Varaventtiili

Between iPhones

2011-09-26T00:56:00.000+03:00

Since I cycled home in the downpour of last Wednesday, my iPhone 3GS has not turned on the backlight. I don't know if you have noticed, but the screen of the iPhone is darn near impossible to read with the backlight off, even in good lighting conditions.

Given that iPhone 5 doesn't launch in a week, I find myself between iPhones.

Rummaging through the kitchen drawers produced a functioning Nokia 5000d-2 and a 4 GB iPod mini. Maybe I can pretend I'm just trying to be retro until iPhone 5 is available in Finland?

Some observations about the phone:

The first thing that strikes you when you pick up the Nokia 5000d-2 is it's feather-like weight, only 74 g. It is thin and light enough to lose in your trouser pockets. The battery, even though it is old, lasts a few days. That seems incredible to me because I am used to charging my phone during every night and often during daytime too.

The user-interface is slow and feels like it is from the stone age.

There is very little on-board memory (12 MB of which about 9 MB are left to the user.) so uploading music files on it is not really an option. There is no slot for memory card. The headphone jack is too small for standard 3.5 mm plug. The phone has a built-in radio but it requires headphones to work.

The user-experience is riddled with annoyances like:

The automatic key lock only engages if the phone is on the home screen.
The backlight turns off automatically, but the next key press doesn't just turn on the backlight, the key press also takes effect. E.g. if you are in the middle of composing an SMS and get distracted, you'd better not press the biggest key on the keyboard. Yes, it will wake up the phone but it will also immediately send the message.

The web browser is terrible, but installing Opera Mini helps a lot. There is no 3G support, so browsing is slow. Email, even Gmail, is integrated in the messaging menu. Reading emails with this is not fun, but you could do it in a pinch.

Facebook status can be updated by sending email and nowadays Tweets can be sent as SMS to Finnish phone number.

The only things I'm really missing are my calendar from work Exchange server and GPS support for Endomondo or a similar exercise-logging app.

Some observations about the iPod mini:

The battery is a bit old and tired. It took a couple of hours of charging before it woke up and iTunes connected with it. But it still works and seems fully supported by iTunes. But no new software updates available for it, I see.

The click-wheel was an innovative user-interface that still feels fresh. The screen is positively minuscule and monochrome. This device was built for listening music, period.

The 4 GB size means I have to scale down my music collection, but it was easy to do. On iTunes synching screen I checked my "Coding music" playlist and a new option "Fill available space with music". The last option was not available back when I was using the mini for real. A really useful option!

The iPod mini came with a belt-clip, which is good for cyclists during the summer months if all the cycling shirts (with large back pockets) are in the laundry. The clip is less useful now when the weather is so cold I'm wearing a jacket which has pockets big enough to carry any size of phone or iPod. The clip can actually be removed and the mini is much smaller without it.

All in all, I think I can survive with this setup with some time, weeks or even months. The rumors say iPhone 5 comes out on October 5th, so I will be OK, even if it is rolled out in Finland a bit later.

Browser resource usage

2010-06-13T22:56:00.002+03:00

The other day I had Safari running all day and before going to bed I started Activity Monitor and checked what's going on. I was surprised to see my Mac was swapping. It usually isn't, not any more after I got a new Mac mini with 4 gigabytes of RAM.

The cause for swapping was Safari 5 taking up just under 1 GB. Eh!??!

I did a test. I opened Safari, Firefox and Opera and loaded each with 3 tabs: Twitter, Facebook and Gmail and let it simmer for 5 hours.

Browser	Version	Initial RAM use	RAM use after 5h	CPU usage
Safari	5.0	185 MB	301 MB	0.1%
Firefox	3.6.3	160 MB	157 MB	3.3%
Opera	10.53	205 MB	249 MB	7%

I don't think I can afford to run Safari now that it uses so much memory. Incredibly, Firefox used less memory after 5 hours than right after loading the pages! I think if anyone these days says Firefox is a bloated browser, they are badly mistaken.

I also followed the CPU usage of the browsers. It seemed to stay constant, so I did not include initial and after-5-hours figure in the table. To Safari's credit, it runs fast and causes practically no CPU load even with these Javascript-intensive pages. Opera uses so much CPU, it would start to be noticeable if all the 3 users on this Mac would use Opera.

Based on the figures above, Firefox is my new default browser.

Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

2010-05-04T18:45:00.000+03:00

Interesting presentation of the new C++ standard.

Kuuntele tämä podcast iTunesissa:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=120906714

-- Sami

Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

2010-04-22T18:37:00.001+03:00

Kuuntele tämä podcast iTunesissa:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=120906714

-- Sami

The only sportscast I like

2010-04-15T08:54:00.001+03:00

Kuuntele tämä podcast iTunesissa:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=78561049

-- Sami

Hudson iPhone app

2010-04-14T08:58:00.000+03:00

http://hudson-mobi.com/

Usability of modern computers

2010-04-04T13:18:00.002+03:00

Lately I have been helping elderly family members with their computers and other home electronics, so I have been offered some rare insights into the usability of modern-day gadgets.

Let me outline some use cases that seem to be common, at least to the elderly around me:

Printing photos

This is the most common use case. Digital cameras are cheap and lots of photos are taken in all the family occasions. The cameras are easy to use: Power on, point and shoot. It is the part that comes later that is problematic.

The user has shot the photos. The next step is to get them printed. The user has a color inkjet printer. The printer is connected to the computer. The computer also has a memory card reader.

The user needs to remove the memory card from the camera and insert it to the card reader. If the user is lucky, some software is automatically started that does something and takes the photos from the memory card and scurries them away somewhere in the bowels of the machine.

The user then removes the memory card from the reader and gets insulted by the machine that he has done something stupid.

Now the user has to find the correct icon to click, then find his photos somewhere in the windows on the screen and then find something to click to print the photos. Then the user also must remember to change the printer settings for printing on 10 x 15 photo paper, not A4 plain paper he printed yesterday's fish casserole recipe.

That was such a tiresome exercise! Why was it so difficult? What the user really wanted to do was to connect the camera to the printer and press a button titled "Print my photos"

When the photo is printed, the print is the end result. It can be enjoyed together with friends and family in the living room.

The user does not find any value in the digital versions of the photos stored somewhere in the computer. The user does not easily find his photos in the computer, they are difficult to view because they are so small and it is difficult to move from one picture to the next.

Luckily these days there are printers and cameras that can print photos without the troublesome computer making things difficult.

Watching camcorder videos

Camcorders are also cheap these days and what would be more fun than shooting moving video clips of grandchildren while they play and do many other nice things. These are also pretty easy to use: Power on, point and shoot normally works with these. Of course there are a lot of menus in strange languages but if one stubbornly ignores them, they will go away and stop bothering you.

Again, the trouble starts when these videos are to be presented on the big flat-screen TV in the living room.

The camcorder has a USB connector. The TV has a USB connecter in the back. How fortunate! The video is obviously going to be play on the screen as soon as a USB cable is connected between the camcorder and the TV.

Unfortunately it did not. It turns out the TV does not know how to play video. It can only show still photos from the camcorder's memory.

But it is possible to make a DVD disc from the videos. The downside is, it involves using the computer again and we already know from our past experience with printing photos how fun that was.

Sony has spotted a market in here and makes a product called DVDirect, a box you connect the camcorder to, insert a blank dvd and press a button. Simple and easy. Our user is going to get one of these so he does not have to deal with the troublesome computer.

Watching photos on the TV

From the previous exercise the user discovered it is possible to watch photos on the living room's big flat-screen TV if one can get the photos on a USB memory stick.

Obtaining USB sticks is easy. They are commonly sold at cash registers of convenience stores among candy, cigarettes and condoms.

Now the user needs to talk the computer into releasing some of the photos it is keeping hostage to the USB stick. The user has no idea how to go about it but the user knows how to call a young family member and get them to use remote screen sharing and export the photos on the USB stick.

Remove the USB stick from the computer. (Ignore the insulting message the operating system puts on the screen about doing something improper again.) Pull the power plug from the wall to quickly shut down the computer.

In the living room, the user inserts the USB stick into the slot on the TV. The TV complains about some pictures bring broken or unreadable. The user has to manually skip over broken photos with names like ".Trashes", ".Spotlight-V100" and a lot of them named "._IMGXXX.JPG"

After scrolling over dozens of broken photos there are finally some proper photos and the user can relax. But isn't modern technology difficult!

Photos on a digital picture frame

The user has a digital picture frame. It is a nice and modern way to enjoy the digital photos. Apparently it also requires photos on a USB stick. Lucky user, he already has a lot of photos on the USB stick from the previous day. (And there is always the "family IT guy" he can call.)

The user sticks the USB stick on the side of the frame and finally something works as it should! The frame begins showing the photos on a never-ending slideshow. And it was so easy to use.

After a while, however, the user begins to be irritated by the big blinking led at the top of the USB stick. It is kind of distracting.

A call to the "family IT guy." He tells the user he should manipulate some buttons on the frame and copy the photos from the stick to the frame's internal memory and then unplug the USB stick.

The user has no idea how to do that and because the family IT guy cannot connect remotely to the picture frame, he cannot help either. The user pulls the plug of the digital picture frame and throws it into the waste bin. He shoots some piccies on his digital camera, connects it to his printer, gets some nice color prints and hangs them on the wall.

Good discussion on sustainable living

2010-03-09T18:31:00.001+02:00

How consumerism is killing us all and what can be done about it

http://ax.itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/exploration-with-dr-michio/id353007502

-- Sami

Life, the universe and everything

2010-03-02T09:07:00.000+02:00

Exploration With Dr. Michio Kaku:

http://ax.itunes.apple.com/fi/podcast/exploration-with-dr-michio/id353007502

-- Sami

A nice article on clojure Clojure

2010-02-11T23:06:00.001+02:00

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-05-2009/jw-05-clojure.html

Programmers of popular programming languages

2009-11-19T00:56:00.004+02:00

Hmm... as some of you probably know, I collect exotic programming languages. This quote made me think:

If you program in the most popular programming language, your skill in that particular language is a commodity. If you program only in the most popular programming language, you have made yourself a commodity. A commodity can only compete on location and price, and location doesn't really get you much on the Internet. This means that only people with a poor understanding of economics program in PHP.

Lifted from http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-hacker-news-thinks-php-won.html

What do you think?

How american health care works

2009-10-25T01:14:00.001+03:00

Check out this podcast on iTunes:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=201671138

Thanks to Juha for recommending it to me.

Come again?

2009-08-31T21:05:00.002+03:00

From HP's customer service web site:

Note: You must have administrative privileges on your Mac computer to install the software. Click System Preferences, Accounts, and check Allow user to administer this computer.

Now let me get this straight: You should grant your account administrative access in order to install some software. But you need administrative access to grant administrative access, don't you, so why bother?

Learning XPath

2009-08-23T11:06:00.002+03:00

Many of the Mac OS X command line utilities have a -plist option, which makes the utility do its thing in the "plist xml" format. I had the idea that maybe it would a good idea to use it and then use some of the xml tools to extract the information I want, instead of the usual pipeline of grep, awk and sed commands.

Specifically, I wanted to find out the mount point of a file system. I know the device file of the disk partition/slice.

I could try the mount command, but if the mount point directory has whitespace characters, parsing the output of the mount command is a bit fragile.

diskutil info is an OS X specific command that gives me what I want. After learning about XPath a bit, I came up with something like this:

diskutil info -plist /dev/disk0s2 | xpath "//string[preceding-sibling::key[1]='VolumeName']"

This is not yet perfect. The volume name is surrounded by <string> and </string> but I can live with that. The final insight for the XPath expression came from this post.

P.S. This post was written in Blogger's rich text editor in the Safari browser. This was the first time it worked well enough to be useful.

The best programming language, part 3

2009-05-03T13:06:00.003+03:00

I wrote some time ago about my search for the best programming language. Now I have discovered a new language that meets a lot of the demands: Clojure.

Clojure is very much like Lisp. It runs on a Java VM. Java VMs are stable and either already installed on many platforms or easily available. All the objects you can import into Java are available for calling from Clojure. The Clojure programs can be deployed as .jar files and no-one needs to know you actually produced it with a high-level functional language.

Clojure also has good support for multi-threading and it does it with a new and interesting way by implementing software-transactional-memory, which apparently makes thread programming easier than using locks.

It is licensed under the Eclipse license. IANAL but it looks to me like it would be possible to use it for commercial software development without any major problems.

I'm still reading the documentation and I haven't written anything more complicated than a hello-world with it, but I'm liking what I see so far.

Parkkeeraus on taitolaji

2009-03-08T18:45:00.003+02:00

Tämän BMW:n omistajalla on joko:

niin huono näkö, ettei näe parkkiruudun viivoja tai
niin iso ego ettei yksi parkkiruutu riitä tai
ei vaan osaa parkkeerata

Myyrmannin parkkihalli, perjantaina 6.3.

Simple = good

2009-02-23T23:50:00.002+02:00

Modern day gadgets, devices and equipment mostly suck and have bad failure modes. Let's illustrate this with some examples:

I have a digital TV receiver, Handan CV-3300 CNX. The picture and sound works. Subtitles also work most of the time. A few times a week the device turns on but there is just a black, blank screen on the TV and no sound. A power-cycle makes it ok again.

Like all digital TV receivers, it includes a feature called EPG or electronic program guide. This is supposed to be a display of past, current and future programming of all TV channels. When I press the EPG button on my remote, I get this information for some channels but the rows for other channels are empty. Sometimes it helps if the receiver is on for a while. Sometimes those rows stay empty for hours.

This is probably a bug in the receiver's software and will go away when the manufacturer makes a firmware upgrade available. I have had the box from 2005 and it has never found an upgrade. I have also navigated the device's menus and found the command to search for upgrades. Nothing there either. There are no upgrades on the Internet either. In fact, the manufacturer's web site has no record of this device.

My friend has a stereo set with a turntable. When we were listening to his LP records, we discovered the turntable was broken: when the arm reached the end of the record, it did not automatically lift up and return itself to the rest next to the revolving plate. The mechanism is broken. But one can push a lever to lift the arm and then push the arm to the resting position with a fingertip.

This got me thinking: The turntable is broken, yes, but not badly. It still plays the records and the small problem it has is easily amended with just a little flick of a finger. And even if the turntable develops more serious issues, it will probably still be able to play the records but with a loss in sound quality. The worse the problem, the greater the impact on sound quality. But the problem will have to be very serious indeed to completely prevent enjoying recorded music. To make it short: it fails gracefully.

Another example: Last week I got a coffee grinder. Not an electric monster but an old-fashioned one with a crank on the top. I have never used a coffee grinder. In fact, I have only seen them in films. The grinder came with a small sheet of paper on which were some hard-to-understand instructions. I could not figure them out. But the device was so simple and made from just a couple of pieces of wood and metal held together with screws, so it was easy to take it apart and figure out how it works, which way to turn the crank and how to adjust the coarseness of the grind.

It is a beautiful piece of equipment that is simple, does only one thing, does it well and is easy to understand, operate and repair. It also fails gracefully. (The device did not fail at all, the manual did.) And let me tell you: If you like coffee, you should grind it yourself. There is a remarkable difference in the taste. I did not believe it until I tried.

I am beginning to like simple things which I can understand and fix. Maybe I am getting old. Maybe it is because all day long at work I have to build and fix complex things that can and will fail in a lot of different ways. And all of those failures are bad, or very bad.

Is it even possible to build software that fails gracefully? I don't think I have ever seen such a thing...

Uusi ulkonäkö

2009-02-23T23:49:00.001+02:00

Otin Bloggerin uudet ulkonäköasetukset käyttöön ja samalla muutin blogin pohjaa ja tein vähän muitakin pieniä muutoksia.

Best game in a while

2009-02-15T01:33:00.002+02:00

World of Goo is a great game! It is very easy to learn. You can play a quick game when you have the time and come back to it later. It is addictive and fun. No obvious bugs. It is cheap ($20) and carries no obnoxious DRM. It does not need a powerful computer but still has attractive graphics. It is available for Mac, Windows and Linux (and Wii.)

At the price point of 15 euros it is starting to become questionable if it is even worth the time and trouble to pirate this game. For me it was easy to decide to buy it.

Get the demo, play it, then buy the full version. Support the couple of guys behind this piece of pure genius!

Cheap music

2009-02-01T11:02:00.002+02:00

I was shopping in Anttila yesterday. On my way out my eyes happened on a display of music cds with an attractive price: 1,00 euro. Most of the cds had classical music, but some was music for children.

Classical music at 1,00 euro / cd is much cheaper than in iTunes Store, so I picked up Tchaikovski's Symphony #5 Op. 64, Dvorak's Serenade for strings in E Op. 22 and a collection of Johan Strauss Jr.'s most popular works.

The cds have no real packaging to speak of. They reside in square cardboard envelope with a portrait of the composer on the cover.

Obviously the publisher of these cds understands that these days the packaging is no longer important to many music consumers. The physical disc is only the medium for transferring the music from the shop to the consumer's computer and mp3 player. After the transfer, the disc can be either discarded or (preferably) archived.

I commend the music industry for coming up with this idea for competing with iTunes: Make the music cheap enough by discarding unnecessary baggage and people might still buy the discs. At least I don't have to make a backup copy of this music. And it doesn't carry any form of obnoxious DRM.

[I know all iTunes music is DRM-free these days. Unfortunately I have 365 songs in my iTunes that have DRM. Well, I can only blame myself. Nobody forced me to buy from iTunes.]

Obviously the 1 EUR price point is possible only because the music on the disc is in public domain, but I suspect the big record companies could scale back their profit margins and make up the difference by increasing sales, just like Hollywood movie studios have done. One hardly needs to pay more than 6-8 EUR for a movie DVD, unless it is from Disney.

Why do I use Safari

2009-01-25T23:47:00.003+02:00

During this weekend I have had a discussion on Twitter about Safari vs. Firefox. Well, in reality it hasn't been much of a discussion because it is hard to present a good argument in 140 characters. So I will elaborate here.

Why do I use Safari? Some people might have difficulty even understanding the question. 70% of Internet users surf with Internet Explorer. Many, if not most of them have never even heard of Firefox or Safari. But it so happens that I live in an environment filled with technically savvy nerds and literally everyone of my peers runs Firefox.

Except me.

Why?

I want to be different. For some reason I think there is something wrong with anything that is wildly popular. I hate crowded places. If everyone uses Firefox, I want to be different. I'm just wired that way. I also want to code in exotic, preferably dead languages: Forth, Lisp, Smalltalk, Erlang.

If I wanted to be like everyone else, I would run Firefox on Windows or Linux and code in C++ or Java.

I also have some practical reasons for preferring Safari:

Practical reason 1: Safari is smaller and starts up faster. This is important to me because my home computer is a 1st generation Mac mini, PowerPC CPU and 1 GB RAM. It normally has at least 3 users logged in, so memory is tight. I have developed a habit to quit the web browser when I'm done with the web pages or when I leave the Mac. If I were to run Firefox and keep it running, it would take ages to swap it in or out when switching users. If I always quit Firefox after viewing a web page, I will spend a lot of time waiting for Firefox to start.

This is much less of an issue on my work machine but I like to keep my work and home environment similar to minimize confusion.

Practical reason 2: Mac keyboard shortcuts conflict with Firefox Back- and Forward keys. Many are the web page forms where I have written a lot of text and hit cmd+left arrow to go to beginning of line. BOOM! Bad idea. Firefox immediately leaves the page and goes back in browser history. Never mind I had lots of unsaved text written on the page. Sometimes you can cmd+right arrow to go back and the text is still there. On some web services you get a blank page or an error. Safari is smart enough to interpret cmd+left arrow as beginning-of-line if the keyboard focus is in a text field.

Practical reason 3: I don't like tabbed browsing. Yes, I'm weird that way. Everyone of my peers has dozens of tabs in their Firefox. I don't understand how they manage. Tabs are essentially a two-way list. If you use the keyboard, you can only switch to the tab on the right or tab on the left. Those who remember the university Data structures and algorithms course will see this is the O(n) behavior. If you have a lot of tabs, you will spend a lot of time hitting ctrl+tab. The only random access available is to click on a tab with a mouse. But there's only about 8-9 tabs that fit in a Firefox window of reasonable width. The other tabs are hidden.

If you open new browser windows instead of tabs, you can use Expose (F10) to navigate them. Any browser window is within your reach with a couple of key presses or a flick of a mouse, especially if you set an active corner to invoke Expose.

Don't get me wrong, I do use tabs. I often open closely related web pages in tabs in the same browser window. So normally I have 4-5 browser windows and a couple of them have 3 or 4 tabs.

Now it is late. In the words of the immortal Forrest Gump: That is all I have to say about that.

The best programming language, part 2

2009-01-07T23:56:00.001+02:00

This kind of fits the theme of my recent posts.

The best programming language

2009-01-02T21:36:00.002+02:00

I have been doing most (well, pretty much all) of my professional programming in the C language. I'm beginning to really hate it. It is so difficult and error-prone to do string manipulation in C. It is easy to leak memory. There are no standard high-level data structures.

I have been looking for alternatives for a long time. The alternative should:

have good libraries
have good interface to libraries written in C
have support for threads
be small
have good performance
not have many dependencies to operating system libraries
it should be possible to make closed-source programs with it

I have looked at Smalltalk, Erlang and Python.

Smalltalk has good libraries and the Smalltalk virtual machines tend to have very few outside dependencies. The Smalltalk I'm best familiar with, Squeak, has no support for threads and seems to interface somewhat badly to the outside world. I was especially disappointed by its support for running subprocesses and controlling them. Also, it is pretty much impossible to make closed-source software with Squeak. All the source is included in the image or can be reverse-engineered easily.

Erlang is an even more niche language than Smalltalk. There aren't many other people using it. Erlang is difficult to extend with libraries in C. Apparently not many C libraries can easily live with the extreme parallelism and thousands of light-weight processes a typical Erlang environment looks like. OTOH Erlang has good support for running subprocesses and communicating with them. Erlang sucks particularly bad in performance, unless your problem parallelizes to the extreme and you have the hardware to support it. For the more conventional cases Erlang is probably not a performance booster.

Python is sexy but slow. Python is also mostly single-threaded. It has threads but only one of them can execute in the interpreter at once.

Java is very un-sexy and also very slow. It has good thread support but it is a huge bloated monster.

All the languages above are very big. I call it very big if the customer has to install 30+ MB of language support/runtime/virtual machine to deploy a piece of software.

At the moment it looks to me like C++ or Objective-C would be the solution. Also there is this thing called Haskell, but I haven't looked into it sufficiently to have any idea how it stacks up with the contenders above.

Should I stay or should I go?

2008-12-30T00:09:00.003+02:00

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood are a bit harsh. Essentially they say if you even think about leaving the software profession, you really should go, that even entertaining a thought like that is a sign of a bad programmer.

During the last couple of years I have been considering ways to become a professional horse trainer/stable-boy or something like that. Sorry, but I did not realize by doing that I was committing an act of treason against our beloved profession.

I never considered myself to be an excellent programmer but I never knew the bar was so high. Ok, maybe I'm not that great, but I haven't figured out a way to get someone to pay for playing with horses all day and well, I do like coding. So maybe I'll stick around a while longer.

But I do think people can be good at what they do but still get tired about it for a reason or another. And it is a very big world out there with a lot of things to do. It would be foolish to assume one can be happy only by programming computers. Yes, it pays well, like Joel says, but money is not equal to happiness. Happiness comes in many forms and can be found in many ways.

I am happy now. I hope you are too.

Automating TVkaista with Automator

2008-12-29T22:37:00.003+02:00

I have been a very satisfied user of TVkaista.fi, a tv-show recording service. I have been using it to download shows I missed for some reason and I have also used it to download tv shows to my iPod via its iTunes feed.

Only recently I realized I should perhaps automate downloading the shows I follow regularly and it was only then I discovered TVkaista has an RSS feed for each tv channel. Then it came to me that I could try to use Automator to automate the downloads. And it seems it has been a success.

There were a couple of issues.

First, I only wanted to download each show once, even if I accidentally invoked the download more than once. I solved this by subscribing the tv channel RSS feeds into Mail.app. Mail can keep track of the read/unread status of each feed article. Alternatively, each article can be flagged or unflagged. I chose to flag an article when it has been downloaded and only download unflagged shows.

Second issue was a bit strange. The Automator workflow I had made worked OK when I ran it from Automator. However, it did not download anything when I saved the workflow as an iCal plugin and had iCal invoke the download at certain times. There seems to be very little one can do to debug Automator. Eventually I realized the iCal plugin is actually an application bundle and when it wants to authenticate to TVkaista, Keychain does not allow it. After using Keychain to allow access to all programs for TVkaista authentication, my scheduled downloads work just fine.

You can check the Automator workflow I use to download Hill Street Blues. It looks like this:

If you are a TVkaista subscriber, you can try it too after subscribing to the YLE FST channel RSS feed in Mail. If you want to schedule the download, open the workflow in Automator, then from the File menu, Save as plugin, choose iCal plugin and give it a descriptive name. Then switch to iCal where you will find an event that is set to invoke an application. Change the event to run and repeat the way you like. The iCal plugins are actually app bundles saved into Library/Workflows/Application/iCal under your home directory.

Kamarimusiikkia Kannelmäessä

2008-12-02T20:05:00.000+02:00

Dvorak, Brahms, Bartok

Isänpäiväherkkua

2008-11-13T23:01:00.000+02:00

$1.65M = 1.3€

2008-11-13T23:00:00.000+02:00

Dollarin kurssi on tainnut romahtaa. Mutta ainakin asunnot ovat halpoja.

Tarkka tyttö

2008-11-13T22:57:00.000+02:00

Veera ottaa selvää kumpi leivos on suurempi. Ja löytyihän niistä 2 mm ero!

Hyvää isänpäivää

2008-11-09T12:14:00.000+02:00

Sony is evil or how to watch DVD-VR on the Mac

2008-11-02T22:56:00.003+02:00

My dad has a Sony hard-disk and DVD recorder with a digital tv tuner. He also has Canal+. Sometimes he records a movie into the hard disk and sometimes he makes a copy for me by copying the movie from hard disk to an empty DVD disc.

MPAA can rest easy. So far I haven't been able to watch any of the discs he has given me. This is because the discs he makes with his Sony are in DVD-VR format, not DVD-Video. DVD-VR is a disc format used mainly by the Sony video cameras that record directly to DVD, i.e. not a very popular format, like the DVD-Video.

The UI of the Sony DVD recorder makes it pretty easy to copy recorded TV shows from hard disk to DVD. You simply have to step thru a wizard-like sequence of screens where you just click on the button labeled "Next" and it is the highlighted button on every screen. If you do this (and my dad does), you will get a nice DVD-VR disc. If you would like to make a DVD-Video disc instead, you would have to switch the video format in a different place in the menus. It is not possible to change the format in the "HD->DVD copy" wizard.

Of course my dad never remembers to change the video format. He just steps through the wizard and clicks on next, next, next, burn. Mission accomplished.

Why on earth did Sony choose the default format to be DVD-VR instead of the ubiquitous DVD-Video! Probably to promote the DVD-VR format and increase consumer lock-in. Sony has a history of not using industry-standard solutions and standards to prevent consumers from buying cheap off-the-shelf parts.

Sony is evil! Boycott Sony!

Today I found a small piece of software that can read a DVD-VR disc and produce a VOB file. The VOB file can be played back with e.g. VLC. It's movie time!

Uusia sarjakuvia

2008-11-02T12:46:00.002+02:00

Myyrmäen Suomalaisessa Kirjakaupassa oli takaseinän hämärässä nurkassa hylly, johon katseeni sattumalta osui. Siellä oli sarjakuvia uloskantohintaan. Mukaan tarttui kaksi Petri Hiltusen teosta: Koston merkki ja Laulu yön lapsista. Hinta 2 x 2,95.

Sain juuri ensimmäisen näistä luettua ja olen tyytyväinen. Tarinat ovat lyhyitä, mutta nerokkaita, samaan tapaan kuin aikaisemmin hankkimani Asvalttitasanko.

Lukemista on nyt vähän kasaantunut, pitkästä aikaa. Listalla olisi vielä ainakin Ilkka Remeksen uusin ja myös uusin Naruto.

How to copy iTunes library to a new machine

2008-10-22T00:14:00.002+03:00

It became necessary for me to copy (well, move, really) my iTunes library to a new Mac. I googled a bit and found some advice essentially boiling down to this: copy the files and import them to iTunes in the new Mac. This means you lose playlists, play counts, stars, podcast subscriptions and other stuff. That doesn't sound nice.

The starting situation for me was that my music files were on an external disk and the library was in my $HOME/Music/iTunes folder.

After trying it a couple times, this is how I did it:

Shut down iTunes on the old Mac.
Copied $HOME/Music/iTunes folder my old Mac to the same folder in the new Mac.
Made a new empty folder called "iTunes Music" inside the above folder in the new Mac.
Copied all the music from the external disk of the old Mac to the above folder.

That's it. I suspect if my music files had been under my iTunes folder in my home directory instead of an external disk, I could probably have copied it all in one go.

Missä on posti tässä kuussa?

2008-10-20T18:51:00.000+03:00

Tuli asiaa postiin. Posti ei enää olekaan samassa paikassa missä se oli vielä viime kuussa. Posti on siirtynyt lähimpään kauppakeskukseen, kätevästi muidenkin kauppajuttujen kanssa samalla hoidettavaksi. Postissa on 15 ihmistä jonossa. Jono etenee hitaasti. Oman pakettini ovat hukanneet.

Twitter and IM

2008-10-19T13:40:00.002+03:00

Communicating with Twitter used to be possible via multiple channels: web, mobile web, SMS and IM. There are other communities like Twitter, but they are mostly web-based. Twitter was never strong on features or stability, but it ruled on accessibility and convenience.

IM support was disabled during the summer and Twitter always said they were working on fixing it.

Then Twitter shut down SMS updates and its usefulness went down dramatically.

Today I noticed the message about Twitter working on IM updates had disappeared and in Twitter's settings page it no longer sports any IM settings. Apparently the IM feature has been discontinued "indefinitely".

This means Twitter these days has no features a lot of other web communities would not have. In fact it has a lot less. The only thing Twitter still has are the users. It will take some time for the users to migrate elsewhere and a lot of users probably will stay. Especially the U.S. users never got used to using Twitter over SMS. But in the U.S. text messages are expensive and phone data plans are cheap.

Tosielämän rekursioita

2008-10-11T18:03:00.002+03:00

Tuli tässä tutun kanssa puheeksi henkilökortin hankkiminen. Tuttu oli näet hukannut omansa ja mietti miten poliisi mahtaa tunnistaa hänet kun hän menee hankkimaan uutta korttia.

Poliisin weppisivuilta löytyy seuraava tieto:

Henkilökorttia haettaessa on oltava mukana
1 passikuva
luotettava selvitys henkilöllisyydestä (passi tai henkilökortti)
mikäli hakija on alle 18-vuotias, huoltajien suostumus (paitsi ns. alaikäisen henkilökortti)

Eli kun hakee uutta henkilökorttia, on hakiessa todistettava henkilöllisyys henkilökortilla (tai passilla, mutta jos omistaa passin, ei kai silloin edes tarvitse henkilökorttia?)

Tämähän on tietysti mahdoton tilanne. Koska henkilökortteja kuitenkin myönnetään, on poliisi ilmeisesti valmis tinkimään yo. vaatimuksista jos henkilökorttia hakeva ei henkilökorttia omista. Mielenkiintoista olisikin tietää, miten poliisi näissä tapauksissa henkilöllisyyden varmistaa.

Tiedämme kokemuksesta, että alle 18-vuotiaan henkilöllisyys todistetaan ottamalla nimet paperiin molemmilta huoltajilta.

Hesari tänä aamuna

2008-10-10T08:10:00.000+03:00

Kuulossa vikaa

2008-10-04T16:11:00.000+03:00

Yksi parhaita Hesarin poliittisia pilakuvia

Uusia sanoja

2008-10-02T15:52:00.001+03:00

Korkeateknologinen materiaali. Mitähän se sellainen on? Onko se kivi-, kasvi- vai eläinkuntaa?

Huomaamaton kiusa

2008-09-14T21:16:00.003+03:00

Tämän täytyy olla maailman suurin tragedia: Jokin kiusaa sinua etkä edes huomaa, että sinua kiusataan.

Share your music

2008-09-13T15:01:00.003+03:00

I think I am seeing a new trend. I am so slow that when I see a new trend, it is probably well underway and everyone else knows about it, but I'll tell you about it anyway.

The trend I'm talking about is this: listening to music with headphones is going out of style.

Data point 1: About a year ago I started paying attention to the way kids seemed to play music off their phone speakers. I see this on the train during my commute and on the streets.

Data point 2: In the spring Veera got an iPod Shuffle as birthday present. In June she got a new phone capable of playing mp3 files and she immediately abandoned the iPod. She exchanges mp3 files with her friends over bluetooth and plays the music over the phone speaker because that way all the friends can enjoy the music.

Data point 3: Today I read in the paper McDonalds is recalling toys they gave away with kid's meals in Sweden. The toy was a thing that played pre-installed music from a little speaker at 110 db! It even comes with a warning not to put the toy close to ears because of hearing damage.

I think listening to music with headphones is something for us, the older generation. We are busy, we travel/commute, often alone and we do not want to disturb others with our music/podcasts/audiobooks.

It seems to be different for the younger generation: When they hang out with friends, it would be rude to listen to music just by yourself. It is much nicer to share it with your friends. And when you're alone, even then it makes sense to listen to music from the phone speaker at full blast because it makes a statement: It tells everyone around you who you are, what you like and that you're so cool you don't give a damn about the dinosaurs shooting disapproving glances at you.

Of course the sound quality of the phone speaker is bad or very bad. For some reason this does not seem to be so important for the kids. Perhaps the reasons stated above outweigh the poor sound quality.

I can't say I like the way things are going but smart companies like Apple have already recognized this trend and taken advantage of it: This week Apple announced the new iPod Touch that can play music from a speaker.

The world has become a noisier place and there's nothing we can do about it until the kids of today become middle-aged old farts who long for peace and quiet.

Update:

Data point 4: Today (Sep 4) YLE1 showed documentary called Ponitytöt, where the camera followed a group of 13-15 year old girls who ride and take care of horses. At the end of the film the girls are in a bus, drinking beer and listening to rap music from a mobile phone speaker.

Kiristys unohtui

2008-09-05T10:54:00.000+03:00

Eikös ne kasvatusmenetelmät olleet lahjonta, uhkailu ja kiristys?

Poliisihevosia Paciuksenkadulla

2008-08-13T10:02:00.000+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Kannattaisi tukea peremmin?

2008-07-31T09:24:00.000+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Arvaa mitä kuvassa on?

2008-07-28T06:35:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Ympäristötaidetta Martinlaakson tyyliin

2008-07-19T15:35:00.000+03:00

Nuorison suosima kaljanjuontipaikka Laajavuoren kallion laella.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Business as usual

2008-07-17T01:01:00.001+03:00

Yle uutiset: "Espoossa VTT palotekniikan laboratoriossa pieni tulipalo." Eli hommat pyörii vanhalla kaavalla.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Reunat loppuu

2008-07-10T15:59:00.001+03:00

Kuvasta voinee päätellä että enemmistö huushollin asukkaista on naisia.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Kimppakivaa!

2008-07-09T19:40:00.001+03:00

Eestiläinen hotelli mainostaa hääyötä 3 henkilölle.

(Oikeasti kyseessä on 2 eri tarjousta mutta sitä ei helposti huomaa.)

Suomen kallioperä vanhempaa kuin maailmankaikkeus?

2008-07-09T11:48:00.003+03:00

Helsingin Sanomat kertoi tänään taloussivuilla Kuhmossa tehdystä timanttilöydöstä. Ottaen huomioon, että maailmankaikkeus on jotain 14-15 miljardia vuotta vanha, on suomalainen 250 miljardin vuoden ikäinen kallioperä luultavasti riittävän vanhaa.

Handbrake 0.9.2 generates AVI files with broken FOURCC

2008-07-08T22:55:00.002+03:00

I am able to play AVI files generated by Handbrake on my dad's Mac on my Mac and my Philips DVD player. However, when I generate AVI files myself, both my Mac and my Philips complain about unknown codec.

I found that Handbrake 0.9.1 (latest that works on my Dad's Tiger) creates AVI files with FOURCC code "DX50". The AVI files created by Handbrake 0.9.2 have FOURCC code "FMP4".

Apparently there is some semi-justifiable intellectual property issue, which has caused ffmpeg developers to change the FOURCC code they generate and Handbrake uses that library. While I understand writing open-source software is difficult and one rarely gets much appreciation for doing it, I cannot understand why open-source coders woud choose to make life difficult for their users. I myself was very, very close to dropping all open-source tools and buying a closed-source encoder from DivX.com.

But not quite. Finally I found a GUI utility called AviFourCCChangerX. Just changing the FOURCC code back to "DX50" makes everything alright again.

Additionally MacPorts carries a command-line utility called "cfourcc".

Citymarketissa on Nortonia

2008-07-06T17:02:00.001+03:00

Hyllyt täynnä Norton Internet Securityä

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Turnajaisten loppurähinät

2008-06-30T14:42:00.001+03:00

Viikonlopun Turun keskiaikaisten markkinoiden turnajaisesitys, tai ainakin pari minuuttia sen lopusta.

Pendolinon kyydissä

2008-06-30T10:33:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Suihkulähde Turun aseman edustalla

2008-06-30T10:08:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Turussa bongattu Itä-Saksan seisoja

2008-06-29T18:42:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Voittaja sai kuningattaren ja koko valtakunnan

2008-06-29T18:40:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Turnajaiset

2008-06-29T18:39:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Kelttiläisiä koruja ostamassa

2008-06-29T16:06:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Taas syödään :)

2008-06-29T13:33:00.000+03:00

Turussa oli jo nälkä. Heti hyökättiin aseman vieressä kiinalaiseen.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Puolimatkassa Karjaalla

2008-06-29T12:05:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Vahvistusta Turun matkaa varten

2008-06-29T10:58:00.001+03:00

Kahvia ja muffinssia Rautatieasemalla.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Auto-op my IRC friends

2008-06-24T11:59:00.003+03:00

I finally managed to make a plugin for Colloquy, the IRC client I use on the Mac. The plugin grants channel operator status to my friends when they join the channel.

My first stab at this plugin caused the version prior to 2.1 to crash. 2.1 seems to work, almost. Colloquy does not pass input from plugins thru the same parser which processes commands like /op, so it seems to be necessary to send raw IRC protocol command to give ops. Thanks for Juha Autero for his help.

You can download the plugin. Put it in Application Support/Colloquy/Plugins

Kännykän sterilointi?

2008-06-21T17:36:00.001+03:00

Kännykän latausasema Kampin linja-autoasemalla

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Hevoset kesälomalle

2008-06-15T18:37:00.003+03:00

Olimme tänään viemässä Primadonnaa, Nasua, Akashaa, Paavoa ja Pinkiä laitumelle. Tämä oli vain etujoukko. Loput hevoset tulevat ensi viikon lopulla kun Sandbackenin viimeisetkin kurssit on pidetty. Täällä ne saavat sitten syödä ja telmiä koko heinäkuun.

40 tuli mittariin

2008-06-15T16:26:00.001+03:00

Syntymäpäivä vietettiin viemällä hevosia kesälaitumelle.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Erlang process spawning, continued

2008-06-15T00:09:00.002+03:00

I forgot to explain why this obsession to use spawn/1 instead of spawn/3. spawn/3 calls the named function in the named module, which means the function must be exported by the module. In my program it felt unnecessary to export the helper function just for the purpose of being able to start a second process to run it. Only start/1 needs to be exported by the pingpong module now and life is good.

Erlang process spawning solved

2008-06-14T23:59:00.002+03:00

I did not understand how to use the one-parameter spawn call in Erlang. Later I was looking for a tutorial on socket programming in Erlang and came across this. Among other things, spawn/1 was also used in there. This is how I now start a second process in my first Erlang program:


Pid = spawn(fun () -> pinger() end)

It works!

Erlang process spawning

2008-06-14T17:41:00.002+03:00

I'm a bit puzzled about Erlang process spawning. Why does spawn/1 exist? Let me explain.

The normal way to spawn a process is apparently with spawn/3 (which means that spawn takes 3 arguments): spawn(Module, Function, Argumentlist). A "module" in Erlang means the file in which the function is specified.

There is also a variant of spawn that takes only one parameter, spawn/1: spawn(Function). It starts a process running that function with no parameters. One could easily think it is a shorthand for spawning a process that runs a function defined in the same module where spawn was called, but I have never gotten it to work.

When I try spawn/1 in my first Erlang program, all I get is this error: {"init terminating in do_boot",{badarg,[{erlang,spawn,[pinger]},{pingpong,start_pings,1},{init,start_it,1},{init,start_em,1}]}}

Anyone have any ideas?

My first Erlang program

2008-06-13T01:25:00.002+03:00

I wrote a program to test how fast is the message passing and process scheduling in Erlang.


-module(pingpong).
-export([start/1, pinger/0]).

% This would be something that got its params from command line
% like: ['123']
start([PingH|_]) ->
  start_pings(list_to_integer(atom_to_list(PingH)));

start(Pings) ->
  start_pings(Pings).

start_pings(Pings) ->
  Pid = spawn(?MODULE, pinger, []),
  io:format("Processes ~w and ~w will exchange ~w pings~n", [self(), Pid, Pings]),
  Pid ! { self(), Pings - 1 },
  pinger().

pinger() ->
  receive
 { Pid, 0 } ->
     Pid ! quit,
     done;
 { Pid, Pingsleft } ->
     Pid ! { self(), Pingsleft - 1 },
     pinger();
 quit ->
     done
  end.

Save it into a file, like pingpong.erl, then compile with erlc pingpong.erl. Run with: time erl -noshell -s pingpong start 100000000 -s init stop

Sending 100 million messages takes roughly 60 seconds on my 1.4 GHz PowerPC Mac mini.

Hyvin parkkeerattu

2008-06-07T20:23:00.000+03:00

Kuvattu työpaikan autotallissa. Autonhan voi jättää mihin haluaa jos oven vieressä ei ole vapaata pysäköintipaikkaa.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Sony Ericsson K810 muutaman kuukauden käytön jälkeen

2008-06-07T13:23:00.003+03:00

Maaliskuun alussa kirjoitin uudesta puhelimestani alustavia kokemuksia. Ajattelin että nyt pitää kirjoittaa tuntemuksia muutaman kuukauden käytön jälkeen.

Kuvan lähettäminen blogiin on kiva toiminto ja käytin sitä ahkerasti niin kauan kuin se toimi. Sitten se vaan eräänä päivänä lakkasi toimimasta. Ruudulla palkki kulkee vasemmasta reunasta oikeaan ja sitten tulee teksti: "Kuvan lähettäminen blogiin ei onnistu." En ole keksinyt mitään tapaa korjata sitä, lähinnä siksi kun en ole löytänyt mitään asetuksia tälle toiminnolle. Tai voihan se vika olla Bloggerin päässäkin.

No, ei hätää, sähköpostin lähetys toimii ja kuvat kulkevat Bloggeriin sitä kautta aivan kuten ennenkin.

Kirjoitin aiemmin, että musiikkisoitin ei muista kuinka pitkälle mp3-tiedostoa on kuunneltu. Tämä ei näköjään pidä ihan paikkaansa. Jos musiikkisoittimesta poistuu kesken mp3-tiedoston kuuntelun ja tulee myöhemmin takaisin, soitto jatkuu siitä mihin viimeksi jäätiin.

Sen sijaan jos vaihdat kappaleen keskeltä seuraavaan ja päätätkin palata takaisin, toisto jatkuu edellisen kappaleen alusta, ei siitä kohdasta mistä hyppäsit eteenpäin. Tämä on vähän ikävää pitkien podcastien kuuntelussa, jos sattuu vahingossa tökkäämään tikkua niin, että soitin vaihtaa kappaletta.

Mac OS X 10.5 ei tietenkään osaa sykronoida kaletereita sun muita K810:aan. Sen sijaan jos puhelimen liittää Macintoshiin tiedostonsiirtotilassa, se näyttää ihan tavalliselta USB-massamuistilta. Macin työpöydälle ilmaantuu kaksi levyä: PHONE ja PHONE CARD. Olen sittemmin askarrellut iTunesin älykkään soittolistan ja Automator-työnkulun yhdistelmän, joka poistaa vanhat podcastit puhelimen muistikortilta ja kopioi sinne uudet.

PHONE- ja PHONE CARD -levyjen irrottamiseen liittyy pieni kauneusvirhe: Vain toisen levyistä pystyy irrottamaan, sen, jota yrittää irrottaa ensin. Jälkimmäistä levyä ei pysty irrottamaan. Puhelimen mielestä jo ensimmäisen levyn irrotus on riittävä ja puhelin pyytää irrottamaan kaapelin. Kaapelin irrotus kuitenkin saa Macin heittämään ruudulle pari ilmoitusta siitä kuinka levyä ei koskaan saisi noin vain poistaa ja nyt tietoja on voinut hukkua.

Tietoliikenneyhteydet toimivat ehkä suunnilleen samalla tavalla kuin Nokian 6630:n kanssa: Muutaman minuutin weppisurffailun jälkeen puhelimen selain alkaa valittaa tietoliikennevirheistä. Kun vaan sitkeästi yrittää niin kohta taas sivut latautuvat.

Puheluissakin on jotain vikaa. Pari kertaa on käynyt niin, että puhelin ilmoittaa tekstiviestillä uudesta puhepostista. Kun soitan takaisin minua tavoitelleelle ihmiselle, hän on sanonut että puhelu ohjautui suoraan puhepostiin. Kun näin on tapahtunut, puhelin ei ole soinut kertaakaan.

Eli ilmeisesti Nokia 6630:ssa ei sitten ollutkaan suurempaa vikaa ja syy lienee Soneran 3G-verkossa.

K810:n selaimessa on sama ongelma kuin 6630:ssa: Kumpikaan ei näytä tallentavan evästeitä. Tämä ilmenee siten, että jos kirjaudun jollekin sivustolle ja laitan kirjautumissivulla rastin ruutuun "Muista minut ensi kerralla," minua pyydetään silti kirjautumaan joka ikinen kerta. Ainut sivusto, joka ei vaadi kirjautumista jokaisella käyttökerralla on Google Readerin mobiiliversio, mutta se taitaakin tunnistaa jollakin muulla tavalla, ehkä WAP-puhelinnumeron perusteella tms.

Ericssonin käyttöliittymä on parempi kuin Nokian: Esimerkiksi jos johonkin paikkaan pitää kirjoittaa esimerkiksi sähköposti-tai weppiosoite, tekstinsyöttö menee automaattisesti pois T9-tilasta. 6630:ssa T9 piti itse ottaa pois päältä. Ja samaisessa tilanteessa joutuu usein osoitetta syöttäessään kirjoittamaan pisteen tai @-merkin. Ericssonissa kun painaa 1-näppäintä kerran, saa pisteen, toisen kerran niin saa @-merkin. Nokialaisessa ainakin @-merkki piti kalastaa paljon kauempaa. Muuten, kolmas painallus 1-näppäimestä tekee /-merkin. Näppärää, koska sitäkin usein tarvitaan weppiosoitteiden kirjoittamiseen. Ja Nokialaisessa sekin merkki piti hakea jostain kaukaa.

Olen edelleen positiivisesti yllättynyt kameran kuvanlaadusta. Zoomatut kuvat näyttävät melko huonoilta, mutta jos kuvia ei zoomaa, olen aika tyytyväinen moniin kuviin. Erityisen huomionarvoista on, että kelvollisia kuvia tuntuu tulevan jopa sisätiloissa ilman salamaa. Lisäksi asiakirjakuvaustilassa kamera tarkentaa aivan naurettavan lähelle, ihan parin sentin päähän paperista.

Kameran ollessa perustilassa ihmisten ihonväri ei näytä ihan oikealta. Jos kameran laittaa muotokuvatilaan (ja miksei laittaisi jos tarkoitus on kuvata ihmisiä,) ihonväri korjaantuu luonnolliseksi.

Radio on pienoinen pettymys koska se ei tunnu kovin herkältä. Se ei automaattihaulla löydä monia paikallisradioasemia ja jopa Yleisradion kanavat kuuluvat rakennusten sisällä erittäin huonosti. Jos YLEn kanavat riittävät ja kuuntelee radiota ulkoilmassa, äänenlaatu on hyvä.

Sijoitin muutaman kympin Ericssonin lisävarusteeseen, jossa saa piuhan, jonka toinen pää sopii puhelimen persiiseen ja toisessa päässä on vastausnappi ja normaali 3.5mm kuulokeliitin. Paketissa oli myös in-ear-tyyppiset kuulokkeet ja niihin 3 erikokoista tuttiparia. Pienimmällä tuttiparilla kuulokkeet ovat todella mukavat minunkin ahtaissa korvissani ja pysyvät hyvin paikoillaan. Kuulokkeet myös eristävät hieman ympäristön melua. Äänenlaatu on kyllä etenkin bassotoistossa melko kehno.

Kuulokkeissa on pieni nipsu, jolla kuulokejohdon saa kiinni takkiin tai paidankaulukseen. Se on hyvä keksintö, jonka toivoisin yleistyvän myös iPodin kuulokkeissa.

K810:aan ei saa ladattua kaikenmaailman omia ja ostettuja ohjelmia, mutta en ole niitä yhtään kaivannut. Kaikki kaipaamani tuntuu olevan jo valmiina ja toimii aika lailla niin kuin luontevalta tuntuu. Oikeastaan harmittelen vain sitä, että jos olisin odotellut muutaman kuukauden, olisin voinut muutaman kympin lisärahalla saada mallin C702, jossa on muuten samat toiminnat ja vielä GPS lisänä.

Erotilanne?

2008-06-06T18:29:00.002+03:00

Tämän päivän Helsingin Sanomissa ollut pikku-uutinen. Mikä ihme on "erotilanne koiran ja omistajan välillä"? Päättivät muuttaa erilleen? Kumpi pani eron vireille?

Perusmerkin koulukoe

2008-05-25T15:30:00.001+03:00

Kävin tänään yrittämässä perusmerkin koulukoetta. Tulos yllä. Ei mennyt läpi. Muuten meni kohtuullisen hyvin. En ollut edes huonoin :)

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Voi johtaja parkaa!

2008-05-23T09:01:00.000+03:00

Eikö kukaan voi auttaa veripäistä johtajaa?

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Pelataan kitarapeliä saunalla

2008-05-10T01:03:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Friteerattu kuha

2008-05-10T01:01:00.000+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Linux Security 7 postmortem lounas

2008-05-10T01:00:00.001+03:00

Empire Plaza ravintola, Kamppi

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Nojapyörien testiajo työpaikalla

2008-05-10T00:56:00.001+03:00

Janne järjesti pihalle paljon erilaisia nojapyöriä. Tahtoo kuvassa näkyvän. Valitettavasti hinta on 2900 euroa.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Portobello vai Porttobello?

2008-05-06T07:56:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Hesarilla lukihäiriöinen töissä lauantaisin?

2008-05-03T09:45:00.000+03:00

Tai sitten saksalaisautoilla voi nykyään tehdä latuja...

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Koffin puisto, Helsinki

2008-04-29T14:04:00.000+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Janne hakee gps:llä sijaintia

2008-04-29T14:03:00.000+03:00

Koffin puisto, Helsinki

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Pyörätien tukko

2008-04-27T22:55:00.001+03:00

Pakettiauto ja kuorma-auto tukkivat pyörätien perjantaina Meilahdessa.

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Äänekästä tupakointia

2008-04-18T14:51:00.001+03:00

---- Lähetetty Sony Ericsson -matkapuhelimella

Gekko hengailee

2008-04-13T23:03:00.001+03:00

... just oven päällä. Miten ne nyt juotetaan?

What does your shell history say about you?

2008-04-13T12:45:00.004+03:00

Vasco had come up with an interesting meme: shell history statistics.

Here's mine from my home Macintosh:

$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head

101 ls
49 man
43 cd
35 sudo
26 find
21 less
20 port
16 which
16 ssh
11 vi

What does that say about me? I think it says I do not use my home Mac for much command line work. I'm a bit surprised that which and vi are on the list. I try to use a GUI editor on the Mac whenever possible. I use Aquamacs, TextWrangler and a bit of Eclipse.

And why do I need less so often?

I'm sure the results would be quite different on my Linux machine at work.

Tapiola pankki: Emme voi ottaa vastaan käteistä rahaa

2008-04-11T09:34:00.001+03:00

Kyseessä lienee konttori, jossa on vain neuvontaa tms. mutta hiukan hätkähdin kun pankin ovessa sanotaan ettei käteinen käy.

Veera sai 9.5 fysiikan kokeesta!

2008-04-09T18:56:00.001+03:00

Nörtti-isä pullistuu ylpeydestä.

Strange Safari Status bar

2008-04-05T22:00:00.001+03:00

"Message (1) processing took 50 ms"

What message? What processing?

Äärettömyys

2008-04-03T17:22:00.001+03:00

Pyöräilykausi 2008 avattu!

2008-04-02T09:52:00.001+03:00

Veera iltateellä

2008-03-27T22:03:00.001+02:00

Windowsin mongerrukset

2008-03-27T09:39:00.001+02:00

Virmista? Kirjain kokoja?

Testataan puhelimen kameraa

2008-03-20T09:34:00.001+02:00

Kamera urheilukuvaustilassa. Tulos on vähän hämärä ilman salamaa.

Sprintin suunnittelua

2008-03-18T16:01:00.001+02:00

Suunnitellessa katsotaan asioita asiakkaan silmin (Tiimarin aurinkolasit simuloivat asiakasta.)

Kevään merkkejä

2008-03-10T20:40:00.000+02:00

Ruusu pukkaa lehtiä

Uusi puhelin, Sony Ericsson K810

2008-03-08T23:51:00.003+02:00

Työpaikalla on taas se aika kun saadaan uusia puhelimia. Edellisellä kerralla en jaksanut paljon perehtyä asiaan ja otin vain sen peruspuhelimen, jota IT suositteli, Nokia 6630. Se oli virhe ja jäin kaipaamaan edellistä puhelintani, joka oli Sony Ericsson K500.

Vahingosta viisastuneena tutustuin nyt huolella puhelinmalleihin ja olin pitkään Nokia E51:n, Nokia 6110 navigatorin ja Sony Ericsson K810 välillä.

Valitsin sitten kuitenkin K810:n koska K500 oli jättänyt niin hyvän muiston. Tärkeää oli myös se, että K810:ssä oli noista kolmesta ehdottomasti paras kamera. Halusin puhelimen, jossa olisi ainakin 3 megapixelin kamera salamalla ja tarkennuksella, jotta se korvaisi rikkoutuneen Canon PowerShot SD100:n.

Seuraavaksi pieniä huomioita K810:stä muutaman päivän pikakäyttötestin perusteella.

Kiitämme:

Ohut ja kevyt.
Erinomainen kamera (puhelimen kameraksi).
Kuvan saa heti näppäyksen jälkeen lähetettyä blogiin.
Nopea ja kaunis käyttöliittymä.
Automaattinen näppäinlukko.
Web-selain on nopea ja sivun sisältö jouheasti vieritettävissä ja luettavissa vaikka kuvat vielä latautuisivat.
Web-selain toimii aina. (Nokia 6630 väitti joka toisella yrityksellä että pakettidata ei ole käytettävissä.)
Akun kesto.
Puhelut tulevat perille (ainakin toistaiseksi. Nokia 6630 ei aina ollut yhteydessä verkkoon, vaikka väittikin olevansa.)

Moitimme:

Epästandardi kuulokeliitin.
Nappikuulokkeet liian isot, jopa ilman vaahtokumeja.
Musiikkisoitin ei muista kuinka pitkälle musiikkitiedostoa on kuunneltu tai onko sitä vielä kuunneltu ollenkaan.
Synkronointi iTunesin kanssa ei toimi. Kappaleet pitää raahata yksitellen iTunesista puhelimen muistikortille.
Web-selain skaalaa kuvat niin että ne mahtuvat näytölle. Kuvat eivät suurene, vaikka sivua zoomaa.
T9-kirjoituksen kielen vaihto vaatii turhan monta napin painallusta (vaikkakin vähemmän kuin Nokia 6630:ssa.)
Jos osoitekirjassa on nimi "Sukunimi Etunimi", sitä ei löydä kirjoittamalla muutama kirjain etunimestä.

En ole vielä asentanut työpaikan Windows-koneeseen puhelimen mukana tulleita ohjelmia, joten kalenterin ja osoitekirjan synkronointi ovat vielä kokeilematta.

Veera siivoaa kaappeja

2008-03-08T17:24:00.000+02:00

Tänään melkein myöhästyttiin ratsastuksesta kun neiti ei löytänyt ratsastushanskoja

Isi harjaa, Foxy syö

2008-03-08T15:46:00.001+02:00