Latest Postings by Mathias
The limits of "community driven"
So I decided to finally upgrade from Karmic to Lucid. Easy task, only should take some time: After all I did a plain default install. Well, ok - I've used the alternative ISO as my employer requires me to use full disk encryption. It's a good idea anyway, no idea why this feature isn't the default for all installs.
So after some time the install finishes, the ...
About missing flights
Frequent fliers will know this, but to everyone else: If you ever should be that stupid to miss a flight, call the airline where you booked that missed flight as soon as possible. Otherwise they will cancel your inbound flight and bet on charging you an incredible amout of money for your previously reserved seat. For me they lost their ...
Using DBus as lock-daemon
Recently I found this comment in the source code I am working with:
// what if both processes read in the same time and write at the same time, no increment
Please! Don't do such things! Don't just leave such comments in hope someone else will come around and will fix later. Please take the time to apply a locking mechanism.
Obvious choice when dealing with files would be to create a lock file. Unfortunately creating a ...
GCC 4.5 - Awesome Release!
GCC 4.5 just was has been released yesterday. It's a really awesome release according to its summary of changes. My favorites:
- The -Wc++-compat option is significantly improved.
- Compilation time for code that uses templates should now scale linearly with the number of instantiations rather than quadratically, as template instantiations are now looked up using hash tables.
- Improved ...
Stylish New Business Cards
Our new business cards have arrived:
Stylish. Professional. No Nonsense. Hopefully the attributes associated with Openismus...
Well done Kat!
About reinventing the wheel
Nice article: I Can't Wait for NoSQL to Die. Fits on many IT problems, not only SQL vs. NoSQL. Should be common knowledge, but apparently is not.
Bottom line: First of all do some research before throwing out the baby with the bath. And no: Jumping on the current hype won't magically cure your self made skill/knowledge/management/whatever problems.
QML Hype
So yesterday I've skipped the chance to watch some "exciting" QML demos in Helsinki. This was quite surprising to some of my KDE rooted team mates. They didn't understand how I could not show the slightest sign of excitement.
Well, but actually I wonder for months: What's actually the fancy and awesome, the brilliant new, the exciting part of QML? It ...
Technique vs. Intelligence
As the military rushes to place more spy drones over Afghanistan, the remote-controlled planes are producing so much video intelligence that analysts are finding it more and more difficult to keep up.
Yet another proof that technique cannot replace intelligence.
(Notice the wordplay.)
Re: Facebook Scam Groups
Erich: Not sure if Facebook is in charge. All that happens is, that people try to cheat and get cheated back. That's what happens to greedy people who consider themself smarter than they really are.
Back from Maemo Summit 2009
So I am back from Maemo Summit 2009. Great people. Great show. Great talks. Great venue: Enjoyed it quite much to walk arround in the Westerpark, Marc-André loved the petting zoo.
Hotest topic, of course: The N900. Thank you Nokia for lending those devices: Feels so good to finally have one for personal use! Finally got ideas for some private N900 hacking when reflecting ...
Application Theming Tricks
From time to time applications need custom theming rules. Especially when the project has professional UI designers involved. So how to achieve this with GTK+?
Trivial Theming
Most easy and very wrong:
if (gdk_color_parse ("pink", &color))
gtk_widget_modify_bg (widget, GTK_STATE_NORMAL, &color);
This will break and look childish as soon as your users use a custom color scheme.
Better:
static void
style_set_cb (GtkWidget *widget,
GtkStyle *old_style)
{
GtkStyle *style = gtk_widget_get_style (widget);
if (gtk_style_lookup_color (style, "SecondaryTextColor", &color))
...
Rant: Trade Imbalance Penalties
Barack Obama on CNN: "We can't go back to the era where the Chinese or the Germans or other countries just are selling everything to us, we're taking out a bunch of credit card debt or home equity loans, but we're not selling anything to them".
Found this quote when searching for stories supporting Financial Times Deutschland's story about US and UK officials ...
Well, and it is a phone!
So after months of denial it turns out, that the/we Maemo folks really built a phone!
Kinderschutzbrett
Michael just found a good illustration of Zensursula's internet stop sign. Definitely worth to repost:
Roughly in English: “This is because your neighbour abuses children. You don't want to watch, do you? (For better illustration the "inter-net" was omitted in this picture.)”
See you at the Prater Biergarten
Let's have a small GNOMEr's come-together in Berlin's Prater Biergarten this Friday at 16:00.
