a few years later, i've come to try the emacsen way to blog. not that i'm unhappy with the ecto/mac way of doing it. but let's face it, i'm trying to keep my geek factor alive, here :d pros - weblogger.el seems to work. to use a blogger backend, just load the file (i fetched it from emace lisp package archive) and fire 'M-x weblogger-setup-weblog'. Then replace the default endpoint with http://www2.blogger.com/api and you're good to go. Editing a post is very mail like - the emacs/gnus way, which is impeccable. cons - usability is somehow lacking, specially because you don't have a post-list view to select from. after the setup (or after fetching all entries) you're presented with the last post you wrote and you can move to the next or previous ones. and you can start one from scratch. But there's a post management gap here. someone with spare time and willing to learn emacs may take a jump at this, i can provide for tips and drinks along the way! :d back to real work, now. cheers.

Offline Buyer for iPhone teaser

Ok, some of you may know I have been toying around with an iPhone app idea. Mostly for my own usage, but I know it could be used for some others. So here's the deal I propose: I'll show the current alpha version screenshots, collect feedback, make some (pertinent, viable and not too complicated!) bug fixes last minute changes adaptations. Then I'll launch a beta version to some lucky/brave volunteers. After a reasonable amount of time and good experiences (will depend on the comments flow) I'll deploy the application to the App Store. This is going to be a great tool for Buxfer users, and since it's my first application, I'll put a symbolic price tag of 1$ (0.79€). This will hopefully help me cover the iPhone developer program. If that goal is reached, following application extensions and future applications may be free of charge. But let's face it, 1$ per user is a lot easier to fit than 99$ on myself... At least for me!

Without further ado, here it is a flicker screenshot set. Feel free to ignore or offer constructive criticisms about the visual. Yes, the weird little square on the top right of the transaction addition screen is also the application icon. Hey, I do this in my spare time, ok? :)

W595, meet your new brand: (void).

A2-DB3150 Flashing / Debranding. This is the fancy name for which you must look up in the web, if you need to remove the annoying, unpractical and often limiting (and annoying, have I mentioned it's annoying??) branding that certain network operators carve into the great Sony Ericsson W595 (dubbed Walkman). A2 it's the chipset family, and DB3150 is the motherboard type, I'm told. On the other hand, the vast majority of forums tell you that you can edit a little file in the phone to inform the Sony Ericsson Update Service (SEUS) that it needs a new (generic) firmware. Well, that didn't happen to me. Why? my Fw was already up to date. So the other option was to flash the desired generic fw into the phone. I found out that I had to pick one with the appropriate language settings (e.g., Western Europe would have, among others, English and Portuguese). And I also found out that some tools to do it, with the appropriate guidelines. So, without further ado, for your referencing pleasure, here's the first set of instructions to achieve debranding:

1. Download a2uploader.rar from here A2UPLOADER-download(also contain Gordon's Gate Setup) and unpack
2. Run Gordon's Gate Setup and install flash drivers (if you already didn't install)
3. Download MAIN, FS and custom files for your phone (all needed files you will
find here in download section - firmware(MAIN and FS) or custom files (CUSTPACK)

[From A2-DB3150 Flashing - Top Sony Forums]

Read the article for the rest. And enjoy, for instance, 3G networks blocking, and the consequent longer battery life! :)

Ubuntu on alcohol doing Office 2007

Up until recently I've found myself drawn to explain people who wanted to do something good with their computers to step into the Ubuntu way (or equivalent free linux distr.). But the caveat would be the same — people would have to let go of the Oh-so-good-and-pleasant-without-whom-I'd-do-nothing-out-of-my-life Office 2007. But last week I took another shot at it. Installed an ubuntu on an 2 year old Asus F3JC laptop, saved the rescue disc to keep the windows XP license, and created a Virtual Machine (tried QEMU, VMWare, and was about to try the Sun approach too). Yes, it runs. Yes, it loads office's apps. But hey, I'm trying to talk someone into leaving XP because Ubuntu 64 would be a better experience... Come on, booting an OS and then booting another OS and go through the hassle of sharing folders between them in order to use the guest OS's apps? That's... devilish unpractical, to say the least!

To work around that, a good friend reminded me of Wine, a (the?) WINdows Emulator for Linux. I remember having read that office 2007 didn't run there, but boy, I was clearly wrong about that! Yes, it's not a click-install-run procedure yet, but It's doable, if you're willing to follow some precise guidelines. The trouble is, there are lots of machine/architecture/emulator version/office version combinations out there, and I found out most guides only work for a specific one. Thus yes, some forum scavenging is required. First, let's give a warm thank you to the Wine team. It has grown so much, now it can run .NET frameworks, DirectX and other recent MS works flawlessly. Then, note that I tried and successfully install, run and use Word, Excell and Powerpoint (Publisher crashes, as well as Access, and I didn't try any other Office app). This was done using Ubuntu 8.10, the 64 bits version. To make your life easier, I'll state that I had troubles following most guidelines with the updated wine version (1.1.12), so I reverted to 1.1.11 (use the archive here). After doing that and starting from a clean (sober!) wine state (do a 'rm -rf ~/.wine' on the console shell), I followed the instructions on two sources (I've found many others, but the procedures are essentially the same, gotta set the required libraries and runtimes right before installing everything), and got everything up and running. Sweet! I can now ditch the 6-10 GB image for a virtual system, and have people run office as fast (faster? or is it just me?) as open office. If that won't make up people's mind, what will? Oh, right. Yes, you can wooble a word window just like any other, and it looks as sleek as you think it would! Eh. (Btw, see here for a handy replacement for your office disks. Claimed to be working, I haven't tested any.)

Share and enjoy. And in a Windows 7 15-minute's of spotlight era (do you really believe it will stay much longer than that?), let's keep our machines light, pretty and productive with the free alternatives.