When I was a kid I liked wrist watches from Casio. I had one with a calculator, one with an address database, one with an infrared remote control and one with an altimeter. But for the last 25 years I didn’t wear one. I don’t like to wrap anything around my wrist. And since I… Continue reading When a product is better than the description
Tag: ubuntu
Worst customer experience ever
The best notebook ever I blogged about my attempts to buy a decent notebook here before. But let’s recap quickly. In the fall of 2013 I bought a Dell XPS13 Developer edition. When Dell shortly thereafter announced that they now accept BitCoin, I had the feeling I missed out on that opportunity. Nevertheless, it was… Continue reading Worst customer experience ever
let’s encrypt
I never bought a commercial grade SSL certificate for my private website, but I used free ones before. Usually from startssl. While it worked, the process was cumbersome. And then when I wanted to renew, my browser showed a warning that their own certificate was out of order. When the letsencrypt initiative (supported by mozilla… Continue reading let’s encrypt
Verifying downloads
Last week I stumbled across a post from last year, where somebody described how it was impossible to download an important infrastructure program securely on Windows. My first reaction was of course to pity the poor souls that are still stuck with Windows. How easy is it to just type apt-get install and have all… Continue reading Verifying downloads
ubuntu phone will be great, but it is not yet
The BQ Aquaris ubuntu phone that I waited for so eagerly was delivered today. Full of anticipation I unpacked it and switched it on. After playing with it for a while the excitement turned into dissatisfaction. I hate to say it, but on a phone the solid base and polished user experience is not enough,… Continue reading ubuntu phone will be great, but it is not yet
an ultrabook for developers
My old netbook still runs, but it shows signs of senility. I have been thinking of a replacement for a while, but as it still worked, that was constantly postponed. When I first read about project sputnik, I thought this is great news and I want one. The device that followed looked very nice, but… Continue reading an ultrabook for developers
OpenCL First Steps
There is an increasing noise about GPGPU computing and how much faster than CPU (even parallel) it is. If you didn’t hear about all that, GPGPU is about using the computer’s graphics card(s) to do general purpose computations. The key to the performance lies in the parallel architecture of these devices. From what I read,… Continue reading OpenCL First Steps
packaging libboost compiled with llvm clang
I read many articles and posts over the last year or so, citing how great llvm clang is. On one side it shall have a static checker that makes lint redundant, and on the other side the optimizer has an -o4 where the -o3 shall be comparable to other optimizers. On top of that, compilation… Continue reading packaging libboost compiled with llvm clang
Screen went black
This morning, I had a short moment of horror when I turned on my Netbook. After the ubuntu splash screen, it went black and didn’t respond to any keys. The only response was for the power key, where it displayed the ubuntu splash screen again and shut down. My Acer aspire one has the dreaded… Continue reading Screen went black
Robot Arm part 1 packaging and simple manipulation
Another project that I had in mind for a while was to experiment with robot arm path planning and inverse kinematics. If you don’t know what that is, think about how robot arms could be programmed. The simplest form would be capture and replay, in which you have a controller which which you record how… Continue reading Robot Arm part 1 packaging and simple manipulation