Lava Lamp in odd shape

Since I got my hands on a free one (at last), I thought I’d post it.

Before you win a million…

…let your dad know on the show, then watch the fireworks, and make a very cool exit.

It’s like a throbbing toothache of the mind

Take away the sensation inside
Bitter sweet migraine in my head
It’s like a throbbing toothache of the mind
I can’t take this feeling anymore

So give me Novacaine

Snow In June?

We all know that Apple is working on their next thing, called Snow Leopard. However this time around, after adding ever more new features with every release, they take a short break to update the system under the hood a good bit. First screenshots have emerged, but nothing exciting.

Safari 4 comes with the feature to create a stand alone browser, only for one website

Altough nothing, or minor things, are gonna change on the visible end, it’ll still be a upgrade worth getting. I’d say.

When does it release? My guess is June next year, WWDC09.

Like Snow In June.

Crop Circle Phenomena: The Pi Formation

Let’s assume for a moment, that there are other, superior people out there. Let’s assume that they are a bit ahead of us, say 1 million years. Which is possible, alright? And now say, that they have obviously mastered the interstellar travel. That would mean that have come up with a trick under their sleeve which would allow them to kinda cheat on the maximum speed limit which is the Speed Of Light. So they could, in theory, traverse greater distances at a shorter time. How they do it? Well, you know, that’s the magicians trick right now. And we as the audience are just stunned about how they do it. Like all impressive magicians tricks, people keep thinking about it, try many things to imitate or even replicate it.

You see it is important to understand that I do believe that we – in the very least have been visited my civilizations from other worlds. I do also believe that especially after lighting up the first nuke, they have once again shifted their attention toward us.

If I’m right, then their logic would dictate them that they cannot interfere with the evolution of our society, not just yet. If they would do that, the shock wave that follows would be too great, our society could not handle the load of that significance. I’m not just saying that… I do believe that in our current shape and form, the vast majority of the population would more see it as an disruption of everything, it’d be pretty much chaos all over the place.

However, they also know that we have mastered primitive space travel, you know, Space Shuttle, Apollo, ISS. Incidentally, ever since we mastered the skies and primitive space travel, curious things started to occur, which are today known as crop circles. You know these fancy patterns that appear out of nowhere in crop fields, oftentimes incredibly huge.

Over the years many theories have arisen… but all of them still fail to explain the Arecibo Formation, or the Julia Set.

Most circles show up certain characteristics. Most notable one is that the crop is bent – never broken. We did tests on crop, and found that extreme concentrations of microwave radiation on particular spots of the crop can bend it, while not breaking it. So this is the how. We also know that crop circles do sometimes have a residue of some sort of radiation, which reportedly makes people feel euphoric and happy.

The patterns varied and got ever more complex. However, none of them had the level of complexity as this one, recently found in Great Britain.

The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi.

It is has appeared in a field near Barbury Castle, an iron-age hill fort above Wroughton, Wilts, and has been described by astrophysicists as “mind-boggling”.

You know, if you couldn’t directly communicate, but still want to leave a message, you’d put in a puzzle. And the puzzle’s result should be something that is the same thing, everywhere in the universe. What we know, they know. And what is the same everywhere in the universe? Numbers.

And what number seems to be the one universal truth? Pi.

And this is what the circle represents. It is said to be the most complex one ever. If this is indeed coming from people in higher places, then they sure have humor and intelligence, to put such a universal constant into such a beautiful piece of art.

It is my belief that crop circles is a messaging system, without directly interfering in our society, letting us know they are there. If this is indeed the case, then I have to hand it to our peaceful visitors, who sure know how to keep our minds busy, and make the answer even more exciting.

Let’s just say we have peaceful friends in higher places.

It’s been a long road: Wine 1.0 is here

Long story short. The much anticipated 1.0 version of the Windows API interpreter for POSIX systems has now hit the servers, and is here for your pleasure.

=============

The Wine team is proud to announce that Wine 1.0 is now available.
This is the first stable release of Wine after 15 years of development
and beta testing. Many thanks to everybody who helped us along that
long road!

While compatibility is not perfect yet, thousands of applications have
been reported to work very well. Check http://appdb.winehq.org to see
the details for your favorite applications.

The source is available from the following locations:

http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.0.tar.bz2
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.0.tar.bz2

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

http://www.winehq.org/site/download

You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/site/documentation

You can also get the current source directly from the git
repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/site/git for details.

Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

==============

Source

Programs to be bundled with COSMOS

So for the first time, I gonna give a hint of what I plan to bundle with the operating system once it enters a user testing and production stage.

Voyager
The file browser of the system, allowing for opening and looking at files, move them, copy them, delete them, everything that has to do with files. Also burning to disc can be done directly within the file browser, as well as retrieving information about the files themselves. Voyager presents one of the core applications and technologies, and cannot be removed from the system – it is exempt from manipulation by the user in terms of deinstallation. The file browser employs controls that have been written by me entirely, and the controls in turn use Moonlight, the file indexing and monitoring service for the system. This is what makes the file management fast and easy.

Moonlight
As just mentioned, Moonlight is the file indexing and monitoring framework, allowing for quick retrieval of information about files. It represents the search mechanism for data on your computer, within the files you have access to.

COSCode
It is both – the API for application development, and the end user application allowing for rapid creation of new applications and tools in the COSMOS environment. The IDE also comes with a second tool, named COSDesigner, which allows you to create and design windows, and then connect them to your code. The moment you save your changes, your program will be able to run. COSCode is an attempt to provide a better mechanism for coding than what is currently available in Squeak.

Cosmic Waves
The entertainment center of COSMOS. It represents the doorway to entertainment such as music and movies, and can be played directly from in there. Playlists are supported as well as finding music, playlists can also contain videos. Everything you would expect from a good multimedia tool.

COSPhoto
The photo management suite of COSMOS. Modern interface, utilizing many controls from the COSCode API. A hub and gateway for photo storage and manipulation.

Hubble View
Built in to Voyager, but can also be used as a stand alone application, which allows for a quick look at many sorts of file formats without opening the corresponding application beforehand.

COSTerminal
A standard Unix terminal emulator built on the user interface controls in COSMOS.

SE51 unveils Moonlight

It is with my greatest pleasure to announce that I have finished a preliminary version of the real time search technology for the COSMOS project, named Moonlight.

What is it?

Moonlight is the framework and underlying foundation for two things: keeping track of changes with and all your files and documents, and be up to date with the index of files that you have access to. The technology allows for blazingly fast retrieval of all kinds of information about a folder and file – Moonlight is both: a file indexing service and a search engine to find your files quickly. In other words, it is a database which keeps information about the digital life of the user. Although such technologies are available in other systems, I do not believe this to be available in Squeak and Smalltalk, inside which I program COSMOS in. Therefore, Moonlight is also Object-Oriented.

How does it work?

Every time the user begins the session, the index is updated and then stored in the RAM of the computer. This allows for super-fast access times. I do understand that the downside of this approach is that more RAM is used than it should be. So far I have run tests with several hundred files, and have not seen any significant drop in RAM availability or speed. But since this is preliminary, it will probably change at a later stage.

At boot time, a table is created, which consists of nine columns, each column with specific information about a file or a folder. The number of rows is as many files in your home folder. The table looks like this:

Based on this table it is possible to retrieve pretty much any information about any file or folder at any time with any object and therefore application and/or control.

So far I have not integrated a search to make us of this, but this is up next.

COSMOS to be Linux based

My project to create a free and open source operating system with the name COSMOS, is going to be built on a Linux core. I have tried Nexenta on which I wanted to base this on originally, but hardware support was very limited, although its features were pretty amazing.

I am going to use TA-Linux on this one. It is a widely unfamiliar distribution, and is pretty much only the naked core of a Linux distribution. Pretty much like the sceleton for your own customization, and then remaster it. I have been using this distro earlier on and have found it to be pretty modular, pretty customizable.

Trust me when I say that I have tried both, FreeBSD 7 and OpenSolaris – they work great and they sure are superb operating systems in any aspect. But not intended to run on desktop computers. Linux however, seems to be better in that respect. So Linux it is.

And for the post yesterday, I hope you gathered that I was messing around. You should have noticed when I Rick-Rolled you…

—————————————–

UPDATE:

I have been trying TA-Linux on my box just now, the one on which I want to do all further development – but I cannot install the system. The DVD drive is not detected as such, therefore no installation possible.

Looks like Gentoo is gonna be the candidate now.

First COSMOS application: TextPad

Not only is it my birthday today, it is also the day at which I am happy to announce that I have completed the first application that fully utilizes the COSMOS UI Framework (COS Presentation Base). The tool is able to open and save text files, as well as modifying them and performing basic operations such as copy and paste. In its current form the editor was written in only one day and has a bit more than 300 lines of code.

The program is entirely based on controls that I have written on my own in Smalltalk, and utilizes many of them.

I am very happy about this progress and paves the way to more applications yet to come that will complement the finished COSMOS software when I am ready to release it. First screens after the jump.

TextPad showing its all-new Menu Shelf on the right, the menu system that is going to be introduced with COSMOS.

The Open File window, showing the current available file types that TextPad can open. Also, when one hovers above a file in the Open File window, a band is displayed on the bottom containing information about the file. The band disappears when the cursor goes away from the file, or another band is displayed when another file is beneath the cursor.

This is how the File Menu looks like.

And this is the Edit menu.

As of today the COS Presentation Base features a window template for About windows, and TextPad is the first to use it.

When a program is iconified and one hovers over it, a band comes up which displayed the window as a thumbnail in the moment it was when iconified. Also, the name of the program is displayed. What is not shown here, is that each corner of the icon has halos, allowing the user to restore the window, close the program, adhere the icon to one of the screen’s edges, and release adherence.

If you are interested in knowing more about my project named COSMOS, then jump over the About Page.