Yo, autocomplete.

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Arthur

One of my biggest pet peeves is ‘AutoComplete’: the functionality of a text box to suggest (and complete) previously entered data. I’ve seen many bad implementations and the one fresh out of memory I can remember is Opera’s URL box, which I’ve mentioned a many times.

For RoundAbout, I implemented the AutoComplete in the ‘MailProperties’ box (see image above and video right here): The code can be found around this url, look for the method Memo3KeyUp). If I look at the code now (and to be honest, I’m hardly a Delphi programmer these days), I have no idea what I was doing: I recall that in some conditions the Autocomplete should stop doing its thing most notably when the user uses the navigational keys. Additionally, the partial matching was troublesome at one time also. What surprised me most was that everything could be implemented in one event (The KeyUP event of that particular memo box). Messy.

Eventually, I grew up and when there was a request to make an autocompleting editable combobox, I was smart enough to clean up the code and section it off in several methods (KeyUp/KeyDown and OnChange). This code end up living in its own component (PMComboBox): the code is so clean that I’m certain you should be able to take this code and rewrite it in other Windows-based programming languages.

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So Central Rain

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Arthur

Eearlier this month, REM announced that they were breaking up. That is: after being over 30 years in the music industry, the three band members decided that:

“Working through our music and memories from over three decades was a hell of a journey. We realized that these songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years of our working together”

Today’s ‘Past The Bridge’ entry, (musically) encompasses the band’s earlier years perfectly: So. Central Rain (35+ seconds). I refrained from using their more popular works as I believe that everything went downhill after their ‘Out of Time’ LP/CD. Sure, ‘Everybody hurts’ sounds pretty and ‘consumable’ but it’s over-engineered and over-done. Compare that to their earlier works, were Stipe’s lyrics, superimposed on the band’s simple chord structure, created songs people still don’t understand today. That is the brilliance and timelessness of ‘So Central Rain’ and for that matter, all songs on their album “Reckoning”.

I ran into REM during Stipe’s infamous contribution to KRS-One’s HEAL project (earlier) and KRS-One’s contribution to REM’s “Radio Song” (YouTube, another brilliant song). This was in a time where the band slowly started to become the focus of attention, which skyrocketed after their ‘Automatic’ CD. The rest is fairly history: I lost interest and found other music I cared for. In my opinion, REM never recovered their artistic skills after ‘Automatic’. Maybe that’s the curse of commercialization. Maybe not. Who cares.

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Out and In

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Arthur

A glorious moment: Today I’m finally retiring my 2004/2005 Centrino laptop: it was initially my work laptop in a previous work life and was eventually passed on to me with the permission of management of said employer. It has served as my main Ubuntu laptop since 2008: as I didn’t have the official permission to carry the laptop’s OS, it made only sense to install Ubuntu on it. I recall, that at that time I had to do some manual stuff to get, for example, the wireless working.

Laptop 2 is another pass-me-down, but obviously a lot more powerful than the Centrino/512MB laptop I’m retiring. I expect this to last me for at least a couple of years, with the traditional host of Ubuntu upgrades. Once again, I refuse to run Unity on this thing: however, I might consider running Gnome 3 on this as I believe the Nvidia 8400 should be able to handle this.

For now.

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911 and Fall

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Arthur

Exactly a week ago, it was the 10th anniversary of 9-11: it looks like the (re)construction at the former Ground Zero has made substantial progress. To be honest, I’ve never followed the progress on the 9/11 memorial (official site) but personally, I like the idea of the water falls. The last week, we had our share of remembrances and that: I wasn’t planning to elaborate on my personal thoughts. Here, have a link to the Archive’s excellent TV News archive (link).

We had our first frost warnings of the years, which means that most likely Fall will be short. One of our maple trees got really hit during the last storm (Irene). Strange enough: I believe we went thru the worst part of hurricane season. That is, the last hurricane I’ve heard of was Maria (CBC news) which only hit Newfoundland earlier this week.

And last but not least, a pet peeve. Now that I’m using a tablet (Android based) I noticed that a lot of companies have mobile variants of their websites: By default it’s these mobile variants that are shown. I find this irritating, particularly knowing that most of the mobile browsers have no problems showing a full website.

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Irene

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Arthur

By now you have read about hurricane Irene: For a change it made landfall in the US and it’s expected to hit mainland Canada (via Quebec) later this night. Canada’s Weatheroffice has it’s expected path plotted on this page, where you can also see that they’ve started tracking hurricane Jose. Obviously, it’s tracking a more eastern path.

Irene is full-up mentioned in the news, particularly by US outlets, where the lower parts of several states are under flooding watch: the main gist is that it could have been worse: the current death count stands at 19. The expectation is that the situation here in Canada will be less severe: In NB, NB Power currently reports at or around 10,000.

Around here I’ve only noticed the casual strong/torrential rains. Additionally, the humidity has gone up, which is generally another sign of a tropical storm passing by. I don’t expect the power to go off, but hey, hurricanes are unpredictable: stay inside and most important of all, have a good sleep.

Update: Pretty images from the Space station (link)

Aug 30th, 2011: Aftermath in Canada (CBC)

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Triple A

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Arthur

You have probably read about the downgrading of the US credit rating by S&P late (last) Friday night (news). The SF Gate duly notes that:

Standard & Poor’s historic downgrade of the U.S. credit rating caused the capital to erupt Saturday in the exact partisan clashes that S&P had said led to its decision in the first place.

China, yesterday, lashed out at the US’s ‘addiction to debt’ (via The Telegraph):

The US government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone

Surprisingly, as the world’s largest producer of goods, China’s own credit rating is ‘A+’ (per 2008), which is lower than the US’s (a quick view PDF).

While some of the media predict that the markets are going down crashing this Monday, Internet experts and commentators are mixed about the actual meaning of this downgrade. At Metafilter (discussion) the general consensus is that this is a plain and simple politics game by the S&P with the goal of shirking responsibility for the mortgage crisis 3 years or so ago. Interesting point of view: however, there’s no doubt that Republicans are trying to tie this rating to the Obama presidency (via Reddit), which brings this posting a bit full circle as the Republicans deserve as much blame on the US’s debt issues. The Bush tax cuts for the rich (2 trillion). Two wars financed on what exactly (1 trillion). The mortgage crash and the super bailouts that happened before Obama’s presidency started.

In politics, the golden rule is to stick the negative news to the incumbents: in that light, 2012 is going to be an interesting election year for the US.

Updates: Reddit discussion about the mainstream media (supposedly) ignoring that S&P is blaming the Republicans for the downgrade.

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Boardwalk

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Arthur

Over a week ago, Norway was rocked by twin terror attacks that killed 77 people, most of them youngster attending a Labour Youth Summer camp on an island called Utoya. The BBC has an excellent recap of the events that happened (timeline, photos of victims, in Norsk) that day. A day after the events, the world found out that the suspect was a Christian Norwegian who got his inspiration from the typical right-wing commentators that occupy this very Internet. Obviously, regardless of you religious conviction, an act of terror is still called terrorism.

Yesterday, Obama announced that a debt-deal was made between the two parties (Democrats and Republican): the deal will now be sent back to both Congresses (link to BBC). The deal was a result of (an apparent) 2 weeks hard negotiating between the two parties and president: generally, it looks like the Democrats lost again (Krugman NYT). Obama seems to be the center of the blame, but not jumping into this crisis last year. However, I believe all this cajoling started when the Democrats lost the House of Representatives last year. Obama ultimately deserves blame for not actively engaging himself in the midterm elections of 2010. I don’t think Obama’s presidency is the worst presidency in the world (as others have claimed): however, this appears to be a White House that is running after the facts.

Remember that there’s a civil war ongoing in Libya and that NATO is helping the rebels by bombing, uh, targets? That was how long ago? Seven or so months ago? Well, it looks like the war’s not going well for the rebels (UK’s Independent reports) as it looks like they have been conceding more ground than expected and that Khadafi is not going to be away for a long long time. This smells like an ugly quagmire.

Aug 6th, 2011: WSJ’s 2010 article sounds preposterous, claiming that the Democrat’s loss of Congress may have been an intentional move of Obama (link)

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Hibuscus and other tales

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Arthur

We bought a hibiscus (Wikipedia) the other day at the local Sobeys. They had them in assorted colours, but we opted to go for red. Again. We used to have one before when we were living in Nova Scotia and let me tell you: this is the only houseplant I’ve ever known that is so picky that you want to yell at it. However, for some reason, that makes us more persistent to get the one we bought growing as it is supposed to be. Mind the dead leaves and flowers it dropped on the carpet. Yes, I almost forgot it does that too.

I’ve slowly picked up the ‘Chronicles of Thomas Covenant’ (Wikipedia): I’ve read these before when I was a young kid and just 5 years ago, I bought the first 3 books of the series. However, SF chronicles tire me out. Not as much as George W. Bush’s “Decision Point”, tho.

Now that I got an Android Tablet (earlier), I find I spend my time more using the Tablet than my Windows PC. Interestingly, this has also resulted in me using my Linux laptop more than usual: this laptop now functions as a buffer between the Tablet and my multimedia collection (books, video and audio files). On the Tablet I use ‘ES Explorer’ (marketplace) to copy files forth and back (via SAMBA, no less). I managed to get the Tablet connected to the Linux laptop also, via the direct/USB cable: However, WIFI is so easy.

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Review: Acer Iconia Tablet A500

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Arthur

I read an article that discussed the latest statistics on wordwide tablet use. Its conclusion was that the Apple IPad is still reigning supreme: that is, even after this season’s release storm of Android-based tablets (Acer, Asus, Motorola) and others (like Blackberry’s Playbook and HP’s Touchpad).

So, 4 or 5 weeks ago, I decided to jump in the tablet market and got an Iconia Tablet myself, only a couple of weeks after my wife decided to get one. There was no doubt in my mind to go for an Android tablet. First of all, a Windows tablet (at the current stage) makes no sense: Windows 7 is just not ready for ‘touch devices’. Secondly, while I admit Apple makes excellent devices, I’m not so much happy with the way how the company has locked down the iPad (and IPhone/Ipod for that matter).

So is Android tablet-ready? From the use I got out of the Iconia, I’d say yes. The Iconia is easy to use and comes with plenty of apps available on the Android Marketplace: while most of the apps aren’t ready yet for tablet use, the Android marketplace feels more mature than people say it is. The device itself suffers from design issues tho: while the metal back makes the tablet look sturdy, the seams (between metal and plastic) feel flaky. There are other parts (mostly the plastic) that make the device look cheaply produced: the Micro SD slot is one of them. The same is true for some of the slots on the sides: While the full-size USB and mini-hdmi slots look fairly solid, the proprietary mini USB slot (for synching data) looks like it could break anytime.

Note that I’ve hardly used the mini-USB slot: Android devices are properly detected as external drives on Linux and Windows. You can literally copy files over Windows sharing (nee Samba) using any of the (free) Explorer apps available on the Android market. This brings me to some of the included software: the quality of the Google applications is perfect. Google mail applications (Gmail and regular mail) are excellent and so are some of the niche tools, like Maps and Latitude. The Webkit based browser (which reminds of Chrome but is definitely NOT Chrome) is good but not stable: While Flash is supported, I can imagine why Steve Jobs does not like it. Light Flash apps work good: don’t expect to be able to run the average Facebook app. Most Flash apps are not even ‘touch ready’ yet. Video play works as promised and some of the typical (included) Tegra games show promising graphics. To be honest, I didn’t buy the tablet for playing games. I’m also not sure if there’s a future for Android games, but I might be wrong.

So, the question is ‘should you get an Android tablet or IPad?’. This is literally up to how you plan to use it. While the Ipad has a lower resolution it has definitely that ‘designed’ feeling, which this Iconia has not. However, it’s open: if you ever hated itunes and Apple’s closed up platform, you’ll enjoy using this tablet. Downloading zip files (right on your tablet) from the Internet or your other computers and then copying them to your tablet’s music folder is magic. It works perfect and flawless and you just can’t do this on your Ipad.

Maybe the right question is ‘do you really need a tablet device’. Lets say it this way: if you wanted to buy yourself a netbook, you may just as well consider getting a tablet. Android or Apple: that is just a personal choice or flavour.

Continue reading →

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Chess

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Arthur

I used to play chess in school competitions, from age 9 or 10-ish to (effectively) 19. I was fairly good: At one time, I ended up in the finals (after a mind-blowing 100% winning streak) where I gave up a winning game after I found out I was going to miss the train back home (earlier on xsamplex, 3 years ago). Anyhow: before computing became big, I ended up buying two chess “computers”: one was a TravelMate (Saitek?) and the second one was the Scisys Turbo 16K (“endorsed by Gary Gasparov”).

Why do I mention all of this? I just saw ‘Bobby Fisher against the world”, a documentary about the tragic life of chess grandmaster and world champion, Bobby Fisher. I followed the 1992 Spassky rematch and from what I recall, it was indeed a match that should have never been played. While a lot of people of my generation had Fisher as their primary chess champion, my personal favourite chess player was Garry Kasparov. I don’t agree with Kasparov’s political aspirations, but as a chess player he promoted aggressive and solid gameplay without the theatrics and antics of his predecessors.

I still do play chess so once in a while, mostly against the computer using any of the current known free chess engines: It’s amazing how the technology to write chess computers has advanced into the current state. No, let me rephrase that: with the current technology’s pace, chess engines have become so good, that they can outplay and outrank grandmasters. This is an amazing feat. Whether that’s good or not, I’ll leave to the current generation of chess grandmasters.

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Flora and fauna

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Arthur

If I eliminated statistical weather data, I would say that this year’s weather is going to beat all records. First we had too much snow. When March came, we slowly went to wet weather. Which is about the same weather we have right now, and it’s the end of June. Not that it’s cold: it just appears that it has been raining now every weekend. Obviously, this is good for the grass and the weeds. As for the birds and other animals: besides the groundhog around the property, I highly doubt they love this weather.

I read that Canadian geese are not welcome in some parts of Canada. The NB town of Nackawic (Google maps) has applied for permits to cull some of these birds. According to CBC, there’s even a Facebook page dedicated to these geese. Apparently.

One of the first things that came to my mind when I came to SJ was that it was an ‘artsy city’. On top of that, I thought there were too many derelict buildings around. Take for example the former Kings Square Cinema theatre: It must have been empty for ages now. Last year, it looked like someone was doing some construction to the front and facade, but, today, the building looks like it needs to be demolished. Hopefully that will be soon.

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Books

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Arthur

I briefly mentioned this in the previous posting that I bought myself an Android tablet, which review is pending… I hope. Thanks to this tablet, I’ve actually re-kindled (no really, considering I use the Android Kindle app) my love for reading books. I think the current score of books I finish in a week is four.

This reminds me when I was younger and introduced to the library by parents and siblings: I (and my twin sibling) literally swallowed (or ate so you will) books and eventually we were reminded by others what the point was visit to the (local) library branch on a daily basis. This amused our parents who laughed about this and mockingly called the library our ‘second home’.

There are couple of ‘library events’ that stand firmly in the back of my mind: the first one was the day we as (children) decided to try to walk out with books that were marked as ‘more adult’ (age 12 and higher). We were bored to tears reading the kids books but the librarian on duty caught us red-handed.

The second event was our entrance in the city’s Central Library: it was so large, and there were so many books to pick from. I mostly read a mix of SF/Fantasy, Thrillers and literature: compared to the little local library, the Central Library was a place in heaven, with places to roam about and quietly sit down.

I might add, that this Central Library had plenty of programming books around and (unsurprisingly) would fuel our search for programming subjects.

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Predictions

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Arthur

Now that we know the Rapture has been delayed to September (previously at xsamplex), we nw have a couple of months to make sure that things are running as smooth as they used to be. Like make US Politics the laughing stock around the world: to be honest, I laughed when I heard Thatcher snubbed ms. Palin. Reportedly one of her aides said the following:

Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.

You wouldn’t say so?

Earlier this month, Saint John’s Sea Dogs won the (Junior) Memorial Cup, which is a kinda big deal in Canada. The city organized a parade for the winning team, from Kings Square right down to Market Square. I was there also, shooting pictures (my set). I’m not a fan of hockey or something: I was surprised to see a lot of people lining up to catch a glimp of the hockey team. Only in Canada these kind of events go by without any incident, that is, unless you’re talking about those funny blue guys running down the street before the parade started.

As you’ve noticed, I’ve not been writing much the last couple of weeks: this is mainly due to the obligations around the house (yes, it’s fairly sunny these days). Additionally, I found out that I prefer to browse around on my tablet, which is unfortunately less keyboard-inclined than the laptops that are laying around. On the good side, soon it will be time to write a review of this tablet. Soon-ish.

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