Thursday 4. February, 2010

Android app?

Nordaaker just got an Android device. <a href=”http://arne.nordaaker.com/”>Arne</a> is currently fondling a Google Nexus One. Sleek piece of hardware. I’ve been thinking we should do an Android app. Question number one is which language?

21:11 <@sri> java?

21:11 <@marcus> hmm?

21:11 <@marcus> No, I don’t think so

21:11 <@marcus> Scala maybe

21:11 <@sri> mhm, scala seems bearable

21:11 <@marcus> my thoughts precicely

 

Friday 15. January, 2010

Samsung, please let me redesign the ST1000 OS

I just bought a new compact camera, a Samsung ST1000 (or CL65 in the US). It’s a lovely piece of hardware, a 12 mpixel camera with a 28-135 lens and image stabilization, GPS, Wifi all in a small sleek package. However, it has some issues. Here’s my reaction as captured on IRC after trying to use the internet sharing features:

21:13 < @marcus> my camera's firmware was written by idiots.
21:14 < @marcus> samsung--
21:14 < @marcus> it "supports" picasa and youtube and facebook
21:14 < @marcus> but can only upload 320x200 videos of less than 30 seconds
                to youtube
21:14 < @marcus> and only pics to facebook
21:15 < @marcus> awesome!
21:15 < @marcus> it's a 12mpixel camera tho
21:15 < @marcus> with 5x optic zoom
21:15 < @marcus> heh, this thing has face recognition
21:15 < @marcus> and a decent flash
21:15 < @marcus> and 720p video
21:16 < @marcus> if the software wasn't so horrible, it'd be awesome
21:16 < @marcus> 3.5" touch screen
21:17 < @marcus> it's got a gps and wifi
21:17 < @marcus> WTF
21:18 < @marcus> and it can't email video
21:18 < @marcus> this is bullshit
Saturday 28. November, 2009

Burning the candle at both ends part II (source)

In addition to recent fatherhood and doing my own startup and taking over the leadership of the Oslo Perl Mongers, I’ve started a project to get a hacker space set up in Oslo. Actually, this ties in to my Oslo Perl Mongers interests as well, so it’s not a completely new project. I got very inspired by @kyrah’s talk about metalab.at in Wien at FSCons in Gothenburg a couple of weeks ago.

I’d like to see something like this in Oslo, so I’ve set up a Wiki and started talking to various other interested parties. If this is something you would be interested in happening, please sign up at the Wiki and the Google Group and join the discussion.

Burning the candle at both ends. (source)

In addition to recent fatherhood and doing my own startup, I am now the leader of the Oslo Perl Mongers. Look forward to tech talks from Oslo.pm in the months to come. :)

Friday 6. November, 2009

Testing JavaScript from Perl

If you want to write tests for your JavaScript code from Perl, Claes’ module Test::JavaScript::More comes in handy. This module works by evaling everything from the use line as JavaScript. Of course, now you’re mixing two languages in one file, which is not going to make any of your syntax validators happy. However, loading it like this will please both perl and jslint:

m| /* |; # Comment out JavaScript
use Test::JavaScript::More;
__END__ = '';  // It's is all JS from here. */
ok(1,'Success!');

One final note. I had some problems building the cpan module of JavaScript on OSX with Spidermonkey from ports. If you have the same problem, get the latest and greatest version from GitHub, which fixes this issue.

Sunday 1. November, 2009

(source)

Jim Wesson aka @hotdogsladies aka Merlin Mann is the customer from hell:

First, and most important, can we do something to make the logo BIGGER and more prominent? I’ve done a quick sketch using the circumference of my coffee cup as a reference guide (see attached) and I’m sure we all agree that the new eagle is much easier to see at about three times the current size (I’m not sure what that is in computer picas). Everyone agrees that the new eagle logo my daughter drew is GORGEOUS, so I really want those feathers to stand out over the “Stool” info scrolling through the eagle’s mouth (beak? bill? not important).

Great fun.

Friday 16. October, 2009

Amazon announces same day delivery (source)

Whoever decides to provide this service in Oslo for a reasonable price will have me as a loyal customer. Amazon is charging 15$ for normal customers and 6$ for prime customers. Would make a prime membership worth it quite quickly if you live in one of those target cities I guess. (via daring fireball).

Thursday 8. October, 2009

Creating QR barcodes with perl. (source)

A really simple tutorial for creating these 2d-barcodes that you see android use all the time.

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Wednesday 7. October, 2009

Things you don’t want to see in your server console.

2190872.796576] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference
[2190872.796765] tsk->{mm,active_mm}->context = 00000000000016ca
[2190872.796810] tsk->{mm,active_mm}->pgd = fffff800b6244000
[2190872.796853]               \|/ ____ \|/
[2190872.796860]               "@'/ .. \`@"
[2190872.796867]               /_| \__/ |_\
[2190872.796875]                  \__U_/
[2190872.797141] swapper(0[#0]): Oops [#1]
[2190872.797271] TSTATE: 0000009911001600 TPC: 0000000000000000 TNPC: 0000000000000004 Y: 00000000    Not tainted
[2190872.797387] TPC: <0x8>
Tuesday 29. September, 2009

Introducing … Me

Hey there, the internet is a turbulent place, and since I’ve moved around quite
a few times, I think I forgot to introduce myself the last time I made the
move. I am Marcus Ramberg, the writer of this blog, and director of
Nordaaker, a small British/Norwegian company currently run out of Oslo,
Norway. In addition to being my personal blog, at the time being this blog
acts as Nordaaker’s dynamic english presence. As the other director of
Nordaaker, Arne Fismen runs our norwegian presence.

In one form or another, I’ve been writing on the internet since around
2002, when I set up my first own domain, thefeed.no.
Back then I was running my own Movabletype installation.
Thanks to the glorious Internet Archive you can see my
first blog the way it looked about a year after it’s launch. It is
very strange for me to go back and read the thoughts I had so many years
ago.

I was also hosting other blogs on my movabletype installation, including
slemmen, who wrote about sysadmin stuff and some college friends like
marlboro and gry.

On the front page we had a perl script that aggregated all the blogs,
a simple planet if you will.

Back then, I wrote a lot less about tech than I do now. Looking at the
categories, we see that the three biggest ones are Travel[44], Geek[36]
and Opinion[26]. Still, even then I was journaling things from the
Perl Community. However, checking back around 2005, a few years
later, Geek[108] was dominant, With Opinion[49] and Mac[34] as the next
ones. Perl is trailing 4. with 27 posts. I also wrote 18 book reviews

About that time I gave my first talk about a MVC framework.I was
already active in the community, contributing a Mason view to Maypole,
my third CPAN module. I had been using Mason at work for a couple of years
by then. It was not until I started working for ABC Startsiden that I started
using Template Toolkit.

About then, disaster struck. My server HDD died, losing a lot of images
from our image galleries. After that, I lost a lot of the motivation for
running thefeed, given the risks. Losing people’s personal data isn’t fun.
At least I am glad that the blogs are preserved in the internet archive.

It took a while for me to start writing again after that, but in the period 2006-2009
I decided to use hosted solutions, keeping both a vox blog and a
livejournal, before finally moving to this blog installation.
I’m self-hosted again, and the software might vary, but I hope the addresses
will last for a long time :)

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