| Calling someone with more time than me: AccuWeather Android widget? |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|11:13 pm] |
Jeff Sharkey has made a nice weather widget for Android 1.5 (source here), but unfortunately it uses the US National Weather Service, who don't have forecast data for the UK, so the widget won't do anything with a UK location (although they do have current conditions). If there are any bored Android hackers out there, this would be a nice project, for someone who has more copious free time than me… here's the widget's XML parser, and here's some UK forecast XML from AccuWeather.com who cover .uk, .us, .ca (they publish this data for ForecastFox, and here's what their location search looks like). Doesn't look too hard. You'd need to get permission from AccuWeather, but they said yes to ForecastFox and this would be much the same thing (a free weather forecast, and clicking on it takes you to their site).
Edit: Someone had a better idea: use Google's weather feed (the one they use for iGoogle and Calendar). |
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| Stinging wildlife of Normality, part 2 in a series of, please, no more than 2? |
[Apr. 29th, 2009|09:34 am] |
or, Fright of the Bumblebee (see Wasp of Doom for the thrilling first part)
 This lost creature has been lurking in my bathroom since some time yesterday evening. It made its presence known shortly after Susan had got into the bath, which was fun. For the rest of the evening it bumbled around, perching near any lights that were warm, before going to sleep on the bathroom curtain. I left the door closed and window open overnight, hoping it would go away at sunrise, but instead it went into hiding, only to reappear suddenly in the sink while I was shaving. When I took this photo it was scrabbling around in the bath. I'm really hoping it decides to leave soon; options otherwise are limited (pint glass + card + release at far end of garden; failing that, vacuum cleaner). Edit: fortunately for all concerned, catch-and-release worked. :-) |
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| Sponsored singing this weekend |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|11:15 am] |
This weekend, I'll be taking part in Cambridge University Gilbert & Sullivan Society's sponsored 24-hour sing-through of all 13 G&S operettas. The event is part of Cambridge RAG; here's the list of charities.
If you'd like to sponsor me, just email me with an amount and stating whether it's a total or an amount per operetta completed (I've no idea how many I'll manage; it could be anywhere between 3 and 13). I'll email the sponsors with the results on Monday. |
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| My take on the G20 police fiasco |
[Apr. 8th, 2009|11:41 pm] |
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| Headphone recommendations please, again |
[Mar. 27th, 2009|12:38 am] |
Offices are noisy; I work better without a constant background of speech; the off-again-on-again plan to make the office less noisy is off-again for the forseeable future. Wearing headphones for most of the day is an obvious possible answer, but the ones I bought after pondering in June aren't comfortable enough for that much use. I'm looking for circumaural closed-back headphones, and the Sennheiser HD280 has been recommended. Best price delivered seems to be about £80, which is OK if they're as good as people say and will last. I'm no audiophile (and may well continue to listen over A2DP for the ability to get up from my desk without unplugging anything) but I do want something comfortable which will isolate outside noise (or cancel it, but I've not tried that and don't know how well it works). I do need to minimise the leakage of my own music, hence closed-back. Compactness is not an issue, and they must go around my ears, not squish them. The HD280 looks good, so two questions: firstly, where can I try these out? (Clive, I think you mentioned somewhere, but my brain is a sieve.) Secondly, which others should I consider (and relative merits)?
Edit: Just tried an HD201 in the office; the bass is predictably weak, but more importantly the contact pressure gave me a headache just from 10 minutes. With that in mind, look at the HD280 spec, and hover over "Contact pressure". Hmmm. |
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| Third-party updates on Debian-based distros: a thought |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|01:15 pm] |
Why don't third-party deb packages just drop a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d (and invoke apt-key) to provide updates, instead of rolling their own in-application update notifications? Skype, Last.fm and others don't need to be polling independently for updates; this isn't Windows; there's already apt, and usually a perfectly good mechanism for polling that, like Ubuntu's update-manager, so the workflow should just be "click on .deb → install → updates will be offered to you with all your other updates". In Last.fm's case, they already have an apt repository. Am I missing something here?
Alternatively, my previous version of this idea: a mime-type for "file to go in sources.list.d + something for apt-key + list of packages to then install" and a tool to handle it. That would be unnecessary new code; the one advantage is it would play better with the case where a site wants to offer you multiple packages with dependencies. |
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| Android Calendar |
[Feb. 12th, 2009|11:48 am] |
I have some patches for the Calendar app; I've finally made a usable build with them for 1.1 (US RC33, UK not out yet). One of these patches I've mentioned before, but the list is growing:
If only someone would fork Calendar (like someone did very successfully for Email) so it can be built using just the SDK, rather than having to finagle the semi-private bits of the platform source to a state compatible with 1.1, which, from the point of view of the public git respositories, seems to be between two commits. WTF. Given sufficiently copious free time, I might eventually make such a fork myself. |
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| New wheels |
[Jan. 10th, 2009|01:45 pm] |
I am now the proud owner keeper (because of how the cycle scheme works) of a Ridgeback Velocity. It's lovely. The current weather isn't. What do the cyclists reading this recommend I wear to keep the wind (and rain) off my face? I was thinking of a balaclava, but as Susan points out, that would make me look silly, or worse. Some people seem to wear Biggles hats (the ones with ear flaps) and leave it at that, but when it's this cold, which it occasionally is around here, I want more coverage than that. Also, interposing very much material between my head and my helmet is likely to fail, because my head is too big. Edit: I bought a Buff. Somewhat overpriced, but it works. |
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| Resolutions |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|06:40 pm] |
In no particular order:
- <trad>Something better than 640x480 at 8fps in L4D would be nice (although I'm not doing too badly as is)</trad> ✓ (patched)
- Visit London more often.
- Finish rocketjon's interminable website project and make it public before the end of February. ✗
- DSFW on my Debian bugs
- Fix all known bugs in Android Puzzles.
- Bike more. As of 10th January I have a new bike to help with this.
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| Dear Lazyweb: bike buying advice please |
[Dec. 28th, 2008|10:58 am] |
My bike is old (over 10 years), rusty, worn, bent, unreliable, possibly heavier than necessary and generally not fun, so I drive more often than is sensible (especially to work). This Christmas I've received some money towards a new one. I know Cambridge and the web are full of bike shops, but don't know which shops/bikes are any good, which is where I'm hoping you can help me. I have ( some requirements ) |
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| Dear Lazyweb: New Year's Eve |
[Dec. 23rd, 2008|02:33 pm] |
Susan and I have no plans for NYE. We're considering the Pembury, which I'm guessing will be open; will any of you be there? Do you have any other suggestions? |
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| My job, in all its Web 2.0 glory |
[Dec. 17th, 2008|05:07 pm] |
My employer recently released an update of their traffic manager, ZXTM 5.1. One of the headline features, which I've been heavily involved in developing, is improved event handling: you can now set up mappings from some/all events to various actions, including arbitrary scripts. Looking at the comments on a recent blog post discussing some of the new functionality, I've found a short video of some of the, um, productive, business-critical use to which this feature has been put (needs sound).
Yep, my code lets people integrate their traffic managers with, among other things, the hollow wifi-enabled bunnies of the apocalypse. What have I done?! |
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| Python bug? (urllib2.HTTPDigestAuthHandler) |
[Dec. 12th, 2008|10:10 pm] |
This script, when edited to fill in valid LiveJournal credentials (or InsaneJournal, if you change the URL and user list) fails for me in a very odd way. It fetches the first two URLs quite happily, and returns a 401 on the third after querying my password manager about 6 times. Even if you shuffle the user list around, increase the sleep, etc etc... I seem to be able to request as many such URLs from LJ as I like, in separate Python executions, or with different HTTPDigestAuthHandler objects, but any given instance of HTTPDigestAuthHandler will always fail on the third use. Failing on the second use would be more understandable, but three? WTF?
Edit: Filed as Python bug 4683, comments go there. |
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| How to get Voice Dialer on your UK G1; how to fix a Google app on your G1 |
[Nov. 15th, 2008|12:27 pm] |
By way of a couple of mini-howtos to save the next person some time: ( you're probably all bored of this by now... ) |
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| Quick G1 review, after 36 hours |
[Nov. 2nd, 2008|01:38 am] |
I have a shiny new T-Mobile G1, at long last, and people keep asking me whether it's any good. So, in the interest of reducing duplication of information laziness, here is ( a brief review ) |
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| It LIVES! |
[Oct. 21st, 2008|02:28 am] |
Simon Tatham's puzzles on Android. I has released it. Before any Android devices were released (sort of). Happy now. :-) |
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| Coming soon: Simon Tatham's puzzles for Android/G1 |
[Oct. 4th, 2008|10:06 pm] |
 Once upon a time, ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) simont wrote some very nice portable puzzles. Then I bought a Palm, and noticed someone had done a Palm port, and distraction ensued for many a happy hour. I'll soon be buying a T-Mobile G1, and want it to run these puzzles, so I'm porting them.
Android applications are Java-based, so I'm very grateful to Michael Schierl and the NestedVM project for previous work to make the puzzles run as Java applets, meaning all I have to do is change J2SE applet bits to their Android equivalents. Still to do: erm, rather a lot actually. I currently only have the bare minimum required to produce what you see to your left (drawing callbacks and not much else; no interaction yet). |
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| Google phone to be announced today |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|10:09 am] |
Google and T-Mobile will be announcing (text version) the G1, the first Google Android device, later today. I might be slightly more excited about this (and slightly more optimistic about it solving my various ongoing phone complaints) than is strictly sensible. On the other hand, this gives me something to bounce about today while recovering from an ear infection.
Edit: looks good, shame about the curvy (fragile?) slide and lack of 3.5mm socket but I'll probably buy it anyway, depending on what the UK contract looks like. All I've heard about that so far is that it'll be free if you pay £40+/month. It'll be available here early November ; you can request spam about it from T-Mobile. |
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| Phobile moans again: satnav |
[Sep. 16th, 2008|12:03 am] |
Some recent bad experiences with satnav have prompted even more consideration of my choice of smartphone. My biggest complaint against my current setup is that starting TomTom, if the separate GPS receiver has been turned off, is a fiddly, glitch-prone, lengthy process; it usually involves turning both the receiver and the phone's Bluetooth function off and on several times. Once that's done, I have to wait for the receiver to get a fix, which can take several minutes if I haven't used GPS for a while. Also, my map is at least 17 months out of date, and the frequency with which it doesn't match reality has become just high enough to be annoying. The decision to buy a system that uses a locally-stored map seemed obviously correct at the time, when I didn't have an unlimited* data service (indeed, there may not even have been any sensible products that used an online map), but it's less so now.
What I would like, ideally, is a non-Windows smartphone with built-in GPS. Edit: Such devices seem to be able to obtain a fix more quickly than my current device, though they don't maintain a fix at all times as that would kill the battery. As previously mentioned, the Palm platform seems dead, its successor doesn't look likely to ship any hardware soon; I'd hoped the first Android phone (appearing in the next couple of months) would be worth looking at but apparently that might not even have GPS. [Edit: it will have GPS and is launching on Tuesday 23rd...] As far as I know, if I'm looking to buy within the next few months, that just leaves the iPhone. Unfortunately, its Maps application doesn't look suitable for dashboard use. It won't even follow the route as you drive, let alone replan if you take a wrong turn or give you voice directions (which I used occasionally, until TomTom inexplicably lost the capability recently). There are vague rumours that TomTom are working on something for the iPhone, but I'm not holding my breath. Even if true, I would expect it to still use a local map so you must pay them per-update.
( Table of options: Treo too buggy, iPhone too expensive and not hands-off )
I don't like any of those options. Does anyone have a better idea (other than a separate device or Windows)? :-( |
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too busy
still intimidated
musical
discontent
distracted
contemplative
frustrated
resolute
thoughtful
lazy
amused
confused
impressed
giddy
pleased
sick