Quec.es, the XMPP Blog

Cool URIs Don't Change
[15:30:38] matt [wronka.org]/Trip All of the Google Buzz RSS feeds are black.

Useful for the numerous Internet, but non-Web-enabled, iPhone and Blackberry devices
[19:16:56] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.generay "Omni Hotels is the first hotel company to offer both iPhone and Blackberry mobile applications. Our mobile apps on both platforms offer the full functionality of our HTML website"

Google Alerts
[09:38:33] matt [wronka.org]/Trip Many people may not be aware that I actually use Google for its 'Alerts' feature, which is pretty useful. As Google looks around the Web, if they find something that matches terms you have registered, it will send you an eMail.

I get a lot from various news sources. What I really want is to hit reply and correct them. Maybe that will be in version 2.

Compiz Settings Manager (ccsm) and Priority/Control issue
[22:39:39] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.generay We got new development boxes at work, so I set-up a fresh install of Debian testing. It seems like there's a bug in ccsm which prevents a user from adding the control key to any key combination. Instead it reads as "priority" which doesn't do a darn thing, and in fact doesn't get saved as part of the key stroke.

The work around is to edit the compiz config file (which is probably $HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini) and add "<Control>" to any key combinations directly.

Buying a Camera: The Two Camps
[11:46:12] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia Do you want to buy a digital still camera? Decied to which of two groups you belong. The rest is just budget:

http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2544776&cid=38170088

Murder
[18:59:26] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.generay I recently made the first announced release of murder on freshmeat.

http://murder.wronka.org/

More information: http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/murder/

The Economist Renewal Offers
[18:50:14] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.generay I received two different eMail offers from the Economist for an early Renewal offer (I have at least one more year on my subscription). One for 80% off, $69 a year; the second for 85% off, or $51 a year.

Ordering magazines is oddly reminiscent of buying trinkets on holiday.

Advice for giving (Computer Assisted Slideshow) Presentation
[11:11:02] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia http://www.siggraph.org/s98/cfp/speakers/blinn.html

This is specifically for SIG-Graphics, but really is generally enough for any computer-assisted slideshow presentation.

Lightfield Cameras
[11:17:17] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia Lytro, based on the founder's work while at Stanford from around 2005 through 2007, has started taking orders for hand-held light field cameras that should ship in early 2012.

They sound cool. The practical use at the moment is not entirely clear, but I'd expect some pretty interesting exposures to come out over the first few years that just weren't possible before (with consumer-level equipment). Given the dimminuitive size of the Lytro device, it seems reasonable to carry as a replacement for a point-and-shoot, and as a companion for a larger SLR or medium-format camera.

On the subject of medium formats, there is a page from someone from the University of Maryland providing a how-to on converting a medium format Mamiya to a light field camera for only $5--and the cost of the medium-format system which will be magnitudes more than the $400-$500 charged for a much smaller Lytro device. Nevertheless, it may help you understand a little bit more of what's going on.

http://www.cfar.umd.edu/~aagrawal/sig08/BuildingLightFieldCamera.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_field

WebOS 3.0.4 Upgrade
[11:06:45] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia WebOS 3.0.4 fixed a number of issues for sure, such as the fact that the web browser would crash Luna(?) on certain large pages. However, it also means a lot of patches that made the device usablish no longer worked, the bluetooth keyboard (which previously didn't have key repeat enabled by default) now drops more characters, and often gets stuck repeating in X. Tab doesn't work--it outputs '9', whereas shift-tab does produce a tab sometimes (also ctrl-shift-i). Escape is oddly ctrl-shift-[ now, which makes it seem like the ctrl key is by default broken, or something else, until it is shifted. I should probably xev that.

The tweaks to start X without the keyboard space reserved are gone--all of tweaks is currently broken. X also doesn't want to start vertically now, whether or not the keyboard is connected--this might actually have been an existing issue if there were any record of a keyboard connected. I hadn't spent much time with 3.0.2 with a keyboard stored in the bluetooth devices but not actively connected.

The default WebOS browser and mail client won't connect to my server, and die with unhelpful errors "Cannot load page" for the web browser, and "error code 990" being one of the errors for the mail client (the other being simply indicating a socket connection error). The mail client also doesn't indicate whether the problem is with the IMAP server or the SMTP server. The problem in all cases only happens with TLS or SSL; removing encryption works. I've installed the root certificate, but that hasn't seemed to fix the connection issues--my kingdom for useful error messages. Of course messaging doesn't work with Jabber, and athe existing (7 month old) messaging-plugins package doesn't seem to work with 3.0.4--I hadn't tried with 3.0.2 but it sounded as if it worked from the forums.

It's arguable if I feel like it make sense to look further into these issues. I'll admit a big part of my reluctance is no fault of HP, Palm, or the community but from the results I saw with Nokia where patches just sat stagnant on bugzilla until Maemo basically died. Unrelated to the software front, it's nice to see that HP offers 90 day service, but the actual page reminds me of why I stopped buying Palm which was because when I called them for support on a new device they basically tried as hard as possible to chargre me for the call. Later it turned out they knew there was a static electriciy discharge issue which would often cause the device to lose stored data. I should have gone with Handspring.

dmr
[16:29:37] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/10/obituary-0