Struggle For More Pixels

Anybody that uses a computer a lot, usually would agree that there’s just never enough pixels on the screen to do what you want. This term, my old roommate left his monitor behind, and I’ve taken it into my room for use with my laptop. My laptop’s display is 15.4 inch widescreen, with a native resolution of 1280×800. The current monitor I’m using has a native resolution of 1680×1050 (just shy of 1080!), however, sometimes even that doesn’t feel like enough. Having a dual monitor setup is perfect, but I wish it worked better in Linux for a setup where both monitors might be a different size.

X seems to think that the best way to do this is to make a square screen, even if one screen is taller pixel-wise than the other, meaning I don’t get the bottom of the screen on the smaller monitor. The other side-effect here is that the KDE panel goes across the bottom all the way, even if I wanted it just to be on one screen (Windows does this, and it’s a feature I like). Dual monitors is something Windows gets right, and Linux absolutely fails at. Then again, there might be a solution I don’t know about. At work, I have a nice setup. I have a nice large square screen, and spend all day in VMWare, so switching around VMWare has become second nature.

I’m also thinking within a year I’m going to have to get my laptop replaced. Heat has became a big issue for it, and even a chillpad struggles to keep it cool. I’ve tried dusting it a couple times, but unfortunately the air circulation on it has never been that great. I have the most problems when running something that gives the GPU a pretty good workout, usually pushing the sensor temps over 100C, and making the bottom of the laptop too hot to touch. In my dual monitor setup, I must remember to keep the laptop lid open, even if the screen is in use to promote air circulation.

Who Turned Off the Pump?

Every weekend, my friends and I go to a pub called “The Lieutenants Pump” for bunch at about noon. Last week we got this letter:

Dear Valued Patron,

I regret to inform you that the Lieutenant’s Pump has been assessed a two day Liquor license suspension by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission. The Commision found us guilty of being over capacity by five people on the patio during last years Stanley Cup Finals.

On the night of the infraction, we did everything in our power to control the patio but did not foresee people jumping the fence. We had staff supervising the patio and when people hopped the fence they were immediately escorted off.

We were not aware at the time that this would be considered insufficient by the Commission. Somehow, the Commission expected us to prevent the fence jumping. Short of barbed wire and electrification I’m not sure how this could have been accomplished. None the less, in its wisdom the Commission has concluded that the suspension is warranted as a general deterrent to other operators and as a specific deterrent to us letting it happen again.

The Lieutenant’s Pump will be closed October 11, 12 and 13 which is Thanksgiving weekend including Monday.

I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this closure will cause. Any concerns about this situation should be directed to:

Ted Meekin
Minister of Government and Consumer Services
4320 – 99 Wellesely St. E.
4^th Fl. Whitney Block
Toronto M7A 1W3

416 – 327 – 6611
TmcMeekin.MPP@Liberal.OLA.ORG

“See You At the Pump”
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John Couse
Owner

Great debates! Tabs

I’d like to talk about a growing trend which has been displeasing me lately: Tabs. They’re everywhere! Well, maybe not everywhere. Really the kinds of tabs I want to talk about are the ones made common by web browsers like Firefox or Safari, etc. but which are also showing up in apps like Photoshop and other non-browser apps.

Now, I’m not talking so much about say, a Settings window for an app, where different settings are on different tabs, grouped by relevance. Grouping functions of an application together on a tab is not what my gripe is about. That seems fairly appropriate to me. My gripe is with grouping documents into tabs.

So let’s move on with the classic example: the modern web-browser. You can click a link and have it open (optionally) in a new tab (there are other ways of creating tabs but I’m sure we all know them, and it’s really unimportant here). This typically reveals a tab bar, with small rectangles titled for each tab you have open, also bearing a small icon for dismissing the tab. Most modern tab bar implementations allow you to re-order the tabs and also expand them into full windows (otherwise the tab acts as a child to its window). When a tab is selected in the window, it is the sole document the user may view in that window. This is the basic idea of tabs which I’m sure we’re all familiar with.

Here’s my problem with tabs: Let’s say I’ve got Safari open, one window containing 5 tabs. I want to switch from my email tab to my news tab. I’ll just use alt/cmd-tab to switch to new. Ironically, this functionality is busted because I’m using tabs. Also, things like Exposé on the Mac (and I’m sure Compiz on Linux) are broken when it comes to tabs because, they deal with windows and not tabs.

Let’s take a breather here. Yep, most every tab implementation I’ve seen has a keyboard shortcut for switching between tabs. Sadly, these are all different shortcuts most of the time. And even if they are the same in different apps, it’s still not the cmd/alt-tab we’re so accustomed to. And hey, Firefox is pretty extensible, so maybe there is a hack to get it to co-operate with alt-tab, but that only solves the problem for Firefox, not all tab apps.

If you don’t use a keyboard, you’ve now got to hit those ridiculously small rectangles in the tab bar. Let me explain ridiculously small, I’m comparing the target size of the tabs to the target size of entire windows (which, as you may remember, is what we had before tabs). So I’m saying, if I have three windows onscreen at once (tiled in some manner, not full screen), each one of those windows is orders of magnitude easier to hit (and therefor switch to) with a mouse than is a tab.

I don’t think tabs are all bad. I think the real problem lies in the paradigm associated with them. The general paradigm seems to be something like “My browser is fullscreen and I have 3 tabs open, one for every task I’m currently focusing on”. However, if you work more like “I have 3 windows open, one for each task with tabs briefly opened in each window when it is appropriate” then it’s much easier (as I’ve explained) to switch between them. I’m not saying “do away with tabs altogether”, but I am saying tabs should should only be used temporarily, and only when relevant to that window’s task.

It often happens one of my tasks is researching a certain topic. Given my paradigm for browsing, I’ve got a window open with Wikipedia and one with Google Docs. As I read wikipedia, I’ll sometimes open a new tab to read on a related subject, close it, and then switch to my Google Docs window to write something about my topic. The different areas of focus stay separate and tabs are only used briefly, like an extra buffer or scratchpad for any given task.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this one, because I know tabbed applications like browsers are one place we all spend a lot of time.

Getting Lost

I had a meeting with a company this morning at 10:30 in a part of the city I’ve never been to before. Between Google Maps and OC Transpo’s trip planner, I was about to figure out approximate times and buses I’d have to take. Since the meeting was at 10:30, I obviously didn’t want to be late, so I targeted to be there about 10:00. Both websites said the latest I could get there, without being late, was 9:00.

I woke up early at 6:45, and got up about 8:00, got showered, etc, and left by 8:30. I jumped on the 96 to Bayview, hopped off, and picked up the 182 to where I thought the building was (according to Google Maps). I started in search for a Tim Hortons, found one, but the line was ridiculously long. I started back to the building. When I got to the building, I remembered the email said suite 300. I get to suite 300, but it’s not that company. I try looking it up on my cellphone through webmail, the my phone was rejecting the webmail’s server certificate. Great. I do a quick google, and find a result for a building down the road, so with 20 minutes to my interview, I hike it about a kilometer to the other building. Upon reaching the elevator of this 7 storey building, and I got in and pressed floor 3. She started to press floor 3, then realized I already had. Knowing about the meeting today, she asked if I was the person whom had the meeting.

The meeting went fairly good, about 50 minutes long. I left the building, and went to the bus stop, and waited for about 15 minutes for a bus to arrive. A 15 minute bus ride to a transit terminal, and I took a bus back home. It took me about an hour and 20 minutes to get home, and in 30C heat with 35C humidex. I probably covered about 5.5 km (3mi) of walking today, but I could do with the exercise.

Questionable

One thing I’ve always said I was going to do, is read all the archives of Questionable Content, a daily web comic. When I first saw in on April 1st, I thought it looked really cool. I decided that I’d read right from the beginning, but with 1,200 comics, that isn’t an easy feat. I recently had a small three week vacation before I flew out to Ottawa, so I took 3 days, and read about 300 comics a day. I can safely say I’m caught up, and I highly recommend the comic to other people.

Also, sorry for the lack of content of late. The well of ideas is kinda dry right now. I start a new job on monday, so maybe that will give me something to talk about.

The lines — read between them.

http://devver.net/blog/2008/08/looking-for-your-first-cs-job-be-sure-to-own-your-ideas/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

I just blew my f***ing mind.

So I’m sitting in my bed, it’s nearly 2am, I’m playing Super Monkey Ball on an iPod touch, and I’m talking to Q online. My room is dim, lit only by a sole lamp on my nightstand. Something catches my eye — it’s a FUCKING BAT flying around my room. A bat! A BAT.

I jump out of my headphones, toss the laptop, and bolt the hell out of my room. There’s a fucking BAT in my room. Catch my breath…WHAT IN THE HELL?? I guess at some point during this commotion I screamed something about a bat being in my room, cause I could hear my roommates talking about it, worrying about a possible bat in their room.

How did a bat get in my room? How long had it been there? And what it God’s sweet name was I going to do about it? Ughhhh, there was a BAT IN MY ROOM. Closed my door, obviously, so it couldn’t fly around the rest of the house. Thank God I have a back door in my room which leads to outside. So I went outside, around back, into the dark, down my damp dark steps, and kicked open my door.. It started flying around again which quite frankly scared the bejesus out of me. And then he stopped. I thought maybe it had flown out, but it looked more like it had flown into my closet. Eventually I re-enter with a broom, still quite convinced there is a FUCKING BAT IN MY ROOM, and I pin the back door open.

Sure enough, out pops he, and begins to swoop around my room, over and over, door still ajar. He flies close to the door, but doubles back. He does this many, many more times. Just keeps flying around, trying to land. Eventually he briefly lands on my ceiling, but again starts flying more. Meanwhile here am I, crouched on my floor, holding a broom, and dodging a FUCKING BAT. And the only thing I can think of is Batman (which interestingly enough I had just been reading about moments prior), and how Bruce Wayne calmed himself with the thought the bat is more afraid of him than he is of it. So I kind of relaxed and let the bat fly around me a little bit.

Finally it flew out of my open door and into the night…

Sorry for the cussing, but it was by far the most intense thing that’s happened to me since… EVER.

Wrapping Up Another Term

Summer session is quickly drawing to the end. Over the summer, I’ve taken a total of four classes: Computer Organization 1, The Romans, Data Structures, and Software Engineering. In case you weren’t familiar with how the summer school works at UNB, it’s divided into two smaller terms, Interssesion (May & June) and Summer session (July and August). Classes are super compressed into six weeks, as opposed to three months (with a month for exams, totaling four months). This Saturday at 1400h, I have my software engineering exam, and then Monday at 0900h I have my Data Structures exam.

After my exams I’ll be returning back home for a few weeks before I head back out to Ottawa for another four months. This fall I’ll be going to QNX Software Systems out in southern Kanata. I’m not familiar at this point as to what my actual assignment will be, as they said they’ll figure where I want to work when I get there. The only unfortunate thing about working out in Kanata is that it’s over an hour bus ride from my house, vs about 45 minutes to the IBM lab I worked previous. The one good thing about a bus ride that long is that I can take a small nap on the bus. I’m really looking forward to my term there, and I think it’ll be fun to try something different. After my work term, I’ll be returning to Fredericton for another term of school.

Walk Through The Park

iPod/iPhone 2.0

Well, I figured I’d better write a post. It’s been a little while!

I’ve been using the 2.0 firmware on my iPod touch now for a couple weeks. So far things have been going really smoothly. The enterprise WPA works beautifully at my university, although setup wasn’t that fun (instructions here). Stability at first was a bit of an issue. Some of the apps kept crashing (it was actually less stable than my jailbroken iPod). In fact, sometimes an app would freeze up and make my music skip.

Some of the apps are great, some are not. The Facebook app is pretty decent, at least now you can view people’s walls. The Lastfm app would be a lot better, however, Apple doesn’t allow background processes, so unfortunately it doesn’t support scrobbling. As expected, Super Monkey Ball delivers and is really great, but is also very challenging! A fun little game is JirboBreak, which is just a breakout clone. The NYTimes app is pretty good, although a bit unstable at times. Tap Tap Revenge is great, it’s like guitar hero type deal for the iPod/iPhone. There’s a wordpress app, which I haven’t had a chance to use yet, and the best is the Remote App. Remote lets you use your iPod/iPhone as a (ed:) [G.D.] flickerbox for iTunes, allowing you to browse your music and change the volume, scrub, and pause tracks. Very useful for parties.

Exchange support is here, however, I don’t (yet) have any use for it. One thing iPod touch users will like is the beeping on mail. As soon as it gets new mail, it’ll beep at you, alerting you of your new mail. It doesn’t seem to be as quick on the draw as before, and doesn’t always tell me if I have new mail. I’m not sure what the issue is, but I wish it would tell me every time!

Push notifications aren’t anything really interesting. Mail checking can only be set in 15 minute increments. Since all my accounts are IMAP, they only support fetch anyways. I’d rather have 5 minute increments for mail checking, but I guess 15 minutes is fine.

The only thing I want back from my jailbroken iPod was Lastfm scrobbling support. I’m hoping someone will find a way to make this work, but until then, I guess I’ll just have to live without it.