GENZARD Blog

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but I was certain that at least something about my reading habits would change with the Kindle on its way. I must have thought that it would be something about the way I read – adjusting to virtual page turning, virtual paper, ink, virtual everything… But no, that went seamlessly. It’s actually easier to turn pages on Kindle – especially when holding it with one hand. And I certainly don’t miss the paper cuts And it’s lighter than your average book (paperback, not to mention hardcovers). But again, that’s not the most important change.

It’s been almost 4 months now and what has really changed for me is the way I find books to read. No, I’m not talking about browsing it from the Kindle itself – I don’t do much of that. As a programmer I’m inextricably linked to my computer and that’s where I search for everything, books included. I’m talking about using that “Send sample now” button on the site – and using it a LOT!

Yes, I have my favorite authors, but I do like to explore and find new authors as well, and the ability to actually read a chapter or so before buying a book has certainly changed the way I read. The book sounds interesting? Good reviews, probably a nice plot? An unknown author? No problem at all – send me a sample and I’ll see if I’ll buy it

Drawbacks? Well, I positively hate the following message:

This title is not available for customers from your location in: Europe

Who wouldn’t? Apart from that and books not available for Kindle, I have no complaints And I use Book Depository for such titles anyway – no shipping & handling fees and the books arrive in days (which is quite a thing around here). Brick and mortar bookstores? They’ll probably be seeing less and less of me, I’m afraid

Who would have thought that I would ever use an on-screen keyboard Why would I want to? My off-screen keyboard serves me just fine, thank you But, if you ever need to e.g. hold your three week old son in one hand and type a message at the same time with the laptop keyboard just out of reach of the other hand… Well, never mind the reason, the Ubuntu repository includes (and installs by default) an on-screen keyboard – onboard.

There’s a full keyboard with function keys and numeric keypad (toggled by a single click) and there are even a few nice additions – a set of 9 snippet/macro keys, 4 keyboard layouts and a scanning key selection. More than I need anyway

Strictly speaking, being pretty is not the most important aspect of a charting applet, but with me it ranks quite high. No matter how advanced the code behind it, if the charts look rough, unfinished and downright ugly, there’s no way I would use them in an application or on a site. It’s a relief to have both feature rich and beautiful charts to work with.

Meet amCharts from Lithuania. I’ve been mostly using their Flash charts, but they also have .Net, Flex and WPF & Silverlight versions. Very easy to use, too There’s a settings file which allows complete customization of all the chart details and there’s the data file in XML or CSV format. That’s it – with a few lines of code your data will be displayed in a very pretty and interactive chart

The best thing is it’s all completely free if you don’t mind the link to their site in the upper left corner If you do, I’m sure they’ll welcome another paying customer. They surely deserve your support for all the work they’re putting into the product.

I love Linux My main dev machine runs Ubuntu 8.04 and I had PCLinuxOS 2007 on my laptop (Fujtsu-Siemens Amilo A1655G) until yesterday evening, when I decided to replace it with openSUSE 11.0. Why? Well, I haven’t had a chance to check it out recently and I just wanted to see how the new version works and feels

The installation went smoothly and it detected all the hardware. However, when I tried to turn the wireless card on (there’s a button right beside the power button), the HDD light flickered a bit and nothing happened. I checked again and after some consultations on the openSUSE Forum, we concluded that the card was successfully detected and installed, but was “simply” turned off…

Checking the log file (/var/log/messages) revealed that the OS did not know what to do when the wireless button was pressed. My first idea was to try to find the correct key code and just link the button to it, but after some unsuccessful attempts I found something better – a kernel module (fsaa1655g) which allows turning the wireless card on and off from the command line

The installation of the module failed the first time i attempted it, but installing kernel sources and updating the kernel to match the source version did the trick and I managed to install the module. That’s when the wireless LED finally agreed to light up for me

So, why do I love Linux after all the trouble? It’s an excellent OS, that’s why