Matt Croydon::Postneo

Month: August 2003

  • Blackout Moblog

    Via Jeremy, the Blackout Moblog is absolutely classic.

  • Power Outages

    Thanks to a heads up by the chaps in #mobitopia, The Washington Post:

    NEW YORK – A massive power outage swept across swaths of the eastern United States and Canada on Thursday, leaving sections of New York City, Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto without electricity, witnesses said.

    Film at 11, but this definately doesn’t strike me as a good thing, regardless of why it is happening.

    Similar coverage can be had at CNN.

    BBC News is providing better coverage than stateside news outlets, as usual.

  • Chiba and Boa Constructor

    Chiba 0.9:

    Chiba is an Java implementation of the upcoming W3C XForms standard. This release is now about 90% feature compatible with the new Proposed Recommendation and adds DOM Event support, Dependency Recalculation, improved and simplified rendering, request parameter mapping and a complete reworked object-model.

    Boa Constructor: 0.2.6 in CVS:

    Since the 0.2.3 release, the following major features were added (and are available in CVS): Sizers; Support for sub-menus and separators; Alternative image handling with wxPython.tools.img2py modules; Support for BicycleRepairMan; Help projects; and Improved plug-in preferences/settings handling. Boa Constructor, SourceForge.net’s August Project of the Month, is a RAD GUI-building IDE for wxPython.

     

  • Opteron Ultimate Linux Box

    Linux Journal’s Ultimate Linux Box runs on Opterons.  If money were no object, so would mine.

  • Apache Ant 1.5.4

    Apache Ant 1.5.4, the last version that will support JDK 1.1, is out.  Go grab it.

    Yes, Erik has already blogged it.  It is by definition “so earlier this morning”.

  • test.py: Self-Testing Test Script Runner

    Garth Kidd has introduced a self testing test script runner called test.py.  It tests itself and makes sure that the modules for your tests can be imported before testing.

    Bravo!

  • 10 Python Pitfalls

    10 Python Pitfalls was pointed out by several people last night and early this morning.  I’ll read up on it later, but a quick skim looks promising.

  • Wi-Fi Wants to Be Free

    It’s true.  Paul Botin’s piece in Wired about free Wi-Fi access has been making the rounds lately, but a title from the Seattle Post Intelligencer’s weblog says it like it is:

    Wi-Fi wants to be free.

  • Nikon Coolpix 3100: Don’t Buy

    DPReview:

    Just posted! Our full in-depth review of Nikon’s entry-level zoom Coolpix 3100. This three megapixel three times optical zoom digital camera was announced at PMA earlier this year and is aimed at beginners or those on a budget, it’s pocket sized proportions and cute rounded styling make it a great go anywhere camera which won’t break the bank. Read the full review to see how the Coolpix 3100 performed in our tests.

    I would personally advise against purchasing a Nikon Coolpix 3100: It runs on one really expensive, non-rechargable, CR-V3 battery.  You of course have the option of purchasing seperately rechargable NiMH AA batteries, but at the $299 price range, a digital camera should include a rechargable Lithium Ion battery.

    Using non-rechargable CR-V3’s is a recent trend that doesn’t make me very happy.  It screws the consumer while allowing the manufacturer to lower the all-important price point another few bucks.  A single CR-V3 battery can cost over $15 here in Washington, DC.  For $15 you can get anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so of usage.

    It’s not just Nikon.  Some recent models that I’ve seen from Samsung, Olympus (they make one that requires TWO CR-V3’s!), Kodak, Pentax, and others use this non-rechargable battery.

    Make it stop.

  • Slow

    Wow, windowsupdate.microsoft.com is really slow tonight for some reason…

  • Amok! Amok! Amok!

    Symantec has released a quick and easy fix for the nasty little worm running amok.

  • Google Calculator

    Via Dave Winer, the Google Calculator rocks.  Of course it handles all the weird an imaginary numbers quite well:

    …And much fun was had by all.

  • Wi-fi At Panera Bread

    Mac Central:

    Bakery-cafe chain Panera Bread Co. is one of the newest food chains to announce that they’re deploying Wi-Fi access. Unlike many of the other companies that have announced plans for wireless networking access, however, Panera’s doing it for free.

    Wow, that is great news.  The list of wi-fi enabled stores doesn’t include the one closest to me, but honestly, I wouldn’t mind driving a little out of my way to eat food and surf for free.

  • Athlon 64 Logo

    Now that is a logo.  Did I mention that I love the color orange?  The Register has details, and of course, all we need now are the actually Athlon64’s.

  • Realtime Video Editing in Linux: Cinerella

    Cinerella 1.1.7 is out.  It is movie editing on crack for the Linux platform.  Here’s what’s new:

    Improved playback through firewire. Importing of dvgrab and lavtools AVI files. Changing parameters for PCM works more often. A virtual file system for renderfarms. Time stretch based on overlapping windows instead of FFT. Integrated mpeg2enc, toolame, and LAME encoding as libraries. The default configuration should run on a stock Red Hat 9.0 system.

    It requires some beefy hardware, but from the screenshots it looks like it’s all worth it.  The integrated clustering also looks awesome.

  • RSS Owl 0.51b

    RSS Owl is a Java three paned RSS aggregator written using SWT.  The latest version is 0.51b.  I saw this come across the WAP aggregator the other day, but I had no way of blogging it.

  • GCC 3.3.1

    It looks like I missed the release of GCC 3.3.1 the other day.

  • Mono Python Bindings

    Yes, my plane was supposed to be on the ground around 11pm.  Yes it’s about 3:30 and I’m just settling in at home.

    I’m hopelessly playing catchup, but there’s some interesting mono/python news from a few days ago:

    Brian Lloyd has announced the availability of his Python binding to .NET. This works with .NET and Mono. For more information about it, see Brian’s site at http://zope.org/Members/Brian/PythonNet/

     

  • Florida Moblog #2

    Today was MGM Studios and will be after hours night at the Magic Kingdom. Right now I’m off to the top of The Contemporary Resort for dinner. Later.

     

  • Florida Moblog #1

    It rained a good bit of today in orlando. I caught up on some feeds today, but was mostly offline. Check out my moblog for a few pictures. Back to some vacation…