse måder, man kan sidde og ligge i et flysæde på
Economyclass.

Undervejs havde jeg også bemærket, at min krop som sædvanlig i begyndelsen
af mine ferier, havde fået et mindre breakdown, men da dette mere er reglen
end udtagelsen, tænkte jeg ikke nærmere over, at jeg var blevet lidt syg.
Dette skulle jeg imidlertid blive gjort meget opmærksom på ved ankomsten til
Hong Kong.

I Hong Kong hersker der nemlig lov og orden, og tilsyneladende er der et
departement for selv vanding af træer og endda de mindste skrænter har fået
en gul plade med et registreringsnummer. På samme måde bliver de indrejsende
personers helbred tjekket nidkært, hvilket i første omgang sikres ved
varme/feber detektor, der ved varmeskanning viser, hvis der er nogle
personer, der har feber, når de ankommer til landet. Dette vidste jeg
imidlertid ikke, så stor var min forundring, da jeg på vej fra flyet ind i
Hong Kongs lufthavn bliver stoppet af en mand i kittel og med maske for
ansigtet, der insisterer på at måle min temperatur i ørene. Han konstaterer,
at jeg har feber (hele 37,8) og derfor ikke uden videre kan tillades adgang
til Hong Kong i tilfælde af smittefare. Jeg beordres straks at tage en
ansigtsmaske på, og følge med en sygeplejerske. Det viser sig, at jeg skal
tale med en læge og jeg skal svare på en masse spørgsmål, så de kan få
udfyldt nogle papirer om min sundhedstilstand. Heldigvis klarer jeg frisag,
og får lov til at rejse ind i landet sammen med Niklas.

Faktisk nærer jeg en stor respekt for effektiviteten i Hong Kong lufthavn og
Hong Kong generelt, og når man tænker tilbage på, at det var i Hong Kong, at
Sars epidemien først brød ud i november 2002 og i løbet af kort tid dræbte 3
civile samt en læge, forstår man godt, at de med alle midler forsøger at
undgå en epidemi igen. Fodring og kontakt med frie fugle er derfor forbudt.
Et påbud jeg imidlertid ikke kunne holde, men jeg blev da heldigvis ikke
pågrebet og sat bag lås og slå for at fodre en gråspurv med kage på en cafe
J

Bortset fra en lidt skrantede helbredstilstand, (der også fik medført, at
den mand som skulle tjekke mit pas samt indrejsepapirer til Sydney tre gange
spurgte mig, om jeg havde tuberkulose!) har Niklas og jeg indtil videre haft
en fin ferie med mange gode og spændende oplevelser.

I Hong Kong nåede vi bl.a. i zoologisk og botanisk have, hvor dyrene til min
store glæde havde det rigtig godt, og der var ansat adskillige personer til
at passe dem. Desuden var der gratis adgang som et tilbud fra offentligheden
til alle indbyggere og besøgende i Hong Kong. Måske Kultur og Fritid i
Esbjerg Kommune også skal varetage en zoo på et tidspunkt? I så melder jeg
mig frivilligt til at passe dyrene

Tirsdag nåede Niklas og jeg også at tage bjergtoget op til The Peak, som er
det højeste punkt i Hong Kong med en fantastisk udsigt, og dejlig ren luft,
som en kærkommen afveksling til Hong Kongs hektiske byliv med meget bilos.
Derudover var vi på markedet for at købe kopitasker, hvor det var
obligatorisk at prutte om prisen, som det i øvrigt lykkedes mig at få ned
med 50 %.

I onsdags skulle vi have været en tur ud til en lille fiskerlandsby, men
Niklas have glemt at trykke på gem på sin Iphones alarmklokke, så vi vågnede
først omkring 10.30, da rengøringsdamerne forsøgte at komme ind på vores
hotelværelse. En hurtig ændring i planerne og vi tog i stedet af sted til
Hong Kong Heritage Museum, der helt klart også var et besøg værd. Aftenen
gik med galopløb på Sha Tin væddeløbsbane i selskab med Markus, en af Niklas
mange fætre, der i øjeblikket er i Hong Kong for at skrive på et ph.d.
projekt. Jeg lod være med at spille på nogle af hestene, men det var et
spændende studie at iagttage adfærden hos de personer, som gik op i
væddeløbet med liv og sjæl. Der er en helt speciel stemning før et løb går i
gang og hestene er kommet på plads i startboksene. Ved flere af løbene måtte
der desuden målfoto til for at afgøre hvilken hest, der havde været et
mulehår længst fremme over målstregen.

Dagen efter, i torsdags, gik rejsen sidst på dagen til Sydney. Først nåede
vi dog at strække benene i Kowloon park, selv om det begyndte at regne, så
det var en lidt blandet fornøjelse. Desuden tankede vi op på Pacific Coffee
Company, der er et af de få steder i Hong Kong, der serverer almindelige
vestlige sandwichs, kage, og drikkevarer.

Jeg mærker en tydelig uoverensstemmelse mellem min egen og kinesernes
definition på mad. Kineserne har tydeligvis et mere bæredygtig og mindre
fremmedgjort forhold til spisningen af det hele på alle dyr. Så man kan både
få serveret fiskehoveder eller kyllinger og ænder mv. med hovederne og alt
skindet på. Eller hvad med indbagte grisetæer og kyllingetæer? Efter et par
mislykkedes forsøg med at spise på lokale asiatiske restauranter, var der
derfor næsten tale om hamstring fra Pacific Coffee Companiet.

Heldigvis går jeg dog en lys fremtid i møde. Her i Sydney kan man nemlig få
almindelig morgenmad, der hverken indeholder risnudler med fiskeboller eller
blodigt og uigenkaldeligt kød. Det eneste kinesiske mad, jeg indtil videre
er blevet glad for er deres the, hvilket i øvrigt er meget heldigt, da the
serveres ved samtlige måltider

Mht. tidsforskellen mærkes det i øvrigt tydeligt, at der er omkring 10
timers forskel mellem Sydney og Esbjerg. Vi var næsten kommet over vores 7
timers jetlag fra Esbjerg til Hong Kong, da vi i går morges (fredag) ankom
til Sydney og fik lagt endnu tre timer oveni. Fredag bar derfor præg af
træthed, hvilket selvfølgelig også kan skyldes manglen på søvn. Man sover
ikke særlig godt i et tætpakket fly, så det bliver helt sikkert bedre efter
en god nats søvn i en seng.

Vejret i Sydney lever i disse dage ikke op til forventningerne og de lokale
går også rundt og fryser. Normalt plejer der at være omkring 25-26 grader,
men de sidste par dage har der kun været 15-18 grader og regn. I morgen
bliver ikke bedre, men i morgen og mandag skulle der ifølge vejrmeldingerne
blive godt vejr med solskin og 20-25 grader. så det glæder vi os meget til J

På den positive side er vi ikke blevet forbrændt af solen, og der er stadig
rimelig stor sandsynlighed for solskinsvejr langs Great Barrier Reef mellem
Brisbane og Caines.

På trods af manglen på energi i går nåede vi dog alligevel at gå rundt i
Sydney og spadserede i Royal Botanic Gardens samt Hyde Park. Desuden fik vi
set Operahuset og Niklas købte billetter til os til Arabian Nights, som vi
har været inde og se kl. 14 her i eftermiddag. Heldigt at vi kunne få
billetter med så kort frist og det har været en perfekt inde aktivitet på en
regnvejrsdag samt en meget passende ”før” fejring af min 30 års fødselsdag i
morgen J

Mærkeligt at fylde 30, men jeg vænner mig nok til det

De øvrige aktiviteter i dag har først og fremmest været sightseeing og
shopping. Der er nogle seriøs fede butikker i Sydney, men jeg bliver
desværre nødt til at begrænse mig pga. at det bliver svært at presse flere
ting ned i min kuffert. Niklas fik købt adskillige gadgets i Apple butikken,
mens jeg nøjedes med at købe en Australian Sweatshirt med en kænguru på. Jeg
var dog stærkt fristet til at købe et par rigtig flotte kjoler og nogle seje
sandaler men jeg holder stand endnu.

I morgen er endnu ikke planlagt i nøje detaljer, men en tur til Taronga Zoo
Park for at besøge bl.a. næbdyrene er et kvalificeret bud. En anden mulighed
er vi tager til Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park, der skulle have et rigt
dyreliv, her i blandt en koloni af koalaer J

Mandag skal vi skifte til et andet hostel, og derudover besøger vi enten det
store Akvarium eller Australien Museum, som er Australiens største
naturhistoriske museum.

Tirsdag tager vi på en guided udflugt til Blue Mountains, før vi onsdag
morgen atter sætter os ind i et fly og rejser videre til Brisbane.

Jeg har vedlagt nogle billeder til at illustrere rejseberetningen. Og ja –
beklager længden på rejseberetningen, men detaljerigdom er nu engang en del
af min personlighed.

Anden del af rejseberetningen forventes at komme om et par uger, undervejs
mellem Brisbane og Caines.

Jeg håber, at I alle har det godt.

Mange venlige hilsener fra Christina

PureData on iPhone

Wow, the libpd guys make it possible to put Pure Data patches in your iPhone app. I’m definitely going to make an app based on this, if nothing more then just for the heck of it. Time to brush up on my PD skills, I’ve been using Max/MSP for too long See the article

Roo & Spring Security

Hatim has written a very nice blogpost about Roo and Spring Security, including source and going into a good level of detail.

ROO-1537 & ROO-1538 resolved

I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but I’m a big fan of both Roo and the guys behind Roo. Big thanks to Alan & James from the forum post, ROO-1537 and ROO-1538, as of git version a474dc7b95613fae564f0e0fa50d89a6818bd753, and tested today one day later, my scripts run flawlessly through the tests! Which means, we can continue with Tiles. Stay tuned!

STS 3.5.0.RC1

The guys at SpringSource have too many links to STS 3.5.0.M3, finding 3.5.0.RC1 was a bit hard, so if you’re looking for it, go here: http://www.springsource.com/products/eclipse-downloads

1236: MySQL replication problem solved

Ever seen this before? Got fatal error 1236 from master when reading data from binary log: ‘Could not find first log file name in binary log index file’ I had that after a MySQL server in my replication loop went down. When it came up, the next server in line gave this replication state ‘Relay log read failure: Could not parse relay log event entry. The possible reasons are: the master’s binary log is corrupted (you can check this by running ‘mysqlbinlog’ on the binary log), the slave’s relay log is corrupted (you can check this by running ‘mysqlbinlog’ on the relay log), a network problem, or a bug in the master’s or slave’s MySQL code. If you want to check the master’s binary log or slave’s relay log, you will be able to know their names by issuing ‘SHOW SLAVE STATUS’ on this slave’, which was quite logical since the end of the bin-log had been corrupted due to external circumstances.

This should be a simple

STOP SLAVE;

CHANGE MASTER TO

MASTER_LOG_FILE=’bin.000nnn’,

MASTER_LOG_POS=1;

START SLAVE;

on the node that had stopped replicating, but this is when the 1236 error kicked in. As very often with 1236, the node that had gone down hadn’t updated it’s binary log index file (servername-bin.index in this case, yours might have a different prefix) so I had to manually add that in the index file. One more thing to remember, restart the MySQL server after updating the index file. Then replication should happily resume again once you hit START SLAVE; on the next mysql server in the replication ring.

PS, take care, the CHANGE MASTER seems to flush the tables or something, it doesn’t simply set some variables, so depending on the load on your server this might take several minutes

Main composition

While resolving the test problems in the last code, let’s look at what we get by doing a

mvn jetty:run

The application has a header on top, a footer in the bottom, and a menu on the left hand side. This is in line with the Composite View pattern described in the Tiles tutorial:. To recompose this layout, see src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/layouts/layouts.jspx. In there you find that what we want to work with is , but working with this file will let you get the basic layout you want. The different attributes are found in layouts.xml, and they reference their respective files in /WEB-INF/views, so that should get you started making a nice template

Tiles for Roo

I love Roo! Ben Alex and his team have made a great job making starting a Spring project a breeze. However, I’ve shied away from using Java for XHTML/JS/CSS since 2003, so while I know the underlying technologies with Roo (JPA, the databases, Spring, JUnit, Tomcat, etc etc) I don’t know Apache Tiles at all. So I figured I’d like to learn it, at least until Roo 1.1 hits in a few weeks, when I’ll probably want to learn GWT. Stay tuned…

So, for learning this I’m going to make a project I’ve been planning ever since I released my awesome tuner for early music musicians: Well Tempered for the iPhone: Open Temperament. It’s going to be an open database for tuning temperaments. So, first step, register the domain (let’s hope this isn’t going to be one of those many great ideas that are parked on a domain due to lack of time ), done, and let’s get the basic Roo script up:

project -topLevelPackage net.opentemperament
persistence setup -provider OPENJPA -database HYPERSONIC_PERSISTENT

entity -class ~.entities.Family -testAutomatically
field string -fieldName name

entity -class ~.entities.Temperament -testAutomatically
field string -fieldName title
field string -fieldName description
field string -fieldName originalAuthor
field reference -type ~entities.Family -fieldName family

entity -class ~.entities.OnlineUser
field string -fieldName fullname
field string -fieldName email
field reference -class ~.entities.Temperament -fieldName onlineAuthor -type ~.entities.OnlineUser

entity -class ~.entities.Note -testAutomatically
field string -fieldName name
field reference -type ~.entities.Note -fieldName enharmonicTwin
field number -fieldName indexFromA -type java.lang.Integer

field reference -fieldName startingNote -type ~.entities.Note -class ~.entities.Temperament

entity -class ~.entities.Comma -testAutomatically
field string -fieldName name -notNull
field number -fieldName ratio -type java.lang.Double
field number -fieldName ratioInCents -type java.lang.Double
field reference -type ~.entities.Comma -fieldName alias

enum type -class ~.enums.IntervalType
enum constant -name MinorSecond
enum constant -name MajorSecond
enum constant -name MinorThird
enum constant -name MajorThird
enum constant -name PureFourth
enum constant -name PureFifth

entity -class ~.entities.Deviation -testAutomatically
field reference -type ~.entities.Note -fieldName lowestNote -notNull
field enum -type ~.enums.IntervalType -fieldName intervalType -notNull
field reference -type ~.entities.Comma -fieldName deviationType -notNull
field number -fieldName deviationValue -type java.lang.Double

field set -class ~.entities.Temperament -element ~.entities.Deviation -fieldName deviations

controller all -package ~.web
logging setup -level DEBUG
security setup

json add -class ~.entities.Family
json add -class ~.entities.Temperament
json add -class ~.entities.OnlineUser
json add -class ~.entities.Note
json add -class ~.entities.Comma
json add -class ~.entities.Deviation

perform eclipse
perform test

Waiting for the Apple TV

The new AppleTV with iOS inside has me very excited as a developer and a media consumer. But, unfortunately, after the new AppleTV was announced, the old Apple TV is still on sale here in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. What gives, Apple? You neglect the most technophile part of Europe, both with the iPad and now with the AppleTV, without an obvious reason. I emailed support a few weeks ago, and they asked me to check back when the AppleTV started shipping. So now I guess we’ll have to drive to Germany to pick one up, just like with the iPad. Lucky for me that’s easier than for the Norwegians.

Kind of Magic

From a concert September 11th in Esbjerg, Casper, Kristian and Thomas from Kind of Magic

Virtual bank-run on Eik Bank?

Eik Bank, who in 2007 bought the Danish part of Skandiabanken and thus got me as its customer, is in trouble. The share has fallen from ~86 DKK in august to ~30 DKK today, the board has resigned, the Færoe government is wondering if they can bail it out. Apparently the 9,1 million DKK guarantee the Danish government gave is worthless, the same article notes that the security behind the bank is stock in the bank and a failed construction company, so now they’re frantically trying to sell the Danish part, the one they bought in 2007. The Danish Finance Ministery guarantees that all deposits are safe, but nowhere do I see that means that customers will actually be able to access their money/pay their bills. A similar uncertainty was in Norway when the Icelandic bank Kaupting was put under administration and people’s money were safe but unavailable. (English readers, see this summary article on Eik Banks trouble)

This is where it gets interesting: The Danish part is an Internet only bank. The customers are people who are used to using the net, and thus quickly find out what’s going out. They usually also have a second bank, so all the ~100.000 customers going online and transferring their money to another bank should be a relatively quick thing. Thus we have a virtual run on the bank. Not queues as we know them, but lots and lots of transactions. And besides the run, who is going to want to buy an server-infrastructure with ~100.000 empty accounts?

So how serious is this? Just me pulling my money? Well, two days ago an ATM refused to talk to Eik Bank anymore, the first time I have experienced that. No problem with my other cards. Then todays headlines. Quite serious, and the news in danish TV isn’t helping them either. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. How this plays out will probably shape internet-only banks for a very long time to come. And that’s a banking concept I’ve been very fond of since I became a Skandiabanken customer in Norway a long, long time ago.

A whole lot of changes

Today I’ve done what I should have done (and in part did) a long time ago, get my blog up again, retire other blogs, integrate those posts here and modernize this blog. I did update WordPress a while back, adding a new design, but this time I’ve actually completed the look and made it, well, less fancy. It’s the content, not the design, and until I get someone to actually make a working design, a slightly customized standard-design will do well for me.

My blog had been offline for a while due to a bad combination: server formatting (I changed from running ESXi with FreeBSD on top to just FreeBSD) and laziness. I’m integrating my photoblog and early music blog, and ~10 years of blogging plus two blog integrations made for an awful lot of dead links. But the weather is awful today, so I’m in the process of fixing them up too.

Anyway, my plan is that a fresh look, having the old content up-to-date and letting it be the hub of what I do online, I’ll actually get around to write interesting stuff again, something I’ve not done on a regular basis for a while. Having it the way I want it should help for motivation. So, new improved blog… let’s see what comes

Esbjerg Tidlig Ensemble

Let me introduce to you Esbjerg Tidlig Ensemble, the ensemble where I’m privileged to be a recorder player. Right now we’re planning our christmas concerts and we have time for one more. So if you’re quick and get in touch with me, we can come and play for you and your audience this christmas

Hiding files from iTunes file sharing

In my SheetMusic iPad application I want my users to be able to import new sheet music, get it back again for printing, and still keep the database and other working files away from the user. Luckily, hiding files is easy, even with file sharing enabled. Just prefix your files and directories with a dot, and they will be as hidden to iTunes as they always have been to Finder

Facebook/Address book syncing

I got an email today from two of my friends who had sent an email to everyone notifying that their email had changed. Not willing to do this work every time someone changes something I thought, I can just grab this via Facebook. A while back I used Address Book Sync (http://danauclair.com/addressbooksync/) and that was great, but one day it stopped working. I checked it out again, and although the new version 1.4 locks up while syncing, it actually does some work while appearing locked, and after a while it had chewed through my friends list and was ready to update my friends. It categorized them in matched and unmatched, so I started by syncing everyone who was matched. That seemed fine, but it synced photos more than phone numbers and email addresses, which is what I’m after. A couple of tests revealed that I was missing emails, adresses, phone numbers and homepages. Hmm… not quite there yet. What do you use? What do you recommend?

Roo / Spring-Security - done right

There’s a great example of how to do spring security in Roo right here: http://bitbucket.org/jeduan/spring-roo-password/ Grab the code and read via

hg clone http://bitbucket.org/jeduan/spring-roo-password

SSL: Apache CRT => Pound PEM

To convert a certificate generated for Apache to a PEM file usable for Pound, do this:

openssl x509 -in mycert.crt -out mycert.pem
openssl rsa -in mycert.key >> mycert.pem

Now your certificate that was generated for Apache’s SSL is ready to be used by Pound

Face recognition in Lightroom 2

Frustrated about having Faces in iPhoto and not in Lightroom? Frustrated that it’s then in Aperture, but not Lightroom 3 beta 1 and 2? Frustrated about not hearing about it being a priority in Lightroom at all? And still addicted to Lightroom? Yupp, me too. But this night, for reasons not related to this post, I thought, hey, perhaps Picasa can help out? What I found is too good to be true, so it’s probably going to have all kinds of weird side-effects. But for now it seems to be great! You see, Picasa doesn’t move the files out of place, and it works with XMP (which Aperture does not, even though it claims to). And of course, I save all changes in an XMP sidecar. This great article simply states that all face detection will be written back as metadata in the file, and even updated into the XMP, so that I can just read it back into Lightroom! That sounds fantastic! So right now I’m scanning my entire library and look forward to a lot of tagging!

Audible on iTunes fix

I’ve had a problem forever that when iTunes closes, it forgets the password to the iTunes store, and it forgets the password to my Audible account. I’ve Googled it once or twice but couldn’t find the answer, and since I hardly ever close iTunes except for boots, and since Quicksilver is so fast to open 1Password to retrieve my passwords, it’s only been a minor annoyance. But today I wanted it fixed, and Audible has actually provided a few solutions. The last one worked for me, I moved the /Library/Preferences/com.audible.data.plist out of place, relaunched iTunes, entered the password, closed and reopened iTunes again, and it still works. Super! The new and old files differ not in size, but the key is different and the old file had some flags set on the file.

Quick fix for Bootcamp

A Mini Server (two disks, no superdrive) became redundant in our setup, so I used it to test a few things. At the same time I needed Visual Studio, so I dedicated one of the drives to Windows 7. After installing it with bootcamp, the mini would reboot as Windows, but if I pressed option and selected OS X, and rebooted after having used OS X, I’d get a “no OS” flash and the mini would reboot, find no OS, reboot again and loop. If you ever get this problem, the fix is easy: Press the option key and select boot into OS X, then go to System Preferences, Startup disk, select your OS X disk, and press restart. It’ll now behave correctly and reboot into OS X at startup.

managedObject problems resolved

I’ve been having some issues using the

- (NSManagedObjectModel *)managedObjectModel

function. First it didn't load well, but Marcus Zarra helped me out there on Stack Overflow. The funny thing was of course that up until now, it'd worked great on the phone but not the simulator. That solved, it stopped working on my phone, but I was working so much in the simulator I didn't pay a lot of attention to it.

Anyway, today I wanted to have that figured out, and I came across this great post by Jeff Lamarche, and while it didn't explain to me why I had multiple versions on my phone but not my simulator, even after I had wiped the application and application data completely, it allowed me to load the correct model. So now everything is running smoothly and the app is coming along great.

If you've been having the same kinds of issues, I hope these links help you as much as they did me.

SharePoint 2010 and BDC

Are you having any of the following problems?
- In SharePoint Designer 2010, when you select “External Content Types”, you get “The Business Data Connectivity Metadata Store is currently unavailable.”
- The Business Data Connectivity in Central Administration under Manage Service Applications gives you “Unrecognized attribute ‘allowInsecureTransport’. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive. (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\Bdc\client.config line 34)”
- When you create a new Business Data Connectivity service you also get “Unrecognized attribute ‘allowInsecureTransport’. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive. (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\Bdc\client.config line 34)”

If so, hurry over to and request the hotfix for SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Aperture 3 and XMP: A showstopper

It seems that Apple doesn’t want people switching from Lightroom to Aperture. In this support document, Apple confirms that they only import strictly what they HAVE to to say that they comply with XMP, but they don’t support XMP enough to make it useful. Expect to loose all your labels and ratings when importing from Lightroom, and don’t expect to have the data transfer back to Lightroom in case Adobe releases Lightroom 3 and you’d rather stick with that after your 30 trial days are up.

If you’ve run in to XMP issues with Aperture 3, do feel free to leave a comment.

Sample Spring3 / Hibernate3 / TestNG app on GitHub

In case anyone’s interested I posted a sample Spring 3 / Hibernate / TestNG project on GitHub today. My motivation for doing so is to have a code base a project can start from, and a starting point for discussions on StackOverflow and such.

Canon Pixma Pro9000 MkII on Snow Leopard

Recently I bought a Canon Pro9000 MkII printer. About a week later, Snow Leopard was released. I decided I wasn’t too fond of the drivers that came with Snow Leopard and wanted the “official” ones. However, they won’t install on anything beyond Leopard, unless you do some tweaking. If tweaking is what you’d like, you’ve come to the right place. In this little post, we’ll install them.

First, use Disk Utility to create a new image that’s read/write enabled from the CD. Select the CD (CANON_IJ) from within Disk Utility and hit the “New Image” button at the top of the window, between “Enable Journaling” and “Convert”. Select “read/write” from Image format and save the image to your desktop. You should get a window titled “Disk Utility Progress” saying Creating Image and Reading CANON_IJ. Let it finish

Having done that, eject your CD, and be sure you have your image mounted. (Double-click it if it’s not). Open your terminal, and write

cd /Volumes/CANON_IJ
find ./ -name getosversion -print

That should give you:

.//Set/Printer Driver/Pro9000 Mark II series/PrinterDriver_Pro9000II series_071700.pkg/Contents/Resources/getosversion
.//Set/Printer Driver_Alt/Pro9000 Mark II series/PrinterDriver_Pro9000II series_101800.pkg/Contents/Resources/getosversion

Now replace these files with a string saying your OS is version 10.5.8:

cat > /tmp/getosversion
#!/bin/sh
echo 1058

press ctrl-d

chmod a+x /tmp/getosversion
cp /tmp/getosversion "Set/Printer Driver/Pro9000 Mark II series/PrinterDriver_Pro9000II series_071700.pkg/Contents/Resources/getosversion"
mv /tmp/getosversion "Set/Printer Driver_Alt/Pro9000 Mark II series/PrinterDriver_Pro9000II series_101800.pkg/Contents/Resources/getosversion"

You’ll get an “Operation not permitted” when mv tries to set the file owner, don’t worry about that.

Voila, you’re good to go. Run the setup from your image. You’ll get a warning saying the OS version is unsupported, but we’ve just made it so that it will complete correctly. So just click OK when you get the warning, install the printer as you would before and enjoy

Phone numbers of Oz

Went through a bunch of old junk and found my old SIM card from when I lived in Brisbane. Popped it into my iPhone, luckily I had disabled the PIN code. Settings, Mail-Contacts-Calendar, Import SIM Contacts… voila, I have my REALLY old phone book back. I wonder if those guys still have the same numbers.

Seng til salgs

Dreamzone Gold B20 140x200cm Box- & overmadrass fra Jysk i Esbjerg.
Mederne er i lyst trÃ¦

LÃ¦s mere om sengen her:
http://www.jysk.dk/4/5/6/11/3209557/a/catalog

LÃ¦s mere om hvor fantastisk en Gold Dreamzone er her:
http://www.jysk.dk/4/5/s24897/ag/catalog/

Billeder:

BÃ¥de madrassen og topmadrassen er i sÃ¦rdeles god stand, og det er stadigt mer end 10 Ã¥rs garanti fra Jysk. Vi er ikke rygere og har ikke dyr, sÃ¥ sengen er frisk og fin.

Vi er lige flyttet ind i et nyt hus og kunne desvÃ¦rre ikke fÃ¥ en sÃ¥ stor boxmadras op trappen til vores sovevÃ¦relse. Derfor er vi nÃ¸dt til at sÃ¦lge den og kÃ¸be to enkeltsenge i stedet. Dette er en helt fantastisk seng, som du/I vil blive MEGET glad for.

Sengen blev kÃ¸bt pÃ¥ tilbud til 6800 kroner (original pris 7599) + meder. Du fÃ¥r den for 2500, inklusive meder, og henter den selv i Esbjerg.

Sengen har pocket-fjedre som er slanke, rÃ¸rformede fjedre i hÃ¦rdet stÃ¥l lagt i hver sin stofpose. Det giver en smidig og lydlÃ¸s konstruktion med mange individuelle stÃ¸ttepunkter. Boxmadrassen har dobbelt lag med fjedre, sÃ¥dan at nedre lag har 150 mini-bonell-fjedre per m2, og den Ã¸verste har 250 fjedre/m2, fordelt i 5 komfortzoner som giver en mere ergonomisk korrekt soveposition, og sengen har latex-polstring som leder varmen vÃ¦k meget effektivt og giver god stÃ¸tte.

Topmadrassen bruger memory-skum, dvs varmeregulernde skum, vejer minimum 45 kg/m3, former sig efter kroppen, virker trykaflastende og Ã¸ger blodcirkulationen.

Se mere her:
http://minreklame.ipapercms.dk/JYSK/DK/2008DKOKT3fdsjkkfds/?Page=3

Vareinformation fra Jysk:

Vareinformation:
Madrastype: Boxmadras
StÃ¸rrelse: Bredde: 140 cm, LÃ¦ngde: 200 cm, HÃ¸jde: 25 cm
FjederindlÃ¦g: Pocket/Mini-bonell
Fjedre/mÂ²: 250 / 150
Zoneinddelt: 5
HÃ¥rdhed: Medium
Polstring: 37 kg/mÂ³ koldskum 30 mm
Bolster: 75% bomuld/25% polyester

Inkl. topmadras
Kerne: Memory-skum
Kernekvalitet: 50 kg/mÂ³
KernehÃ¸jde: 5 cm
Quiltning: 200 g/mÂ² uld + 4 mm koldskum + 300 g/mÂ² polyester
Bolstermateriale: 75% bomuld/25% polyester
HÃ¸jde: 9 cm

Meder i lyst trÃ¦

Well Tempered price rise

As announced in the end of january, the price for Well Tempered has increased, and will continue to do so for the next couple of months. If you want it at a reduced price, be sure to get it now before the next price increase.

Well Tempered is an early music tuner for the iPhone. It has lots of baroque and renaissance temperaments that are configurable for any key. The sound shapes it has available makes it so that it can be used pleasurably with soft instruments such as the bass recorder, and be heard through louder instruments such as the cello, even when placed on the notestand quite far from the cellist ear.

Visit the Well Tempered Homepage for a demo video

Well Tempered Status

I’m working on a couple of updates for Well Tempered, both for adding more temperaments and for refining the UI after a couple of users have been so kind as to provide useful suggestions. That’s great, I love that kind of feedback! What’s not so good is that Well Tempered is now being distributed outside the AppStore, without my consent. I’d love some feedback on how to handle such trials. I really hope people getting it through those channels consider upgrading to the retail version as there have been some important improvements since the initial release.

Clang for iPhone

Jeff wrote a nice Clang introduction on Clang that I ran on my Well Tempered code to check out what bugs I could find. I had some convention breaches and a couple of minor leaks that would turn up when the program was closed and its state was saved, so while not beating me up, it was great to get the feedback on what parts I had been ignoring so far. I hope to bring these advices into my code from now on, and I’m sure I’ll be running Clang frequently to get this great feedback

Well Tempered picked up by some blogs

Zicos have picked up the Well Tempered iPhone application after a feature in Synthtopia. The article was also tweeted about. Well Tempered was also featured on iPod Touch Fans by the App Store Bot. Nice to see it being picked up

synthPond

While checking out other OSC applications than pOSCa and OSCar in the AppStore I came across Synthpond lite that looks really cool. Just thought I’d let you know

lasttweet.py

I thought I’d share this little piece of code. Nothing revolutionary, but all right for Twitter maintenance. I didn’t want to be following lots of people that don’t post, so I wrote this little utillity that lists when people posted last time. It requires python-twitter. To get a nice list of who hasn’t posted in 2009, do
python lasttweet.py | grep -v 2009
Likewise, if you want to see everyone that last posted in January and have it sorted by what day in January, do:
python lasttweet.py |grep Jan|cut -d ' ' -f 3-9|sort -n
Here follows the code:
`
api = twitter.Api(username=’username’, password=’somepassword’)
page = 1
users = api.GetFriends(page=1)
friends = []
friends = friends + users
while(len(users) == 100):
  page = page + 1
  users = api.GetFriends(page=page)
  friends = friends + users

for user in friends:
  lastPost = user.GetStatus().AsDict()[“created_at”]
  print lastPost, user.screen_name
  tl = api.GetPublicTimeline(user.name)
`

Three little iPhone apps

Good fun: today I submitted three little iPhone apps for review, hopefully they’ll be up in the AppStore within long. The first is Well Tempered, my tuning application, that’ll be for sale. It’s for tuning early music instruments such as harpsichords and organs and will have many early music temperaments. Do see the product page. Then there are pOSCa and OSCar, free OSC controllers that’ll get electronic musicians up from their chairs and performing. Can’t wait to have them online and I wonder what people will think of them. I like them very much. Updates will of course be provided as necessary.

Great Canon 5D MkII Review

This review is a really nice and thorough reveiew

Supercollider and bubble game

Here is a nice link to Patrick using the bubble game to create OSC signals that will generate sound in SuperCollider. Soon, he can use pOSCa and OSCar as well

Finding more Lightroom duplicates

I have a problem: I’ve put all my photos I’ve taken the past ten years into Lightroom. To ensure that I didn’t miss any, I’ve put in all from my server, all from my backups etc etc etc. In short: duplicate galore. Now, I’ve sorted by filename and removed duplicates. I’ve sorted by capture time and removed duplicates. That made me go from 88k to 74k. But I still have duplicates. They have different times because some were posted in my galleries. They have different sizes because some were thumbnails. They have different names because some were exported and sent via mail. And some are more odd, or perhaps a combination of them all. But in 74k photos, finding duplicates and deciding which one to keep is hard!

I have made a solution: a little Python script that will go through the Lightroom database, generate a 9x9 thumbnail of the photo, and compare it to all other photos. It takes a couple of hours to run on my 74k photos, helped me clean out 2k duplicates with only two false positives. That’s not bad!

What it does is that it sets the label with a string representing the thumbnail, and then you sort your grid view by label and voila, you’re good to go. Since it goes for the raw files, it will find duplicates even if they have been corrected or worked on afterwards:

Another example is that if you’ve changed the colours a bit around, it will still find it:

So that’s all very nice. Here’s the source code, under BSD license. Put it in your Lightroom directory together with Lightroom.lrdata. And oh, btw, if it blows up anything at all, do tell me, but don’t hold me responsible. This hasn’t been tested on much. But if you read the code, I think you’ll find it can do very limited harm

Challenges ahead:

RAW files not supported yet
Doesn’t work too well on the different size problem, must find a better solution
Faster run times?

Hope you can use it as well as it helped me

The competition

I’m making OSC controllers for the iPhone, and I just sat down to check out the competition. Some projects, like TouchOSC and OSCemote are for pay. However, they are both out-competed on features and looks by Mrmr by Eric Redlinger. His version is soo much closer to what I have in mind, implements all the features by the two others and is free. That’s a mighty good package you have there, Eric.

Status on my week is that I’m not to fond of doing the web-bit, so I’m not giving myself any exposure either. The functionality is coming nicely together for the apps, and I’m starting to get a couple of beta-testers, but I’ll probably spend some time finding a couple more. Right now I really need a graphics artist and someone who enjoys doing CSS

iPhone OSC apps, day #1

Jay, revived a project from back in April (Lighting Matrix for Max) from back when the iPhone SDK was NDA and only beta #3 was out. Well, for my first day of serious iPhone dev, I revived it, made it run with the current version, ripped out the Max/MSP part and inserted OSC instead. Good fun

Burger King is at it again

For those of you who attended my bachelor party, be sure to read this article from Eksta Bladet

launchd problems?

Does your console log look much like

Oct  8 22:23:56 MyComputer com.apple.launchd[210] (com.company.app.task): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
Oct  8 22:24:02 MyComputer com.apple.launchd[1] (com.company.app.task)[39664]): posix_spawnp("/Library/Vendor/Folder/task", ...): No such file or directory
Oct  8 22:24:02 MyComputer com.apple.launchd[1] (com.company.app.task)[39664]): Exited with exit code: 1
Oct  8 22:24:02 Halloumi com.apple.launchd[1] (com.company.app.task): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

then chances are you’ve installed software and deleted it again. We all do from time to time, some more frequent than other. This can be quite annoying when debugging a problem, as well as fill up space and drown more important messages. launchd is the cron of OS X, but you won’t find /etc/launchd.conf. Instead, look in /Library/LaunchAgents and ~/Library/LaunchAgents and you’ll find the ones that started the problem

Bergen Etude

Photos from Ringve 2008

The photos from the Ringve summercourse at Sund, 2008, are online, if you should have them and haven’t received my mail with the super-secret password, drop me a line and I’ll send it to you

Hands up!

Twitter

It seems you cannot use the iPhone 2.0 firmware without a Twitter account, so I got one. First I started by adding some developers that I think do cool stuff. But then I got to thinking, who of my friends and contact are in there? Twitter isn’t great at bulk importing, so to help me, I found TwitterWho where I could mark all my contacts in my address book, copy their names, paste it into the box and off it went and found everyone. Yay! How if I can only find a way to automatically look up Facebook friends on Twitter….

Filmscanner

I’ve been looking into what to replace the Nikon CoolScan 4000 that broke and Nikon didn’t manage to fix, and in that process I started a discussion on photo.net where people came up with some really nice answers. Check out the discussion

Cocoa and SOAP tutorial

Having dumped WSMakeStubs, I’m looking at the WebServices Core again, and this time I found that Todd Ditchendorf has written a nice tutorial about it. I’m working my way through it and it looks promising

3 broke my network

I bought a 3 EazyInternet mobile broadband modem and subscription this week, thinking it would be sweet with 7,2Mbit on the go. And it works fine, cool thing having on my mac. But, alas, when installing it, the installer disabled my Airport WLAN and wired Ethernet interfaces, so currently I’m locked to using *ONLY* 3 network, which is *REALLY* slow compared to the wired network at work and the WLAN at home.

Ribe 1300 years

Just a quick link to Ribe’s 1300 year celebration website that Christina is working with.

WSMakeStubs, a nightmare?

I’m not quite sure of the state of things, but fact is I’ve had lots of problems with WSMakeStubs, and I’m looking for alternatives. WSMakeStubs makes stubs for webservices in Objective C (and C++, but I haven’t used that). WikiBooks have an excelent article on what to watch out for and tips when using WSMakeStubs, you can check it out here. I’m seriously considering just wrapping the SOAP XML myself and doing some XPath on the result, but come on, Apple, it shouldn’t have to be that hard. My bugreport (#5944524) hasn’t been touched, and I guess for a good reason: Apple must have zillions of them, it seems everywhere I hear about WSMakeStubs I hear how it’s not working. I hope they put this tool into shape quickly, it would be a real benefit, especially with all the iPhone programming going on. Just look at how easy this is in Visual Studio, how easy Axis2 makes it. Even PHP libraries like nusoap are easy to use compared to WSMakeStubs. Apple, I’m sooo looking forward to WSMakeStubs 2.0

She said "yes"!

11 days ago now, me and Christina were on Cuba on vacation. It was three years since we met, I proposed, she said yes. We’re expecting to get married in september

I\'ve been accepted as an iPhone developer

I finally got my mail from Apple with the acceptance. (ok, so I got it May 8th but I was in Cuba so I didn’t know) The fee is payed and the certificate should come “any moment now”

Objective C for Max 5

I bought my upgrade of Max 5 yesterday, and I’m of course eagerly waiting for my license code. Trying to put Objective-C and Cocoa into all that I do, I found RÃ©my Muller’s blogpost about writing Objective-C externals for Max. Also, Electrotap has posted ObjectiveMax on Google Code. It’s dual-licensed GPL/Commercial which of course make BSD licensed code and closed-source-but-free a non-option. I’ll probably try out both and port much of my Java stuff over to have it working at greater speed and tested with Max 5

On the same page, RÃ©my writes about Bonjour for Max/MSP, and with my iPhone development efforts such as Lighting Matrix I’m planning on implementing a Bonjour interface as an option to UDP. (I’d also like to try out bluetooth just like the Wii interface aka.wiiremote, but that’s not a near-future plan as I’m not sure it’s supported through the official SDK yet)

"Unknown architecture" with iPhone development

Every now and again I get “Unknown architecture” when trying to compile. I found this post that has the solution in the bottom: *

From the “Project” menu, choose Edit Active Target “ “. Select the “Build” tab. In the search box, look for FRAMEWORK_SEARCH_PATH. Highlight the row with a search path in it. Press to completely wipe out the path.
I don’t know quite why there sometimes are more paths there that I don’t want, but it helps anyways.

Lighting Matrix for Max

I’m still a Max/MSP junkie (Max 5 was released today!!) and so I’m happy to present my new interface for Max: LightingMatrix

As you can see, LightingMatrix is a matrix of black buttons that light up when you press them and then fade down. When I get my certificate and get to put it on the iTunes App Store, you’ll see that you can use multiple fingers. The values are sent via UDP to Max where you can use it just like any other control. I look forward to seeing what splendid software-synth, lighting, moving robot or other fun stuff you’re going to be making with this. The power of tapping with many fingers is available, now also for Max/MSP (and Jitter)

DashBoard

It’s been a while since I wrote about what I’m doing, but nothing much has changed: I’m working with the iPhone SDK making different applications. Today I’d like to demo the application that made me start working with the iPhone: DashBoard. I first got interested with dashboards when I tried to make something userfriendly with Performance Point and found IMA’s dashboard. Now I’ve created a simple, easily customizable dashboard for the iPhone. Because of Apple’s NDA I cannot release it, but I believe I can show it to you, running on the simulator:

In this video you see a logo on top and nine KPI buttons below. Each KPI button has a logo, a number, a unit, a last-updated date and a colour to indicate if it’s as it should be, falling below target or significantly below target (in other words, if there is a problem), using green, yellow and red. When you tap a KPI button, the report is displayed. The report is just a webpage, so I’ve linked up a webpage for every KPI button showing just a normal webpage, but more interestingly I think: PDF reports. As you can see, it works beautiful with 154 page reports, even though I guess for actually using this, you’d use a page or three with lots of graphs.

PS, yes, my conservatory exam preparations are going well

Debugging Cocoa

Debugging Autorelease is a great wiki entry at CocoaDev. EXC_BAD_ACCESS, meaning accessing an object you’ve already released (most likely) or have not yet instantiated (it happens) isn’t that fun to debug. Luckily, the NSZombie environment variable works when developing for iPhone as well, and I could find the error that had cost me most of my day. Yay! Other good resources for debugging are Debugging Techniques and Mac OS X Debugging Magic

The iPhone shortage

The mac world is high on expectations because of what is apparently a shortage of iPhones. New version coming up soon? Yes, probably. People hope for a 3G version. I hope for one too. I expect it to be announced in June and available end August. People think of a 32gb version. Sounds logical. But didn’t people notice Intel’s announcement of their Atom processor? Here’s ZDNet’s take on it. I would expect this to mean that an iPhone based on this architecture would be launched, perhaps silently even. Just a bit more horse power, very fitting for iPhone OS 2.0. Perhaps with a 32gb option. But still EDGE, no 3G. Then a 32gb version with 3G could be announced in June and become widely available in august.

NASA cuts Spirit

It’s all over the news: due to budget problems, NASA puts Spirit into hibernation and cuts back on the activity for Opportunity. Where do I sign the protest list?!

Exception handling in Cocoa

Being fairly new to Cocoa I enjoyed reading O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter’s article on exception handling with Cocoa.

No atos(1) in the iPhone dev kit?

One thing I love about Java development is the ease of finding bugs through stack traces. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that Cocoa likes being so verbose about it, it prefers just giving memory addresses to the function. CocoaDev has a nice article about how to add this that’s based on Apple’s documentation, but it requires /usr/bin/atos that I cannot find in the iPhone SDK. That doesn’t mean it’s not installed, but at this time I have no way of knowing that it is. I have no idea how I should let people beta-test my products and sending automatically back intelligent bug reports without this tool. Ok, I have no idea on how Apple plans to allow for betatesting applications if the AppStore is the only application distribution method, and I have no idea how people do this otherwise as atos(1) isn’t included with the default OS X system either. But I would really, really like to include stack traces with bugreports from beta testers.

Google Data for Cocoa/iPhone

According to iPhone Atlas, Google has pushed out a new release of its GData Objective-C Client Library that can be used with the iPhone SDK. Yay for Google! Check it out! For my last job I used Google Spreadsheets and Google Documents quite a bit, and it’s great being able to integrate it. Making a little word processor with synchronization to GDocs should be fairly trivial now.

iPhone dev continues

My work with the iPhone SDK continues, working on three clients to our backend services at the moment. I’m very much looking forward to blogging about this as it’s cleared at work. But as you probably have noticed from my posts, working locally and synchronizing with the back-end is what I believe most iPhone applications are about. Do quick and stuff you need to remember on the iPhone, work out the details from your computer, keep everything in sync. That’s why I’m excited about Google’s data integration. That’s why I’m excited about integrating SQLite. That’s why I spend a lot of time working with SOAP integration. And of course, it’s all good fun. I’m tempted to say that working with a back-end is a lot easier than doing everything local. At least the satisfaction of seeing the work you do on the little screen influencing the real world is a lot better than it just influencing that screen.

One thing I’m miffed about, though, is the NDA. They’ve got a 100,000 downloads, and if 1/20t of this is developers, then that’s still 5,000 developers. Where are they all? I can’t find much going on on discussion boards, forums, mailing-lists or whatever. And Apple is only slowly letting them in to their community. I hope they’ll let us in soon, I want to discuss problems I’m having without having people with briefcases coming after me, I want to know what other people are working on, I want the development to be more social. Right now, it’s mostly a one-man game, and that’ll get old very soon

Getting info on private Cocoa frameworks

class-dump is a great tool for getting information about how private frameworks work that you may want to use. For example, iPhotoAccess.framework gave among other classes the following:
`
@interface Base64 : NSObject
{
}

+ (id)stringForBase64:(id)fp8;

(id)base64ForString:(id)fp8;

@end
`

SQLite for iPhone SDK

After asking on the MacRumors forums I was pointed back to FMDB that I had looked at a couple of days ago. FMDB is a Cocoa wrapper for SQLite3. I had a look at it, and after my initial difficulties, I found that I was trying a way to complicated way to use it for my iPhone applications. To add FMDB, simply do the following:

in XCode in your project window, rightclick your “Classes” and Add -> “New Group”, call it FMDB
drag the files from src in the FMDB package into the new group
Rightclick Frameworks, Add -> “Existing frameworks”, select /Developer/Platforms/Aspen.platform/Developer/SDKs/Aspen1.2.sdk/usr/lib/libsqlite3.dylib and press “Add”
Compile, smile and start using it

Mono on iPhone

Way cool, a composer/musician/LDAP-developer has made Mono run on iPhone. Jailbreaked, by the look of it, looking forward to seeing it compile with the official iPhone SDK as well and a Mono Touch library.

iPhone SDK questions and comments

So, two days of implementing ideas, trying stuff out, reading discussions, documentation and watching videos have passed since the iPhone SDK was launched. My dayjob has become developing for the platform, which is great. It’s a fun platform to work with and developing for it is quick. I’m really looking forward to Apple delivering those certificates soon so I can try it out on the iPod Touch (no iPhone in Denmark yet).

So that was rant number one, certificates. Why-oh-why do I need them when I do software development? I would also very much like to be able to share my apps with friends, perhaps even beam them wirelessly over to them. And I should be able to do this with a self-signed certificate like with SSL. Self-signed for development, signed by an authority for production, that’s a good scheme.

What’s up with Bluetooth? Has anyone been able to access it through the SDK yet?

I write applications that want to synchronize with a repository of files on the computer. How can I arrange such a synchronization without making a web service that the user first can synchronize with his computer and then with his ipod/iphone?

Multitasking. Sure, I can save and restore my application for most things. But if I have to download the files I need from the network, the user is going to switch applications. (I’m still looking forward to see how I best should work with webservices) Good thing that
ramond has gotten background-running apps to work, but this will break with Apple’s license, so no idea if this would kill the product on the iTunes App store. We’ll have to wait and see for that

The videos refer to the XCode and Cocoa-dev mailinglists on lists.apple.com, but the moderator on the Cocoa-dev list has made it clear that iPhone development related discussions are not welcome

Funny little thing is the metronome app, clearly made by someone who does not play music. The last beat in the group is the accented one in this app. But it was a nice illustration as some of the first things I want to make are a metronome and a tuner. The tuner is going to be tricky with the floating point instruction set being reduced in the 16-bit Touch set, might have to recompile as ARM. I’m looking forward to seeing it outside the simulator (and finding out if the iPod touch has a microphone )

How do you unit test these apps?

The apps are sandboxed, so no ssh into the phone without a jailbreak I guess. But ssh clients should be trivial now

So, I’m excited about this and working with it. I’m really looking forward to integrating it with our products at work, and I’m looking forward to writing music apps on my spare time (which is going to be limited until my exam June 9th is over). I guess all of these things will be answered shortly after my exam is done.

iPod Touch development

After yesterdays iPhone SDK release, my boss agreed that we should spend some time making a client for our apps with it and got me an iPod touch to work with. Good stuff. The SDK and tutorials seem very good. Strange thing that many of the samples don’t run in the Aspen Simulator. Especially since I need a certificate to be able to deploy them on the iPod, and that certificate is right now not available outside the US. I didn’t expect to need a certificate to develop, I thought that was just for publishing on iTunes. So not being able to deploy those samples on a device and not being able to run them on the simluator, I’m stuck with guessing. I hope that is soon resolved as developing for it is good fun.

Webkit and Webkit/Safari on Windows

I have been using Webkit nightly for the past few weeks. I was not planning on using it much, just trying it out, but it’s so fast that without really intending to, I’ve stopped using Firefox. I never used Safari much because I like Firefox both speed- and feature-wise, but now I’m probably Webkit only. Until something better comes along, of course. Naturally, I’ve been wanting to use it at work, on the Windows Server 2003 R2 servers that I’m developing on. To start of with something safe, I tried out Safari while installing a Sharepoint server. It crashed when only it and the OS was installed. Jikes. On close inspection, Safari only claims to be XP and Vista compatible, but installed without a problem on WS2003R2. Replacing it with webkit was no hit either, both crashed when entering wikipedia.org in the address bar. Having fully installed the server, none of them run without crashing. So I guess it really is XP or Vista only on the Windows platform.

Setup visual studio for sharepoint development

A food obsessed IT developer writes about setting up visual studio to develop for sharepoint without having sharepoint installed on the development computer. Nice instructions and saved me quite a bit of time.

PSF -> JPG converting

FixPicture is a nice little site that helped me with converting a PSF file (ArcSoft PhotoStudio format) to JPG. I had received this file as an attachment by a user who couldn’t know this was a nonstandard format, and since I didn’t have any software that could read it (as far as I know), this site was very useful.

Templates in Sharepoint

I was installing a set of templates on a sharepoint server I’m setting up for work, and I came accross these great instruction on how to install them, since I had the same problem as Matthew in the comments. I even learned that the command line has for-loops. I always assumed this shell had absolutely nothing. Now I just believe it’s very limited. zsh for Windows? (without Cygwin?)

Airtunes is back

Macrumors reports that AppleTV Take Two includes airtunes support! Yay! Finally some light in this dark tunnel. And here I was thinking that Apple had abandoned the technology after leaving it out of new Airports. I’m looking forward to hearing just what it will do. Stream? Play back? Both ways? Bridge?

Esbjerg Tidlig Ensemble in Jyske Vestkysten

ETE had a little note in Jyske Vestkysten today

Pentaho

While Googling I found Pentaho, an open source BI suite that uses the same stack that I used for my last job: MySQL/JBoss/Tomcat/Eclipse. Great seeing there are more out there, and if you’re starting up with BI and prefer OSS, check them out!

Questions Dashboard Users ask

Reading more in The Dashboard Spy I found this great table of questions users ask and how you should answer them when it comes to designing dashboard:

Check out the reference whitepaper by PureShare on Best Practices in Dashboard Design. And for that next great UI design, check out 175+ Data and Information Visualization Examples and Resources

No CoverFlow for shared iTunes libraries

I’m not a frequent user of CoverFlow, but now that I wanted to use it on my shared iTunes library in my living room from the Windows iTunes client I noticed that I cannot select neither CoverFlow nor in an album list. I’m stunned and looking forward to trying it out on my MBP

Named Calculation expressions

Just a quick note on Name Calculations in SSAS, they need to be written in whatever SQL dialect the underlying DB engine (probably MS-SQL) understands. I wanted to make a Sales Margin calculation, and to avoid a Divide by Zero where sale price was zero, my code for this was:
 CASE WHEN Sale<>0 THEN (Sale-Cost)/Sale ELSE 0 END 
Never before have I needed four lines to do a simple IF.

iTunes@work

These instructions are a great 5 minute guide to using iTunes at work. My mini at home already has SSH access enabled, so fire up Putty, make a tunnel, install the helper app and Boom! You’ve got music at work

Mobile phone and smoke detector

This is just the weirdest. Not three minutes ago my Norwegian mobile phone that I haven’t had turned on since christmas suddenly turned itself on, and just a second thereafter my smoke alarm went bananas. I can smell no smoke, no smoke outside, no smoke in the entrance, not anywhere. What’s going on? Normally I would just assume it malfunctioned, but my mobile phone turned itself on! It shouldn’t be able to do that??

Big hands

FrontRow updates

One of my pet project has been FrontRow and using my mini with an Elgato Hybrid and EyeTV as a media centre. At the moment its very quirky since there isn’t much info on making FrontRow plugins, or so I thought. Yesterday I read about PyeTV, an EyeTV integration for FrontRow written in Python using FrontPython. Jay! I love Python! And all this while I had been betting to read about it at Alan’s blog. But he got a girl, so jay for him as well. I’m looking forward to having some time on my hands to use FrontPython and see if I can put together a SNES launcher from FrontRow, integrated with DarwiinRemote. Check out Plugin101 for FrontPython on how to get started. Now, is anyone working on making a clone of the YouTube support that AppleTV has for FrontRow? BTW, check out Sapphire Browser that seems to have started it all

Canon EOS 450

The Canon EOS 450 was announced today, and now DPReview has made a preliminary review of it. I’m sad it doesn’t go past 1600 ISO. Nikon is going for high ISOs now, and Canon has pretty much stood still since I bought my 20D. My wish for the next camera (Canon 50D?) is higher ISO with low noise (low noise at 6400 ISO, boost ISO to 25600 ISO. I can dream, can’t I? But Nikon has low noise up to 3200 ISO so Canon should do its best to do better) and sensor-based image stabilizing. If you need to cut back, Canon, I can do without live view.

Leopard backing up cache

Time Machine included in Leopard backs up your ~/Library/Caches unless you explicitly ask it not to. Just something to make a choice about when setting up your hourly backups. I do my backups to a remote disk, so I certainly would not like to every hour have my last hour of browsing backuped.

Great dashboard!

Indianapolis Museum of Art has the best dashboard ever. If you’re a happy mac user and working with business intelligence, you’ll want to make dashboards like this! (Thank you DashboardSpy for the link)

Designing a better shower battery

The one thing I don’t get with showers is why there always is water left in them. I mean, I get the physics of it, I just don’t understand why I can’t just press a little lever on the shower battery and make the remaining water flow out in the drain. Then I can be sure that no water will slowly go out of my shower and make a damp bathroom, chalk stains or grow bacteria after I’m done showering.

Tab-completion on host-names on OS X

I don’t know if this is bash or an OS X feature, but nonetheless: today I discovered that there’s tab-completion that takes .ssh/config into account! I on-instinct did a tab after writing part of the hostname I wanted and (boom!) there it was, auto-completed with a colon. So to SSH to my mini I did “ssh mi“ and go “scp mini:”. If this is the bash-guys or the darwin guys, I don’t know, I hope to find out. Nonetheless: a big thank-you!

CozyRoc SSIS+

One of my main gripes with Microsoft SSIS is that there is no way to reuse logic. In my data integration task I needed to do the same lookup and translation tasks (typically convert to upper case, replace “ with ‘N/A’, look up column in side table and use the IDs from that table instead) many times, in my case when importing data from an Axapta database. CozyRoc got back to me and told me that they have released an SSIS component that includes new components for reusability of code and flows. Being a coder I had given up on SSIS and rewritten my work in C#/SQL, but next time I’m very much looking forward to using it.

Great MDX resource

In Scott Larsons blogpost referenced in my last post he gives a short but important note: his favourite MDX resource. And I agree: a 62 article series in learning MDX. Since I’ve worked with SQL “all my life” I’ve not bothered to much with MDX, but with this series I’m really looking forward to learning it better. To do the tutorials you’ll need the free MS-SQL 2000 samples (that unfortunately aren’t bundled with neither MS-SQL 2005 nor MS-SQL 2008). You can download them from here. I should note that while it compiles fine with VB6, using it with Visual Studio 2005 left me with a pretty large debugging job. But don’t worry, the data sources are included and that really is all you need to work through the tutorials. For the interface, you’ve got BIDS

Calculated KPIs in PerformancePoint

What bugs me very much about working with KPIs in PerformancePoint’s Dashboard is that you cannot do simple calculations. For instance, I have a sales cube that has the measures unit cost and price the unit was sold for. I would like to say that a loss (price/cost < 1) makes the KPI red, a <20% margin makes it yellow and >=20% is green. In Excel this would be trivial: choose the price column, type ‘/‘ and choose the cost column: voila, you’ve got your calculation. Not so with Dashboard. As Rex Parker from Microsoft writes in the PerformancePoint Team Blog you’ll have to write an MDX query. I don’t believe MDX is for the average business person that PerformancePoint Dashboard is aimed at. But until MS puts together an expression tool that is as least as understandable as Excel, Scott Larson has put together a nice little tutorial to show how to write such expressions with MDX.

I agree with Scott’s comment: I’m beginning to suspect that the use of PerformancePoint, at least in it’s early releases, will require at least functional knowledge of MDX and PerformancePoint Expression Language (PEL) for PerformancePoint Planning, neither of which are exactly business-user friendly

PerformancePoint connection errors

At work I’m looking at PerformancePoint, and being a newbie with this product I of course do all the newbie errors. That’s why I was so happy when finding Nick Barclay‘s blogpost where he explains all about the way-to-common connection errors. Big thank you to Nick.

iTunes duplicates

Not quite happy with any of the programs I found to identify iTunes duplicates, I spent an hour making my own (beats tracking down duplicates. ) I thought I’d share it with you. It’s my first attempt at using OS X’ ScriptingBridge and written in Python. I have no clue if it runs out of the box, I suppose you should have Developer Tools installed. It’s not the fastest beast either, and Python and iTunes both use 50% CPU. But it gets the job done. If you wonder why I give so many parameters to the track class I should say that I plan on reusing it to do some more iTunes housekeeping. The script will mark all the duplicates with one star. Then I can round them up and delete them afterwards.

import struct
from ScriptingBridge import *

class Track:
   def __init__(self, name, album, artist, size, length, track, path):
     self.name= self.str(name)
     self.album= self.str(album)
     self.artist= self.str(artist)
     self.size = size
     self.length= self.str(length)
     self.track = track
     self.path= self.str(path)

   def str(self, s):
     try:
       return s.encode('utf-8')
     except:
       return "N/A"

   def equals(self, t):
     test = t.name == self.name
     test = test and t.album == self.album
     test = test and t.artist == self.artist
     test = test and t.size == self.size
     test = test and t.length == self.length
     test = test and t.track == self.track
     return test

   def __eq__(self, t):
     return self.equals(t)

iTunes = SBApplication.applicationWithBundleIdentifier_("com.apple.iTunes")
lib = iTunes.sources()[0].playlists()[0]
tracks = lib.tracks()
filetracks = lib.elementArrayWithCode_(struct.unpack('>L', 'cFlT')[0])

Tracks = []
Duplicates = []
duplicates = []
for track in filetracks:
  t = Track(track.name(), track.album(), track.artist(), track.size(), track.time(), track.trackNumber(),track.location())
  if(Tracks.__contains__(t)):
    Duplicates.append(t)
    duplicates.append(track)
  else:
    Tracks.append(t)

print len(duplicates)

# Deal with duplicates
for track in duplicates:
   track.setRating_(20)

Not an artist either

Good fun, I just found another blog titled Not_an_Artist

Amazon SimpleDB

I’m a big fan of Amazon EC2 and S3. To be able to use the amount of computing power you need and the amount of storage you need and only pay for what you use is a good way of computing in my view. However, EC2 wasn’t built to run clustered databases like MySQL on, and I’ve had problems finding any service that will let me pay for the capacity I need (cpu time and disk space) and give me a guaranteed query time. Amazon’s SimpleDB seems to be a good step in that direction, and I’m really looking forward to toying with it and hopefully use it for many interesting projects.

Morten

Blog back home

I’ve moved my blog and photoblog back home. A few of my other sites might follow. I’m hoping to have them better integrated so. At the moment people will come up to me and say ‘I saw your home page!’ and I’ll ask them which one. Not a good place to be. I’ve been planning an integrated solution for a year without really having had the time for it, but having it back home might actually do some good for those plans.

Silicon Image 3132 and Leopard

ZDNet posts that you should beware of using Silcion Image’s 3132 chipset that’s used for so many noname eSATA ExpressCards (and the one I have) with Leopard. I have had little success using this with Tiger as it seems incompatible with my enclosure (might as well be the other way around, though)

Interface Builder 3 demo

Having read here and there about how to work with Interface Builder 3 that does not have the “Classes” page like IB2, I’ve found that the following YouTube video shows it way better in 3 minutes than what I had spent hours reading:

Gorm\'s Cat

Kite surfer

The picture

The picture, promised in the last podcast (yes, it’s been too long, but we’ve got material brewing ) is finally here, found on a CD in a big pile of CDs with images

What\'s up with Airtunes?

Airtunes is/was Apple’s way of putting music in other rooms. It came with the Airport Express, but when the Airport Extreme was updated, Airtunes was nowhere to be found. Worse, Airtunes can only be streamed to one target?!? Now that Apple has released yet two new WiFi audio products, the iPod touch and the iPhone, why does they not include Airtunes capabilities? They should be able to both stream music and have music streamed to them! Apple, where is Airtunes heading? I still want the same music in every room of my apartment.

Jeanne a la Mogens

Mogens added some powder to the skin of this gorgeous girl…

La Pavoni seal replacement

I’m replacing the seals on my La Pavoni Europiccula, and I found these instructions on how to do it from How to Operate, Maintain, and Repair Your la Pavoni Espresso Machine. Good stuff, very helpful. Together with La Pavoni’s part overview (the first page), it was a real help. Only thing I couldn’t do was replace the mini rubber gasket because I don’t have ring pliers.

No Airtunes update

Tuesday’s Apple announcement held many goodies, but Apple seems to be going nowhere on Airtunes. Airport Extreme had been updated, but no Audio Out. And with my Airport Express, I cannot simply add more Airport Expresses to play the same set of music in every room of my house: Because iTunes and the Express use Apple Lossless compression to encode music (rather than native MP3 or AAC), you can stream audio to only one unit at a time (source). Dear Apple, wouldn’t you make a nice little plug-this-adapter-in-the-wall-and-get-audio-out Airtunes device that I can put in every room of my house with a stereo, and throw in a remote control or two in the package?

Auto-mount external drives on OS X

Run the following as root to make disks auto-mount during system startup. I use this to have an external disk to put my Tomcat, JBoss and MySQL logfiles on
defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool true

iPhone has BSD subsystem

When Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone would be running OS X, I thought to myself that that’s just what he sais: it will have the same userinterface, but he’s not going to keep the core there: the BSD subsystem. Looks like he has, though, and now people are SSH’ing into the phone. That suddenly made the whole phone very much more appealing. I’ll still need 3G and a decent camera, though. At the moment, my k800i is doing both camera and MP3s all right, but then again, it has no BSD subsystem.

Bjarke

Spy camera

Boing Boing has a link to this interesting article about a victorian age spy camera:

Proud Mother

Young one

They have hatched

Drinking Duck

Anneline

Quick tip

WGBH Radio Boston has posted a live recording from 2003 of The Flanders Recorder Quartet. Download their podcast through iTunes music store this feed, or as MP3

Photo library managers

Well, I’ve been using iPhoto, Lightroom in it’s different beta stages and now I had a demo of Aperture. I’ve been shooting digital for quite some time now, and scanned lots of negatives from when I still shot film and my parents before me. My collection is about 35.000 pictures, spanned over many DVDs and CDs. Pictures that are virutally inaccessible because I don’t know where they are. So I decided a while back to throw them all into a harddrive and try out different programs.

First program I had to ditch was iPhoto. Even iPhoto 6 becomes unusable after about 5000 pictures. It’s just ghastly slow on my Macbook Pro 15” 2,33Ghz Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM. So that’s inexcusable.

Second program was Lightroom, after about 10.000 photos it was very slow. At 16.000 photos it grinded to a halt. Not even half way there. A shame, really, as I really liked Lightroom and had high hopes for it, I have now abandoned it.

I grabbed a demo of aperture, and hit a very convenient limit. Where Lightroom and iPhoto just died more and more, Aperture said:
Aperture has max 10000 pictures
Aperture projects are limited to 10000 master images each. You should create new projects and import your images in batches of less than 10000.
Quite convenient, really

So, what do I do now? Shooting mainly RAW I don’t suppose changing to F-Spot is much of an alternative, especially since it’s proved quite inaccessible on OS X. I guess I’ll have to talk with the crowd that uses iView Media Pro and see how it fares. Do you have any other recommendations?

Finding friends in Social Networking sites

I need Adium for Social Networks. Adium is an IM tool that has ‘em all and runs nicely under OS X. Social Networks are exploding. So I thought it would be fun to look for some of my friends, but after trying to find a few it hit me: there are so many networks. I would have to search each one of them. And what if they join tomorrow? I’d have to search again unless they search for me. I have an account at Orkut, Facebook, Blink and probably quite a few others. I usually don’t log in to them. So I would need something that searches for my friends in all of them when I search, and which could do that over again whenever I wish to check if they’ve showed up. Then I’d probably need some interface to keep my information on all of them up-to-date, and to be able to manage them one way or another. Any ideas for an Adium-like client for social networks?

Sønderjysk Kaffebord \'07

Solution to OS X Mail stopped downloading GMail messages via POP3/SSL

A few times I’ve experienced that OS X’ Mail has just stopped downloading new messages via POP from GMail. I’ve been all around Google’s mail system to try to figure out why Mail and GMail all the sudden won’t co-operate anymore. Not having any luck there I began exploring and found a solution:

For the sake of example, my account will be called username@gmail.com

Go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@gmail.com@pop.gmail.com

In that folder there is a file called MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2. It’s an XML file that contains stamps of when what mail downloaded from GMail. Mine was about 45k large. I quit mail, moved this file away (just in case) and started Mail again. And voila! Mail is downloading mail from GMail via POP3S again. And it picked right up on where it left of.

Freja

Oscar Strand

Pianoman

GlusterFS

GlusterFS is likely to implement S3 storage according to this forum post

Shades of pink & yellow

Staying tuned: Leopard to be released at Vista launch?

Apple launches draws press. If Apple were to release something spectacular at the same time, that would draw a lot of press, downplaying the Vista release. Leopard will be spectacular, and so will iLife ‘07 and iWork ‘07 based on Leopard. To me it would make perfect sense for Apple to release all these three packages at the Vista launch date. I would love it even more if they released it all as one product. They asked us to stay tuned, I’m on my fourth double espresso and shivering with tention!

Art, possibly

MacFuse

Thank you Google, they have released MacFuse. (tip from BSD News) I love FUSE with FreeBSD, but since I usually use FreeBSD for my servers and would like to use FUSE on my workstation, this is great! See Google’s blog entry about it. As I write I’ve got a couple of SSHFS mounts up. For my work, I’m really looking forward to use something like S3FS with Amazon’s S3.

My take on the Apple TV

The Apple TV is a device I have been looking forward to since the iTV prototype was announced. Why would I want this rather than a Mac Mini? Well…. my question is still unanswered. But these were my surprises and questions:

Question: Ethernet and Wifi, does this device work like an Airport Extreme as well? The ethernet plug, is that gigabit ethernet or 100 mbit like the Airport Extreme? (why they didn’t go for gigabit there beats me)
No DVD, No Blueray, No HD-DVD. Seriously, guys, I don’t want to have to run to another room to load my DVD. And if I had a computer in my livingroom, I’d be using it instead of the Apple TV
40 GB HDD is small. My 200GB disk with my iPhoto libraries and iTunes library is full and needs an upgrade. Add movies to this, and 40 GB is too small. On 40 GB you could squeeze in a single HDD quality movie (30GB) and a normal DVD quality movie (8 GB). Two movies and your system is full. One movie only in best quality. Why would I want this?
How is DivX support for this device coming along?
How do they intend to work out 5.1 surround with two analog sound outputs?
PVR - having a built in tuner and recording TV shows and storing it in iTunes, possibly syncing it with my mobile phone (iPhone perhaps some day) or iPod Video. A decent PVR system is really what I’m in the market for these days, and that’s not the Apple TV.

My take so far is that the best Apple TV around so far is the Mac Mini. But I’m sure the concept is great, so I’m looking forward to future revisions. Having said that: the Apple TV has an USB slot. I wonder what they’ll expect us to hook up there. Looks like an USB HUB, a 500GB HDD, an audio interface and a TV receiver so far. That’ll become one expensive Apple TV with a lot of spaghetti cabling. Same with the Mini, though, but that’s after all an entire computer

My comments on the iPhone

Having slept on it and digested a lot of articles, these are my comments on the iPhone announced yesterday:

It runs OS X. In my book that means a BSD platform. I’m looking forward to having this confirmed. I so miss having BSD on my mobile.
WiFi - thank you
Cool browsing interface due to CoreAnimation - great!
No UMTS/3G? Yes, we all know 3G is slow, but EDGE is way slower. What’s up? I really hope the European version will sport 3G
2MP camera? Come on, Apple, that is SO last year!! I thought Apple was supposed to set a standard other would come running after
Max 8GB disk? Ok, fair enough, but you already have that out on the market and have had it for a while. Look at Ritek & co, they just announced 16 and 32GB solid state discs
Why is it not possible to buy music on the run? When I’m over at my friends’ place and we talk about music, I’d love to be able to get the tune right away. But it seems I can’t buy it from iTunes. (I’m sure they’ll fix this soon enough, though )
I must admit I’m skeptical towards the QWERTY keyboard on-screen with no tactile feedback, but I’m looking forward to giving it a spin and see what it does for me.
Google Maps is great! But I already have that on my Nokia 6280.

Further things I’d like to know: is there a camera connector for it? And if so, does the internal software support RAW?

Now, I’m cautious about one thing: warranty. Apple has a reputation to refuse to repair iPods that have been handled extremely nice. I don’t handle stuff nice. My Ericsson mobile phone drowned when I took a dive in the ocean, not long after my Palm 3e took a fly through the air and landing on the floor in an awkward position after being out drinking. I figured I’d smack it all into one, and got the Sony/Ericsson P800 which got a dint in the screen a year after I got it. Figuring I’d only go with cheap stuff from now on, my Nokia 6280 has survived a few rides through the air with no problem. They are even making sports versions that are extra protected. I’m always doing something, always in action, and the stuff that I take along gets a trip trough the air occasionally. So, I’m really going to be looking at how fragile these phones will be. If they’re not, I might just spend the $599 for one. Probably in its 2nd iteration, though

Just a couple of hours more

I’m waiting attentively. Wonder what goodies Macworld ‘07 will bring. I admit it, I’ve become some sort of a fan. But in my defence: THEY STARTED IT! They took FreeBSD and NetBSD and threw a great UI on top of it and sold computers that were set up in a way I liked it with this preinstalled. Hmm….! Waiting….

No Norwegian for me, thanks!

I’m so happy I took the consequences of the last failure trying to fly Norwegian/Sterling that I now flew with Cimberair. The service was swift and great! However, Norwegian is still trying to mess up their customers’ lives (Norwegian link there). Same trouble as last time. What is it with these guys? They make Ryan Air look like choir boys.

Learning the guitar

Rebecca

Wiskey

Portrait

Jump!

Niklas + Christina = Sant

Fishing

Light roast

I must admit I’m getting confused with which roast is which. The two cups I’ve tried this morning have both been what I believe is 160C - 5m, 190C - 4m. It’s very light, smells very nice like chocolate, but with both cups I’ve had (grinded at 5 and then 8) they have been acidy like regular coffee, watery like regular coffee and no more taste. The last cup had a decent amount of crema, but that just goes to show that you can have crema without taste.

45 second difference

What a difference 45 seconds makes! I had a cup of the 176C - 2m, 204C - 3m, 232C - 3m that I roasted the 12th, which is 45 seconds shorter than the roast of the 10th and it’s got so much less flavour. It still tastes nice, but there are big things missing. Very interesting since these 45 seconds were slashed because I thought they’d need to be less burnt, not because I heared a crack earlier.

Different cups

Today has been a quite caffeinated day. I’ve had two cups of the light preset 1 roast, one grinded at 4 and one at 6. Both turned out quite bitter. Luckily my milk frothing is going better by the day, so they turned out to be quite drinkable.

The next I tried was the now four days old 176C - 2m, 204C - 3m, 232C - 3m45s. I dialled in 6 and got a cup with lots of crema and after a while a few drops of oil broke the crema surface. It was not bitter at all and quite tasty, a roast I’d most definately would try again.

I had a second cup of this, dialled in at 8 which also gave me nice crema, oil and a lovely taste. This time I added some amaretto syrup and frothed milk and had a nice tim-tam with it. Umm….

Taste two

Todays cups were the four day old roast of preset 1 (only two handfulls of beans left) and the five day old very dark roast of preset 2.

The preset 1 was the first one to go. The beans made just a double basket at setting 4 on the Rocky. How little coffee two handfulls of beans give doesn’t cease to amaze me. The crema was there but by the end of the pull it was “pushed away” by the last five seconds of drops. There wasn’t too much crema in total, but it looked nice. The taste was really nice, although quite light, not quite unexpected from a light roast. When I cleaned up I noticed the puck had shattered with two large cracks going right through it. I haven’t seen that earlier.

For the second shot, an hour or so later so that the Pavoni had had a long time to cool down, the crema was identical. The cup and group head had been preheated just as in the previous shot and the Rocky was still dialled in at 4. The pull required was still nice, strong and steady. I believe it took about as long time, some 20-25 seconds. The taste was more burnt, which was expected from the very dark roast I had the first day. My conclusion from day 1 remains, I had overdone it with preset 1. This worries me as my variant of Randy’s famous “preset 10” was also quite dark, but I’ll come back to that one another day. This one should be at its prime now and was quite bitter, actually. Much of that “wow”-taste is gone.

Oh well, tomorrow I have some new grinds ready. I haven’t heared back from Risteriet yet regarding a tamper and some fresh green beans, but I’m sure they’ll get back to me in no time. In the meanwhile, there is still loads to learn. For this dark coffee I certainly need to froth some milk. Now, how do I do that?

Note to self: this one will be called “the big eared poodle”, my first latte art creation.

Two new roasts

Having read the iRoast 2 review at Coffee Geek I couldn’t help myself and roasted two new batches: 150g of cold Miscela d’Oro (100% arabica). One roasted at 190C - 5m, 208C - 6m, 232C - 2m30s. The second one was at 196C - 1m, 222C - 3m and 240C - 2m. With these two profiles in addition to the first one (176C - 2m, 204C - 3m, 232C - 3m), it’ll be an interesting day saturday or sunday when I get to taste all three of them.

Todays roast and thoughts

Nothing much new with todays roast, it’s the same as two days ago, but with 45 seconds less in the last stage. My reason for this was that I found that roast to be just a little bit too burnt in smell, and I want to see what implications that has for taste. Also, these beans were directly up from the freezer, so the change for them must have been very drastic.

Regarding grinding, I’ve found this advice: The grind should be just slightly finer than sugar. Kinda sandy but you can smoosh it together with your fingers. However, doing this I get no crema. Using Lavazza or Illy (which are about grinded to about sugar size) I got no crema. Using supermarket beans I get little crema. Using fresh roasted beans I get crema, but just a couple of millimeters, not the excess of crema as seen on many videos and reported by other Pavoni users.

In other news I’m looking at tampers. It seems that there’s more to it than I thought. The La Pavoni Pro I have should probably have a 51mm tamper, but now I’ve found that they make them both flat and convex. So many choices….

Oh, btw, Coffee Geek has a nice iRoast 2 review released two days ago

. Also I found a nice La Pavoni Introduction.

Last roast of this batch

I’m just not concentrating today (too much coffee?) so I’m roasting the last 150 grams of Miscela d’Oro: 160C - 5m, 190C - 4m, 196C - 2m, 204C - 1m, 210C - 1m30s. I was inspired by Randy’s iRoast 2 review and Ryan’s summary of his first day with the iRoast 2. Now I’ve placed my order for a Miscela Due Doppio from Risteriet, which is 80% arabica and 20% robusta. I’ve heared robusta gives more crema, which is what I’m hunting for at the moment. The cups taste spectacular already.

Day 5

Delicious, yesterdays roast turned into a cup with lots of crema. To adjust for the grind I experienced yesterday I dialled the grinder up to 6, but it went perhaps just a tad to fast through this time. But the cup is awesome: no acid, no bitterness, just lots of taste. What a lovely blend. I can’t wait until saturday when these beans should be at their peak.

Day 4 - Too fine grind

Today I was rushing out of the door but had time for a cup of pre-roasted Columbia. When I came back later I tried the beans I roasted yesterday at the same grind, setting 3. To handfulls of beans resulted in a single double-basket of coffee! Yikes! Where does the rest go?!? (or, how much of my bean is really air). I should get a weigth to try this out. Still with my plastic tamper I did what I would think is a decent tamp and a few seconds later I pulled the lever. Exitement…. how much will come flowing? Nothing. Oh well, a gentle pull… nothing. A thighter squeeze… nothing. Increasing up to full body weight and finally a little bit came dripping. An early refill, press ‘til halfway, refill and full length pull with all my weight. Drop by drop, until I had a full cup. Which was still warm, btw, so nothing too wrong there. But the cup was more acidic than the previous cups I’ve had, so this was probably a too fine grind. I’ll let the beans rest for a while and see what happens.

Since I wanted more beans to test with for the light roasted one (remember I roasted just a hand and a half full of beans, so I’m running out of beans if I’ll be using that amount for a single cup). Two cups roasted at preset 1 and put into a paper bag before they go into their own box tomorrow. I have no idea what box that will be, I’m quickly running out of boxes. I’ll probably throw away some more of that pre-grinded coffee.

Preset 1 and the new roast

For this one cup I used half my preset 1 roasted beans, grinding at 2 with the Rocky. The reason I’m going for 2 is that my tamper is still the plastic one (I expect a new, decent one with the next shipment of coffee) and I want as much crema as I can get. The cup was propably preheated in a bowl of hot water, so I should be all set. Boil up the pavoni, release some steam, boil further, have some water through the group head, grind, tamp, pull, refill, pull halfway, refill, pull the entire length. The pull really required a lot of effort, but the shot was nice compared to all the shots before my grinder. Much more crema (let me attach a picture). The coffee was really oily (after having broken the crema and drinking a bit you can really see the oil) but I think the taste from the cup yesterday (and this morning, the preset 2 one) was fuller. But hey, this is the day after the roast. I should let the little bit I have back (probably just one cup) wait for three or four days and try again.

Having read a bit about roasting with the iRoast 2, I tried with the following setting: 150g beans, 176C - 2m, 204C - 3m, 232C - 3m45s. This was following the Sweet Maria advice of up to 6 minutes in the last stage and seeing that most people who had written preferred about 2m30s to 3-4 minutes in the last stage. I don’t know exactly what to listen for when it comes to cracks yet, so I figured that it would probably be done by now. We’ll see for the first cup tomorrow.

Day 1-3

I’ve finally taken the plunge: La Pavoni Professional, Rancillo Rocky and iRoast 2 are all lined up on my kitchen counter. Espresso heaven, here I come. Now, what’s missing is what I can’t buy: my skills. I have had a $50 espresso machine and a $10 grinder so far, and after 500 cups served it can only produce burnt water (you won’t know it until you’ve tasted it), but after this I was sure I wanted something that could make a real cup where I could taste something new.

Well, this was certainly new. I’ve experimented a week with the Pavoni (it arrived a week before the roaster and grinder) and not been able to get a single cup with crema using Lavazza, Illy and extra fine grinded espresso coffee from my local coffee seller. So I was really looking forward to the grinder. Having very excited opened it and followed the instructions, my first cup with Colombia Supremo from FÃ¸tex turned out to have very little Crema (but still more than with my previous cups) but an incredible taste. I was starting to believe.

Next step: roasting. I know nothing about roasting, but the iRoast 2 comes with two presets: light and dark. Figuring I’d try what it suggested first, I roasted some Espresso Miscela d’Oro from Risteriet at preset 2 - dark, and put it in a paper bag overnight. It smelt very burnt so I was afraid I’d overdone it.

Day 2 I wanted to taste it, even though I was skeptical of how burnt it was. Grind, press: there’s crema! Lots more than I’ve had before, although nothing compared to the pictures I’ve seen. The taste? Great! Really, really great. No bitterness, and all I’ve heared about a sweet cup of coffee, I just understood what they meant. And this was after one day, I’ve read peak taste will be at day 4 or 5. Can’t wait. To make the day after more interesting, I roasted a handful of greens at preset 1 - light.

Day 3 - the dark coffee is still very good. The light one I haven’t come around yet as I want to give my tastebuds a chance to go into neutral again. So meanwhile I’m surfing the net to learn what others think of roasting with this machine to see if I can get a third alternative and what I should think about when I’m tasting the next cup. Can’t wait!

Pavoni

Water lilly

Ayaka

Panasonic DMC-FZ7 or Canon Powershot S3 IS?

For a long while I have been recommending my mum to get the Panasonic DMC-FZ7, and now she was finally ready to take the plunge. Of course, when reading up I found that the Canon Powershot S3 IS was out as well and has close to identical features. The differences are: the Canon is twice as heavy, uses AA batteries rather than a propriatery lithium-ion battery, has a shorter minimum focus distance (good thing ) and zooms quicker. After much discussing, she ended up with the DMC-FZ7 as it was lighter and I’m quite confident it was a great choice even though I liked the lens of the S3 a bit better. Price difference? $1.

Owen Morse-Brown\'s duets

Owen Morse-Brown has made a set of CDs if you want to play duets but have no-one to play with. The series contain Telemann Boismortier sonatas.

Kenichi

Jeanne

Episode #2

Here is the second podcast, slightly delayed since production but ready for your enjoyment. The reason for the delay is that neither I nor Mogens have found the picture we promised in the podcast, so we’ll have to get back to you with that one. Greetings from the Ringve Early Music Course here at lovely Sund, InnerÃ¸y, Norway.

Linea

Beware of flying Sterling and Norwegian

This is flying with Norwegian or Sterling: I arrive at Copenhagen airport 1,5 hours early (I had planned on being two hours early but apparently the airport train was malfunctioning). There is one counter and a long line that has not been organised at all. While the line quadruples in size, security from another airline makes sure to move the line so that their passengers can come through. I’ll probably fly with that airline next time.

After an hour in queue for checkin (poor check-inn guy, he was working like crazy), I finally get out, through security (security at Kastrup was actually very fast! ) but they had no gate for the plane until ten minutes before it was scheduled to leave. At the gate the line was equally long, and by the time we were on board we were already very late. But the plane had been late at its previous destination as well, so while we all sat there, the plane stayed put.

After a very long time, the plane was ready to leave. The security announcement on this flight from Copenhagen (Denmark) to Oslo (Norway) was totally gibberish. None of us understood anything in what I think was a mix of Hungarian and English with a Spanish accent. Everyone was confused, so in case of an emergency, we’d be toast. The crew was very friendly, though, and one guy really did his best to make us feel at home, even though we had to communicate in bodylanguage. For the record, I speak Danish, Norwegian and English and usually don’t have trouble understanding people in these languages.

The flight was luckily quite eventless even though the cabin crew kept ringing the bells all the time so I was wondering what was wrong. In case of an emergency, I probably would have stopped noticing and not get the message, even if I spoke Gibberish fluently. When we landed at Oslo Lufthavn Gardermoen, though, the bridge couldn’t connect to the airplane, so we were stranded there. At first we figured it was just a few minutes, but it quickly became 20 minutes with no airconditioning and the summer sun boiling the airplane. I was seriously planning on using the emergency exit. The interesting thing was that the alternative, a car with stairs, was right outside the airplane. However, no-one of the people working there seemed interesting at using it.

When coming in the air station everything seemed fine, and after a little wait (about 10 minutes) the luggage would start arriving. Only problem was, it couldn’t get out as the belt was already full with left-over luggage. After a thirty minute wait when I got my luggage, the same super-sized Barbie doll, a couple of televisions and lots of luggage had gone around a zillion times and blocked all the luggage. The luggage system even broke down once and some guy came and fixed it. Breakdowns happen, and he fixed it quickly, but I spoke to the people there and asked if they would call someone to remove the luggage that wasn’t collected. They said it was a problem that people went to buy tax-free instead of collecting their luggage, but I pointed out that the tax-free was virtually empty and that this was a problem and they should call someone. The woman I was talking to said it wasn’t their job, so the airport should hire someone. So if anyone from OSL reads this, your staff seems to think that you should hire someone to make a one-minute phonecall to alert the airport crew that excessive luggage should be removed from the belt.

Why is my conclusion not to fly Sterling or Norwegian? Sterling and Norwegian share flights and thus share responasability. If they were having problems, they never informed us or did anything to make the journey more comfortable. They clearly have negotiated very bad deals with the airport if they cannot have more than one check-in open and if they cannot get the airport crew to service their passengers. And really, I saw other airlines getting the crew to do a great job, and I was really envious, so next time I’m flying with someone else. You might argue that you get what you pay for with a cheap airline, but the plane ticket was not priced significantly lower than the alternatives, at about 850 DKR I can fly with many alternatives.

So, Sterling and Norwegian, straighten up. You not only lost me as a customer. Being a foreign student I’m a regular customer on a budget. You’ve probably lost half the plane passengers as well if the outspoken complaints is something to go by. Bad service is bad business, straighten up or you’ll go bust: either way I expect better airline service.

For myself, I note that the entire deal took me one hour less than taking the bus. For the record, this was flight DY 905 July 15th from Copenhagen to Oslo, scheduled for departue 9.20

Lebanese blogging

Reading up on what is happening in Lebanon I found The Lebanese Bloggers and a Letter from Beirut that I think are a very good read in addition to following the news. These bloggers are there telling us their story and about the confusion. Go read

What do signatures mean?

I’m quite used to transposing music to where it fits my instrument, even though I know some people don’t approve of this. I think what is important to know when doing this is what character is implied by using a certain signature. Since I don’t have a copy of Mattheson’s NeuerÃ¶ffnetes Orchestre I looked for the quote and found this page that quotes Mattheson directly on what they mean. Here is a translation to English by Babelfish

Cokin systems

I’m planning on getting a filter system for my lenses, and I’m investigating the Cokin P system. I found this article that is really nice with lots of images and explanations on how to use such a system.

mxdublin

From the website: mxdublin is a Java/Python framework that can be used to sequence generic events with pure-data or max. In short: very cool, an easier way of Max/MSP or PureData scripting for us who are more into lines of text than objects and lines. Basically they use Jython and mxj, which means that I’m looking forward to mxdublin~ based on mxj~ Downloading and getting ready to install.

Easy FFT tradeoff explanation

I found a very nice explanation of the tradeoffs when doing an FFT by Fred Marshall here. Look at the last post on the page.

The fake screenshots: OS X/Window integration

Recently two screen shots appeared of the upcoming Leopard. Everyone is screaming fake, even the author sais so. But a solution like in the first picture would actually make complete sense. I mean, for OS X Apple has basically been making a nice layer that everything interfaces. First up, the reason I switched: X11. X11 integrates quite nicely with OS X and keeps in style with Aqua without loosing the X11 feel. Classic has been running on OS X from day 1 (not sure if it’s still running on those shiny Intel Macs), and after a boot-up the applications integrate nicely with Aqua but retain the Mac OS 9 feel. In comes Mac OS X for Intel, all PPC are done through Rosetta, and voila, it looks like its running native, and is nicely integrated with Aqua. Now would it be so strange to conceive that Windows is booted in the background running in its own environment just like Mac OS 9 does on the PPC and the applications integrating with the lovely window manager Aqua? I don’t think so. What I think is that it’s time to bump up that X11 integration to make it a tan smoother. And I know that I’d prefer FreeBSD booting up in the background and using Aqua for my window manager.

So where is this screenshot? Well, it’ll probably go offline soon, but in the meanwhile: http://www.picturetrace.com/images/leopard_img01.0.png

From the rest of the speculations that followed the fake screenshots: I don’t think I prefer a tabbed Finder. While a cool idea at first, I think I’d be clicking to much between windows. If tabbed, then just not the way proposed in the screenshots. Second, I don’t need Adress Book and Calendar integrated, I need tighter integration between these apps and other apps I use, for instance Google Mail/Google Calendar, Thunderbird, Firefox etc). For the OS X/Windows integration, if Apple isn’t already working on a scheme like this (I’m sure they are) then they should hire this guy and exploit his imagination

Deer at Sundown

Sensor cleaning

I recently bought a sensor cleaning kit with a blower and two brushes not very unlike the one featured here. Luminous Landscape has a great article on sensor cleaning that I followed. So here follow a few pictures from my cleaning session. It should be noted that I have tried cleaning it with a swab and some lens cleaning stuff before so rather than being nicely spread out, my dust was here and there collected in little stacks. Have a look at the changes. I did three sweeps and got to the point where I couldn’t quickly spot any dust. Bonus points to find dust I didn’t spot. The entire thing took about 5 minutes:

The following two cleaning pages are also nice: photo.net and Rob Galbraith.

Vignir

Republishing faximiles

First, let me invite you to post links to faximiles available on the net as a comment to this post.Â I’ve been puzzled by the lack of faximiles available on the net. For us early music lovers these books should be in the public domain as all copyright claims have long expired. Many are locked up in libraries and private collections that only give republishing-rights to certain publishers, making faximiles very expensive. Don’t get me wrong, I think the S.P.E.S. faximiles are some of the most gorgeous books in my book-case. But apart from a very nice cover, what new have they added that decides that we cannot scan the prints and republish it for everyone to see?
The question comes from our podcast where I’d love to put the Philidor suite available so that you can look through it and make up your own mind rather than to rewrite it myself and just post a few bars that explain a problem in the faximile. Would this be illegal? Or should it be considered in the public domain and be encouraged? I know I mentioned republishing rights, but what rights do these libraries and collections have? They make an agreement with i.e. S.P.E.S., my local library acquires a copy that I borrow. Then I’m no part in that republishing-agreement and stand with a wonderfull piece of art with no copyright.

I hope I’ve given you a little insight to my confusion and I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter and your links to faximiles that are available on the net.

pdj - Java for Pure Data

Too cool! Today I found pdf which is Pure Data’s take on mxj. It’s supposed to be API compatible with mxj, which is great because that’s what I use for all my Java-based externals. Suddenly I feel like I’m in the open again after having been digging myself further and further into Max/MSP. Don’t get me wrong, Max/MSP is nice but Pure Data is closer to my heart. Well, as far as software goes, anyways.

Balderdash

I’m reading lots of student reports these days (their exams are coming up soon), and in one I found a very interesting word: balderdash. Not quite knowing the meaning of it (I know it’s a game, but from the context it wasn’t the game that was talked about) I looked it up, and from Weird Words I found a funny little quote from the 1766: That which is made by the peasants, both red and white, is generally genuine: but the wine-merchants of Nice brew and balderdash, and even mix it with pigeonsâ€™ dung and quick-lime. This adjective is also used as a verb, in addition to the substantive being the game.

Why?

First podcast

As promised Nik & Mogens have made the first podcast for the Early Music Blog. It’s available for download here. If you’d like to subscribe to it you can use iTunes (select Subscribe to Podcast from the Advanced menu) or any other podcast capable program and use the link http://earlymusicblog.net/?feed=rss2&category_name=Podcasts.

This first podcast includes the Sarabande from Philidor’s 10Ã¨me suite that we played in concert in the beginning of April. The rest of the parts will come in later podcasts. It refers to this blogpost about Philidor’s notation.

This is our first ever podcast so please be gentle, the more we learn the better the quality of these episodes will be.

Google Notebook on OS X

Everyone and their grandma seems to blog about Google Notebook that was launched today. They support Windows and Linux officially, but the Firefox plugin worked great with OS X 10.4 at home as well, so Mac users aren’t left behind. Now I’m looking forward to all those “Note This!” plugins for WordPress that are sure to come within the next few days.

Recorders for sale

Max toolbox

NathanaÃ«l LÃ©caudÃ© is working on the Max toolbox which makes working with Max/MSP more efficient with nice hot-keys. Look at the demo video and decide if you give it a try.

Fisheye camera for under $20

I might add a fisheye to my webcam having read The Aggregate’s article on creating a sub-$20 fisheye camera.

Where not to ornament

Continuing with Quantz goodies I’d like to use him to comment on what to embellish and what not to. We know that the French wrote down many (but not all) of the necessary embelishments and we know the French almost didn’t embelish compared to the Italians who could be accused of overdoing it. I assume the Germans did it as well, being inspired by the French and Italians. So instead of asking when do we ornament, the question is when don’t we? In chapter 12, paragraph 26, he sais “The majestetic admits few additions, but those that are appropriate must be executed in an elevated style”. Perhaps there is nowhere that one shouldn’t ornament, but rather how much should one ornament?

Ms Kasket Karl

XCode Max/MSP externals

David has written new instructions on compiling Max/MSP externals using XCode

Ugly VSTi Host

There is a great VSTi host for free available for mac at reFuse Software. It’s ugly and it does the job great! And it’s free. So I’ve finally been able to test the VSTi I made with Max/MSP and it works like a charm.

Submission open

A short little update: now you can use the submit story/recording/photo buttons in the righthand sidebar to submit the material you’d like included on the blog. No need to register and create the blog entries yourself anymore.

Sorry about the long delay before writing. I am in the middle of moving to a new apartment and spend my days building and painting walls. But, Mogens’ harpsichord is well in place, Craig has sent me one of his Carmichael’s Modern Baroque Recorder that I’ll be trying out as soon as I’ve finished moving. Also, we have some music in store for you to listen to and some pictures coming up. So stay tuned.

Mogens going home from the Monday Night Drinking Club

Annika

Ms Kasket Karl

Marcela

Susanne

Canon 30D released

The speculations on Canon’s release are over, DPReview has a preview of the Canon 30D that was released today. In short: not much new from the 20D. More flexible ISO settings and a larger screen. What is this? They should’ve called it Canon 21D. Not much of a version bump, while 10D to 20D was significant. With the release of the 5D I was hoping for some of the features to be brought down to the x0D line, but only the LCD made it. Oh well, I guess they want to keep me drooling for a 5D instead. I’ll be keeping my 20D, though. The 85mm f/1.2 lens looks cool, though.

Wide angle zooms

Mogens‘ Canon 10-22mm rocks. That was what I read out of the lineup of Nikon, Sigma, Tokina and Tamron wide-angle zoom leenses. It’s conclusion was to buy a Nikon, but further down argues that he prefers the Canon with lower distortion and price. I’ll borrow Mogens’ lens and put some pictures here. Meanwhile, my take on wide angle has been my Canon 20mm f/2.8 (hmm, no pictures online yet, I’ll have to do something about that. I’ve had the lens for like half a year now) and fish eye lens adapters like the 0.42x I was sent instead of what I’d actually bought or my father’s 180 degrees fisheye adapter. That works well also, but 10mm is awesome!

Lise

Early modern harpsichord?

About two weeks ago I bought a Harpsichord (JÃ¸rgen Bengaard). Of cause it wasnÂ´t new and I consider it more to be a donation since it was very cheap. It wasnÂ´t the harpsichord I was looking for either. I needed one that I could bring with me at any concert I might do. But this was unlike any Harpsichord I have ever seen before. There were foot-pedals (toggles) and 16Â´-stops and was as heavy as any grand piano (it held an iron frame). But I had to buy it!!! and now I found out that there is absolutely no information saying anything about this kind of instrument. It seems that most early musicians (of our time) would rather that it had never existed! So in the future you will find many posts regarding this particular kind of harpsichord that must have been the obvious choice of instrument for the not-quite-so-early Harpsichordist. My first priority will be to find a recording of the instrument from the time it was build…

Listen to early music!

Listen to original recordings of early music. ThatÂ´s a dream we all share, because we will never be able to know exactly how old music was played in its time. This is not possible - but IÂ´ve just discovered a homepage where it is possible to listen to very early music. Both wax cylinders an tinfoil recordings gathered right here at tinfoil.com. Interesting to hear how people sang and played around 1890-1913; in the years just before the sinking of Titanic (yes! it is possible to hear a recording of Â´Nearer My God to TheeÂ´ from those years!) Well, have a listen (and a laugh). Cylinders of the month!

Who is living in your lense

Therefore, the owner of the lens did not have any idea that there was someone living inside the lens. I found this quote when searching on how to clean lens fungus. Not that I have found any on my lenses, but a very interesting lense just turned up but with some fungus. Read more on lens fungi and how to remove them.

Jonathan decorated

Modified cornetto

Wanting to get a different sound from my cornetto, an oboe playing friend of mine and I mounted a reed instead of the regular mouth piece on it. I wanted more of a crumhorn sound but ended up with something that sounded fantastic on every 20th try and otherwise was really hard to play. Lots of strange sounds coming as well. But I like the idea. Here are the photos. First the reed, then two full-length versions of my Moeck cornetto with the reed and finally the normal mouthpiece.

HÃ¥kon

Balje pÃ¥ stol

Google Maps?

Trying to research what areas of Greece the eight church modes came from I used Google Maps. But to my surprise, neither searching for geographic places nor getting details of Greek cities worked very well with Google Maps for Mac. I hope Google will aquire more detailed shots for cities outside the US and make searches available also for historic places such as for instance Troy, where according to Mattheson the Phrygians with their mode lived.

English singers

We already know that Mattheson disliked French singers, but he doesn’t spare the British either. Quoting chapter 9 in Der Vollkommene Capellmeister paragraph 13-14: ...Germans generally produce more basses and tenors but the Italians more altos and sopranos than all other regions: together with the more rugged climate and lifestyle also beer drinking contributes to this in the case of the Germans; but the Italians are the opposite in both respects, and in addition there is the frequent castration.

Thus it is also certain that for example in England there are not by a long shot as many well-trained voices, and in France everyone sings mroe out of the throat and not from the chest as in Italy, where the voices are more sonorous, clear, pure and expansive

Fredriksberg

Aping

Young raindeer

Tuition

Taxims

This weekend Dan Laurin is giving a masterclass in Esbjerg, and me and Michael are going to play Belicha, an estampitta from the 14th century Italy. As far as I’ve understood, there was much culture imported from the middle east to Italy at this time, and you weren’t really in style if you didn’t have your clothes imported from Istanbul. Grove lists this piece as a dance, but I think many would agree to this being more improvised music. I sure would like to see someone dance to it. So I’ve been at the library borrowing stacks of music with Taksims (TaqsÄ«m) trying to get to know the contemporary arab classical music more. According to Grove, TaqsÄ«m means dimunition and is a form dating back to the 18th century, but I haven’t been able to find any earlier forms leading up to the taqsÄ«ms until now, so these will have to do. And my imediate reaction is that early music lovers should get some CDs and listen to this! There is so much brilliant music and musicians in this genre! I’ll definetly use their input for improving my Belicha. Perhaps not for this masterclass, but certainly during this semester. Lots of great ornaments to be “borrowed”.

Sceptical

Posing deers

Scene by the lake

New to the blog

Hi, I’m a new co-author to this blog and early music is quite new to me although i have played it all my life. I am mostly puzzled, stupiefied and amazed by the things possible (and impossible) in early music and i hope my startlement will only increase as more early music reveals itself before my anxious eyes and fingers.

I’m actually an organist that recently threw my energy on the harpsichord. I now play many kinds of music with many different people. I’m happy to discover that many techniques used on the organ can be used on the harpsichord too (and many cannot - still happy, and learning). I hope you will find your time to comment and discuss my following post on these and many other matters concerning early music.

Happy blogging

Building a viola da gamba

Sarah Peck has started to build a gamba. It’s all nicely documented on her blog and the progression will be linked in the column to the right. Check out the first entries about the beginning: and how far she has come today: Looking forward to following your progress, Sarah. Keep us updated!

Almost one month in

Hi, I thought I’d give you a heads-up on what’s happening with the blog. It’s now almost one month ago that the blog officially came up on http://earlymusicblog.net and we’ve added a number of features. We’ve now got the most recent scores from the Werner Icking Music Archive linked in the sidebar, a number of blogs linked up and their resent posts linked and made bookmarking on different bookmarking services up and running. Not to mention a little set of entries and a couple of design changes.

So what are the goals for the next month? Getting active co-authors and improving the blog further, and finding more blogs to link up. So please post your early music blog link as a comment here and I’ll add it quickly. If you’d like to become an author, send me an email. There are already a handful of co-authors that are gearing up to submit their first article. Stay tuned for yet an interesting month!

Landfall

iTunes illegal in Norway?

A little note to Dan & David from their latest show on CRAP, iTunes’ EULA and DRM technology is considered illegal in Norway according to the consumer rights watch. This is all over the news today. So publicity is coming on DRM technologies.

Centerpiece

Something interesting

Black & White

Male duck

Orazio Vecchi - Al bel de tuoi capelli

Christian and Annette Mondrup maintain an archive of scores for recorder ensembles. The latest addition is a madrigal consisting of 8 parts for 5 voices: Al bel de tuoi capelli by Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605). The score is complete with text, so should be nice for singing as well.

GrÃ¥ hegre

Fiskehejre

Good posture

I’ve been reading Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellemister and written about it a bit in my blog in the entries Mattheson on Perfection, The Location of Paradise Revealed, The Origin of Music and What you really need to know about Angles. Today I’m reading chapter six, and I love how he writes about the need for good posture:

Can the attentive listener be moved to pleasure if he [….] sees a dozen violinists who contort their bodies as if they are ill? If the clavier player writhes hsi jaws, wrinkles his brow, and contorts his face to such an extent that it could frighten children? If many of the wind instrumentalists contort or inflate their facial features (one must not omit the lips of the flutist) so that they can bring them back to their proper shape and color in half an hour only with difficulty?

It is even said of Minerva, that she threw the flute away just because wind instruments have the misfortune that they distort the features; and is also known from history that Alcibiades, though he was otherwise a great lover of music, nevertheless hated flute playing for the cited reasons. The viola da gamba would have pleased him more: For there is, after the lute, hardly any instrument with which one can produce a more refined posture. Because of this, the French love both instruments before all others, since their strong inclination toward the bon air often goes so far that their zeal makes them seem comical.

Another recorder crazed guy

I just found the page of a guy called Geejay who obsesses over the recorder. A fun read. Speaking of fun, what a concert this must have been:

Must - have - coffee

Wow, and I thought I made nice coffee! I need to work on my coffee decorating skills

No excuse not to play in tune

In paragraph 23, chapter 4, page 58 of On playing the Flute Quantz writes on intonating:

Ã¢Â€ÂœThe flute has the innate defect that some of its notes when sharpened [playing sharps] are not quite true, some being a little too low, some a little to high. For in tuning the flute you must first see to it that the natural [diatonic] notes are tuned truly in accordance with their proportions. The faulty ones you must, as much as possible, seek to play in tune with the help of your embouchure and your ear.Ã¢Â€?

This is a little note to those who claim that you should play any instrument as is and that some instruments can never be played in tune. Many other instruments have the same problems (i.e. saxophone and recorder) and the players of all the instruments that have these problems should seek to play them as well intonated as possible.

In paragraph 16 he writes: Ã¢Â€ÂœThis defect can be easily remedied, however, if the player possesses a good embouchure, a good musical ear, a correct system of fingering, and an adequate knowledge of the proportions of the notes.Ã¢Â€?

Now, if youÃ¢Â€Â™ll excuse me I have to go practice playing in tune

Early Music Blogs

Funny thing, I’ve found two other blogs called The Early Music Blog 1 and 2. 1 is Italian and hasn’t been updated since september and 2 is a republished version of Goldberg Magazine. These two and other blogs I found or are emailed to me will be put in a feed and new updates from these blogs will be posted in the right-hand sidebar so that you can always have easy access to updated early music blogs (hopefully with original names, though, or we’ll have to come up with some kind of numbering system )

Delicious and Photoblogs

Note to self: use delicious tags such as photoblog-posts for my photoblog.

Automn Blues

iPhoto 6?

Today I threw out 1576 pictures (6,6Gb worth) of iPhoto 2. That means I only have 3166 (or 13,3 Gb) of them left on my computer. I bought iPhoto 5 being reasonably happy with iPhoto 2 but being promised better performance. Now that didn’t turn out well. (yes, it was faster, but it should handle the photo collection of an average DSLR amateur) iPhoto is the program that crashes most frequently on my computer. Only reason for going with iPhoto was that f-spot wasn’t stable on OS X, and last I checked about a month ago it still wasn’t. I’m recompiling now, though, hoping that OS X stability comes around soon. (It’d be awesome having it included with fink) This guy won’t be upgrading to iPhoto 6 anytime soon. Apple hasn’t taken a single bug report regarding iPhoto 5 seriously. No stability patch has been released. Bad enough it being dreadfully slow. Sorry Apple, you had my money, leave photography for the rest and build those wonderful computers you’re so good at.

Grey Heron

On French singers

During a visit to the coffee shop with Ulrik and Ketil recently, I learned that in the renaissance the zink/cornetto and the oboe are described as the instruments that are closest to the voice, so one can speculate if singing technique has changed from very nasal in the renaissance to a more â€œclassicâ€ ideal that is closer to the flute when Quantz writes On playing the Flute.

While discussing embouchure (Chapter 4, page 55) Quantz notes how close the flute is to the human voice and saying that working with chest voice and falsetto is just like tightening the lips when playing the flute (in his view it is this that makes the flute a natural instrument), he comes with the funniest attack on the French and their singing:

â€œThe Italians and several other nations unite this falsetto with the chest voice, and make use of it to great advantage in singing: among the French, however, it is not customary, and for that reason their singing in the high register is often transformed into a disagreeable shrieking, the effect of which is exactly the same created when you do not cover the mouth hole sufficiently on the flute, and when you try to force out the high notes by blowing more strongly.â€

Unfortunately I havenâ€™t heared many (only one comes to mind) recordings where the singers have experimented with using shrieking or very nasal singing. Perhaps the contemporary ways of baroque singing is still too nice?

New Years Rocket

Flutes d\'amore

In On playing the Flute paragraph 17 chapter I, page 34, Quantz describes the “flutes d’amour” as a flute that is a minor third lower than the common flute. Funny, as I always imagined it was a name for the voice flute (a recorder in D), being a minor third lower than the alto recorder.

Winter-Christina

Baroque music has/had much to be desired

In my previous post from Quantz â€œOn playing the Fluteâ€ I quoted:

â€œWhoever is aware of how much influence mathematics and other related sciences, such as philosophy, poetry, and oratory, have upon music, will have to own not only that music has a greater compass than many imagine, but also that the evident lack of knowledge about the above-mentioned sciences among the majority of professional musicians is a great obstacle to their further advancement, and the reason why music has not yet been brought to a more perfect state.â€

What I find very interesting is that Quantz criticizes the contemporary music of having many flaws and would like music students to be more educated. I wonder what his take on the conservatory studies today would be as they in my mind are much more narrow than what my impression of those days requirements are. This is great so that we can spend more time with our instruments, but as Quantz recognizes it does not necessarily make us good musicians as much as able technicians. People often argue that they make music because they play whatâ€™s they feel. But if we do study the language, how do we know what the composers wanted us to feel? How can we hope to communicate these feelings to our audience when we do not know the subtleties the composer put into these feelings? Just to speculate a bit, does the fact that we miss out on a great many subjects contribute to the mysticism of music where so many claim not to understand it or even claim to be non-musical?

Hope no-one got offended, as usual this is my thinking out loud and hoping to get your comments on the matter.

Blogging in 2005

2005 has been quite a good year for blogging. This blog has been its regular mess of different stuff that intrests me, but it has spawned some interesting projects. My photoblog, for instance, got a kick start with my photoblog entries that I used to have in this blog. Also, as I started teaching, my work related posts turned into a blog with lecture notes that my students could visit to get all the material I had to offer them. And quite recently the early music section, with quite a bit of help from some friends, is made into the early music blog. The server and familly blog that I set up for my father has been mostly left untouched, but all in all I’m quite content with the stuff that is being served. I’m a bit surprised by how little comments come in as my feeds have a steady amount of subscribers. Many people actually send me emails rather than leave comments, so it’s not that I don’t get feedback, but you don’t get to read it. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll understand more of why this is in the following year.

Musicians benefit from academic studies

Iâ€™ve studied computer science and then gone on to study the recorder and Iâ€™m currently busying myself with making the recorder able to control the computer. I love the combination, but wondered a bit about if Iâ€™ve chosen a favourable tradeoff. Iâ€™m happy so I guess Iâ€™m not doing to bad. But, when I started reading â€œOn playing the Fluteâ€ by Johann Joachim Quantz (the book Iâ€™m referring to is the 2nd edition of the English translation by Edward R. Reilly published through Faber & Faber) I found that he had something to say on the issue. In chapter 1 (page 24) he writes:

â€œFurthermore, a musician must not occupy himself with too many other things. Almost every science requires the whole man. My meaning here, however, is by no means that it is impossible to excel in more than one science at the same time, but that this requires a quite extraordinary talent, of a kind that nature seldom produces.â€

Ouch! But later in the same paragraph: â€œYet if someone who gives himself to academic studies has sufficient talent for music, and devotes just as much industry to it as to the former, he not only has an advantage over other musicians, but also can be of greater service to music in general than others, as can be demonstrated with many examples. Whoever is aware of how much influence mathematics and other related sciences, such as philosophy, poetry, and oratory, have upon music, will have to own not only that music has a greater compass than many imagine, but also that the evident lack of knowledge about the above-mentioned sciences among the majority of professional musicians is a great obstacle to their further advancement, and the reason why music has not yet been brought to a more perfect state.â€

So, apparently, nature seldom produces people that can do two things well, but there are many examples if the two things are music and academic studies. Of course, a good question is what Quantz recognizes as academic studies. Is what he writes considered academic by his contemporaries?

PS, happy new year!

Philidor

Oscar

Quantz on the troubles of buying good instruments

When Quantz writes â€œOn playing the fluteâ€, the flute is just emerging from a time of much change, and we know that the flute changed much until it became the flute we know today. The recorder is in a similar situation today where the recorders that are made are often very different from what they were only fifteen year ago, and through my correspondence with inventors and recorder builders I have no reason to believe that the recorder is done developing now.

What I have found is that recorders made by good recorder players are in general better than those made by instrument makers who are not good recorder players. And I was happy to find support for this finding in Quantzâ€™ book. He writes this for the traverso, but I see no reason why this should be different for the recorder if we replace the word embouchure with breathing technique. He writes:

â€œPure intonation from one note to another depends upon a firm and secure embouchure, a good musical ear, and upon a good understanding of the proportions of the notes. Whoever possesses this knowledge and also plays well is in a position to make a good, accurately tuned flute. But since the majority of flute makers are not able to do so it is difficult not only to get hold of a good flute, but also to acquire a good ear, even with frequent playing.â€

Quantz then goes on to advocate that flute players should know much on flute making. I disagree with this since I donâ€™t think we have the time for it, but I would strongly suggest only buying recorders from makers who are good recorder players themselves.

How to make a lightbox

In his blog Joseph Holst has a great tutorial on how to build a light box. I expect to be building one of these when I get back to Esbjerg after the christmas holidays

Felix

Early Music Blog launched

Welcome to the Early Music Blog. This project was started by Niklas Saers after discussing it with a couple of friends and will hopefully be a place where people interested in early music will post their thoughts and stories and link up other early music blogs. I hope that you will find this site interesting and participate throught commenting and posting your thoughts and ideas.

If you’d like to write for Early Music Blog, please register and I’ll be sure to give you writing priveleges

Cat Clutter

Philidor ornaments

In this first post I’d like to talk about Pierre Philidor’s notation of ornaments and what this might mean. The ornament in question is the grace note leading up to the second quarternote in the third bar:

Seeing just the upper voice and that second bar, I’d think this is inÃ©gal. However, as this is french late baroque music, we would assume that inÃ©gal would be written in quavers like the fourth bar in the bass line. But if we can expect a regular inÃ©gal, why would Philidor then in the next system write the dotted figure seen in the upper voice first bar and bass second bar in the following example?

It seems like Philidor likes to play with the sharpness of the inÃ©gal. But if this is the case, we still haven’t decided what the second bar in the first excerpt means. My personal take on this is to see what Vivaldi is doing at the same time. Shame on me for thinking about italians when working with french music, but hey, Philidor and his fellow french composers were more influenced by italians than the previous generation composers would have allowed. Vivaldi uses such grace notes as dissonances in front of the harmonically correct notes, and since we know that they should have at least half the length of the note, they become great dissoances while it’s easy to read where we’re going harmonically. So I tried playing it lombardic, but I’m not sure that this would be a great solution either.

Monday Night Drinking Club I

What you really need to know about angles

In this last quote Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister, we go back to religion. There are just a few things that a good capellmeister cannot afford not to know:

“…to God even a thousand years is like the day which passed yesterday, and the angels’ days are years, as is known by the theologians.” Mattheson quotes Luther here from Daniel.

But let’s return to the origin of music: “Angels, though they are spirits, can assume bodily for, can use instruments and appear in flesh and blood, as Michael did, as often as they want. And since in the hereafter we redeemed men like them will be in body and soul, it is easy to divine what a magnificent quality the harmony of these heavenly musicians must have had.

Thus it is not true that vocal music is actually and originally older than instrumental: for all sort of instruments are also ascribed to the angels and saints in the Bible, especially harps and trombones, as string and brass instruments, and they certainly played just as well as they sange before Adam was created.”

Behind bars

The origin of music

Here is yet another of my favourite quotes from Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister:

“Others, who think they know much more about [The Origin of Song] and who maintain no small reputation to this day, seem yet more wrong to me than the previous ones: since they, with Lucretious as their leader, made the unthinking bird the inventor of divine music. Hence, one of these may write that the first inventors of vocal music had been monkeys, because they aped this art from birds; in this however, in my opinion, the good man really acts quite apish. For anyone who has nothing sensible to say has no cause to abuse.”

Hehe, I can just imagine the conversations Mattheson and Darwin would have had if they’d ever met.

The location of Paradise revealed

One of my favourite quotes from Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister is from the foreword: “…the four principal rivers wich originate ther [in Paradise]. But now the most common opinion on the location of Paradise is that it was situated in Mesopotamia toward Armenia, thus Eden must have been on the land which stretches between the Tigris and Euphrates up to the Armenian mountains. Certainly a fine spot!”

Certainly a fine spot indeed. Looks like a great place for a holiday trip.

Snowgrass

Mattheson on perfection

I’d like to quote Mattheson from Der vollkommene Capellmeister. In his foreword (I read from the english translation that’s close to impossible to get hold of these days. Publishers take note: this book requires a reprint!) he writes:
`
In France they say:

A passable meldoy or verse
Is not worth the devil.

Scholars are all of the opinion that it would be impossible for an individual to bring even only one branch of knowledge to perfection; but, in order to do this, it would be absolutely essential that many scholars pool their resources, render mutual assistance, and work collectively. For experience shows that nothing of significance is achived until matters are taken up through such cooperation.
`

I think this is one of the nicest places I’ve ever found support for the open source movement. And science for that matter. Words of note: mutual assistance, work collectively. Go out, do your work, share your insights and show us how you did it

Classic Nikon lenses on Canon EOS systems

Peter Spiro wrote an article making the argument to use Nikkor lenses on Canon EOS cameras. It fits nicely with the manual focus argument I’ve been making. Out of special interest, he has copied a table comparing 50mm lenses. I’ve decided NOT to go for a Canon 50mm lens, even though I’ve used my friends f/1.4 extensively.

Christmas music

Pringles Macro photography

Haje Jan Kamps has written a great article on macro photography. Not quite pinhole, but that direction

Horn faces

Preben

Manual Focus Lenses III

In this post abuot manual focus lenses on DSLR cameras, we’ll again look at a M42 mount and a FD mount lens. (be sure to check out the first and second post). The M42 mount will be my Miranda 28mm f/2.8 lens, while the FD mount lens is Mogens’ 35-70mm f/2.5 FD lens. Again, notice that these are very fast lenses that have cost less than $40 a piece.

The 28mm lens has a little issue, it’s supposed to be stopped down with a lever on the mount-side of the lens that the camera will push. This needs to be jammed, or it’ll be f/2.8 all the time. I haven’t gotten around to jam it properly, so all the following pictures are at f/2.8:

Mogens brought his 35-70mm f/2.5 lens on a family trip to Turkey, leaving his auto-focus lenses at home. He found that it was a great companion:

To wet your apetite, we’ve got hold of a 2x FD-mount converter, bellows, macro rings and colour filters to toy with, and we’ll be posting photos with them as well

Magnus

Ballad

Henrik

Barbershop choir

Peter

Horn

Søren

Mogens Portrait

Michael 3

Purple II

Purple

Håkon

Imperfect horse

Adam

Ole & Tormod II

NRK is podcasting

Norsk Rikskringskasting (the Norwegian version of BBC) has long streamed its radio via the net. Now they have started with podcasting, and tell you all about it in virtually every radio program and on this page. I checked it out, and many of my favourite shows were there. Note NRK, I *REALLY* miss Musikk Antikk. Their page is far from structured at the moment, but as more shows are podcasted I’m sure they’ll introduce some structure (four almost identical news-casts, which one should I choose?)

Ask

Percussive friends

Water drop photography

I’ve been reading up on liquid sculpture about how to make water drop photos, and my conclusions so far is that the equipment is to expensive, but I’ll have a chat with some friends over christmas when I get back to Norway. For the moment, read this and this interview on the topic. There are lots of great photos included!

Tormod

Ole

Ole Johnny II

Pentax K to Canon EOS lens adapter

As I mentioned in my first MF lens post, Bob has a great article on manual focus lenses for the Canon EOS. He writes it turns out that the diaphragm coupling lever which sticks out from the back of the lens makes [adapting Pentax K lenses on a Canon EOS body] impossible. This is the standard answer you will get, and at the moment I cannot find any adapters on eBay or any other retailer. Lucky for us Michael Pollet has put this claim to shame. In his article he writes a detailed instruction of how to adapt a M42->EOS adapter to the Pentax K lenses instead. I was planning on doing something similar but haven’t received my Pentax K lenses yet so I haven’t been able to tell if its feasable. Luckily he’s shown that if at loss, this is a great way to go. He reaches infintity focussing and has done some quite interesting modification. If you’d like to mass-produce such an adapter he even offers to send you a prototype for inspection. Hopefully it won’t be too long until we can see such product on eBay. Until then we’ll all get our old metal working equipment out.

Ole & Tormod

Game lost

Ole Johnny

Ping Pong

Match winner

Louise

Christmas\' dancing king

The croud

In Concert III

Manual Focus Lenses II

In the first post of this series I argued that you can save lots of money buying manual focus lenses and get great pictures with your DSLR camera. In this post we’ll look at three more lenses: the Mogens’ 500mm f/8 FD mount lens and his Helios 58mm f/2 M42 mount lens.

First one out is the 500mm. Since it’s a M42 lens, the adapter steals 1/3 stop of light and gives a 1.26x crop, making this equivalent to a 630mm on a APS-C sensor or a 1008mm on 35mm film/full frame sensor.

Next up, the 58mm:

Be sure to follow the thread, more exciting manual focus lenses are comming up. To wet your apetite, we’ve ordered in a bunch of Pentax K lenses and adapters to other lenses that are laying around.

In Concert

In Concert II

Machiatto

Danish house

Cloudy

Mini

Pin selfportrait

Drowned Recorders

MarihÃ¸ne

Nanny Ogg & Granny Weatherwax

Teleshooting

Michael 2

Say Tuna

Nik Portrait

Cowgirl

Glass Horse

Natural model

Turkish mama

Pool

Late

Ketil

MF - What is available?

In this blog entry I’ll introduce you to the use of dirt-cheap lenses for your Canon EOS 20D, 350D, 10D or whatever EOS camera you prefer. It may be a bit lengthy, but then again it can save you lots of money if you plan to buy new lenses. (or it can cost you lots if you don’t really plan on doing this. Beware!)

Let me start by quoting Bot Atkins’ EOS FAQ: Is there any point in using manual focus lenses? I think the answer is generally no, not unless you have to. I found this to be the general view of the Canon DSLR amateur community on the net. What I saw, though, was all the beautiful pictures taken before the auto-focus lenses came about. I remember all the fun I had with my father’s Yashica camera and his lenses were by no means bad. And throw in the fact that the reason I bought my 20D was that I wanted to do more manual work and that I more often than not use my lenses on manual focus, I decided I wanted to try some older lenses.

Now, I think there is only one EF-M lens, a manual-focus-only lens. However, as Bob will tell you, there are lots of different standard-mounts for older lenses, and there are EF adapters for most of them. The adapters fall into two categories, adapters that require optics to maintain infinity focus and those that don’t. The lenses that don’t use Contarex, Contax RTS, Leica R, Nikon, Olympus OM, Pentax K, Pentax Screw (also called M42), Petri Bayonet, Ricoh Bayonet, T2 mount or Yashica FR/FX mounts. The lenses that require optics use Canon FD, Konica F, Minolta MD or Miranda mounts. The mounts that don’t require optics are in general cheaper and keep the lens characteristics, while the ones that require optics usually enlarge the image somewhat and decrease the light transmitted. For instance, the Canon FD adapter zooms 1.26 times and decreases the light transmitted by 1/3 stops. My recommendation would therefore be to get lenses that require an adapter without optics for wide-angle lenses and adapters that require optics for telelenses.

The lenses I’ve focussed on have been M42 mount and Canon FD mount lenses. The adapters have cost me $5 and $35 on eBay. The weird thing is that the FD mount lenses usually cost way much more than equivalent M42 lenses cost, and that’s even though you loose 1/3 stops of light and can’t really use it for wide-angle photos. A thing that has been a bit of a problem is that not much information is available through Google about the lenses you may be offered, while we’re used to extensive reviews on new lenses that arrive on the market.

For this post I want to introduce you to two lenses: my 72-162mm f/3.5 Hanimex FD mount lens which has become my concert-lens of choice for its relatively large aperture for what becomes the 35mm equivalent of 145-327mm f/4. Look at the pictures and by all means give me feedback to what you think of them:

The next lens is a 37mm f/2.8 Russian MIR-1 M42 mount lens. Unlike the previous one, it has no extra magnification or light-stops so it stays at f/2.8 and is a 35mm equivalent of 59mm:

Now, please note that I haven’t gone after these lenses for maximum sharpness. A lot of reactions I’ve got have been on sharpness and you certainly get sharper lenses. But I like the feel of these lenses. Keep watching my photoblog and I’ll be sure to post new pictures of other exciting lenses and I’ll get back to you with a 28mm f/2.8 M42 mount, a 35-75mm f/2.5 and a 500mm f/8 FD mount and later on extention tubes and bellows

Marienlyst

Bicycle in autumn

Self Portrait 2

Self Portrait 3

Candlelight

Open source noise reduction

A while ago I was pointed at Noise Ninja which is a great program for reducing picture noise. While investigating, I found a few other options, but no open source options. Looking at it again today I found that there are a few plugins for The GIMP in the works: most notably Dcam Noise 2, but also ISO noise reduction. I wonder what’s keeping the open source world away on this, but I’m glad to see someone’s working on it at least. At the moment I’m just adding a bit of blur to my images using GIMPShop and *shriek* iPhoto 5

Michael

Manual lenses

In my photoblog I’ve started a series on manual lenses. The first lens out is a Hanimex 72-162mm f/3.5 lens with a FD mount that I’m using with my Canon EOS 20D and a FD-EOS adapter. It’s my defacto concert-lens and I’ll be starting off with a series of concert pictures. Next up is a MIR-1 37mm f/2.8 M42 mount lens. Be sure to follow the photoblog for the next couple of days and see if you find these lenses usable. I’ve payed Â£10 for the 72-162mm and $20 for the MIR-1 through eBay, so perhaps you’ll find that you can have great lenses for a bargain! Then again, perhaps you’ll conclude that it’s a waste of time and money and be glad that I tested this and not you. Let me know what you think!

Horn

Duck

Woof

Home-owner

Wooo!!! As of 15 minutes ago I’m officially a home owner, owning my own 3-room apartment of a whopping 93 m^2. Wee!

Error for non-US keyboards in Tiger

If you didn’t notice Tao of Mac’s post, go read it. Your /var/log/windowserver.log on your Tiger system may be updated every time you press a key. Mine certainly was. Good thing there is a solution, although it should have been patched by Apple long time ago. Buggar that. Oh well, patched manually. Now back to playing Lemmings, the DHTML version

4G iPodLinux

Recording capabilities for the 4G iPod is getting closer every day

Great photo

Joyce Lawrence has captured a great photo:
Read his comments

Printing from Tiger to a Windows server

According to Apple, setting up Tiger to print on a Windows network is done almost automatically. Yeah, right. Lucky for me David Carlin wrote an blog post on how to set up a Windows printer in Tiger. Thanks a lot, David.

Post from Tiger

Hello Everyone,
just trying out the WordPressDash widget for Tiger. I’ve been toying with Ecto a couple of times, but perhaps this will be my primary posting way from now on? I’ve tried so many different blog-clients, and I keep coming back to the webpage and simply writing my post. Call me old-fashioned.

Classical music for dummies

Lenses arrived

Finally, my lenses have arrived. They are so much fun, and as soon as I get back to Denmark I’ll be sure to post some pictures taken with them. In the meanwhile, read this nice review which compares the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 to the Canon 35mm f/2 lens. The Tamron is a bit confusing, zooming the opposite way from all my other lenses, and it makes quite much noise while focussing. But that is very easily forgiven because of the nice images it takes. A little bit anoying that it doesn’t have full time manual focusing, though. And it says very clearly “do not use 2x converters with this lens”. Why not? I’ll have to figure that one out.

Confused

Markjordbær

Speeding Subway

The series that’s been going for the past few weeks is over. Now back to everyday life….

Raindrops

And for our last picture in this series, Raindrops. Thanks for watching and commenting.

Here I am

Return of the hairy demon

Yellow

Evening bisquits

Honey straw

Music machine

You’ve got to try out this (via Boing Boing)

Pink tongue

Bumblebee #2

Our last insect for in this series

Skunkbee

M$ critic

Funny thing, this guy predicts that I’ll be a sworn M$ critic by 2021. Funny that. I have absolutely no idea who this is.

Rainer Böhm\'s Ganassi alto stolen

A message forwarded from Rainer BÃ¶hm:

Dear colleagues,
the following instrument has been stolen:

g-Alt after Ganassi, made by Adriana Breukink
a=466 Hz
two parts
maple (no metal applied)
no signature

Please forward any useful information to:
Rainer Böhm
Joachim-Friedrich-Str. 41
10711 Berlin
Tel.: 030 / 893 52 95
Fax: 030 / 895 42 421
Email: rainerboehm.altamusica@t-online.de

iPod + 20D

Despite the warnings of battery drainage and poor performance, I’ve bought an iPod. After having shot 850mb worth of photos with my Canon EOS 20D, I decided to throw the 368 (yes, I shot jpeg) into the pod. Result: it took two hours and half the power of the pod is gone (the 20D still thinks its full). And the iPod is so hot that I really don’t want to put it in my pocket.

Butterbee

Bumblebee

Todays new star is the bumblebee. He’ll be featuring this blog the next four days

Half sun / half shade

Today, our last bee prefers it half-and-half

At work

Deeper still

How do you like the widescreen crop? What I really find fascinating about watching the bees is that they are the small ones. The flowers bully them around with their hairs, overloading them with dust.

Flying bees

Which of the two flying bees do you prefer? The first one is over-exposed but gives you the hairy flowers and the bee slightly unfocussed with the wings being mere shadows. The second is clearly out of focus, but is more traditional “little bee going for big flower”

Bee portrait

How do you like your bee? Today I’ve got two versions that differ a bit in colour and focus. Which one do you prefer?

Mating

Punycode Squirrelmail Plugin

I’ve extended Javier Wilson’s punycode SquirrelMail plugin to allow logins with non-US letters. I.e, test@bÃ¥t.no will be translated to test@xn—bt-yia.no and use that for login. If it is of use to you, you can download version 0.2.2N.

With love from me to you

Today I’m starting a little series of 18 pictures called “Flowers & Bees”. First one out I sent to my girlfriend, called With love from me to you. All the pictures are taken either in my mums garden or the playingfield next to it. This particular one is from the field, and as you can see me and my lens were quite bombarded with pollen by the time this picture was taken. It would have been nice if the picture was more focussed, at 1/100 second it was still to shaky for my 100mm macro and a 2x converter.

New lenses coming

I’m looking forward to trying out the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens I ordered today. I finally found a review of it, and it sounds good. After reading a bunch of reviews of the Tamron 28-75, I’ve decided that it’ll replace my trusty Canon 28-80mm f/3.5-4.5.

Open fileformats mandated by the Norwegian government

Our right wing government has finally done something right: it’s mandating the use of open fileformats. This has long been demanded by The Socialist Left Party of Norway.

_MG_5934.JPG

Harpsichord

Dirty Coffee Pot

My favourite CD shop

Well, in Oslo at least, is Aktiv Klassisk in Øvre Slottsgate 5, 0157 Oslo, Phone +47 2233 6080. In case you feel like buying me a CD some day, you really can’t go wrong this place. And the staff are wonderfull

Night sky

FreeBSD + postfix + sasl2 + pam + mysql = Working Authenticated SMTP

This is most of all meant as a note-to-self to next time I’ll have to do this.

Installed the port mail/courier-authlib with the following options:

WITH_PAM=true

WITHOUT_VPOPMAIL=true

WITH_MYSQL=true

WITHOUT_POSTGRESQL=true

WITHOUT_LDAP=true

WITHOUT_GDBM=true

WITH_AUTHUSERDB=true

Installed Postfix with SASL2 and TLS. Config to Postfix’ main.cf:

smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes

smtpd_sasl_local_domain =

broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes

smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous

SASL2 needs “-r -a pam” flags in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/saslauthd.sh and the following in /usr/local/lib/sasl2/smtpd.conf:

pwcheck_method: saslauthd

mech_list: PLAIN LOGIN

Finally, /etc/pam.d/smtp:

column=password crypt=0 logtable=log logmsgcolumn=msg logusercolumn=user loghostcolumn=host logpidcolumn=pid logtimecolumn=time sqllog=1

auth required pam_mysql.so user=postfix passwd=xxxx host=host.domain.tld db=postfix table=mailbox usercolumn=username passwdcolumn=password crypt=0 logtable=log logmsgcolumn=msg logusercolumn=user loghostcolumn=host logpidcolumn=pid logtimecolumn=time sqllog=1

# account

account required pam_mysql.so user=postfix passwd=xxxx host=host.domain.tld db=postfix table=mailbox usercolumn=username passwdcolumn=password crypt=0 logtable=log logmsgcolumn=msg logusercolumn=user loghostcolumn=host logpidcolumn=pid logtimecolumn=time sqllog=1

# session

session required pam_permit.so

That should really be all there is to it.

SV against proprietary formats in the public sector

digi.no reports that SV, a norwegian socialist party is angered by government agencies (like the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK)) using proprietary file formats, locking the public to certain vendors rather than making the content available to the general public.

Spring is coming

Jon

This is my steenbergen soprano recorder, Jon with the 415 body. It’s made by Tom Prescott.

iTunes music store in Norway

According to Kulturnytt on NRK Alltid nyheter, iTunes music store is coming to Norway April 28th. Does this mean it’s coming to Sweden and Denmark at the same time?

Skale Tracker

Skale Tracker is a good, old-fashioned tracker. It’s made to look like Fast Tracker II and is released for Windows and Linux. And guess what, an OS X version is in the works! These guys are great! The features I really love are these:

SoundFont support
Akai instrument support
Can be used as a VST instrument
Uses VST effects

And yes, it’s all free (as in beer. I found no available sources). Can’t wait to put this on my Mac. For the meanwhile I’m fiddeling with it on a PC.

Elven city

Blue Moon

This is a follow up on my Luna series. I expect I’ll be photographing the moon every now and again

Blue Fork

My entry for thethursday challenge Tools, but I forgot to submit it.

List of all Pure Data objects

Here is a list of all Pure Data‘s objects.

Sourceforge

Sourceforge has a category for Sound Synthesis. Yay!

Selected for Pixos #30

Yay, my picture was selected for the Pixos #30 challenge Macines in… gallery.

Should you be interested, this is my mobile phone now:

The people I asked to repair it don’t want to change the glass only like I asked them to, and ask for €300 to change the entire display, and hold my phone as hostage at the same time. So it seems there’ll be no more fancy phones for me.

Make WordPress plugins

This tutorial should get you going.

Iranian blogger convicted of Espionage

Read more at OhMyNews, and now would be a really good time to join with Amnesty and protest against such violations of human rights.

Star Wars: Episode 3 - Spoiler

There’s a spoiler available for Star Wars: Episode 3. Some guy has collected a lot of images and made a storyboard out of it. (via Boing Boing)

Hello World

I’ve been photographing fish again, this time with my 100mm macro. Way better results, but I’ve got to stop using high ISO settings when using a flash, even if it’s the on-camera one

Flashes

Me and Mogens were looking at wide-angle lenses, which of course brings me on to the subject of flashes. What I’ve really wanted to play with is several flashes, for instance a Canon 580ex and two Canon 420ex’es as slaves. But since Canon hasn’t decided to sponsor my blog with these lenses just yet, I started reading up on alternatives.

My first suprise was, the wireless support for these lenses is infra-red. Hello, radio has been around for a loooong time! Do you think I’ll have those extra flashes put in a place where they can have “eye-contact”? So, looks like I’ll be waiting for a new series of flashes.

But, I found it interesting that the Sigma EF-500 DG works just like the 580ex, people have been really pleased about it and it’s just half the price of the Canon. Alas, the Sigma seems to get a thumbs down from one wedding photographer (Ben Rubenstein). (the other reviews were good, but way shorter) The EF-500 was Sigma’s answer to Canon’s 550ex, guess we’ll see what they’ll match the 580ex with. While we’re waiting, read the EF-500 review and the 580ex review.

New to flash photography with Canon camera’s? Read this introduction. It’s a bit long, but it has all that you want

Well, to summarize the lens issue: I might be selling my EF-S 18-55mm and only use my EF 28-80mm and use 0.42x fisheye lens I was conned into buying. Or, I’ll continue, as now, to use my 18-55mm for fisheye only. The options we read up on were EF-S 10-22mm (samples)/(forum reviews) that would suit me very well (that is, if I started doing landscape photography and such. Right now, my use for this lens would probably be quite limited), but the EF 17-40mm has got really good critiques in different forums as well, even though the 10-22mm forum sais to stay away from the 17-40mm if the 10-22mm is an option. My main critique of the 10-22mm is that 10mm looks very fish-eye’ish. For fisheye, I think the Peleng 9mm featured on Chromasia seems spectacular. But for now I’ll keep toying with my EF-S 18-55mm and the 0.42x fisheye.

Violins are hard to play

According to a mathematician and his student, violins are hard to play, and they go on explaining why.

iPhoto 5 Revisited

I’ve been using iPhoto lately, and I’ve been using it a lot.

First to the RAW issue. Does Apple make use of RAW? Yes and no. When at first you load the RAW, the changes you make will use the RAW file as source and apply them, not wasting your precious data. However, it will save the changed file as a JPEG. Thus, next time you make a change, iPhoto will NOT use your RAW file, apply the changes you did before and the ones you have made now and save that as a file, but it will use your intermediate JPEG file, thus wasting more information than necessary. This is most apparent when you use external programs. Try dragging your fresh file to an application, and it will be served a RAW file. Make some changes in iPhoto, and it will be served a JPEG. Can this be solved? Yes, it’s quite easy for Apple to save a trail of what modifications have been done to the image as metadata to the image and apply these when making changes later. It will take a bit longer to save the file, but that will defintely be worth it.

Second, not being able to select a whitepoint is a hassle. For the pictures you’re not passionate about, this is not a problem, but to the ones you want to give your best attention, iPhoto will not be what you’re using. Selecting a whitepoint is so quickly done in other programs

But iPhoto 5 is WAY faster than iPhoto 2. I’ve been hitting it with my 30mb/photo negative scans (the Nikon Super coolscan 4000ED is doing a great job backing up my fathers negatives), rotating and cropping away. I’ve been touring Denmark with this years Very Big Band project, taking 4gb worth of photos with my Canon EOS 20D, organizing the lot and putting it together with iDVD. (The iPhoto/iDVD combination does not work super as there is no other way than manual to change the sort order of the iPhoto pictures when importing them to in iDVD. And once it’s cached a iPhoto folder, resorting the folder in iPhoto won’t help either) Sorting, rotating, simple editing and organizing the photos and burning them to a DVD (iPhoto format) is easy, if you don’t mind waiting 5 seconds now, 10 seconds after the next edit and 5 seconds to create a folder.

Bugs? Yes sir, the progress window will keep open forever when I’ve been editing files, and the program will often go into what looks like an endless while when it’s not used, leaving “force quit” as the only option. Doing too many things at once seems to confuse the editor and make it do only a few of the changes that were asked for.

So is it worth the upgrade? For me I’d say a definitive yes. I’m more organized with my photos as iPhoto 5 can handle more pictures quicker than iPhoto 2 could. Is there room for improvement? Yes, very much. Hope Apple will release upgrades beyond the 5.01 upgrade, which I believe they did not for iPhoto 4.

Rose 1

Red rose in a room only lit by a red lava-lamp, against a radiator

Instant Coffee

My entry for the Macroday challenge fluid

50mm test

A good test subject for my mate’s 50mm f/1.4 lens

My Valentine

I always fall for cellists. I love the sound of the cello. I love the shape of the cello. And look what the cello has to say on the subject. You’ll notice that the last string is broken. The poor little thing, I felt like fixing it right away, but it wasn’t mine and I’d probably make it worse

Table of cakes

Update: based on Straynjer‘s comment, here is a new version:

The original:

Organ

FreeBSD\'s maintainability

FreeBSD’s maintainability has been measured according to an index suggested by Ioannis Samoladas et al.

Crayons getting shot

Way cool! I’m normally not a fan of guns, but this picture is awesome: (via Flickr)

Mac::Glue

Merging two old photo libraries (one that constantly made iPhoto crash that worked well when upgraded to iPhoto 5 with other old ones that I used to make iPhoto 2 quicker) I came across Cleaning iPhoto and Mac::Glue. So a quick:

 perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Mac::Glue"' gluemac /Applications/iPhoto.app 

and off I was using his scripts to compare MD5 hashes. I’ll be using Mac::Glue to do the same cleaning up for iTunes where my duplicate count is getting higher quickly.

And in case you’re one of my friends who know I don’t like perl, I still don’t. But the alternative was AppleScript

Homemade lenses

This is so cool: thigs guy makes his own lenses, and they give great results.

iPhoto 5 - First Impressions

The TNT delivery guy was here and delivered my iLife ‘05 pack which I bought solely because of iPhoto. (Apple refused to give me a student discount for the software, even though I ordered via the net. I’ve heared people don’t get student discounts in Apple’s stores.) I use my Canon Ixus, Canon EOS 20D, HP Scanner and Nikon negativescanner much, so being very annoyed about the sluggish performance of iPhoto 2 but loving its way of interacting with my blog and organising pictures, and hearing good thing about performance on iPhoto 4 and that iPhoto 5 would be better performance wise, I decided to upgrade after they threw in RAW handling (which seems to be a total fake).

First impression: the DVD was filthy. I opened the box, took it out of its envelope, and had to clean it before putting it in my drive. Wow, I’ve never had that happen to me with new software before. Was the packaging done by hand or something? Anyways. iLife takes a whopping 4.7 GB, or 5% of my harddrive. The installation took 45 minutes, the converting of my iPhoto 2 library of 800 photos took 2 hours! (I run a 1Ghz iMac with 1GB ram)

Scrolling is indeed much faster. Not as fast as f-spot, but still fast. Opening a 8 megapixel picture takes 3 seconds, opening a 20 megapixel picture takes 6 seconds. Saving a slightly cropped 20 megapixel picture took 37 seconds! Saving a slightly cropped 8 megapixel image took 8 seconds. Each edit must be saved before proceeding to the next picture, no option to make changes on previews and then batch them together in one go. Meaning I won’t be using iPhoto to edit my 20 megapixel photos that my filmscanner makes.

RAW: (what we’ve all been waiting for) No camera color profiles to load, no spot white balance to set. Just lots and lots of impresise sliders so you can see what it looks like and choose a setting based on that. In other word, it’s no replacement for ufraw (or whatever RAW converting application you use). Even Canon’s bundeled software handles development from RAW images nicer, and I really don’t like that bundled software. So even though I have iPhoto, I still want to keep working on RAW support for f-spot, and you might want to stick with your favourite RAW processing software.

Good thing: getting to continue my work while it does the importing. Bad thing: doing so led to my first iPhoto 5 crash, after under an hour of usage. Wee. I hope we’ll see Apple updating this one quickly. Bug report sent.

Preferences: why can I not choose Thunderbird as my email program?

So, based on my first impressions, this is my wishlist for Apple to improve iPhoto ‘05:

REAL RAW support
Batch handling for editing
No crashing
Faster image handling

RAW support in iPhoto

Apple sent me a mail saying my iLife copy has been dispatched. In the mean time, California Fox reports that iPhoto’s RAW support is, well, fake. It imports RAWs, but rather than use the RAW files as a source when modifying brightness, temperature, exposure, saturnation etc, it uses an intermediate JPG copy. And as we all know, this just isn’t the same. This is not what we asked for when we wanted RAW support, and just not mentioning this and waiting for people’s reactions seems just irresponsible on Apple’s part.

In the mean time, I’ve come across f-spot and I’m currently tracking its CVS and looking at integrating Udi Fuchs’ ufraw into it. This’ll be my first shot at C#, so I’m wondering both how the task will be and how people will respond to it. I do NOT, however, plan to settle on intermediate JPGs.

End in sight

Toes

According to An Open Shutter, his most searched for word is toes. Funny thing. So far my top search word is 47th street photo. The more nerdy words score good as well. What search words bring in people with you? And how do you bring people to your site and keep them coming back? I stick with my photos and hope someone will bother with my ramblings as well.

Cloudy moon

Yay, I’ve got my camera back. That is, my camera went in for service to get the 13 detected hot pixles (or whatever the correct term is), but the repair guys forgot to put in the battery when they gave it back. To make things harder, I live in Denmark, the repair shop is in Norway. But one month later, I’ve got it back, and they’ve done a good job changing the cmos.

Anyways, I ended up taking a lot of pictures with my 100mm f/2.8 macro, and while this is quite unfocussed, it ended up having the atmosphere I wanted. I have no tripod and I’ve given my father back his 300mm f/4 that I used for my previous moon shot, but I had to try this one out to see if it was any good. I took a few at lower ISO settings that got more details of the moon, but they reduced the lighting on the clouds. I’ve got to play more with GIMP or Photoshop Elements.

Tekna looking for the stars

The Norwegian language has a problem: there is no such word as management. The word we use for management is leading, which as even a pre-first year management student knows is just a tiny fraction of it. In my experience, many Norwegian managers know nothing much about management. And since my experience is mainly from the IT sector, no wonder that the perhaps biggest organisation for technological and natural sciences professionals, Tekna arranges a course in Astrology and Management (ok, Astrology and Leading is the actual title, but from the text they obviously mean management)

Thanks to Erik Tunstad for bringing this up

Did Shakespeare have syphilis?

Everyone seems
to wonder if Shakespeare had syphilis. He may have been given bath treatments to kill the bacteria and have had to inhale quicksilver to “cure” him and may have died from the treatment, which caused him to loose hair, shiver and become asocial. Or, people may be exagerating. You read the evidence and figure it out.

Cheese-cake

The University of Oslo‘s cheese cake (Norwegian only)

Hot pixels on the Canon EOS 20D

Tomorrow I’ll be at Canon’s authorized repair-shop to have them look at my 20D. It’s got what I think is hot pixels even at indoors shooting at 1 second shots. Not good. But, being nervous that my camera will be gone without replacement for a while, I am reading up on the subject. There are quite a number of programs and articles on reducing noise in digital images.

Oh, and thank you Alan Briot for your EOS 300D diary. It’s a great read, and introduced me to Lens baby (review). I’ll be experimenting more with my new 100mm f2.8 macro, though. But these babies look like very fun toys.

Epson P-2000

According to DPReview: the P-2000 is a very well-designed, very sophisticated and very desirable addition to any serious digital photographer’s gadget bag. My conclusion from reading their review: drool Good luck to Epson with the RAW support. My 20D is already supported, but it seems they have just a little further to go.

Oh, and merry christmas to everyone coming by my blog

Selfportrait and RAW handling

At the moment I use Canon’s EOSViewer Utillity and The GIMP for RAW handelling. While I need to figure out how to use The GIMP without getting heaps of artefacts/noise, I get quite often strange artefacts that are white curves that follow the light within a picture. To give an example, look at this selfportrait (not the best portrait as my eyes are crossing). The first picture is using The GIMP:

The second one is using Canon’s software and then cropping it slightly in Photoshop:

Any suggestions to how NOT to get these white curve-artefacts with Canon’s software? What kind of RAW handelling software do you prefer, and what do the pictures look like after you’ve exported them to jpeg?

UFRaw

I’ve been using UFRaw, a GIMP plugin to work with the RAW shot of the moon. The images was quite under-exposed to start with, but still it gives me very many colours in the sky:

It uses dcraw that I talked about earlier. Do you have any experience with dcraw or utillities based on it you’d like to share? I’ll spend some time learning this tool so that I can get better results than this redish sky.

Solstice

At 13.42 today, the sun turned (Norwegian link)

Drive

I’m planning to get more away from my computer with my camera, and I’ve been looking at solutions for emptying my CF-card onto a harddrive while travelling. My most probable choice is CompactDrive PD7X (which I’ll buy here unless someone gives me a better offer), but I’m also looking at Archos AV420 that has too many features I don’t need and the Epson P-2000 that has some great reviews, is an image browser as well and supports Canon’s RAW format, but has more than twice the price-tag.

Luna

I’ve borrowed my father’s telelens and tripod. Sorry for the awful crop, but I didn’t bring my 2x converter, and when I’d finally got it, the moon had disappeared.

Mushrooms

Illusions

Fire hydrant

Ulm

Numbers in the piano

It’s been waaay to long since my last post. I’ve uploaded a couple of images to my Photoblog gallery, but I’ve been to lazy to post them here. Sorry, this will be a batch of them all. Even worse, I’ve taken pictures I’d like to put here, but now they’re all squezed into a disk I brought with me to Norway where I’m spending my Christmas vacation at my parents’.

The first picture is my submission for the Pixos contest ‘Number in’.

Terrence, Philip and more Canadians

Inspired by South Park, the organ pipes got this picture:

9000 year old wine

Wine was made 9000 years ago. Read more and more and more and much, much more. (via forskning.no)

Vigeland\'s "Monolith" damaged beyond repair

Not long after Scream and the Madonna were stolen from the Munch museum, the Monolith by Vigeland is painted black and probably damaged beyond repair by vandals.

Coral network

Do try out the Coral mirror of my blog and tell me how responsive it is in comparison with the source blog.

Home computer anno 2004

My head hurts posts a picture of what scientists believe will be a home computer in the year 2004. Look at the monster!

note: urban legend

Note to Java programmers who do Python

Python Is Not Java by Phillip J. Eby will save you lots of time

Return of the King - Extended

A Quicktime video with a 6 minute preview of Lord of the Rings - Return of the King, the extended version, has been released. I ordered my copy from Amazon about a month ago, nice to see what I have waiting for me. (via Binary Bonsai)

Praetorius - Puer natus

With December 1st coming up tomorrow, here is Praetorius’ Puer natus in Bethlehem in Christian Mondrup’s transcriptions for the recorder. He’s used ABC Plus for the typesetting for those who are interested.

Reverse lenses

Plonsky writes on reverse lens combinations do go great macro-shots of bugs.

Note determining object

I finished my first external Pure Data object, a note determining object. This object takes in the number of Hz a note is measured to be and outputs what note it is (the low A on a piano being 1, going up to 88), determining how many cent off it is and how many Hz extra there is (i.e, 415Hz = A flat (tone 47), one cent (minus 0.174Hz) low. Fourth output is a text with the note name, in this case Ab. This object uses equal temperament and was just an excercise for me to see if it can be done.

Here’s a screen shot:

The code is copyrighted Niklas Saers, 2004. I place the code under the two clause BSD license meaning I merely ask any redistribution, whether in source or binary, to reproduce this copyright.

Illiad making me thirst for coffee

With Illiad’s Userfriendly cartoon going on about treating coffee addiction (see first strip here), my cravings for coffee skyrocket

Tu che del mio dolore

Christian Mondrup has added an italian madrigal Tu che del mio dolore by Giovanni Battista Dalla Gostena (c.1558-1593) for 5 recorders to the recorder archive. Keep up the good work, Christian!

pyExt

Thought you’d might want to see just how simple it is: my pyext example for Pure Data. I’m planning to make an object that takes in a floating point number of frequency height and determines what note it is and the amount of error according to different scale temperaments, i.e. Valotti, Werkmeister 3, Kirnberger, Meantone and Equal tempering.

pyext for Pure Data

I decided I prefer writing normal logic in a language I’m used to, so I went looking for a Python-external for Pure Data. And sure enough, I found Thomas Grill‘s py/pyext (built upon flext, a C layer for Python externals). I didn’t figure out how to install the binaries (didn’t take the time to experiment) so I just compiled them up. Works great.

Writing externals for this is supersimple:

class example(pyext._class):
  _inlets=2
  _outlets=1
  def _anything_1(self,args):
    print “inlet 2:”,args
    self._outlet(1,1)
  def _anything_2(self,args):
    print “inlet 2:”,args
    self._outlet(1,2)

This little code should be an external that prints out the argument it receives and sends the inlet number it received the signal on to the outlet.

My project - Overtone analysis

I think it’s about time I introduce my project:

I want to use Pd to extract the overtones of the recorder and train a neural network to identify what kind of sound (broad, thin, glass-ish, etc) I’m playing. I want to use this to control VST processors to shape the sound I play. And after the network is trained, I want to the analysis and processing in real-time.

At the moment I’m reading up on alternatives to FFT to separate out overtones, and I’ve made a prototype as a proof-of-concept kind of thing using fiddle~ to identify the overtones in hz and bp~ to separate them out as audio streams. It still has lots of problems such as artifacts, sound degeneration and latency issues. But it gets the job done, so I’m optimistic.

I’d prefer to do my project as a part of a Ph.D, but since Ph.D funding takes a while to find, I’m already starting. Can’t wait for formalities. When I’ve checked that it is ok to release code here I’ll post some as I progress.

Pd & Max/MSP blogs wanted

I’d really like to get to know blogs that focus on Pure Data and/or Max/MSP and use it for development and performances. Leave a comment with your blog URL

Martin

Munch's head stolen

Missing:
A statue of Edvard Munch in a Our Saviour’s Cementary in Oslo has been stolen of his grave only short time after Madonna and Scream were stolen (via VG and Aftenposten)

Mirror

I loved this dodgy bathroom mirror. But I need to pay better attention to my camera, I’d left it on 3200 ISO.

Use your eyes

Tracy‘s photoblog is one of my favourites, so upon reading her interview I decided to take her challenge
and posted my first self portrait. I toyed with a couple of ideas, and finally I decided on trying to work with the problem with people closing their eyes when the moment I take a picture. Serious blinking brought me this photo

Moon probe arrives

The BBC is reporting that a European moon-probe has arrived in orbit around the moon. They also describe the propulsion system and theories of the moon’s formation.

Google is promoting Firefox

http://www.google.com/firefox

SSL support in Java

I’m making an XMLRPC server in Python that I need to access from a Java Servlet. But the default security manager is picky about allowing SSL certificates it does not trust (if you were in doubt: this is a good thing! ). The solution (based on this site was:

openssl x509 -in server.crt -out server.crt.der -outform der
keytool -keystore $JAVAHOME/jre/lib/security/cacerts -alias pySSL -import -file server.crt.der

Band Aid flies again

CNN reports that a new Band Aid is being formed. Whee!

Organizing photos

I just saw PicoJet’s flash-based ad (via The Digital Photography Weblog). PicaJet is software for organizing my photos, not much unlike iPhoto. I’m really fond of iPhoto, except that it’s too slow and that labelling and organizing pictures still takes too long. I miss RAW-support and search-functionality like imgSeek. I love the Gallery plugin, despite rotation bugs. I’m currently sticking with iPhoto 2 as I figure it’s been so long since the release of iPhoto 4 that a new version is bound to be due soon. But as with all other photo-organizing software I’ve seen, PicaJet & iPhoto have a problem with DVDs.

With my recent purchase of my Canon EOS 20D, the amount of pictures I take has risen sharply. And the file size of my favourite format has risen for each picture from ~400k to ~6m. Within three weeks I’d taken 4Gb of pictures, nicely fitted on one DVD. But, that’s making my pictures unavailable. I need to have a thumb-nail in my archive (say about 640x480 would be nice) that informs me what DVD I’ve put it on so I can find it back. I’ve got a 15cm stack of photo DVDs and the occational photo CD. I need this to become available. How have you guys solved this?

Knob

Don't shop at 47th Street Photo

I bought a 2x teleconverter from 47st.photo at eBay in September. The seller has until now not made even what I can consider an attempt on solving the issue, so I’ve given up, and hereby report the issue to eBay. I also write this as a warning of people who consider doing business with this company. Don’t do business with them unless you can walk in the door and hold the actual product.

The item I was bidding for was this: Canon EOS Rebel K2 Ti GII 7n 2x Pro Telephoto Extender and it had the following picture on eBay:

This item is what I got:

As you can see, it clearly sais macro and 0.42X, not tele, not 2x.

I contacted the seller as he had requested in writing before leaving feedback. Any decent person would. I described the problem detailed, but the answer back was a one-liner: hello this is the same lens. (entire mailing history enclosed for your inspection) After more one-sided mailing to a non-responsive seller, they finally wrote to me asking me to call them. I’d already left them my phone number in case they could not communicate by email, but they clearly could. With them sending the wrong item, it was unreasonable for them to demand that I should bear the expense of an oversees call, much less wait for them to get up in the morning. These are some of the wonders of email: asynchronous and (virtually) free.

Don’t get me wrong, the people handled the shipment in due time and all the “free, bundled” stuff was there. I’m sure it was a glitch in the shipment, but they should take responsability and handle the replacement for the correct lens. After more than a month, I have now given up on them and desided to write this. I’ve bought a 2x extender from another seller on eBay, and the transaction went smooth, just like all my other buys there. I would not discourage people from buying stuff there, but beware. I have now stopped looking at items sold in US dollars and will only buy from within the European community and Scandinavia.

Sterk Ding Dong

In an attempt to say what beer is approved for more consumption and what is not, I’ve started taking pictures of it, with good help from the rest of the Monday Drinking Club. Martin is inspecting the fisheye lens (more for that complaint in a future post), but Fuglesang’s “Sterk Ding Dong” is a well-approved christmas ale. Enjoy!

Pissoire

Martin: you made the pissoire look cosy! Guilty as charged.

Ill

FreeBSD 5.3 released

Finally!

Geeks good for democracy

At Kurohin they are double-checking the numbers and drawing their connclusions from the US election. Although I haven’t thought the American voting system a suitable tool for a democracy, it is a boost that people can and do verify the numbers. More openness of election data and the data presented in open formats will only help us understand the democracies better. Keep up the good work, whoever is behind this.

(PS, computerizing elections doesn’t mean people won’t screw up, as Wired can attest to)

FreeBSD release engineering process updated

[Scott Long][1] announces changes to the release engineering process with a focus shift from features to timelines. Time for me to update the FreeBSD Project Model document again (already have one uncommitted major revision here that I’d planned to commit shortly after 5.3 )

[1]: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=2259911 0 current/freebsd-current

Automatic checkout

Ed Gottsman writes about RFID tags for ZDNet and sais it could eliminate check-out and just deduct the money from your VISA card as you leave the store. Don’t know about you, but I find way to often that stores overcharge me and don’t give the price as advertised unless I point it out for them. And this is with identifying technologies as barcodes. So I guess I won’t be the one cheering when my VISA bill is way larger then what it should be because I wasn’t able to say to anyone “now, look here, in your ad you say it costs this but you’re still charging me double”.

Scream

The Munch museum that recently had Scream and Madonna stolen has been closed in order to set up new security measures so that a similar theaft doesn’t happen again. A month ago the police said they were closing in on the buggars that stole them. So while we’re waiting for them to come back and the museum to open, Always Curious gives us his version of Scream

Morten

Bush Planned on Attacking Iraq in 1999

Bush Jr. planned on attacking Iraq in 1999 if you believe this article. Talk about a long planned terror-attack.

Ingeborg and Jonas

A photo I took for their concert program

Horror @HC. Ã˜rstedsgade

Canon lenses

This page introduces most Canon EF lenses and contrasts quite a few of them in nice comments.

Horror @HC. Ørstedsgade

Dagens kåseri: Kresne kvinner og tomsete menn?

Kresne kvinner og tomsete menn?

Attention.xml

From Technorati:

How many sources of information must you keep up with?
Tired of clicking the same link from a dozen different blogs?
RSS readers collect updates, but with so many unread items, how do you know which to read first?

Attention.XML is designed to to solve these problems and enable a whole new class of blog and feed related applications.

Good stuff, guys, I’m excited to hear about it and wonder where this’ll go. (via Jeremy Zawodny)

Practice

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

From AK47, I love this series

Welcome

This dude has moved into our stairway

Not an iPod fan (yet?)

With the announcement of iPod Photo and all the hype about it, I’m afraid that the iPod has become even less of an option for me. This little device is about PAST creativity, I take mobile devices with me primarily becuase of PRESENT creativity.

What do I mean? I bought a Creative Jukebox a while ago, not because it was nice looking (it’s certainly not) or seemed cool, but becuase it had a microphone inlet. (turned out to be useless for microphone without a preamp that I had to go and buy because it was really more of a line-in that didn’t get microphone-usability before many firmwares later, but that’s another story). The iPod, Jukebox and company are portable storage devices. That means that I should not only be able to retrieve information from them (photos, music and video is widely available on many of these), but I should be able to store it to them in an instant. Listen up, Apple: that means microphone in and a CF (and/or similar) reader. Minimum! (I’m sure many people would require Composite/S-Video, GPS in etc)

When I’m at a raga concert in India I want to record it to take back home and listen to how they make their music. I was, they didn’t mind, I recorded. An external microphone (Sony’s minidisc microphones are nice) should be enough of add-ons. But not with iPod, there you have to add a separate box for audio-in, and I haven’t heared much reports on it, so it’s quite possible you’d need the same preamp. For the CF-cards (yes, I took loads of photos of raga players in India, and yet, my CF-card went full) you have to add another external box. That it three or four boxes + of course a microphone and the camera. This scenario becomes nothing of creativity and lots of pain by carrying all these boxes, wires, plugging them all together, having batteries and monitoring their levels. It’s not just for concerts, it’s for when I’m praciticing and want to review my practising. Most walkmans now how to handle record and playback and don’t come with lots of extra boxes, just a microphone.

Apple & co: what I need is a storage device that’s small and allows for good input. A storage unit (iPod for instance), my camera, my microphone, I should be on my way. Or quite possibly, a storage unit, a microphone and a video camera.

When you’ve got this in place, you can think of putting a screen on it to watch those pictures, ‘cause I can watch them just as good on my camera when I don’t get them off my CF-card anyhow. And the few pictures I want to have with me to show people fit nicely on my mobile phone which has the same resolution as those fitted on the iPod Photo. I don’t take thousands of pictures with me for everyone to store, but I take thousands of pictures on the road to take back home, and it’s fun reviewing those while I’m on the road.

No, I’m not an iPod fan, yet. But if Apple would add input facilities, I’d be first in queue. Think how nice an iPod mini would be with the good battery time and filled with pictures and recordings from my trip. That’d be something to show to my fellow backpackers.

Ballet dancer king in Cambodia

A ballet dancer becomes king in Cambodia. Who said there are no careers in arts? [from Aftenposten]

Farenheit 9/11 goes public domain

More or less, anyways. As long as you don’t make a profit of it, you can download the movie according to Michael Moore. Not sure if this is his call to make, so it’ll be interesting to see possible reactions.

Trouble ahead

My first attempts at editing, only minor adjustments in green

Apetite growing

After reading on a nice, Brazillian island, my apetite for going out travelling is growing again. Although I’d still prefer backpackers’ accommodation. $100 a night that was suggested for this island is a bit stiff in my opinion. Hmm… where to next?

Avhold

20D work flow made simpler

Dave Coffin has made dcraw work for OS X by a couple of support mails. Grab the source code and compile with gcc -g draw.c -lm -DNO_JPEG -o dcraw or get the binaries from Francisco Montilla.

My workflow is now: download RAW images from the camera into folder, do all my regular post-processing (auto-colour, auto-levels, make jpeg) and then import to iPhoto. I used Canon’s own software for the RAW handelling first, but it’s got clumsy select mechanisms. Now I get it all just the way I like it. (shell handelling of graphics has been my main preference since 1999, but of course I’ll use a graphic editing program for non-typical operations. Far better than automate-functions in Photoshop )

Many thanks to Dave and Francisco for their help in getting dcraw working with the 20D on my OS X box.

Back home

And no, I don’t live here. But if you were up at night and this was your home, wouldn’t that be nice?

Steinway

Why I do single shots

Jake at Photoblogs asks if we loose a way of telling a story by using single-shot photoblogs rather than multi-shot. So here’s why I do single:

The picture I choose best represent my mood, feelings, thoughts and/or highlights of the day. Doing multiple shots I feel would be saying too much. By going through the shots day by day, perhaps you’ll get to know me well, but by multiple shots you’ll have no idea what I most want to focus on as I’m probably all over the place.

Secondly, of course, is the time issue. I don’t get to take that many good pictures as I’m still learning. And processing them takes time. Time comes coupled with space: I don’t have unlimited with space to publish everything. (although some would say I’m fairly close )

No, I’ll save those multiple shots for photo albums, such as my gallery. But having said that, there are multi-shots photoblogs that I read every time a new picture has been added, and one of them is on my top 3. So choose your format, wrap it nicely and I’m looking forward to seeing it. (yes, by all means, do leave an URL in your comment)

Shadow sign

iPhoto

Is it just me, or is iPhoto getting seriously old. First off all, it doesn’t support RAW yet, so the CR2 files from my Canon EOS 20D are easily getting seriously disorganized. Seconldy, speed… sorry Apple, I’ve seen iPhoto 4 with 7000 1 mb pictures with the odd 40mb picture in it, it’s just not up to par on your iMac 1Ghz/1GB which should be more than good enough to handle this. How hard is it to cache those thumbnails? Waiting minutes every time you move the scrollbar just doesn’t work. So I’ve stuck with iPhoto 2 which is equally slow. Features of iPhoto 4 I’d like of course, and I’m so looking forward to hearing news of what Apple has in plan for the next revision (will that be iPhoto 6, 8 or 16, btw? ) as iPhoto 2 doesn’t work well for more than a gb of photos at a time or so.

Photoblog update

Right, I’ve ended up adding a Photoblog category to my blog. I’m sure someone will hold the definition against me and scream some bad language in my face, but hey, this works for me.

The four options as I saw it was keep using Gallery as a Photoblog, install a separate blog for Photoblogging, tweak my WordPress template or make a WordPress plugin for Photoblog posts. The first two could be “integrated” through building a little script that would take the different RSS feeds and make them into one. The last one would probably be the nicest as all about the post would go into the post text in the database. Only problem is: my PHP server doesn’t support exif and as I’ve just moved my server I couldn’t really be bothered to redo the PHP installation right now.

So I went for option three: tweak my template. This consisted of checking when a post was from the Photoblog category and then present it like I want my photoblog entries presented, which for now is with SOME exif-data (my Canon EOS 20D gives by far too much uninteresting data, so I took only out what I thought to be interesting enough to share. If you want the rest, grab the picture and extract them yourself ).

graphics/exiftags from FreeBSD’s ports collection was installed, index.php and archive.php got a little extra with:

< ?php if(the_category_ID(false)==13) { include “photoblog.php”; } else { ?>
</>

and photoblog.php was basically:

$content=get_the_content();
$src=strpos($content, “src”);
$start=strpos($content, “””, $src);
$end=strpos($content, “””, $start+1);
$src=substr($content, $start+1, $end-$start-1);
$src=str_replace(“.sized”, “”, $src);
echo $content;

$sha1 = sha1($src);
$cache = ABSPATH . “wp-content/cache/“.$sha1;
if(file_exists($cache)) { echo “

“; include($cache); echo “

“; }
else {
exec(“/usr/bin/fetch -q -o /tmp/“.$sha1.” $src”);
exec(“/usr/local/bin/exiftags < /tmp/“.$sha1.” > $cache.tmp”);
exec(“/bin/rm /tmp/“.$sha1);
exec(“/usr/bin/grep Created $cache.tmp >> $cache”);
exec(“/usr/bin/grep Exposure $cache.tmp | /usr/bin/grep -v Mode >> $cache”);
exec(“/usr/bin/grep ISO $cache.tmp >> $cache”);
exec(“/usr/bin/grep Focal $cache.tmp >> $cache”);
exec(“/usr/bin/grep Lens $cache.tmp >> $cache”);
exec(“/bin/rm $cache.tmp”);
echo “

“; include($cache); echo “

“;
}
?>
</>

I’ll add some presentation later for the more minimalistic approach. But right now, I think it looks quite good. Of course, an option five: auto-blog my entries to Gallery’s Photoblog gallery would’ve been even better, but for now this is all right.

Incomplete

Lead singer

At Philippa’s birthdayparty I grabbed this great picture of Jacob

Lunch

Reposting my old entries that are only in my gallery as of yet

Pattern

Solitude

Centurion

Eclipse and Mac OS X

Cool, seems Apple is backing Eclipse by putting it as a featured tool on their web: Eclipse and Mac OS X: A Natural Combination. I used Eclipse a while ago and loved it, but on OS X it was too slow to use for anything worthwhile. I hope this has changed in the last half year, 3.1M2 is downloading right now.

Satellite crashes into house

(via GoogleNews)

Worlds ugliest fish

Nice image

Delicious Library

Delicious Library looks GOOD. I have no idea of just what it does beyond building up your own library of stuff, but when it’s available I’ll go have a look

Debate plugin notes

Blogs can be used to promote democracy. A topic can be discussed and people can leave their comments. But a plugin can be made to allow WordPress to be used for debates. This is where two or more parties discuss an issue. People should be able to leave their comments that then are a pool of “questions from the audience” that the participants are requested to answer. I think this is one of the really intersting public discussion tools that for now only are in the mainstream media and not in blogs (yet).

Do feel free to use my idea for making such a plugin or similar. I would appreciate a link back to this post, though.

WP Plugin Database

A WordPress Plugin Database is up. Would be nice if it could be tied in with a plugin manager in WP13. Looks nice, and I’m happy the compability field is used.

Photoblog

My first attempt isn’t really a photo blog as much as it is Gallery with its own category. See it here and subscribe to the RSS if you like. Today’s entry:

Yesterday’s entry:

Concepts that do not exist in the English language

Metafilter has a post on concepts that do not exist in English

Apple cake

Today’s cake: apple cake without cake:

4-5 apples
150g marzipan
150g dark chocolate
50g butter
hazel nuts

Prepare the pan with butter, add sliced apples, spread little pieces of marzipan all over, and put chopped chocolate and nuts on top

Finally add slices of butter on top and put it in the oven on 225 degrees until the chocolate is fully melted and the apples tender.

Upcoming changes

Right, it’s time for changes for this blog. I need the following: a photoblog section and a linkblog section. I need to revamp my photo gallery. And I should seriously not use this page to show that I don’t have a clue about what colours match.

Linkblog - if I just want to post a quick link, it takes up too much space as is. They should be collected and placed in one go on my page. I plan on implementing a linkblog and photoblog by just putting the contents in its own category. This category should then of course NOT be in the category listing.

For the photoblog I expect to have a separate theme now that I use WP13-cvs anyway. For the link aggregation I probably need to write a little plugin or so, should give me an excluse to look at the plugin architecture. With Gallery I expect to be going back to 1.4.4, the speed of Gallery 2 just isn’t there. My server is a 500Mhz thingy and that’s been sufficient for a looong time. It should be sufficient for Gallery 2 as well

Kubrick for WP 1.3 - RC2

Ryan Boren has released Kubrick 1.3-RC2. According to him, the changes since RC1 are:

Added 404 page
Images are loaded from stylesheet_dir instead of template_directory
Added links.php and archives.php page templates

After doing a diff between the two, I find that the only file that has been changed is index.php (true, the stylesheet has had a version bump in the comment, but that’s all). That means, comments, archives, index, footer, page, search, searchform and sidebar are unchanged. Good news if you’re using Kubrick as a template for building your theme like I am, but bad luck if you were hoping Kubrick is going somewhere. The RC’s seem to be status quo designwise but implementing WP13 features more and more. Up to you to decide how you like it. I don’t mind too much, but I’m always excited to see what new design ideas are thrown around.

Gigapixel Images

This guy stitched a picture scaling 40784x26800, and it looks good!

20D

I’m not the only one to receive my Canon 20D, Michael Reichmann has an excelent followup on his last review. I agree with his comment on the shutter sound, my first reaction was Argh!. This will be bad in so many situations. But, the camera is so seriously great that I’ll happily live with that. Only question is: Michael, what happened when you got busted by the two?

My picture taken (by my mum) at Fanø with the EOS 20D. Quite cropped, stored to the camera at moderate compression. Quick summary: I took ~330 photos, my battery STILL shows full power status.

My main concern is really with my lenses.I couldn’t afford a 17-85 IS lens, so I have the 17-55mm and my trusty old 28-80mm (picture above is taken with this lens). Oh, and it’s quite heavy, which is a pro when taking the picture, but having walked around with it in my right hand the entire day, I can feel it in my shoulder. Now I have to work on my blog for a nice photoblog section as this camera sure will get addictive

Update: Randal L. Schwartz loves his EOS 20D too. He talks a bit in phrases like in an artful stroke of madness and so on, and I need to think a bit about this as I do very much agree with many critiques of the “snapshot culture”, but I think that these critiques are usually a bit too harsh from people who get more competition. So I need to find my view on the balance. More on that later

Crop

I’ve become facinated by the 1:1.5 crop, I think I’ll use that for most of my photoblog, at least to start with.

Laszlo

I’ll need to check out Laszlo and it’s open source server.

Bellow tubes

This guy has some amazing pictures demonstrating his bellow tube setup.

Colourblind Web Page Filter

I usually to check how my pages work for blind people using w3m or links, but now I can check how colour blind people see my pages: Colourblind Web Page Filter

WordPress 1.2.1

WordPress 1.2.1 Testers Needed

A message from Barthold Kuijken

On September 20th 2004, while putting my luggage in a locker at The Hague Central Station, my shoulder bag containing four - very good - traversos (and personal papers, telephone, calendar, address book etc..) was grabbed away. It stood between my legs on the floor, but the thief was very experienced and fast: I hardly noticed a shadow moving and something slipping against my trousers.

Following instruments were stolen:

1) A. Weemaels, Hotteterre copy, 387 Hz., boxwood, in a nice wooden box it consists of 8 pieces:

wooden end cap
ivory end cap
head joint
wooden connection
ivory connection
middle joint
wooden foot (with ivory ring)
ivory foot

2) A. Weemaels, A. Grenser copy, 415 Hz., boxwood with (imitation-) ivory rings,4 pieces, no corkscrew but end cap, register foot

3) R. Tutz, I.H. Rottenburgh copy, stained boxwood with (imitation-) ivory rings, 4 pieces, corkscrew, register foot

4) Ph. Allain-Dupre (but unsigned), Quantz copy, 392 Hz., ebony or grenadilla, 4 pieces, (head joint with corkscrew and tuning slide), two keys and register on foot

The last three instruments were carried in a clear brown soft leather purse. I hope any of you could help me finding these instruments! (honestly, I don’t dare to hope very much that I’ll ever see them back, but one never knows…)

Anyway: thanks for looking out!

Bart

e-mail address of Barthold Kuijken e-mail: barthold.kuijken@pi.be

Please forward this e-mail to any helpful source, from the music world, second hand shops, music fairs, music schools etc.

Coffee is addictive

According to The Seattle Times, coffee really is addictive. In other words: no news today.

What is really funny is they find that an average american drinks 3.4 cups of coffee a day. Now, how much is a cup? Is a cup the same amount of coffee as an espresso shot? My cup of coffee is typically three espressos that fit nicely in a cup. There’s even room for hot water, hot cream, cinamon, liquer, whatever you desire for your coffee (yes, cookies and chocolate too). Is this regarded as a cup? An americano is typically an espresso with buckets of warm water, producing the worlds probably thinnes coffee. Do americans drink americano’s? (looks like they do in Friends, but then again how american are the Friends characters? )

ZDNet uses WordPress

At the bottom of ZDNet.com, they kindly acknowledge: Made with WordPress. They were instantly added to my blogroll.

Pitcairn "explained"

Originalism has an informative article on the background of Pitcairn.

Slide Show in XHTML/CSS

A good one-file slideshow X-HTML/CSS/JS-based system is available at Eric’s Archived Thoughts

Nigeria spearheads polio campaign

BBC News is reporting thatBBC Nigeria has launched fresh eforts to stamp out polio. This is part of a campaign to immunise more than 80 million children in 23 african countries. They have my best wishes. Hopefully this is what I’ll think of next time I hear someone say Nigeria.

HP doesn't like Schwartz\'s blogging

I wonder if Jonathan Schwartz will comment on todays news (ITworld (via ZDNet blog (via Schwartz, actually )) and Computerworld (via Linux Today)) that HP doesn’t like him blogging negatively about them. I remember reading the discussed entry and I actually agreed with Schwartz in much of it. But it’s interesting as this is what, in my view, blogs do well: give people’s opinion a place, without having corporations interfering. For instance, I’m buying a Canon EOS 20D camera, and I read reviews by obviously biassed reviewers, but also lots of blog entries. And after having read enough, I actually ordered it without having had it in my hand, I’m that confident that this will be a great camera. It goes the other way around too, if I buy something on eBay and I get screwed by a seller (no, I don’t have any particulars in mind ), I will be sure to report it, and not particularly by negative feedback. This is what blogs do well. And I’m sorry for HP if they don’t appreciate it. But hey, they got heaps of PR on it. And it’d be nice to hear Jonathan’s opinion.

Pop-ups

Today I had my first pop-up ad in a loooong time because I’d forgotten I’d disabled it just to try out some stuff. Good stuff, I’d totally forgotten the anoyance.

Baking

I’ve taken up baking

My first loaf of bread wasn’t a success for the looks, but it tasted fantastic! My second one was rather sluggish with too much water, but I’m getting there. Add ingredients, let the machine do the rest. Suits me fine. And finally I can get good bread in Denmark (not just white or all black, but plain norwegian “grovbrød”)

Trackback spam

Great, trackback spam is becoming a problem too.

Wednesday evening

I skipped badminton today to cook dinner (marinated turkey, mixed vegetables, thai-sauce and brown rice, then my chocolate/espresso fix served with dark orange chocolate on the side. When everyone was gone, I thought this picture captured the day nicely.

Nuclear batteries

An interesting read

Recording music is, er, hilarious

The Recording Industry Guide to Home Taping via Binary Bonsai

2x converters

I contacted Soligor about their 2x tele-converters as I noticed that many firms have released new converters and that some (Soligor included) have special converters for the digital Canon EOS series. They answered (quickly, I may add ) that the 2x convertors are only coated from one side but that because the sensors in digital cameras reflect light, they require double coating. There are two new issues to me in this:

The sensors reflect light? Does this disturb the picture with any lens when using a slow shutter speed?
What kind of coating is used for converters (or lenses in general) and what is it used for? (obviously it has to do with reflection, but how/what?)

Canon 20D questions

Question at Chromasia regarding a canon 20d photo

Aldersgrense for giftermål

I Aftenposten i dag kan vi lese at Arbeiderpartiet vil slavisk følge Danmark på å innføre 21 års aldersgrense for familiegjenforening. I Danmark er grensen 24 år, og det har blitt bare store mengder tull av det fordi det slår ut foskjellig og det er masse bråk på tinget om det. Folk vil ha det bort. Arbeiderpartiet vil vi skal inn i den samme ulykken.

PD and Neural nets

This article is a good introduction to neural nets in PureData: Written by Arshia Cont, Thierry Coduys and Cyrille Henry.

I Found Some Of Your Life

Where do the lines go for what’s too much intrusion into someone’s life? This guy has found a memory card in a taxi, and says: I am going to post one of your pictures each day. I will also narrates as if I were you. Apparently so that this person can get back to him and reclaim his/her memory-card. Why does this remind me of blackmail?

iWork

Left a question about iWork for Sun

EF-S lenses

Now I’m sure, I’m buying a Canon 20D. I discussed the camera with the corner-photostore guy who also just ordered one, and he said an interesting thing: don’t get the lens. Apparently, it’s giving rounded off images. Now, I don’t have the worlds most fancy 28-80 lens on my EOS 500, but I’ve never had a problem with lenses. So, I went to look for some reviews. The lens in question is a EF-S 18-55/3.5-5.6 (here reviewed by photo.net). I guess my main point is having one that I can get close enough with, as my trusty 28-80 will become a 45-128 lens. Thus 18-55 should overlap nicely, and I really shouldn’t need to go for the 17-85 lens. The conclusion from photo.net comes in the beginning of the article: it’s good enough. Right. I’m not an expert. If I was, I’d buy the Canon 1MkII or something. Done deal, I can’t afford the other lenses. (Interestingly, I haven’t found any packages with a 20D and a 17-85 lens)

But, just for fun, let’s take the reviews: DPReview brings us 17-18 and 10-22 lenses and a Speedlite 580EX flash.

PHP5 - Sad state of affairs

I’ve been working on installing PHP5 on client webservers the past couple of days, and with some help that’s been going all right. Much I’ve read has been on the merits of PHP5 vs PHP4, little have I read on user experience. So here’s my first experiences with PHP5 and commonly used PHP packages:

WordPress - 1.2 has issues that are solved in 1.3 CVS. Still, it requires rcps (a regular expression library) to be installed, and with this the wp-admin triggers functions that causes a segmentation fault (signal 11) that I haven’t been able to debug yet
Gallery 2 - doesn’t come past the “go to step 1” in the installer. No news in the error-log
phpBB 1.4 - When setting up, the dialog for setting up the database returns to the default values when pressing the submit button
Coppermine - Undefined variable: HTTP_SERVER_VARS, HTTP_GET_VARS, HTTP_POST_VARS and HTTP_COOKIE_VARS is output to the error log. The response in the support forums have been (my translation) We don’t care about PHP5, it works with PHP4 and if you want to use our stuff, use PHP4.

After having read many similar suggestions in the various discussion boards, I was left saddened. With the Segfaults, ok, PHP5 hasn’t matured enough yet, but from running a couple of hundred jails with PHP4 I know PHP4 segfaults regularly as well. Just not consistently. But obviously people don’t care to write the PHP-based software they distribute enough to keep up with the general guidelines posted by the PHP developers long ago, the reason that variables like $_GET[] such were introduced. And safe-mode seems to be a no-no. I guess I was to optimistic thinking the pass-by-reference as opposed to pass-by-value would be a little problem for some projects, it seems to be a common problem for many.

So, my task for now will be to move all our clients that want PHP5 back to PHP4 and say no, you can’t have the benefits of PHP5. And you’ll probably go coding something that won’t run PHP5 when finally we can switch to it.

Mozilla OS X woes gone

With the release of
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 and Firefox 1.0 preview, the problem with Desktop Manager and CodeTek Desktop Manager are gone. For the past two release it has been beyond belief hard to input any text into Firefox and Thunderbird, to the point where I’ve gone back to Apple’s Mail and Safari. Now I can use both Mozilla products again.

Encrypting swap

According to AppleInsider, Tiger is adding
an option to encrypt memory when its being swapped to disk. If swapping wasn’t a performance drain already, this will be. Unless, of course, “encryption” is an XOR thingy or similar. (I automatically assume strong encryption )

Om Malik refers to debates on Skype

Great point of entry into ongoing discussions about Skype: privacy, VoIP, statistics, infrastructure.

Customizing Gallery 2

In a response to an ongoing discussion at Binary Bonsai, I decided to implement Gallery 2 for Kubrick. Estimated time: 30 minutes. This is not Vanilla Kubrick, this is my bastardized version, I just copy-pasted most of the plain HTML and made sure all the CSS was in the CSS file. Reason being, { and } are “smart tags” in Gallery 2. Ok, so let’s go.

First of all, Gallery 2 CVS as of today. Get it.

Now, if people would like me to post my modified files, do leave a comment (can’t be bothered if no-one cares ) And, unless other licenses forbid it (i.e, GPL kicks in), all files will be under the standard two-clause BSD license.

Ok, here we go: Copy templates/global.tpl to templates/global.tpl.local and edit the local-file. I ripped out all except for {include file=”gallery:`$main.viewHeadFile`“ l10Domain=$main.viewL10Domain} and {include file=”gallery:`$main.viewBodyFile`“ l10Domain=$main.viewL10Domain}. You can view variables with a tag like this: {$main.viewBodyFile }.

Next file up, layouts/matrix/templates/albumBody.tpl that again is copied to albumBody.tpl.local and after you’ve edited that one you may want to edit singleBody.tpl for the full-size pictures, sidebar.tpl for options and pathbar.tpl for the breadcrums. Not too much of a hassle, really. I think Gallery 2 is coming somewhere. But then again, I would love to see this streamlined into one file as with WordPress. Oh well, I’ve got in half an hour a Kubrick-like Gallery 2 implementation. Now for the tweaking…. (you see from the heading how bad I am with colours and layout )

VST server in PD for FreeBSD

I’ll definetly need to read Using VST/VSTi Plugins In Linux when I’ll want to do the same for FreeBSD. Just reinstalling 5.3BETA3 on my laptop to make it my power music-station. Yeah, it’s still the 400 Mhz thingy.

SSH2 implementation in Python

SSH2 protocol for python

Robotic Barkeeper

Paul Lamere can tell about a robotic barkeeper that will serve you a drink at a spoken request, and tell jokes while it’s making them. I’m hoping that version two can juggle the bottles, make recommendations, improvise new drinks depending on the users, eh, customers mood and send drinks to the girl in that sparkling red top. And of course, I expect it to pass all sanetary tests. How often do you wash your hands, little robot?

Aborigines discovered America?

Did the first Americans come from Australia? Not through Sibir from Asia, not the Vikings with Leif Erikson and certainly not Columbus.

Rape of Kosovo

She cradled him to her chest, she looked into her boy’s eyes, she stroked his face and she snapped his neck. This is The Observer writing on systematic rape in Kosovo where 4.4% of the female population were systematically raped during the Balkan war. This article is long and horrible in detail, is about the consequences and what was hushed down, and should definetly be read.

PHP regex problem

PHP allows the use of the PCRE library, but PHP5 comes with an interesting, undocumented twitch: You have to add -with-pcre-regex if you want to use preg_match(), a quite commonly used function. With PHP4, all you did was -with-pcre and you got the whole package, and the -with-pcre-regex is undocumented in the configure program of PHP5 which is where people look for this.

Change your hair

This hair styling test is great!

SMS-rally for the Beslan victims

An SMS rally in Norway that asked people to light a candle for the Beslan (Russia) victims led to the Red Cross being given one million norwegian crowns (Norwegian article). 1.050.000, really. 1.5 million SMS’es were sent, and Telenor, Norways biggest phone company, gives the surplus to the Red Cross, which in turn will send even more help to Beslan within this week. I received these SMS’es both in Norwegian and Danish, so perhaps this has happened other places in the world as well? More info in Norwegian here.

Credit problem

Dear all, I’m having a problem giving correct credit to the blogs where I find links with interesting content. Each day I read my newsfeed of ~160 feeds. While reading it, I spawn 30 or so background tabs, and if I find something I really want to blog about, I blog about it. Finding BACK to what entry I clicked from takes much time this way, and thus it’s all to easy to give less credit than what I’d like to. So, I was wondering if you have any suggestions for SIMPLE solutions that would allow a user to know where the page he’s coming from originates from?

Hard times for EU

The Observer has a good article on Europe reaching its crisis point

Quote Sony: No music for you

I wanted to try out Sony’s online music store, but it seems it requires Explorer. Try this with Safari and feel the rejection. This is not the way to do business. My most recent experience with this is that I askes the Skype developers for beta access to their OS X software and they were making money of me in no time (and I’m dialling far more frequent to Norway now). How about that music, Sony?

FreeBSD UFS2 Snapshot Management Environment

Ralph S. Engelschall writes on FreeBSD’sUFS2 Snapshot Management Environment. This is really rather cool stuff for a filesystem in a production environment like at work.

Roller and norwegian characters

Hi. I’m having a bit of trouble using Roller for Ingeborg’s homepage. I’ve set the characterset to be ISO-8859-1, yet all norwegian characters end up as question marks in the HTML. The database contains the posts with Norwegian characters, so something weird happens on its way through Roller. Checked this with version 0.9.8.1 and 0.9.8.2. Apparently this is still true with 0.9.9. Time to finally ditch Roller (and go for WordPress?)? I like the system, but it keeps failing on me and not having a big community making plugins and such for it, there’s not really that much to hold on to. Or is there? Input is most welcome!

UPDATE: Lance sais he’s fixed the issue. And the Roller Demo with Tomcat5, JSPWiki and Roller set up out of the box is quite nice

Downside to hypertasking

Hypertaskers do things faster but not better is today’s article from SlashDot. Forgetfulness, sleeplessness, irritability and stress, sounds familiar? Sure does to me. Anyway, with increasing demands and increasing inputs it seems the logical thing to do is to find a way to be able to deal with issues one at a time in a relaxed fashion. And how do you deal with that email-overload?

Firefox

Happy with FireFox? Good, then don’t read these two articles.

Avalon

Crhis Anderson answers Miguel de Icaza‘s concerns about Avalon. I’m very glad he does, and to have discussions like this in a public forum is great. I don’t totally buy the SVG and CSS both were passed on because they weren’t adaquate to meet our needs. I’ve heared this way to many times before as an excuse to reinvent the wheel and having to answer to no-one. Although it’s not embrace and extend we’re used to, I would have preferred them to implement standards correctly and then make additions through contributing to standard bodies like W3C.

iMac

Russell Beattie sais it best regarding the iMac: My toddler would knock it over. Besdies, if this thing is going to be wall-mountable, all the wires are coming out the wrong way. And if it is not, it will look like a giant, unelegant octopus (my current imac has presently connected my stereo-system, backup-speakers, microphone, usb hub, negative film-scanner, TV breakout-box and keyboard, that’d fill all the slots in this next iMac and look rather unimpressive). It should have been simple: that one cable into the monitor should go to a little box that connects to all the cables. Break-out boxes are old news, but it works for hiding away the mess. Other oddities: No Firewire 800, slow FSB, default only 256MB RAM, still loving 80GB drives (two years ago I bought an iMac, and then the 80Gb drive that came along was small, what is this?), no DVD+RW, only DVD-R, Bluetooth not by default. I have heared nothing about WiFi, so I expect it’s there. And please don’t give me that built-in speaker “solution”.

In short: there have been many good proposals for the new iMac, this one was rather tame and has flaws that keep me from getting excited (apart from the G5 part). So my ideal solution right now would be a G5-based powerbook with an extra display.

An Introduction to HTTP Fingerprinting

An Introduction to HTTP Fingerprinting is a great article, and if you’re programming for the web (who isn’t these days? ) you should read it!

Skype for OS X

Finally Skype is available for OS X users. Been a betatester a while, and it looks great.

Blog spam

A couple of hours ago my blog was spammed with lots of comments. They all got caught, so no worries, but what surprised me was that although they were clearly spamming for the same host, they came almost all from differen IP-adresses, radically different IP-adresses: 12.22.85.3
193.145.88.17, 193.165.223.2, 200.35.83.27
200.56.233.5, 202.125.129.138, 203.150.28.215, 203.169.115.134, 203.246.165.35, 206.163.199.1, 210.3.7.150, 210.4.143.254, 210.5.71.243, 212.47.27.186, 213.253.212.101, 61.19.243.11, 63.81.122.87, 64.19.80.100, 64.3.231.3, 65.112.88.98, 66.178.7.6, 66.192.31.98, 67.136.50.93, 80.53.138.10, 80.55.131.150, 80.58.20.235, 80.58.46.235, 80.84.154.70, 81.118.4.4.
Someone is having a bit more fun with distributed computing than they should.

Nicer Titles

Having seen Nicer Titles demonstrated at Binary Bonsai, I decided to incorporate it into my page. Don’t seem to work too well with Safari, though.

Sign Blog

Rob Wilks is blogging in sign language

Categories and indexing

Hi. I came across del.icio.us in an Infoworld article, and figured: What if we make an RFC for categories. If we had a set of standardized categories people could choose to use, we could have blog indexes where we could subscribe on a category in a language as an rss feed and receive only interesting topics on that. An example of a category could be Music/Early Music/Renaissance, as opposed to Art/Renaissance/Vermeer. I’d love to receive blogging on Vermeer and Renaissance music without having to hunt these blogs down and add them to my RSS feed.

Fun with math

Found this at SeanBonner:

Videoblogs

In Marc’s Voice today, Marc shows this video of Momentshowing. I don’t know about the guy who made this, but this kind of thing freaks me out. He’s assuming that just because a person is outside, he has the right to videotape him and show him around to everyone. Assuming, of course, that the story is true and not just produced. This is why people are afraid of cellphones with videocameras and such, that people will just allow themselves to not only watch people and stalk people, but do it with the world as their audience. What do you think about this?

Spammers Tarpit

Spammers tarpit has been posted. It’s a plugin that’s supposed to ask spammers to go away. Not an ideal solution as far as I can say. I’d prefer just increasing the delay, first a minute, then a minute and a half, until they go away. Using bad language isn’t any much help. And oh, it has it’s bugs. When posting this, my screen reads: Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /disks/ideraid1/web/saers.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/tarpit.php on line 51. Go figure. But good to see that people are working on this, and good luck to the developers continuing the development.

Update: this bug is due to that they don’t add a list of IPs. So you’ll have to figure that one out for yourself, make an array of IPs. Like I’m going to add that to my daily workload. No thanks.

Nytt norgeskart

Fylker er tydeligvis avleggs, nå skal Norge deles inn i syv regioner. Større og større kommuner, nå “superfylkene”. Mer makt til færre politikere med mindre lokaltilknytning. Dette er ganske langt fra veien vi burde gå, mot økt lokaldemokrati.

Dealing With Creative Conflict

Keith Robinson writes on Dealing With Creative Conflict Within a Team. These things just can’t be said often enough. I’ve read them many times. I’ve said them many times. Yet I and many of my peers overlook them many times.

FreeBSD 5.3Beta1 & Enlightenment DR16.7.1

FreeBSD 5.3-BETA1 is available, happy testing, everyone. Also, the long avaited Enlightenment DR16.7.1 has been released. I don’t know how many years ago Enlightenment was my favourite deskmanager. Year 2000 or thereabouts, perhaps. Congratulations! Perhaps I’ll give this a spin sometime soon.

RSS usability guidelines

Helge wrote down some RSS usability guidelines that seemed to settle our discussion at the Weblog Tools Collection.

Skype for OS X

Way cool, Skype is coming to OS X! IP telephony, here I come!

Python for UIQ

This guy is making Python available for my Sony/Ericsson P800 and similar UIQ devices. Get his feed.

Ars Subtilior

I came across an ok site with introductionary examples of Ars Subtilior, music from around Avignon and Northern Italy (roughly 1370-1410) (see Wikipedia for more.

RSS entries' uniqueness and comments

Whoops, I seem to have sparked a debate on RSS feeds and comments at WebLog Tools Collection. Good to have these kinds of dicsussions going in this kind of open forum

Scream and the Madonna stolen

About 11.50 today we could read that Scream [and the Madonna has been] stolen from Norway museum. Not in BBC World, of course, but in Aftenposten and at NRK. Four, then three, and now two armed & masked robbers have stolen Munch’s paintings Scream and the Madonna, and the museums expect a demand for randsom. This is not the first time Norwegian treasures like this are stolen (if you can read Norwegian, see this story in VG), but luckily they have so far usually turned up again after some time. After all, would you let anyone into your home knowing you had a hot painting in it?

Canon EOS 20D Review

New Canon EOS camera out. I read this review
and particularly I noted The camera also has long exposure noise reduction as an option. Does anyone have any experience with such noise reduction? Does it work satisfactory?

Testing at M$

The IE blog has an entryabout testing that I found quite nice to read. I’m very fond of tests

No news of silence

According to SmallBusinessComputing, Maxtor Rocks on With DiamondMax. I assume that means that we’ll have one really noisy harddrive on the market. Cleverly, they haven’t mentioned the sound it makes at all. I expect heavy noise pollution

New bird species discovered

From BBC News: An international expedition has found a bird species new to science on a remote island in the northern Philippines.

Audacity 1.2.2 beta out

Haven’t seen any blog notes about this, so: Audacity is having a prerelease of 1.2.2. Grab it here
Audacity is the open source alternative to Sound Forge, and is currently supported on OS X, *nix and Windows.

Strange network traffic

Hi all,
do you recognize this kind of ethernet traffic? This is the output (repeated over and over) from tcpdump

17:15:59.702633 01:80:c2:00:00:01 > 01:80:c2:00:00:01, ethertype Unknown (0x8808), length 60: 
        0x0000:  0001 ffff 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
        0x0010:  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
        0x0020:  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000       ..............

Raible Designs ~ Site keeps crashing

Matt has a problem with his site crashing. Nik:
What kind of profiler would you use for a job like this?

New Harpsichord

The new harpsichord at school has arrived. Due to what’s called a wormhole in the wood, I’m calling him (it’s CLEARLY a male instrment) Grima. Weee!! He sounds great. Now we just have to put the old one into shape.

Summer

Nik is back in Denmark. My trip was good. The weather has been good, my book (Peter Bastian’s “Inn i Musikken”) is still interesting, my

Nomad

is still filled with good music (now listening to Chominciamento di gioia – Ensemble Unicorn Vienna) and the weather has been fabulous. No turbulence (although I think the pilots were having fun flying slalom every now and then ), and the correspondance with my train was just great. Straight from the plane to the train without having to hurry or wait for ages.

I haven’t been blogging much this summer more than commenting on what others have been writing. So, here goes: we ,the youth choir of the Cathedral of Oslo (Oslo Domkirkes Ungdomskor), went to the choir olympics in Bremen, Germany. There we came in 8th of 27 (which logically enough gave us a silver medal. Olympics where everyone get medals ) in the category for mixed youthchoirs. I am amazed at how great the judges were. We weren’t too well prepared, so we deserved no more, but with how well our performance went, we deserved no less either.

We went by boat to Hirsthals and had a bus from there, and stopped at a farm in Ringsted where the aunt of one in the choir had an art gallery where we held a concert. Attendence was good and the concert sounded quite good, and the party afterwards (including lots of champagne and small fortune-stones) was swell. The parties in Bremen were quite magnificent as well (the mexican place at the corner of the street with our hotel will never be the same, but we were by a couple of really nice pubs too), and being a tourist in Bremen was nice, with a great lunch at the windmill, interesting churches, a shop selling really tasty chocolate and a super public transport system that was quite reliable and didn’t cost us much because of the olympics.

A couple of weeks later I went to Sund folkehøgskole for the Ringve Summer Course where lots of recorder-, traverso-, harpsichord-, gamba-, violin&viola-, baroque guitar, lute- and theorboe-players as well as our singers and dancers. All

early music

for an entire week. We were only two recorder players this year, whereas we’ve always been the largest class. The ten harpsichordists must have been the largest class this year, and qiute frankly: it’s was great! I got to play in more ensembles than I’ve done in the two previous courses combined, and only thing was that it was quite tiring so when I the last day wasn’t playing in an ensemble, I must admit I didn’t mind.

Ink-jet printing creates tubes of living tissue

Ok, this is apparently old news, but still it was new to me. newscientists.com has an article on Ink-jet printing of living. This sounds like a wonderful idea. Canon is apparently doing the same thing in Japan

Antispoof feature in ipfw

I should be sure to include the ipfw antispoof option,
implemented by Andre Oppermann in FreeBSD’s ipfw, at work

Cocoa#

The Mono project has a new member: Cocoa#. According to their site CocoaSharp is aimed at .Net/Mono developers that want to allow their users to have a native Mac OS X application experience.

Gnome 2.6 on FreeBSD

If you are installing Gnome on FreeBSD right now, you should read this article. I expect it’ll be outdated fairly quickly, so if you’re reading this a month from now you can probably skip it

atacontrol panic

I’ve had a panic with FreeBSD’s ata-raid under -CURRENT the last few days, collected it all and wrote to Søren about it. A little while later, a patch pops in. It all works. Thanks a bunch, Søren.

Problem with photos

According to an US news site “You know the bands - their names, their music, their image - everything is licensed. And if somebody takes a photograph of the band, and that picture ends up on e-bay and somebody’s paying money for it, the band’s not seeing any of that revenue, then they have a problem with it,” Barry Kohlus, with The Backyard, said. So let me get this right, if I take a picture of something and sell it, what’s in the picture should get money for it? If I take a picture of the Eiffel tower, should I pay some Paris agency for that? If I take a picture of someone, should I pay them for it? Hmm…. I’ve been in the newspapers a couple of times, twice on TV and in various sites. Does that mean that all these places should pay me for the picture? Obviously, someone must have their licencing wrong.

Kubrick

So, this blog now uses the Kubrick team, even though I’m having a couple of problems with it. So I did a quick google to see how many admitted to using it, and I thought I’d link up a few here. I won’t comment on the ones that haven’t made any real changes, but since I’m planning to I thought I’d see what other people have been doing.

FreshNecessity has done a nice thing with different backgrounds for each heading and added a couple of options on top. Much like I was thinking about. He uses iPap for his photo albums. Maybe I should check it out. I’m using Gallery and I haven’t looked too much into making it work with the same theme yet.

ChopSocky did a nice thing with the right-side bar.

Cultural Collision tries having a menu on top, but I don’t think he’s just there yet.

UPDATE: Kubrick in Hindi

UPDATE2: Dubtribesoundsystem

Solheim

I was recommended to have a look at the webpage to Maria Solheim, singer & lyric writer. I’ll have to listen to some of her music.

Alcohol is good for you

The news is out, alcohol is good for you. Of course, everyone just points to this article to legitimize their drinking, not reading it and certainly disregarding all articles that say the opposite. And I love strange conclusions: such as, I should drink half a bottle of wine before studying.

Zoto

Zoto looks really nice, and I should visit it frequently because it has no RSS feed. Ehm…. that of course means, I’m putting the picture gallery for blogs up here and hope that I come back for it. I first read about this at PhotoMatt today, and even though he sais WordPress is not supported, obviously they’re working at it. I’ll give ‘em a ping and ask for that RSS feed. I love image RSS feeds! Fresh photos, a glance of people’s lives without reading all the time. Call me lazy, but I’ve always loved photos

Creativity

A for the geeks variant on how to be creative is available at GapingVoid. I must admit disagree with his way of thinking, but by the sound of it, he’s trying to make people think big and beyond. I’d prefer introducing people to the subtleties. But I’m no teacher, so when I find that someone has done this, I’ll link to him.

Great hackers

In his article on Great Hackers, Paul Graham works on how productive coders actually like to work. This is a little piece I hope my current, my future and my past employers will read. While I’m sure they are heaps of exceptions, this is very much how it works for me. So if this is the kind of work I’ll be doing, do read.

Developers recommended not to make comments in FreeBSD

Hendrik Scholz has made a great case in his article FreeBSD source keyword statistics that FreeBSD hackers should stop writing comments, or lie when writing them

US Military problems

An interesting site is http://www.seewhatyoushare.com where a lot of documents and images have been revieled that apparently have been shared through P2P networks. Someone learn the military how to use a computer. Anyways, the really great picture among them is this:

Repertoire for the Ringve Course

They’re trying out a discussion/planning forum for the Ringve early music summer course at olavsfestdagene.no. Nothing fancy but I’m sure it does the job.

Hot Coffee

Remember Seinfeld’s sketch with Kramer and the hot coffee? Well… happened to me today. You know it’s a dangerous occupation when you have to go three stories to get a good cup of coffee

Jacob van Eyck Quarterly 2004 / 3

This quarters edition goes back to everyone’s favourite:
Amarilli mia bella, Van Eyck’s variations

Kongsbergjazz

I was at the jazz festival in Kongsberg friday together with a good friend of mine from ODU. There I met a friend I lived with in Australia and a friend from secondary school and his girlfriend. Good stuff. We got to see Bobby McPhee at The Thing w/McPhee & Cato Salsa Experience and Palace of Pleasure, although with the last concert I loved the warmup band while PoP didn’t really perform but sing and play bass to playback-only. Not much of a performance. Today is cancled for my part as I had to go back to Oslo to fix a server that crashed during the night. Bugger! (the damned thing ran out of swap and locked out all) We had a couple of concerts lined up and it’d been fab being there. The feel of the place was great. Everyone was friendly and outgoing and we got to chat with heaps of nice people. Wish I could’ve stayed.

Multivitamins may slow HIV

Taking multivitamins may help stop HIV infection developing into full-blown Aids according to BBC News.

Mummies

Dorry has a photo-blog full of mummies

Fishmeal #2

I was better prepared this time. A really strong coffee, and loads of food. Fishmeal in a cup, mix with half water/half coffee, drink, drink water, drink coffee, eat food, more coffee… I can get through this

Great photo

Apo Enne-woman with her tattoed arms is a great photo of an elderly women, I don’t know where from. (Where in the world is Samoki? Would it kill people to say what country they’re writing in? Or just what continent? )

Dashboard

I haven’t figured out what all the fuzz about Dahsboard is. I gave Konfabulator a shot once. Looks nice when you’re using it, it’s good for server monitoring etc. Sorry for the Konfabulator guy that Apple made a smiliar product. I hope he at least had a chance to strike a deal similar to what the guys who made Panther’s filebrowser got. Anyways, Konfabulator had a problem, and Dashboard has the same. An Apple-blogger sais it right out:
Dashboard is (from a browser geek’s perspective): HTML sidebar panels liberated from the browser window and placed anywhere on the screen. Meaning, using it gives you nothing but clutter on your desktop. Big deal? Probably not, but you’re not going to get good information here as you’re training yourself to ignore it. Worse yet, when the Konfabulator widgets fail, they often more or less stall, making the ready-at-hand/present-at-hand discussion relevant again: it will jump up at you and annoy you when it fails. I don’t care if it’s failed when I’m not reading the information, and because I’ll be trained to ignore it, it’ll be nothing but a hassle. When I get 10.4, I’ll be sure to turn it off straight away, just like I never wanted to use Konfabulator much.

Another good photo

Fishmeal

One and a half hour ago, I had my first cup of fishmeal mixed with water. It was such a shock I almost vomited, and I still feel it crawling up, trying to get out of my stomache. Not delicate at all. I was aware that the taste and smell was repulsive, but I can’t have mixed it out allright, ‘cause it felt like sand mixed with water. Ugh… oh well, at least I’m prepared for my next cup tomorrow. I’ll be sure to have a good cup of coffee around, then. Now I had only chewing gum, and I assure you that there’s no amount of gum to chew that can instantly make the taste and feel in your body go away. I’m taking it on the recommendation of a father of a friend of mine who’s a nutrition researcher. Together with a couple of tablets, this should help protect my arms and my general wellbeing. I’m quite convinced this is a good thing, but ugh…

WordPress Moblogging

I came acrossJohn Blade’s Homepage and found his hack for allowing the wp-mail feature to import pictures. I’ve been thinking about doing it myself, but good seeing John did it already. Besides, he’s from Brisbane.

DES

This is mostly to try out an “Insert image” plugin for WordPress. As you can see, Dag-Erling came visiting saturday.

RAID

A raid disk failed at work. HP box, RAID controller, replacing the disk was done in a sec:

 ciss0: *** Hot-plug drive removed: SCSI port 1 ID 1 ciss0: *** Hot-plug drive inserted: SCSI port 1 ID 1 ciss0: *** State change, logical drive 0 ciss0: logical drive 0 (da0) changed status interim recovery->ready for recovery, spare status 0x0 ciss0: *** State change, logical drive 0 ciss0: logical drive 0 (da0) changed status ready for recovery->recovering, spare status 0x0 

However, going with two IDE disks and FreeBSD’s ATARAID gave not even a panic, just instant boot. Still work to be done.

VSTi instruments and VST effects

This site is a good springboard to lots of fun

Duphly faximiles

Free faximiles of Jacques Duphly available.

Concert

I went to a concert at Norges Musikkhøgskole and heared Ingeborg Dalheim’s exam concert. This was really the best singing I’ve heared in quite a while, and I’m hoping to hear more of her later on. It was a well-composed exam with exciting music, and I by far preferred her Rameau piece that sounded magnificent, but Monteverdi was really good and the Vivaldi pieces were splendid. I don’t know to much of Norwegian folk music (I’d really like to get to know more, though), but what I heared sounded good, as did the modern work. If you have the chance I’d totally recommend hearing a concert with her.

David\'s Crosswords

I don’t usually do this, but, since David is such a good bloke:

BlogWalk

I’m packing my stuff to go to Norway for the summer. Anyways, came across a site with really nice photos. This one has a really neat stylesheet

Lion Cafe

I was just at Lion Cafe (in Esbjerg) with a friend, the first café in Esbjerg. By café I think of a place that serves good coffee, probably something to eat, but no alcohol. They might have beer, but coffee is more of a focus. Anyways, it was crammed full, almost no space available. We had poor luck as someone took our table while we were ordering. Ordering took for ages, standing in queue took 15 minutes, and just before ordering we had to fix the table situation. Thus 15 more minutes only to meet an overworked and not very happy girl who didn’t hear half my order (my danish isn’t good, but she didn’t get things right with the ones in front of me either), and then it turned out they didn’t accept any bank cards. So I’m off to withdraw money, and then 10 minutes more in line only to pay and find out she’d forgotten my coffee, which wasn’t made right either (not anywhere close to strong). Since they were overworked, they had not cleaned any tables. Not very plesant sitting down to a really filthy table. Even though they’d forgotten to put cheddar cheese in the bagles, they tasted all right. Anyways, enough ranting about the café. I’ll stay clear of it for 6 months or so and then see if they’ve shaped up.

Been too long in Denmark

I’ve been too long in Denmark: I was shopping two bottles of wine, one port and one bottle of vodka, and had to pay roughly 150 norwegian kroner, and thought “Wow! That was expensive”

Salsa is good for you

According to the scienceblog, salsa is good for you

No small system

Hmm, I don’t think I use unusually many applications, but without any of my data, my OS X system uses 22,2Gb. Not just a Windows-thingy being bloated, then.

Celia Cruz

Sorry, just had to copy this one off. Thanks to this salsa-loving guy. PS, I’m still looking for people to dance salsa with in Esbjerg. Any salsa-instructors here?

Thunderbird

I downloaded Thunderbird, having used version 0.6+, I moved up to 0.7. Sorry, but it ditched my entire setup, doesn’t let me use any keyboard shortcuts and thinks everything is spam. I’ll be downgrading now.

Firefox

Firefox 0.9 for OS X wasn’t much better. I can’t type in the adress bar. I don’t think Mozilla has too extensive tests for OS X. I’m looking forward to a rapid re-release or something.

Mobile phone

Wee… for those who think they are on a good mobile phone plan, I just had 4,02 kr back (about 50 US cent, a little less than an australian dollar) and got 5m30sec worth of phone time being very nervous that I should be interrupted and not being able to refill. Mobile phones are a lot more fun in Denmark than in Norway where I’d have payed about 20kr for the same call.

Galleries

Seems everyone is making galleries for inclusion with WordPress these days. Pictorials is coming up with release two. Checked out PhotoStack, but was too much work to be done by myself, not much for integrating existing templates with a quick-and-dirty-tag. Have heared nothing back from the iPAP guy (what’s in a name? ) Everything’s in beta…

iPAP

Regarding galleries, iPAP was released today

Myndighet

Jeg tror en problemårsak i dag er bruken av ordet myndighet. Så lenge vi er umyndige skal vi ikke kunne ta noen valg, men ei heller skal andre ha lov til å velge for oss. Foreldre blir oppfordret til å la barnene finne seg selv, men så lenge de hele tiden blir ansett som umyndige så vil disse valgene ikke ha noen virkning. Resultatet er at alle skal være multikunstnere når de blir myndige. Gjennom grunnskole og videregående er det “det almenndannende” som undervises, det vil si stort sett alt mulig. Man skaper illusjonen av valgfrihet gjennom et par valgfag, men “bonusordninger” og krav skal gjøre at fagkombinasjonen tilsammen blir en fin røre av alt mulig.

Så en dag kommer man ut og skal velge utdanning. Over natten skal man være spesialisert, ha tatt et valg innen hva man vil gjøre resten av livet. Dette skal illusjonen om at man har tatt noen valg hjelpe med. Og så skal man atpåtil være dyktig i sitt fag og hurtigt spesialisere seg videre.

Jeg er ikke sikker på om at dette er lurt. For alle mulige kunstnersjeler er det en god idé å spesialisere seg alt fra tidlig alder, gjerne før man har fyllt 10. Dette tror jeg heller ikke er så ulikt for andre yrkesgrupper. Spurte du meg hva jeg skulle holde på med da jeg var 10 så ville du nok hørt data. Hva jeg skulle spille ville nok vært synthesizer eller blokkfløyte. Nå er jeg 25, og svarene du får er ikke veldig forskjellig, men mye tid er brukt på en almenndanning slik at jeg har fått lære hvor lite jeg kan om alt mulig og flyttet konsentrasjonen fra å kanskje bli riktig dyktig på dette til jeg er 18 til å ha et mål om å være riktig dyktig til jeg er 29. Og for å nå dette mål skal jeg jobbe dag og natt. Supert.

Om en unge liker å holde på med tre, hvorfor ikke oppmuntre ham til å bli snekker, treskjærer, tømrer eller noe i den dur alt fra liten alder og få en som er mester i sitt yrke og en større trygghet på hvem han er og hvor han hører til i samfunnet alt før han har fyllt 20? Hvorfor skal man på død og liv ha absolutt alle muligheter like mye åpne, hvilket egentlig vil si like lite åpne og et liv av usikkerhet for alt man valgte bort?

Royal Library

I just visited the Royal Library of Copenhagen to order some manuscripts by Benedetto Marcello. I’m excited to hear if they are available

jMax WIKI

I just noticed today that jMax has a WIKI. Good stuff.

"art"

Random moving 2d shapes have been classified as art on SlashDot. Makes me wonder: what do geeks know about art?

Atlantis found again

The Register is reporting that Atlantis has been found. Whee! Again. Like so many times before. But, I hope they go in and find interesting stuff there, be it in Spain or not. Spain or France actually make more sense than the Antarctica theory.

Coffee bang

My coffee pot exploded! I’m effectively online as my once white iMac is now a black disaster area!

Panther hang

My Mac locked up! While this may not be surprising, it’s worth noting as my Mac virtually never hangs. Had the look and feel of a filesystem hang. The userinterface updated nicely, all network ports accepted connections, but the windowsmanager wouldn’t respond to any clicks, just moving the mouse and the ports never presented anything much, and it all happened upon multiple known writes. Anyways, only lost data is a save of a mail that had been sent before the hang.

Legal Torrents

I’m sure you already know BitTorrent, but I didn’t know about Legal Torrents until today where music can be downloaded and distributed for free legally. Great place.

Big Bang Chess

I’ll be playing Big Bang Chess. Care to join me for a game?

Early Jazz....

…or whatever, Respectable Groove is a band every early music lover should check out

Smoking ban in place

For you non-Norwegians, Norway has put a public in-door smoking-ban in place. Great for us non-smokers. I wonder what going out will be like now.

Nice blogs

Came by Ryan and left him a comment om a music request. Besides seeming like a nice guy, his page looks fabulous

Food culture

I’m shocked! I read Fast Food Nation about two years ago and didn’t like it much because as I was reading mainly science at the time, its “proofs” didn’t hold one bit and it was through-and-through pop. Bo-ring. Anyways, reading my regular blogs, this guy concluded he eats fast-food 3-4 times a week. I knew there were differences in european and american eating culture, but is this really representative? Should I eat a fast-food menu once every two or three weeks, I’d find that really depressing, and the occational saussage I eat when too busy when I’m in Oslo is not a good thing. It’s not filling like regular food is. Hope this is just one standing out, but with the movie Supersize me he was referring to and Fast Food Nation and countless american shows, I’m beginning to wonder

So-called Christian claims kidney

Morons.org printed this morning an article of A woman who gave a kidney to a 20-year-old College student wants her kidney back because the recipient decided to drop her Christian Faith. More on the topic in LarkNews

D\'oh

Nope, didn’t work. However, Creative Labs sais it should work. It’s funny, because so do most stores selling it too. I guess just we customers don’t understand how to use it with iTunes, because lots of people have asked questions how to, and no good answers

Update again

Burning the midnight oil here. Seems Creative has an unsupported plugin that not too many know about. It’s an iTunes plugin for the Nomad Jukeboxes. If someone had given this to me ages ago, I’d already been very happy for ages. Anyways, I’m very happy now. Thanks to the guys at NomadNess for helping out on this

Blog up

I needed to post this somewhere, so I made a blog. Home blog. Hooray… better than my old html-page with weblog-like-contents. Anyways, reason I couldn’t use my old roller blog was that I needed a TrackBack. But hey, the blog I wanted to refer has no trackback-support either. Argh! 5 minutes wasted. Anyways, this Apple-blog told me version 10.3.4 of OS X is out. Good stuff. It’s just general blah-blah, but this is what I’m hoping for:
improved disc burning and recording functionality, DVD+R(W) coming? My drive is really a DVD+/-RW but is locked to DVD-R only. Way to go Apple.
additional FireWire audio and USB device compatibility, can I now finally hook up my Nomad Jukebox 3? I was happy when I read Apple supported it with iTunes, only to find out that they only supported version 1.0. Now I’m hoping. (update installing)

African watersupply

This is a great incentive for communities with poor water-supply to make merry-go-rounds. Kids run waterpumps by playing! Good stuff! I’m not to certain about a water-wheel, though. I imagine it hurts backs and is incredibly uncomfortable. But then again I haven’t tried a two-digit number kilos of water on my head either. Thanks to aWholeLotANothing for pointing me to them

That worked

Now, that seems to have worked. But, Mozilla Firebird under Fedora seems not to understand much of the CSS on my page, leaving the header standing over my image instead on top of. Oh well…

Fedora Blog Entry Poster

Merry Christmas,

I’m at work writing a Java-based XML-interface to OpenSRS for use at REGISTRAR.NO to register heaps of domain names. And, being a bit fed up with Fedora’s regular terminal defaulting to UTF-8 and not having bothered toying around with Fedora, I finally took a peak around and found this one. So, here goes, “first post”

dagen i dag

Hei! Min gode nabo Niklas har laget web- side til meg! Hipp hurra! Dette skal bli bra! =)

Ellers har jeg øvet altfor mye cembalo idag, sliten i armene. Nå spiser jeg St. Nikolas- midddag (sjette desember), etterpå bærer det opp til Maren og Thomas for julegløgg. Yummi! Jeg skal ta med pepperkaker, som jeg pluss en gjeng gode naboer bakte ut i forgårs før salsa- aften…. Life is fantastic!

Blog revival

Right, if you’ve been following my blog you might have been a little discouraged getting the 500 HTTP-error for about a month. Well, short story shorter: I wrote a velocity macro that had an error that brought Roller down. Removing the macro hard from the db didn’t work, so it wasn’t until today I could be bothered starting it from scratch. Oh well… I might put back a bit of the old content. We’ll see…

Apart from that, this is December 6th, my name day and St. Niklas (Sinterklaas). Had an amazing breakfast with my dear neighbour and now I’ll shower, go practise and then go grocery-shopping. The weather is fantastic today.

Oh, and yesterday Dag-Erling submitted a request for me to become a FreeBSD doc-committer. (you have read my thesis on FreeBSD, right?) This was after we finally returned to integrating parts of my thesis with the FreeBSD documentation (draft available here) and quite much will need updating

Mobile phone for the blind

My daily RSS feed brought me an article on a mobile phone for the blind, which I thought was neat. I’d love to hear how these things work in reality as I figured voice would always be to much hassle and it would interface with the user through something they could read

Yawn...

I must admit I’m dead tired today. I think perhaps I’m getting the cold everyone here at the con seems to have had. Only thing is I had it last week. Oh well, the amount of heat I’m producing will save me the heating bill.

Anyways, been a Good Boy(tm) and practised my hours today, been in the choir, and been working on the Zope implementation at REGISTRAR. Put up a little test blog just to see that it is really working like it should. Now I’ve got to do some reading and learn some Zope as I’m sure users are going to expect I know all about it.

Harpsichord tuning

Monday evening I had my first real stab at tuning a harpsichord. I’d been given an introduction by Jan the week before, and now was my chance to try it out (he’d come and tune it later as he always tunes it monday evening or tuesday morning). It actually went surprisingly well. Lots of it was in reasonable good tune when I left it. I first tuned it as I has learned, and then of course started tuning a couple of intervals I did not like, which led to other itervals I did not like, and so on… so after about two hours of this I figured that enough was enough and did my harpsichord lesson instead. And it wasn’t at all bad playing the pieces.

Ingeborg in Jyske Vestkyst

OK, a little old, but still. This article came in our local newspaper about Ingeborg becoming young musician of the year in Norway. Congrats again

Using w.bloggar

Trying out all these blog-programs turns out to be quite an experience.
And, I’m learning heaps of how lots of people prefer writing their java
programs. My todo-list is growing by the minute.

So, just to see what
this progam was like I fired up Windows and installed w.bloggar. My
main objection to w.bloggar and every other client I’ve used so far is
that they don’t really support images well. I do “insert image” and
they expect me to give an URL. Well, in most cases I’ve probably have
the image on my Canon Ixus or my mobile phone. I expect to have to
download the images to my computer, but from there I’d like to just
stick it in my post, letting the client and my blog server handle the
uploading between them.

Secondly, I’m looking forwards to plugins. My picture gallery is a
hack. I’m going to have a better stab at it, but it’ll include my
Apache-server, so it won’t be all within the webapp domain. I’d prefer
it to be so, because you cannot really expect long-time consistency
having o juggle a blog on two or three servers. And although I use PHP
and Python heaps, I don’t really feel like mixing them in.

Further more, I really need to get rid of this URL if I’m going to
substitute my homepage for a blog.

A last notice, posting this through w.bloggar removed all the newlines
thus making my entire posting unreadable. When I pressed edit in
roller, the title showed up but the contents didn’t. In short, this
sucks, there are clearly problems between the two (Roller is probably
at least as much to blame), but hey, that saves me starting up Windows

PS, when give me plugins… although so-called emoticons are plain
stupid, I wouldn’t mind a plugin converting the ones I write until some
that look good

Well, I figured I might as well try a post with Weblog Poster. It sais it can handle the Blogger API, so let’s check out right away if it can handle newlines.

That was a new line.

Tracking a JUnit posting

I like unit testing, but this guy refers to an article
that I think
perhaps has misunderstood a little bit. Testing the internals of a
component doesn’t give much meaning to me. Oh well, shan’t be picky,
especially since this post was mainly to try out trackback.

First post

Hey all,
this is really the first Roller blog I’m ever running. It’s created mainly to try out webapps on our Tomcat server because our customers would like to deploy some, and it seems to have been working great.

Done

Whew,
the log script just finished now. And all looks well.

So, now I have to make sure Tomcat fires up all right all the time and
that the cat rebooting (don’t you just love that idea? ) works all
right for users tweaking their system. Then I’ll hopefully have time
for the dummynet implementation.

Changes

A couple of jar-files look like being in conflict. Strange, as I have
no idea why someone would dist java.util-jars. Anyways, got that
cleaned up and our main apps are purring nicely again.

The templates for our statistics aren’t applied correctly. I imagine
there are some path conflicts there. Applied some logging yesterday,
time to investigate…. hmm… classpath is incorrect. Fixed.

Now for fixing file permissions when generating new users….

Blog hacking

I’ve been toying around a bit with my blog, just to see how it works
and to provoke the code a bit to get more experience with managing
webapps. So far, things seem to be working well. I just need the URL
changed into something a bit nicer looking.

Folia

Wow, it’s been ages, hasn’t it. Well, you’ll be all very pleased to hear that I’m studying for my exams that are coming up. In studying, I mean of course that I’ve taken up the keyboard again, started playing Beatles on my guitar, rehearsing Corelli, been having a concert with the choir (it went totally fabulous! And it was great standing on the gallery singing in a quartet while the rest of the choir was singing towards us with candles in their hands! Magnificent!) and saying yes to play both for my job, for a choir that’s doing a Shutz-piece my choir also had parts of on the concert, and said ok to sing with another choir. Seriously, I have no clue why I study IT. I think it has something to do with sanity, but I begin to feel that I need some time off to study music. I’ve figured the best way to pick up my keyboard skills is to do La Folia in all scales. So that’s what I was doing just now. I made myself a cup of soup, but since I was so busy with the music, it I took a way to big cup, put the soup powder in and put too much water in it, so it’s more like reddish water.

Well, apart from music, Thu was visiting me all the way from Switzerland. I had a great time and I’m quite sure she did too. It was terriffic seeing her again. And I’m sure Anne Lise (hah, I insist on that spelling, thank you very much ) called me for ages from Australia. I think she’s giving Optus a run for its money by using their deals to the fullest.

Oh well, back to the keyboard. And yes, I should be sleeping now. But then again, who shouldn’t?

Square wheels

I’m on my way from work now, and an incredible banging can be heard from the closest train. It sounds as if it’s running on square wheels. I cannot imagine who took the wise decision to let that train run through the subway, ruining the rails. It strikes me that what our subway system lacks the most is management. There cannot be any economic or service reason to run that train.

My day has so far been fine, if not a little bit confused. When I went out the door this morning, I didn’t wear my contacts. That sais something of how tired I usually am when I go out the door. Now, after literally having my nose glued to the monitor, I am on my way home to fetch my contacts and my laptop so I can attend a statistics tut. After that I’m off to get a matress for Thu who’s coming from Switzerland to visit tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to that.

At work everything is going right, although an increasing number of requests and less and less time to code makes the page feel more and more like a well-intended hack. A neatly designed and poorly documented hack. But it’ll all turn out right in the end as it’ll converge from chaos into a neatly presented piece of order.

Studying

Today I have done what everyone plans to do and no-one ever does (1). I’ve been studying statistics at uni all day! And I actually got quite a bit done, covering a fourth of the material and several weeks worth of tutes. Then I had a chat with David who’s in Bankok, and now I’m on my way to choir practise. This has been a dramatic improvement of yesterday where I played with my ensemble in church and then waited for falling stars at night. I didn’t get anything smart done during the day (I had a lovely chat with a great friend of mine, though ) and although they had predicted hundreds and thousands, I only got to see two falling stars. Oh well, I made a wish anyway.

(1) Ok, they do, but pretend they don’t