Archive for May, 2008

Bloody pigeons!

Bloody pigeons, nibbling at the radishes. B*stards! Yeah, I know all pigeons look the same, but I bet it was the one who sat on the roof watching us plant them in the first place.

Luckily, many have survived unscathed. The leeks, onions, carrots, parsnips and runner beans are starting to poke through too. I never imagined I’d be so keen!

Tags:
Filed under garden : Comments (0) : May 21st, 2008

On “Welte vs. Skype Technologies”

So, Skype backed down.

Now, I don’t have anything against Skype, or closed source products in general. (Heck, I write closed source code for a living.) But you’ve got to play fair and either accept a license completely, or decline it completely.

The GPL takes the default Copyright scheme and makes it more free. Skype argued that the GPL was illegal, unconstitutional and responsible for the deaths of kittens. But whether that’s true or not is irrelevant. If it were ruled that the GPL was unconstitutional in Germany, then that would leave GPL’d code still subject to plain old Copyright. So you can’t just do what you like with it.

It’s like having an orchard of apple trees with a sign outside: “Free apples. Pick your own. No tractors.” Then someone drives a tractor around your orchard, claiming “who are you to stop me driving my tractor?”. Well, it’s my orchard. My apples. My rules.

So we wait with baited breath: will Skype quietly can the offending product, or release the code? I’m hoping for the code – otherwise some folks might accuse GPL of stifling innovation. And we don’t want GPL to be a big scary monster.

Tags: ,
Filed under tech : Comments (0) : May 15th, 2008

Memory for the Packard Bell EasyNote A8202

For the avoidance of doubt, the Packard Bell EasyNote A8202 uses DDR memory, not DDR2. Despite what many websites might say.

(Grr!)

Tags: , ,
Filed under tech : Comments (0) : May 14th, 2008

Popcorn Hour arrives

So the Popcorn Hour arrived. (Yeah, terrible name, I know.) And it works a treat, too, connected indirectly to the wireless network using my Squeezebox Receiver as the wireless bridge.

I was concerned that the wireless thing wouldn’t have sufficient bandwidth to properly stream video – but I haven’t seen any problems so far.

The setup was dead easy, configuring the network and connecting to an NFS share on the Kurobox was a breeze.

I have one or two minor niggles with the firmware onboard the PCH, but it’s generally excellent. :D

Tags: ,
Filed under tech : Comments (0) : May 8th, 2008

Hardware good. Firmware bad.

See, I always thought that the hardest part of making a modern gadget would be the hardware. Get that right, and you’re plain sailing – especially given these gadgets’ increased reliance on firmware and software for their functionality.

With updatable/upgradable firmwares, you can add features, push bugfixes and generally keep the user base happy.

So why, in a number of cases, do manufacturers get the hardware right but the firmware/software so very wrong? It’s almost like they finish the hardware, then throw together a lump of firmware which is barely good enough to allow the product to ship, and then… they stop.

Two examples:

  1. Topfield 5800 PVR. Hardware: spot on. Firmware: clunky at best
  2. Palm TX. Hardware: again, spot on. Operating system: dated, even when the TX was first released in 2005, and unreliable

Let’s examine the Palm TX. It’s hardware ticks all the boxes for a PDA, even in 2008: Bluetooth, IRDA, WiFi, touchscreen, SD card support. But we’re still stuck with Palm OS (with VersaMail and Blazer), even though there are active hacking communities (such as Hack&Dev) doing very fine work. Hardware manufacturers really should recognise that third parties have both the time and the enthusiasm to try to improve devices like these. I’d dearly love to run Linux/Opie on my TX if only WiFi was supported.

Of course, people would argue that it’s not in the interest of manufacturers to help people hack their hardware. Hacking gives extended life to older machines, which has the potential to harm future sales.

But there are two straightforward counterarguments:

  1. if a hardware manufacturer embraces the hacking community, then the community would generally be more likely to give future support to that manufacturer (see SlimDevices/Logitech for a great example)
  2. in Palm’s case… their recent machines are just as crippled with crappy software – so there would be very little reason for a TX user to upgrade at all!

So I remain optimistic that someday WiFi on the Palm TX will burst into life under Linux. And when it does I’ll be able to say goodbye to PalmOS and start using the TX again.

Tags: , , ,
Filed under tech : Comments (0) : May 6th, 2008

More seeding…

More seeding today (after a lunchtime walk to the Durham Ox in Orston).

  1. A random mix of lettuces
  2. Runner bean (Sun Bright)
  3. Parsnip (White Gem)
  4. Carrot (Giant Red)
  5. Beetroot (Sanguina)

The carrot and beetroot were also from The Real Seed Catalogue. I do wish we’d been more organized, as the Real Seed Crew had run out of a few things that we wanted. Next year I hope we’ll order earlier, so won’t be relying as much on the local garden centre…

Tags: , , , ,
Filed under garden : Comments (0) : May 5th, 2008

Sowing seeds (late)

Due to other distractions, we’re a bit late in sowing the first seeds in the veggie patch. But these are now in:

  1. The first of four rows of onion (Bedfordshire Champion)
  2. The first of three rows of leek (Long de Mézières) from The Real Seed Catalogue
  3. The first of three rows of mixed radish

We’ll sow subsequent rows every two weeks. Fingers crossed!

Tags: , , ,
Filed under garden : Comments (0) : May 4th, 2008