Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Got my new Apple Lanyard Headphones

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Amazing, the swedish apple store dont sell the old Apple Lanyard Headphones, the ones that fits in both Apple 1st generation and 3rd generation.

by Stephen Hucker

by Stephen Hucker

And I cannot buy it from the US Apple store either, they just don’t let you to do so. So at the end I reverted to EBay and I found a nice offer from buyitloveit.com($12 + $6.5 shipping). That’s halft the price listed on the Apple Store ($39.00) and they are new not used. The ebay description said that the packaging was damaged but the only thing I could find was a sticky mark on the top of package. And it only took one week to deliver from UK to Sweden. Nice.

“Reload in target plaform” is not working in Netbeans 6.1/6.5 RC2 in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

I filed a bug report

http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=153354

It seems that it cannot find the inner class ResolvableHelper inside the TopComponent. (throws a NoClassDefFoundException, see the messages.log for details ). It’s funny though, because it works perfectly in Windows XP and Vista, I thought this stuff was platform independent.

dropbox not syncing files

Monday, October 20th, 2008

Today I fixed my dropbox installation on mac os x . It was not updating (sending) files from the Mac to the Dropbox servers. In fact it was sending new files to dropbox servers but some old files that were supposed to be on dropbox account were not synchonized and I couldn’t get Dropbox to notice that, until today. I found this post and it seems that if you close dropbox, delete the ~/.dropbox directory and restart dropbox you’ll get the account linking screen again and dropbox will index everything and make sure that your local Dropbox directory match the online one. It took a while but all the files are safely transferred to Dropbox now.

Wireless Power Meters

Friday, July 18th, 2008

I’ve been trying to find power meters for home. My criteria is that it has to support several sensors (because I want to know how much energy my computer and home cinema is spending) and it has to be wireless (because it more convinient this way). After researching a couple of hours, it doesn’t lok good. The number of choices is very small. The Voltcraft option is in doubt because all the information I can find is in german. And the only other working option that I found is Plogg.

Plogg

Plogg looks easier to interface with. It seems that it’s a serial interface (AT-command) over Bluetooth or Zigbee. Or if you get the PloggZgb EAP you will be able to access the sensors via TCP/IP in your Ethernet LAN.

Quoting from the plogg webpage:

Supported Com Port Redirector (CPR) software maps virtual COM ports on a PC platform and redirects application data destined to an attached device. Rather than going out of the local COM port, the data is transmitted across the Ethernet network to/from the Lantronics XPort Direct using TCP/IP.

But it’s not clear the model with the European power socket is orderable.

But at least it gave me the clue to look for Zigbee sensors as it seems that this technology is aimed at this type of devices. Although it went down that road and I didn’t find any real product there. I’ll post about it later.

By the way, if you are looking for power meters and you don’t need wireless or multiple sensors there are a lot of choices. Here’s a small sample:

  1. Volcraft Energy Check 3000
  2. Wattson 01
  3. The Owl
  4. Efergy
  5. Eco-eye / Mini-eye

Check the comparison chart between those.

Voltcraft Energy Control 3000

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Voltcraft Energy Control 3000Voltcraft sensor es-1

An article on the Elektor magazine on home power meters caught my attention, particularly the wireless one. In the article they mention the Voltcraft Energy Control 3000, that is able to receive data (about energy consumption) from several sensor and can be connected to the pc via usb. The only problem is that the software that comes with it is in german only. The price is ok, 100€ + 35€ per sensor. But I cannot find any information on the actual format of the data that the Voltcraft Energy Control 3000 provides. I also impossible to tell whether or not special USB drivers are needed. It could be that it presents itselft as a hard drive and expose the date as a file. That would be the easiest way to interface with it and use my own tools to process the data. That would also make possible to connect to my MacBook Pro.

If anybody finds any information (in english) please leave a comment here.

Typing tilde on Netbeans 6.1 - annoying java bug

Friday, July 11th, 2008

It seems that is imposible to type the ˜ symbol (named also tilde,squiggle,twiddle,not,approx,wiggle,swung,dash,enyay,sqiggle) in Netbeans with a Swedish keyboard at least. It seems that it’s a long known java bug (bug 6353098, bug 6253172). At least I can use the Alt+126 code to type it.

Migrating BlinkList bookmarks and Powermarks bookmarks to del.icio.us

Friday, July 11th, 2008

It´s done. I was suffering constant problems with BlinkList and I decided to move to del.icio.us. I also decided to rescue the old powermarks 3.5 bookmarks from the oblivion and import them to del.icio.us too.

BlinkList gives you the option of exporting your bookmarks in JSON format via the Options ->Export links. (here is the link)

So grab the json file and save it somewhere in your disk.

Then you have to use the script below to load the bookmars into del.icio.us but first make sure that you have ruby or jruby, rubygems, json-jruby or json-ruby, jruby-openssl and rubilicious installed.

If you use jruby you can install everything in the following way:

jruby -S gem install json-jruby  jruby-openssl rubilicious-0.2.0.gem

Then use the following script to load all the bookmarks in the json file to del.icio.us. Just change the filename and username and password to suit your needs.

#!/usr/bin/ruby
 
require "rubygems"
require "rubilicious"
require "json"
require "date"
require "time"
 
 
def getTime(item)
  dateadd = item['dateadd']
  return Time.at(dateadd) unless dateadd == false
  return Time.now
end
 
def getIsPrivate(item)
  isprivate = item['private']
  return "checked"==isprivate
end
 
def getTags(item)
  item['tag'].gsub(' ', '_').gsub(',',' ')
end
 
json_string = File.new("blinklist20080710.json").read
 
result = JSON.parse(json_string)
 
r = Rubilicious.new('your_delicious_username','your_delicious_password')
 
i=0
for item in result do 
  i += 1
  puts "#{i}: #{item['url']}"
  #next if i < 3229
  r.add(item['url'],item['name'],item['description'], getTags(item), getTime(item), true, getIsPrivate(item))
end 
puts "ended"

If the script fails in the middle of the import don´t worry. just uncomment the “#next if i < 3229″ and change the 3229 to the last bookmark id that was loaded. Rerun the script and it will skip all bookmarks up to the one you write there.

Loading the old powermark file into del.icio.us is a little more complex. You will need two files:

1) state_pattern.rb (from maurice codik’s blog). I´m copying it here for completeness sake

#!/usr/bin/ruby
 
#   Copyright (C) 2006 Maurice Codik - maurice.codik@gmail.com
#
#   Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and
#   associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
#   including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute,
#   sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
#   furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
#   The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial
#   portions of the Software.
#
#   THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
#   LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
#   IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
#   WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
#   SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
 
 
# an example:
#
# class Connection
#   include StatePattern
#   state :initial do # you always need a state named initial. this is where you begin.
#     def connect
#       puts "connected"
#    # move to state :connected. all other args to transition_to are passed to the new state's constructor
#       transition_to :connected, "hello from initial state" 
#     end
#     def disconnect
#       puts "not connected yet"
#     end
#   end
#   state :connected do
#     def initialize(msg)
#       puts "initialize got msg: #{msg}"
#     end
#     def connect
#       puts "already connected"
#     end
#     def disconnect
#       puts "disconnecting"
#       transition_to :initial
#     end
#   end
#   def reset
#     puts "reseting outside a state"
#     # you can also change the state from outside of the state objects
#     transition_to :initial
#   end
# end
 
# how's it work:
# Each call to state defines a new subclass of Connection that is stored in a hash. 
# Then, a call to transition_to instantiates one of these subclasses and sets it to the be the active state.
# Method calls to Connection are delegated to the active state object via method_missing. 
 
module StatePattern
  class UnknownStateException < Exception
  end
 
  def StatePattern.included(mod)
    mod.extend StatePattern::ClassMethods
  end
 
  module ClassMethods
    attr_reader :state_classes
    def state(state_name, &block)
      @state_classes ||= {}
 
      new_klass = Class.new(self, &block)
      new_klass.class_eval do
        alias_method :__old_init, :initialize
        def initialize(context, *args, &block)
          @context = context
          __old_init(*args, &block)
        end
      end
 
      @state_classes[state_name] = new_klass
    end
  end
 
  attr_accessor :current_state, :current_state_obj
 
  def transition_to(state_name, *args, &block)
    new_context = @context || self
 
    klass = new_context.class.state_classes[state_name]
    if klass
      new_context.current_state = state_name
      new_context.current_state_obj = klass.new(new_context, *args, &block)
    else
      raise UnknownStateException, "tried to transition to unknown state, #{state_name}"      
    end
  end
 
  def method_missing(method, *args, &block)
    unless @current_state_obj
      transition_to :initial
    end
    if @current_state_obj
      @current_state_obj.send(method, *args, &block)
    else
      super
    end
  end
 
end

2) The script that parses the powermarks file and load it to del.icio.us

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require "rubygems"
require "rubilicious"
require "json"
require "date"
require "time"
require "state_pattern"
 
class Parser
  include StatePattern
 
  attr_accessor :name, :url,:desc,:tags ,:date , :r
 
  state :initial do     
    def parse(line)
      #puts "initial: #{line}"
      if line  =~ /<a href="(.*)">(.*)<\/a>/
        @context.name = $2 
        @context.url = $1  
        transition_to :read_keywords        
      end
    end
  end
  state :read_keywords do 
    def parse(line)
      if line =~ /<!--keywords-->(.*)$/
        @context.tags = $1.chomp
        transition_to :read_keywords2
      end
    end
  end
 
  state :read_keywords2 do
    def parse(line)      
      #puts "read_keywords2: #{line}"       
      if line =~ /<!--/
        if line =~ /^<!--desc-->/
          transition_to :read_desc
          @context.current_state_obj.parse(line)
        end         
        if line =~ /^<!--mdata/
          transition_to :read_metadata
          @context.current_state_obj.parse(line)
        end
        return
      end
      @context.tags += " " + line.chomp      
    end
  end
 
  state :read_desc do 
    def parse(line)      
      if line =~ /<!--/
        if line =~ /<!--desc-->(.*)/
          @context.desc = $1.chomp
        else
          #puts "not desc"
          if line =~ /<!--mdata/
            transition_to :read_metadata
            @context.current_state_obj.parse(line)            
          else
            raise "don´t know how to parse this in this state #{line}"
          end              
          return
        end               
      else
        @context.desc += " " + line.chomp
      end
    end
  end
 
  state :read_metadata do    
    def parse(line)      
      @context.date = $1.hex if line =~ /<!--mdata=\[\w+\]\[([0-9A-F]+)\]\[([0-9A-F]+)\]\[([0-9A-F]+)\]/
      @context.date = Time.now.to_i if @context.date < 0
 
 
      puts "=============================="      
      puts "name: #{@context.name}"
      puts "url:  #{@context.url}"
      puts "tags: #{@context.tags}"
      puts "date: #{Time.at(@context.date)}"
      puts "desc: #{@context.desc}" unless @context.desc.nil?
      puts "=============================="
      @context.r.add(@context.url,@context.name,@context.desc, @context.tags, Time.at(@context.date), false, true)
      @context.name = @context.url = @context.tags = @context.date = @context.desc = nil
 
      transition_to :initial
    end
  end
 
end
 
 
r = Rubilicious.new('your_delicious_username','your_password')
p = Parser.new
p.r = r;
i = 0
File.new("pm3520070703.htm").each { |line| 
  puts i; 
  i += 1 
  #next unless i >2261
  p.parse(line);  
}
 
puts "ended"

(This script will add all the links as private. If you don´t want that behaviour just modify the last parameter in “@context.r.add(@context.url,@context.name,@context.desc, @context.tags, Time.at(@context.date), false, true)” to “false”.)

Again, if the script fails in the middle of the import don´t worry. just uncomment the “#next unless i > 2261″ and change the 2261 to the line number where you want to resume parsing the powermarks file. Rerun the script and it will skip all previous lines.

Hope it helps anybody that it´s trying to escape from Blinklist and/or Powermarks. I successfully imported 3299 blinklist bookmarks and 4000 powermarks bookmarks (a lot of dupes though). By the way, the first script will replace any previous bookmark with the same url and the second script will not. That´s the way I wanted it but of course you can change it. The parameter before the last one in the call to add is the one that control the “replace”. (see add documentation).

Create tables in Evernote

Monday, June 16th, 2008

There is no easy way to create tables in an Evernote table the best way I found is to use blocknote freeware WYSIWYG html editor to create the table and then paste it into the Evernote note.

The MacBook Pro is not crash-free

Monday, June 16th, 2008

I just received my new MacBook Pro. I got this crash on the first day :-(. I put it to sleep and when I tried to restore… look what showed up on the screen.

Upgrading my video card

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

I just upgrade my venerable Nvidia 980 XGL with a more modern video card the Sapphire ATI X1650 Pro AGP. The X1650 is not cutting-edge but it really boosted the Half-Life 2 performance, I can get 40+ fps in 1900×1200 in my 24″ monitor. I´m pretty impressed. I´m not a hard core gamer, though.