Alcides Fonseca (english feed)

Hardware Brands with their own OSes

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:51:10 +0000

A while ago my wife, the non-techie in our family and a Mac user, asked me: “How come Dell or Toshiba or Sony don’t make their own OS’s? I mean, if each brand had its own OS it would be better because the people that built the computers know the computers better than Microsoft.” — Minimal

The first time I read this I actually though it was a good idea. If each OS focus on that particular hardware the manufacture is selling, they would make it as stable as possible (think Apple). At least it would be the end of Bluescreens.

But that would become a problem for application developers: suddenly they don’t have the win/linux/mac problem, but rather win/linux/mac/dell/toshiba/lenovo/vaio/.... And using virtual machines like Java or .NET is not the solution because everyone appreciates native solutions (at least for the graphical user interface). Sure this could be improved and high-level languages like Python and Ruby could be used with different backends for the OS, but it’s the same as the current Java solution.

And then there is the drivers for peripherals. Linux (and Mac) users already suffer the problem of not having drivers for some devices, and if every brand had its own OS, I bet you could only buy Dell accessories for your Dell computer because that’s the drivers available.’

The best solution I see is to each one make a flavor of Linux and test the drivers to their specific hardware, so they can all run the same applications. They can choose between Gnome and KDE (and others) according to the computer specs, but as far as I know even those options are pretty compatible.

Learning by succeeding

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:52:54 +0000

Giles Bowlett on learning by succeeding or by failing.

Obviously, if you want to learn something, and the brain responds to failure without learning anything, but it responds to success by learning, then focusing on failure is not a good learning strategy.

To learn, all you have to do is succeed.

Notice what that doesn’t say. It doesn’t say what you have to succeed at.

And I like that There’s some powerful neuroscience supporting this and a great book which goes into exquisite detail.. Really interesting approach. I would conclude that I need to succeed at less important tasks in order to learn the total part. Like playing SuperMario or other games. You don’t need to master all the weapons and tricks on the first level.

Customized dunks

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:54:28 +0000

As some of you might know, I am really crazy about old school shoes. I’ve owned dunks, air force 1s, chucks, superstars and a few more, and the ones I like the most were the nike dunks.

Today I found out a blog where a guy posts his latest creations: fully customized dunks with themes. If you like them (I really do!) check his online shop where you can buy most of them for £180, or just request one pair.

Japanese Simplicity

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:05:18 +0000

A central aesthetic principle in Japan is simplicity, but it is different from simplicity in the West. Let me explain the difference by comparing cooking knives. The knives made by the German company, Henckel, for example, are well crafted and easy to use because they are highly ergonomic. The thumb automatically finds its place when you grab the knife.

Japanese cooks who have special skills prefer knives without any ergonomic shape. A flat handle is not seen as raw or poorly crafted. On the contrary, its perfect plainness is meant to say, “You can use me whichever way suits your skills.” The Japanese knife adapts to the cook’s skill (not to the cook’s thumb). This is, in a nutshell, Japanese simplicity.

Kenya Hara on Japanese Aesthetics

Komm, susser Tod

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:19:58 +0000

Come, sweet death

Stockholm congestion solution

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:24:49 +0000

Found this in the end of a TED video. Of course it’s an IBM self-promotion, but if it works, yey! More cities should think about it.

nginx + passenger + django

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:03:47 +0000

I am currently in the process of migrating all the websites I have running on this VPS from apache2 to nginx. The Apache2+passenger bundle was working really fine, except for some unknown slowness with redmine, but I wanted to try another httpd and I’ve heard a lot of nginx, and passenger guys added support for it a while ago.

Since nginx doesn’t support loadable modules, I had to compile it with all the modules I might need in a near future, so the following instructions also include the http_push_module.

When testing this wiki in the nginx server, it was always serving the homepage for whatever URL I asked for. After two sessions digging into the nginx, passenger and django internals, and doing a few tests, I found out the problem:

Nginx provides Passenger a REQUEST_URI instead of the PATH_INFO header that django processes to route the request. Since PEP 333 requires a PATH_INFO header, I had to correct the problem in one of the two other. I ended up fixing it Passenger, since it’s the one responsible for the WSGI interface.

So even if you had already installed passenger, just add those two lines , and it should support Django straight away.

¹while debugging, the tmp/restart.txt trick didn’t work for wsgi, so I used a sudo killall -9 python since it was the only python process running.

Clã - Golden Skans

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:41:55 +0000

Portuguese band Clã coverig Golden Skans from Klaxons. Images from the 1982 video Vicent, from Tim Burton.

Also check their cover of The Beautiful People during SXSW.

Surrogates

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:20:15 +0000

Surrogates is just like I, Robot if you just replace Will Smith with Bruce Willis and if humans just stay at home remote controlling the robots.

The movie is acceptable, but totally predictable. And like many others, they suppose that in 20 years there is only one aspect in our civilization that changes, something that I find hard to happen.

Religion Flowchart

me@alcidesfonseca.com (alcides) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:06:15 +0000

A perfect way of choosing your religions consciously. Via Friendly Atheist