Random mumblings of ARM developer
Yesterday during evening talk I found out one funny thing — all my trips related to OpenEmbedded was to cities which name starts with “B” letter.
First it was Berlin — first OEDEM (in 2006). Then it was FOSDEM 2007 in Brussels. Latest one was GUADEC 2007 in Birmingham. Next one will be OEDEM 2007 — Berlin again.
Before or after OEDEM I will probably also attend Bromley to visit OpenedHand office but this does not rather count as Bromley is part of London.
I am using the same ISP for over three years — it gives me internet access via cable TV. It works reliable (I had maybe 3-4 moments without network) but they got hit by popular problem — overbooking…
According to contract I have 3072/512kbps connection but during last weeks it is rather 3072/90kbps and it blocks me from sharing of my work with people (how long can you wait to push 40MB file over network?). All calls to their support sounds similiar — “we will contact our technical guys to check what is going on” ;(
Which ISP it is? It is ICP Poznań.
Today OpenedHand team (which I am proud to be a part of) released Poky Linux 3.0 ‘blinky’. I was working on it during last months. If you have free time then I suggest going to website and try it.
What interesting in this version? For me it is whole set of Matchbox components in new versions:
And there is new look&feel named “Sato” and whole set of PIM applications named “Pimlico” (which is also used on OpenMoko powered phones).
In two weeks from today I will marry Ania. The ceremony will take place in Szczecin, Poland at 16:30 local time (CEST).
So feel free to to come and wish us good luck ;)
Due to fact that some of embedded devices require using vendor tools I decided to install Microsoft Windows XP Professional on my Dell D400. As this machine lack CD-ROM drive I had to find other way. “Unattended” project provides boot discs which allow to make installation over PXE (netboot).
I followed DOS way and gave my tweaked copy of installation CD for it. The first problem was that I got “Partition Signature !=55AA” message after reboot and machine was unbootable. Hopefully I can boot grub4dos over PXE so I was able to go back to the Debian.
How to fix it? In my situation marking FAT32 partition as bootable solved problem.
The message is messy because there was 0x55aa signature at the end of MBR…
Another year passed. It was good year — I changed job to much better one and soon will be married man. Lot of interesting new projects appeared and I have access to some of them — some of them resulted in new toys ;)
Wednesday was last day of GUADEC for me. Getting from bed was hard — party and night talks made it really hard. We came to conference and started to put OH stand working and waiting for other guys to get here.
There was GMAE meeting which I attended to get some idea what is going on. Many people, many different projects etc… One of interesting parts was during break when I got Apple iPhone in my hands — it’s interface is really fast and has some interesting ideas in it. For example Safari browser renders only lthat part of page which is displayed on screen — you can see it when fast scroll page. On screen keyboard is very easy to use with bare fingers — no need to look at it if you remember layout of standard QWERTY one. Many reviews noted ability to automatic screen rotation. It is not automatic — application needs to support it otherwise nothing will change when you rotate. Another extra stuff is multitouch screen — zooming works really great in apps which I tried (Maps, Photos, Safari). And the great part of touchscreen is that it is integrated into top of case — it is totally flat.
Today I attended Lighting Talks — some of them are interesting (like GPE^2) some are not.
Evening will be other — food at OH apartments, some beers and talking about anything. Tomorrow early morning wakeup and long trip back home — taxi, train, plane, taxi (about 10h in total including stops).
Tuesday I spend mostly on OpenedHand stand. We had ST Nomadik board there and it was my part of work to get it booting — with serial cable it was fast stuff. Then I updated it’s software to latest build. We also had few OpenMoko phones with some experimental software on it — new Today application is great — old one can not be compared.
I decided to skip most of presentations as I did not found any interesting. There was one which I decided to saw — something about multi-user session handling. It was quite interesting but I think that it will require lot of work to get it done.
During evening there was a GUADEC party at “Workabout” — few beers, lot of talks etc… There was a guy from iRex Technologies which we talk with — he will work on integrating his work with upstream OpenEmbedded version. Some parts will be not integrated because they can not (or not want) to open everything.
After party we had discussion in OH apartment. I gave some ideas to Chris and Neil about new stuff for OpenMoko Today/Dialer stuff. Finally I was able to get to sleep.