Supersonic Ringtones
Well, not quite. It's pretty well-known, I suppose, that people generally lose the ability to hear higher frequencies as they get older. Seems like some grade-school kids are taking advantage of this. Kinda smart, I think. I can here the "mosquito" sound perfectly well, but I'm not sure if I can hear the 18kHz tone. Acutally yes, I can hear it, but not very well. If I jack the volume of my speakers most of the way up, I can hear it very well, but I'm not sure if that's just distortion caused by the amplification (then again, it's a hardware amplifier, so I'd think not). Probably the tone is very close to the edge of my audible range.
Kinda neat, and amusing.
Simple Cell Phone
How hard is it to find a nice, simple, stylish cell phone? I can't seem to find anything I like. I'm looking for an unlocked tri- or quad-band GSM phone without a service plan, so price is an issue: I'm thinking ideally under $200. I currently have a CDMA phone with a 2-year contract with Verizon (expires in 11 months next April), but I'd also like a GSM phone for when I go traveling overseas. After my Verizon contract is up, I'd consider dropping that plan and signing up with T-Mobile or Cingular. Until then, I'd run this new phone off prepaid SIM cards.
I have three main requirements: flip phone, small, looks good. The last one is a bit subjective, of course.
Flip phone because it will live in my pocket and I don't want my keys to be calling my friends all the time. Yes, I know most all phones have a keypad lock, but I hate using it.
Small because, again, it will live in my pocket. I wear jeans sometimes. My phone goes in my right pocket with my keys. That's just how it is. I hate belt clips. In general I think they look dumb, and the last thing I need is something protruding from my hip that I can slam into things by accident.
Obviously, "looks good" is a pretty stupid criterion: who would want an ugly phone? I guess maybe I have different taste than most people, because I find most phones to be at best ordinary and uninspiring, and at worst blatantly ugly. I want something small and rounded, somewhat organic-looking, maybe. If they can get away with ditching the external antenna without hurting signal quality, more the better. I'm also tired of the silver look, though I guess a two-tone with silver/grey would be OK. I've seen some phones with a "soft touch" finish, which I really like. Maybe something in a medium or dark blue (maybe just as a highlight color). I don't want something shiny or flashy; matte finish is better. And I'd like to get away from the cheap-plastic look prevalent with so many phones. The finish on my phone scratches so easily (remember, it goes in my pocket with my keys), and it looks like crap now.
As for features, it's pretty negotiable.
The phone book needs to allow me to associate several numbers (home, cell, office, etc.) with each contact, but should let me easily call any of the numbers with just one or two extra button presses.
Predictive (T9, I guess) text input for text messaging. I don't do text messaging often, but when I do, I don't want to spend 10 minutes crafting a 5-word message.
Easy access to a "manner mode" type feature where I can quickly switch between the ringer and vibrate mode. I usually have the phone on vibrate all day while at work, but if I come home and toss it on the table, I want it to ring. I also leave the ringer on while I'm asleep (yeah, I know, I'm backwards) since work people occasionally call me in the morning when I'm still in bed (but should probably be up). Holding a key for a few seconds to switch between modes is the best way to do this. Bonus points for a feature that lets me set it to vibrate in place of the first 2 or 3 rings, and then start ringing after that. I'd probably leave it in that mode all the time.
Color screen on the inside. Color screen on the outside is optional, but desired. There has to at least be a screen on the outside, even if it's b/w or greyscale. Since I don't wear a watch, I want to be able to pull the phone out of my pocket to check the time quickly.
Ability to silence the ringer or make it stop vibrating by hitting any of the keys on the outside of the phone. If I'm busy and don't want to answer it, I usually try to mash the phone buttons just by grabbing the phone without reaching into my pocket.
A decent call log for dialed, received, and missed calls. It should tell me at least the time and duration of the call.
The caller ID should automatically match incoming numbers with my phonebook and display the name if it's in there. I'm at the point now where I (sadly) don't remember anyone's phone number. It must show this on the outside of the phone, as I want to be able to answer the phone simply by opening it, so I need to know if I want to answer it before I open it. I'm lazy. I don't want to open it and hit a key to answer.
I don't care about web access, downloadable ringtones (a default, pleasing ringtone is fine by me), applications or games (downloadable or builtin), PIM/PDA features, music/video/picture playback, voice recognition (my current phone has it, and, while it's reasonably reliable, I never use it), voice memos, etc.
The obvious stuff. Decent battery life. Two days minimum with moderate use without charging. Good voice quality, good reception. I live in Silicon Valley, so reception usually isn't a problem, but when I'm not in the bay area, it can be annoying, especially when I visit my dad (virtually no service in the house, barely usable service outside on the property). I guess that's more of an issue with the network and tower placement, but a slightly more sensitive receiver might make it just usable enough. Eventually the cell might become my primary phone (and I don't have a landline), so it needs to work everywhere, and certainly in my apartment.
Nice to have but not deal-breakers: simple calendar where I can set alarms on a specific day and time (I'm very forgetful about random non-work appointments), tip calculator, calculator, generic alarm clock (nice when I'm traveling), and an AIM client (useful occasionally when I'm out late to check if a friend is awake before calling).
Note that I don't need a camera. They take shitty pictures, and getting the pictures off the camera is either a pain in the ass, or costs money. I refuse (more on principle than anything else) to pay money to send myself a picture from my camera. If there's a camera on the phone, I don't mind, but I don't want it to compromise my other requirements (small, mainly). It's kinda cool to associate a picture with a phonebook entry, but not necessary: I can read the name faster than I can associate the picture with a name, especially since it would be so small and low-res. My current phone is somewhat retarded in this: it only displays the picture while the phone is ringing, and only on the inner screen (the outer screen is greyscale). So I rarely ever even see the picture at all, since it disappears when I open the phone to answer it.
I guess my feature requirements are somewhat annoying: I want some fairly detailed basic functionality, with some nice-to-have advanced functionality, but at the same time I really dislike some of the more mainstream advanced functionality (like the cameras).
So how about it, lazy web? Where can I find my dream phone? My "looks good" requirements seem to knock a lot of phones out of the running. I'm not particularly partial to any brand: from an informal survey of my friends, on average everyone likes and hates every particular brand. Though Nokia, LG, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson seem the most popular. But when it comes down to it, I really don't care what the brand is, as long as it fulfills my requirements.
Then again, I feel like I should wait until the end of the year. Phones go out of style fairly quickly and my "small" requirement will only get easier to satisfy over time as technology improves. I don't want to be thinking about ditching my current cell plan next April when my contract runs out, only to realise I don't really like the GSM phone so much anymore (or rather, that there are newer, more stylish phones available that meet my requirements better). For practical reasons, I'd like to buy this new phone no later than mid-August.
Ok, that was a really long post. I'd edit it down, but I really don't care that much.
Bug Counts
As people have noticed, I've had much less time over the past month to work on Xfce. In some ways this is OK, because we've entered the 4.4 beta cycle, and theoretically all I should be doing is fixing bugs. Of course, every now and then I add a new feature, because, well, honoring my own feature freeze would just be too easy, wouldn't it?
I guess part of the problem is that we don't add any new features to the stable series after it hits point-oh. So the feature set that 4.4.0 has will be the same feature set that 4.4.1, 4.4.2, 4.4.3, etc. have. Couple that with the fact that our 4.evennumber.0 releases have been 14+ months apart, and I feel like way too much stuff brews in the development branch before we have a real feature release.
I'm not really sure of a good solution. All of us work on Xfce whenever we can. We all have day jobs or go to school, so it's totally a free-time, unpaid endeavor at this point. It's hard to do scheduling when no one can commit to any specific amount of time. And honestly, I don't like working to those kinds of schedules. If I want to work with deadlines, I'll get a job that requires me to do so. Oh wait: I already have a job like that, and it sucks.
Anyway, I actually sat down to write a post about bug counts (as you can see by the title), but I've digressed before I've even started. Go me.
Xfdesktop has had a good amount of changes lately, and therefore there have been a fair amount of bugs. I'd like to say my bug count is dropping, but it seems to be hovering pretty steadily around 20-22 bugs. Part of the problem is that some people keep logging new bugs after I close old ones. Not that I mind: I'd rather know about things and have a chance to fix them. But it's hard to feel like I'm accomplishing things. Clicking on that Commit button after changing a bug's status to Resolved feels good, but getting an email in my xfce bugs folder a half hour later with a subject line starting with "New" is starting to wear on me.
That's not to say I don't want to fix bugs. Keep 'em coming. (The reports, not the bugs.)
On a side note, I'm really sad that I haven't touched Xfmedia in many months. According to the svn log, I haven't really made a significant code change in about 5 months. Also, I fear that I've made a few changes to the current trunk branch (basically just the latest stable release plus some fixes), and I haven't carried them over to the experimental branch, which will eventually replace trunk. I probably won't really have much time to work on Xfmedia until after Xfce 4.4.0 is out. Though I wonder if that's just an excuse.
Anyway, just wanted to take a quick break. Back to work...
Lame Video Cards
So I finally updated x.org to 7.0 on my HTPC. I had been putting it off since the crappy proprietary matrox drivers required to use the card are poorly-maintained and probably wouldn't be updated to install to the new file locations, if they worked at all.
Anyway, I did the 7.0 update, futzed with the ebuild to install the drivers to the right location, and started up X. Unresolved symbols in the video driver. Great. So I do some questionable manual shared library linking, and X finally starts. And then crashes right after showing the video card's splash screen. Great.
I found a newer, unofficial build of the driver made by some random dude (a fact that points out how much Matrox's support for the driver sucks), but he used a funky shellscript installer, and getting at the files easily is a pain since for some reason the --target cmdline option doesn't work. Stupid. Anyway, I got tired of trying to force it to work.
So, I'm fed up. Matrox is now on my shitlist for Linux. I just ordered a $40 (minus $15 mail-in rebate; yay!) nvidia geforce 6200 on newegg, and that'll be it. I'll probably put the 6200 in my desktop, and move the 5700 in my desktop back to where it started in the HTPC. Or maybe I'll just put the 6200 in the HTPC, because it requires less effort.
So, unless I want to downgrade back to x.org 6.8.2 (I don't), my HTPC is a very large doorstop until the new card comes. Well, actually, it's also a cross-compile box. I finally figured out how to get crossdev to properly compile a cross toolchain (including glibc and g++, which I was having trouble with before) on my two x86 boxes, so now I can compile updates for my ppc PowerBook on three different machines. Which is good, because the PowerBook is kinda on the slow side.
If anyone wants a Matrox Millennium P650 for about $60 (pricegrabber says they cost anywhere from $120-$230), let me know. It's a pretty nifty dual-DVI card (no VGA at all), aside from the shitty Linux support. Otherwise it's going into my Pile O' Unused Crap.
Sweet, Sweet Irony
Cardinal Poupard, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, says:
This is a shocking and worrying cultural phenomenon that reflects, on the one hand, the ignorance of millions of people and, on the other, the voluptuous pleasure the media take in promoting products that have nothing to do with the truth.
Irony surrenders. It just can't take any more.
The Bubble is Coming Back?
I present Exhibit A.
Social Networking
I was reading a post by Luis, who has just joined Facebook, after trying Orkut and finding that more or less no one in his social circle actually uses Orkut.
I'm most active on Facebook myself, though it's hard to really say why. Part of it might be that it was the first social networking site I used (aside: for some reason I resisted Friendster and the others like the plague). Some time after joining Facebook, I also joined Orkut and Friendster, though that was because I was invited to by friends; I didn't seek it out myself. I don't quite recall if I found Facebook myself, or if a friend invited me. Probably the latter.
I guess Facebook is more relevant to me since it has a college focus (though they've expanded that to include high schools and employers). Granted, I'm not in college anymore, but more than half of my closest friends are still in college or still related to one in some way. (Hah, grad school: suckers! _) Or maybe I just never gave Orkut or Friendster a chance since I was devoting energy to Facebook. On the other hand, I have around 100 'friends' on Facebook, and less than 20 each on Orkut and Friendster, and I don't think I've actually invited anyone on any of the services. So all my friends on any of the three are people who were already on the service that I found by searching, or who joined and found me.
So I guess, either by chance or by design, more people in my social circle tend to end up on Facebook than the other popular social networking sites.
Unfortunately, though, I don't really get the feeling of any kind of participation level. I tend to participate passively: I'll check out my friends' pictures when they post new ones, skim their profiles when they update them, etc. I join 'groups' on Facebook not because I want to participate, but because it seems cool or funny, or it's a topic I identify with. Even if I wanted to 'participate', I'm not even really sure what that means.
So I see Facebook as a window on some friends I don't really keep in touch with as well as I'd like, as well as a way to reciprocate and let people know what I'm doing. But for the people that I see often in person, or talk to regularly on AIM or IRC, Facebook really does nothing for me.
Now, what would be cool is if there was some involvement with OSS-related people that I know. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Facebook is more or less US-only (though I have seen Oxford and Cambridge on there), so that leaves out the majority of the Xfce and Lunar guys I know.
I dunno. While it's somewhat fun to be a part of these little online communities, I don't feel like my life would be in any way diminished without them.
Find x
Clearly the best answer to a geometry problem ever.
Dialog Button Text
I was reading p.g.o today, and came across this little snippet from Murray Cumming:
Show how much better [Save] is than [Yes] in a “Do you want to save changes?” dialog, with a “Really Discard Changes?” dialog as the punchline. This emphasizes our attention to detail, and to the user experience, so they don’t need to pay attention.
I've given this a bit of thought on various occasions over the past 8 months or so, and I can't really come up with a conclusion as to which I like better.
I think, for users unfamiliar with a new piece of software, using descriptive titles ("Save" instead of "Yes" in the above example), is good: it helps prevent possible data loss, and removes any amount of confusion. It also helps in the case where multiple applications have different conventions: perhaps one says "do you want to save changes?" and another says "really discard changes?", and you haven't used either of them enough to quickly remember which is which. Having a "Save" button in the former dialog, and a "Discard" button in the latter quickly disambiguates and avoids confusion. (Although, you could make the case here that app developers shouldn't use the negative form ever, and should always use the more positive, data-saving "do you want to save changes?" form.)
However, for the advanced user with a good memory, this is a pain in the ass. I know which apps ask what on close. For some applications, I get into the habit of using the keyboard to press the buttons. When I want to quit the app and ditch what I'm doing, I hit ctrl+q, which then brings up the "save changes?" dialog, where I press 'n'. Or if I do want to save, I hit 'y'.
Now, maybe that's not such a big deal. I guess it's ok to remember to hit 's' or 'c' instead.
But the situation changes when you bring in a bunch of other dialogs. Perhaps I'm using a file manager. If we had the "old" way, I'd have 'y' for affirmative actions ("yes, delete that file", "yes, move that file"), and 'n' for negative actions. Now I have a bunch of different keys: 'd' for delete, 'r' for rename, 'm' for move, 's' for save. And it's not just the file manager: these dialogs with a bunch of different keyboard shortcuts are a pain in the ass. Not to mention that there are still "old-style" apps around that use 'y' and 'n'.
So I'm still on the fence. Designing for general usability seems to indicate that the new way is better, so that's what I'll follow in any apps I work on. But a small part of the advanced, keyboard-shortcut-loving user in me dies every time.
Previously On…
I've noticed recently that a lot more TV shows than usual are doing story arcs instead of being composed mostly of standalone episodes. Which I like, because I enjoy the idea of an ongoing story that can't be wrapped up neatly in 43 (or 22) minutes.
However, it seems that the writers (or producers, or whomever) seem to think that every episode in a story arc needs an extensive 2-4 minute "previously" segment where they recap what's happened in the story thus far. Is it really necessary? It's annoying, and wastes precious time that could be used for actual story development. Take a hypothetical half-hour show, which really has 22 minutes of actual airtime. If they spend 2 minutes at the beginning doing previouslies, that's 9% of the show they've wasted. Lame.
And are people really that stupid and forgetful that they can't remember what just occurred last week? I can understand a short "previously on" segment if the show has been on hiatus for a month, but week-by-week?
I suppose there's the issue of people who missed last week's episode, but really, why waste time catering to those people? There are plenty of ways to catch up on missed episodes (legal and technically-illegal), and most popular series have their episodes re-aired later in the week.
Then again, I do like that more series are doing the extended story arc thing, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.