Google Code supporting Mercurial

Google has announced support for Mercurial on Google Code. Currently it is a preview release for a limited set of users.

There is a Google analysis of Git and Mercurial here.

UQ switches to MS Exchange Labs

The University of Queensland is switching over to Microsoft Exchange Labs for student email accounts. In the past I have redirected all my university email to my personal GMail account and I wished to continue that.

This turned out to be a ridiculously complicated process, that I would have never figured out without the instructions. Furthermore it can only be done in IE 7! Obviously the IT staff haven't walked around with their eyes open, otherwise they might have noticed how many students have MacBooks.

From my brief exposure to this service, it seems like a really bad idea to try and clone a desktop application (Outlook) in a web browser. Having to double-click is completely inconsistent with the normal browser paradigm.

QOTD

Java is the Brier Rabbit of IT. Once touched you can't let go. Its simplistic enough to be inadequate in almost every situation.

From The Book Of JOSH - Scala In The Enterprise

MacBook water resurrection

Over Easter, my (adorable) 4 year old daughter was watching a DVD on my MacBook and she spilt a cup of water on it. When I got to it, the MacBook had water on the keyboard and had stopped working.

After wiping off the liquid on the outside, I pulled out all the parts that are fairly easy to access - battery, RAM and hard drive. The hard drive casing was wet. One RAM stick had a few small drops on it and both had a white powder on the contacts. I wonder if this was a residue from rapidly evaporating water. I propped the MacBook upside down, with the parts still out, hoping it would dry overnight. I didn't hold much hope.

The next morning I put it back together and tried to power it on, but no go.

We traveled home Monday and that night I plugged it in and it actually booted up. There was a wet patch in the bottom of the screen, but otherwise it was working fine. I couldn't believe it.

I found this post, so the next day I tried it. Two terminals executing yes > /dev/null to max out the CPU and the screen open at about 45 degrees, to try and catch the heat. About 4 hours later the wet patch was gone.

I am writing this post on the MacBook. Amazing!

My Manhattan Project - how I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street.

For those of us that consider job satisfaction in more ways than how well we do our job or how well we are paid, but also how does our work impact our world? Does it simply enrich some nameless shareholders, or does it do more?

Here is the story of Michael Osinski, a programmer that wrote software that turned mortgages into bonds. Somewhat relevant in the current "global economic crisis".

The original article, spread across multiple pages is here.

Netbooks

A few years ago I used to use an Apple 12" PowerBook and it is still my favourite laptop. I now have a 13.3" MacBook, that seems too large to be convenient when on the move.

When working at a semi-permanent desk I prefer to use a desktop, rather than a laptop anyway. So I need a machine that is just powerful enough for my day-to-day, non software development activities such as email, calendar, tasks, documents, music, skype and reading the web. Most of these are accessed through a web browser anyway. It also needs to be small enough to fit in restricted spaces and not be a burden when walking/cycling.

Given these requirements a Netbook seems a logical consideration. I wandered into a retail shop this morning and the keyboards on all the smaller ones with 8.9" screens were just too difficult to use for my fingers. The models with 10" screens seemed ok though.

All the following are only offered with Windows (in Australia): Dell Mini, BenQ Joybook Lite U101, Fujitsu M1010, Acer Aspire One 10.1, HP Mini 2140, MSI Wind series, ASUS Eee PC 10" series, which I don't find suitable for stability and usability reasons. While the Eee PCs apparently have a Xandros option, I could only find them being sold with Windows. It is also interesting that ASUS gives better battery life figures for Windows than Linux.

The remaining options seem to be the Kogan Agora Netbooks which come installed with gOS, based on Ubuntu. Or alternatively, buy one of the Windows ones that can be reinstalled with linux. The BenQ Joybook seems to be the cheapest of the bunch, coming in at around $600. The Kogan Agora Pro has more RAM (2GB in total) and is priced at $539. While previews indicate good build quality, this is Kogan's first foray into computers, so there is the usual version 1.0 risk.

The future looks interesting - ASUS has announced the Eee PC T91 and T101H, both with touch screens.

The coolest though, would have to be the Touch Book by Always Innovating. The screen and keyboard detach so you can use the screen on its own as a tablet device. I suspect that would be more comfortable when browsing/reading away from a desk. It is also magnetised so you can stick it on the fridge. I would be much happier with my wife accessing her recipes that way, rather than having the MacBook on the kitchen bench surrounded by ingredients. Finally, it has 10-15 hours battery life. Unfortunately it won't be available for several months yet.



Some useful sites for research were cnet.

Questioning the Windows standard

I don't really follow this sort of thing, but I noticed a story on the French police switching from Windows to Ubuntu. Even if the numbers are wrong, it is nice to see a large organisation that has actually not followed the defacto standard of Windows, which is what I see in the organisations around me.