Posted by martin
Just upgraded to Leopard and sad at the loss of VirtueDestkops? Spaces not doing it for you? Read on...
Background
When Leopard was announced Spaces was touted as the replacement for VirtueDesktops. This lead to Tony Arnold the main developer of VirtueDesktops downing tools and declaring VirtueDesktops dead.
So everybody waited in anticipation for OS X 10.5... only to find Spaces not living up to their expectations.
So why the big fuss?
With the advent of 10.5 Apple has tightened up the code such that no other Desktop managers properly work on top of Leopard. This leaves many followers of VirtueDesktops little or no choice than maybe to change their working practices to Spaces or find alternatives....
1. HyperSpaces
From the creator of VirtueDesktops comes HyperSpaces. Unfortunately this isn't set for launch until 2008 and it also isn't clear if it will have the same rich feature set that VirtueDesktops has.
2. YouControlDesktops
YouControlDesktops has probably the closest functionality you are going to get to VirtueDesktops. The interface for configuring things isn't as intuitive or slick as Virtue but it's not such a big deal since you'll not need to use it that often.
Currently there is a beta version for 10.5 that works pretty well but there is some kinks. Namely issues with the Dock not always getting context when it should.
So in summary the solution is not perfect but it's the best I've found so far. Download the beta and provide the developers with feedback, hopefully we can help push this forward.
Posted by martin
Sometime ago back in May I bought a Nokia N95. I summed up the good and the bad about it. Nearly three months on I thought it fitting to revisit the issue. (also it seems it's been far too long since I posted here)
My impressions now? I like it, just not quite as much as when I first got it .. like all things I guess the little niggles get frustrating after a while.
The bad
- Sluggish interface.... I'm not sure why this happened but when I got the phone all was sweet. However at some point things started to slow down.. There is a notable delay between selecting apps and an even worse one with the camera.
This seems to happen to all the N95 users I have met and nobody has found a solution yet.
- Sluggish camera... Ok, this is the same thing but waiting up to 10-20 seconds to get the camera ready just to take a shot only to miss the moment totally sucks.
- Fiddly keys - the keypad is pretty cramped and it's easy to press a button when you didn't want to
- Finding people - Sony Ericsson have a really nice feature where names of the people you most text / call are easily available when sending a text. On the N95 you have to hunt them down each time.
The good
- Using it as a 3G modem to connect to the Internet absolutely rocks. I've tried the Vodafone datacard before and this is just so much nicer and more reliable.
- Using it as a stand alone web browser - works well on it's own too. View sites, even with flash content.
- Sync'ing with your iTunes collection - Nokia recently released Media transfer software
- Watch TV on the go.. a while back T-Mobile where offering their tv streaming service for ITN, Channel 4, Big Brother etc It worked pretty well for catching up with things. It kind of worked OK but you def need a high quality 3G reception. It was free but I think you need to pay a monthly fee now.
So all in all you can see I got more bad points this time round. I'm aware there is a new firmware update that I can download which apparently addresses some of the camera issues. Also I got a 4GB memory card from Mobo memory - great for storing movies, pics, and music without having to worry about it getting filled up quickly.
Posted by martin
Ever used SVN or SVK? Git is another source code management (scm) system that has been getting a fair bit of attention of late. I recommend giving it a try if you haven't done so already.
Unfortunately it can live up to it's name when it comes to installing on an Intel based Mac. More so if you recently migrated from a PPC Powerbook and hadn't updated your Darwin ports. All your libraries are likely to be compiled for the wrong architecture leaving you with messages like this:
/usr/bin/ld: warning /opt/local/lib/libz.dylib cputype (18, architecture ppc) does not match cputype (7) for specified -arch flag: i386 (file not loaded)
The long and the short of it is that you will need to re-install darwin ports from scratch and then do a manual install.
Here are the steps you take:
Make sure you have the latest version of XCode: http://developer.apple.com/tools/download/
Remove ports (this will be the case if you have installed ImageMagick or similar in the past)
See http://www.nabble.com/I've-hosed-my-ports-install,-clean-slate-install--t3868686.html
Always backup before you do these kind of things, esp if you depend on anything in your ports install
Reinstall Darwin ports: http://darwinports.com/download/
Install git through ports (this only gets you the 1.4.2 version though)
sudo port install git-core
At this point you could just stop but if you want the latest and more advanced features its worth
carrying out a manual install. Especially if you want to transfer files from an existing SVN repo.
Install git manually (now you have dependencies from the dawinports install)
cd /usr/local/src
curl http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.2.1.tar.gz > git-1.5.2.1.tar.gz
tar -xvzf git-1.5.2.1.tar.gz
cd git-1.5.2.1
make configure
./configure --prefix=/usr
sudo make install
Test it out
martin$ git --version
git version 1.5.2.1
martin$ git-svn --version
git-svn version 1.5.2 (svn 1.4.3)
martin$ git
usage: git [--version] [--exec-path[=GITEXECPATH]] [-p|--paginate] [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]
The most commonly used git commands are:
add Add file contents to the changeset to be committed next
apply Apply a patch on a git index file and a working tree
archive Creates an archive of files from a named tree
bisect Find the change that introduced a bug by binary search
branch List, create, or delete branches
checkout Checkout and switch to a branch
cherry-pick Apply the change introduced by an existing commit
clone Clones a repository into a new directory
commit Record changes to the repository
diff Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc
fetch Download objects and refs from another repository
grep Print lines matching a pattern
init Create an empty git repository or reinitialize an existing one
log Show commit logs
merge Join two or more development histories together
mv Move or rename a file, a directory, or a symlink
prune Prunes all unreachable objects from the object database
pull Fetch from and merge with another repository or a local branch
push Update remote refs along with associated objects
rebase Forward-port local commits to the updated upstream head
reset Reset current HEAD to the specified state
revert Revert an existing commit
rm Remove files from the working tree and from the index
show Show various types of objects
show-branch Show branches and their commits
status Show the working tree status
tag Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG
(use 'git help -a' to get a list of all installed git commands)
Done!
In summary
This is all bit a convoluted to be honest so if you have a better way then please feel free to chip in. Hopefully though if you end up in the same situation this might be the helping hand you were looking for.
Further notes
Note: to get the docs to install you need to also install
sudo port install xmlto
sudo port install asciidoc
However I kept encountering time outs trying to pull libxslt (a dependency) from an external source so I moved on and
skipped the docs for now.
If you want to use the git-svn command and end up with messages like this: "Can't locate SVN/Core.pm in'. It might because you installed SVN from an installer. In which set the perl lib path to the parent directory of where SVN/Core.pm is located. In my case:
export PERL5LIB="/usr/local/svn/perl/darwin-thread-multi-2level"
References:
Thanks to:
Posted by martin
Just a quick note to say that I'll be giving a talk at tonight's London Ruby Users group on distributed Ruby (and Rails.
More details on the event here
Posted by martin
I have had the N95 just over a week now and it's definitely fast becoming my favorite gadget of all time.
It really pushes the boundaries of what you can do with a phone - it's pretty much got my wish list of features.
The good (most of the following are all in-built)
- Fantastic quality camera - takes great quality pics in pretty much all conditions
- Equally fantastic video camera
- Wireless and 3G web browsing (unlimited if on t-mobile)
- Catchup on RSS feeds, check your mail anytime any place
- Stream media where ever you are - bbc news, podcasts etc
- Post directly to Flickr and Twitter
- Make and receive VOIP calls - Skype on the move (with Fring)
- Apparently I can also blog directly from the phone but I've yet to try that
- Use can use your standard walkman headphones
- Phone is compact yet still usable and not a bulky PDA
- Extremely user friendly - lots of neat touches and intuitive shortcuts
The bad
- Battery life - 1.day at most if you are lucky
- Prone to occasional crashes
- Memory/storage - Soon runs out after a few tunes, pics and vids are taken.
- GPS / Navigation software - this should be in the list of good points but it's been a real pain to try and setup. You can't just download the maps directly and from what I have read the GPS can be flakey at times. I've yet to get this installed.
- Lack of support for Mac - bundled sync software / utils are all PC based
What next?
I'm heading to RailsConf next week and hoping that Duty free might be able to help me out with
the following:
- A 4GB micro SD (if it's out yet)
- A spare charger - either USB or battery
I may even try and do some blogging from the conference next week - no promises though!
Posted by martin
Get the wrong URL in twitter? Gotta love the error page:
