I just downloaded and compiled Dillo, a sweet little browser that bridges the gap between the tiny and efficient text-based Lynx and heavyweight browsers like Firefox and the sluggish beast Mozilla.
Dillo is a lot like a desktop version of a Palm Browser - tight, fast, memory efficient… and short on features. The most important missing piece is an ECMAScript ![[WikiPedia]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
(JavaScript) interpreter, which prevents sites like http://www.gmail.com from working. CSS support is also very light, but for pages that abide by http://www.w3.org standards, Dillo will render them just fine.
Speaking of standards, Dillo knows them well! In the lower corner of the browser window is a little 'bug' icon that shows a count of every HTML bug on the currently displayed web page.
The Dillo binary is only about 1 meg (un-stripped), and uses less than 3 megs of RAM during regular browsing. Awesome.
I did need to make a change to Dillo's configure.in to build properly with my OpenSSL static library install (the shared libs won't build on my system). On line 243, I just switched the ordering of LIBSSL_LIBS to be LIBSSL_LIBS="-lssl -lcrypto" instead of LIBSSL_LIBS="-lcrypto -lssl".
I can't wait to see this browser mature!
Avoid buying cheap-o security cameras, such as ones from Swann, Q-See, etc. at all costs. If you are lucky enough to find printed specs on the package, you'll notice that they have high noise levels, high lux levels, and low resolutions, all of which translates to a garbage picture and endless false-positives with motion capture software.
The Swann I tried today simply died after 10 minutes of use. Blank, no picture. 
If you pay a bit more, you can get a much higher quality camera from Lorex. I have a VG1030R mounted outdoors. Solid metal construction, and it delivers a clean picture at a decent resolution for motion capture in all but the lowest light situations. Sure, it isn't a 525 line CCTV, but for $79 at Fry's/Outpost.com, it is a hard value to beat.
After craving a top quality Japanese Green Tea, I tried a variety of teas at my local coffee places (Peets, Starbucks, etc). While they have good coffee, I was less than impressed with their tea, as well as their annoying habit of serving tea in lip-burning, tea-blanching, boiling hot water.
Luckily, there is a fantastic tea bar in Berkeley, CA called Far Leaves. Not only do they have a variety of green teas, they have a large variety all kinds of teas. Each tea is freshly imported and clearly marked with an expiration date. The manager and employee happily allowed me to sample several teas, and spent time teaching me the best way to prepare each of them.
I ended up buying an excellent Japanese Green Tea called Hakuro, which is infused for less than 60 seconds in 160 degree (F) water.
I asked the employee how their business was doing, and he replied, 'well, it is a tea bar...'
StickyC discovered this years ago, but lo and behold, this consistent formula worked its magic on me last night.
Company Party + Gin Martini + Karaoke Machine = SINATRA!
Sing along with me:
South of the Border
Down Mexico Way…
Seen the cool Bottle Cap camera tripods over at Semsons?
Jake Ludington posted instructions detailing how simple it is to just make your own.
Quote: Total cost is $3.37, not including the Pepsi.
The crummy analog picture quality of the Comcast DVR [superbowlcomcastdvr, comcastdvrwar, comcastdvrdst, newcomcastdvr, comcastdvrdead, comcastdvrdelete, comcastdvravsforum, comcastdvrcodes] box has me actively researching solutions for building my own HDTV PVR . I didn't expect to discover that the Electronic Frontier Foundation supports and encourages people to build their own HD PVRs before the FCC-mandated broadcast flag goes in effect this summer.
Thank you EFF!
BTW, did you know that ElGato makes an external HDTV decoder with FireWire output?
My SanDisk SD WiFi Card just arrived in the mail today, and hoo-wee is the 'net fast on the Zodiac now.
As a matter of fact, after having my adventures with bluetooth and getting this WiFi card, I simply can't imagine having a non-wireless PDA ever again.
Thanks to the web site: http://www.sacpug.org/ZodiacWiFi.html for helping clarify just which WiFi card to get.
There are a lot of great HDTV big-screen monitors available these days, but nearly all of them have maximum resolution of 1280×720, which supports the HDTV resolution 720p. Unfortunately, 720p is not the highest HDTV resolution - 1080i is. Even though 1080i is interlaced, the ultimate way to view 1080i content is on a screen that supports true 1080p progressive-scan resolution. An ultimate version of that screen, in my opinion, is the Sony Qualia.
When I was in Japan a couple of months ago, I got to see some Qualia stuff in person at Sony's headquarters, and I was blown away by the perfection of the picture quality. Click the thumbnail to see a full 1.2MB close-up.
According to a pull-out section in this month's Sound & Vision magazine, it looks like Sony is only releasing two Qualia models in the US this year, both big and expensive. We can only hope that they release more soon, or its back to Japan for me!
I've been very picky about keyboards over the years, as I tend to type like a machine gun. Several years ago, I found one that I thought was perfect: the NMB RT6856 which used to be bundled with Micron desktops. I actually possess 6 of those.
Well, I figured it was time for me to get out of the stone age of PC keyboards and try something new. So I picked up a Saitek Gamer's Keyboard. This thing is slick! A dedicated macro pad, an ultra-quiet key throw (so long, 'machine gun'), and groovy blue LCD backlighting.
And its just plain cool-looking too:
I've had the Comcast HD-DVR for about 2 weeks now. I'll write a review after I finish reading a thread about it on AVS Forum.
AVS Forum is a killer place to get all the hi-fi and video info you need, but sometimes the amount of information can be overwhelming. The "Official Comcast 6412 w/ iGuide Discussion" thread is 119 PAGES long… so far...
My friend and GDC speaking partner Elonka is in Wired today, discussing a cool crytographic sculpture at CIA headquarters.
In case you're wondering, Elonka was the first person to crack PhreakNIC.
And of course, she has a blog.
This week I've tried a variety of web browsers for PalmOS . Specifically, I've been looking for a browser that:
(aka JavaScript)Unfortunately, no Palm browser can do all of the above. But some come close enough to be very usable.
I've tried:
PDABuzz has a very good comparison of some other PalmOS browsers, but does not review WebPro 3 or WebViewer.
WebPro 3 by far did the best job of page rendering, especially with the formatting of tables and using stylesheets properly. However, sluggish performance is very noticable while scrolling pages - the browser can 'hang' in many instances. WebPro does not support landscape mode on the Zodiac, though some people are getting landscape functionality by using a hacked version of WebPro with CodeDiver.
Blazer 2.0 is a nice, small, and fast low-frills browser. Sadly, it can't handle JavaScript, and even refuses to load many web pages that are beyond its capability to render. It also has issues with scrolling and the back button, sometimes erasing pages completely. And of course, it has no landscape support.
The Reqwireless WebViewer could count as the smallest of the browsers, weighing less than 100k, but you need the giant WebSphere Java Virtual Machine in order to run the app. WebViewer is very fast, but the UI is extremely primitive, with a minimal amount of customization for options. Again, there is no landscape support, and the demo version has a ridiculous limit of 10 web pages per day.
That leaves Xiino, a slick little browser from Japan that is fast and does a respectible job of page rendering. Table formatting is clumsy but readable, and there is no landscape support. The latest version of Xiino, 3.3E, does not work on the Zodiac. If you launch Xiino twice (say, check a web site, check email, then check another web site), Xiino will cause a Fatal Exception 100% of the time. Luckily, Xiino 3.2E is still available for download, and it runs fine.
For now, Xiino 3.2E is the best PalmOS browser out there, as long as you're willing to compromise.
Update: Xiino 3.4 [xiino3.4, xiinodead, xiinooffline] is now available, and it supports landscape mode
Update 2: Read a comparison of Xiino 3.4 to the new nWeb for Zodiac
I was googling the net for a quick and easy read on the history of Chinese Dynasties, and sure enough, I found a very nice one. Of all places, a Minnesota State University campus has an online eMuseum, where they have a nice timeline of the Dynasties of China, among other easy-to-digest national and cultural histories.
My long time friend StickyC has a very active techno-humor-motorcycle-drinking blog over at http://www.stickyc.com. He also has a wiki, where he's posted a run-down of his fairly elaborate Home Media Center project.
I've been meaning to do this for about 5 years now, but the big holdup for me has been an affordable, attractive, and silent HTPC case. I guess the time has come.
Applying a polyurethane top coat to a wood finish in a cold winter garage turns out to be a bad idea.
In my case, each '2 hour fast-dry' coat took over 10 hours to dry in 45'F weather. And worse, the stuff won't flow smoothly or disolve itself properly, leaving lot's of little polyurethane boogers all over the finish.
Next time I might try to make a wipe-on varnish by thinning the polyurethane with turpentine or naptha, but I suppose wood finishing is better suited for warmer weather.
Tip: When carrying a tube of suncreen during winter sport activities, put it inside of a sealed ziplock bag before slipping it in to your pocket.
That way, you can prevent a mess and some permanent stains when, oh… hypothetically speaking, you're snowboarding on a lovely Thursday afternoon in January at Sugar Bowl, carving down the run 'Tunnel 41', when you suddenly catch an edge, land flat on your chest, and the suncreen tube asplodes.
Because of an apparent bug in the Widcomm WinXP Bluetooth drivers, I decided to try enabling Bluetooth in Linux to give the Tapwave Zodiac wireless internet access.
Linux Bluetooth works great!
Bluetooth success in Linux is a result of the BlueZ driver project, which is conveniently included with the Kernel since 2.4. Thanks to a huge collection of online documentation, especially from Tills and Ben, getting the Zodiac to connect through my Linux box was mostly a piece of cake.
Apparently, most new distros have Bluetooth support functional right out-of-the-box [mandrakediskswap, mandrake10]. On my older, hand-cobbled Linux box, I did have to patch and recompile my Kernel (2.4.20) and download and compile the latest BlueX utils, iptables, and pppd daemons. But with a one-line change to the BlueZ util source, everything compiled and installed without a hitch.
Finally, I've got the Zodiac on the net without WiFi or GRPS!
As the Sandisk SD WiFi cards are sold out everywhere (unless you want to pay a premium price), I've been experimenting with Bluetooth as a connectivity option on the Tapwave Zodiac.
I have a D-Link DBT-120(rev. B4) Bluetooth dongle that, as with all Bluetooth dongles, comes with drivers from Widcomm (now Broadcom). To allow the Zodiac or any other device to access the internet via the Bluetooth dongle, all you need to do is enable Internet Connection Sharing in WinXP on your primary LAN connection, then enable Network Access for Bluetooth devices in the Widcomm drivers. Easy enough, well-documented on the net, and when it works, it works well.
But it doesn't work very often.
If you follow forum postings on the net, you'll see dozens of posts from users complaining about 'timeout' problems and other connection errors. I too was getting a timeout error on the Zodiac, specifically:Error: Serial: timed out. could be bad cable or faulty Modem, (0×0305).
I found I could reproduce the problem 100% of the time. When the Zodiac first attempts to connect via Network Access, a balloon tip will appear above the system tray:
Clicking that balloon will open a dialog box, asking for authorization for that device:
If you click OK in the auth dialog without ticking the 'Always allow...' checkbox, the connection will work fine. However, if you tick the 'Always allow...' checkbox, all subsequent connection attempts will fail, even if you reboot the machine and reset the Zodiac. And if you have to manually approve every connection attempt at the server, well, that makes a wireless connection pretty darned inconvenient, doesn't it?
I believe this is a bug in Widcomm's device pairing, as I could sometimes fix this by manually un-pairing and re-pairing the device. Of course, this bug isn't mentioned anywhere on D-Link's support site, and Widcomm will not deal with end-users directly.
Looks like its time to scoot my chair over to the Linux box again…
Numerous web sites can describe how to connect to the Sony Ericsson T616 via Bluetooth , but many seem to be missing a critical piece of information: the network access number, aka the phone number.
Thanks to Chad at Infoworld, I found the dialup number that works on ATT Wireless (now Cingular) GPRS .
That number is: *99***1#
This morning I SSH'd to my web site on a Tapwave Zodiac via the ether ... 
I wonder how much I'm being billed for this?
The Tapwave Zodiac is a very cool PalmOS handheld, but unfortunately for us old-school Palm users, it comes with the one and two-stroke Graffiti 2 handwriting input system, rather than the original elegant one-stroke Graffiti 1.
Fortunately, it is possible to add Graffiti 1 to the Zodiac. All of the HOWTO's I found on the net were a bit cryptic, so here's how I got it to work for me.
NOTE: I do not warranty this procedure at all. It worked for me, but might not work for you. I am not responsible for any problems or damage this may cause.
graffiti1.zip file from Zan's Stuff (thank you Zan for providing this!)graffiti1.zip file on your desktop. DO NOT FOLLOW ANY OF THE INSTRUCTIONS INCLUDED IN THE graffiti1.zip FILE!!!Graffiti_Library.PRC to Graffiti_Library.mp3 and Graffiti_Library_enUS.PRC to Graffiti_Library_enUS.mp3. DO NOT USE THE FILES THAT END IN .PDB!!! DO NOT INSTALL THE zboxz.prc APP!!!.mp3 files in to the Palm Install Tool (don't double-click them or you might launch a Media Player accidentally).mp3) files from the SD Card to the Internal File System by selecting them and clicking the << or >> button..mp3) files in the tree Internal > AUDIOGraffiti Library and Graffiti Library_enUSGraffiti Library, tap the Details button, and make sure the Type is libr, Creator is grft. Change the Version ID to 525 and tap the Save buttonGraffiti Library_enUS, tap the Details button, and make sure the Type is ovly, Creator is grft, and Version ID is greater than 2 (will likely be 3)If something goes totally haywire, you'll need to do a hard-reset to restore the Zodiac to its original state. To do a hard-reset, hold down the Power Button, press the reset button (the one in the pinhole on the back), wait a second, then release the Power Button. A screen will ask if you want to erase all of your data (or something to that effect). Say yes. Your data should be restored the next time you do a HotSync, provided you did a HotSync before things went awry.
I recommened downloading and installing Graffiti Anywhere. Graffiti Anywhere allows you to use the full screen for Graffiti input, rather than just the abc or 123 input areas, and it works with many (if not most) PalmOS apps. On the Zodiac, this allows you to keep the virtual graffiti area closed, and have apps run in landscape by default.
I've enabled Writebacks (comments) and Trackbacks so you can finally tell me what a boring blog this is.
I modified the original blosxom writeback plugin to require valid email addresses and to log IP addresses, but don't worry, neither is displayed publicly.
Formatting isn't supported in the Writebacks, but I plan to enable full tikiformatting, interwiki, and emoticon support, which would make this blog a work lot like a wiki .
Also coming eventually: Captcha .
I just added Jason Silver's smilefie plugin to allow support for graphical emoticons. Here's what I've got (with images lifted from Trillian Pro):
![:-\](/images/blog_buttons/disappointed.gif ":-\"){kind=small}
He had a minor bug or two that I fixed, and I added proper support for XHTML. I also made the alt tags more lynx friendly, and ended up having to rename the plugin to 99smilefie to force it run after tiki and wikiwordish.
I need to learn a little more regex kung fu to make this really work correctly with tiki (such as preventing emoticons in code blocks).
FYI, I need to play with the server config today and tomorrow, so http://www.mikeyp.com might be up and down periodically. I should have things wrapped up by the weekend.
Hopefully I'll have writebacks working by then, as well as fix the ampersand issue with RSS and XHTML.
Maybe it's obvious, but Mozilla Thunderbird is not a usable alternative to Outlook 2003 . After playing with Thunderbird 1.0, it is a very well done email client app, perhaps the best Windows email client from someone other than Microsoft. But without a full-fledged PIM , a stand-alone email client is nearly worthless to me, and probably most other contemporary PC users. And that's a shame.
There is some promising vapor on the Mozilla web site called Lightning . Maybe Thunderbird will be worth checking out again a year from now.
Oh, and if you think Outlook is bloated compared to Thunderbird, check out the memory usage reported by Process Explorer's "Peak Working Set":
thunderbird.exe 24840 K
OUTLOOK.EXE 25800 K
Palm.exe 16820 K
Pretty similar memory usage. However, when idle, Outlook reduces its memory footprint (Working Set) to under 8000 K, whereas Thunderbird never shrinks. And if I want to run email and PIM like I do with Outlook, I need to include the 16820 K from the Palm Desktop.
And just for kicks, Mutt appears to use 100 K.
My mail servers support POP3 and IMAP . Because I'm using multiple clients nowadays, including webmail, Mutt, and Outlook 2003, I changed my Outlook config from POP3 to IMAP. Oops.
Outlook's support for IMAP is lacking a couple of features. Yes, it basically works, but here's what it won't do:
Omar at Microsoft looked in to IMAP email clients extensively, and wrote a great analysis in his blog. He concluded that Mozilla Thunderbird has the best Windows IMAP support.
I tried Thunderbird about 6 months ago, and it wasn't bad. But I use MS Outlook 2003 at home for a variety of reasons, mostly for:
At this point, I'm pretty much stuck with Outlook, and hoping someone at Microsoft decides to care about the problems.
Might be time to take a peek at Thunderbird again. Or maybe just stick with good ole' Mutt!
Modern front-loading washing machines are such a cool improvement over the classic American top-loader tub . After picking two highly rated models (Bosch and Whirlpool) and finding out that they won't fit in our circa 1979 laundry room, our third choice was delivered today:
Believe it or not, the spin cycle on this thing runs at 1100 RPM. As I sat on the floor in front of the machine, watching centrifugal forces fling every last drop of moisture from a load of bath towels, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to my face if the door accidentally blew off…
In the December 14, 2004 issue of PC Magazine, Bill Howard wrote an excellent article about the problems with fixed-resolution LCD panels and readability. Since most Windows apps can't deal with font DPIs other than 96 (lazy programmers), high-resolution LCD panels are straining our eyes with tiny on-screen text.
Howard notes that 100 DPI is the ideal resolution for readability, and provides a nice chart that shows native DPI for a variety of LCD panel sizes and resolutions. In the article, click on the link for the 'DPI: Crispness vs. Readability table.'
It's no wonder that my old Thinkpad X24 has such an easy to read screen: the native DPI for the 12 inch 1024×768 monitor is almost exactly 100!
The Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco makes the well known and loved Anchor Steam Beer. Recently, I discovered that Anchor also has a distillery called, appropriately enough, the Anchor Distilling Company.
If you like gin , try Anchor's Junipero. Unlike Bombay Sapphire's silky yet robust flavor, Junipero has a distinctly floral and spicy taste. It just might be a key ingredient in the quest for the perfect martini.
