Monday, April 24, 2006
First Oil Refinery
The price of oil and gasoline has been raising steadily recently. The gasoline national average is almost $3.00 per gallon (and obviously over $3.00 in California). Besides the obvious increase in the price per barrel of oil, another oft cited reason is a reduction in refining capacity. This got me interested in reading about how a refinery works. Surprisingly, the world's first ever oil refinery was built at Ploiesti in Romania! The refinery was built with American financial support, only to be later bombed during WW2, and subsequently rebuilt. How the world turns ...
Friday, April 21, 2006
Friday, April 14, 2006
From the ashes
This coming Tuesday, April 18th, is the 100 year celebration of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. The earthquake leveled large parts of the city, and what it didn't destroy subsequently burned in the many fires that erupted. Though it was a great tragedy, the city came out of it stronger and better.
I am looking forward to the many events the city has planned to commemorate this important historical event.
There are two particular events that stand out in my mind.
One is a gathering around 5am near Lotta's Fountain, at Market & 3rd: a place where people first gathered in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake.
The other is a gathering at 7am near the Little Giant at 20th and Church: one of the few (first?) hydrants found to be working immediately after the earthquake and provided water to quench the fires. Every year, children, survivors, firefighters, and others join in painting this hydrant in gold paint, as a strange but moving way to say thanks.
I feel very happy to be part of this important event in the life of this city. Although it commemorates a great disaster, I feel that it also highlights the incredible history and life that followed.
I am looking forward to the many events the city has planned to commemorate this important historical event.
There are two particular events that stand out in my mind.
One is a gathering around 5am near Lotta's Fountain, at Market & 3rd: a place where people first gathered in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake.
The other is a gathering at 7am near the Little Giant at 20th and Church: one of the few (first?) hydrants found to be working immediately after the earthquake and provided water to quench the fires. Every year, children, survivors, firefighters, and others join in painting this hydrant in gold paint, as a strange but moving way to say thanks.
I feel very happy to be part of this important event in the life of this city. Although it commemorates a great disaster, I feel that it also highlights the incredible history and life that followed.
More Ubuntu
I played some more with Ubuntu, and I continue to be very impressed with it. It really does "just work", I find it intuitive, fast, and efficient. If I hadn't been so entrenched into running Windows, I would very likely switch over to Ubuntu. Out of the box, Ubuntu does the following with minimal or no configuration:
First, there is a staggering number of digital media players out there for Linux: totem (gstreamer and xine flavors), xine, ogle, mplayer, rhythmbox, sound-juicer, kaffeine, amarok, and many more. Each one has its own idiosyncracies, and they only share codecs to a limited extent. The user interfaces (especially for DVD playback) are a huge hack and look like they were written by a 5 year old with a spoon. Some players (notably xine) natively support the important formats (WMV, MOV, etc.), while others use elaborate wrappers around Win32 DLLs (yes, you read that right) to decode the more stubborn formats. DRM formats (e.g. iTunes) are decidely out. DVD playback requires the controversial DeCSS library, and even then only works right about half the time (the gstreamer flavor is very slow, while the xine flavor works). Integration in Firefox only works with MPlayer, and even then crashes about a third of the time. In the end I got it to work acceptably well, but it was not easy, and does not do everything that Windows does.
The one lesson I took away from this is that the entire digital media software world is a gigantic mess. There are huge interests (and probably lots of $$$) in keeping these formats proprietary and opaque, and I wonder if Linux (or, more specifically, the free open source world) will always be one step behind in that regard. The fact that you have to run through so many hoops to play a DVD on a Linux installation (and even then with problems), is simply crazy in this day and age. I would have hoped that Apple would provide a Linux version of iTunes, given that it already runs on a flavor of Unix (OSX), but I wonder if that will ever actually happen.
It will be interesting to see what the future brings.
- Browse the web (Firefox), read and write e-mail (Thunderbird)
- Read and write office documents (OpenOffice) and PS/PDF (Evince)
- Instant Messaging (Gaim)
- Download and browse digital images (gThumb), edit images (Gimp), scan images (XSane)
- Burn CD/DVD (Gnomebaker)
- P2p (Bit Torrent)
- Detect and automount external hardware (printer, flash drive, digital camera, iPod)
First, there is a staggering number of digital media players out there for Linux: totem (gstreamer and xine flavors), xine, ogle, mplayer, rhythmbox, sound-juicer, kaffeine, amarok, and many more. Each one has its own idiosyncracies, and they only share codecs to a limited extent. The user interfaces (especially for DVD playback) are a huge hack and look like they were written by a 5 year old with a spoon. Some players (notably xine) natively support the important formats (WMV, MOV, etc.), while others use elaborate wrappers around Win32 DLLs (yes, you read that right) to decode the more stubborn formats. DRM formats (e.g. iTunes) are decidely out. DVD playback requires the controversial DeCSS library, and even then only works right about half the time (the gstreamer flavor is very slow, while the xine flavor works). Integration in Firefox only works with MPlayer, and even then crashes about a third of the time. In the end I got it to work acceptably well, but it was not easy, and does not do everything that Windows does.
The one lesson I took away from this is that the entire digital media software world is a gigantic mess. There are huge interests (and probably lots of $$$) in keeping these formats proprietary and opaque, and I wonder if Linux (or, more specifically, the free open source world) will always be one step behind in that regard. The fact that you have to run through so many hoops to play a DVD on a Linux installation (and even then with problems), is simply crazy in this day and age. I would have hoped that Apple would provide a Linux version of iTunes, given that it already runs on a flavor of Unix (OSX), but I wonder if that will ever actually happen.
It will be interesting to see what the future brings.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
OpenSource rant
Someone gave a technical talk today about the code quality in OpenOffice. He's an engineer working on improving various aspects of OpenOffice, and the talk was somewhat of a retrospective and personal opinions on the codebase.
Before I begin, I should mention that I like OpenOffice. I find it useful, stable, and generally a worthy competitor to Microsoft Office. In particular, its importers do a very good job of translating from Microsoft's formats to open formats.
I have heard people complain about the code quality in OpenOffice, in particular the fact that it's severely threatened by bit rot. This is in part because the codebase is enormous (over 5 million lines), and in part because there is no overseeing authority.
The first vignette was about a feature (or lack thereof) in Impress (the equivalent of PowerPoint). If you don't move the mouse for about 3 seconds during a presentation, the cursor should disappear (it's distracting). Apparently, this feature was implemented in Impress in 2002 by 3 different people, but it was never approved into the codebase because the Sun usability folks (which still control OpenOffice) could not agree on what is a reasonable time interval (should it be 1.5 seconds or 2 seconds or ... ?)
The second vignette was about the first bug this engineer fixed in the codebase, namely:
#define protected public // eine kleine Schweinerei
If you know anything about Object Oriented Programming, this is about as gross and blatant violation of OOP principles as you can imagine. Apparently, someone was in a rush, and instead of refactoring a protected method into public, he decided to make all protected methods public. There is also a "rule" on the team that you never modify code that has German comments.
I always felt that Open Source, as a philosophy, works remarkably well despite the fact that it seems it shouldn't work at all. However, I also feel that the Closed Source philosophy is just as viable, since financial pressures are very effective and in fact drive just as much innovation (consider the fact that Microsoft, although much maligned, does produce some of most usable interfaces around, and it's no accident that lots of open source projects copy them).
In my personal experience working on Microsoft Office, the attention to detail and code quality, was extremely impressive. Never once would anyone have dreamt of implementing the kind of hacks I heard of in this talk about OpenOffice. I do believe that open source projects suffer from code quality issues and bit rot, and I have heard lots of similar stories about MySQL and other high-profile successful projects.
I suppose one lesson is that Open Source zealotry (as well as zealotry in general) is really out of place and should be regarded with due skepticism.
Before I begin, I should mention that I like OpenOffice. I find it useful, stable, and generally a worthy competitor to Microsoft Office. In particular, its importers do a very good job of translating from Microsoft's formats to open formats.
I have heard people complain about the code quality in OpenOffice, in particular the fact that it's severely threatened by bit rot. This is in part because the codebase is enormous (over 5 million lines), and in part because there is no overseeing authority.
The first vignette was about a feature (or lack thereof) in Impress (the equivalent of PowerPoint). If you don't move the mouse for about 3 seconds during a presentation, the cursor should disappear (it's distracting). Apparently, this feature was implemented in Impress in 2002 by 3 different people, but it was never approved into the codebase because the Sun usability folks (which still control OpenOffice) could not agree on what is a reasonable time interval (should it be 1.5 seconds or 2 seconds or ... ?)
The second vignette was about the first bug this engineer fixed in the codebase, namely:
#define protected public // eine kleine Schweinerei
If you know anything about Object Oriented Programming, this is about as gross and blatant violation of OOP principles as you can imagine. Apparently, someone was in a rush, and instead of refactoring a protected method into public, he decided to make all protected methods public. There is also a "rule" on the team that you never modify code that has German comments.
I always felt that Open Source, as a philosophy, works remarkably well despite the fact that it seems it shouldn't work at all. However, I also feel that the Closed Source philosophy is just as viable, since financial pressures are very effective and in fact drive just as much innovation (consider the fact that Microsoft, although much maligned, does produce some of most usable interfaces around, and it's no accident that lots of open source projects copy them).
In my personal experience working on Microsoft Office, the attention to detail and code quality, was extremely impressive. Never once would anyone have dreamt of implementing the kind of hacks I heard of in this talk about OpenOffice. I do believe that open source projects suffer from code quality issues and bit rot, and I have heard lots of similar stories about MySQL and other high-profile successful projects.
I suppose one lesson is that Open Source zealotry (as well as zealotry in general) is really out of place and should be regarded with due skepticism.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Ubuntu
I used to run Linux in college, and I liked it a lot. It did take time to tweak and setup and fight with stubborn hardware and all that, but it was also fun. And, more importantly, I learned a lot from it, which has consistently come in handy recently.
Since then, I've been running Windows. It takes less time to setup and there's more software available for it. I feel that my time is better spent and I am more productive and faster on Windows. Occasionally, I try out a version of Linux on my spare partition just to keep up, but I never end up using it for any significant period of time.
I recently tried out Ubuntu, and I have to say I'm very impressed with it. It feels very polished, in ways that no other Linux felt before. You boot off the CD, provide a few simple configuration options, and after about 30 minutes, you have a fully functional, polished, and usable Linux running on your machine. Everything from the careful selection of default packages, to the icons, and the default settings seems to have been thought out with usability and people in mind. All my hardware was supported right off the bat (printer, scanner, iPod, network, etc.) I feel that they really do live up to their creed: "Linux for Human Beings".
Interestingly, the most annoying part in getting Ubuntu to do what I want, was installing the various software and codecs for non-free media (DVD, MP3, etc.) Ubuntu has its roots in Debian, which is all about free software, so it does not come with any packages that are not free (in license or in spirit). You can install these codecs relatively easily, but it takes some time to get them to work just right (DVD playback in particular). If nothing else, it made me appreciate the whole controversy (and silliness, really) over DeCSS in a different light.
At the end of the day, however, Ubuntu feels right in ways that no Linux before has felt. I will probably keep this one around for a while, and I will probably post on it again.
Since then, I've been running Windows. It takes less time to setup and there's more software available for it. I feel that my time is better spent and I am more productive and faster on Windows. Occasionally, I try out a version of Linux on my spare partition just to keep up, but I never end up using it for any significant period of time.
I recently tried out Ubuntu, and I have to say I'm very impressed with it. It feels very polished, in ways that no other Linux felt before. You boot off the CD, provide a few simple configuration options, and after about 30 minutes, you have a fully functional, polished, and usable Linux running on your machine. Everything from the careful selection of default packages, to the icons, and the default settings seems to have been thought out with usability and people in mind. All my hardware was supported right off the bat (printer, scanner, iPod, network, etc.) I feel that they really do live up to their creed: "Linux for Human Beings".
Interestingly, the most annoying part in getting Ubuntu to do what I want, was installing the various software and codecs for non-free media (DVD, MP3, etc.) Ubuntu has its roots in Debian, which is all about free software, so it does not come with any packages that are not free (in license or in spirit). You can install these codecs relatively easily, but it takes some time to get them to work just right (DVD playback in particular). If nothing else, it made me appreciate the whole controversy (and silliness, really) over DeCSS in a different light.
At the end of the day, however, Ubuntu feels right in ways that no Linux before has felt. I will probably keep this one around for a while, and I will probably post on it again.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Bootup
This is my blog, a place with commentaries on things I like: technology, art, urbanism, philosophy, travel, and so on.
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