Late for work - blame it on Nokia

On Friday morning at 8:24 I discovered an interesting feature about Nokia Ovi Suite. The backup functionality does not back up the alarm clock settings.

I had the previous evening made an software update to my E51 and since I followed the instructions presented by the update wizard and the backup/update/restore procedure completed without errors I assumed everything went fine. After the update I did, however, notice that my phone language and profile settings were restored to factory defaults but since my contacts, e-mail and calendar data was intact it didn't bother me that much.

Dear Nokia, if it is too difficult to back up the alarm clock settings, then please at least inform the user, if he has alarms set, that they will be lost during the upgrade process.

Making MPlayer really-quiet

MPlayer must be one of the best media players to support both obscure, nonstandard and broken video formats on any platform. I use it regularly on Linux.

However, by default, MPlayer has the annoying habit of displaying (and hiding) error dialog boxes, sometimes even in very rapid succession. Usually there is not even anything visually wrong with the video, there are just some errors (nonstandard things) in the stream. Luckily, there is a solution for this:

Tell it to be really-quiet.

From the command line:
mplayer -really-quiet myFile.mpg

or, to make it more permanent, add the line
really-quiet=yes
to
~/.mplayer/config

Thats it.

distcc made easy

The easiest way to set up a simple two machine distcc environment in Ubuntu 9.04.

Quick and dirty

install distcc on both client and server:
sudo apt-get install distcc

On server:
distccd --daemon --allow your_client_ip_address

On client:
export DISTCC_HOSTS='localhost your_server_ip_address'
make -j4 CC=distcc CXX=distcc

Please note the CXX=distc for projects using C++ e.g. Qt ;)

That's all it takes.

Permanent in project

To make distcc more permanent in your Qt project add the following two lines to yous .pro file:
QMAKE_CC = distcc
QMAKE_CXX = distcc

Which qmake will then generate to:
CC = distcc
CXX = distcc
in the make file.

export DISTCC_HOSTS='localhost your_server_ip_address'
make -j4

Visualize progress

To get visual response of what is happening use distccmon-gnome
(sudo apt-get install distccmon-gnome)

A B&W World in Color

For some reason I am convinced that before the 1960:s the world was black and white, especially during World War II. Perhaps images like this will slowly prove me wrong.

An amazing collection of 4x5 Kodachromes.

Make the best of Windows

Even if I can avoid Microsoft Windows both at home and at work, I also realize that some less fortunate people are forced to use Windows on daily basis. The Windows experience can be made a lot more pleasant with some free software.

In this post I have tried to collect links to some useful free Windows software. These applications might not be fully equal with their commercial counterparts. Sometimes they are better sometimes worse, but they are free and get the job done.

Most of these programs are also less resource hungry then their commercial counterparts and are thus excellent for use on netbooks.

Office:

• OpenOffice.org - MS Office alternative (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access )
  
• AbiWord - Lightweight MS Word alternative
  
• Scribus - Page layout software (PageMaker, FrameMaker)
• Dia - Drawing program inspired by MS Visio
  

Internet:

• Firefox - Powerful Web browser (Internet Explorer replacement)
  
• Thunderbird - MS Outlook alternative e-mail client
  

Graphics:

• Gimp - Adobe Photoshop / Corel Photo-Paint alternative
• Paint.NET - Adobe Photoshop alternative
• Incscape - Adobe illustrator / CorelDraw alternative
• Hugin - Panorama photo stitcher
  
• Blender - 3D content creation suite

Audio & Video:

• MPlayer - Most advanced video player available. Works well on older hardware because of very good resource usage.
  
• VLC - An advanced but more user friendly media player than the one above.
• Audacity - Sound editor
  
• CDex - Audio CD extractor
  

Misc:

• 7-Zip - Advanced file archiver with a high compression ratio.
• Notepad++ - Advanced text editor, people used to Pfe will like this.
  
• ISO Recorder - Quickly burn ISO-files to CD/DVD
  

Representing your company

When you have a sticker proudly marketing your company with both name and logo you should remember to behave. Most people will associate your behavior with the company you are "marketing". This is specially important if you have bad manners and can't behave like normal people.

Sitting frequently on the train between Turku and Helsinki this problem is something that I encounter much too often.

Case study:
You currently sitting in front of me at the other side of the table in the IC2 train.
Stop behaving like you own the train spreading your belongings over the already minimal table and screaming into your phone (that does really not improve the reception). I also have no wish to smell your foot sweat so kindly keep your shoes on.
Finally, please cover your mouth when you cough, I have no time to catch tuberculosis, or something similar.

I understand that you do big business deals and know everything, but still I really don't even care to know your existence.

I'll step off the soapbox now.

Hiding the door

Why did you Nokia S60 guys hide the main sync menu in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (Tube) at Menu -> Settings -> Connectivity -> Data transfer -> Sync? This makes e.g. the calendar synchronization with Ovi a bit painful. The idea to get the contacts easily synchronized in the contacts application is OK, but why is this not possible in the calendar application?

In the E51 the complete synchronization was at least in an visible easy to find location Menu -> Tools -> Sync.

More opinions about the Tube will follow.

Aboard Air Force One

Reuters senior staff photographer Larry Downing, assigned to the White House, gives a glimpse of the life of a press photographer working aboard the Air Force One.

Don't save on your {}

Why are there still people who insist on not using curly braces when writing if-statements? Braces should always be used, even if the code block only contains one line of code, because sooner or later someone will add another line without noticing the absence of braces.

This is something I would expect to find in an returned Programming 101 assignment, but not in production level code, but hey life is full of surprises.

Save money and fall in love with open source

It amazes me how many people and businesses are either unaware or actually fear open source or free software.

I don't understand why people still during this economic downturn keep giving their money to foreign companies. This money could either be saved by directly using open source or buying support & consulting services from local companies keeping the money in the country.

It seems to be a common misconception that the quality of open source software is lower than the quality of commercial software. It's true that the quality of open source varies a lot, but so does the quality of close sourced commercial software. It's all about marketing.

It's also widely believed that there is no support for open source software while commercial software is fully supported. This is not true, just try asking Microsoft to fix some highly critical bug in their software (like this one), and I'll bet that they will not even bother to answer.

Usually open source developers are very quick on fixing bugs in their own pet projects, but this is something that can naturally not be guaranteed. On the other hand since the user/company/government has access to the source code they can either fix the problem themselves or hire someone (trusted) to fix the problem for them. This might cost a significant amount of money depending on the problem, but at least the possibility exists.

The access to the source code also gives the user a chance for a code audit and to compile the the source code to binaries themselves, something which might be very difficult if not impossible with commercial closed source software. In some environments e.g. government or military, this might be the only way to be absolutely sure what binary code is running on the hardware. Because if you don't know what you are running something bad might happen.

One area that has historically been the Achilles' heel of open source is training courses and educational material of good quality. However, today there is an increasing amount of education material and courses arranged dealing with the usage of open source software. This is especially an area where public tax funded schools should help. They should not only teach the children to use commercial software but also present them with alternatives. A good start would include Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Gimp, but the journey should definitely at some point visit Ubuntu (Linux).

Finally perhaps the biggest advantage of open source is the absence of vendor lock-in. Open source software usually uses standard, documented, open, patent free file formats which means that the user will always have access to his files, the ones that he after all created and owns. This is not always the case with commercial software that often uses undocumented binary blobs of data (I'm looking at you with your memory dumps Word), that are unreadable by the user if the manufacturer decides to stop supporting its application, or go out of business.

I must add that even if the software is free and open source, the user might still not be allowed to do anything he likes with the software. The terms what may or may not be done depend on a number of things e.g. if the software is in commercial or noncommercial use. These terms are explained in the license accompanied with the software itself. The most common and known license is GPL, but a number of other licenses also exist.

In conclusion I would like to point out that the most important thing after all is to find software that suits the users need, let that be either open or closed sourced software.

All I ask is keep your mind open and don't be afraid to try something new and different. You might be pleasantly surprised :)

Written by yours truly, who makes his living writing (open source) software.

Qt Creator - A fun way to code Qt

Last November I came across a new lightweight C++ IDE named Qt Creator which is being developed at Qt Software (former Trolltech). Qt Creator is supposed to provide everything a Qt programmer needs, and it actually quite good at keeping its promise. At first I used it in parallel with Eclipse, but since Christmas it has been my primary IDE. In March I upgraded to the newly relesed version 1.00, which is the version I currently use.

All basic features expected to be found in an advanced text editor / IDE are supported, e.g. syntax highlighting, auto-indentation, (un-)commenting code, code folding, bookmarks etc. But also more advanced features are supported like code completion and error highlighting.

I like the easy code navigation and powerful search features, but I really miss code refactoring support which I hope the trolls will soon add. The integrated help is useful after you learn to remember that it's not located in the same window as the editor, this is frustrating when you out of old habit try to Alt-Tab yourself away from the Qt Assistant window.
I have very mixed feelings about the project view, but maybe I'm not using it correctly. I would like it to also show other files than the ones present in .pro files e.g. configuration files.

Since I work with Scratchbox I haven't familiarized myself that much with the building and debugging facilities provided. I did however get Qt Creator to compile inside Scratchbox but it generated the Makefiles wrong and I didn't have time to look into the problem. The form editor seems to be an integrated version of the normal Qt Designer, which is ok to use.

Support for two popular version control systems, Subversion and Git, is also available.

Qt Creator even contains vi key-bindings so vi users can feel at home. Sadly Emacs users are still left out in the cold.

Oh, I almost forgot, it's cross platform.

About Orthochromatic

It was surprisingly difficult to find a good name for my blog. I tried different on-line name generators but ended up browsing photography books and websites. I wanted the name to be photo related but not too tied to anything specific, I also felt that the name should be usable in IT related context. I finally ended up with Orthochromatic.

According to wikipedia "An Orthochromatic spectrum is any spectrum of light devoid of red".
In photography the term orthochromatic usually refers to film that is only sensitive to blue and green light, but not red.

While browsing for a name I stumbled on this magnificent picture taken on the 17 December 1903, 10:35 a.m.
Enjoy it.

FP

Well this is it, first post.