lmjabreu's blog

They Still Don’t Get It

2009-02-15T04:18:17-08:00

Seriously, what’s wrong with these people, y’don’t need a PhD to understand this is the wrong path to go:

Click here to view the embedded video.

To start, this guy is using a stylus, a stylus, it’s 2009, that’s a mobile device, just stop please, you shouldn’t need a stylus to use a mobile phone, and you shouldn’t design interfaces so that they’re dependant on them, like this scrollbar:

Windows Mobile 6.5 Scrollbars

Here’s another highlight from the above video:

Same old UI, fancy tiny tabs

But wait:

526Mhz, same old tabs

Yeah, it’s a 526Mhz cpu, 196mb of ram, and the old-style tabs are back, so much for unified UI, we know it’s a development build but why the different tab controls.

windows mobile 6.5 program listing

Even with those specs the scrolling of the program list is choppy, maybe due to the high quality 3d effects and fades and.. oh wait it’s just a 2d scroll, I can achieve better performance with javascript, ha.

An Efficient File Browser

If only I could remember the truncated name, date, and file size combination of that file I was asked.( love the scrollbar )

Next, popup menus:

Thanks for displaying what I cannot do on a limited space screen.

Funny eh? ( bash bash bash heh )

just slide to unlock.. what happened to MS Research =|

Think mobile browsing, now think desktop browser, and mix:

again with the tiny buttons, sheesh.

There’s a blue progress indicator behing the url field text though. Funny detail, it doesn’t render the previous homepage properly:

so.. big scrollbars that came out of the xerox or tiny scrollbars we made?

I can imagine a great future for this mobile os, ffs.

Here’s a couple of links to help you recover from this:

Long-Term Performance Analysis of Intel SSDs

Left 4 Dead’s Price Slashed By 50 Percent

and my shared google reader page

have fun

Dreamhost Remote Backup Setup on OSX

2009-01-02T21:20:45-08:00

Requirements

Ah well, not actual requirements, more like a ‘best used with’.

osx
dreamhost account
growl

And.. some basic unix knowledge like ~ = your home directory and stuff like that.

Initial Setup

After enabling the backups user:

Generate an ssh key

First, launch the terminal app ( cmd+space and type terminal ) and type( > indicates the beginning of the prompt ):

> cd ~/.ssh ; ssh-keygen -t rsa

It’ll ask for a destination, just use the default ( ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ), and a passphrase ( leave it blank ).

Now that we have the ssh key we need to publish it to the remote server, since the dreamhost backup server doesn’t allow ssh we’re gonna have to copy it using scp, but first we’re gonna establish a secure ftp session in order to create a couple of directories we need.

Again in the terminal:

> sftp username@backup.dreamhost.com ; mkdir ~/.ssh ~/backupdir

Replace ‘username’ with your dreamhost backups user and ‘backupdir’ with something that’ll identify to which machine that backup belongs, you’ll be asked to type in the password dreamhost mailed you.

Now, I’m assuming you don’t have already published any ssh keys to that server, so, getting back to the terminal:

> scp ~/-ssh/id_rsa.pub username@backup.dreamhost.com:~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Again, replace ‘username’ with yours and type in your password for the last time.

In case you already have an ‘authorized_keys’ file on the server( like if you’re adding multiple machines ) you’ll need to append the current machine ssh key to the authorized_keys file but since Dreamhost doesn’t allow ssh to the backup server you’ll have to download it and upload it after you’re finished.

> scp username@backup.dreamhost.com:~/.ssh/authorized_keys ~/Desktop/

> cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> ~/Desktop/authorized_keys

> scp ~/Desktop/authorized_keys username@backup.dreamhost.com:~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Great, we’re done here, no need to type in your pass whenever you want to ssh/rsync/sftp/scp to your server from that machine.

Scheduling and Actual Backup Magic

First, download this automator workflow, what it does:

clears the previous backup log ( /tmp/dh-rsync-backup.txt )
starts the sync process and saves the log to the above file
sends out a growl notification when finished
kills any lost rsync process ( just to be sure)

On the last line you’ll need to:

replace USERNAME by your backup username
replace BACKUPDIRECTORY with the name of the dir you created before

Optionally, you can edit the –exclude rules and directories to backup, remove or add new ones, remember, the directory paths are relative to your home directory, don’t forget to add a ” \ ” before moving down a line and use single quotation marks for paths with spaces( ‘Library\Application Support’ ).

Now go to File > Save As > change the file format from workflow to application, save the “dh-rsync-backup.app” in a safe place, I have it in ~/Documents/Automator Workflows/.

Now, you can manually run that .app whenever you want to start the backup process, but that isn’t practical, so let’s schedule its execution in a nice clean way with iCal.

Add a new Calendar to iCal

Add New Event

Edit Event

Done!

Recover a Backup

rsync -avP USERNAME@backup.dreamhost.com:~/BACKUPDIR /LOCALDIR

Notes

Use this post as inspiration/reference for your own solution.

Here’s a simplified script:

rsync -aP --protocol 29 --delete --force --delete-after --delete-excluded \
 ~ USERNAME@backup.dreamhost.com:~/BACKUPDIR

‘–protocol 29′ is needed to remove the implicit -e parameter used by newer versions of rsync, type rsync on the terminal to check out the other parameters. ( I think –delete and –delete-after creates some redundancy but am not sure, heh )

And other useful posts:

Give your Early 2008 Macbook Pro the 4-Finger Gesture

2008-12-22T11:02:13-08:00

Fingers, four.

[UPDATED for 10.5.8]

It’s quite simple actually, just grab this file (AppleUSBMultitouch.kext), open a terminal window and type this:

sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBMultitouch.kext
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBMultitouch.old

that will backup your current multitouch driver, and next we’re gonna install the new one:

sudo mv ~/Downloads/AppleUSBMultitouch.kext /System/Library/Extensions/

( you can also copy it there using finder )

Final step is to repair permissions, use Disk Utility, select your Macintosh HD and click “repair permissions”, when it’s over reboot and voilà!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Peripheral Extinction

2008-11-19T19:11:04-08:00

The computer mouse may someday become an endangered species. Instead of rolling a mouse around to move a cursor around on the screen, more and more users will gesture with their fingers on touch screens and multi-touch trackpads, analysts say.

Reads an article published today on PhysOrg. The article also states that in the next 5 years we may stop using a computer mouse, and that some may have already abandoned theirs, it mentions Microsoft Surface, Apple iPhone, HP TouchSmart and a couple of other devices, but in my opinion it doesn’t nail it.

trackpad

Something happened when I got my 15″ Early 2008 Macbook Pro in April ‘08, something that also happened to a couple of friends of mine, and my girlfriend, they’re all mac (laptop) users, as I am, and we’ve stopped using a mouse, there’s no need for it.

I’m a mac user for a week now and apart from gaming never felt the need of using a mouse, I think it’s the gestures; 3 finder swipe, 2 finger scroll, rotate and size of the trackpad.

Not an actual quote, more like a sum of what he told me on a couple of sentences, but I think that’s it, that’s what makes the trackpad replace the mouse: size and gestures. Also interesting is the fact that he, as a desktop user, and my girlfriend used to use a mouse at all times, my gf still does at work on her desktop so it’s an even bigger contrast.

I for one had a Tablet before my current Macbook Pro, it was a cool experience in the first months, but then it got old, it was a convertible and as a convertible I missed the physical keyboard a lot, and when in tablet mode using the stylus on the screen wasn’t a good experience, screen needed to be more steady, and the os/applications didn’t have a good pen input support (some, as in lots, didn’t even display the input that brings up the virtual keyboard/Hand Writting Recognition), it’s far more easy to scroll using the 2 finger gesture than touching the scrollbar with your finger or stylus for example, dragging on the other hand was nicer to do using a stylus.

Anyways, nowadays laptop sales surpass desktop sales so we’re having more and more laptop users, more and more trackpads, most of those laptops are running windows (despite mac laptop sales being on fire, +28% since latest refresh compared to the same period of ‘07), and pc laptop designers seem to have not noticed the increasing size of Apple’s laptop trackpads, so, even for models released today, like HP’s TouchSmart TX2Z, feature a tiny trackpad:

above: 13" Late '08 Macbook, below: HP TouchSmart TX2Z

I picked that one because it was released today, but I never saw a windows laptop with a large trackpad, it may exist but it isn’t common at all. Besides size and gestures, there’s something else that’s important for trackpad usability: the dreaded bevel, I don’t know who though it was a good idea to put a bevel around the screen of mobile phones, windows mobile devices, trackpads, lucky us the mobile phone lost it many years ago, the iPhone made the windows mobile manufacturers remove it from their devices( apparently it makes it easier to use your fingers instd. of stylus, who would’ve guessed! btw I know it was introduced to protect the screen from scratches but that was a long time ago ), and now, what will it take for pc laptop designers to remove all those bevelled trackpads, left and right mouse buttons from their designs.

So, having read this, do you also think the mouse will be extinct on the next 5 years? I think not, 5 years it’s a long time span, much can happen, both on the PC side and its many manufacturers plus Microsoft with their MultiTouch-friendly Windows 7 and Apple, I doubt this established standard will be extinguished.

Oh, and one more thing, those of you who believe a Minority Report interface would be cool for everyday use should have a little chat with the Starfire actors, apparently waving your arms all day isn’t something you want to do, and that is also true when it comes to regular touchscreens, same it is to say that direct manipulation devices are destined to fail for everyday use, unless the screen switches place with your keyboard and that would create a whole new batch of problems.

Oh Oh Oh(no it’s not Santa), and one more thing.. aww I forgot while writing that silly ho ho ho joke, heh nevermind =]

Edit: ah! I remembered, it’s another quote from that article:

The demise will be hastened by the move toward 3D environments

Re-he-he-heally?

Book Meme

2008-11-12T05:18:49-08:00

‘The Perspex Pillar’, announced the man, ‘representing the forces of Science and Reason in the Galaxy!’

Grab the nearest book.
Open it to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

RJDJ

2008-11-07T09:03:25-08:00

Click here to view the embedded video.

Give. Would love to try this on the subway, rush hour. Wonder if it would: a) generate a cool sounding racket soundtrack b) make me deaf.

This is the kind of app that has no issue whatsoever being approved on the App Store, wonder why.

One Point Twenty-One (annotated) JigaPixels!

2008-10-21T17:51:13-07:00

And another quickie, shame on me, 9 drafts and I pub a quickie, lol.

Think this project is worth mentioning, haven’t followed MS Research much lately, not sure how old this one is but the article on AppScout’s from 2008/10/20.

Gigapixel Annotations - areas

Gigapixel Annotations

Cool project from Microsoft Research, by Qing Luan and friends.( very little details about this project so it must be really recent )

It basically does what the name implies, it’s a way of annotating Gigapixel images, based on zoom/panning. As the user gets visually near a pre-defined area/hotspot, an annotation is displayed, currently there are 2 types of annotations:

Labels
Media
1. Narration
2. Sound Loop( ambience i.e. street, wild life, etc )

Pretty neat, sound’s very important in human perception and can totally make a difference, try watching this video with no sound:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s not the best example I could remember, but it gets quite boring with no sound.

Same for images, maps. Imagine Google Maps with sound, Street View, it’d be much fancier wouldn’t it? Doesn’t need to be accurate, just something like when viewing a city play a city-esque sound, same for nature, sea, etc, you get the idea.

It’d also be nice to have Fado playing when viewing Lisbon, Serenatas on Coimbra( During Queima i.e. heh ), highly contextualized.

Q: When.

Yahoo OpenID Usability Research

2008-10-10T12:00:20-07:00

Yahoo Developers Network pubbed a research about their openid usability, I just wanna highlight these 2 pages:

user exposure to multiple(13) openid providers

Just silly, they had already to insert the multiple providers, so, why not instead add some logic to that form so that you just need to type in your openid url/email? Code does the rest.

OP & RP collaboration

Agree if we want to have an homogeneous experience.

1 Million Euro Clusterfuck

2008-10-09T20:53:39-07:00

This is a long overdue rant against ViaCTT, a service provided by the ( only ) Portuguese Post Office, CTT, and created by his geniousness Luís Nazaré.

downforeveryoneorjustme result for viactt.pt

That’s the first thing I like about it, requires you to specify the subdomain, common illness.

The Looks

Anyway, Luís( not this one here ) states this is a Million euro project ( infra-structure costs not included ), alrighty, let’s talk about this million euro web service they built, starting with the homepage:

ViaCTT Home

First thing my right side of the brain said was: “eww”, my left side puked afterwards. It’s ugly on the outside(above) and on the inside:

ViaCTT sub-subpar code

Now, remember when I said this was a service provided by the CTT? ( hint hint: ViaCTT ) Then check this out:

CTT Home

Layout’s a bit broken, but humm, it’s a bit radically different from ViaCTT, lord knows why. The insides are all wrong too, my beautiful template, twisted away.

A Step Closer to the Core

Enough about looks, let’s step a bit into the core of this million euro beast, let’s try to login!

ViaCTT Login

What’s this, a virtual keyboard? I’m not gonna demand OpenID or an uber safe login method here, but humm, those virtual keyboards are a pain in the ass, they’re not safe*, and harm user experience, oh and can make something as simple as a login form to require javascript( instd of using it only to improve experience ).

*or: as safe as the OS you’re using, plus, they provide visual( and audio: mouse clicks ) feedback added to the slower input rate, which makes it easier for someone near you to snatch your pass that if you were using your old kbd. Seriously, it’s like these things were designed to teach your password to others.

Anyhoo, equip your battle armor, weapons, brace yourselves ‘cos we’re gonna step a bit further, here’s your dashboard:

ViaCTT UI ClusterFuck

I’m not gonna waste time going through the tabs, but please read the comments on the above image.

THE CORE

Alright, I decided to leave this for last, The Core of ViaCTT, the essence, the ( official ) reason or this aberration to breathe among us( no offense to aberrations throughout the world, lol ).

According to the creator, this service isn’t supposed to provide its users with an email inbox, I wish it was, so I could simply order GMail Pop Fetcher to rescue my bills from ViaCTT inbox.

Luís Nazaré’s description goes something like this:

Via CTT intends to allocate a digital post box to every citizen, where, similar to physical mail, each one can receive and process their bills, invoices, payment warnings and other B2C and A2C records in a single digital inbox, solely addressed by CTT – safe, free, universal and convenient, like no other.

Now, digital post box sounds a bit like email to me, dunno, but maybe I’m going nuts so we better check how ViaCTT actually works.

When an entity you subscribed to has a new bill for you to happily pay, they send it as pdf to ViaCTT addressed to you, ViaCTT notifies you by email that you have a new bill to pay*, you open your email,open viactt, type in your username, click in your password, decipher the icons and click on the unread document title so the server sends you a pdf’ed bill, and afterwards it’s the standard bill paying ritual.

Wouldn’t it be simpler if you just.. oh I dunno, emailed me that pdf? Or if you wish, email it to anyone else in the world so they gain access to the information required to pay my bills, heh.

*or annoy you with useless newsletters, notifications of services not available in your area like it happened to me today.

IMO, the core of the service isn’t that bad, I think it’s handy to have my address serving as a digital ( invisible ) one, I just wished I wasn’t forced to login to viactt so I can download a file.

Something else I’d like to see happen is the complete switch of B2C and A2C to digital medium, only ‘romantic’, impossible to turn digital items would get to my postal address.

Hard to explain.
That’s all folks.

You Have Less Than 17 Hours

2008-10-06T04:39:32-07:00

To take advantage of this promo:

SyncMate 50% off @ MacUpdate ($19.95 , retail $39.95)

Just to let y’all know.

update: speaking of synchronization, the development of OggSync for mobile is stalled, the current beta works well and if you download it and use codes beta12 beta13 up to beta25 I believe, you’ll get access to the pro version for free, been using it for months.

SyncMate: sync your windows mobile device with your mac(files, photos, contacts, music, time, notes, etc)
OggSync: sync your windows mobile device with Google(contacts, calendar)

free advertising…

Narcissistic Good Deeds

2008-09-30T08:47:12-07:00

Quick post!

Today, on a FriendFeed timeline near me, this popped up ( you can pop it up too by click clicking it, it’s much more readable I assure thee, lol ):

Akoha @ FriendFeed

As I write that event occurred like 14 minutes ago, but it’s destined to popup on my twhirl for the rest of the day with likes and comments, wtv, that’s not the point.

Thing is, I find this service.. good, but funny at the same time. To sum it up, you buy cards/decks, and each card represents an activity like offer a drink/coffee/beer/some nice gesture, the card holder passes the card to the person to whom he offers the coffee, that person inserts the card unique code on the Akoha website et voilà, the person who bought the card gets Karma points, so that no random old lady rams into him and making him loose the prized lottery ticket.

What I find funny is the fact that hundreds(?) of people will make good deeds, if you can call ‘em that, maybe because of a website told them to and offers them points for every deed.

Am I the only one to whom this reminds of those games you do with kids so that they do their homework? “do it and you get a candy.. or wtv”, just a thought, I’m not wasting monay on a service that tells me how many good deeds I’ve done so far.

Nice service though, if that’s what it takes..

Ah yes, btw: It’s Snowing on Mars.

Caminhos de Ferro Loophole

2008-09-28T05:37:37-07:00

Heh, esta descobri hoje com a senhora Filipa, ao tentar comprar um bilhete de Santa Apolónia para Santarém e usar desconto Cartão Jovem descobrimos que tal não é possível devido ao percurso ser inferior a 90km ou algo do género, ora, tendo em conta que o custo do bilhete é de €9 e o desconto de 20%, que tal experimentar aumentar um pouco a distância, por exemplo para o Entroncamento e ver o que dá?

Santa Apolónia - Entroncamento com desconto C.Jovem

Yep, distância maior, preço menor, we win.

Presidential Body Language

2008-09-27T16:48:17-07:00

Just a quick post, while reading through my feeds I found this pair of images:

Obama pwning McCain

and

Obama pwning Hillary

I, for one, hate the american politics, but anyways, the post was entitled “Obama 1 – 0 McCain“, I didn’t even read it, judging by the title and 1st photo I thought it was about something Obama had said, but having read “The Definitive Book of Body Language” by Allan and Barbara Pease ( very, very fine read ), I was completely ‘wowed’ by those images, such a strong body language of superiority and control over the other person, absolute pwnage, reminded me of a couple of pics I saw of G.W. Bush and T. Blair in the book.

As I said, I don’t like it, I find it unethical the amount of marketing around these politicians, manipulating voters, but it’s interesting to observe this.

Ka-POW!

2008-09-26T11:24:05-07:00

Ah yes, brand-spanking new blag, out with the old in with the new.

To sum it up: got really really tired of my old (100% hand-coded, authored by me with enough bells and whistles)theme, so, I dumped the whole blog (content now lives in an abandoned db, maybe I’ll set up an archive blog) and created a new one. New url (should’ve used this one from the beggining), new theme based on Sandbox (*sigh* :BASED: I did alter stuff around and dumped their css completely, ah well).

Oh boy, previous paragraph’s like the invasion of parenthesis haha. Anyway: thinking of creating a color.php to output dynamic css, like random color schemes ‘cos black’s a bit… dark.

Ah well, here we go again! Down-to-earth guy posting his rants/thoughts/ideas/useful info about web and mobility.