Ceesaxp@Blogger

Цены на iPad 2

2011-05-26T23:02:00.001+04:00

Как было уже сделано для оригинального iPad-а, вот сравнения стоимости устройств в разных странах. Несколько замечаний: 1. К ценам США стоит добавить 5-9% налога с продаж. 2. Цены в европейских странах (включая Россию) несут в себе НДС порядка 15-18%. 3. Сингапур и Гон-Конг по-прежнему самые дешёвые места для покупки. Posted via email from ceesaxp's posterous

Mac App Store impressions

2011-01-07T23:42:00.003+03:00

Two major impressions so far: It is very slick, I am glad it is not a part of iTunes monster app. It is almost as easy as on iOS, with only one major difference: your purchases are for a device you buy it on, not for your Apple ID, like with iOS. (UPD it is exactly as easy, although one does have to go through "Do you really want to buy this app (Y/N)? Oh, you already bought it, then we just

Blogging from Emacs

2011-01-07T22:56:00.001+03:00

Being out for 10 days at the start of January helps one to relax and recharge. Adding a few more days before or after only makes it better (although totally messes up one's sense days of week). So good it is that one can even get a bit of time to experiment. Like try and choose a better Twittering client for the desktop, or see if buying MarsEdit would be worth it? Would not the kitchen sink of

А вот и цены на iPhone 4

2010-11-21T23:53:00.002+03:00

В продолжение моей записи о ценах на iPad, вот выборка цен и на iPhone 4 по разным странам и с учетом недавних анонсов от российских ОпСоСов... {"chartType":"ColumnChart","chartName":"Chart 2","dataSourceUrl":"//spreadsheets.google.com/tq?key=0AvzUwitbPCZgdHYtczJEY09pVEpwYTdvcDdOd3FvMXc&range=H2%3AJ14&gid=1&transpose=1&headers=1&pub=1","options":{"reverseCategories":false,"pointSize":"0","

Цены на iPad

2010-11-16T12:59:00.005+03:00

Было немного свободного времени, нарисовал небольшой график для сравнения цен на iPad в разных странах: {"chartType":"ColumnChart","chartName":"Chart 1","dataSourceUrl":"//spreadsheets.google.com/tq?key=0AvzUwitbPCZgdHYtczJEY09pVEpwYTdvcDdOd3FvMXc&range=K2%3AO11&gid=0&transpose=1&headers=1&pub=1","options":{"displayAnnotations":true,"showTip":true,"nonGeoMapColors":["#20124d","#674ea7","#0000ff"

Как iPhone 3G с iOS 4.0 на 3.1.3 откатывать

2010-07-30T21:47:00.003+04:00

Сразу скажу, процесс не мой, это, скорее перевод + личный опыт. Источник процесса — Funky Space Monkey Итак, вам надоели тормоза и удивительная нестабильность вашего проверенного 3G под управлением iOS 4? Не всё потеряно, прошлое можно вернуть. На Маке На Маке процесс, на мой взгляд, проще и понятнее. Вам потребуются: iTunes 9.x Stock 3.1.3 FW iRecovery LibUSB library package

What I am missing since I rolled back 4.0 on my iPhone 3G

2010-07-21T08:14:00.001+04:00

There are a few things that I am missing since I rolled back from 4.0 to 3.1.3 iOS version on my iPhone 3G. In now apparent order of importance…Unified inbox was a great feature, much awaited and most obviously missed.Notes that sync over-the-air. It's been a bit of a silly process to sync them via iTunes and to see them in Mail.app. On the other hand, I've also moved onto Notebooks app since,

Don't hold it like this!

2010-07-16T08:05:00.001+04:00

Here's a page from Nokia user guide for the 6510 model: Posted via email from ceesaxp's posterous

ReadyNAS NV+, LinkSys WRT610N, 802.11n and Time Machine backups

2010-07-14T00:04:00.001+04:00

I have been running a weird issues on my network for the past few weeks, if not months with wireless being flaky at times. A few of the symptoms were sporadic disappearances of ReadyNAS NV+ shared NAS folders. Then I started running onto Time Machine backup issues, i.e. Time Machine would simply refuse to see ReadyNAS backup share. I’ve been trying to tweak WRT610N settings, turned AFP, NFS and

iOS 4 on iPhone 3G

2010-07-05T00:58:00.004+04:00

I’ve been running iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G since the update was made available. Unlike previous updates, I can’t say I am a very happy bunny about the results. The update It was not smooth. And I know I am not alone: many people have reported the update (and especially back-up/restore process) taking hours. In my case, I managed to back-up my iPhone only after 3 unsuccessful attempts and after

Нарушение авторских прав не является кражей

2010-07-04T18:45:00.001+04:00

Пара очень интересных записей в дневниках тут и тут по теме. Очень подробно и очень взвешанно. Суть дилемы в том, что кража означает “брать тайно чужое, уносить или присваивать что тайком; похищать, воровать” (Даль) — предполагается насильственное, тайное отчуждение чего-либо. Зачастую многие компании (от звукозаписывающих до киностудий) хотят убедить нас в том, что незаконное копирование и

Почему живые организмы не ломаются, как программы?

2010-05-08T11:16:00.002+04:00

Интересное исследование из Yale University на тему того, почему компьютеры и программы ломаются, а живые организмы, даже такие простые, как бактерии, нет. Они взяли геном бактерии E. Coli и ядро Linux и сравнили сети взаимодействия и подчинения между ними. Both E. coli and the Linux networks are arranged in hierarchies, but with some notable differences in how they achieve operational

Как должен работать DVD-плеер

2010-05-03T12:03:00.001+04:00

Сегодня утром дочь три раза звала меня с просьбой помочь разобраться с тем, как запустить Гарфилда-2 на DVD проигрывателе. Сие навело меня на мысли, ими делюсь:Диск лицензионный, 5-я зона. Но при этом язык меню и все настройки на английском, и это в диске с детским фильмом. DVD проигрыватель был настроен на русский язык.Как это, по-моему, должно работать в XXI веке:Проигрыватель должен опросить

Is the basis of patent system flawed?

2010-04-19T07:10:00.001+04:00

A really good read on patents:…the paper finds that due to technological advances and the ability to more rapidly and easily communicate and collaborate widely, these forms of innovation (innovation for direct use as well as collaborative innovation) are becoming more and more viable across a variety of industries, which in the past may have relied more on the old way of innovating (single

Half a day of Posterous

2010-04-18T08:22:00.001+04:00

First of all, I got the idea of Posterous a bit backward: I sort of thought autoposting would aggregate, rather than disperse my posts.On the other hand, this maynot be such a bad thing, that it does not aggregate.The site feels a bit less refined than, say, Tumblr or Twitter. Less refined in a sense that it is a bit jerky, shows a few rough corners here and there.Oh, and this is also a test of

FP

2010-04-17T20:16:00.001+04:00

Nothing to see here. I have heard of Posterous before, and since I am sort of looking around trying to see what works best for me (if I wanted to leave Blogger), for my very occasional writing… Maybe this is it? Or this could be sort of an aggregation of may other things I wrote elsewhere. We'll see. Posted via web from ceesaxp's posterous

This war reminds my of children sandbox…

2010-04-12T22:57:00.001+04:00

NYT reports (and Wired picks it up) that: Google is almost ready to start selling its own tablet. The device, according to the New York Times, will be “an e-reader that would function like a computer.” Now, don't get me wrong, but I ain't buying. Google was a great company, while it stuck to what it was doing best: search and web technologies. Going mobile phones, netbook computers and tablets

He just nails it

2010-04-12T21:58:00.001+04:00

This writing was on the wall for a looooong time, ever since Apple vs. Sun feud about Java. … it is pretty easy to see why supporting other runtimes is ceding a lot of control to a 3rd party. Imagine if 10% of the apps on iPhone came from Flash. If that was the case, then ensuring Flash didn’t break release to release would be a big deal, much bigger than any other compatibility issues. [source]

MarsEdit

2010-04-05T21:22:00.001+04:00

MarsEdit is an awesome editor for a weblog. The only thing I wish it could do is publish converted content, i.e. allow me to write using Textile or Markdown markup, yet commit to Blogger and such HTML.

My $0.02 on iPad

2010-04-05T21:02:00.001+04:00

First of all, I am glad that for once I had a vision :) This is nothing too big, and I was not original, but I kinda-sorta thought that iPad would be a great name: it leverages off the ThinkPad name brand, it follows the suit of other "i" products (iPod, iPhone, iWork, iMac, etc.), it gives you an idea about the form-factor (it's a 'pad,' not a 'slate,' not a 'tablet'). But this is not what I

[something-something]Pad

2010-03-19T22:39:00.000+03:00

Apple iPad? How about a little German innovation instead … German Android device has a bigger multitouch screen and a faster CPU than the iPad. Also it runs Flash, has USB ports, an inbuilt card reader and expandable memory. Additionally it allows complete multitasking and has a webcam. Beat that baby. Then it brags on about an unknown German company that is marketing a supposed German iPad

Nexus One, iPhone, Flash

2010-01-07T23:43:00.001+03:00

One thing I thought was a great thing about iPhone was the fact that it does not support Flash. Sure, you end up not being able to access a site or two—nothing to shed tears about. But most importantly so much of the content was moving off the flashy crap and onto H.264 and such. What now scares me with Nexus One is the declared support of Flash 10.1 on the device. This is BAD. Really bad. This

(anti)Freedom fighter

2010-01-04T11:18:00.006+03:00

New Yprk Times OpEd: Ten for the Next Ten (by Bono) A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales... we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s

Apple event on 26 Jan

2009-12-26T10:02:00.000+03:00

So, everybody and their uncle are predicting the tablet. Seems like a good bet indeed. But I am sure that it won't be (at least in some important aspects) what all are expecting.I wager that tablet will be centered around media management for your home media library (extending and expanding lethargic AppleTV) and aiming at PSP fair and square. It will not be Apple's answer to netbooks.[Posted

Ecto 3 - The new Ecto

2009-10-24T22:11:00.001+04:00

Old Ecto was constantly failing to work for me on Blogger, but Ecto 3 has improved a lot on that. But the great failure it has is that when you hit "Publish" it does not save your post first!

SharePoint is MS Access of internet 1.x age

2009-10-24T21:41:00.000+04:00

Getting 802.11n to work on Unibody Macbook Pro with WRT610N

2009-09-16T23:15:00.004+04:00

I just got me a nice and shiny Linksys WRT610N — it was about time to upgrade the network, get a bit of a speed boost. Installation was trivial (no, you don't have to insert a CD if you know what you're doing), but for some reason I could not get my Macbook (unibody 17", early 2009) to see "N" network, only "G" was visible. Solution was simple, but took some searching. In "Basic Wireless

Why did they need to spoil good thing

2009-09-08T22:11:00.002+04:00

Many moons ago I came across a nice plugin for Outlook — LookOut which has made it just passable to live with multiple PST files and cope with 300+ inbound / 150+ outbound daily emails. Just type in from:Joe subject:foo "bar baz" and 'ere you go — a few seconds later you get your list of spam from Joe. Even when I first installed it (around 2005), LookOut was already sold to Microsoft. They

GlimmerBlocker

2009-07-29T23:27:00.002+04:00

GlimmerBlocker is a great tool for Mac OS X user to stop the ad banner craze. Comes with a sensible ruleset by default. To expand on it an fit my needs of browsing Russian web sites I have created a small filter feed available here: http://idisk.mac.com/ceesaxp/Public/runet.xml.

Ballmer wants Apple to open up

2009-02-22T10:58:00.000+03:00

This is amazing: via cnet. Steve is really feeling the pinch: "Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice." The question is whose choice, right, Mr. Ballmer?[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Microsoft retail push

2009-02-13T07:01:00.004+03:00

SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Microsoft Corp's (MSFT) decision to launch a retail push for the first time suggests the company is hoping the success of smaller rival, Apple Inc. (AAPL), in reaching consumers, may rub off on the larger company. Looks like Zune has not taught them a thing.

Blogging on an iPhone

2008-12-24T22:46:00.000+03:00

One of the first apps I wanted to get on an iPhone was one to let me post into my blog. And the first one I have installed and took for the spin was BlogWriter. It is a decent application but I have very soon discovered that it is too basic.This may be a function of my Blogger setup -- I have disabled automatic formating -- but creating a longer post has proven to be a challenge.But more

Vienna

2008-11-07T12:25:00.001+03:00

There's something charming in a good non-Disney sense of a word about being in Vienna. Measured, balanced living. Beautiful streets with lots of green (or as the case was for me this time -- covered in gold, red and brown colors of fall), buildings that each looks like it has just stepped down from the pages of fairy tales or is a materialization of Mozart's tunes. The smells of the city --

iPhone me

2008-11-05T18:11:00.001+03:00

I have not held myself back for too long after the official launch of iPhone in Russia. No more than a few days, in fact. As I promised to myself, I went to a shop and played with the 3G model for 15-20 minutes. The plan was either that, or Nokia E71. I liked my iPhone experience, hence the decision was made. It has now been a bit over a month that I have been using the device. There are things

Fixing iPod/iPhone/AppleTV syncing issue for iPhoto albums

2008-10-04T16:44:00.010+04:00

If you ever come across a situation when iTunes refuses to sync your iPhoto library to your iPod, iPhone or AppleTV, and a very important symptom is that you cannot choose "Selected Albums" option in iTunes syncing preferences, chances are you have an issue inside the AlbumData.xml file within the iPhoto Library. Luckily, the fix is rather simple: Open Pictures directory in Finder, locate your

Netbook Remix

2008-07-03T20:50:00.002+04:00

A few days ago I have moved back from XFCE4 back to standard GNOME Ubuntu desktop, while at the same time changing my desktop shell for Netbook Remix. This setup is much more convenient than standard desktop on my tiny EeePC 4G, as on one hand I do not need to mouse around as much, but at the same time it is not as limiting functionally as Xandros. And it is stable enough (although there are a

Limits of Django or limits of db back-end?

2008-04-21T22:14:00.002+04:00

Fiam has posted a slightly controversial piece titled The Limits of Django. It is a great read, I totally enjoyed it. However, he has come up with some very shocking stats of Django ORM approach vs. C caching daemon (93 seconds vs. 0.8 second to query a database of 500,000 votes of 1,000 users on 5,000 stories. A few have suggested that his database/data model maybe to blame, I think there's a

The day I've opened up my WiFi

2008-04-12T10:06:00.002+04:00

It is today, the day I thought to myself: "If Schneier thinks it can/should be done, why don't I do it?" And I changed my DD-WRT settings to fully open up my wireless to anyone. I've made some changes to QoS and DHCP setup. DHCP addresses will only be assigned to .64-.255 range and that range has been throttled down in QoS to bulk access status. If I could figure out a way (and I might, if I am

Daring Fireball: Safari’s Tab Dragging Modes

2008-04-10T22:23:00.003+04:00

John Gruber questions the two drag modes in Safari: I don’t see why the intra-window (left-right) mode even exists. With the inter-window mode, you can do everything: reorder a tab within a window, move a tab to another existing window, or move a tab to its own new window. The intra-window mode only allows one thing: reordering tabs within their current window. I can’t think of a single reason

OOo "innovations"

2008-03-27T21:19:00.002+03:00

OOo Ninja's post on new features of OpenOffice 3.0 has put me into a totally gloomy mood. If there is a single piece of software in FOSS world that can take all the rap for "no innovation," it is OOo. I am really surprised that OOo 3.0 is not trying to re-imagine Office 2007's ribbon interface — after so artfully picking up the zoom slider and reading layout.

Drawing (Scribbles) on a Mac

2008-03-16T22:28:00.004+03:00

I have been looking for a simple program to entertain my daughter with drawing (she loves it) on a Mac. I've got a (cheap) Wacom tablet that wanted to employ as well. TuxPaint is nice, but I hate the rubber-stamp/clipart mentality it sort of forces one in (and sounds are annoying). Also, I think that interface is overloaded. Accidentally I cam across this marvel — and have bee having lots of

Feeling the heat, aren't we?

2008-02-29T21:02:00.002+03:00

This is just soooo good: ...the senior vice president of Sony's IT product division said the tiny $299 notebook could potentially shift the entire notebook industry. ... "If (the EEE PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom," said Mike Abary. About time. All those monsters that are being produced by Dell, Sony, HP and others — aren't really

Ubuntification of EEE

2008-02-24T10:25:00.007+03:00

There are very many posts all over the web on how to replace EEE's somewhat limiting Xandros distribution with Ubuntu. To be fair, I think that default install with Xandros should be a plenty for most EEE users. Then again, if an "average" EEE user is somewhat geeky -- it might not be. I was somewhat wary at first, even despite the fact that I am not new to Linux, Debian in particular. On a

(One of very many) Praising posts about EEE

2008-02-17T22:27:00.003+03:00

Have you heard about eeevolution? No? Then you are missing out big time. The little DVD box sized machine that pretty much does everything that your average HP/Dell/Sony spiffy new laptop does but at a fraction o weight and cost. It is a marvel, not to be missed out. It is XO for the rest of us (or for those who want a more expandable hardware). I've had mine for a few days now. I never

Mixing politics and Unicode considered harmful

2008-01-04T08:04:00.000+03:00

Over at Slashdot there is a story about Russia pushing for its own International TLD '.рф'. The comment put onto a Guardian article about this has turned some 'cold war alarm bells' on my side, hence I posted the following in the comment thread: I'd suggest Mr. kdawson next time to take a slightly less political look at the stories he's putting up. This has nothing to do with "Hindering

Windows PowerShell overkill

2007-11-30T23:48:00.000+03:00

Sometimes OO paradigm is an overhead, not a savior. Especially when it comes to simple manipulations such that are typical to shell scripting tasks. I mean, what appears more to the point and is faster to implement? This: ipconfig | findstr "Address" Or this: ifconfig | grep "Address" The latter is more flexible, you can search for pretty much anything. And once you get regex involved --

OLPC threat for Intel, Microsoft

2007-11-27T11:05:00.000+03:00

When I am reading an article like this one in WSJ that talks about how Intel and Microsoft have found themselves threatened by Negroponte's OLPC, I can't stop but shudder at utter stupidity and pervasive greed that totally obscures any understanding of what OLPC project means.I do not work for OLPC, I have no affiliation to the project other than occasional contribution to the UI translation

Leopard — a very personal view

2007-11-26T23:21:00.000+03:00

Not that it matters, but:I like new Dock. It's more or less always hidden, hence it's reflections are lost on me, the small dot looks more or less the same (so far) as the black one.Transparent menu bar — very much the same, I use a solid color background and end up nearly unaffected by transparency thing. I did notice, however, that while menus are rounded now, menu bar screen corners are not

Things that Apple is really good at

2007-11-26T23:10:00.000+03:00

There were numerous referenced posted on a variety of social bookmarking sites about smart hackers going for a re-implementation of this or that feature of Apple's latest Leopard release of Mac OS X. And this is über cool that you can now hack your N800 to scroll like iPhone or to show a keyboard just like in iPhone (with just a few hundred lines of Python!) or that you can now pretty much as

WIndows XP on OLPC??

2007-10-26T22:52:00.000+04:00

Picked up over at Reddit, MSFT is really trying to compete with OLPC: Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) has made progress in getting its Windows software to work on a low-cost laptop computer for poor children that currently runs on rival Linux software, an executive said on Thursday. And I find it preposterous. And they're getting it wrong, again. Redmond does not seem to understand, that this is

C-fonts from Microsoft

2007-10-19T23:14:00.000+04:00

There's an article over at Slashdot referencing a blog post at hunlock about new Microsoft "core" fonts. The post is a bit dated, from April this year, but /. has just picked it up. I saw a link to hunlock back in April, most certainly over at Reddit. I have tried and installed the C-fonts on both a Windows PC and a Mac. The process did require a download of PowerPoint 2007 viewer, as there's

The 300+ changes in Leopard

2007-10-17T23:48:00.000+04:00

I have been going through the Apple‘s 300+ New Features page and quite a few made me feel excited and much more eagerly waiting for Leopard than before. Here‘s a quick run-down of what I like on that list: AppleScript: Full Unicode Support for AppleScript. Finally. With the rest of Mac OS being so much pro-Unicode, Applescript‘s (and its editor‘s) disabilities in that area, the need to hack a

Which Emacs.app?

2007-10-01T21:59:00.000+04:00

There're many versions of GNU Emacs to choose from when it comes to MacOS. There's a standard console-only Emacs that comes with the system. There's Carbon Emacs that (as the name implies) uses Carbon libs. There's an Aquamacs — again, the name is telling. But what I found to be a very nice addition to this group is Emacs.app — a Cocoa-based Emacs version. It is still in development and

XML::Simple oversimplification

2007-10-01T07:04:00.000+04:00

Perl's XML::Simple module is an easy way to get your application to talk some basic XML. it uses expat to parse data, so there the leverage is good. But where things tend to go awry is with consistency of reading and writing back. Example Let us take the following sample XML document: A survey with a description.

iNewton or iPad next year?

2007-09-29T07:22:00.000+04:00

There are more rumors around the net about a possibility that Apple will introduce a "new Newton." This bides well with what I mentioned in my post on iPod Touch being "origami Mac". Mike Elgan's article in Computerworld is very interesting in that respect. Events in the past 30 days lead me to conclude something unthinkable just one month ago: Apple -- yeah, I said it -- Apple! will ship the

Common Lisp tutorial

2007-09-22T17:05:00.000+04:00

Common Lisp tutorial If you also think Lisp might be better served if PCL was at least one of the results returned to a would-be Lisper searching for a Lisp tutorial you can help out: if you have a web page where it would be reasonable to do so, consider linking to the url http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ with a link text of “lisp tutorial” or “common lisp tutorial”. Yes, I’m asking you to

Eureka moments

2007-09-15T22:08:00.000+04:00

I am pretty sure that this won't be an eye-opener for many, but I just had my eureka moment with XPath. I have been playing with XML config file for a light-weight survey module for our intranet and has been banging my head against Perl XML::Simple module. After a lot of sweat and tears, mismatches between hash and array return values I thought of XPath (probably thanks to SteveY's post) -- and

Rubbish day

2007-09-10T20:27:00.000+04:00

Early Friday night over at The Leicester Arms pub was slowly getting crowded and noisy. Being close to Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street is a guarantee for high traffic — tourists, business people on the run from nearby offices, buddies striking a quick one to start the evening before going off to clubs or restaurants. We were just that sort of traffic — get there, get a beer, drink it and

iPod touch – an Origami Mac?

2007-09-09T11:13:00.000+04:00

Here's just a quick thought: Apple's new iPod touch is Apple's measured response to Microsoft's UMPC, a.k.a. Origami PCs. A similar sentiment seems to be ringing over at C|Net — although their post is a speculation before the iPod event of Sep. 5. True, the primary purpose of iPod touch is still music playing. It will do that nicely, just as well as Classic, Nano and Shuffle varieties from the

Doing 'IT' for a bank -- that bad?

2007-08-29T07:26:00.000+04:00

I came across the argument following Reddit link, here's a good quote to start: ... I am going to highlight the one thing that you should NOT do. I am hoping and praying that you are a lucky person and don't get sucked into the awful quagmire that I am about to outline below. ... If you are really, really unlucky, like most of us, you will leave school and 'go do IT for a bank'. There's

Numbers for the rest of us

2007-08-26T12:24:00.000+04:00

Ever since Apple released Keynote rumors were circulating all over the fan sites as to when a full truly Mac office suit would be released. This was addressed bit-by-bit. First, Keynote was joined by Pages. Then both Keynote and Pages have received a small table management face-lift. Finally, this year Numbers has been released. There's been many reviews of Numbers. Since I've been working

Взгляд: Россия нашла замену Microsoft

2007-08-01T07:08:00.000+04:00

«Для нас важно, чтобы параллельно с устранением пиратства развивались программы с открытым кодом» Давно пора. Хочется надеяться, только, что ето не попытка выторговать лучшую цену из Редмонда.

Fixing Russian track names in iTunes

2007-07-28T19:04:00.000+04:00

Here's a situation: you have a bunch of MP3s of Russian (or Cyrillic in general) songs that you decided to drag-and-drop add to your iTunes library. No problem with that, except every once in awhile you end up with songs/artists/albums named using "birds language" instead of proper Cyrillic letters. I have once in the past stumbled onto a small AppleScript solution that fixed that, but I was

One month after upgrade: BlackBerry 8800 impressions

2007-07-22T09:55:00.000+04:00

Just about a month ago I have upgraded my BlackBerry from an old 7290 to a shiny 8800. What's below is a quick summation of my impressions. Look and feel It certainly feels lighter and slimmer. Although it is a bit longer than 7290, it has no bulge — it is a plain candy-bar slab. Gone is the scroll wheel on a side, cause of many thumb injuries of real crackberry addicts. Its replacement is a

iPhone fonts choices — why so limited?

2007-07-21T12:02:00.000+04:00

John Gruber writes about a limited set of iPhone fonts, commenting that "...but worse than that the list is so short is that some of the fonts Apple did include are so ugly." I think that the reason for that is to keep as wide a character coverage as possible, while saving memory. Most (although not all) of the fonts that iPhone does have are either Unicode or have many more character sets than

Minimized Windows™

2007-06-20T06:50:00.000+04:00

The Land of Wind, Ghosts and Minimised Windows Windows can't, you see, just blithely stop drawing a program's window when it's minimised. I think that's because you can't count on programs to redraw themselves correctly, or because they may freak out if one or more of their various window-drawing strategies is not correctly bit-bucketed. ... WinNT and its descendants - possibly even Vista,

Belkin Wireless G + MIMO router

2007-05-29T07:43:00.000+04:00

I bought one of these a short while ago -- I felt the need to try and improve wireless reception. My good-old LinkSys WRT54G has rarely produced a signal stronger than 60% percent and I could well feel the difference in speed between direct plug and wireless access to internet. Looking at the reviews of the product I assumed that it is the rigth thing for me, and on one of my trips to London I

Chicken and Rice

2007-05-20T22:05:00.000+04:00

One of the things I like to do to take my mind away from the daily grind is cook. I don't like it being a routine affair -- that'd kill the whole feel of it. What I like about it is that on one hand you have a recipe -- which a rule set that you have to follow. On the other hand, you can try and do things differently -- and end up with something totally differnt (good, bad or ugly) from what

X/HTML5 vs. XHTML2: a dilettante's view

2007-04-17T22:25:00.000+04:00

There has been a number of different views on the matter of new markup language spec for the web in the past few weeks. As a hobbyist, I certainly cannot provide a solid foundation for my views, other than that some things feel right, and some don't. In this case, a lot of X/HTML5's "backward compatible" features are plain 1996 déjà vu. Unquoted attributes. Mixed cases for tags. The I, B,

DRM, Apple, Microsoft

2007-02-10T20:33:00.000+03:00

Steve Jobs' recent Thoughts on Music have been around the blogs, news sites and general media. There's been a nice article in Economist, a long thread on Slashdot. Why did he say what he said? This position does not seem to match many of the past actions by Apple?I think that the story is relatively simple. Besides the fact that putting all the blame for not providing non-DRM'ed content on

Why Johny can't code and whether he really needs BASIC

2006-09-17T15:31:00.000+04:00

David Brin has written an article at Salon titled Why Johny can't code. The basic premise is that it has become very difficult for the younger generation to pick up computing, as simple and straight forward environments of yesteryears are gone. As an example given by David, it was much easier to do between late 60's and early 80's when machines were 4-bit and BASIC was on the ROM of pretty much

Folderless Outlook

2006-06-09T22:34:00.000+04:00

This is a reply to an email I have received from Mark of CNXN fame, the one that made del.icio.us and Reddit with his No-Folder tutorial as a feedback to my post. The text has been edited slightly to better fit blog. First a quote: As illogical as this sounds I find this very valuable info. When I first started using Outlook without folders I had the “fear” as well until I kept at it and

Is Bangalore as high-quality resource-rich as it wants everyone to believe?

2006-06-04T22:53:00.000+04:00

Apple software logs out of India- The Times of India: Considering the low-cost, high-quality talent pool that Bangalore offers, it is unclear why Apple decided to shut shop just over a month after it commenced operations. Say what? Maybe the proper way to react to Apple's actions was to actually stop and think: are there really that many high-quality support resources over at Bangalore?

CRN | Lenovo, Linux, Lenovo3000 | Lenovo To Shun Linux

2006-06-04T22:46:00.000+04:00

As seen on Slashdot, quoted from CRN: CRN | Lenovo, Linux, Lenovo3000 | Lenovo To Shun Linux: Computer maker Lenovo will not install or support the Linux operating system on any of its PCs, including ThinkPads and a series of new notebooks, the company said this week. So, it has started. It has not really taken all that long. I used to be an almost adamant ThinkPad fan — I still think that in

Using Outlook Without Folders, Without Filing

2006-06-04T22:25:00.000+04:00

Over at Mark Rosenberg has published a tutorial on Using Outlook Without Folders, Without Filing. This is so much un-GTD that I had shivers going down my spine when I realized what this was about. This is also likely targeted at those lucky among us that don't fear seeing an inbox full of 12,345 messages — then waiting for them to get sorted, the way author suggests. I have known people to go

Opera Mini 2.0

2006-06-01T21:29:00.000+04:00

Opera Mini™ for Mobile: Opera Mini™ is a fast and tiny Web browser, that allows you to access the full Internet on your phone. ... The new version further improves the browsing experience by enabling download of images, MP3s, etc directly to your phone. I've had previous version of OperaMini running on my Nokia 6230 phone and pretty much always preferred it to the stock Nokia browser. The only

Motorola exec reveals next-gen slimphone: the SCPL - Engadget

2006-05-28T15:41:00.000+04:00

Motorola exec reveals next-gen slimphone: the SCPL - Engadget: TLK BT TS: MTRL'S HD HNCH FR CLLPHNS, RN GRRQS, RVLD TH XSTNC F N PCMNG HNDST CLLD TH SCPL (THT'S SCLPL, N CS TH LCK F VWLS MD T NCLR) DRNG RCNT CMPN NVSTMNT CNFRNC -- BT KPT LL TH MPRTNT DTLS T HMSLF. LL THT'S KNWN BT TH SCPL (WHCH W HP N N WLL MSTK FR TH SRGCL TL PCTRD HR), THR THN TH BVS FCT THT T WLL B QT SLM, S THT T WLL SPRT

GUI vs. console

2006-05-27T22:30:00.000+04:00

Is the Console next Desktop?: For professions that require loads of data-entry, such as bookkeepping, income tax, retail... console-based applications still provide more user performance than any visual design. This is the second para in the first comment posted. I can't agree more. Time and time again I am seeing that good GUI metaphors are extremely hard to come up with. Designing an

Macbook -- continuation

2006-05-27T00:57:00.000+04:00

I have now had a little more time to play with the “little white box,” here’s a few amendments/additions/clarifications to my earlier review. Glare/display There is a glare. In some case it might, indeed, be strong. Yet you can relatively easily get rid or reduce it -- you should generally not be sitting with strong sources of light beaming either straight or at an angle at your MacBook screen

Why Your Boss Is Overpaid - Forbes.com

2006-05-27T00:30:00.000+04:00

Why Your Boss Is Overpaid - Forbes.com: Workers are frequently ranked relative to each other and promoted not for being good at their jobs but for being better than their rivals. It is a natural response to the difficulty of true performance pay. Now, this is one interesting statement, and so very true. This also makes any sort of “objective performance appraisals” a nonsense: if you compare a

MacBook

2006-05-22T01:27:00.000+04:00

Today marks the day when I yielded to a temptation thoroughly. I saw, I liked and I bought — a new bright and shiny Apple MacBook. A nice little white marvel that fits so comfortably on ones laps or an airplane table... By way of rationalization I bought it for my wife — she claims to have liked it. I think she may have said that to give me an excuse, if I needed one. I pretend that this was

Throw No Stones

2006-05-20T10:11:00.000+04:00

Throw No Stones Originally uploaded by jurvetson. This is unbelievable -- can anyone imagine anything like this coming out of Redmond?

Creationism is not Cristianity

2006-05-05T21:14:00.000+04:00

Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer: Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be

Windows API as part of MacOS X 10.x?

2006-04-22T10:36:00.000+04:00

There May Be an End-run for Apple Around Windows After All: A souped-up OS X kernel with native Windows API support and the prospect of mixing and matching Windows and Mac applications would be, for many users, the best of both worlds. There would be no copy of Windows XP to buy, no large overhead of emulation or compatibility middleware, no chance for Microsoft to accidentally screw things up,

Pirating to benefit Microsoft?

2006-04-14T07:21:00.000+04:00

How Piracy Opens Doors for Windows: The proliferation of pirated copies nevertheless establishes Microsoft products — particularly Windows and Office — as the software standard. I could not agree more — this is exactly what I have been seeing in Russia, and it really is annoying. One would think that a country that is (used to be?) so paranoid about espionage be CIA and the gang would instead

Russia’s Putin Reclaiming Dominant Role in Former Soviet Union - COLUMN - MOSNEWS.COM

2006-03-25T10:07:00.000+03:00

Russias Putin Reclaiming Dominant Role in Former Soviet Union - COLUMN - MOSNEWS.COM: At the center of the Russian policy in the region is a determination to resist the West’s efforts to boost its influence at Russia’s expense, in what Moscow says is falsely portrayed as a bid to promote democracy. Let's just take a slightly different (though definitely biased) look: can you truly believe

Would you really want to dual boot Mactel?

2006-03-19T14:27:00.000+03:00

WinXP and OSX dual boot in MacBook Pro: Finally I’ve succeeded in installing Windows XP in MacBook Pro. Now it can dual boot between Windows XP and MacOS X. There’re few issues with windows xp but being able to boot smoothly between these 2 OSes are really amazing. I do consider myself a geek, and I do like to tinker with things -- yet I am still a bit amazed that folks are so much intrigued

Everything new is well-forgotten old stuff

2006-03-17T07:35:00.000+03:00

Backup Files to DV Camera: Tape backup was once the norm for archiving files from home PCs. Consumer grade tape drives tended to be flaky and slow, but were the only alternative to using dozens of floppy disks. ... The average price for MiniDV tape in consumer quantities is about $4 or as low as $2.60 in 100 unit lots. MiniDV tape stores 8-12GB in SP mode or 12-18GB in LP mode, depending on how

What's worth the effort?

2006-03-16T21:46:00.000+03:00

A revelation has downed on me the other day during one of the endless meetings: It does not matter how elegant or smart a solution is (or can be). What matters is how timely it is and how well it addresses (especially a long-standing) immediate need. Case in point -- procurement process (or rather lack thereof). Up to recently we've had an almost total paper kingdom. The only automated part

Trust the unconscious self

2006-02-18T10:43:00.000+03:00

An interesting point at “sleeping on it” or the way we put it in Russian -- “утро вечера мудренее”. The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of

Technorati

2006-02-16T02:08:00.000+03:00

Technorati Profile

Quicken 2005 for Mac

2006-02-12T11:25:00.000+03:00

I wrote before about my little pet project that is not really going anywhere -- a moderately sophisticated personal accounting package for MacOS X. I am well aware of such apps as LiquidLedger, CashBox, Conto (btw, if you are really new to this and just want to get a feel for keeping your hands on your finances I would really recommen d going with Conto), iBank, MYOB, and many others. Yet I

Helvetica Neue Condensed in Safari

2006-01-14T23:46:00.000+03:00

The theme of this blog right now uses Helvetica Neue Condensed in heading elements, yet rendering of this font on a Mac is very much different between Safari, Opera and Mozilla-based browsers, see for yourself: Safari Camino Opera Not sure why Safari does not render condensed font correctly and no info seemed to be anywhere....

Changing Blogger theme

2006-01-09T12:23:00.001+03:00

As I am working on an update to Ceesaxp.Org, I have decided to change the theme used here at Blogger. I've gone for JellyFish. It is relatively light, although a bit large or my taste. I might tweak it a little, or I might change it around entirely to suit the main site's theme better.

Small nifty tricks with iTunes and a Mac

2006-01-08T23:40:00.000+03:00

While one might opt to pay for iRooster, there are cheaper if not a bit less elegant ways of achieving pretty much the same goal: getting up on time.

BlackBerry does not work well for GTD — revisited

2005-12-08T23:34:00.000+03:00

Over at my primary site I have started a write-up on my BlackBerry GTS experience. Nothing too much to write home about, if you ask me.

BlackBerry 7290 vs Palm Tungsten T5

2005-10-22T22:29:00.000+04:00

BlackBerry 7290 vs Palm Tungsten T5 Originally uploaded by ceesaxp. I've done a little write-up on my recent experience with a BlackBerry 7290 over on my primary site.

2005-10-10T00:45:00.000+04:00

Serenity Went to see the movie last night -- was not too bad, in fact might well be one of the better sci-fi movies I got to see in the last few months (that after a total dissatisfaction from watching The Revenge of a Sith). It's also sort of nice to see a movie that does not only rely on CGI to get the effects. I wonder what the budget was -- sure does not look like it was huge -- that with

Fall Impressions

2005-10-10T00:34:00.000+04:00

bfly Originally uploaded by ceesaxp. I suppose this may sound a bit lame and romantic-silly -- but I can't help but feel so amazed that the fall this year here in Moscow is just spectacular. In fact, I can't remember the last time it was so good -- all of September and most of October so far have been dry and sunny -- not your usual Moscow drizzle, lead-grey sky and low-hanging clouds.As

Palm is a gonner

2005-09-28T22:42:00.000+04:00

When Palm ruled the handheld-computing market, few thought it would ever have to partner with Microsoft. It is all downhill from here -- and one should have really seen the writing on the wall. The lousy performance of recent handheld devices (see my notes on T5) with memory leaks and sporadic resets... Then the news of PalmSource being sold (that after failing to put Cobalt onto any devices