The nvidia driver does not work out of the box in Ubuntu Gutsy, Ubuntu Hardy boots to graphical UI but with 3D features disabled. To get everything working properly you need to do the following steps:

Warning, long. Executive summary can be found below from bold text, if you don’t want to read everything, just read the bold text

I have already asked this on Facebook (and I received a lots of answers), but those who haven’t answered it yet and maybe are not reading my questions there, please give me your comment. Which programming language is your favorite? I personally prefer lowish level languages such as C and C++ (I like especially C++, unlike many C-g-object-people, but now I would like to hear some different opinion, that is not just from my head), so what is your opinion?

Currently there are alternatives other than the plain C for Maemo development, for example C++ works out of the box (you don’t need anything extra) and Python can be used with installing some extra packages. How do you feel about those, are those what you want or is there something else you would rather like? If you can give any comments why do you prefer some language, please let me know. Please take also in account that some languages may be less resource hungry than the others, and the Internet tablets are, because they are small pocketable devices, still resource limited embedded devices.

Instructions: Go to my blog, if you haven’t registered, register, and leave your comment. I would be interested to know your opinion.

As of speaking about Python, by the way, are you aware of PyPhantom?
http://pyphantom.garage.maemo.org/
Have you used it and/or do you find it useful? Have you developed applets / plugins for Hildon Desktop with or without it with Python language? Have you found it useful? Has that been cool or not so cool? If you have encountered problems, have you considered filing bugs to garage.maemo.org -page?

While you are thinking your answer, maybe you want to see a little set of interesting pictures: Click here to see. My eyes are propably still looking like these on this my little friend (this is The news of today, not my cat, but the pictures behind the link).

Anyhow, C, C++, Python, Java, C#, Vala, D, you name it, please keep me posted!

I’ve got a new laptop for doing Maemo-stuff and installing it didn’t really work out of the box (when it does?). I had problems with setting up the hardware accelerated X on Ubuntu (for IBM/Lenovo T61p, which has nVidia Quadro chipset, the latest nVidia driver from nvidia site was required), the nVidia installer worked, and compiled the kernel module, but the nv module was insisting back on each reboot (and only way to start X was to kill the safe-mode thingie, log in as root, execute /etc/init.d/gdm stop, run nVidia installer again (it took long time because it first tried to search compatible kernel module from nVidia site, but couldn’t found, and then compiled the module), and then do /etc/init.d/gdm start).

After quite inconveniently booting the machine several times up (needing to do the long task mentioned above), I decided to get help.
I got some help from Rodrigo Novo, and I decided to write a to document what was done. You can read it here: http://www.karoliinasalminen.com/blog/?page_id=258.
After some fighting with the stubborn Ubuntu, it agreed that ok, lets collaborate. HW accelerated X is runnign nicely now! Thanks Rodrigo!

I have set up development environment (gcc, g++, automake, gtk+, glib, …) and now it is the turn to install scratchbox and Chinook on it. I just did it on my old computer so, it’ll be quite painless I would expect.

What is happening on January 23rd? Well, Burt Rutan is going to made his new SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two public. Read more about it from Engadget from here: Scaled composites to unveil the SpaceShipTwo. So far there have been only artist renderings of the forthcoming craft, but now you are supposed to see it for real. This is propably the coolest thing happening on Earth right now (IMHO).

And it is also Kate’s birthday .

I downloaded the latest packages of KDE4 (instructions can be found from Kubuntu page).

First impressions: somewhat works. On first attempt it ended up corrupting the settings file so that the desktop was empty on the next boot. I fixed it by removing .kde4 from home directory and starting the KDE4 desktop again.

Now the reverse-wow-effect. On Mac, the first impression is that wow, how easy this is to use. With KDE4, there are also desktop effects etc. on the desktop (which are by the way slower on GeForce 8800GTX high end graphics card with 768 MB video memory than similar things on Leopard with integrated Intel GMA950 low spec accelerator which uses system memory as video RAM), but first impression was that oh, how I can do something (if I can) and oh, what did it do now, did it crash? KDE4 certainly feels more like Windows Vista (I have tried it once in a computer store, and first impression was that I was disappointed and unimpressed) than Leopard (which impresses me still after using it now for a month or so). Paradigms are more redmondian than Appleish. The amount of originality is also pretty low, I did not see anything special new. Not so nice.

The hard-to use thing kind of culminated to the fact, that I did not figure out how to add application shortcut icons to the panel and I also did not figure out how to add programs to the favorites in the start menu (which is tiny box on the left bottom corner of my 30 inch monitor at resolution 2560×1600 - I even needed to scroll the menu in order to find something on a monitor size of 30 inches, perfectly understandable on a mobile device because of small screen and ease of use because of touch screen, but on a 30 inch desktop - what a waste).

With lack of workarounds for the usability problems, it did not take long before the Gnome desktop was booted back. Even though it is not as shiny as the Leopard on my Mac, it at least works for me and does basic stuff I need frequently.

KDE4 was not complete disappointment, it does basic things, it is free software and it is not extremely bad either, but because there are alternatives that suit me better, I am going to be using them.

I came up with something in my experiments where I needed to parse a comma separated list to vector of floats.
I googled the Internet and found more examples for other languages than for C (there are numerous examples around and mine may not be the best one), but I decided that maybe I’ll put the C how-to to my blog since there are number of places where you could need it, for example when writing some application for Maemo. For example if you have your configuration in an XML-file and want to describe RGBA -color in Cairo compatible format, for example you have this inside mycolor-tag:

1, 0.6, 1, 0.7

You can obtain the mycolor-tag from the xml file with libxml2 with ease (and there is tons of documentation and examples how to use libxml2, for example my and Kate’s EFIS -project uses it to parse configuration files, if you want know how to do that, please go to the Katix EFIS project page on garage.maemo.org and have a look), but now I’ll tell you one way how to get the numbers. Here is one way to do it:

Little example:

char *csv="1, 0.6, 1, 0.7";
double mycolor[4];
...
parse_csvf(csv, 4, mycolor);
...


And then the parsing can then be done as follows:

void parse_csvf(char *csv, int len, double *list){
  int place=0;
  int slen = strlen(csv);
  int i;
  int itemcounter=0;
  char item[255]={0};
  int overflow=0;
  double fitem=0;
	
  for( i=0;i<slen ;i++ ){
    if ( csv[i]>='0' && csv[i]<='9' || csv[i]=='.' ){
      item[itemcounter++]=csv[i];
    } else if ( csv[i]==',' ){
      fitem=0;
      item[itemcounter++]=0;
      fitem = atof( item );
      list[place++]=fitem;
      if( place>=len ) {
        overflow=1;
        break;
      }
      item[0]=0;
      itemcounter=0;
    }
  }
  if(overflow==0){
    item[itemcounter++]=0;
    fitem = atof(item);
    list[place++]=fitem;
  }
}

You could maybe use some helper function from some higher level library, but here is one way how to do it. And you might also end up with a lot cleaner-looking solution if you used C++. However, this is C and many Maemo-programs are written in C. My older C-versions used more than one for-loop, this does the parsing in single pass and might be faster.

I spent the whole weekend for working with our kitchen (and some time at the night for playing with the new PS3, but no time yet to watch the new Blu-Ray movies I have).

Our kitchen repair has finally reached the point that it is again usable. The new floor (with ceramic tiles and heating pipes) is installed, refrigerator is installed and cats are happy to get food on their table. Next thing to do is some finishing touches to the walls, some Wisa Deco panels needs to get installed. Replacing the refrigerator was unbelievably hard work.

I paid back some sleep deprivation on Saturday-Sunday night -about 11.5 hours of sleep. And after that I still felt sleepy.

As I happen to be a gadget-lover (Am I? 3 x Nokia N810, 5 x Nokia N800, 5 x Nokia Nokia 770, (okay, most of those aren’t mine but they are Kate’s or actually Nokia’s in the end) couple of computers, cameras, all kinds of stuff), I am happy to announce that we have a new gadget in our household, new gadget now and then keeps one happy:

I did put our Mac to download the latest beta-version of X-plane yesterday (over 1GB download). That was worth the wait every minute. The new X-plane is awesome. The texture detail, world detail is all better than ever before. If you thought that X-plane 8 Global Scenery looked great, this will blow you and all MSFS fans away. I was just test-driving the new default aircraft - the Cirrus Jet.

Linux version is coming soon. Once it comes, I’ll order the DVDs (our simulator PC is running Ubuntu Gutsy). X-plane now comes in 8 dual layer DVDs full of scenery. Also the detail (3D cockpit on Cirrus-Jet) is something I haven’t seen on any other simulator to the date. The 3D cockpit is in this version usable and not just a fancy looking feature which really does not work, in this version it works and gives a feeling of sitting in a real aircraft.

Surprising thing is that the sim is usable on Macbook with the relatively low spec Intel GMA950 3D accelerator. Of course turning roads, high detail world, volumetric fog, reflections on water and trees on makes it slow, but by tuning down some parameters, it is flyable without a high spec machine (we have Geforce 8800GTX on the Linux machine and 30 inch display, I can hardly wait to see how it will look like on that) allthough in X-plane the processor speed plays a huge role - the Core 2 duo processor in the Macbook is potentially faster than on our living room desktop PC.

The Cirrus-Jet cockpit:

Learn more at: http://www.x-plane.com/beta.html