consolidating blogs

rm -rf * will no longer be updated. this is the end.

readers, if you like to read more about what i've got to say technology-wise, please point your browsers to my weblog: big mango.

Gut Wrenching Pain

Boards across the Internet are burning up for a few hours now!

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007] (from apple.com)

I'll wait until you can catch your breath.

Got it back? Okay.

With Apple's announcement, frankly the Faithful everywhere can feel this gut wrenching pain--- but it makes perfect sense. iPhone represents billions of dollars of revenue for the Cupertino-based computer maker. Whereas a new release of OSX can potentially give a few million dollars of revenue, it can wait. Apple needs to ship the iPhone as soon as possible and if it takes developers away from all other resources then so be it.

Leopard represents the next phase of Apple's flagship Operating System. A few months delay in making sure it is fit to run Macs everywhere is good enough to know. Our disappointment is huge, but the payback is even greater later on. It is nice to know that the boys and girls running things at Apple have their priorities set right. A few more months waiting for perhaps the best operating system since Tiger is well worth the wait.

OctaMac: Raw Power

Have you ever wondered what raw POWER feels like? The 8-Core Mac has arrived.

This baby sports a pair of Quad Intel Xeon Processors, running at 3Ghz, each. Pump in at least 4GB of RAM and plug-in the full 3 terabytes of storage, and you've got one hell of a Machine.

The 8-Core Mac Pro is the Ferrari of the Computing World.

Mac Pro: Raw Processing Muscle.
details can be found at Apple's site.

war journal 16: sabayon and beryl

fifteen year-old upstart Linux is the programming geek's idea of an operating system. freely available for download, installation and distribution, since its inception in the early 1990s, Linux's popularity has skyrocketed. One could say, Linux's story is the computing world's version of rags to riches. yet, its road to world dominance has hit a bit of a snag, it remains far from being a viable desktop alternative for the everyman.

The world has embraced the penguin. there is no doubt that much of the Internet's infrastructure uses Linux boxes. Enterprise and backrooms of companies everywhere are on Linux. If there was any doubt of the power and capability of Linux, one just has to look at the prestigious list of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world, where Linux is the obvious choice of scientists and researchers everywhere.

in spite of all this, Linux has not breached the desktop. is it because linux has had the reputation of being bland?

Sabayon Linux is one of many linux distributions that is getting eye candy. This video isn't my desktop. i picked it up off youTube to feature the beauty that is sabayon linux.

I've just finished reinstalling my linux box and moved from gentoo to sabayon, the latter is based on the former, much like ubuntu is based on debian. Sabayon Linux has one thing going for it: sabayon runs beryl out of the box.

So whats the big deal? Getting Beryl to run is more of a hit and miss mission. I should know, the past month has been dedicated to getting beryl to run on my gentoo-driven amd64 box. at one point, I was so desperate that i even reformatted the drive and installed ubuntu 7 (feisty) just to get it to work. The farthest i've reach using gentoo had been to get linux to run 3d rendering on my ati 9250 video card.

Sabayon solved my need. it ran aiglx right off the livecd installation. in fact it was the first thing it asked going through the installation. though i've had problems getting it to connect to my dsl modem (my linux box is the router which connects my internal network to the internet). it took a bit of work, and a bit of a hack via the good old gentoo installer: i chrooted to my installed sabayon and updated its rp-pppoe setup. it was the only way to make it happen.

Sabayon, Ubuntu Feisty are just some of the distros that give linux the eye candy and hopefully will attract the attention of people. Yet i must say this: Linux has a long way to go before it can be an excellent Desktop box. More on that for my next post.

war journal 15: what the bloody heck is wrong!?!

i've been spending the better part of the day installing gentoo@home.

i wanted to scrap my current gentoo install which uses reiserfs because i've been having problems with it. i use this box as a backup/file server. i upload all my os x dmg (disk image files) to linux. i upload videos and music there as well. so its typical to find 100MB to 2GB files.
reseirfs corrupted one of those files.

i wanted to switch to jfs.

no i have a gentoo livecd of amd64. i wanted to use the binary packages. no big right? should be a straight forward process. in my opinion should take bout an hour. 2 at the most.

i started at 8am. its now 3pm. i've hacked my way through the installed partition because the livecd install failed to compile the kernel.

no big, right? its also easy to recover... chroot to the partition and run emerge from there to build the broken packages.

what typically shouldn't be a major problem has turned to a disaster.

rsync keeps failing.

now i can't seem to install the pppoe daemon which is required to connect to the adsl because my rsync keeps failing (equivalent to update repository sa ubuntu). this box also serves as my router see, why i need pppoe.

what the bloody heck is wrong!?!

war journal 14b: windows games on linux, snapshots

last time, we were talking about how things crash when running windows games on linux, via wine.

here are some screenshots from my amd64 box.

star wars: jedi academy, character selection

image 2:

star wars knights of the old republic, intro

after this shot, the game one wine crashes. what is suppose to happen is that this is suppose to go to the character selection box.

well at least there is some progress. i suspect my dated hardware needs some upgrading. those games are being ran off an amd64, 1.8ghz box, 1gb ram, ati (yikes!) 9250 radeon card.

war journal 14: running windows games on linux

one must always trust one's distro. for about a month now, i've been trying to run windows games on linux. a crazy notion, given the bleeding edge nature of wine. i went crazy and even went so far as to install ubuntu on my linux box--- as a separate partition beside my gentoo. i was desperate to get direct rendering running and thus opengl.

the applications for third world nations would be great! people can run games on cheap hardware, something most internet cafes would probably benefit from. after all, if you could somehow do away with windows and its inherent security flaws, that would be great isn't it?

i don't mean to emphasize the flaws of windows--- i rather think there is a place in the world for it. but given a public terminal that lets you browse the internet, play games and do limited word processing, one can not possible contain the myriad users who would be running the system. linux would be an ideal platform for a multi-role public terminal because you'd be able to limit their access rights. and no, vista would just be too darn expensive to deploy.

i've been going crazy trying to get gentoo to run direct rendering. i couldn't get it to work. and a quick look at the gentoo forums said that though ati's linux drivers are sucky, my radeon 9250 card should run. hmm. insane.

i decided to run ubuntu on a separate partition. i just need to know my video card could work.

ubuntu feisty is a great distro! it ran direct rendering out of the box. its installer is one of the prettiest i've seen--- and very easy to run. it was able to detect all my peripherals. my one comment is this: i had to manually run pppoeconf to get my dsl running and the network panel remains a close sibling of the one windows xp has. it may be because mac os x has spoiled me on that regard--- networking is a breeze on os x with zeroconf networking.

wine--- on the other hand wasn't available on feisty. it is on edgy and some of the drivers had to be installed. still: no big, right? so i did and winehq's wiki worked rather well.

knights of the old republic's install ran pretty well just as it did on my gentoo. it is my only game, so pretty much there isn't much of a choice. then i hit a snag. the game wouldn't play, wouldn't go past the menu. winehq's app db revealed that there have been successful installs of knights and that they were able to play.

i decided to copy my ubuntu's xorg config and transfer it to my gentoo box. after all if that worked... it should on gentoo right? it didin't. direct rendering wouldn't work.

i killed X, ran eselect opengl set xorg-x11 then, rsync'd and updated portage and downloaded the newest gentoo-sources (gentoo's patched linux kernel). i decided to remove the dri--- (it was recommended by the gentoo howtos for ati) from the kernel but i wouldn't be installing the ati-drivers. i fetched xorg-x11's drm instead. the compile was a success. reboot.

login to gnome and ran glxinfo | grep rendering yielded: success! direct rendering was working! i loaded up kotor's disc one. then ran wine. start game. and kotor's video came to life! yes!

then it crashed.

coming to the computer, sooner than you think

What would you do if you could touch your music, your photos, your videos and that report you need to submit to your boss... on a computer display?

Twenty years ago, the icon-window-mouse-keyboard quartet we are so familiar with today, changed the way we communicate and interact. It appeared on the Macintosh, then on Microsoft's Windows and into every desktop and notebook computer in the last two decades or so.

For the past few years, researchers have been developing 3D windowing interfaces. Project Looking Glass and Beryl are an examples of this effort, as is the work of Jeff Han. So it hasn't been a question of, "can we do it". The question is: how useful would it be?

Apple Inc., the maker of such iconic devices as the Macintosh and the iPod, launched the iPhone during Macworld last January 2007, which they promised will revolutionize the way we use, the umm... phone... to call. hhhmmm.

What has the iPhone got to do with a new window interface?

This is the biggest, most exciting potential of the iPhone and it is a feature called "Multi-Touch". This piece of technology allows the user to interact with the computer with just using your hands. Too science fiction-Minority Report, you say?

Macrumors.com in March 2006 posted this on their site:

"Operation of a computer with touch screen interface". Again, individuals at Apple appear to be spending a lot of time on the potential interface for users of a touch screen device. The patent describes the the possible advantage of touch screens by being able to "glean much more information about a user's actions" than from conventional keyboards.

The methods described are intriguing in that it appears that there could be a level of refinement to the touch interface that has not been present in previous devices. Again, Apple describes the utility of offering a multi-touch capable display which can process multiple figures and gestures to provide additional information.

A few days ago, BingeBoy posted this amazing video:

In the next three months or so, Apple is not only launching iPhone... it is also expected to launch the next version of its flagship software: Mac OS X 10.5 (code name:Leopard). The rumor mill has been buzzing with the tantalizing possibility... that Multi-Touch could make its way to the desktop sooner than most of us may think, "as in, is three months or so, too soon?"

what makes people say this? A quick look at this short preview from Apple about one of the corner stones of Leopard, called Core Animation promises that Leopard will not only bring a better User Interface but also this same capability is found on the iPhone. How difficult would it be to enable multi-touch for the desktop when you've done it on a small device like iPhone?

The potential for this kind of user interface will usher in a new universe of how we interact with computers. No longer will applications be chained to the limitations of the GUI and the keyboard-mouse-display. we can build interfaces that are application specific. For example, you can interact with your photos as if you were holding them and shuffling them or arranging them as you would, developed film. the same with video, with music. you can re-arrange your report to your boss in potentially the same manner and configure, theoretically, a keyboard you are comfortable with writing. the possibilities are endless.

With two applications known to be using it, Time Machine (which will be part of Mac OS X 10.5 is an animated way to interact with your data backup) and iPhone multi-touch will be part of our daily work-flow. Whether or not Multi-Touch ready displays will be around, or if Leopard will have Multi-Touch for the desktop enabled, the fact that this piece of technology will be functional in a computer called iPhone, only time will tell when we can expect to be touching our data, our photos, our music, our videos, and working with it on the desktop.

Don't Do This @ Home

I must really be getting good at this. This is my second time to fatally crash the mac in a year. to this day, i don't know what The Faithful call it, when your mac says in a black screen to press the power button because the system did something fatal. in this case, user (i.e. the guy whose blog you're reading now) did something stupid.

panic(cpu 0 caller 0x001A429B): Unresolved kernel trap (CPU 0, Type 14=page fault), registers:
CR0: 0x8001003b, CR2: 0x00000000, CR3: 0x01753000, CR4: 0x000006e0
EAX: 0x00000000, EBX: 0x00134b5e, ECX: 0x000036b8, EDX: 0x0000dae0
CR2: 0x00000000, EBP: 0x1d0bbf88, ESI: 0x0585b624, EDI: 0x00000000
EFL: 0x00010206, EIP: 0x001963ce, CS: 0x00000008, DS: 0x00190010

Backtrace, Format - Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x1d0bbdb8 : 0x128d08 (0x3cb134 0x1d0bbddc 0x131de5 0x0)
0x1d0bbdf8 : 0x1a429b (0x3d0e4c 0x0 0xe 0x3d0670)
0x1d0bbf08 : 0x19ada4 (0x1d0bbf1c 0x12d99c 0xdae4 0xe)
0x1d0bbf88 : 0x35695712 (0x22 0x4ba970 0x1d09bba4 0x0)
0x1d0bbfa0 : 0x35634177 (0x297 0x1d0bbfc8 0x356aabaa 0x1d09bba4)
0x1d0bbfac : 0x356aabaa (0x1d09bba4 0x1d09bba4 0x2d4cb000 0x1d09bba4)
0x1d0bbfc8 : 0x19ac1c (0x1d09bba4 0x0 0x19e0b5 0x4c99640) Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0x0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
org.openafs.filesystems.afs(1.5.15)@0x3562d000

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.9.1: Thu Feb 22 20:55:00 PST 2007; root:xnu-792.18.15~1/RELEASE_I386

Model: iMac4,1, BootROM IM41.0055.B08, 2 processors, Intel Core Duo, 1.83 GHz, 1.5 GB
Graphics: ATI Radeon X1600, ATY,RadeonX1600, PCIe, 128 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 1 GB, DDR2 SDRAM, 667 MHz
Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM1, 512 MB, DDR2 SDRAM, 667 MHz
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x89), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (4.80.79.1)
Bluetooth: Version 1.7.14f14, 2 service, 1 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: Built-in Ethernet, PPP (PPPoE), ppp0
Network Service: Parallels Host-Guest, Ethernet, en2
Network Service: Parallels NAT, Ethernet, en3
Serial ATA Device: WDC WD1600JS-40NGB2, 149.05 GB
Parallel ATA Device: MATSHITADVD-R UJ-846
USB Device: Built-in iSight, Micron, Up to 480 Mb/sec, 500 mA
USB Device: Bluetooth HCI, Up to 12 Mb/sec, 500 mA
USB Device: IR Receiver, Apple Computer, Inc., Up to 12 Mb/sec, 500 mA
USB Device: Hub in Apple Pro Keyboard, Mitsumi Electric, Up to 12 Mb/sec, 500 mA
USB Device: Optical USB Mouse, Logitech, Up to 1.5 Mb/sec, 100 mA
USB Device: Apple Pro Keyboard, Mitsumi Electric, Up to 12 Mb/sec, 250 mA

what crazy thing did i do? installed openafs 1.5.15 (distributed file system) on the imac. the install never did get to finish. anyway, don't worry, this isn't a sign of bad design on apple's part. the tech IS bleeding edge and most users will never ever touch it.

Touch your Data

Every App has its own User Interface. This was the promise of Apple's iPhone. No keyboard on your phone--- just a touch screen. Jobs had a point. Every app needs its own User Interface. On a phone or any handheld device is more obvious.

Handheld devices are being used in almost every setting. Take this news from Mobile Computing, with the promise to deliver tablet PCs to the hospital setting.

Imagine, a display only, 13" lcd "tablet"--- no keyboard, just a touch screen, running full speed OS X in all its desktop glory. secure shell to your server? open a terminal.app on your tablet mac and there you go... logging onto your server. oh right, you're in the office with wifi all around... thats ok... your linux server just emailed you the hourly log from /var/log/messages but you have to meet your staff for coffee just across the street, so you're reading the log while sipping coffee in starbucks.

what about the desktop? with the advent of better User Interfaces--- could mark the end of the mouse and quite possibly the keyboard. i'd trade my mouse for touching stuff on my display. The keyboard could quite possibly remain--- for typing reports and such.

We might even see an age where every display follows us. User configurable displays--- based on your function/role in an organization. It sounds very Star Trek-ish, with each LCARS terminal configured specifically for the task at hand but manipulated in a very Minority Report-ish way.

Our machines are becoming faster, more powerful with the arrival of multicores. what are we going to do with all that power? our future machines will allow for better ways of interacting with our data, a more stimulating experience communicating with our friends, family and business contacts.

Future User Interfaces will liberate us from boring device-interfaces and spur creativity in designing appropriate but exciting human-computer interaction. More than ever, every person becomes a node on the network and more importantly, for both work and play, we get to touch our data.

Applegoo

i never open my gmail. ok, almost never, yet my gmail account remains to be my primary email address. in fact, the only reason i keep my yahoo email now is because of my yahoo messenger--- where most of my friends are attached to.

i've taken to using gmail's pop3 features. i've set my gmail account to archive all email after my apple mail has downloaded it. it saves me a browser tab. and i don't have to keep looking at a browser window to see if i have new messages: Apple Mail like every other email client does that for you.

don't get me wrong. i love the clean look and feel of gmail. its functionality is the best with yahoo's new beta the worst of the lot. gmail's clean interface lets me effortlessly search for email--- which i do and hardly the only time i ever open it. that and finding out some obscure email address that hasn't found its way to my computer's contact list.

there is also a way to get your mail through rss but i find rss news readers to be overwhelming, whereas if the message is already with me on Apple Mail... i can simply answer it and gmail's threading identification thingy is somewhat simulated in Apple Mail where related threads are highlighted. Still nothing beats the real thing which really turns your emails into conversations.

I delete all mail i get from my gmail account. why the heck should i keep it together with all the clutter on my hard drive? Google has an archive of my mail online for me to search. So my Apple Mail is empty. Google has done a spectacular job of archiving my email.

if you're interested in using the same work flow click here to visit Gmail Help Center to help you configure your own pop3--- which works for almost every email client in Linux, Windows and the Mac.

Nifty Summarize

Don't have time to read all the stuff being sent to you? Here's one more reason to love (and if you haven't, switch to) Mac OS X! I learned about this feature while watching Mac Break Episode 62: Summarize. Its a nifty little thing that lets you auto summarize any text be it from your web browser, a pdf file.

Select the text you want to summarize like so:


then... click on the menu...



the summary window will come out:


you can set how long the summary would be, by moving the slider and/or selecting the sentence or paragraph buttons like so:


i've tried it with the pdf viewer and it works, and no it doesn't work with Firefox but it does on Camino. This feature works for all cocoa apps.

here's the Camino screenshot:

This cool little tool and apparently has been with OSX for a long time, the boys from Macbreak said.