Spreadsheet representation of music history (click to enlarge)

ome weeks ago I wrote about an XMMS extension that I had devised. This collection of steps which I described could make XMMS store simple log files for music (music ‘history’). That work has now been thoroughly extended to produce spreadsheets (comma-separated values (CSV) to be precise) rather than flat log files.

In brief, what is obtained using this trick are music history logs, one file for each day. Each file contains full, detailed history of the tracks listened to. Interesting information can be derived from these, e.g. most frequently played tracks, tracks quickly skipped (implying the possibility of deletion or removal from playlist). As already said in last entry:

A music log file results in even more redundant data to store. According to a rough calculations, I will see it growing by 1 megabyte every month or so. Compression, however, should make it only 10-20% of its original size.

You can find all the details on this work (installation instructions included) in my Linux Utilities page.

Dr. Irving from the University reported a ‘critical’ issue with the Linux distribution that had been installed in student clusters. The following message was posted yesterday afternoon to the Linux-users mailing list. I believe it is worth quoting:

Several of our students have been complaining about a pornographic screensaver on Redhat Fedora Core 3 desktops. After a bit of rooting around I’ve tracked this down to the webcollage.desktop screensaver which picks random images off the internet and displays them within the screensaver. Not a very responsible inclusion in a desktop environment but it can be found in /usr/share/applnk/System/ScreenSavers should anyone receive similar complaints.

Linux computer for under $255 in the UK (click to enlarge)

ithin this post lies my main argument as to why Linux (or complimentary Open Source streams or movements) will rise hugely in less than a decade. The cost of production continues to slide while human intellect (development) is among the more expensive commodities. The Zipit demonstrates that by using Linux, the leading free operating system, a PDA with WiFi, 320×240 pixels display and stereo DAC can sell for as little as $99.

$299 for the entire package

In Britain, Dabs are now selling a Mandrake 9.2 Linux box (quicklinx 3QV3WS, no monitor is included) for 140 British pounds ($245) excluding VAT. Elsewhere in the world, the fully-featured MOBILIS computer (shown above) goes for only $299 list and speculations are made as to why commercial software will perish once hardware costs equate to it.

Enterprises still need software, and lots of it, to run their operations, but they are buying few new licenses. Part of the story is that the market is mature and buyers have enough software already. Part of the story is that offshore outsourcing makes it cheaper to build your own. A big part of the story is the appearance of more efficient alternatives, such as open source.

With such low prices across the market, buying a larger number of computational units is possible for prices that are comparable with that of several Windows PC‘s or Apple Macs. Server rooms will benefit in terms of performance, as they do already. Homes will be able to offer a computer to each member of the family or exploit computers for otherwise remote uses like home entertainment, productivity and automation in the garden , the kitchen (see kitchen of the future) and even the car.

n a matter of hours I will head off to a plenary research meeting at Oxford University. I decided to catch the 5 AM train rather than arriving at Oxford yesterday. It has become rather difficult to stay off-line for more than half a day, let alone a day or two. Many hundreds of messages accumulate in the newsgroups, many dozens in mailing lists, and about 100 RSS feeds need catching up with. Moreover, error logs expire, server have potential of crashing, and physically speaking, no proper exercise can be undertaken.

A talk I look forward to describes work by Lewis and Chen. The presentation Lewis will deliver bears a title which intrigues me.

Below are 2 photos that I took in the previous Oxford plenary meeting in May 24^th – 25^th. I retain a comprehensive daily photolog so the corresponding entries of the first and the second day are included, as always.

Google have introduced yet another ‘toy’ which re-uses the software from Google Satellite maps. This time, all data being used is imagery from NASA‘s past moon landings.

With nicer innovations and envious ad-free page layouts, is it truly a surprise when Microsoft executives migrate to Google? Tension is growing between these two camps as Miscrsoft recently acquired similar technologies and map data. These interactive maps have enormous value as they add a geographical aspect to the World Wide Web, which is presently in chaos. This has a huge advertising potential.

Does the following scenario sound familiar?

I have a T3 and whenever I have to re-digitize the pen (ie, reboot), it sometimes takes 30 to 40 cycles of ‘upper left’, ‘center’, ‘lower right’ before it stops.

(source: nttp://alt.comp.sys.palmtops.pilot — July 19^th, 2005)

This situation often gets worse. I used to go through hundreds of such cycles at some stage. The number of necessary repetitions seemed to have gone up progressively and, at one point, I had my 8-year-old sister do it for me. I told her it was a game. I finally decided to ask the Palm community and got some suggestions. The problem turned out to have been far more wide-spread than I had anticipated.

Steve confessed about his bad experiences yesterday:

…I have had my Clié for 2 years now and never had to reset the digitizer. My two Palm T3 needed a reset at least 2-3 times each time I was powering it on. That drove me crazy and Palm didn’t acknowledged the problem while thousands of customers were complaining.

Finally, some possible solutions were offered by Aaron last night:

The mad digitizer syndrome is a mechanical defect just like a broken switch. There is software that will compensate (like DigiFix) but the only real solution is to repair the unit. Some have found that cleaning and reseating the internal cables solved the problem. If all else fails, and you’re handy the digitizer can be replaced for US$40.

So, it turns out that digitizers are easily replaceable, although soldering work is involved. Over the years, I gave up on the damaged unit and handed it over to my brother. Sadly, the issue never resolved itself. On the other hand, somebody has fewer reasons to be bitter:

I had a T2 fail on me last year with the same symptoms and Palm replaced it under warranty with a new T3! Others were not so fortunate.

Cited by: PalmAddict

PDF‘s, text files, HTML‘s and
directories in the KDE Desktop with previews (click to enlarge)

ver had the experience of staring at a collection of files, wondering which one is which and puzzled by the best way of finding the text or images you are after? This was a wide-spread operating system deficiency in the nineties (there was a brute-force barrier). Nowadays, directories reflect on their content and file previews are generated on-the-fly, even over FTP, i.e. remote data.

With a large enough icon size as shown above (an example from KDE), even entire documents reflect on their content. Similar types of previews exist for animations and — oddly enough — sound.

By obtaining this reflection on content, there is no longer a need to open files in vain. Location of content becomes an easier task as it can be done visually rather than relying on filenames. Files are simply more recognisable since they express their purpose in the most natural way. If a pictures is worth a thousands words, the user is able to scan more data, more quickly.

Preview are not the only way of improving productivity. Work is being done on extending the “drag-and-drop” functionality for items, e.g. animated folding and dropping (videos included) and richer desktop interactions. As a matter of preference, I like keeping my Desktop clean, making it a ‘yet-to-complete’ list. Previews on files cannot resolve the issue of clutter and scale; they can, however, compensate for the expressiveness of filenames.

For those who do not know yet, Windows Longhorn was intended to introduce WinFS. This new filesystem, rather than using filetables (notably FAT32), was aimed at getting rid of traditional file management and filenames altogether. Nevetheless, Longhorn ended up incorporating none of the promised innovative features though.