Archive for the ‘Not Code’ Category
Why didn’t I know about ZFS before?
I have a fileserver at home. I have done for many years now. The first incarnation was based on Fedora Core 3 (which will tell you *exactly* how long ago that was…) and was very simple. I had an old Xbox HDD (8GB Seagate) and 2 shiny new 200GB Western Digiatl drives for storage.
This was also my first major experience with Linux as a whole, so I was trying to keep things simple. So I did a default type install, with LVM on the 2×200GB disks to give one logical 400GB partition.
All was fine and dandy until I wanted to upgrade a couple of years later and not knowing much about LVM, wiped all my data. Yes, ALL my data. I had some important stuff backed up, but a lot of non-critical but frustrating to lose data (many GBs of painstakingly ripped and encoded CDs and Audiobooks for example).
What people misunderstand about Google Wave
I had heard about Google Wave, had a quick look at their UI, thought “shiny” and not really paid it much attention. Then I was reminded of it again recently and so I had another look, watched the Keynote Speech that they gave at the Google I/O 2009 and had a bit of a look around the web for related articles.
And I got really excited and really angry.
I got angry, because most people weren’t excited for the right reasons, or were dismissive / “anti” because they didn’t really see what Google has done.
But because I am so excited about Wave (not just Google Wave), I thought I’d post this to help you understand what Google Wave actually is and what it isn’t.
What Google Wave isn’t
Google Wave isn’t Wave.
Fantastic Contraption
Oh my god. I can’t believe how addictive this game is. http://fantasticcontraption.com/. The simplicity of it really appeals to me. The idea is to move a pink block from one area on the course to another, and you do so by building a contraption from wheels and connectors. that’s pretty much it!
Doesn’t sound like much, but if you are like me, you’ll not only want to finish all the levels but also go back and experiment with loads of other different ways to finish in the vain hope of finding the perfect solution. A solution that excels by being so simple, or so elegant. So unusual, or so complex. I could play for hours. But I won’t go on for hours.
I will leave you with some of the best contraptions I have managed to come up with, and the first one you should really vote as amazing, because (and I know this sounds a bit arrogant) is ingenious!
- unusual technique! See if you can guess how it works before you start it!
- Minimalistic elegance, perfect timing.
- I saw a solution with more than one spinny thing, but this seemed a cooler solution (notice the pole to slow down the last ball slightly…)
- A cool way to do “The Ball”
That’s all for the moment, but I’m sure I’ll post more contraptions in the future…
Discovering QR Codes
I recently discovered QR codes and how cool they are! Basically it’s a 2-D barcode and can store much more information than your standard bar code.
A QR code is a square of dots in a certain computer-readable pattern, for example there is one to the top-left of this post, encoded with the URL to this post.
Why bother though? Well, they are used mostly in Japan, where mobile phones are generally all Internet-enabled, so on an advert you might have a QR code for a URL where more info can be found. So you whip out your phone, point the in-built camera at the code, and bingo, it takes you to the website. Also you could have a film opening encoded in QR as a calendar event, so when you scan it it puts a reminder in your calendar. Useful no?
On a personal level though, when QR codes are not big in England, why should I care. Well, they are useful for transferring information I want to a phone. For example, I have a bookmarklet on my browser that converts the current page I’m looking at into a QR code (courtesy of the Google Chart API) and open the image in a new tab. Very useful if I find a page and think, “I’ll want to look at that later” I can make the QR scan it with my phone, and the page goes into it’s browser history for my later enjoyment.
For those of you interested the bookmarklet code is (should be all on one line, but for the page width’s sake…):
'http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=400x400&chl='+
encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)
);})()
Try it! (will generate the QR code for this page, but a lot bigger than the one by the title)
You may have noticed that there are QR codes for the permalinks to these posts aswell, so you can easily bookmark them with a capable phone. Another useful function that my phone can do is to display the QR code for a Contact in my address book, so I can easily share that with another QR enabled phone without having to “pair” them with bluetooth, or use Infrared (if the phone still has it!) or text it or whatever. Much more convenient. I just need to find someone else with a QR enabled phone…
The T-Mobile Google G1
So I decided the time had come to get a smartphone. There’s only really two options the way I see it.
In the red corner, the slick-as-you-like, shiny, fashionable, Apple iPhone.
In the blue corner, the open-source, all-your-data-are-belong-to-us, Google G1.
I’ll save the theatrics as you know from the title that I went for the G1. But the pros-cons weighting was a difficult process with many factors. However me being me, the main one and the one that rules them all was price in the end. So lets make this all about the Google G1, and in order to falsely encourage you to thinks it’s great I’ll start with the cons.