Today we have 3rd day of OpenEmbedded Developers European Meeting. This year we have not only European developers but also Rodrigo Vivi from Brasil and Philip Balister from USA. After weekend with misc stuff (when most visible was Gumstix hacking) we finally started technical discussions.
There are many things on agenda and they are changing so better check them on OE wiki.
This time I will write something about roads on Greek islands and how people behave on them.
First thing which is easy to spot is amount of vehicles on road. There are cars, buses, mopeds, quads, motorbikes driving in any directions in different style. People on mopeds, motorbikes or quads goes without any helmets, in swimsuits only — probably they did not ever see “Live to Ride — Ride to DIE” website. Talking via cellphone during driving is very often — never mind does it is in the car or on motorbike, driving on rear wheel only is popular (I do not know — maybe they wanted to get some chicks?).
Roads are full of curves — many times 180° ones, mountains ones usually do not allow to see how goes road after curve or does someone goes from that side so drivers use horn to warning other side. There are mirrors on some curves but usually vandalized. Many times you get few hundred of meters altitude difference in few kilometers…
Road to nowhere
People parks cars where it is good for them (people, not cars) — it can be right after curve, on curve (never mind that there is double line on road). Hopefully in the city they tries to park only on one side of the street so buses are able to go. Bus drivers are other thing — they are awesome. With so tight streets they just go into and are able to turn on overparked intersection…
When you go outside of city you gets other interesting stuff like lack of barriers on gorge side, nearly no space to get two cars pass each other on the road.
Road to Porto Vromi
After our first trip I decided to rather not rent a car…
I decided to write about our honeymoon in few parts. Instead of writing day by day I will write about misc things in each part.
We spent two weeks on Zakynthos island (also known as Zante). It is one of Ionian islands with only few small cities full of tourists. Due to fact that most of them came from UK there are many annoyances everywhere:
all meals contains chips (french fries)
even fast food contains chips (hopefully not all)
all informations are in English and many of them do not even have a text in Greek
informations like “when you go home to UK you can take xxxx cigarettes” in shops
fat British girls are ugly
English looks like main language on island as it is hard to hear other language on the streets
But all of those annoyances can be ignored :)
View from window
We had a room at Katerina Palace in Argassi. In catalog it was written that it is few houndred meters from the beach but I would not call it a beach — it was just sea. Nearest sand beach is few kilometers from Argassi — you can get there by free bus from “Avalon” pub and it is really nice place to spend some time (the beach of course).
Speaking about sea… It is very clean but also awfully salty :)
After nearly 2 hours in a bus I managed to get into Berlin/Alexanderplatz and then two S-Bahns and some walking and I came to OEDEM place. Few people in place already, lots of laptops, Neo1973 phones and other toys/gadgets.
Yes — next two weeks I will spend with my wife Ania on Zakynthos island in Greece — we are going there for honeymoon trip. Whole too weeks without working on Poky, OpenEmbedded, OpenMoko, without computers — just we, sun, water and walking, taking photos etc.
I do not promise any texts from our honeymoon as I usually forgets about writing them :)
When I was writing article about OpenMoko testing I was thinking that it will get about 2000 views not more. But someone posted it to Digg and after hours it started… After 10h it has over 300 diggs, page had to be mirrored and I had to enable WP-Cache plugin to lower CPU usage. During 2 hours I got more visits then during whole last week…
Now it gets a bit lighter but who knows what will be when Europe wakes up and check Digg…
UPDATE: enabling WP-Cache made Google Analytics not working properly — that’s why previous post does not show in ‘Top Posts’.
Today is second day of my OpenMoko 2007.2 testing. I do it as part of my work for OpenedHand and this gives me possibility to discuss bugs with applications authors before reporting to get some details.
Flashing
I flashed u-boot from 2007.08 snapshot release, self-built kernel 2.6.22.5 and openmoko-devel-image from yesterday (also self-built). Had to connect Neo1973 to other computer as my desktop refused to flash with DFU-util (laptop did not had such problems). I did not had a problem with Neo connected via USB Hub.
System start
Start of phone is nice — first you get full screen OpenMoko logo, then few kernel messages (about 10 lines) and psplash starts so all messages are hidden. When X11 starts there is another full screen OpenMoko logo with text informing that UI is starting. Then OpenMoko-Today2 is started. BTW — to get back to Today you only need to press AUX button.
Today screen gives access to Dialer, Contacts, Messages (not installed as there is no version for OM 2007.2), Calendar (which icon is missing — reported as bug #830). Second tab works as application launcher — with kinematic scrolling, selecting group to display, filtering — useful and nice looking.
3rd tab allow to switch between running applications (also possible with tap-n-hold on titlebar), force close of all (with confirmation) or close selected one (but no confirmation so bug #818 reported). Another problem is that most of icons as shown as default ones — reported as bug #837. Those which are shown properly (“Save screenshot” on screenshot) gets wrong size — bug #838.
Dialer
Next tested application was Dialer. I was able to make few calls from and to phone but did not checked voice quality. There is no history of calls currently — bug #839. I also spotted two other bugs (#814 and #819) but they are solved now.
OM 2007.2 DialerOM 2007.2 Dialer — call history
Contacts
Finally time comes for Contacts application. I did not used it before so it was something new for me (Dialer and Today were first OM 2007.2 apps). Core functionality listed in OpenMoko wiki works.
OM 2007.2 Contacts — contacts listOM 2007.2 Contacts — view of contactOM 2007.2 Contacts — edit of contactOM 2007.2 Contacts — communication history
Entered first contact using “New” button (top right one). Wrote fullname, organization, phone number, emails and pressed ‘!’ button (top left one). Then I switched into list (first tab) and there was no entries. When I added second entry then first one was visible will fullname and second was empty. When I selected first one then fullname from second one appeared. It looks like refresh of list is needed after edit is done. Reported as bug #815.
I had few contacts so it is time to check does filtering works. MokoSearchBar functionality works like it should but there is no information that view is filtered so I posted bug #829. Also widget does not looks so nice so I posted another bug — it was #835.
Like in Dialer there is no history of communication (calls, messages, mails) yet so 3rd tab is useless now — bug #843.
Groups
OM 2007.2 Contacts — groups viewOM 2007.2 Contacts — adding groupOM 2007.2 Contacts — groups view with too many groups
Last tab is group view. This also needs some work done. There is no way to remove (bug #822) or edit (bug #825) group. Adding new one use requester instead of making it inline like it is in edition of contact (bug #824). And there is a problem when there are too many groups — they overlaps with bottom tabs (bug #821).
During testing of groups I spotted another theme bug — selected checkboxes are not styled like unselected are — bug #823 reported.
Dates
OpenMoko Dates is not yet ready for testing so I will not write about it. According to posts on Chris blog it looks more and more interesting.