Why I consider Sony to be "evil"

Submitted by andri on

Some time ago I decided that I would no longer buy any Sony products. It's not because anyone told me to or because it was "hip" to boycott them. Lately, I have seen Sony releasing some compelling commercial products and it is hard to tell your friends why they shouldn't buy Sony products without sounding like some sort of zealot.

I like lists, so I am making a list of Sony's evil doings with sources so people can form opinions of their own. Please excuse the dramatic title, but actions do speak louder than words and I do believe Sony's actions reflect that it is a self-serving, evil corporation that will stop at nothing, to get it's way.

Tags: 

What I love about Gnome 3

Submitted by andri on

My Gnome 3 Desktop

There has been a lot written about Gnome 3 in the past half a year. People do not like change, and the fact that we now have Unity, Gnome 3 and KDE 4 leaves many people wanting their fucking old desktop back. I tried Unity for a few months, didn't really get used it. In this article, I would like to focus on the positive part of my Gnome Shell experience (with Ubuntu 11.10).

Tags: 

Icelandic Virtual Keyboard for Meego Harmattan

Submitted by andri on

Coming from a nation of 300.000 people has its downsides, like lack of keyboard support on various platforms. So, when I got my awesome Nokia N9, I wasn't all that surprised that there was no text input option for "Íslenska" or Icelandic. Fortunately, The Nokia N9 is mostly open source and the on screen keyboard uses Maliit. For those who like custom keyboards, they can check out MesInput.

I have created a virtual keyboard file for Icelandic and contributed it to the MesInput project (awaiting confirmation).

Until then, you can download the file from here:

Then place it into:

/home/user/.config/meego-keyboard/layouts

The file can be uploaded through the SDK (sftp/ssh) or through USB mass storage (untested).

Tags: 

Rant on Moblin, Meego and now Tizen

Submitted by andri on

I spend a great deal of time reading about new technologies. Usually, that leaves me excited with all the new cool upcoming stuff and occasionally I feel like developing on it. For a while, I have been a big fan of the Qt development framework. The API is clean, the IDE is nice and it also allows you to create rich applications in QML without much programming experience.

In the video above, the Nokia N9 is demonstrated. This UI, that seems to impress most people - would not be possible without Qt. Now, unfortunately Nokia's new CEO (fresh from Microsoft) decided that Meego was a burning platform and abandoned it. That left Meego in the hands of Intel, who said that "they were fully committed". Which, today, we found out was a lie.

Tags: 

Social Networks and the future

Submitted by andri on

I live abroad, disconnected from friends, ex co-workers and family so I try to use social tools to stay in touch. With the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and every other web 2.0 webpage on the Internet - you can be social everywhere. Now, the problem is simply to pick the right services and try to inform your friends. What is missing, is a way to be social with your contacts and not just with the company supplying this specific social service.

Tags: 

AJAX problems with jQuery and IE 7

Submitted by andri on

I spent the day debugging a specific Javascript error in Internet Explorer. It seemed to have problems with fetching a JSON data file through $.ajax.

For reference, the solution was to force IE to use ActiveX for xhr (found by Bjoggi at the jQuery forums):

$.ajaxSetup({
xhr: function()
{
if ($.browser.msie)
{
return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
else
{
return new XMLHttpRequest();
}
}
});

Hope this helps anyone else - since searching for "ajax ie" results in a whole can of worms...

Tags: 

Site update

Submitted by andri on

It has been months since I've written anything here, so here is what has happened:

  • I went to Iceland as an intern for 4 months at Sprettur where I learned a whole bunch of stuff. I also got to attend a Test-Driven-Development and Agile Design courses with J.B. Rainsberger as a part of my job there.
  • I am finishing my studies here, so hopefully I will be looking for a job in February 2011.
  • I also vacationed in Iceland for 20 days with my girlfriend - it was very nice, I have pictures!
  • I went through the old articles from andrioid.net and andri.dk and posted the good ones here.
  • I have an iPad now, courtesy of my friends at Sprettur so I will probably dial down on my Apple bashing for a month or two...

Tags: 

Creating a CV in LaTeX and TikZ/pgf

Submitted by andri on

As a part of my site restoration, this page was salvaged and may not be up to date


Once in a while, I have to dust off my CV (resume, Curriculum Vitae) and update it a bit. Originally I looked at the various TeX packages for CV making but I didn't really like any of them. So, I decided to create my own template using TikZ for graphics.

You can see a screenshot of my CV on the right of the page or just download the PDF file for a closer look.

Tags: 

102 key fix for Icelandic keyboards

Submitted by andri on

(Note: I stole this from my friend's blog - because his site isn't online at the moment)

Using 102 key keyboards with an an Icelandic keyboard layout

One of the most frustrating things about the Icelandic keyboard layout is that the <>| symbols are bound to an extra key only found on 103 + key keyboards, this key is located left of the Z character.
Despite this you will often find 102 key keyboards and laptops with 102 key keyboards being sold in Iceland, while this isn't much of a problem for your standard windows user it's quite annoying for programmers and *nix users which depend on sh/bash shells.

In my frustration I ended up creating a new custom Icelandic keyboard layout for 102 key keyboards, here is the layout along with a guide on how to install it.

This map uses alt-gr and the ,.þ keys for the <>| symbols, this is handy because it's an easy one hand keypress and because 102 key keyboards will have the <> symbols printed in that place.

Tags: 

Pages

Subscribe to Andrioid.net RSS