Marcin Juszkiewicz

On 1st August I send mail from Poland to London, UK by normal mail. At nearly same time British post started to strike. Today I got my mail unpacked with two additional stamps with ‘addressee has gone away’ marks. Do I have to add that address was correct?

Fucking Royal Mail and the way which they handle mail…

Today evening I was in IKEA shop near my house and bought GLIS box (blue). Tomorrow I plan to fit ALIX board into it — will require few holes (for Ethernet, VGA, USB, Power ports) and hard disk mounting but will fit and there will be space left. This will allow to put it under desk where is place for all my headless machines.

Yesterday I cleaned my Microsoft Natural Keyboard after few years of usage (keyboard itself is 12 years old). Whole process took me 3 hours, required 3 screwdrivers, bowl with water and some chemicals used to clean keyboard case.

Why 3 screwdrivers? Big Philips one to open case, second to take foils and rubber from case. Then flat one to take keys from case (only if they do not want to go out after finger press from inside of case). All keys were cleaned only with water as it was enough to get them clean. Case needed chemicals — I used “Pronto” anti-dust spray.

Completing keyboard was easy but gave me few problems. First I forgot about rubber used for space key and needed to unscrew electronics to put it back. Then needed to fix “Enter” key (main one, not numpad one) as it was working but very hard — it use hinge which as to catch key properly. After connecting to computer there was a problem with YUHJNM keys (as you see in post’s topic). Another unscrewing and fixing foil they were working.

The last problem was space bar which was working only in the middle. This key mounting is hardest in whole keyboard. To mount it properly you need to disassemble stamen from it and put it into it’s place in case. Then put key into case. Put keyboard keys to bottom and use flat screwdriver to put stamen into it’s place in key. After that keyboard should be fully functional.

Like I wrote it took me 3 hours but it was worth it. Keys does not block and keyboard is clean. Of course it is not white but what you can expect from 12 years old keyboard :)

x86 architecture is total mess when it comes to naming. Basically there were “i386”, “i486”, “i586”, “i686” — nothing more was used. But this gives lot of problems.

First one — which optimisations can be used on “i686”? It has MMX for sure but does it have SSE? SSEv2? SSEv3? 3DNow! technology? It depends on cpu… for example PentiumPro (the first “i686”) has MMX but lack any other addons. Athlon64 will have most of them (or even all in newest cores) but under 32bit Linux it still be “i686”.

Second thing is how Linux recognize CPU. On ALIX board I have AMD Geode LX which has MMX and 3DNow! but lack SSE. According to some data it is “i686” but under Linux it is “i586”:

root@alix:~$ uname -m
i586

Currently I am running Ångström on it but is it built with “i686” optimisations…

Now when Neo1973 phones are in hands of external developers we have more and more people using the OpenEmbedded build system. Many of them wants to add something to resulting image. And that is where problem begins…

Most of them abuse DISTRO_EXTRA_RDEPENDS variable which should be used only in a distribution configuration file. Some of them also use MACHINE_EXTRA_RDEPENDS which should be used only in a machine configuration file. And all of them are surprised when I told them that their way is wrong. Most common reaction was: “So how can I add ‘mc’ into image?” (“mc” is an example).

The solution is simple — if you want to have image with own contents then you need to write a recipe for it. Take the one which you want to extend as a base, add few entries into RDEPENDS/PACKAGE_INSTALL and that will be all. And if you want to have something extra you just have to edit own image and add it. With abused vars you have to remember about rebuilding task-base recipe.

Why such way instead of abusing listed variables? Because in other way we will get bug reports like “I tried to flash angstrom-x11-image and it did not fit in flash.” when we know that it fit on that device. Why it did not fit for user? Because he injected megabytes of applications into it. So how we react to such report? WONTFIX/INVALID comes to my mind.

More about it can be find in Poky manual.

Yesterday Sean announced new version of OpenMoko software — so called OM 2007.2 version. It is redesigned, rewritten to make phone software more finger friendly.

What changed? Nearly everything :) Theme is lighter, applications are usable without stylus, there is no “scroll wheel” which was in 2007.1 and nearly no one know how to use it — instead of it there is a dragging by thumb or finger up/down in the list (also left/right). Everything is better fit to 285 DPI of Neo1973 screen. Main place of operation is new Today application which shows events from calendar, missed calls, tasks to do and allow to run any installed application. It also allow to switch between running ones. In summary — it is totally different stuff.

Why I am writing about this? As I work for OpenedHand I had a luck of seeing that stuff month ago — we presented it on our booth during GUADEC. More details can be seen on Thomas Wood post about OM 2007.2 and Chris Lord made video which show kinetic scrolling on Neo1973.

During wedding week I was at Ania’s parents house. Recently they bought 42” wide screen TV and DVB-S receiver. This gave me possibility to watch some HDTV channels and compare them with standard TV.

I have to admit, that such big screen shows why HDTV is future — without high resolution data image is blurred too much — there is too small amount of details on screen. For example faces of news presenters are flat instead of showing face elements (wrinkles for example). There was no time to watch DVD movie but after working with my 20” LCD monitor I think that on 42” it will also remind that it is low resolution data ;(

Too bad that my cable TV do not provide HDTV channels ;(

I just married my beloved Ania — time for wedding party now :)