Before Humanity

Wide Margin's first full release.

2011-08-31T02:41:00.000-07:00

Wide Margin has reached a major milestone, it has had it's first full release, Wide Margin 1.0.9.

Wide Margin is a simple and quick bible application for ubuntu and has the following features:

As you type searching and passage navigation
Out of the box King James Version support
Full navigation history
Familiar browser inspired interface
Daily reading planner
Ubuntu PPA

You can install it now using our Ubuntu PPA ppa:trampster/widemargin

We welcome bug reports, patches, UI mockup and any other way you might want to contribute. Please visit our website https://bitbucket.org/trampster/widemargin/wiki/Home to get started

Going forward we plan to start development on release 2 which will bring Wide Margin to windows. Release 1 will continue to get bug fixes and regular updates until Release 2 is complete.

Wide Margin goes Beta

2011-08-15T01:12:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce the first Beta release of the Wide Margin project.

Wide Margin 1.0.8 Beta

Changes include:
- Packaging improvement courtesy of directhex
- Daily Reading fix to bug causing the app to crash when loaded on some days.

For those of you who don't know Wide Margin is a quick and simple bible application for ubuntu. You can get it now from our ubuntu PPA ppa:trampster/widemargin

Wide Margin will stay beta for the next few weeks and if no major bugs are found will then become the first full release.

If you want to learn more or to help out please visit https://bitbucket.org/trampster/widemargin

Wide Margin 1.0.7 Alpha 2

2011-07-19T00:58:00.001-07:00

I have just released Wide Margin 1.0.7 Alpha 2.
It contains a bunch of bug fixes bringing the bug count down to zero. :)

Passage scrolling now works.
Verse links now scrolls to the verse in the link.
As you type passage navigation, scrolls to the typed verse.

If you already have Wide Margin installed you will get the update automatically.

If not you can install it from our PPA instructions can be found here:
https://bitbucket.org/trampster/widemargin/wiki/Download/Install

Announcing Wide Margin

2011-07-04T00:17:00.000-07:00

For some time now I have been quietly working on a new bible study program. That application has now reached it's first alpha release and is ready for wider testing and use.

What is it?
Wide Margin is a fast and simple bible study application, which gets out of your way and lets you at the important stuff, Gods Word.

Features
* As you type searching and passage navigation.
* Out of the box King James Version support.
* Full navigation history.
* Familiar browser inspired interface.
* Daily reading planner.
* Ubuntu PPA

Why another bible program?
The other bible programs available for linux did not meet my needs. Most are confusing and required advanced setup before you can use them, they loaded slowly, search slowly, have complicated and cluttered interfaces and more features then I would ever know what to do with. In short they did not fulfill my most common use cases, which is to quickly look up a verse or read a passage. So in the finest tradition of open source software I have scratched my own itch and created Wide Margin.

How do I get it?
Wide Margin is available for ubuntu via a PPA. ppa:trampster/widemargin

How can I help?
Wide Margin project welcomes bug reports and patches. Please visit https://bitbucket.org/trampster/widemargin/wiki/Home to get started.

What does it look like?

Say NO to custom Android Interfaces

2010-05-17T02:35:00.000-07:00

One of the big problems facing android right now is market fragmentation. It seems that every android phone you see is running a different version of the operating system. Here in New Zealand there are two android phones available through the local providers, one is the LG GW620f and the Sony Ericsson X10i. Both of these phones are running the outdated 1.6 version of android. When Google is up to version 2.1 with 2.2 about to be released.

So what's the problem with this? Well the problem is that users are missing out on a whole bunch of new features and on a lot of applications in the market which are not available for version 1.6.

The reason that the Sony Ericsson phone is still on 1.6 according to their blog is that they have made their own custom user interface. When Google releases a new version of android Sony has to test the new version with there custom interface and fix any problems which might result from the changes. They also need to add the ability to use the new features which Google has added. And while they are doing all this you the customer misses out. You miss out on the new features and you can't install the new applications.

So if having their own custom interface makes it so hard to upgrade in a timely manor then why do they bother. The reason is that marketing theory says that your product needs a 'point of difference' in order to 'differentiate' it from the competition. HTC has their Sense UI, Motorola has their motoblur.

The problem is that this marketing theory does not take into consideration the huge disadvantage that your product has in the market place when it is out of date. How big of a disadvantage well people in the know just wont buy your product. And those who do will very soon become upset and disgruntled.

Windows has faced a similar problem with OEMs. The problem is that OEM's try to 'add value' (another marketing buzz word) by including all sorts of crap ware applications on their computers which are for sale. I once set up a windows net book for a friend. It came crammed full of trial versions of all sorts of security applications so much so that it took forever to load and when I opened the internet browser over half the screen was taken up with the tool bars that the OEM has pre installed for me. The area that was left for actually browsing the internet was so small as to make using it almost impossible.

That is why apple has been so successful. Because they control both the Software and the hardware they can prevent this kind of crap from happening.

So what can you as the consumer do about android market fragmentation? Firstly don't by android phones with custom user interfaces. Don't buy android phones pre installed with stuff that the manufacture decided adds value.

What you want is plan vanilla standard android. All the OEM will have to do with new releases of android is test it against your hardware and then push it out.

There is a name for a phone with plan android on it. It's call Google experience. You know when you get a Google experience phone that it will not be full of crapware, and that it will be updated in a timely manor.

Currently the best Google experience phone is the Nexus One. This is sold and marketed by Google itself. And it gets upgrades rolled out as soon as they are available.

So don't buy an android phone with a custom UI, which is full of crapware. Get Android as Google intended it to be and ensure that you will never get left behind.

Why Apple hates flash

2010-02-01T23:21:00.000-08:00

Following the much hyped announcement of the Apple iPad. The most talked about aspect of the device apart from the numerous jokes about feminine products, was not something that the device did or had but rather something that it didn't have. The much hyped Apple iPad does not support flash.

Steve Jobs claims that this is because adobe is lazy and flash is resource intensive and buggy.

However I have a different theory, something that fits much better with the philosophy of Apple.

Apple likes to control everything, they argue that the more control they have over the device the better your experience will be. And to a point they are correct apple has built a name for itself by creating easy to use, reliable and good looking products.

Apple also likes to make money, and in the end thats the reason they like most companies are in business. Did you know that apple takes a 30% cut out of every sale made through the app store. What that means is that apple has a vested interest in making sure users get there applications through the app store.

The web is full of flash applications, and each of those flash applications can be obtained on the web for free by anyone. Apple can not control what flash application you can use, its has no way of ensuring those applications conform to is design guidelines, meet its terms of service or do not compete with core functionality provide by the device, and most of all apple can not make money out of you using those flash applications. What apple can do is not support it.

I believe that if a company with the resource of apple really wanted flash on their device they would have it. I think the reality is they did not want it and did not believe they needed it.

What they did do however was underestimate the public backlash they would get by not providing it.

So why doesn't the ipad support flash? It because Apple wants you to get all your apps from the app store, which they control and which they make money from.

Nexus One vs IPhone

2010-01-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

There have been lots of blog posts and reviews about the two phones, but most of them seems to skip over the huge difference in specs of the the two phones. So I have graphed the two phones so you all can get a real understand of the differences, no feelings, no spin just the hard facts.

Google Wave missing email

2009-12-02T01:18:00.000-08:00

I have spend the last few day trying out he new Google wave. To trial it I have used it to organize a tramp.

What I liked.

Google Maps integration

I was able to add a map and plot the route on it along with the location of all the huts.

Playback

The ability to play back the history to see how the wave evolved.

Real-time collaboration

I could see other peoples edits as they happened

Editing messages

One of the really bad things about emails is that once you send them it is to late, you can't edit them you can't fix mistakes.

The Bad:

It's invite only

It's still only a preview (there are still some problems to be worked out)

You can't remove people from a wave.

You can only communicate with people who have signed up.

But the real big problem with Google wave is that Google is promoting it as a replacements for email. If Google wants it to replace email it must have a credible migration strategy. Google wave is not backwards compatable with email. You can not send an email from Google wave and you can not receive email on Google wave. What that means is that as long as people I know still use email I will have to check both email and google wave. To be honest I can't be bothered, so I will be sticking with email until google wave works as an email client.

PiTiVi

2009-07-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

One application that Linux is missing is a good easy to use video editor. As has been pointed out many times all across the web Linux is the operating system of choice for making movies in large movie studios. That's right not the arty Mac. These studios use there own in house tools to do video editing and they have large clusters of linux servers for doing rendering.

Unfortunately this software is owned by the movie studios and is not made available for free or otherwise so none of the advantage of it filters down the lowly desktop user like you or me.

In most other areas, there is a good open-source Linux alternative. You want an office application then use open office. You want a audio edit then use audacity. You want a photo editor then use GIMP. You want a browser then use Firefox. But if you want a video edit then you are stuffed.

There are video editors for linux I hear you scream. Yes your right there are but none of them live up to expectations. Weather they are buggy, not maintained, not in the Ubuntu repositories (I'm looking at you Cinelerra), not easy to use (I'm looking at you blender). Nothing quite lives up to expectations.

There is one application which is show some promise and that is PiTiVi. Specifically I tried the just released 0.13.1.2 from the ubuntu PPA

PiTiVi has a very easy to use visual interface. Most operations are archived by an intuitive drag and drop. The interface is simple, clean and attractive. I picked up the interface within seconds it was a real pleasure to use.

So I thought I would put this promising application to the test. Recently I went on a trip to Rarotonga we took lots of photos and I wanted to make a nice slide show with music. Simple right, no actual video source just jpeg photos and maybe some nice transitions. I have laptop with a 720p screen so naturally I wanted to create a movie with that resolution.

So I start the process of dragging the photos I want in from my file browser and positioning them in the time line. This was so simple a 5 year old could do it. Then I dragged in the 2 mp3 tracks I wanted to use and positioned them in the time line, this was also as natural as breathing. The second track was two long so a chopped it. Once again this was simple.

Then I tried to add the transitions I wanted, you know a nice fade here and there maybe a swipe or a fly in. But I couldn't figure out how to set the transitions. Eventually I looked on the PiTiVi website, only to find that transitions are not yet implemented, but they are working on it.

So I was a bit disappointed, I continued.... I could do without my transitions they were just extra eye candy really.

So the next thing to do was render it. I clicked on the big render button. It asked me what settings I wanted to use. So I selected the 720p option and then started the render. Everything looked good it said the render would take 10 minute and it had a progress bar. for the first 6 or so minutes the progress bar progressed and the time left decreased as expected. But then the progress bar stopped progressing and the time left started increasing and continued increasing for the next hour until I have up and canceled it.

I tried again and again and again, I tried different rendering settings but nothing helped it didn't always stop at the same place. Sometimes it almost finished other times it stopped right at the start. But never did it complete.

Now it doesn't matter how easy to use a application is or how ascetically pleasing it is to the eye if it can't do the job then it is useless no its less then useless because useless implies harmless but this application wasted several hours of my time and achieved nothing.

So I give PiTiVi a rating of 0/10. It is being actively developed so hopefully in a years time I will have a different opinion of it. It shows a great deal of potential if only they can complete the basic feature set and fix their rendering problems.

WPF, Mono and WINE

2008-08-06T01:34:00.000-07:00

The number one reason for people to be hesitant in switching to Linux for their desktop environment is application compatibility. More specifically compatibility with their favorite windows application.

I'm a dot net developer, and for me that killer windows application is Visual Studio 2008. No IDE (integrated development environment) even comes close to providing the features, usability and coding efficiency provided by Visual Studio. And yes I have tried eclipse.

Their are two open source projects of note which are trying to address this problem. The first is WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator), which aims to provide a free implementation of Windows API on Unix. A honorable goal to be sure. So how does it go on my killer windows App Visual Studio 2008?
Well it doesn't, it can't even run its predecessor Visual Studio 2005.

What about Mono I here you say. Well I was coming to that. Mono is the second of the two open source projects I was planning to mention. Mono aims to provide a open source implementation of .net. Allowing .net applications to run on Linux and Mac. Ausome!!! Ausome that means that any application developed for .net should just run in linix. However when you look closer your rose tinted glasses start to crack. .net has become the development platform of choice for application programmers. It offers huge productivity, maintainability and reliability advantages over native code. Novell the company which sponsors the mono project has just announced the release of mono 2.0 which has full support for .net 2.0 plus c# 3.0 features like linq and linq to xml.

Unfortunate .net has moved on a long way since it released those features and now has a new and much improved GUI framework called WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). This is quickly becoming the GUI framework of choice for new windows applications.

And this is the real tie breaker. The Mono project has no plans to implement WPF. And with that little bit of information mono's ability to solve our problem of running .net apps on linux dies.

Of course just because Novell does not have the resources to implement WPF does not mean the community can not step in and add this functionality, I mean thats what the whole idea of open source is. Unfortunately this is where the whole things fulls apart. Linux users, ie the ones who most want Linux to become the desktop environment of choice and the ones with the programing skills to make WPF on mono happen hate microsoft. For them hating microsoft has become like a religion. And that hating of microsoft includes microsoft technologies. Even if that technology is being implemented as an open source project by an independent organization. Microsoft haters have gone as far as trying to make sure mono is not included in popular linux distributions. Some going so far as to call in inclusion of mono dependent applications infestations. In doing so shotting themselves and their desire to see linux become the technology of choice in the foot.

What about MonoDevelop you say, a IDE for creating .net apps on linux. Unfortunity again Mono Develop is years behind Visual Studio. As I type this I have Mono Develop running on my machine. It does not let me target anything more recient then .net 2.0 (so no LINQ) and it doesn't even come with a visual debugger. (its still a work in progress you have check it out and compile it from SVN)

So what is required for linux to become the desktop of choice?
Windows applications have to 'just work' on linux.

This means WINE and MONO must become feature complete. MONO releases must follow .net releases within at least 6 months. And nothing especially something as important as WPF can be left out.

So Linux lovers rool up your sleaves and make it happen.

Introduction

2008-08-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

First an intro, I'm a .net developer living in Christchurch New Zealand. At work I use Visual Studio 2008 Pro and work on a set of applications used to configure radios.

At home I have moved my main computer to Ubuntu because I like the idea of free and open source software.

I would love to see Linux become the desktop operating system of choice. However I see a number of barriers to this happening.

With that in mind this blog will be used to document the barriers that I have come across and continue to come across to the wide spread adoption of Linux on the desktop.