Freshman with an iPad

I recently got an iPad, this is my first iOS device so I’m going to write my firsts impressions with this device and this system.

I must say I’m not an Apple fanboy and I have quite experience with Android (1.5-2.3).

First impressions:

• It’s heavy, heavier than I imagined but it can be held on one hand easily.
• Build quality seems very good.
• Touch screen sensitivity is amazing.
• It’s fast, very fast, shifting screen, opening and closing apps, web browsing…FAST

Needless to say I’m used to the weight already, I really like the smoothness and speed of iOS on the iPad, I don’t know if it’s so fast on iPhone.

After configuring accounts, wifi, etc…first thing was to install apps from the App Store, I used iTunes on a PC at first, now I use the App Store iPad application.

• First thing I noted on the Apple App Store is that there are very little user comments and punctuations, I really find these useful since I used them on Android Market to know if the app is what I’m looking for.
• Maybe there is but I haven’t found it yet, I would like to have a method to get a refund for apps, I may want to try them to know if they’re useful or I like them, if not I would like to uninstall them and get my money back since there is little user feedback.
• Autocompletion on the search box could be nicer if it includes other users searches, not only apps names.

First apps I installed:

• Google Search:
  Well…you get a link to google apps, they run on Safari so it’s like browsing Google Apps. You have a push Gmail notifier that will open your inbox in Safari.
  I guess I was hoping for something more, Google apps on Android are a real beauty.
• IM+:
  An IM client, I have used it with Gtalk, it works fine most of the time.
  I got lot of FC (Force Close) at first, after an update it seems quite stable but I don’t like very much the interface.
  Here I noted how the notifications on iOS suck, I will talk about this later on this post.
  Now it works fine, when I’m browsing and someone talks to me, I change to IM+ app and I have to wait some seconds until the new messages are shown on the conversation window, it bothers me when I’m browsing and chatting because I can’t have a fast conversation, iPad is fast, IM+ is not.
• Angry birds: Nothing to say here, it works great, fast and nice graphics.
• Dropbox: I like this app, not very integrated in system as Dropbox for Android is, but it works fine.
• Evernote: Very nice, fast, no problem at all.

Multitasking and notifications

Multitasking works fine with IM applications, IM+ uses push but it still drains the battery.

You can double press the button to see all apps “loaded in memory” and keep the finger on one of them to kill them.

Notifications are a joke, at least what I’ve seen, come on, it’s 2011!! notifications show a popup message or a number on the app icon. So I have to take a look to my desktop to know what’s happening or I see my web browsing interrupted when someone talks to me.

I think iOS5 implements notifications like Android or WebOS…that’s nice, nice and late!

This is what I really don’t like about iOS user experience, they really need to redesign all the notifications and information system. I know GUIs Apple policy but I really hate notifications now.

Increasing Debugging Eclipse PermSize while developing plugins

The configuration is quite simple, I just got tired of permgens errors while developing a plugin in Eclipse.
This is how I’m launching and debugging a plugin.

nVidia PowerMizer on Linux

Nvidia settings panel has a tab called powermizer where you can set a power policy. It will change Graphics Clock, Memory Clock and Processor Clock depending on the system graphics load.

First get what modes do your card and driver support:

nvidia-settings -q GPUPerfModes -t

perf=0, nvclock=50, memclock=135, processorclock=101 ; perf=1, nvclock=405, memclock=324, processorclock=810 ; perf=2, nvclock=405,
memclock=1800, processorclock=810 ; perf=3, nvclock=715, memclock=1800, processorclock=1430

I have 4 levels, 0, 1, 2 and 3. 0 is the one I want to set as it sets the clocks to the lower frequency.

If you want to set it to a powersave mode with no scaling you can do it by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf like this:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
Option  "Coolbits" "1"
 Option  "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerLevel=0x3; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3"
EndSection

 
"PowerMizerEnable=0x1;

enables PowerMizer feature (0×0 would disable it instead). This entry may not be needed since in recent driver versions PowerMizer is enabled by default.

PerfLevelSrc=0x2222;

sets the governor approach. 0×2222 means fixed frequencies for both battery and AC mode.

PowerMizerLevel=0x3;

sets the current mode. 0×3 is the lowest, least power intensive mode.

PowerMizerDefault=0x3;

sets the default level on battery. 0×3 is the lowest, least power intensive mode.

PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3"

sets the default level while with an AC plug. 0×3 is the lowest, least power intensive mode.

Sources: http://linux.aldeby.org/nvidia-powermizer-powersaving.html

http://tutanhamon.com.ua/technovodstvo/NVIDIA-UNIX-driver/

Opera Mini 6 tuned for Samsung Bada

You may use the new Opera Mini version on your Bada device with fixed font resolution, it’s easy, you just need to download the jar file from opera web and the tuned jad:

http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/versions/

Then create with any text editor a text file called opera-mini-6.0.24093-advanced-en.jad with this content:

MIDlet-Version: 6.0
MIDlet-1: Opera Mini, /i.png, Browser
MIDlet-Description: Opera Mini
MIDlet-Icon: /i.png
MIDlet-Info-URL: http://mini.opera.com/
MIDlet-Jar-Size: 290498
MIDlet-Jar-URL: opera-mini-6.0.24093-advanced-en.jar
MIDlet-Name: Opera Mini
MIDlet-Permissions: javax.microedition.io.Connector.http
MIDlet-Permissions-Opt: javax.microedition.io.Connector.sms, javax.wireless.messaging.sms.send, javax.microedition.io.Connector.socket, javax.microedition.io.Connector.file.write, javax.microedition.io.Connector.file.read
MIDlet-Vendor: Opera Software ASA
Content-Folder: Applications
MicroEdition-Configuration: CLDC-1.0
MicroEdition-Profile: MIDP-2.0
MIDlet-ScreenMode: ROTATE
MIDlet-Landscape-Support: true
MIDlet-Input-Support: true
MIDlet-Input-Hide-Support: true
MIDlet-Touch-Support: true
MIDlet-Scaleup-Support: false
MVM-Pause-Background: false
MIDlet-GPS-HYBRID: true
X-PAX-Tastiera: Qwerty

Now you may install the browser and enjoy it.

Opera Mini 6 – First Impressions on Android

Opera Mini 6 was released today and I’m a big fan so I’ve already downloaded and I’ve been playing with it for a while.The update can be found on the market and on the opera website.

After installing you can notice the new look, the color now is black, an opera icon on the settings menu, not much, I think the interface was and is good.

Loading on Android is faster, much faster. With version 5.x everytime you change the focus, for example if someone talks to you on gtalk, you had to reload Opera which tooks a few seconds and a loading screen. Most of the time you lose the page you were in.

Now, in version 6, loading is near instantaneous, no more fear to use several apps at the same time even on my old G1.

Speed Dial is still there, loading web pages is as fast as version 5, I didn’t notice neither faster nor slower.

First change on browsing, you need double tap to zoom in, and double to zoom out, just like chrome for android. You can click links in the zoom out view, again just like the stock browser.

It’s a multitouch enabled browser so you can pinch zooming.

Another think I liked a lot is the posibility to hide the navigation and address bar but keeping the android status bar, so you will still be able to see incoming notifications while having a near-full screen browser, you can always open the menu and address bar by pressing the menu button. I really needed this on version 5, thank you Opera, good work.

On the menu is another button to share links through the android share menu, so you can choose between bluetooth, dropbox, evernote, gmail, sms, reader, twitter, whatsapp…or whatever social software you have installed. I used to copy the link and paste it on a new mail, this is easier and faster.

For the moment this is the differences I’ve notices at first view, I’m sure there will be more. If you like Opera browser I recommend you to try this version, if not, I recommend you to try it anyway, Opera Mini uses very little data traffic since web pages are processed and adapted in their servers, it uses much less power because less processing is needed and well…it is fast, the fastest I’ve ever tried on android.

Tree Style Tab and Firefox 4.0

It seems Tree Style Tab is not working with firefox 4.0 yet, it works just for the betas, you can make it work easily and fast if you want to.

First of all, you have to have firefox 4 installed. You will also need the Tree Style Tab xpi file, download the last version from the download section.

Once you have the treestyletab.xpi file, open it with a zip archiver like 7zip, winrar or just rename it as treestyletab.zip and double click it.

Localize the file install.rdf inside the zip file, it’ll be in the root level. Then you just have to edit it, go to line 157 (it may change depending on the Tree Style Tab version).

em:maxVersion=”4.0b12pre” />

Change the maxVersion to one equal or higher than your firefox installed.

em:maxVersion=”4.1″ />

Save the file overwriting the old install.rdf and drop treestyletab.xpi to the firefox window, the installation will succeed.

Now you just have to restart firefox. You can follow the same procedure with any firefox extension, of course, it may not work, that’s why the programmer didn’t include the new firefox version.

Apple’s iPod (bad) quality

I have a 5G iPod Video that I bought new some years ago, when it was a new model, 4 years ago I think and I’ve opened it today, I didn’t do it before and that’s weird in me.

My surprise was I found a screw behind the battery, that screw was from the harddisk, it didn’t make me happy, my iPod wasn’t supposed to be refurbished and if it is not, why the harddisk lost a screw? a harddisk never has to be opened, how was it built?

For the price I paid I was expecting something more, maybe…don’t know…all the screws in place?

Installing Solaris 10 on a Sun Enterprise T1000

Installing Solaris 10 in a T1000 is not as easy as you think as this machine doesn’t have any USB ports nor optical units, just ethernet interfaces.

We will need:

1. Another machine with Solaris or OpenSolaris. I am going to use a VirtualBox machine with OpenSolaris as I don’t have another Solaris machine. The ethernet should be configured as “bridged” in VirtualBox and the host machine must be in the same subnet as the T1000 where we want to install Solaris.
2. The Solaris 10 64bits install DVD for SPARC (sun4v). I downloaded the image and mounted it inside VirtualBox.
3. The OpenSolaris server and the T1000 must be in the same subnet. We can get the T1000 MAC address from the OpenBoot or from the documentation.

We load OpenSolaris in the virtual machine and we mount the install DVD:

1. Mount the DVD
2. Be root
3. mkdir -p /path/to/anywhere/sol
4. mkdir -p /path/to/anywhere/config
5. cd /cdrom/cdrom0/S0/Solaris_10/Tools
6. ./setup_install_server /path/to/anywhere
7. add in /etc/dfs/dfstab: share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 -d “install dir” /path/to/anywhere/sol and add the path to config too.
8. Run shareall and share and check the folders are shared.
9. Check that nfsd is running: svcs -l svc:/network/nfs/server:default if not, execute it svcadm enable svc:/network/nfs/server:default
10. cd /cdrom/cdrom0/S0/Solaris_10/Tools
11. ./setup_install_server -b /path/to/boot
12. cp /cdrom/cdrom0/s0/Solaris_10/Misc/jumpstart_sample/* /path/to/config
13. edit /path/to/config/rules
14. write: network net_ip.0 && arch sparc – profile -
15. edit profile
16. write install_type initial_install
    system_type standalone
17. edit sysidcfg
18. add standard lines without root_passwd
19. cd /
20. umount the DVD
21. Edit /etc/hosts and add a new entry with host1 ip_t1000
22. cd /path/to/anywhere/Solaris_10/Tools
23. ./add_install_client -e ethernet_t1000 -s ip_server:/path/to/anywhere/sol -c ip_server:/path/to/anywhere/config -p ip_server:/path/to/anywhere/config host1 sun4v
24. Check in /etc/bootparams root_server is not localhost, it has to be the OpenSolaris server ip.
25. Boot the T1000, when we see the promt >ok type boot net -v – install
26. The installation will start, follow the onscreen instructions.
    

Broadcom-wl in archlinux 2.6.31

After upgrading to 2.6.31 my wifi stopped working so I googled a little, I found a few usefull links:

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=19514

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=82613

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_BCM4312

Basically what I did was to execute “makepkg” again in the broadcom-wl package and reinstall it. Then I executed:

#mkinitcpio -p kernel26

Also make sure your rc.conf is rigth, you have to add !b43 and !ssb to your MODULES section.

MODULES=(acpi-cpufreq cpufreq_ondemand lib80211_crypt_wep lib80211_crypt_ccmp lib80211_crypt_tkip wl !ssb !b43 fuse)

Reboot your computer and check that your wifi card is working:

#iwconfig

eth0      IEEE 802.11  Nickname:”"
Access Point: Not-Associated
Link Quality:5  Signal level:206  Noise level:165
Rx invalid nwid:0  invalid crypt:0  invalid misc:0

Then you can use wicd or networkManager to connect to your network.

Archlinux, VirtualBox and USB support

I’ve been using Archlinux for some time now and I’m pretty happy with it.

I just want to comment how I got VirtualBox working with USB, just add the following line to your /etc/fstab file:

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,busgid=108,busmode=0775,devgid=108,devmode=0664 0 0

Now you should be able to connect USB memory drives, webcams, modems…and catch them inside the virtual machine within the guest operating system running.