Category: Miscellaneous

>FSCONS 2009

>So, it is kind of stupid to write about these things afterwards, but the time before a conference is always filled with preparations and far too much time spent in OO.o Impress.

The last Saturday I attended FSCONS’09. This turned out to be another great event (I’ve been there two years now). I met lots of interesting people and got faces to a couple of names who’s blogs I’ve been following for a while now.
My plan for this year was to do two workshops – one on Qt for Embedded Linux (which I try to focus on), and one on the Qt SDK, trying to get people started. Both these sessions turned into something else – probably due to the unclearness of what a workshop is intended to be.
The Embedding Qt workshop (slides) had a great turn-up. The idea was to go through the configuration process of Qt/X11, Qt/embedded targetted at QVFb and then have a look at the configuration and deployment of Qt for an actual embedded target. Given a 90 minutes slot, I knew that compilation time was going to be an issue. When it turned out that only one attendee wanted to give it a try, this session turned into an ordinary talk (the one brave guy gave up after the Qt/X11 build – thank you still!). However, the talk was great, lots of interesting questions and great feedback. I really enjoyed the interaction with the audience and at the end Knut Yrvin (an actual norwegian troll) showed up, adding even more facts to the discussion.
The Qt SDK workshop (too few slides to share) also had a great turn-up. My plan was to get people to install the SDK and then show them the basics. I think that something like 5-10 people actually ran the installer, so that was a great success. The demo, however, could have needed some more planning from my side. I showed signals/slots, some widgets and the concept of layouts. For that, I used 40 minutes of my 30 minutes slot, so there where loads of unaswered questions at the end (thanks for everybody coming up to me afterwards having a chat).
To summarize – my aim with workshops did not really work in this setting, however, the quality of the audience and the resulting discussions turned this into a great event for me. I hope that you liked it as well!

>Warning – broken links ahead

>So, the day finally came when I switched from a fairly broken and badly styled MediaWiki-based web page to a WordPress-based one instead. This not only means better management abilites, a working search engine, a proper editor, etc. It also means that links are broken. I don’t write are likely to be – there are broken links out there as I have not migrated all contents. If you run into one – feel free to tell me and I’ll try to sort it out.

The result from this move will hopefully be a more professional presence on the web for my part. Unfortunately I do not have the time I want to polish the site – now I have to prepare my workshops (1, 2) for FSCONS. These events always seems to be so far away into the distant future when I sign up for them – and now it is only two weeks left…

>Off to DevDays

>I’m packing and trying not to forget anything, because my brain will be in auto-pilot-mode tomorrow at 4:50 when the taxi comes around to start my journey to DevDays’09 in Munich.

I’m really looking forward to this, and this year, I’ll even get to speak a few words in the Qt in Education track on Monday. But the biggest upside is to meet all the people in real life. I’m especially looking forward to meeting the QtCentre crew – and all the trolls of course.

>KDE 4

>I’ve finally made the switch on one of my working, production mode, computers. The switch from KDE 3.x to 4.2.2 (I think – whatever Kubuntu comes with). I must admit having been sceptical to all the hype about plasma here, plasma there. Social desktop? I want my old workstation look and feel – I thought.

I absolutely love KDE 4. There is so much new, but everything that is different feels intuit. My very favorite feature is, this far, the device notifying plasmoid. Not having to show the desktop to mount, open or unmount my USB-stick is just – smart and intuit.

Now all I have to do is to find out how to change the clock to a 24h mode… (just noticed, taking the screenshot, after using the desktop for a week…)

>NeHe on OpenGL

>I just saw that Wesley has started to port the NeHe OpenGL tutorial to Qt post 1, post 2 and post 3. Great work! I did that back in the Qt 3 days – so perhaps this can be of interest: NeHe chapters 1-12.

As for the Independent Qt Tutorial. It was a while since I updated, and it only applies to Qt 3. Way back we started to move digitalfanatics.org to a wiki format (yes, it is damn ugly), but the tutorial hasn’t been moved yet – thus the lack of incorporated updates.

>Samsung HD735LJ

>Dear lazy web, does anyone know what SMART the attribute with ID 150 for the Samsung HD735LJ indicates? My tool says:

raw value = 150
status = FAIL
value = 1
worst = 1
threshold = 99
In addition, my atapi info source in my windows logs says that the drive controller is failing…

>Bad news…

>I’ve followed Formula 1 for more than ten years. I guess that the combination of engineering, danger, speed and serious noise got me hooked. Anyway, today BMW announced that they will leave the sport at the end of this season, and for me as a BMW fan, that is bad news.

So, for a little analysis from my part. FIA claims that BMW pulling out is another proof that their cost cutting measures are needed. I believe that there are more reasons:
– FIA and F1 is governed by an odd bunch. Mosley and Eccelstone really seem to like playing politics. And they have contriversial political standpoints, nothing one wants to be associated with.
– Constant rule changes and interpretations. For instance, why where huge changes made to the aero rules before the 2009 season, but then the double diffuser design was accepted. This led to higher speeds, not lower.
– No final rules for next season, meaning that they cannot get started on next years car now (as this year’s car really is a disaster).
– Cost and results, of course, paying millions of euros to score mediocre results doesn’t really improve the situation.
So, finally, two wishes for the future. First, lets find a way to keep Sauber F1 in the game. Second, I hope to see BMW on the race track in other high profile series (no, not S/B/WTCC – more like LeMans, F1 or perhaps DTM).