Sunday, December 25, 2011

SwiFTP makes copying files from your phone painless.

I could absolutely kick myself for not thinking of this sooner.  I started using SwiFTP on my Android phone.  This is by far the fastest and easiest way to get pictures and video off my phone.  While this application is no longer maintained it is a kick butt FTP server that allows you to turn your phone into an FTP server to download files.  It screams at downloading files and turns a long brutal USB connection into a rapid file transfer.  Bluetooth is a complete joke and this FTP server goes at full wifi speed so it's faster than the slow USB connection.  The project is up for adoption and if I had more time on my hands I'd gladly take the application over.  In any case it is the only way to get files on and off your phone in a hurry.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Unity & Gnome - How to alienate a user.

Linus Torvalds said it best when called Gnome 3 an "unholy mess".  I could not agree more.  This week I finally threw in the towel on both Gnome 3 and Unity.  As a long term Ubuntu user I used the distro because it threw in a lot of features from the standard Debian distro.  I have used Debian now for well over a decade.

I switched to KDE 4.7 and I'm kicking myself for not doing that sooner.  I used KDE many years ago and found it to be less robust than Gnome was.  That does not seem to be the case anymore.  It by far puts Gnome 3 and Unity to shame.  I recently read What's the best Linux desktop environment? right after I switched to KDE.  I couldn't agree more with the article.

Why am I so against Gnome and Unity?  Like many Microsoft products it now presumes that I am a complete idiot. Here is a brief list of the major issues I have with both of these products.

  1. No real "shortcut"/"Launcher" bar.  Sure you can "pin" something to the bar but install something like Aptana into a directory and try to "easily" create a shortcut. 
  2. Lack of widgets/applets.  I liked having my CPU usage easy to see. There are any number of other widgets that were useful.
  3. Unity's "Shared" menu bar.  This has to be the most annoying feature.  IF (and I do mean if) it works it's confusing at best.  Generally speaking it's just annoying.  On top of it everything is left justified.  Bring up a small fixed window and you'll see just how annoying it is.  It also makes resizing impossible.  Keyboard shortcuts like CTRL-NUMPAD5 are useful but I shouldnt have to do that all the time. 
  4. I have to "search" or click like crazy to get an app.  A well organized menu structure is obviously too difficult for people. 
  5. Apps "Group" and make task switching difficult. Try using Google talk as a web browser popup.
  6. It's a graphics hog.  Even with a decent video card it stutters and uses up ram. 
  7. Serious memory pig.  1GB is about the footprint of the desktop.  
This list could go on and on.  In any case these new desktops are just a mess.  I really don't understand who these are driven for.  It's sad when I look at Windows 7 and think it's actually better than Gnome 3 and Unity.  I'm just thankful KDE has improved the interface and not degraded it down to a puddle of goo.  

What I further don't understand is who is advocating their use?  I know my fellow developers dislike it. I see users that don't like it.  Who does and why?  Eye candy only goes so far.  Users unfamiliar with Linux (perhaps Win7 users) wouldn't even find this interface productive.  I am at a loss to understand who likes this interface.  

I may never switch away from KDE now that it has a robust interface and community.  It performs better than Gnome or Unity and it actually improved my productivity over Gnome 2 by adding the activity manager.  It works well with Virtualbox and all my other apps.  

KDE you've won me over.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Keep laughing at Microsoft

This article sums it up.  The Condescending UI is again Microsoft and Apple assuming you're an idiot and can't use a computer. 

Friday, December 2, 2011

Pandora you just got pwnd!

I like to listen to Pandora like many others.  The new interface is "better" but not what I call great.  Anyhow I noticed that you could not select lyrics and cut and past them.  Was not a huge issue given the number of lyric sites out there but geez the spam on them.  Since I'm a web engineer I popped open the chrome debugger and noticed that they do indeed just place text there but disable all the controls with JavaScript.  So I thought to myself why not just write a chrome background script to remove those elements from the block.  Simple code.  So before I did I went to the chrome store to see if it had been done before.  Sure enough!

Pandora Enhancer allows you to not only grab the lyrics but you can remove the ads as well as get notifications on song changes.  Bravo!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Laughing at Windows 8

So through a Facebook post I saw the link to the Windows 8 Preview and I have to just sit there and laugh.  I think crayon and finger paints look better than this preview.  When Vista and then Windows 7 came out I scoffed at the flashy interface and Microsoft's lame attempt at "Pretty" interface.  Mac had them beat hands down.  I run across this link where someone references this as potentially Microsoft's "Tablet" to come and I nearly fell of my chair in laughter.


When I see this I thought I flashed back to 1997.  This is beyond a minimalist approach it's down right pathetic.  When I ditched my Windows Mobile phone several years back I said that it was the single most worst interface I ever used.  Seeing this it seems that Windows Mobile now made its way into "Windows 8".

I fail to understand where Microsoft is going with this.  The iPhone interface has been around quite a while and for the most part people love it.  So much the iPad is just as popular as the iPhone.  Android is just making a killing basically modelling after the same interface (due to it being so successful) and then Microsoft says "I know, people want a dos style dir /w with some icons next to it".  I just dont get it.

I fail to understand this for a few reasons.  First, Microsoft has been building UI's for over a decade.  You would think at some point they would have learned what to do and not to do.  Is this what all our user experience data they are collecting has come up with?

Next, does a iPad look like this?  Let's be honest.  iPads are created so an absolute idiot can use it.  They isolate you from even more than Microsoft does and they don't look anything like this.


Who seriously is going to use this interface?  Certainly not anyone with something to do.  This is just in the way of getting real work done.  Ok, so maybe Facebook is not a paying job yet (although my ex-wife tried to make it one).  Given that you still want to fire up an app and go to Facebook.  Who cares about this crap.  It's just something annoying in your way.


The personalized lock screen.  Not since the Edsel has there been such a bad idea.  Yes I know they are not the first.  Android has this and I'm not a fan.  Any "plug in" or other application able to display data from the lock screen is just a stupid idea.  Why?  Security.  It just takes someone with some evil powers to compromise an application and make it so when you press the battery icon, mail icon, battery icon then the clock twice the tablet unlocks or displays all your passwords.  Mark my words the day of reckoning cometh! 

Any way you want to slice it this looks like a bad idea.  I can't believe Microsoft has not just given up and said "Yup, we're not in the mobile market" but they keep trying.  Whats worse is some idiot out there keeps buying this stuff.  I have met more than my share of Microsoft fantasists but I have to question anyone buying this.  If you are considering it let me ask one thing.  Do you live under a rock? 

Android owns 43% of the market.  Apple and RIM own the rest.  Yet Microsoft with less than 5% keeps trying.  Who do they think they are Linux?  I don't understand what they hope to accomplish here.  Is this their tax write off?

I'm not excited at all by this.  What would be entertaining is a WebOS style of surrender before the fight even starts.  I have to say one thing for Microsoft, at least they are keeping programmers employed and for that my hats off to you.   


Adding Windows back into your Grub Menu List

Oddly Grub has always listed my windows partitions along with the list of recent Kernel updates.  Today for whatever reason Windows disappeared from there.  Well I honestly don't know when Windows disappeared since I use it once every 6 months or so.  In any case I came up with a lot of pages on how to edit Grub, etc.  I said there has to be an easier way since it seemed stupid to have to go through all these steps to modify the Grub configuration.  After some in-depth research I found the easy way to get the windows drive back on the Grub list.



For Ubuntu 10+, you need to install os-prober with
sudo apt-get install os-prober
and then update grub again with
sudo update-grub





That did the trick, next thing you know I had it listed back in the list.  Now I can play my Windows games again. 

Friday, November 25, 2011

Black Friday is now spam friday

Apparently black friday is now considered spam friday for all retailers. I don't think that my inbox has received so much I spam over a 24 hour time period from people that I actually wanted to receive email from.  Even companies I haven't purchased things from in over 24 months from have managed to send me at least 2 emails today telling me about some outrageous deal that they've got going on for black friday.  Here's a tip if you want me to buy something don't send me 2 or 3 emails on it telling me what kind of an outrageous deal it is only to find out it wasn't something I wanted to buy any how.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Android Camera Apps

I have been struggling with Motorolla's "standard" camera app for Android.  It's down right pathetic.  In fact iPhone puts it to shame.  I have used the default camera app for some time now and it is down right a joke.  This includes the one on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 as well.  These apps suck.  I tried Vignette but it really worked hit and miss although this was much better than the stock one.

I finally found something that not only is worth $4.99 but shows that the hardware on these phones far exceeds the software.  Camera ZOOM FX by androidslide is exactly what it should be.  A full featured camera application that allows a non-novice camera user access to the functions of the camera.  I was able to even control the jpeg compression on the images.  I immediately was taking better pictures.  I'm still a bit disappointed in the shutter lag on  my phone but at least the quality of the photos I do take are decent.


When LifeHacker said that it's the best camera app for android, they weren't kidding.  It's by far the closest thing to what should be the default installed android camera. 

Which I want to mention as a serious android gripe.  If they want to keep being the iPhone killer they really need to step it up and start creating applications like this as the default installed camera application.  I know people complain about the price of an iPhone however when you get premium apps they come at a premium price.  Something to keep in mind Google!

The Digital Life

I have been considering for some time putting this blog together.  I have other blogs like www.robsprogrammingjunk.com however I don't have one that expressed my every day nature.  I created this blog because I wanted to share all the little things I find along the way.  I often share those with friends and family in person but I felt the need to share it with more people.  I know that others will gain something out of my experiences.  I hope that others will gain something from this and will be kind enough to leave some comments (other than advertisements for pharmacological products!).