I’ve also removed the manual download. The only way to download Afae now is to use the update site (http://robrohan.com/projects/afae). If you’d used the update site before, you’ll have to uninstall the old plugins and re-setup the update site. You can read more about it on the project page.

Thank you to everyone who’s been using Afae, your feedback, and your generous donations. I really appreciate it.

I stumbled on a Git hosting provider today called github. The prices are good, and they range from free (for hackers), to $12/month for small teams, to $100/month for large companies.

If your company does outsourcing to countries where the net connectivity is sometimes sketchy, you owe it to yourself to checkout Git. The distributed nature of the program allows for better collaboration in those types of environments.

Because each “clone” of the repository can still commit, even when the network is down people can still work, and re-sync when the network comes back up.

The other gem I spotted today was a Git Textmate bundle which makes using Git in Textmate as easy as using SVN. Here is a screens shot:

You can install the bundle by following the steps on Gitorious (You need to have the command line version of git installed first).

And lastly, I said before that “git doesn’t have a UI and you need to be comfortable with the shell”, but I was incorrect. If you run the command git gui from within a git directory there is a simple but effective UI. Here is a screen shot of what it looks like on Mac OS X but it works on Linux and Windows as well:

I find the Textmate bundle nicer for most day to day activities, but git gui frequently comes in handy.

You can add the gadget to your iGoogle home page (which I am starting to dig), and access it from any operating system from just about any where in the world:

Or if you use the Google side bar in windows, you can add it there too.

You can even embed the Gadget on your own web site.

A new word is shown almost every day (Monday through Friday), posted at 6:00 am PST.

VLC is a media application that can play almost any kind of media file - it’s a great program.

The security report says upgrade to the newest version to fix, but there are reports that the newest version also has the bug.

So it’s best not to play untrusted movies with subtitles until they get it sorted (or download the nightly build).

Recently, however, I’ve been getting into Git. Git is different from any source control system I’ve used. It’s a distributed source control system which not only gives it a huge work flow advantage in my opinion, but also means you can have repositories without a dedicated server.

The distributed nature

Every coder I’ve ever seen that is working on a project using source control has a work flow like the following:

1) Checkout code locally.
2) Work on code locally trying to add features / bug fixes.
3) If work spans several days then, “update” every day, and try to solve small conflicts with the main repository.
4) When done - commit, and if there are conflicts, resolve the conflicts.

The main, and slightly elusive, point I’ve noticed with this setup is the repository is nothing but a database. All the work, all the code managing is done by the developer and then “pushed” to the repository database when ready.

The developers local copy is really just a branch of the main repository. So why not let the developers local copy have all the rights and privileges to be someone else’s main repository? Git was built with this idea in mind, and the explicit goal of being able to merge all changes back upstream.

What this means in reality, is branching and merging are at the core of git, and I’ve found it to work really well. It lets you test wild ideas with code, and not worry about how you’re going to rollback your changes if you go to far out, and it doesn’t work - if that makes any sense.

Look ma, no server

The other exciting part about git, for me, is you don’t need a server running a process anywhere - you don’t need a git server running somewhere.

Most places I’ve worked I’ve implemented source control, and managing a source control server is time consuming. This is all subjective to the level of funding, number of people on staff, tools available, amount of branching etc, but what if you could just remove the overhead of another service that someone has to manage?

By the way, quick plug, I often use cvsdude.com for my Subversion outsourcing, but even with the tools they offer someone still has to manage the Subversion server (adding users, permissions, the cost).

While I feel you’re insane if you don’t use source control, sometimes running an entire Subversion server is overkill for a project. Writing a Mac OS X widget for example - do you need a full on server, bugzilla, a wiki, and trac hooks for that?

With git, however, you can just put a copy of the repository on a server, and call it your main repository. Done. You can control push access using SSH logins, and if you want to allow anonymous access to the repository, you can make it available over HTTP.

Here is what this looks like, for my notes and if you want to try it yourself:

Get a git repository. Either a new one:

$ mkdir my_cool_project; cd my_cool_project;
$ git-init
$ cp -R [all_my_code_files] ./
$ git add .
$ git commit -a

or copy a whole subversion repository (comments changes and all):

$ git-svn clone -T trunk https://mystuff.com/my_project

Do your stuff

$ write_lots_of_amazing_code.sh
$ git commit -a

Prepare for publish:

$ pwd
/home/guy/my_cool_project
$ git repack -d
$ git clone --bare -l . /tmp/your-proj.git
$ git --bare --git-dir=/tmp/your-proj.git update-server-info
$ mv /tmp/your-proj.git /home/guy/Desktop

Now upload the your-proj.git folder to your publicly available server. As I said before, if you want to allow anonymous access put it in a HTTP available folder, if you want a private one, put it in your home directory or something.

Turn on the hooks for it to update itself when you “push” your new code changes. (one thing to note here is the server needs to have git installed - sudo apt-get install git git-core on Debian / Ubuntu systems)

$ uname -a
your_server GNU/Linux
$ pwd
/var/www/myrepo.com/your-proj.git
$ git --bare update-server-info
$ chmod a+x hooks/post-update

Now it’s ready to be used as a central server.

To “checkout” the code - really cloning the repository locally:

$ uname -a
your_development_box
$ git clone ssh://[username]@[server]/var/www/myrepo.com/your-proj.git

Then working locally, you commit your changes locally.

$ git commit -a

It is very easy to make branches and merge them back into your local trunk (often named master). Here is an in depth posting on the subject when you are ready.

To update your local repository to the code on the server:

$ git pull

And when you are all set with your local changes and ready to push them to the server:

$ git push

Anonymous checkout:

$ git clone http://myrepo.com/your-proj.git

Last bits

Some things to consider:

* Git doesn’t work on windows without Cygwin. It works great on Mac OS X and Linux however.

* There are very few GUI tools for git, you (and your developers) need to be cool with the terminal. (try gitk from the command line)

* You will have many full copies of your repository floating around. While this is great for backup purposes, it might be bad for some projects.

* On Mac OS X I think you have to compile Git from source (I did anyway). It’s not hard, but if that scares you…

For a bit of history, I moved off of Windows in 1997 and on to Linux - Debian mostly (Wow, I haven’t used Windows as my main OS for 10 years!). Back then it took a lot of tweaking to get Linux to work right. I don’t mean customizing, I mean tweaking to get it to even work.

While tinkering under the hood was educational and fun, it was a bit of a pain when it was time to do some actual work. I frequently found myself spending time working on getting my environment to work before I could do any work. I couldn’t get much work done that way so I moved to Mac about three years ago - specifically for the work flow, ease of use, and stability.

Now, however, Linux just works (in so much as Mac and Windows “just work”). Ubuntu installs easily, supports most hardware (WPA wireless with no tweaking on my part!), and comes with a slew of free programs.

It is not my intention to bash Mac or Leopard. I think they are both amazing feats of engineering and craftsmanship; however, Leopard isn’t working for me. I find it unstable, buggy, and disk thrashing - I want to use it I truly do, but it doesn’t want me to. It’s the nicest looking OS I have ever seen, and the improvements are theoretically cool, but for day to day work, it’s failing horribly for me.

So I have a few choices. Wait for an unspecified amount of time for bugs that are unacknowledged to be fixed, downgrade to Tiger, or peruse other options. Number one happens by default and number 2 and 3 are such a pain in the behind, that I might as well look at number 3 just to see (in case this kind of situation is going to become a trend).

My Leopard Workflow Problems

To cut off suggestions that I am over reacting, or making things up, here are a few things that have been happening since Leopard:

* Everyday at least one application crashes while I am working on something. This was unheard of in Tiger, and one of the main reasons I moved off Windows 10 years ago. I haven’t lost this much work since I used Windows.

* Sometimes every application crashes. It’s the darnedest thing, but every couple of days every single app will crash at the same time. The OS doesn’t crash, just every running program. I get an array of “Would you like to send…” windows, then everything starts working again (for a while).

* My account got removed from the admin group for no reason.

* My iPhone now only syncs 30% of the time (I suspect USB code changes, but I have no proof). The rest of the time iTunes beach balls and I have to force quit. Sometimes I have to reboot the OS just to get my very expensive phone to sync (and that is only good for one sync, then I need to reboot again).

* My firewire iSight doesn’t work with some programs anymore.

* The hard drive starts thrashing every once in a while causing the beach ball and I can’t work. I have to sit there and wait. Sometimes it lasts 20 seconds sometimes 4 minutes (one time 15 minutes).

* Sometimes in Mail.app the create new message button doesn’t do anything, and I have to quit and restart the app just to send a message.

* My wifes keyboard on her MacBook randomly stops working. 10.5.1 seemed to fix this for her.

I have clean installed the OS four times (twice on my Powerbook, twice on my PowerMac), and both computers exhibit these behaviors. Odds are if it is happening on two computers it’s not just me.

It is important to note that I have more problems on my G4 computers then my wife has on her intel computer. So it could have something to do with that, but I can’t spend another $2,000 to buy a new computer when the two I have fall well within the specs for running Leopard.

Ubuntu Powerbook Install

I tried to install Ubuntu 7.10 on my PowerBook G4 as a test. Sadly this didn’t work out very well. After a bit of messing around, I got it to install; however, it had some random problems - the worst being that it lost all network interfaces after apt-get upgrade (NetworkManager seems to get horked after the first security update).

Some quick tips for anyone trying this:

* You’ll probably need to be wired when you install because the network card needs proprietary drivers. I used a netgear pcmcia card I had laying around.

* When you first boot the livecd, you’ll likely have to boot the kernel with flags. What I used was (enter this at the boot: prompt):

live-nosplash-powerpc resolution=1024x768 vga=795 video=ofonly

* If you get it to install (I had the computer freeze once during install), to right click press the F12 key. You can setup ctrl+click = right click by editing /etc/default/mouseemu and uncommenting out the lines:

MID_CLICK="-middle 125 272"
RIGHT_CLICK="-right 29 272"

and then:

$sudo /etc/init.d/mouseemu restart

(via viraj.org)

* The cool effects (comp-biz or whatever) worked very well on my PowerBook G4 with 1.25GB RAM.

* The Apple function keys seem to work fine (volume, brightness, eject, etc)

* There is no Adobe Flash support for Linux on PowerPC

Installing Ubuntu on an Apple PowerBook G4, for me, was like it was installing Debian back in the late 90s. It is not as easy as most other installs with Ubuntu, and not everything is going to work (You wont be able to just close the lid and have the laptop go to sleep anymore, you’ll have to shutdown every time). Prepare for a lot of file tweaking.

In the end, I think if you’re looking to move to Ubuntu, sell the Apple hardware on eBay and buy new computers with the money you get from that.

(For example, I am running Ubuntu on a Thinkpad T23, and it works flawlessly).

Yikes, I am locked in.

The one thing I learned from this, is I am currently locked into Apple stuff. I didn’t quite realize it until now though - it never really hit home. For example, if I moved back to Linux I would have no way of syncing my iPhone. I also have an Airport Extreme, and near as I can tell, I can’t edit any of the Airport settings from Linux. Let alone my iTunes purchases. Wow, I am toast.

I always imagined I could just install Ubuntu on my Apple hardware if it ever got down to it, but it seems that it is not that easy. By the way, hats off to the open firmware guys and yaboot - I was impressed that Ubuntu actually could install on and support most Mac hardware.

If you are running intel hardware, you are not likely in this same boat. You can probably use boot camp to easily dual boot or use vmware.

My lesson learned here is - single vendor lock in is limiting on your personal maneuverability, no matter how cool the products seem to be. If the company you are hooked in with starts putting out stuff you don’t like, the economy takes a dump and you can’t afford their stuff, or you disagree with something, your options are limited.

(Written on my Ubuntu Thinkpad T23 while I am installing Leopard for a third time on my Powerbook. Holding to the hope that the problems I am having were things I somehow did wrong.)

One of my Chinese teachers, however, had the idea that we should try video chatting in Chinese to help me get some practice.

(For the curious, I am having trouble understanding Chinese. I can hear the sounds, I know I know the sounds, but they are not forming any meaning in my brain. With single words (with context) I am ok. I also have problems speaking full sentences - I can read and write pretty well, but that is only because I can rearrange word orders and take time to form what I want to say - something you can’t do when speaking)

He, as you might have guessed, uses Windows. Getting this to work (for free) was a long process with a lot of failures. The executive summary for the exercise is: Just use Skype.

Skype’s web site is a bit confusing, but you only have to pay if you call a physical phone. If you chat, voice chat, or video chat online it’s free.

Here were our attempts and the outcomes:

MSN
He was already using MSN. To keep things simple I tried to find an MSN client for Mac that would do video chat (or at a minimum voice chat). Don’t bother with this - it is folly.

Google Talk
I forgot that google talk doesn’t do video, but we couldn’t even get voice going from (Windows + Google Talk) -> (Mac + iChat).

Yahoo
This one was cruel. You can get video to work between (Windows + Yahoo client) -> (Mac + Yahoo client), but no audio. Who would use that? Cruel.

AIM
I found some web sites that say this will work, but we could not get it to work. (Windows XP + AIM client (no firewall)) -> (Mac 10.5.1 + iChat (no firewall)). We couldn’t get voice or video. In fact, iChat wouldn’t even acknowledge he had audio or video capabilities. I was disappointed with this one (and Google Talk) as it would’ve kept all my video chatting to iChat.

Skype
Finally we both downloaded Skype, and it just worked. We installed the application, created accounts, initiated video chats, and were chatting within minutes. (It is a well behaved Mac application to boot).

One last cool thing about Skype is it says it works on Linux too. I don’t have a Linux box with a camera so I can’t try it, but I am impressed they support Linux. If I had money, I’d invest a bit in Skype.

It looks at your browsers preferred language and if it’s Chinese (zh_CN) displays the UI in Chinese. So if you want to see the Chinese site, you have to set your preferred language in the browser. If you’re just curious as to what it looks like, here is a screen shot:

There are not many people that use GlueyNotes in China, but there are a few actually.

I also added support for the Android platform. I am not sure if there are any Android phones in the wild yet, but it seems to somewhat work with the emulator. Since the browser is based on WebKit I am not all that surprised, but it’s kind of neat that it works almost out of the box (if you have an iphone web application you might want to check out Android too).

Consider Android support beta though. Android seems to have problems with a few ajax calls, and text area entry oddities; however, the bugs could be due to the emulator.

I found it kind of a pain to install the plugins without an update site so I just put one together to allow easy installation. If you would like to use Afae, just point the Help > Software Update > Find and Install… and use the URL:

http://robrohan.com/projects/afae/

If you already have Afae installed this is the same version you already have, it just allows you to use the Eclipse plugin manager to install and remove Afae and makes installing on Ubuntu easier.