benad

  
Download now or listen on posterous

First Audio Post.m4a (1192 KB)

Will transcribe soon on Benad's Blog.
Posted via email from Benoit's posterous

  
Download now or listen on posterous

First Audio Post.m4a (3597 KB)

Will transcribe soon on Benad's Blog.
Posted via email from Benoit's posterous

  
Download now or listen on posterous

Memo.m4a (33 KB)

Background: I'm using http://posterous.com/ to post an audio message through email.

So, as I implied earlier, I got a new iPhone 3G S, and in the process sold my soul to my cellphone carrier for 3 years.

Why now? Well, my carrier was offering a promotional pricing for data plans, that is $30 for 6GM per month, until the end of the July.

Still, why? To replace both my iPod, cellphone and portable computer (the Nokia N810). The 32GB size is now large enough to hold my podcasts and music collection. I still use the N810 from time to time, especially since it works well with the iPhone's tethering (Internet sharing) feature.

So, how is it?

The battery life is OK. It usually lasts about 25-30 hours, with about 4-5 hours of it being heavy use. I suspect using it only as a "phone" it could last about two days. So, still not as great as the 3 days I was getting from my earlier phone (Motorola RIZR Z8) or the N810.

Overall though, it does feel like a fast, clean and tweaked 4th-generation update. It's honestly the first time that I've used a cell phone that doesn't require me to get used to its glitches. I know, some are complaining all the time that the touch screen keyboard is difficult to use or "slow", but having used text input with the numeric keypad for 3 years I can assure you that the touch screen keys are quite fine. I still need to create the habit of using more the tip of my thumbs when typing rather than the thumbs sideways, but other than that even using my index typing is pretty fast.

It's also a "lifestyle" change for me. With many applications like Remember The Milk and Evernote, both being connected to the Internet all the time, I effectively use the iPhone as an always-connected external brain interface of some kind. Need to remember something? Type it up or record a message, they both get synchronized on the Internet for future reference, with GPS tagging. Browse almost any web site on the Internet? Yes, from anywhere, using a browser that doesn't suck and is quite fast. Email, calendar and contacts? Yes, all the time with push notification. Got lost? GPS and Google Maps included. Even twitter, which used to be a total pain by typing SMS on a numeric keypad, not works great using TweetDeck.

True, it's not an unlocked Linux machine like the N810, nor does it has a large hard drive like my 80GB iPod. But it's still effectively a quite capable super-portable computer with always-on Internet access. Viewed this way, the total price of about $3000 (with the 3-year voice and data contract) seems reasonable.

I'll keep posting some of the cool tricks I do with it over time. For now, I'll just relax, since, as you would expect, it just works.

... And I have to work on my web site. Hint: http://benad.me/test2/sample.xml. Yes, that's XML, at least if you look at the source of the page...

Trying to make sense of the hype behind functional languages like Erlang and many other implementations for JRE, just to discover that what I really liked was the stack-less distributed messaging pattern.

An interesting standard is AMQP, with many implementations including RabbitMQ.

OSGi is much easier than it seems, and Spring Dynamic Modules reduces the amount of code needed to wire services together.

Eclipse already supports OSGi modules, but work on a branch of NetBeans to make it support OSGi is being done under the name Netigso.

Distributed OSGi looks interesting, especially since I dislike J2EE bean patterns in general.

The Immutable AST Macro is quite a shortcut. Another good reason to use Groovy, if I could find a good excuse to use it.

CruiseControl sucks, at least for me, since there's no out-of-the-box integration with version control, and integration with anything is a pain in general.

Hudson does everything superbly. It runs from a self-deploying WAR file using jetty or deploys as usual in any J2EE server.

Java 6 has built-in support for thread pools in the package java.util.concurrent, also available for older version in backport-jsr166.

BTW, if you need a ThreadPoolExecutor that blocks when the underlying queue is full, then implement a RejectedExecutionHandler that, in rejectedExecution(Runnable r, ThreadPoolExecutor executor) calls executor.getQueue().put(r). Somehow, none of the classes provided in the package does that for you.

I've been quite tired for the past 3 months, so over time I piled up a bunch of stuff I wanted to write about. I'm still too tired/lazy to write a complete article about each of them, and since I badly want to write about the iPhone 3G S I'm going to "flush the queue" today, "executive summary" style.

I haven't updated this blog in a while, so I'll post about something less technical for this time.

There are tons of "free web tools" out there. Everybody knows the tools you get on Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft Live. Also, there are tons of other tools, but after the "buzz" of trying a new tool for the first time, few of them are good enough for day-to-day use. So, here are the tools you may not know about and that I use almost every day because they're that good.

Evernote: Basically, it's an online notebook. It's "killer feature" is its ability to be able to search for words in pictures you upload in a note, but personally I don't use that. The reason I use it is because there are multiple ways to input new notes (web-based, Firefox plug-in, "clipper bookmarklet", full Mac and Windows application, mobile, iPhone app, email), and just as many way to view and edit the notes. With its full support for tagging and easy search, it can easily handle thousands of notes.
How they make money: Free accounts have a 40MB monthly upload quota that gets bumped up to 500MB for $5/month. Good if you tend to upload photos and files in notes a lot.

Remember The Milk: The short address is http://rtmilk.com. As its name suggests, this is an online "TODO" list. Pretty simple to use and has a great amount of features. You can add a "TODO" item easily by email, instant messaging, on the web or mobile web, and get reminders through a "live feed" (Atom feed), iCalendar, email, SMS and instant messaging.
How they make money: Pro version for $25/year has priority support, and applications for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and iPhone.

drop.io: A file upload service. There are tons of "file upload and sharing" services out there, but they are typically filled with ads, waiting times to download, and many other ridiculous time and size restrictions. drop.io lets you create a "drop" where you can put up to 100MB of files, and gives you a short URL that you can give to anyone to let them access the files. No obnoxious ads, no queues to download. The files stay for up to a year of inactivity, and you can upload additional files in the drop after it was created. The drop then has a ridiculous amount of options for viewing the files, including inline view of PDFs, audio files and pictures, subscription to be notified by email or "live feed" (RSS feed and podcast) whenever the drop changes, and ridiculous amounts of options for uploading, including email, web-based, voicemail (!), fax (!!), firefox plug-in (to upload entire folders), and more. And since you can always post text and links to your drop, the drop can become in a way your own blog.
How they make money: Increase the capacity of your drop for $10/1GB/year, options to sell media from the box, and an advanced "manager more" for corporate use.

tr.im: The site tinyurl is currently quite popular for use in services like Twitter as it lets you "shrink" a long URL into a smaller one. The problem? Since all its shortened URLs start with http://tinyurl.com/ (19 characters), it's already too long. Well, with http://tr.im/, you save 5 characters every time. It also has additional options to let you chose your own "shortcode" like http://tr.im/benad (try it), privacy codes like http://tr.im/h4eR-mycode (compared with http://tr.im/h4eR which won't work), and visitor statistics for each clink on your short links.
How they make money: Through other applications and services they sell that make use of tr.im, listed here: http://www.nambu.com/.

OK, that's it for now.

A few months ago, a tutorial for NetBeans 6.5 called "Building a Java Desktop Database Application" piqued my interest. It also linked to another tutorial called "Binding Beans & Data in a Desktop Application". While I've seen "build a GUI for your SQL database" demos a few dozen times already, this was different.

What was new to me was the Beans Binding library, a subset of the Swing Application Framework. While I've read about attempts to increase desktop integration with Swing before, I've never seen anything like Beans Binding. What it does is synchronize bean property values with Swing components or other bean properties. It does so by making use of bean events that are generated by Swing components.

The implication of this is that rather than having the Swing components contain some values that are loaded or saved into the "model" from time to time, the Model and the View (in the "Model-View-Controller" design) are always synchronized automatically. As such, the Controller only needs to bind the View and the Model together. This is similar to the Spring Web MVC framework. Also, this means that you can have multiple Views on the same Model, and they will all be synchronized in real time.

There are a few things missing from Beans Binding though. It doesn't have a "generic" PropertyStateListener that updates a target bean's property when propertyStateChanged is called (that is, when the source property changed). I wrote one that, given the target bean and target property name, uses java.beans.Introspector and calls its write method automatically. Also, it lacks a binding mechanism that can automatically discover which properties to bind based on the introspection of property names and types. If it had that, binding two objects could be done in a single step in the Controller ("bind those two objects together").

• Finish my web site: http://benad.me/. Yeah, I'm too slow.
• Start using a new programming language. I'm thinking of Groovy, a pretty nice scripting language for Java. Somehow, I was never able to use it much. That, and languages like Python and Haskell simply feel horrible to me.
• Contribute to an open-source software project. Not making a new project.

That's all I can think of for now.

http://benad.me/. That goes well with my email "benad at me.com" (a synonym to benad at mac.com). Next step, more content, and explain a bit the process. TIme to sleep.

Just got the 3-disc Wall-E DVD, and the 3rd disc is a waste of plastic, since you can use the deactivation code for the "DisneyFile" only in the United States and Canada, excluding Québec.

See for yourself in their DisneyFile FAQ.

Wow. Thanks, Disney. I'll remember that next time I'm tempted to pirate a 7GB 1080p BluRay copy of Wall-E from Usenet newsgroups...

I wanted to use some of my vacation time to research on Beans Binding (JSR 295), its effect on the Model-View-Controler, and if there are other implementations of a similar "data syncronization" pattern elsewhere, but... I was on vacation for two weeks, so I spent most of my time resting (semi-comatose). Instead, here's what I learned during that time:

• Seasons 9 and 10 of Stargate SG-1 is really a spin-off of its own compared to season 1 to 8. While much of the main cast changed, the writing was pretty good, especially in season 10. The follow-up movie "The Ark of Truth" is kind of a season 11 condensed in 2 episodes, so the writing feels weird and rushed.

• The Apple AirPort Express doesn't work too well with the Tomato/MLPPP firmware in WDS. But then, we used only the AirPort Express for its USB printer sharing, and our printer is a network printer that can connect directly to the router.

• While the port by Team Twiizers of MPlayer for the Nintendo Wii supports DVD playing and has a great user interface, MPlayerWii supports external USB flash drives.

• Geometry Wars: Galaxies is easier on the DS than on the Wii because of framerate issues, but for extra challenge try playing it on the bus while standing up.

• Oh, and it's • 

Common-sense, actually. A little drop of water will help clean it up, and as you clean it the water dries. No dismantling, no hitting on a table, etc.

See: http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/AC2E4202-115B-4A39-ADFB-A7182BA2ED9D/

I'm posting this mainly to avoid boredom, and also to write more notes about interesting sites I found in the past month.

First, Lifehacker did a very good article on Windows maintenance tools. While there's surely been thousands of such lists, this is the first one I've seen that's small, to the point, and good. The tools are: CCleaner, Revo Uninstaller, Auslogics Disk Defrag, JkDefrag and Spybot Search & Destroy.

Second, Supergenpass is an amazing, secure JavaScript bookmarklet (with no server-side storage or transfer) that generates secure passwords based on your master password and the site's domain. An amazing free open-source alternative to password managers (not that I don't like 1Password...)

Finally, HelloTxt is a service that updates your "status" on many services, like Facebook and Twitter, in one step. This is the only one I've seen that actually works and supports over 20 services. Also works with email and mobile web browsers.

OK, that's it for now.

Small update to yesterday's post.

My laptop came back, but the serial number in the logic boad was blank. No serial number means many registered software will refuse to re-register (as if the changed MAC address on the network card wasn't enough).

I sent it back, with a note reminding that re-flashing the serial number is required by Apple since April 2007.

You remember when I previously implied that my Nokia N810 Internet Tablet could be a laptop replacement? Well, this week it is.

As you may have read from NVIDIA's report of last wednesday, many of their laptop graphics cards have overheating issues. Well, my MacBook Pro's NVIDIA card died the morning before that report.

After being stuck on my N810's for a while, I'm starting to get used to it. Its screen size (800 x 480) is not at bad as it seems. First, it's bigger than the iPhone's (480 x 320) and more precise (works with its pen or with fingers). Second, it's clear enough to not strain your eyes. Third, it's actual resolution is good enoug to make large applications like AbiWord or OpenOffice fit on screen (thanks to the Debian environment you can install).

Another thing I appreciate is how you can use it to both download and listen to a podcast or videocast without the need to "sync" it with a computer. Can't both the iPod touch and Zune now do it since they both have wifi, or are they still too dumb to do it?