Chrome more popular than firefox

According to W3Counter February 2012 was the first month that Google Chrome overtook Firefox in popularity.

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?year=2012&month=2

Based on the historical trend, it looks like Chrome will beat our IE in another month or two.

http://www.w3counter.com/trends

EE Poster Kickstarter

Check out this Kickstarter project for EE posters:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarthcode/ee-reference-posters-for-makers-hobbyists-and-pros

“Electronics is a skill where you have to drill the basics constantly! I don’t always have time to re-read an entire book just to fill-in the gaps for a quick project. So I came up with a stylish set of reference posters covering the items I care about the most”

A set of posters for the $25 backing, not a bad deal. Hurry, only 10 days left.

Holy crap, Google CodeSearch shutdown

Wow, didn’t really see this coming, Google CodeSearch is shutting down! The announcement was made in October, but I didn’t see it until today. CodeSearch is a key site I go to when I am working out the details of a firmware module.  Search the compiler and language “e.g. C30 spi lang:c” and voila, examples galore! Damn. A quick test looks like Koders.com will have to do.

Early computer speech

I came across a video of a text-to-speech laptop I made a few year ago on an old youtube account.  I am trying to move it over to s1axter and post it here, which is proving to be a little more difficult than one would expect.  Related to that video was this one about computer speech from the 50’s. Not only am I impressed with the signing, the relationship with HAL9000 and Siri is kinda cool. Take a look:

Install MPLABX and C30 on Linux Mint

I just upgraded from the cluster that is Ubuntu to Mint and tried to install MPLABX and the C30 compiler from Microchip.  The install went flawless on Ubuntu 11.10 however there was a problem running the .bin files on Mint, something about GTK themes or something.  There is an easy fix add “–mode xwindow” after the bin files

sudo ./mplabx-ide-beta7.12-linux-installer.run --mode xwindow
sudo ./mplabc30-v3.30c-linux-installer.run --mode xwindow

Installs just fine

Video blog – Time and Bitfield structs in micros

Bitfields: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_field

Source: MainloopDemo Code

Ubuntu, FFmpeg & Video Editing

I am getting back into some video editing and wanted to update my Ubuntu install to use the latest unrestricted FFmpeg build.  After some searching I found this site about how to get the latest ffmpeg and h.264 codec.  Worked like a charm on 11.04.

Also, check out the latest little video from MyBitBox: 4x4x4 LED Cube

Ubuntu 11.10 Unity – Not impressed

So I was really pumped about the Unity desktop released on Ubuntu 11.04. I installed it and tried to use it and came to the conclusion it kinda sucked so I went back to GNOME 2. Now it’s time for another release of Ubuntu with Unity and I thought this time around the devs would get it right seeing as there isn’t an option to fall back to GNOME. As it turns out they didn’t.

Now let me say that Unity feels a little more polished however it has a LONG way to go.  I don’t think it was a smart move to make a desktop that is under core development the main option for an operating system.  There are some major features that are missing (Probably from lack of development time) such as any sort of widget on the panel/top-bar, no right click option menus at all, no obvious configuration tool, and no way to show the desktop when a program can’t be minimized (Like when Symantec is updating sources). Also, I don’t know who’s idea it was to remove all the options in the “Applications” menu. To run a program you click the Ubuntu icon and are presented with 8 choices, the 4 ‘common’ programs and a few options to search for apps.  It takes like 4 clicks to get to any subcategory. I guess if you use a browser and media player and that’s it, it isn’t a big deal however if you use more than 4 programs it is a real bottleneck. I think this is a REAL step back in UI.  Oh yeah, also why can’t I load more than one folder window from the panel without ctrl-N? Each time I click the folder icon it brings up the folder you have open…wtf, AND if you did do ctrl-N clicking the icon brings all the folders to the front, yeah that’s what people who are browsing around source want, 5 folders to pop-up in their face.

Now I like to try new stuff, I don’t want to be one of those stuck-in-my-ways jerks who bash anything new, but I just can’t get over all the short comings of Unity. It’s like Canonical tried to dumb down the PC for retards, totally forgetting that people want to customize and use their PC without it getting in the way.

Over all, really really poor user experience.

If you do use 11.10 you might want to check out “HOWTO: Configure Ubuntu’s Unity Launcher“.  I set the panel to stop hiding and made the icons smaller, that way I can actually see what I have running.

4x4x4 LED Cube

A 4x4x4 LED cube using 64 LEDs, 2 74LS168 shift registers, 4 NPN transistors. Software written in C on the Mbed prototype platform

Android WTF

I am getting into some Android programming lately and was reading the documentation on error logs, looks like there is a wtf() function.  Of course WTF stands for “What a Terrible Failure“, right! :-) Just a funny little egg in the Android  SDK.

By the way, MyBitBox isn’t dead, I know it’s been a while but there will be more stuff.