undertakingyou

I have written quite recently how I have been using Mac OS X as my primary OS over the last month or so. In the times past I have failed at this in large part because I have not given Mac OS a chance. I found myself making quick judgements about the nuances that existed and then hated everything. This go around I am affording more of a chance here. Although I have been uncomfortable to a certain degree because I am used to all the FOSS tools that I have come to love and rely on. But there are a few things that have really been able to help me keep it together as I make this transition.

My Tomboy Notes replacement. I love Tomboy notes, and having something close to take a quick note. Mac OS stickies doesn’t even come close to it. After some searching I found Evernote, which really is awesome. I like it enough that I upgraded to the premium account. I think Evernote will replace my default note taking app permanently.

For chatting I have had to replace Irssi with bitlbee. I chose to use two things here, even though I could use one. The first is Adium, which is a great multi-protocol chat client akin to Pidgin. It even has a bird as its icon, a duck, that can be the color of your choosing. I use that for google talk, and a jabber account I have for school. The second chatting replacement is Macirrsi. I used port to install Irssi, but the terminal in Mac is still … not the best. Macirssi gives the power of Irssi but without the headaches of mac terminal.

For a text editor I like to use vim. Vim is available in Mac OS, but I have found in Linux that sometimes that it is very nice to have the extra features of a GTK application with the menu’s and what not. In comes MacVim  which provides basically the same functions as gvim. I still have vim in the terminal, which we all know is awesome.

OpenVPN is a great open source VPN solution that we use at work. With ubuntu I just go to the terminal and as root run openvpn with my .conf file or I would set up a VPN connection with NetworkManager and just connect. In Mac OS there is a very eligant solution with the use of Tunnelblick. Seems to be more fickle with configuration file options, and there are some more steps in setting up a connection. Otherwise there is a simple connect on demand option that keeps things going smoothly.

On ubuntu I really liked using gnome do for quick startup of applications. Gnome do is based on the native Mac OS Quicksilver, which is actually quite awesome. Gnome Do has done a great job in replicating it. Because Mac OS didn’t have any kind of menu until recently, Quicksilver is a must so you can access things easily.

There are some apps that I have not found yet a suitable replacement.

• Revelation, password keeper. I have keepassx but it isn’t as good.
• Banshee, a great music player. The current Mac OS version won’t run for me, and iTunes just can’t hold a candle to it.
• A decent terminal. The default terminal is still the best that I have used out of iTerm and Terminator. But there are some drawbacks still with the default terminal.

Recently I have been just using Mac OS instead of some flavor of Linux for my computing needs. With the announcement of the latest edition of the Mac OS X series I eagerly watched for the release of Lion. I followed all the predictions of it being released on the 14th, then when that didn’t happen it was to be the 15th, because the last 3 releases where on a Friday, then it was to be on the 19th because Apple was releasing their financials. It was like waiting for Harold Camping’s rapture. On the 20th when it was released I waited for it to be a hoax, and so I didn’t upgrade till the 21st.

I did appreciate not having to go down to the Apple store to buy the product. The Apple store is always like a zoo with no cages, and no help. Just a gaggle of people standing around waiting for those with the all powerful blue shirt to pay attention to you. I just don’t have the time. The download is big, but it is a new version of the OS. I would have waited just as long to download the ISO DVD of Fedora or Ubuntu. So no harm lost there. The install was smooth and I didn’t loose any of my settings, well not a lot of my settings, but we will get to that.

Two things that I have read in other reviews that are very true. It is slower. My MacBook Pro lags on things that before where no problem. Sometimes on what seems to be the simplest task. Mind you I do have an older laptop, but still, this thing should be able to powerhouse through the occasional typing lag that I am now getting. The other piece of review fodder: there is noticeable change to be like the iPad interface.

For instance, there is no more Spaces or Expose (which constitutes my largest settings change), these have been replaced with Mission Control. Which acts like a hybrid version of the two. You do not have a preset number of desktops (or spaces) but you can create as many as you need. You must have these desktops arranged in a line. I used to keep my spaces in a square with two rows and two columns, but no more. Also the dashboard is by default the leftmost space, with your default space being the second, exactly like the iPad. While at first I had a hard time with the Mission Control change, I now find a certain amount of finesse with it.

Launchpad is another new addition to Lion. It’s icon looks like the MacBook Pro power button but with a rocket ship on it, and rightly so. Using that shows you all the apps that you have, exactly like the iPad does. Complete with first screen showing all the default installed apps, and the second (and subsequent screens) showing apps that you have downloaded yourself. While it is easier and prettier than the default dock Applications folder, I don’t see a lot of added value in having it.

Another iPad like change is the scroll direction with the trackpad. It has been changed by default to have the screen follow the direction of your finger. So if you drag down, you will actually scroll up. I read a lot of complaints about this, and when first using it I was thrown for a loop. But then I looked in the System Preferences, low and behold you can change it with the un-checking of a box. World is back to normal. I don’t know why people complained so much.

Otherwise, while overall Mac OS 10.7 is more ascetically pleasant, I am not finding a lot of other things improved. I was looking forward to a better terminal, which I didn’t really notice a change on. I was also looking forward to better SMB performance, which seems to have only a minimal change. It does however handle crashes much better. Banshee would just hang in 10.6.* but with Lion it actually kills the program, and gives me a very convenient stack trace to solve the problem.

While looking forward to the new multi-touch gestures I can’t seem to get them to work. I attribute this to my MacBook Pro being a 3,1 model, and maybe not capable but I am not sure.

All in all the upgrade is ok. If you are struggling financially to feed yourself don’t upgrade. If you have the $30 bucks you won’t loose out to much. I would not look to this to be a revolutionary change, but I will say that not a lot has broken with the upgrade, and I really like that.

So to give a back story here, in March my wife and I got a Netflix account after some family members lead us on to it. I was excited to have both one DVD at a time and unlimited streaming but you can’t stream on linux. Like so many before me I tried and failed to get it to run without having a virtual windows machine. We had my wife’s iPad, which allowed us to stream. But who wants to gather the entire family around an 8 inch diagonal screen? So after much discussion we got a Network Media Player to sit atop the television and give us unlimited entertainment.

I had a few requirements. One it had to be able to hook to my old TV through regular RCA cables. I also wanted it to be unusable for when I someday get a nicer TV, so I needed HDMI and/or Component video also. I have a good amount of my personal collection ripped onto the computer. I wanted to be able to play this collection either over a SMB share or DLNA server. Lastly, I had to be able to hook up wireless internet, as I didn’t feel like dragging cords all over the place. So off I looked to see about a player that could do this.

In my search I looked at Roku, Seagate, Western Digital, Sony, and others to try and find something that would do all that I wanted. In the end I actually settled on the Sony SMP-N100. The reason being that it was wireless, had all the connection options that I needed. Could play media off of a USB drive, and could act as a DLNA client. It seemed perfect. Once the box arrived I was of course very excited. I plugged it in, hooked it up, and then the disappointment happened. Here is my list of things that went absolutely wrong:

• Wireless is finicky. I have a Linksys WRT54GL V1.1 running DD-WRT and it would connect, but then not reliably transfer data and I could not watch Netflix. In the end I finally used a Linksys WRT54G v5 hooked just as a wireless switch to my DD-WRT router and then I could get wireless.
• DLNA sucked. On the advertisements etc it gives a long list of supported video formats it can play, and then says it is a DLNA client. What it doesn’t say is that not all supported types are supported over DLNA. So I can’t play 90% of my personal collection to it.
• Interface sucks. They use the Sony media cross. While logically this should work great, because you can narrow by catagory, the problem (or suckiness) comes because you can’t rearrange anything. So my most used features (Pandora, Slacker and Netflix) I had to scroll through a ton of options to get to and it became very cumbersome.
• Sony Proprietary Crap. This one has some subpoints.
• All services must be routed through Sony. So to use Pandora, I had to link it to my Sony account. Because I had a store return player I could not do that until I called and talked to Sony to reset my device. Sony is very interested in locking you in. I reset my player to factory defaults and removed all personal data. I still had to call Sony.
• All Netflix traffic is first routed through Sony servers. Now we all know the problems that Sony has with their servers. I can not say how many times I got a ‘Netflix unavailable: error 300′ message. Netflix doesn’t have an error 300. This is a Sony server error number.
• It seemed to have a memory leak. Not 100% sure on this, but while having the SMP-N100 I changed from 1.5 Mbps DSL to 15 Mbps Cable. This increased quality and speed should have been a good thing. However, after watching one show with no interruption, all subsequent shows would be choppy and have dozens of spooling pauses.

Now aside from not working, the sony media player did have some good things. The remote could also control the TV. So I didn’t need to have multiple remotes. Also … Nope, that was it.

I finally got tired of having a player that wouldn’t play, and so I switched gears and bought a Roku XD|S player. Now the Roku has some things against it. The remote that is supplied with it is simple, so simple it won’t control the TV volume too, so I must have two remotes. Also no option for DLNA client or playing over a SMB share. With that said there are some things that are really good:

• Wireless works. It connects and transfers data over my DD-WRT router. No problems.
• It can play various media off a USB stick. So I could play some of my collection, just one more step.
• Interface is better. Not amazing. It is linear. So you have to just scroll through everything. But you get to pick your ‘channels’ and so you only see what you want. Right now I have just Amazon, Netflix, and Pandora. There are other channels you can add.
• So far I have not run into any connection problems because the Roku servers are down.
• I have watched for hours without any spooling pauses or apparent memory leaks.

In all, Roku, all the way. I have not tried Seagates or Western Digitals players although I looked at them in my research. But at this point I am super pleased with the Roku.

Normally I don’t do posts on anything windows because, well, I don’t like to use windows. But this one was just frustrating enough that I thought a quick writeup would be good.

I am helping a coworker with their personal laptop. It is a Toshiba something or other and at boot it was saying “Error in reading the disk” (or whatever the message is, you get the point). Knoppix quickly showed that not only is the disk readable and everything there but also the rest of the system works fine. Using knoppix I fixed the windows MBR but to no avail! The silly thing still wouldn’t boot. I popped in the Windows XP CD with the intention of doing a CHKDSK but to my great aggravation, the Toshiba laptop uses a sata controller that doesn’t have a driver in the Windows XP disk. Couldn’t do CHKDSK because it didn’t see a drive. Crap.

After some searches I ran into nLite. A tool to spin up your own XP disk. You can add drivers, files, windows updates, remove windows features and even have pre-installed software. To my great joy I got the driver needed for the intel 82801 SATA controller, spun up my own disk, and now this laptop is merrily performing the CHKDSK /P which HOPEFULLY fixes this problem.

Some things to note with nLite: Won’t work under wine worth a crap. Had to fire up my Windows VM to make it work. Otherwise it is pretty straight forward. Tell it where your windows disk is and where you want to store stuff on your hard drive. It will copy the windows files over and then give you a nice list of options to customize things. Seems as though sky is the limit, although I didn’t try it past adding some drivers. At the end it will make for you an .ISO which you can burn at your leisure. From there you are on your way to getting stuff done … even though it is windows.

I have upgraded my Droid to the latest CyanogenMod. It is awesome. One wonderful thing with this latest edition of the best ROM ever is the latest source build of google apps. The one I have noticed the most change with is the newest Gmail app, version 2.3.2

Just a bullet list of what I notice:

• Quick button to labels
• ‘Send As’ options pulled from your google account and now available on your phone.
• Smoother composer interface including the following:
  • Drop down to change between reply, reply-to-all, forward
  • Send and Save buttons on top ‘dock’ (or locked header, whatever you want to call it)
• When replying, the option to ‘Respond Inline’ (possibly made just for Aaron Toponce? )
• Option to Mark Important/Not Important (If you use the priority inbox this could be good)

I have really enjoyed some of these new features. I would love to see better select options when looking at the inbox, or any message list anyways. Ideally this would be a select drop down with all, unread, read, starred, unstarred, important, unimportant, none. This would be a great improvement.

A while back I was tired of ubuntu, and didn’t want to deal with the ‘issues’ of Ubuntu 9.04. I also was ready to try a different set of problems. All in all my experience with Debian was fine. The install was easy, it was other things that really made using Debian all the time a little hard. Little things really. Printing pictures was a pain. Importing pictures from my camera was difficult, maybe difficult is not the right word, but cumbersome. When you are used to just plugging something in and a cute dialog box pops up kindly inviting you to import your pictures.

Truth be told, while under the hood ubuntu and debian have everything very close to the same, ubuntu has a certain polish and ease that really makes it a great distrobution. So when Maverick became available I went ahead and got all the ISO’s that I would need.

The install was easy, and once it was done there was not a lot of updates to do. I blame this on it being just a couple of days old. There are still some of the old bugs still there. For instance, on an install with ubuntu my Sound Blaster Audigy sound card won’t work on a new install. I did not have this issue with debian. I am still not a huge fan of one notification at a time. If three people send me chats I want to know all three at one. Being notified one at a time is still in my mind a huge regression in functionality.

Some noticeable differences: a new photo manager, ShotWell, which I like better than f-spot. VLC bug fixed that would not shut off the screen saver while watching a movie (a happy change).

All in all though, I like the new Ubuntu 10.10.

I wrote a review of Zend Enterprise PHP Patterns a while back. While I read the book, I had yet to jump into the Zend framework and really make a project that used it, or any of it for that matter. While doing a project for a client I had need of making several forms. Nothing is more tedious to me than making forms. The html tags for labels, the form input, and then the PHP on top of it to give default values. This is OK when making a short form. But I get extra sick of it when doing a form with even ten or more fields. When faced with such a situation this last week I decided to try just a piece of the Zend Framework.

This is possibly my favorite thing about the framework, the ability to use as much or as little as you would like. It gives great flexibility and allows you to include parts into a currently existing project.

To get started, you need to tell your PHP application where zend is, in addition, starting the autoloader at this time really makes life easy. The following code does just that:

With these two items in place you can just begin to call Zend Classes and Functions without another thought about it. I put this in my included header.php file, where I have all kinds of includes. Now my functions are available to me wherever I am.

To start your form it is very easy.

That is is, we have started a form. Everything else will use the newly created $form object and go forward from there.

Next, you must add attributes and elements to your form. I found certain parts of this very poorly documented. I wish there was a list of acceptable options, etc for each form addition type but there isn’t. Maybe I should just not complain and write it, but I digress. Adding attributes is rather easy

Now adding form fields, a couple options here, both quite easy. First is to just use the $form object and add directly:

The arguments passed to the addElement method are type, name, array of  options.

The second option is to create a Zend_Form_Element object and add that to the $form object:

The last bit, actually rendering your form. Some caveats here, Zend Framework components can be used outside of the Zend MVC environment, but you still must define a view in order for the form to actually come up. If you do not, you will get an exception. It isn’t hard though, the following will do it for you:

Viola! The form magically appears in front of your eyes. A couple things to remember, anything that can be attribute of an HTML form of input elements can be added to the Zend_Form in the options array. This includes, value, class, specifically defined ID, etc. I will be using Zend_Form much more often. It is so easy to get forms together quickly and easily.

A while back I wrote about my trepidation with Lucid. I have used ubuntu linux ever since my first linux introduction 5 years ago. But recently the changes in Lucid and general pain-in-the-butt install issues have had me very scared to install it. I have not updated any of my machines to Lucid but the other machines that I have updated have been less than spectacular.

So, I finally got around to installing Debian on my home desktop machine. I have been holding off because I am lazy. So far everything had worked, but I had a weekend off and away we ran with it.

First, I did have two little issues. I installed lenny and my update to squeeze crashed and burned. Once I used the Testing installer all was well. Also the installer didn’t like hooking to the wifi even though my wireless driver is included in the kernel as the ath9k driver. Aside from that this was the smoothest install I have ever had. Ever. Of all time.

Some things that I really liked. Once I installed the system I was up to date and running full steam ahead. No need to update and wait and download everything. That was already done as part of the install. Usually there are some configuration things and little get it together issues. Once I associated my bluetooth keyboard and mouse I have not had to do anything else. Everything has just fallen into place.

Also, rolling releases are just an awesome idea. I can stay on testing and I will always have an up to date system. Furthermore, the packages in the repositories are not archaic, but actually quiet up-to-date.

All in all, I am very pleased with my Debian install.

Introducing a ‘new’ blog segment where I put my thoughts on some of the best, or worst, of the android apps that I have tried. Today on the docket, Setting Profiles.

We all are on the go, we move everywhere. That is why we have a mobile phone. But I find that I have a handful of places that I am at more often than others. At these various spots I have different services or settings that I use on my phone. At home and work I want to be connected to the WIFI. At low battery state on the phone I want to shut everything off to conserve battery. When at a funeral service, or Sunday while at church I want the phone completely silent. Conversely, when not at home, I don’t want WIFI on depleting my battery needlessly. Or when not at church I want to hear my phone. What is a real pain in the butt is to set these things at each new location every time.

In steps Setting Profiles. There are other apps that also change phone settings based upon certain phone criteria, but I found them cost prohibitive. Settings Profiles only cost $3.95 and is so similar in feature set for my needs it is a no-brainer to save the money.

With Setting Profiles there are some things that very first must be done after installing the app. First, set up some Locations.When you go to add a new location it gives you a couple options, I always chose Lat/Lon which then gives you a map. You simply select where, the distance in radius that you must be from this point, and then a name. Viola, you have set a location. The really cool thing, you don’t have to be at the location, you just have to select ANY point on the map.

Next is to set profiles. When setting a profile you will then select what things should be on/off. Just go down the list and turn things on and off as needed.

Last step, is to set up a rule saying that if you are in location A turn on setting B. Once your location criteria is met Setting Profiles will change your phone settings. Once you no longer meet the location criteria, Setting Profiles will change your settings back to how they were before.

But what if you want something to happen and it is not dependent upon location. Never fear! There are many criteria choicesthat you have. Battery State, Calendar appointment title, Missed call, Blue Tooth device connected, on even just a specific scheduled time to name a few. Do you want your phone to automatically silent from 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM so you don’t get disturbing calls in the night? No problem, this can do that.

What if you don’t want it to change phone settings? You do have the option of Running a program or Notifying you also.

Last points to highlight. You also can select multiple profiles at a time. It simply applies them in order. If your first rule turns on WIFI and the second one disables it, WIFI will be off. Another neat feature is the widget which allows you to quickly use aprofile, disable a profile, or use a profile on a timer. Very convenient for that meeting to be an hour. Time the profile setting with the widget for one hour and automagically your phone settings change when you are done. The widget also shows you the order that the profiles are applied in so that you can more easily refine your rule-set.

What I like: I like the convenience of just knowing that my phone settings will change when they are supposed to without me thinking about it. Very convenient to know that stuff is just magically working for me. Also, the UI is actually quite simple to use and very intuitive.

My wish list: It seems that the GPS location rules are stuck at 1/2 mile. I can’t get a 1/4 mile to work at all. I wish that all the granular options worked for this. Also, on the Calendar Items condition my only option is that for 12 hours prior to the calender item I can have some action happen. Really? 12 hours? With all our that this app can do we only get the ‘choice’ of 12 hours? I want to see options for 12 hours,  1 hour, 30 minutes, and 5 minutes at LEAST. With a more finite time interval I could set it so that when I had a funeral, or had a family arrangement or meeting of some kind it could auto silence my phone. 12 hours is just rediculous. I would also like to see a cell phone tower location option for CDMA phones. Maybe there is a technology limitation there, not sure. But it would still be nice.

All in all: I would still recommend this app to people. Not just as a cheaper alternative than Locale, but as a great option for criteria based phone settings changes. The price point is such that it really is a good value, and really, my gripes are minor. Also, the app is still under active development, which means that improvements should continue to happen (should being the operative word).

I recently installed Android 2.2 on my phone. Gotta thank the guys at cyanogenmod for the awesome ROM that they put out. Of all the ROMs I have tried they are by far the most polished and nice. Plus the ease of using ROMManager is a no brainer. So my thoughts on Android 2.2.

There are some great improvements. First, I thought that I would like having 360 degree screen rotation more. But the reality is that I move my phone two ways. After using everything for a bit I find the rotation to be more of a ‘see I can do this’ thing rather than a useful feature. But still, see I can do this!

More notable for me is the improvements in both the Gmail app, and the Calendar app. Two things in the Gmail app. The support for the color labels now. If you haven’t used this it does provide a great ‘at a glance’ showing of what is going on with your labels. Also the app UI is improved, with some buttons added for fast account switching for those of us with multiple gmail accounts, and more handy next and forward buttons. Also, just found the option now to ‘select text’. When selected you can highlight message text and when done it will auto copy to the clipboard.

The calendar app has a much needed improvement of being able to sync with multiple gmail accounts. I can’t even say how frustrating this was. I had so many people that signed up for a new gmail account, and when we added their work gmail account they couldn’t have the work calendar.

Other improvements seem to mostly be UI improvements with things like the Talk application. Changes in the ‘Car Home’ UI. Call log now has groupings so if you miss 80 calls from your boss in a row you just see one entry with a ‘(80)’ next to it. This will of course show all 80 once you expand them. Contacts now also has a quick dial button at the full list so that you can call directly rather than long pressing or going into the contact. The ‘Messaging’ app has added contacts pictures in the view messages pane and, has changed the font on the date and time stamp so you can actually read it without your microscope. Camera UI has also improved giving quick access to features such as flash, white balance, GPS location, etc. Also who can forget flash support with the betas from Adobe. Lastly, the market app has some cleaning up making it easier to leave feedback, and a dedicated tab to view comments.

Although I haven’t noticed any great speed changes all in all it is very worth the upgrade.

Some things I would still love to see in Android. Universal Copy and Paste. I mean, come on. I can copy a SMS text but not a talk chat? Why not just be able to highlight any text and copy it, paste it, etc. While the ‘select text’ option in gmail is a step in the right direction I don’t think it is enough. It would also be nice to see universal screen rotation. Some apps just won’t rotate unless I pull out the keyboard. Also, a native buzz app would be cool. Until then I will have to keep using Seesmic. Last but not least some improvements to the google voice app. Specifically ability to record calls that are initiated from the phone running the app, and multi-select for bulk actions on things like deleting and archiving.