Cubic Reality » Blog

Postbox email client and static browser

Marko — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:45:20 +0000

I found (through Lifehacker) a program called Postbox. It’s an email client based on Thunderbird.

Until now I’ve been using Opera as my email client. I have used Thunderbird a lot but had to give it up because it kept asking for email passwords (very annoying!!!) even though I clicked on the remember button. For a while now, I’ve been using Opera as an email client and a “static” browser. By static browser I mean a web browser that lives in system tray and which I can show/hide with one keyboard button (Caps Lock in my case). That browser is used for quick access to sites like Google Reader and other regular sites I visit.

Few weeks ago I switched (due to compatibility issues) to Firefox based “static” browser. Basically I made my own Firefox edition called FirefoxPIM. It lives in system tray (thanks to TrayIt), and shows/hides with one keyboard button (thanks to AutoHotkey). Here’s how it looks:

So, now I’m trying Postbox as my email client instead of Opera. As it’s based on Thunderbird, it most likely has that same bug that made me switch client in the first place. However, it is very nice package and I absolutely love the UI. Also it has very nice indexing/search features. So until if/when that password bug appears and/or when it drives me nuts, I’ll be using this program as my email client.

Postbox
http://www.postbox-inc.com/

Wolfram Alpha is a calculator not a search engine

Marko — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:28:05 +0000

I’m sure many of you have heard about Wolfram Alpha. It was quite hyped before it’s launch which was last Friday. I think many people are confused about what it actually is. Usually it’s compared with Google which doesn’t make any sense because they are two completely different things. Google is a search engine and Wolfram Alpha is like an advanced calculator. Basically what it does is, it uses existing data and presents it and modifies it to your needs. For example, time zone or currency conversions etc. The cool thing about it is, it doesn’t just settle for a single answer, instead it offers extra information like graphs and other useful facts.

I really like it and found it very useful, although there are still some issues left. Biggest issue is the input interpreter which doesn’t understand everything. You need to learn a kind of language in order to make successful queries. Also in some cases even though you try any possible combination, it just won’t connect the dots. But it’s a new product and hopefully will continue to evolve.

I highly recommend checking it out. Looking through the examples helps a lot in getting started.

Wolfram|Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com

Using Windows 7 RC

Marko — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:15:15 +0000

I’m sure most of you have heard about the Windows 7 RC release this week. I’ve heard a lot good things about Windows 7 so I though I’d install it on my laptop. The laptop came with Vista Home Premium which I switched to XP Pro because Vista had too much bugs and issues. At one point I had Ubuntu 8.10 installed but had to give it up because hibernation didn’t work properly.

Now Windows 7 is installed and I’m loving it. It works very well and is nice and slick to use. I’ve had no problems with it so far, except for the fact that Zone Alarm firewall doesn’t work in it (yet). There is also the Virtual XP mode which works nicely. Also I like the new task bar (or Super Bar as it’s called). Only problem is when trying to pin files in it. You need to use shortcuts to make it work properly.

I’m using the 64bit version and installed it from USB drive. Here’s good instructions how to do that. If you do the install from 32bit Windows (like I was), in step 6 you need to use bootsect from 32bit ISO because the 64bit version doesn’t work. If you don’t want to download the 32bit ISO (2.6GB), you can also find the 32bit bootsect.exe from google or you can use other 3rd party tool that do the same thing.

Windows 7 RC is available for anyone interested. The license is working until March 2010. After that Windows will reboot itself every two hours. In June 2010, it will switch into non-genuine mode (black wallpaper and constant nag screens).

Windows 7 RC
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Linux HTPC in use

admin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:31:00 +0000

So I’ve been using Linux in my HTPC for 2 months now. All I can say is, I love it. Some features aren’t as pleasant to use as they were in GB-PVR, but overall the experience is nice. New functionality that I really like is having a separate workspace that I can access through VNC.

I ended up using Ubuntu server edition as the base. The main front-end is MMS (My Media System). TV side get’s handled with VDR and Xineliboutput-plugin. All and all the system is very stable and solid. There were some issues with the video quality, mainly due to deinterlacing. That issue got solved after 2 weeks of trial and error. Now the video is perfectly smooth and fluid.

Switching to Firefox 3

admin — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:02:00 +0000

So, I switched to Firefox 3 RC 1. From the tests I’ve done it seems stable enough. In fact, it’s more stable than Firefox 2 which keeps crashing quite often. There were few add-ons that didn’t work right out of the box. Some did have a working development version available, others needed manual tweaking.

Open Firefox add-on (.xpi file) in 7-zip (or similar).
Select install.rdf file.
Press F4 or click File–>Edit
Change the value in em:maxVersion to 3.0.
Save and Close.
Click OK to update the XPI file. Close 7-zip.
Double click to install the add-on.
Hope that everything works fine.

Obviously this doesn’t work for all add-ons since only the maximum Firefox version number is changed. But if there isn’t a working version available, it’s worth a try.

Hacking Wiimote

admin — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:03:00 +0000

Here’s a nice presentation from Johnny Lee. You might have seen his previous video about head tracking in YouTube. I really like this type of 3D technique and look forward in trying it myself. I don’t have Wii remote but I do have a cheap hacked IR webcam which can be used instead. I think this might be the only 3D technique that could hit big in the games market.

“SVN is the most pointless project ever started”

admin — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:45:00 +0000

I just watched this interesting video. Linus Torvalds talks about Git. I’ve heard about Git before but never used it nor read about it in detail. Git is a version control system like CVS and SVN. Although I guess I shouldn’t mention those two in same sentence as Git since Linus hates CVS with a passion. Currently I’m using SVN to handle versions and I’ve been happy with it so far. But Git did sound interesting so I’ll have to try it out.

Git – Fast Version Control System
http://git.or.cz/

Switching to Linux based HTPC

admin — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:47:00 +0000

What would I do without my HTPC. I have had a computer hooked to my TV for the past 10 years. At first, I mainly used it as a DVD player. Now it’s the only source of video. Last year the analog TV signal stopped here in Finland. Ever since then, the HTPC has been the only way I can watch TV since I don’t have a set-top box nor a TV that can receive digital signal. Because I’m really addicted to TV, starting a project like this wasn’t something I was looking forward as it meant I couldn’t get my daily dosage.

Anyway, last weekend I made the decision to try Linux as a base for HTPC. I’m not that experienced with Linux so there was lot to learn. At the moment I’m using Ubuntu but might switch to Debian later. First thing I did was to install SSH server and Synergy. That way I could use my work system to work with Linux.

I have Hauppauge HRV-1100 DVB-T card and it worked right out of the box in Ubuntu (7.10). My motherboard has Nvidia’s SoundStorm in it which I got to work by following these instructions. I tried MythTV at first but quickly moved to VDR. I think it’s really the only choice if you are looking for a serious DVR solution. It handles transponders properly which means one can watch and record many channels (from a transponder) at the same time with one card. Setting VDR up can be little tricky but once you get to know with it, it’s pretty simple. At first I was using packages from e-tobi by following these directions. But since I had some troubles with few plugins, I now compile everything myself.

All was looking good and things were moving along nicely… until!

After days of tweaking I was getting nice and solid picture. However, there was some still unknown issue that made VDR (vdr-sxfe to be precise) respond slowly when used in TV. In monitor it worked fine. I tried pretty much all different combination of settings to make it work. No luck. I also tried different graphics cards which ended in disaster. Being stupid and careless I didn’t shutdown the power supply when I removed one card. I’ve never had any problems when doing so but this time I had to turn the card in an angle which short circuited few pins and that fried the motherboard.

So, now I’m waiting for a replacement motherboard. In the meanwhile I’m using an old board with Duron 800MHz processor. On a brighter note, this gave me the opportunity to clean the case. It was filled with dust and cat hair.

CatchColor

admin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:54:00 +0000

Here’s a nice little app that let’s you pick color from the screen. It’s very useful when creating web pages. The author also has other nice little apps.

CatchColor
http://www.dr-hoiby.com/CatchColor/index.php

Robot dog

admin — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:01:00 +0000

Just found this video from Boing Boing. It’s a video showing a quadruped robot with an amazing balancing skill. I’ve seen this robot before but this new video just blew my mind.

More Info about the robot
http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog

No more Vista!

admin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:51:00 +0000

About month ago I bought a new laptop, Acer 5520. It came with Vista Home Premium and I’ve been using it until last weekend I finally had enough. All and all the Vista experience was negative. I had lot’s of issues with the wireless connection and usually after resuming from hibernation, Vista was not able to find web site addresses anymore (tweaked a lot with DNS settings but there was no fix). The most serious issues had to do with power management. Sometimes the laptop wouldn’t shutdown when powering off or hibernating, only choice was to cut the power by force. Putting the laptop to sleep ended in blue screen of death.

There really wasn’t any reason I could think of why I should use Vista instead of XP. Only difference (in my needs) is that Vista looks “better”. Other than that there isn’t anything new, just more heavier OS. So now I’m using XP and everything works like a charm. I am however tempted to try Linux and after I read an interesting article from lifehacker, I might just do that.

Windows XP drivers for Acer 5520
http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/AcerDrivers/Aspire%205520.pdf

Run Windows apps seamlessly inside linux
http://lifehacker.com/367714/run-windows-apps-seamlessly-inside-linux

New Blog is open!

admin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:13:00 +0000

So here it is, new blog. I though I’d open new blog outside cubicreality.com. Every once in a while, I come across with some "interesting" information that might be worth sharing or just archived for my own use. That’s the motivation for this blog.

Anyway, I’ll still have to tweak these graphics a bit but you’ll get an idea on how it will look.

Update 9.5.2009
This was posted in Blogger blog. Those posts were imported to this site.

FeedDemon is now free

admin — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:23:44 +0000

Until now, I’ve used FireFox addon called NewsFox. It’s been working fine but I would like to have a separate reader program. Today I noticed that FeedDemon is no longer shareware but freeware. I installed it and it seems to be quite powerful RSS reader, so I’m going to use it from now on. If you are looking for a desktop RSS reader, I highly suggest trying this one. It handles enclosures pretty well so it’s good for podcasts also.

FeedDemon
http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx

NewsFox – FireFox addon
http://newsfox.mozdev.org/

WLW beta 3 and spell checking

admin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:39:18 +0000

After I installed the Windows Live Writer beta 3, I noticed that the spell checker didn’t work anymore. The reason was the fact that WLW was localized to Finland. However I only write English text so I’ll need the English dictionary. Hopefully the WLW team will let users to choose the spell check language directly from the WLW in the future.

Currently you can fix this issue by changing the loc file. That file seems to only have a ISO 639-1 language code (codes here). By changing the code to en, WLW enables the spell checker.

Default loc file path is:
C:Program FilesWindows LiveWriterloc

Thunderbird, calendar and google.

admin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:04:49 +0000

I’ve used the Lightning addon for Thunderbird as my calendar for a year or so. Today I was browsing Lifehacker and found out that you can use the Google Calendar from Thunderbird. Lightning supports iCal which is also offered from Google Calendar, so it’s possible to import calendars to Thunderbird. However, it’s read only. If you create/edit events in Thunderbird, they won’t show in Google Calendar.
Fortunately there is a way to get around this limitation. There’s a Thunderbird addon that will let you to handle the calendar in both ways.

I’m thinking that I’ll replace the current forum calendar with a Google Calendar. It’s a lot more user friendly and more feature rich.

Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

Lightning
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/

Provider for Google Calendar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631

New versions (WLW and FileZilla)

admin — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 04:21:14 +0000

I’m here listening to Daily GizWiz episodes and thought to test the new version of Windows Live Writer. The newest build is Beta 3, released 5.9.07. It’s much more stable than Beta 2 and also the installation process went a lot smoother this time. There’s few new features and it work’s now in 28 different languages.
WLW is the one and only Microsoft application that I really like. The usability factor is really good. If you are a blogger I highly suggest to try this app.

Windows Live Writer
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

Another new version I’m using is FileZilla 3.0 I’ve used the 2.x version for a long time and just last week noticed that 3.0 version is out. FileZilla is a FTP client and as far as I know, it’s the best freeware client. The 3.0 version now support drag’n'drop to other programs like CubicExplorer. That’s the one feature I was missing in the older version. Now there’s only one minor feature I’m missing. It’s an option to copy the http address of a file to clipboard.

FileZilla
http://filezilla-project.org/

DBDesigner 4

admin — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:00:16 +0000

I’m currently designing a database (MySQL) for the new version/bug/task tracking system. For that task I’m using DBDesigner 4. It’s a free open source application designed to visually build databases. And it’s written in Delphi . To bad I don’t have Delphi 7 installed, otherwise I could have fixed few "design flaws" in it. I’ve used it for few days and have had no problems with it, except for a small annoyance in the table editor.

DBDesigner is now part of the official MySQL tools and it goes by the name of MySQL Workbench. I haven’t yet tested it so can’t say how it works. It still seems to be in Alpha stage (???).

Anyway, here’s how my database look at the moment:

ASSEMBLY 2007

admin — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:33:06 +0000

Well, it’s that time of the year again. For those who don’t know, ASSEMBLY is a computer festival, a demo party and a LAN party all rolled into one. It is four day party running 24h/day for computer hobbyists. Almost 5000 like minded people around the world come together here in Helsinki Finland. I never have been in ASSEMBLY myself but I’ve watched AssemblyTV from web many years. For me it’s a time to lay back, have few beers and do some fun coding.

If you are interested, you can watch AssemblyTV 24/7 (2.8 – 5.8.07). Read more here:
http://assemblytv.net/2007/stream-en

Here’s more info about ASSEBLY:
http://www.assembly.org/

Secure Login for FireFox

admin — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:48:44 +0000

Secure Login is a FireFox extension that adds similar functionality as Opera’s Wand has. Basically by clicking on the "key button" (or using keyboard shortcut), Secure Login fills the login fields with the saved password data and logs you in. There were some news last week about a "hole" in FireFox that let’s malicious sites to steal saved passwords (read more here). Secure Login "fixes" that issue by not filling the login field until the user tells it to do so.

Secure Login
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4429

found via Lifehacker

Using version control system

admin — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:30:51 +0000

I finally took version control system in use for CubicExplorer. I chose SVN. Currently I’m using local repository but will move it to a server once I have the time and energy to build a new case for the hardware. I’ve been using this thing for a week now and it’s really nice. Currently CE has over 100 files in it’s source so it started to be a bit hard to handle. The biggest thing I like it is the log. Now I can write note on every bug fix or other change, which means there will be change logs for releases

I used to use a simple folder tree to handle different versions. Every once in a while I took copy of CE’s source folder and started to work in that new folder. I also had all the files in one folder so it was quite a mess. I decided to change the folder structure a bit so that source files and .dcu files are in their own sub-folders. It’s much cleaner now.

I’m using TortoiseSVN to do everything. It supports local repositories so there’s no need to use svnserve or Apache. Also I’m using a simple add-in for Delphi that adds menu with common TortoiseSVN commands.

TortoiseSVN
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Delphi add-in for TortoiseSVN
http://delphiaddinfortortoisesvn.tigris.org/