techno bedouin

nomads souls

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:53:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:58:00 +0000

i'm not really fond of the new google favicon

read burner

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:17:00 +0000

at first i loved readburner and was happy about it's coming back online. Now I can't stand it anymore, it just add to the noise. Half of the shared item are from feeds I already subscribe like lifehacker. The second half seems to be just spam or propaganda against twitter but for friendfeed and seesmic. I'm really wondering if it's the current buzz on the net or if it's friendfeed and seesmic aren't manipulating readburner. Conclusion : unsubscribe.

code poet

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Sun, 18 May 2008 11:59:00 +0000

Every time I send a resumé, I titled it with the position I attend. I decide that my next resumé will be titled "code poet". Because I will now refuse to work in a way I think is dumb. If the company only search a replaceable engineer that can produce functionalities without carring about the way it is done, I'm not interested in it anymore.

phpMyAdmin web 2.0 way

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:44:00 +0000

simplier mySQL interface than phpmyadmin : a command line interface (CLI).
you type, query are executed and array of results are printed ajax way.
black screen, green font.

twitter

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:25:00 +0000

This week I rediscover Twitter and I'm quite enthusiast about the underlaying mechanisms involved.
Actually, another app hit the web this week Presdo, it's an event reminder design with simplicity in mind.

I havn't play with it a lot, but the philosophy behind is great. Simple interface, if I understand it well, the events are reminded to you right at the good time, because you can enter simple sentence to describe what, when, where and with whom about the event. I tried "tonite diner with aurelia @aurelia's" and it worked ! Tonite, is not even the right spelling of the word. Every word were mapped to the correct information

Tonite : when = today 6PM
diner : what = diner
with aurelia : whith = me, aurelia with link to email, invitation have been sent
@aurelia's : where = aurelia's, I was dissapointed there's no google map api here

The point is I'm thinking about a mix of this 2 webapp concepts. Another interesting things here : Twistori .

Imagine a contact in your IM, to whom you can speak, it's just a twitter message. Via it's API, you parse the sentence, like twistori do, and optain relevant information to fill an event like Presdo do. The virtual assistant send email to the people you describe. Imagine that the location is a bit far, she can calculate the approximative duration of transportation, and alert you just right in time via IM, she also telle you, she send you an email with the itinary...

Port industriel Edouard Herriot

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:51:00 +0000

shrink my photo studio

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:01:00 +0000

Look at some really easy tweaks you can manage with picnik, a simple but powerfull flash tool for editing photos directly from flickr. Just using my eee I can now edit my photos on the road without installing gimp nor any other software.

I remember editing the same kind of picture not so long ago with a desktop computer, window, a 20" flat screen, all my pictures stored locally on my hard drive, and photoshop.
By the way, I just installed flickrfs on my ubuntu, now flickr for me is just another filesystem mounted on my system, no more upload tool! Too bad I cannot browse the filesystem with the default file manager since nautilus tries to create local thumbnails for all pictures (more than 4400 and still counting).

Shrink my lense

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:57:00 +0000

My first digital camera was a compact : the Canon Ixus V. It was very convenient to carry around and I'm quite proud of some pictures a took with it.

After that my brother in law lend me for another trip his bridge : a Sony F717. Again I was very pleased and the rotating lense helped me a lot.

Now I own a real reflex : A Nikon D50. Unfortunately I haven't use it a lot. I bought it with 2 lenses : 18-55mm and 55-200mm. Based on my previous trip, I know what I like to shoot : details and night scenes. I need big aperture so I just buy a new lense : 50mm 1.8. This kind of lense is short and perfect for travel : it's half the size of the 18-55mm. I will have no zoom, but the most important for me is that I will be able to shoot in low light without using the ugly flash.

Visit this flickr pool to get an idea of the pictures you can shoot with it.

Paris

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:04:00 +0000

Samoëns

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:55:00 +0000

Installing Ubuntu on the eee

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:34:00 +0000

I've just finished installing Ubuntu on my eee using this tutorial. The first try, I forgot to check Ubuntu desktop at one of the step of the installation, and the computer won't start :/
For the second try, I checked Ubuntu Desktop and LAMP server.

I already tested Ubuntu on a regular all-comfort desktop computer, and I was pleased with it, even if I will have preferred a less bloated distribution like Debian. Actually I try to install Debian using this tutorial without any success (perhaps 2Gb SD card is corrupted).

Getting a LAMP environment out of the box is cool, but you always need to tweak it a little. The default files repertory for the we pages are located here

/var/www/

which is only accessible with admin privileges. I create a symbolic link to one of my rep :

ln -s sites /home/user/sites

Another thing missing from the LAMP server installation was the PHP command line interpreter, but you just have to type

sudo apt-get install php5-cli

Flickr review

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:37:00 +0000

The eee comes with only 4Gb of storage (SSD type). With even a minimalistic OS like linux, the remaining capacity is even fewer. I bought 2x8Gb SDHC cards from dealextreme, but I don't plan to store my photos on them. Last time I traveled, I stored all my pictures on an old ibook. Carrying it with me everywhere, it happens that when I was back in France, the ibook didn't start up at all... I was more anxious about my photos than about the computer itself.

This time I decided to store my photos online. I hesitated between 3 solutions : Yahoo's Flickr, Google's Picasa, and Amazon's S3 (Simple Storage Service). I finally choose Flickr because of it's incredible community aspect, I want my photos to be seen, shared, tagged, geolocalised, commented, so it was the simplest choice since Flickr offers all of this.

For 24.95$ I got :

Unlimited uploads (10MB per photo)
Unlimited storage
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited photo sets
Archiving of high-resolution original images
The ability to replace a photo
Post any of your photos in up to 60 group pools
Ad-free browsing and sharing

With this solution, I'm more relax about losing all my precious photos and I can display them everywhere just like that :

firefox complete fullscreen mode on an eee

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:05:00 +0000

Due to the small screen resolution of the asus eee (800x480) I wanted to maximize the surface of display of a web page. Firefox which comes as the default browser has a fullscreen mode activated by pressing F11. But you still see a toolbar on the top of the screen. I discovered a plugin named autohide that simulates the same fullscreen as IE, autohiding the toolbar.

Autohide - firefox plugin

Shrink my towel

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:03:00 +0000

One thing that is extremely space consuming and not really convenient to travel with is a bath towel. Everybody assumes that it's a vital piece of any decent travel packing list. But I will show you that traveler-friendly alternatives exists !

What a traveler needs is a small towel which can dry very fast. Mountain Safety Research (MSR) makes Packtowl. Here's what you can read on their website :

Packtowl UltraLite is the lightest, most compact microfiber towel on the market, perfect for camping, travel, or any situation where weight and space are at a premium. It absorbs water quickly and dries in a snap.

A friend of mine who work for an outdoor sport equipment dealer in Ireland lend me one when visiting him last April. I admit that the Packtowl is extremely compact and works great. You can dry yourself effectively after a shower, and it only need one or two hours to be completely dry.

I would have buy one for myself if I haven't discover the tenugui during my trip in Japan two years ago. After wandering in Kyoto's streets all day long, under a cruel sun, I was dreaming of a hot bath. The guesthouse I lived in was very humble, and just have regular showers. So I decide for the first time in my life to go to a traditional sentō. I haven't planned this, so I needed to buy things in a convenient store nearby. It's there that I bought a tenugui. It's as efficient as an official Packtowl™, it's softer on the skin, it's nicer and it cost less : What more can you ask for !

Yesterday, I order a new tenugui from this website : Jun japanese gifts

Asus eee PC review

noreply@blogger.com (speedyop) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:39:00 +0000

Shrink my laptop

I just bought the new tiny Asus eee PC in replacement of my dear MacBook 13". The main reason is the space and weight saving. When you're on the road, carrying a 3kg+ laptop is an hassle. With just 0.92Kg, the eee is just what I need. The second reason is the budget-friendly price. Tagged just under 300€, I won't be afraid of taking it along with me on the dusty roads or the moist jungles.

(pictures to come)

First impressions

I saw a lot of pictures of the eee PC before purchasing it, and I've been still amazed by it's form factor : it is about one third smaller than the MacBook which is already small compared to others laptops. Asus provides a minimalist sleeve to protect the eee PC and it fits without pain in my messenger bag. Actually I don't even notice the additional weight in my bag when carrying it, it was a totally different story with the 3kg+ MacBook.

I didn't get the chance to choose the color, because its availability in France is quite limited, LDLC sold me the black 4G version. I'm a long time apple's pearl-white-color enthusiast, all my electronic devices tends to be pearl-white : 3G Ipod, MacBook, Mighty mouse, speakers, Nintendo DS ... So I was a little disappointed at first, but the general aspect of the eee PC in black is somewhat more discreet. When traveling with tech toys, you probably don't want to draw attention. I will probably change the color of my Ipod and DS by the way ;).

Tech specs

CPU: 900MHz Celeron M ULV chip underclocked to 630MHz
Video: Intel GMA 900
Display: 7" LCD widescreen at 800x480
Storage: 4GB internal flash
OS: Custom Xandros-based Linux
RAM: 512MB DDR2-667 (8MB reserved for video)
Optical drive: None
Memory cards slot : SDHC
Networking: Atheros AR5007EG wireless, 10/100 ethernet

It's clearly not a laptop for gamers; even if one of the "e" stands for "easy to play", and that Asus provides one or two games, I don't think it is possible to play games comfortably with the eee. Actually I spend most of the time in front of a computer to surf the web, so how is the surfing capabilities of the eee PC? The major limitation is the screen resolution : 800x480. Five years ago, all the websites were design to fit in 800 pixels-wide screens, but it's not the default resolution anymore ! You have to scroll both vertically and horizontally to read the content and it's not very convenient. The right border of the touchpad includes a virtual vertical slider but there's nothing to help you scroll horizontally. I'm rather fond of the two fingers scroll in Apple's products and I will look for this feature in Linux soon.

A new environment to adjust to

I'm quite sad to leave leopard, the most beautiful and pleasant operating system I've ever work with (yes i'm a fan boy), but I'm expecting that Linux will be as efficient as Apple's last marvel without all the bells and whistles. Actually the device is shipped with a special distribution of Linux named Xandros with a lot of tweaks by Asus. The applications, which can be just link to a webapp, are grouped in tabs. My goal is to tweak the linux to have just a terminal and firefox in full screen mode at first. You can do a lot of productives stuff now with just a browser.