guglhupf.net

Since yesterday in the company I work we have new office rooms and a have now I new nice working place. A colleague has made a nice
panorama picture of the new office. My place is the desk on the left side where the termo can stands.

Today I found a nice flash movie:
http://madbean.com/blog/2004/30/

Yesterday I tried to update the CMS that I use for guglhupf.net, but this is more difficult then I first thought. First in the new drupal version a new menu system was included and this is not compatible with the menu modul I use. The second thing is that my custom theme doesn't work anymore with the new version. The main advantage of the new drupal version is that captchas can be used for comments. But as long as no spam is posted on this website the missing captchas are not a problem.

I found out that I'm a high level nerd:

Only two days left until christmas and if I look at the IT news it seems that right persons have the right opinion. e.g. the resolution for software patents in europe has not passed and the european court turns down microsofts appeal to delay the sanctions.
This are good signs that software market in europe remains fair.

One of the programmes I love most is Microsoft Word. Everytime I __must__ write documents with Word I'm wondering why Microsoft didn't achieve it in over 10 years of development to make a product where the basic features work. Today I worked on an document that is entirely in english and I copied a small paragraph to insert it some paragraphs above. After pasting this paragraph a nice dialog poped up that says that the french language pack isn't installed, and I should installed it. I don't know why word changes the language of the insert paragraph to french. The worsted thing a program could to is to domineer the user. Microsoft products are really weird, so thats why I'm a fan of Linux and Mac.

Three weeks now I'm a proud owner of an Apple Powerbook because my over three years old Dell notebook started to show a 5 pixel thick white strip on the right side of the display from the top to the bottom. So this was a good reason to buy a new one.

However, the Powerbook is my first Apple (exept my iPod) and I've never used Mac OS X before. I've heard from people that one who knows a Mac never whats to use another operating system, and this people aren't so wrong.
I have only on description for Mac OS X: It works! I mean complicated things are easy to achive. e.g configuring an internet connection with a mobile phone using bluetooth and grps took me only one minute.

A colleague has also a Mac, an iBook, and it is reallly easy to make a wifi connection between the two notebook.
I activated the airport (=wifi on mac) an clicked on create network. Rendezvous automatically configured the network connection and we were able to use iChat to chat with each other.

I'm really impressed how good Mac OS X works and I'm wondering why Apple does not play a bigger role on the computer market.

Last friday I downloaded the Java Wireless SDK to take a look that Java MIDP. I was surprised how easy it was to setup a little project an write a simple hello world application. The Java Wireless SDK has a nice tool called KToolbar to setup new projects, build them and run them in the emulator. You can also build a jar archive that can be transfered and install on the handset. So after a view minutes a had build a nice HelloWorld application and installed it on a Nokia 7610.

The next thing I programed was a little application that connects to a webserver via http and downloads a file from the server. There a many examples programs on the java.sun.com website how to accomplish this, so this was also quite easy. I installed the application on the phone, started it and entered the url. Then the dialog for the grps connection opened, and after choosing one the download started. After the download was finished I closed the application ant the grps connection was automatically terminated.

But the thing that impressed me most is how short the java programs are compared to Symbian C++.
HelloWorld application:

Java: 35 lines of code

Symbian C++: 400 lines of code

HttpConnection application:

Java: 85 lines of code

Symian C++: 1100 lines of code.

Both, the Java and Symbian C++ applications have quite the same gui.

My opinion is that there must be really really good reason to implement applications using Symbian C++, but I think that is really hard to find, because Java MIDP 2.0 is quite good and has lots of features, and the most important thing is
that Java MIDP can be found on every Symbian based handset.

This week I had a Symbian C++ course to learn more about how
to create application for smart-phones that based on the
Symbian operating system. I is a very intensive course, because
we started every day at 8:30 and finished after 18:00, with only a half
hour lunch break.

I'm quite new to that Symbian stuff, cause I only played a bit with the
different SDKs and wrote some little sample apps.
But one thing for me is clear by now:
Symbian is one piece of crap. It starts with the ugly coding
conventions with make it really hard for programmers to read the
programs. The API documentation for the various SDK is lousy
compared to the documentation that Sun provides for Java.

But the best thing is that the programmer must care of everything.
A little example. A small client server chat application that only
sends a simple string from the client to the server, and the server
only echos the message with is a simple GUI to do this needs about
2000 lines of C++ code.
I think in Java would the program have something about 500 lines of code.
Now think of that how expensive Symbian C++ is, when you need that much
of code for simple programs.

Symbian is one of the newer operating systems and about 90% is written
in C++ (the rest in C and assembler), but they didn't make it to
use the object oriented paradigm in a way that you have a benefit
as developer..
Every SDK, for instance, have its own GUI set, and all the components
are derived from base classes in the SDK. You have
to use this derived classes, instead of the base classes which would
it make much easier to develop applications that supports the different
type of handsets.

Another nice thing from Symbian is that the compiler is based on gcc,
which isn't bad at all, but it is only used to compile the application
for the handset. If you what to compile it for the emulator you
must buy an IDE from Metrowerks, Borland or Microsoft. The emulator
itself is not a real emulator, it doesn't emulate anything, cause the
hole Symbian OS and the apps are native compiled for the x86 CPU.
Why can't the gcc also be used to compile the thing for the
so called emulator? This would be a big advantage that more
software is developed. I don't thing that anyone would develop
open source software when the development tools are not free.

The only conclusion is to do not develop application with
Symbian C++. Maybe Java MIDP is a better way, but I've
never tried it, so I can't say anything about it.

Yesterday the online music store from sony connect europe has gone online, so lets see how it looks. It only took 2 seconds as I encounter the first big k.o. criteria. I opened the site with mozilla firefox and a nice site was displayed that I should download the Internet Explorer. I really hate sites that only works with IE because it is not very difficult to create website the works with all modern browsers.

So I started IE and opened the site and started to browse around. It looked like that the sony guys dids some research with iTunes, because the site and navigation is very similar to iTunes, but iTunes seems much better. I also found some bugs e.g. I searched for David Bowie albums and a non David Bowie album was also listed.

Another bad thing about connect is that the file format is the sony specific atrac, and is only usable with the sony sonic stage software or sony devices. Why is the file format not mp3 so that the files can be played on every mp3 player. iTunes is a bit better, cause there are also third party players that can play aac, and qualitity of aac is much better than atrac.

The thing I miss with connect is the "wanna buy" feeling I had the first time I tested iTunes. After testing iTunes I straight opened the amazon.de website and ordered 3 CDs, because purchase at iTunes does not work here in Austria by now.

Connect is also too expensive. The tracks cost 20-70% more then at iTunes. Only fools spend that much money for low quaility DRM protected music.