Posts in "Technology"

Since I am now spending the vast majority of my time working out of the home office, I decided to invest a little cash in taking care of two of a programmer's most valuable assets – my wrists and back. I've been using my new acquisitions for a few weeks now so it's about time I reported on the experience. First up: the Goldtouch Ergonomic Desktop Solution featuring this keyboard and this mouse.

Let me point out right up front that this was not my first choice. Following a nice lengthy thread on Reddit I started out shopping for a Kinesis Advantage, but couldn't find one in Australia for a price I was willing to pay. The Goldtouch also had some pretty good reviews online, and came at a much more attractive price with some wrist-pads thrown in, so I figured I'd give it a shot. So far, I'm certainly not disappointed. Here's a photo of my new setup:

I'm sure you can see a few oddities here already – the keyboard has a ball-and-socket joint and a big split down the middle, while the mouse is vertical and has all the buttons located on the side. Note also the complete lack of a numeric keypad hogging up the right-hand side of the keyboard; this is actually a design feature that lets you put the mouse within each reach.

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The Mozart/Oz programming language provides a comprehensive distributed programming subsystem, and when it works, it's a thing of great power and elegance. But when it doesn't work, it tends to fail out with error messages that are exceedingly unhelpful. This is particularly troubling if you're working with a high-level abstraction such as Parallel Search – the error messages are far removed from the code that you're actually writing.

Inspired by a recent request for help on the mozart-users mailing list, I've decided to compile a quick troubleshooting guide for Mozart remote connections. And when I say "quick" I really mean it - there's only two steps but they can solve a lot of common problems with getting the distributed programming subsystem up and running.

Step 1: Ensure remote processes are forked correctly

This step is actually quite well documented in the Mozart documentation on the Remote module. However, that's a pretty obscure corner of the documentation for someone wanting to work with higher-level abstractions, and the necessary steps are buried in a long discussion of the underlying mechanics of the remote forking mechanism. Below is the quick-and-dirty version of what you need to know.

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I have created a simple layout file for LyX to edit articles for the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. Link: jair.layout

Basically, it provides some theorem-numbered environments (Theorem, Lemma, Definition, etc) and enables advanced citation styles in theapa format. Enjoy!

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For a good couple of years now, I've been telling myself (and anyone else who would stand still long enough) that I'm not upgrading my phone because I'm waiting for a Linux SmartPhone. And waiting. And waiting. Well, looks like it's finally time to put my money where my mouth is:

The OpenMoko Neo1973 is on sale.

This is an open mobile platform in the truest sense - open source software stack, hackable hardware, and at US$300 for the base version it's priced within reach of a good-sized community. Like most devices in the mobile space at the moment, it's drawing a lot of comparisons to the iPhone. Unlike most devices, it's actually getting a few hits in - it's being touted as the anti-iPhone thanks to its robustly open nature.

Now, a very big caveat: the device currently on sale is basically a "developer release". It works, kinda, but software-wise leaves a lot to be desired. The mass-market release is due in October and will offer significant hardware upgrades (including Wifi and dual accelerometers) and more polished software. Nonetheless, my order is in and the end of my long wait is in sight. Free your Phone.

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I've finally added the must-have feature my new blog was missing - an RSS feed. You will notice a shiny new "RSS 2.0" icon below the navigation boxes on the right of the blog. Feeds are available for the main page, and for individual categories. If you want/need a different feed format (RSS 1.0? Atom?) please drop me a line.

No idea what I'm talking about? Wikipedia has the answers.

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