Older blog entries for i0lanthe (starting at number 14)

... back from ICSE ...

Yay Handera. Guess now I have no excuse to be lazy.

I just read what hacker wrote about Handera POSE, Handspring POSE, Palm, Etc. Heh.
[random people who say] "..the GPL means nothing unless it's tested in court..."
guess they haven't thought through that if it literally means nothing, then perhaps there have been no rights granted to them by the author, and they shouldn't be using the source at all?

This week I saw a thread in comp.sys.palmtops.pilot about scopin' out how apps will look on the Handera 330. Since iRogue and company make assumptions about screen size (yeah, yeah, it's easier that way) and the 330 doesn't have the what-me-worry pixel doubling of the new Clie N-whatever, I thought "hm, better check this out", which I, a user of PRC-Tools and Linux, could do only because when people need Powerpoint and certain games, Lo, they will naturally have Windows machines which can be borrowed and used to run POSE briefly.

(In case anyone cares, iRogue looked fine in regular font, but of course the extra-small font defined by me looked even crappier than it would on 160x160; and, if you close the silkscreen area and then tap around in it, the principle of least surprise is most likely not going to be upheld.)

To provide incentive for people to actually put enough special-case what-OS-am-i-this-week code in their apps to take advantage of the wacky new screen size and the disappearing silkscreen area, there is a contest on their developers page (which you get to via "Support", or in my case by looking everywhere else first) wherein the 12 best all-wackiness-supporting submitted apps will get a free 330.

so, all ye diary readers, Should I care enough to at least find out whether it's possible to "upgrade" an app as they wish by using the PRC-Tools? (Even if it is possible, gahhh, I would have to test elsewhere under Windows! Inconvenient at best.) What are the odds of iRogue (etc) users caring, or of me winning anything, anyway? Or, should I not even waste time thinking about it and simply shun them for not releasing POSE code?

We are plotting to move all the computers at home (of which there are hrair) from this room to the (furnished differently but just as thoroughly) slightly larger and (more importantly) better ventilated room next door, at the end of the month. This promises to be interesting. So far I have moved two bookcases and an air conditioner and then we drilled a hole in the wall, because, well, every home project should involve either duct tape or drilling a hole in the wall; I certainly can't recall the last one that didn't.
I haven't told the fish yet but the aquarium is going to have to move too. They are not going to be pleased.

Crashed my Visor today, and had to hard reset it during a lecture (guess one of those "new" apps I installed lately was not such a good idea). Hooray for Backup springboard.

Serious slacking (from an open-source-developing perspective) is called for this week; 'pologies to the impatient. There's just too many things to do - like work and taxes - and lovely spring weather in the Big Room as well.

Thought I'd try out some advogatoness and certify some people in "Recent people joining". I am not sure what the protocol is, though.. so first I've been looking to see whether I can actually find any open-source software (or other artifact) for which I can find an indication that they've contributed to / writtten it.
often I can't.
so maybe I should just get back to debugging now.

(several hours later) or answering a week of user email and then falling asleep on the keyboard, maybe.

Round-robin debugging. It's iLarn's turn for a while.

I don't have a pet peeve. But there's a peeve that hangs out around the dumpsters on campus. It runs away whenever anyone goes near it. I think it lives on locusts and wild punctuation marks.

Today I have stuck chewing gum into some memory leaks, and played with other people's cats.
And now I will go eat half of the left-over apple pie.