About

  • Combination of the words "Andri" and "Droid"
  • Sysadmin, developer and a student
  • Born in Reykjavík, Iceland
  • Studying in Aalborg, Denmark
  • Not the Google project

Twitter

  • New post: Are your gadgets working against you?...
  • was trying to watch Facebook's lecture on Hiphop for PHP but gave up due to the annoying ad popups...
  • Just received "Javascript: The Definitive Guide", too bad I have no time to read it right now...

Are your gadgets working against you?

There has been an increasing trend in the technical hardware industry to produce products that are specifically designed to restrict functionality of the product. For example: Apple iPod, Apple iPad, Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation and the Nintendo Wii.

This restricted functionality can be everything from only allowing applications accepted by the vendor, preventing certain formats to be played or the famous example of DVD players that only play movies from the allowed region. Why should you, the consumer be buying a product that helps the media companies to monopolize and fix prices?

The Google Platform emerges

Currently, Microsoft holds the keys to the public computer platform. Apple, Linux and other operating systems exist but they have a very minor user base, compared to the Microsoft crowd.

The biggest threats, currently to this are Google and Open Source. The biggest reason, Microsoft users are unable to move away from their platform is the fact that most of the programs they use are written for Windows and will not run anywhere else.

12 reasons to stay away from the Apple iPad

While the iPad obviously has its qualities, I am focusing on what prevents me from buying one. The picture is from Cryptogon.

  • No multi-tasking
  • No USB ports
  • No flash support
  • All applications need to be Apple approved
  • No support for free audio/video formats (such as the ogg/theora)
  • No camera/webcam
  • 130$ extra for the 3G version, instead of just supporting USB 3G dongles
  • Encumbered with DRM (eBook, audio, video)
  • No keyboard (you can buy a special Apple keyboard-dock though)
  • No external memory (no usb, no card reader)
  • No stylus
  • Reflective LCD display, making it unusable in direct sunlight

If you have anything to add to this list or want to point out any errors in it, please feel free to comment.

The Free Software Foundation also has its own page that focuses on the DRM problems with it.

Funny comparison charts:

Logo creation, the (extremely) geeky way!

Recently, me and my excellent group have been working on our semester report and we're currently down to the tiny details and hopefully we'll soon be ready to print. What has annoyed me for a while is the quality of the logo that the university hands out to its students. The only logo that has any actual colors is a JPG version that doesn't scale (or print) very well. There is also a Postscript version, but that only has one color.

I've been creating various graphics with PGF/TikZ (other examples) and LaTeX during the semester so why not use this to create the logo as well?

Has Linux failed on the desktop?

In reply to: The market has rejected Linux desktops. Get over it.

Techrepublic's editor has written this fine blog post about why Linux has failed on the desktop and why it will never succeed. I respectfully disagree and will explain why that is.

Agile Sysadmin - A "short" rant

I came across an interesting lecture today from @bitfield about agile sysadmins with the amusing little question, "is your sysadmin dumber than a hamster".

I recommend following his presentation or reading the summary because he does bring up some real issues with most system administrators.

Google introduces Tasks to Gmail, no off-switch


When I logged on to me email this morning something new was waiting for me in my Gmail account. A brand spanking new "Tasks" button! Which would be great, except I don't like Google's task manager.

  • It lacks synchronization features, hence not usable for my mobile
  • It's fairly limited, feels like someone puked a bit of Javascript code on my tasklist
  • It's not my tasklist of choice, I'd rather have RTM or Getting Things Gnome.

But why can't I turn this off? It used to be an optional labs feature, but now it's just in there. It looks extremely confusing when I add my RTM (Remember the Milk) gadget to Gmail and then I have two 'Tasks' gadgets.

I would like to be able to remove this, without any Greasemonkey magic, please.

Google announces Chrome OS, I speculate...

Today, Google announced that they are working on creating an operating system for netbooks and PC computers called Chrome OS.

They have however not released much details, besides that it is based on the same concept as Chrome, simple, lightweight, netbook focused and will run on x86 and ARM processors.

I have a few theories, so I'll just put them out there:

  • It's going to rely heavily on JavaScript
    If you follow a number of other Google projects like Wave, Gmail, Maps, Docs - Google has been very determined to proof that real applications can be made in the browser.
  • It will probably be Linux based
    Google has a long history with running Linux on both their servers and with Google Android, it would make sense to make use of it instead of re-inventing the wheel.
  • It will most likely not make use of the X Windows operating system in its current form.
    While Xorg is a solid piece of software, it was never really designed for accelerated 3D graphics and it is starting to show. It is quite possible that they will write a new implementation or simply try to create a new graphic subsystem.
  • The V8 JavaScript engine will most likely be in the heart of the system
    I am guessing that at least some of the system calls made by V8 will be integrated into the kernel itself (through modules) and other integrations made to speed up 'the web'.
  • It will have a 'traditional desktop', except it will be completely web based
    After watching a lecture on The Lively Kernel I am pretty sure that Google will bring web applications to the desktop in a big way.
  • The line between 'desktop application' and 'web application' will be blurred further
    Google has stated with it's Chrome browser that they are trying to bring web applications closer to the desktop by allowing you to create 'application links' through Chrome and drag each applications out of your browser. I predict that this will continue.
  • Adsense on your computer?
    Google is famous for integrating advertisements in a subtle kind of way that feel relevant and probably produce more revenue than all of those annoying popups or full page ads. Just imagine that market of being able to create ads in context of not only how you browse your web, but how you use your computer.

These are of course just speculations and it's fun to wonder. I for one would like a fast booting operating system that would just get me online, and quick!

A trip to LinuxTag 2009

In June, me Anders and Johan went to LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany for some geek week fun.

At the booths, most people were either so shocked to hear the English language or simply incapable of speaking it. I did however have really nice conversations with one from Sidux, a guy from Astaro (makers of Strongswan) and some of the guys at the XBMC and Centos booths. My friends at the Drupal booth did not want to talk and kept ignoring me or simply talking back in German.

The best part of the conference was without a doubt the lectures we were able to find in English. In particular, the two QT lectures with Matthias Ettric from Qt Software were excellent. I also really enjoyed the lecture with OpenVZ's Kir Kolyshkin about containers and resource management in Linux which in my opinion makes a lot more sense than creating a bunch of virtual machines, wasting a bunch system resources.

I also attended a lecture about clustered CIFS with Michael Adam which was very interesting. Could be extremely cool to create a single samba share with multiple servers up to several terabytes.

In general a great trip and I think in these couple of days I saw about the same amount of interesting lectures as I did in the last semester at our University. I still think that the organizers of LinuxTag should either prepare their partners for English speaking guests or simply stop advertising it in English as the "Biggest Open Source Event in Europe".

Below are a few pictures from the trip.

  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009
  • A trip to LinuxTag 2009

Calling your own functions from jQuery

I've been playing around with jQuery for a week or so, without any prior experience with Javascript. jQuery is absolutely brilliant and it's quite easy to do different things with it. However, when I started doing repetitive tasks, i wanted to create a function to do it; instead of repeating my code at multiple places.

This is where I had problems, because my 'updateTable' function had no idea what $() was and no jQuery functions worked after I started calling my 'updateTable' function from the jQuery context.

Well, today I got it to work by sending the jQuery object to my function.

Old function (does not work)

function updateTable () {
  /* Call jQuery stuff (for example, change forms) */
}
 
$(function() {
  $(document).ready(function() {
    updateTable();
  });
});

After spending a couple of days scratching my head and reading a bit about Javascript, this was 'obviously' a problem of my function not knowing the jQuery context or any of the objects inside it.

There is probably a smarter way of doing this; but I at least solved my problem by appending the jQuery object '$' to the function, as follows.