Say all I need is the air I breathe

If AIR is supposed to mean Adobe Integrated Runtime, calling it Adobe AIR sounds a bit awkward, right?

who understands this boring blog

At the time I check Planet KDE, it is for high school while Planet GNOME requires junior high school level. Strangely, my website is only for genius (no wonder I myself could not understand it).

Someone knows the algorithm behind that detector?

The Forbidden Kingdom

Finally the long wait is over! In The Forbidden Kingdom, for the first time we are going to see the fantastic Jet Li and Jacky Chan together. Not so much about the story has been revealed. The plot might not be that unusual and even it is likely quite predictable (but who knows until we all watch it). From the trailer, it is mostly about a young bloke that travelled back in time. With a girl and two warriors, he was doing some sort of "prophecy fulfilling" adventure.

Few weeks to go.

PhotoFlow as a plasmoid

PhotoFlow, which I introduced less than 48 hours ago, can also be realized as a plasmoid. It is the top left applet in the screenshot above. I have never written a plasma applet in my life before, so it took me quite a while to figure out how the mechanism works. And frankly, I am still not sure whether such a kind of widget can be really useful at all.

I guess I will wait until KDE 4.1 before I place this stuff in KDE's playground. By that time, Plasma itself should already stabilize. Probably it is even better to integrate it with the Picture of the Day data engine. Or even with the slideshow plasmoid. Or perhaps do you have any other idea?

chasing of the day

We don't believe improving your OS should be like chasing Tigers or Leopards.

-- gOS, on its free updates for life feature

introducing PhotoFlow

As I wrote before, the obvious complaints people are having after trying out Chad's precompiled PictureFlow for Windows Mobile are (1) slow start-up and (2) memory footprint. These stem from the fact that the example demo program that I included was written for clarity so that you can get your feet wet quickly. To overcome the initial loading and memory consumption problem, of course you have to attack the problem from a different point of view.

So here it comes: PhotoFlow. It is a small application for view images and photos, designed to run on mobile devices --like those HTC smartphones, other Windows Mobile phones, Qtopia-based handsets etc-- although you can test it of course on the desktop (but I will focus on the intended target platform only). The usual trick employed here is the so-called "delayed loading". PhotoFlow never attempts to load, resize, and prepare an image to be rendered if that image is not in the vicinity of the user's view. Thus, it starts rather instantly and won't suck hundred of MBs of the precious memory space. This is even done without changing anything in the original PictureFlow widget, we just need to subclass it and handle several things smartly.

Because I am (still) insane, PhotoFlow supports both Qt/Qtopia 4 and the old Qt/Embedded 2.3 (actually also Qt 3, for which there isn't any embedded version) with a single code base. Also the delayed loading part has two versions: with and without QThread. Of course the former is better but some platforms with Qt/E (or even Qtopia, if you want) might not support threading at all, hence the latter.

Get it while it's hot and flood my inbox with your flames.

to examine and to protect

sushi factory bremen

If you happen to be in Bremen, give Sushi Factory a try. It is located right in downtown (see on Google Maps) and easily reachable. The soy sauce is a bit salty for me, but otherwise everything else if fine. The place is cozy. The atmosphere is relaxing. The rolls are of course tasty although they are rather not so cheap. Still, there is a nice bargain for a lunch pack.

Why are DOC/XLS/PPT so complicated?

Still related to the b2xtranslator and the direct availability of Microsoft Office binary (doc, xls, ppt) file formats, the question that is often raised is why are they so complicated? Of course, office suite developers know the likely reasons behind this. But in case you miss the interesting part, read Joel on Software's insight on this matter.

every night has its dawn

You learn that you can be friends with those who do not always share your thoughts, because differences are not obstacles to a mutual respect. But you get to know others who, for whatever reason it might be, always try to convince every soul in this planet that their opinions are the best. You learn the magical meaning behind loyalty, for you go along with those with whom you can trust your life. Yet you uncover the secret of betrayal and meet those who do not hesitate to stab you in the back when an opportunity present itself.

You know those who do many different things for the sake of the humanity. You also meet those who tend to keep everything, often not only their belongings, for themselves. You learn that sharing your knowledge is the best way to advance the human civilization. However, some prefer to keep the charms and spells in their own vault as if they are not aware that great minds think alike.

You learn that your good intentions are sometimes misunderstood - and that sometimes you wonder 'where did I go wrong'. But somehow, there are still some others who are always full of mercy, as giving a benefit of doubt is more challenging than simply blaming someone. You know few which genuinely pay attention to you and patiently listen to your tales. And there are some who have the knack to say something about anything and just keep bombarding you with their rants and ramblings, as if these do really matter.

You know people which have great passions and love for what they do (and that really inspires you). However, infrequently you are stuck with some others who do things as if their spirit is not completely in their body. You work with those who are exciting with all the challenges and on the other hand you also meet those who just drain your brain endlessly.

Everything is just like Hollywood stories. Someone finds salvation in everyone, another only pain. And life won't let you understand.

Five years. Time to move on.

 

 

P.S: This is my last official day at the university, though I still need to go back one more time for the final exam.

laugh of the day

What will you get if you google for deutsche telekom hotline ?

Microsoft Office binary format to Open XML

As promised by Brian Jones, finally the project (under a liberal BSD-like license) to convert Microsoft Office binary format (doc, xls, ppt) to the Open XML format (used since Office 2007), named b2xtranslator, has been initiated on SourceForge. As I wrote before (on Google Code Project Hosting vs SourceForge), it'd be fantastic if Microsoft would have placed the project on Google Code instead of SourceForge (but it is Microsoft we are talking about). As of now, download is not yet available as the project is still in its very early stage.

Many office suite developers have an interest on Microsoft Office file format because it is widely used. The description of the format itself can be obtained from Microsoft since quite some time, however only with the b2xtranslator we will start to see an implementation which is "blessed" by Microsoft.

Technically, there are two slightly disappointing points with this b2xtranslator project. First, it is not an implementation used by Microsoft itself in its office suite but rather an independent one. Second, it requires .NET framework (exactly as I have predicted). For the former, again it means playing the same cat-and-mouse game since there is no guarantee that the translation is fully compatible with the code in the real Microsoft Office. For the latter, well I leave to you, the readers, to reach your own conclusion. Of course there is Mono (which, by the way, is used to integrate odf-converter in Novell edition of OpenOffice.org), but you know well where the discussion would lead.

As usual, let's wait and see.