| Upcoming Android devices |
[Nov. 2nd, 2009|05:03 pm] |
Anyone who's been waiting for better Android phones to arrive hasn't much longer to wait. The next 7 days look interesting:
For comparison, here's the new Orange UK iPhone pricing (*cough*). |
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| What I've been working on for the last long while... |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|01:45 pm] |
It's done! The most visible of my changes in this release is geolocation in TrafficScript and Java. You can now efficiently get the city/region/country/lat-long of an IP address from a supplied data file. Handy if you want to vary your website depending on the client's location, for example. |
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| Case of the missing parcel, reprise |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|04:26 pm] |
I had a similar call in June 2008 and never worked out why, or what sort of scam this could be the basis of:
A man from "Parcel Point Deliveries" or similar called me at work yesterday, saying they had tried to deliver a parcel last Thursday, and would try again today between 9 and 5. He asked me to nominate anyone who could sign for it instead; I gave one name (see below). He said the parcel was from Manchester, but that he had no further information about its origin. This parcel has not turned up, and somewhat foolishly I didn't take the caller's number (nor was it logged my company's phone system, apparently).
Does anyone want to own up to trying to send me a parcel? The only benefit I can see the caller getting from this call if they made it up is the name of someone else inside the company, but several such names can be trivially found on our website. Also my mobile number, which they were supposed to call, but that's also easy to find. |
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| Personal use restrictions in software licenses |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|10:18 am] |
I'd appreciate some advice from people who know the law relating to software licenses better than I do. I'm particularly interested in answers that apply to me as a UK citizen, although information for other countries is useful.
(1) To what extent are software license clauses that restrict the actions of individual personal end users, other than redistribution or reverse engineering, legally enforcible? I'm talking about things like this HTC license: You may only load the Google Software onto the Android Developer Phone 1, and [with some exception] you may not combine any part of the Google Software with other software , as it applies to my personal use.
(1b) To what extent would such restrictions stand up (or have they stood up) in court? In particular, do HTC or Google have any history or stated policy on trying to enforce such restrictions?
Here's where things get interesting: (2) What laws, if any, would be broken by someone who distributes a script or instructions to, given a file obtained legally by a user who agreed to that HTC license, extract components of that file and put them on a device or in a system image, the stated purpose being for individual users for their own personal use? I'm guessing this centers on the script not being considered a derivative work. The said components are not currently protected by any kind of copy-protection mechanism as I understand the term. This is not something I even have the time to create, nor something I'm advocating making, but I'm interested in whether someone will be able to do it.
Update: Several workarounds of this form have appeared. This puts Google in an interesting position, in that if they object to this approach, it's somewhat inconsistent for them to recommend in their documentation that developers do the same thing with G1/Dream device firmware blobs to work around HTC's copyright! (necessary to build any system image that can use devices like the radio (i.e. phone), sensors, probably wifi, etc.) |
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| The future of Android / CyanogenMod: reply hazy, try again |
[Sep. 25th, 2009|04:57 pm] |
First a bunch of apps were closed source, then we've seen how lax they are at updating the public git tree, and now this: Google has thrown toys from its pram over the inclusion of their closed-source applications in the most popular unofficial Android ROM. The ROM builder is trying to open communication with them, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Those apps are, in increasing order of importance to me:
- YouTube (
I think I can live without that particular piece of junk. )
- Google Mail (Meh. Not my main address, and IMAP will work with other clients.)
- Google Talk (I use that, but again, a Jabber client can connect to it.)
- Android Market (I've bought a few apps, most importantly FeedR, and continuing access to updates would be nice if the vendors are willing to support some other method of subscription, but it's not vital.)
- Google Maps (This is where I hope AndNav continues to work and the one operational OpenRouteService server stays up.)
Notably, the Calendar and Contacts apps and their respective synchronisation providers are open source.
Others may have different opinions about the importance of the closed apps, but personally it wouldn't make a huge difference to me if unofficial ROMs no longer included them. I know of no other legal problem with CyanogenMod, since it's based on the Android public git tree, so it can and hopefully will live on (although users might have to do this sort of crazy firmware dance). Some people may return to stock ROMs, but I would still rather have root access on what is, lest we forget, my device, not Google's or T-Mobile's. A short list of reasons:
- Generally, the ability to tweak things beneath the UI, e.g. for wifi, where the UI can't cope with my employer's WPA2 Enterprise network, but I can edit wpa_supplicant.conf.
- The ability to fix bugs in all existing open-source applications/components, without all the "it's a completely different application" faff.
- Early and convenient access to new features from the git tree.
- Wifi/Bluetooth tethering
- The ability to use third-party bugfixes and improvements without waiting for Google. Cyanogen has done awesome things with scheduler tweaks that make the device much faster, and he had an update that fixed the recent null-pointer kernel root hole before Google did.
In another 8 months or so, the contracts of G1 early adopters will start running out. Meanwhile, devices with much nicer amounts of memory, internal storage and CPU cycles are appearing, a few of which with keyboards, which is good news for those of us who like to SSH from our devices. Some of them reportedly have fastboot available out of the box (or perhaps that's just for review models). It'll be interesting to see what happens to Android between now and then.
Update: Google's response, and one from Cyanogen. :-/ |
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| London, this Sunday (9th August) |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|05:40 pm] |
On Saturday afternoon through to Sunday morning, I'll be at a housewarming in Hackney. On Sunday evening, I'll be at the Pembury Tavern. Between the two, I don't know if the hosts of the housewarming will be busy and/or exhausted, it'd obviously be silly to go back to Cambridge and I think Susan has plans that don't involve me. If you might be interested in meeting up with me for some of Sunday in London, and/or you know of things a geek should see/do in London, speak now. |
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| Kitties! |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|01:54 pm] |
 ...anything you can't cope with in the presence of kitties must be srs bsns.(With apologies to the late Douglas Adams. Normality is our house name if you've not been paying attention at the back.)
As Susan just said, if all goes according to plan we'll have these two living with us from next weekend. :-) Currently the one on the left is called Biscuit and on the right is Thomaslina. We'll be changing at least the latter. Any ideas? So far I like Susan's suggestion of Brownie.
Update: They are now (from left) Heisenberg, because she tends to run around such that we can't tell how fast she's going, and Schrödinger, because she tends to hide such that we can't tell whether she's there. |
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| 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.
Update: As of October 2009, Google Chrome appears to have been doing this (as in the first paragraph) for some time. Yay. :-) My one complaint about it is that it does "check for explicit disable flag, else create sources.list.d file" on every update, instead of "check for I-already-put-it-here-once flag, else add the file", where the latter would create less confusion among users who perhaps already had Google's apt repository, and wonder why it keeps reappearing. |
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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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impressed
proud
confused
curious
annoyed
kitties!
recumbent
too busy
still intimidated
musical
discontent
contemplative
frustrated
resolute
thoughtful
lazy