Notes

Yesterday, as Rui already pointed out, I stopped by the new Apple Center, in Lisbon.

It's a small shop, with some hardware on display, but it's no Apple Store for sure.

They had some people there buying a iMac G5 (the older model). I almost went up and said to the couple "Hey, don't buy that! There is a new model already!", but I suppose that availability of the new one is not that good, and in Portugal, it's even worse.

The new Powerbooks where also absent, but that's expected, I suppose. Maybe in a month or so.

The iPod part of the store was pretty lame: a single iPod (and not even a color one??) was attached to a Bose set of speakers, nothing else.

Some hardware gear, non-apple, on the shelfs, mostly external hard disks and wireless routers (Belkin and not Airport stuff??).

All-in-all, a as-good-as-you-can-expect-from-Portugal-distribution-channel-store. The service seemed nice.

The low point of the store is the usage of a 20" cinema display hooked up to a Windows machine running some Point-of-Sale software. I'm all for using what works, but in a Apple "store", it's just plain wrong.

To me, it seems that we have a demand for Apple gear (which is good) but the offer is still lacking (which is not so good).

Meanwhile, I'm booking my flight to London, to attend the London Perl Workshop, and check out the new powerbooks at the London Apple Store. I doubt I'll get to see them before that in Portugal.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Previously, I was using a setup with Tailor to see my darcs repositories with Trac.

It works ok, but there are some issues, the most annoying one is that the commits don't preserve the original author in the meta-data of the change-set, only in the comment. So, all the SVN change-sets you see in trac are made by the user under which you run tailor, and in the comment with each changeset you have something like:

Tailorized "bugfix: make sure curso_id is in the stash" 

Original author: Pedro Melo <melo@simplicidade.org> 
Date: 2005-10-06 08:00:11

Not that nice.

In the process, I discovered the trac+darcs project (also mentioned by Shae Erisson in the comments of the original story) and started peeking from time to time, to see how it was. And tonight I had some hours to kill, so I upgraded my 0.8.4 Trac install to the latest trac+darcs version.

The upgrade consists mainly about following these two pages: the Trac Guide about upgrade, and the Trac+darcs install page.

In my case, this commands took care of things:

# remove old trac
rm -rf /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/trac /usr/share/trac

# upgrade to new version
# note: me thinks darcs get --partial is faster in the next command...
cd
darcs get http://artiemestieri.tn.it/~lele/projects/trac+darcs
cd trac+darcs
sudo python ./setup.py install

# and now convert your trac environments
# for each one, do
trac-admin . upgrade
trac-admin . resync
trac-admin . wiki upgrade

I was very well impressed: it went beautifully well, I could still see my SVN repos of current projects, and after changing the configuration of a new project from SVN to darcs, and using trac-admin . resync in the trac environment directory, I could see all my darcs change-sets in glorious detail.

With this upgrade, the Trac version is now 0.9pre2 with all the goodies, and I also installed the WebAdmin plugin (nice), the AutoNav macro (simple and effective; must also try the TracNav macro) and the LegendBox processor (the version online did not work with 0.9pre2, but I fixed and uploaded a new version that does work).

Please note that the trac+darcs project also supports Bazaar-NG repos, but I don't use them, so I don't know how well it works.

All in all, a smooth upgrade, recommended to all the darcs users everywhere.

Kudos to Lele and Zooko for such a nice system.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

In a project that I'm working on, there is a requirement to use some sort of rich-text editor for textareas in a web-based forum system.

I did a quick survey and found a lot of systems out there. I collected some links and I'm dumping them here, for future reference.

Right now, my prefered solution is TinyMCE.

• http://xstandard.com/
• http://www.richtexteditor.org/demo/
• http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/
• http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/widgEditor/
• http://www.fckeditor.net/demo/

I also found a long list of editors with useful comparisons between them.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Some days before the Oct 12 Apple announcement that they will be selling TV shows via iTMS, specially ABC shows like Desperate and Lost, Robert Iger, the Disney CEO, who also was at the Apple event, gave some hints about the digital distribution of content:

If we sit back and rely on old technology, the consumer is going to pass us by," Mr. Iger says, noting that the music industry made that mistake. "It's extremely important as I enter this new role that I not let that happen to the Walt Disney Co. We're not a technology company, but we need to be the closest thing to that.

Check the article over at Ars.Technica.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I like to follow a couple of TV series: The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, Desperate Housewifes, and Without a Trace, to name just a few.

Of course, watching these on portuguese TV, even cable, is not an option. Most of them are not available, and when they are, they run very late in the evening or at odd hours each time.

So in the last two year, me and my wife, we have been buying these series on DVD. We have all the packs of each one of these, at least those released by the studios.

But waiting 6 months to an year to get a season is more than I can wait most of the time, so I started getting the episodes from Bitorrent. Basically, I can have access to the latest episode less than 6 to 12 hours after it airs on the US. And then, a year later, when they are available on DVD, I can buy them with all the quality.

The point of this is that the studios should be getting the message by now: there are those who are willing to buy the TV shows, directly from them, the day after they show up. Even more, they could give me digitally, a much more reliable and ecological way to distribute the content to those of us who just want that, the content.

One step in the right direction is this: at least one recent show, Commander in Chief (an ABC network attempt to fight NBC The West Wing, it seems; so far, using the first 4 episodes as guide, a failed attempt), the release date of the first season DVD is already available, and you can already pre-order it on Amazon.com (not co.uk yet). Update: I swear I saw it yesterday. Can't find it today, but instead we have this pearl:

Commander in Chief DVD ~ Rod Lurie Share your own customer images

Availability: This title will be released on December 31, 1969. You may order it now and we will ship it to you when it arrives

Notice the date :).

So they might be cutting the lead time from the end of the season till the moment it shows up for sale online. Next step: getting rid of DVDs.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I've been using Movable Type 3.2 for the last couple of weeks. The upgrade from my previous 3.x version went pretty smooth, but only yesterday I noticed some things that where not OK.

First, my comment form does not include the Typekey stuff. At first I though that I had fsck my Typekey token or something, but the explanation is much more simple: the templates I got with MT don't include the code to activate that option. I'm using the new templates, not the old ones. I asked MT to upgrade the templates to the new ones, and backup my previous templates, so this should be working. Must fix this ASAP.

Second, the mail messages where not leaving my server. The previous setup was using SMTP to 127.0.0.1, so I used the same configuration with MT 3.2, but I didn't get any. I switched to sendmail and it works now. Strange. BTW, because of this, I had around 700 comments to filter/approve. Sorry to all who didn't saw them approved quickly.

Third, I'm still trying to figure it out how the comment spam stuff works. It's not automatic enough for me, but it's probably some new setting I'm missing. I need to read more docs, it seems.

Fourth, and this is not a problem per se, the package looks rushed. Inside the admin interface, you can find in the settings pane, in the middle of the page FIXME signs. Not a professional look, I should say.

Let's see if I can fix these issues.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

As I mentioned previously, I would like to upgrade my TiBook that I'm using for almost 4 years now. And this seems the last chance to do it before the switch to Intel processors.

According to the roadmap, a Intel Powerbook is not expected until the second half of 2006.

So the question is: can I wait to upgrade my main work computer, that I use everyday, and that is starting to show it's age? Also, is the upgrade worth it?

First the options:

1. stick with the current Powerbook, and buy a 17" iMac desktop and put it at the place I work the most time;
2. go with the new 15";
3. upgrade to the new 17".

Given:

1. I work mostly on three places: at home in Figueira da Foz, 1 to 2 days a week; at home in Lisbon, 4 nights a week; and at work, 4 days a week;
2. I'm not CPU intensive, I'm multi-task intensive though. I usually have Mail.app, Safari, Terminal.app, Psi, NetNewsWire, ecto, iTunes, Skype, iChat running;
3. I would like to start using XCode more. I haven't used it due to lack of CPU power.

Option 1 is interesting: it's the least expensive and I would get a great desktop computer. I would not know where to put it though. Take it to work might work, but it feels awkward somehow. The other real option would be to leave it at home in Lisbon, but more often than now, I don't spend that much time working, more fun and writing. So I don't think so.

Option 2 and 3 are more likely, but first let's see what's not that good about both of them:

1. they fall short of my expectations about a dual-core G4 chip. I know they where my expectations, but still;
2. they packed more pixels on the same space: is it too tiny to use on a regular basis now? I could not find any mention of DPIs on-line or in the PDFs provided by Apple.

Now what do these two new powerbooks will get me:

• bigger and faster hard-drive (thinking about the 5400 rpm, I could not find the hit on the battery life that the 7200 rpm option would be);
• upgraded 802.11 connectivity and reception: the TyBooks are notorious due the the poor reception they have;
• integrated bluethooth: very important to me;
• more screen pixels: still to be seen if this is a good thing;
• double the CPU power, better and faster RAM technology, with possibility of upgrading to 2Gb when the prices are sane;
• better graphics card, with a boat-load of VRAM;
• digital audio (in and out): not that important for me;
• DVD burner, dual layer;
• USB2 and Firewire 800: the first one important, the second not that important. But the dual firewire, one 400 and the other 800 is nice to have;
• improved battery life.

So thinking about the 15", that's a lot of upgrades for my $2000. All in all, I think that it's a worthy upgrade to the new powerbooks.

Between the 15" and the 17", these are the things that I would gain:

• 50% more hard-drive space;
• 36% more pixels;
• 0,6Kg extra.

The extra weight is not an issue for me. The 50% is also not an issue, I can always upgrade the 15" hard-drive later on.

So it boils down to pixels. And I really don't know. I need to see the screen to answer one question: between the 15" and the 17", which one has the bigger characters?

So what's the plan? Yes, I will buy one of them. I would like to buy it in Portugal, but I don't know if we will get them soon enough. The latest iBooks took almost 2 months since the initial announcement until you could find one in Portugal.

So until then, until I can go into FNAC and pull one from the shelf, I think I'll use the trip to the London Perl Workshop, usually in mid-November, to see them at the London Apple Store, and make my decision there.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I saw the Oct 12 webcast (the URL will go away soon, I supose) some days ago, but only today I got some time to post it. Of course the news of the day is the new Aperture software (and not being a photographer like João Pedro, Rui or Delfim, I can't value it properly), and the new hardware, powermacs and powerbooks. I'll write some comments about the last ones later.

Regarding the Oct 12, these where my notes:

• Photoboth: fun app! I liked the detail that the screen goes totally blank when the shutter fires to serve as a flash. It's the small details, I tell you;
• Frontrow: the iMac's have and external s-video output. Can you use it with Frontrow? That would allow us to use Frontrow with a normal TV set;
• I liked the U2 iPod ad, nicely done;
• iTMS: the ''Just for you'' section is an obvious improvement to any online retail store, nowadays. What I found interesting is that the ''I already own this'' and the ''not interested'' features are much more visible than the Amazon.co.uk, my usual online retailer. I was telling Rui that it was surprised that Amazon didn't had this feature first and it was he who pointed out that they had it, in fact. I found it, in light grey on the recommendations page, not very visible to me. Yet, on either of them, I still can ask for stuff that I want but isn't available on their store;
• the presentation: like previous editions, everything just works. The last time something went wrong that I remembered was the Tiger preview, two years ago in in June, me thinks, when one of the computers Jobs was using started to act up and he switched to a backup. The live iPod demo where nice, also. One question I had at the time, when doing the iPod demos, there was a white border on screen: does it appear in the TV when you are using Video-out? If it does, does it appear in black with the black iPods? :)
• TV shows: bah, not available outside the US yet. What about subtitles? Even the english for the hearing impaired track would be nice;
• Jobs: he seemed tired, more than usual. He made at least some mistakes, calling iMac to the iPod at least on two occasions;
• The bit I liked the most to hear: almost at the end, when Robert Iger, the Disney CEO, was talking (around 58:50): on the subject of digital distributions - '''it is the future as far as we are concern'''

Overall nice event. I don't plan to buy a Video iPod, but I think it's good enough for a first version and it helps kick-start the download video market.

The iMac looks very nice, and if people ask me for a desktop computer to the home, I'll probably recommend it. The price is good, great value.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

From the Gaim site:

I (Sean) have been hired by Google, moved to Seattle, and have been working on the Google Talk team for about a month and a half. The goal of Google Talk is to make real-time communication as open as possible, and in that regard, I've been working to offer all of Google Talk's features into other clients. Currently, I'm working on making it as easy as possible for other clients to use Google Talk's voice features. You can expect Gaim and other clients to be interoperable with Google Talk's voice features in the near future.

Good, maybe they could start by documenting the protocol and let us all help out.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I was waiting for Oct 12 to see if my current laptop would get a decent facelift. It's not he is no longer sexy, it just that I'm no longer as patient as I once was, and waiting for some functions is getting to be a drag.

So when I saw that we only get TV shows in the US (as in not available anywhere else for now, nor any idea about when that might change), an iPod with a bigger screen and video decoding but resolutions that will not cut it for video out, and a desktop computer that is nice but still a desktop computer... well... it's all pretty and nice, but that's it.

Yes, the video store is a beginning of something, I'm sure. $2 a pop per episode is more or less the same that I pay when I get the DVD packs from Amazon. The advantage is that the episode is available the next day, and DVD series usually trail the season at least a year.

Since the first aluminum powerbooks, we haven't had any decent upgrades to the high-end Apple laptop line, so right now, unless you really need one, there is no point in buying one: the ibooks are much better bang for buck. I still have my 15" powerbook because of screen real-estate, that's it.

So, until Apple does something good with powerbooks, I just don't care anymore. In case you are wondering, yes, I would buy a dual-core G4 powerbook right now, even knowing that the intel-based ones will be around probably christmas next year...

I'll peek the January Apple Expo without much hope, but frankly, wake me up next year.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I like to have the same sidebar on the right of my pages, both in the main page and in the individual article pages.

With MT, I always edited the templates to add the same sidebar on both the main index template and in the individual archive template.

Today, I tried something new. I added a new index template, sidebar.html, and copied the sidebar from the main index template. Then I removed that content from the main index template and replaced it with a include of the new template. Also I edited the individual article template in the archive section and added the same include there. You also have to change the class of the element to ''layout-two-column-right''.

Now, my sidebar code is in a single template, for easy updating, and I can update a single template to change the sidebar on all the pages.

The include part is done in realtime using PHP. You can, of course, use whatever you want, but for simple include stuff, PHP is the best solution.

So, recap: to make certain elements of your blog layout easy to update (as in, having them in a single place), do this:

• create a new index template with the common elements;
• replace the places where they where being used with includes;
• adjust css classes if needed.

For example, to make the main page sidebar appear on all the templates, do this:

• from the main index template, take out the <div> with the ''beta'' class;
• replace it with a <?php include "sidebar.html" ?>;
• create a new sidebar template, and paste the original code there (make sure you check the ''Rebuild this template automatically when rebuilding index templates'');
• alter the individual article archive template, change the <body> element to the class ''layout-two-column-right'' and after the ''alfa'' <div, add something like <? php include("../../../sidebar.html") ?>. You have to adjust your path to the correct number of directories you crawl back, it depends on your archive URL layout.

Then make sure you setup Apache to filter all the HTML files via PHP. And then rebuild your entire site.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I live in Condados de Taverede, on the south slope of the Serra da Boa Viagem near Figueira da Foz.

Right now, we have a big forest fire coming down towards figueira da foz. Started at 15:30.

I can see the flames from my house, 500mts or so away. My neighbor to the north had his home touched by the fire.

Right now I'm watering the roof tops, while planes loaded with water cruise be at low altitude. my house seems to be in their flight path right now, so we get a very closer look at them.

Back to the roof.

Update 20:30: until 10 minutes ago, it seemed that it was traveling west, passing us by. We can look to N/NW and see about 45º of horizon with a red sky, and specs of fire flying in the air.

But a new front appeared to the NE of our house, and that one is moving our way. So nest hours will be bad around here.

We moved António to another house, of friends in the city. He will sleep there tonight. Is safer.

Update 20:50: the second front is picking up steam, and it's a bit scary. The noise of the pine trees burning fills the air.

I'll try to get some pictures, but Murphy as always, is not helping: both cameras where out of batteries.

Update 00:40: We can see the top of the flames from the house. The second front is still dangerous to us.

Right now, there are 4 or 5 main areas burning. Near my brother-in-law house, we could see flames around 20/30 meters.

Going to sleep a bit, check back around 3:00 to see is the fire near us os closer or not.

Last update: I woke up around 3:00 and circled the house. I climbed to the roof again. The front that was closer to our home was controlled around 400mts from our home. We got lucky with the wind direction.

The areas near Buarcos (and notice that Buarcos is inside the urban perimeter) where still burning. My brother-in-law was awake most of the night, the fire was less than 100mts from his home.

Around 7:00 things where pretty much controlled around the city. The fire had turned north, to the mountain.

It's Tuesday now, and before getting back to Lisbon I was able to drive through the open roads in the mountain. Basically, it's not there anymore. The entire south slope is gone. All the trees, vegetation burned to the ground. I don't have exact numbers yet about the total area that was burned.

Officially, there was no house burned down, but I saw a lot of roofs with burned areas and houses that had everything burned all around them, so it was very close. Our neighbor to the north, the terrain around his house burned down. I saw the flames licking his walls and windows.

The north slope was still burning monday evening. It was declared extinct around 20:00 yesterday, but around 150 firemen where position to spend this night controlling the area.

We had 250 firemen, around 50 trucks and 4 planes in the area during the day and a half that the fire was active. There are no words to thank them all.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 06:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Sometimes you need to run some script or program that will take a long time.

What I usually do is opening a new window, start the script, and then minimize or send to the back that terminal, leaving a small corner visible to serve as a status. I could glance to the visible corner and look for the prompt to see if had ended.

Now, I use this little super simple script (could also be a bash alias, probably):

 #!/bin/sh
 #
 # Runs script, and prints a notification with growl when it finishes
 #

 $*
 growlnotify -m "Script '$*' completed" -s "Background script notification" &
 # --script ends here--

My version is called n, just n. So I can type n update_mini_cpan and have a nice notification when it finishes via Growl.

Test with n ls -la if you want.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 08:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)