https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff

When the network is up and running, use it to send a message to Broadcom to demand some hardware specs for the b43 driver authors.

• De reeks ‘Weerwolven’ aflevering met Jean-Marie Berckmans. Een man die balanceert tussen genie en marginaal, die nauwelijks articuleert en toch zo meeslepend kan vertellen. Volgens mij heeft Vitalski goed naar de hypnotiserende vertelstijl van zijn kompaan geluisterd.
• ‘The story of the weeping camel’: Ijzersterk ‘docu-drama’ over een herdersfamilie in Mongolië. Met een bijzondere rol voor de muziek. Beter dan eender welke Hollywoodfilm.

Hun reisblog belooft interessant leesvoer te worden: yugo-where-we-go.blogspot.com/

Veel plezier alletwee!

To me, it scored bad points for its awfully long subtitle (Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries — Microsoft .NET Development Series). We’ll refer to it as FDGCIPRNL as a form of silent protest hereafter.

Luckily all is more than made up for having “Krzysztof Cwalina” as one of the author’s names. Can’t do better than that myself.

On to the content.

The book is based on internal documentation used by the creators of the .NET framework (which is better designed than other similar frameworks that I know). It gives great insight in the design process and the many trade offs involved.

Even though the reader might never implement a large framework himself (a framework is designed to be extended, while a library is not), FDGCIPRNLMDS still is valuable in helping better understand the framework that you program against.

The book is also stuffed with generic advice about programming .NET: which classes to avoid, how to name fields, how to deal with exceptions, etcetera.

From time to time, a contributing author comments on the topic at hand in a small blurb, which gives may of the sections a nice personal touch.

Contrary to most technical books, FDGCIPRNLMDS was actually a pretty quick read. All in all, a recommended book for .NET programmers but not so much for practitioners of other platforms. For them, the advice and insight is too biased towards the .NET framework only.

The book I’m reading next seems a much tougher nut to crack, but I’m making progress.

Blijkbaar wordt het EK dan toch uitgezonden in Vlaanderen (in tegenstelling tot eerdere twijfels).

Ik moet toegeven dat ik nog niet veel voetbal op VT4 heb gekeken, maar die paar minuten bleken al voldoende om conclusies te trekken. De heren van de VRT (Raes, Joos, Coninckx en co) zijn ook naar mijn mening significant minder irritant (TM) dan het gekrulde fenomeen.

Al is het natuurlijk wel opletten met zo’n petities: voor je het weet bannen ze het gepoedelte van het scherm en zetten ze een nog minder bekwaam sujet in de plaats.

Waar is de tijd dat Marc Uytterhoeven het WK presenteerde, en Stef Wynants op kundige wijze het EK deed?

For fun and profit, I decided to check whether you can truly send SMS messages for free using Twitter (Wikipedia).

Yes, it does work, except that you can only send to other Twitters — the free part is more about receiving SMSes rather than sending them. So every receiver that you want to SMS needs to be registered with Twitter. Nonetheless, a pretty impressive improvement!

Especially since you can send the messages in a Jabber client (including Google Talk / GMail chat), right on the PC, typing on a decent keyboard.

The trick is to register the mobile with twitter, and setup your mobile to receive only so-called ‘direct’ Twitter messages.

Then, in the chat client, add twitter@twitter.com as a contact. Talking to this service you can send direct messages with “D [username] [message]“.

You get 250 mobile messages per month. Do keep it quiet before the big telcos find out and decide to block it!

It was not a page-turner like “iWoz”, but just as interesting to read.

Just like with the book by Woz, I already knew some of its contents — this time by accidentally browsing the folklore.org stories that form the basis of the book.

The anecdotal structure of the book makes it easy to read in pieces, but it tends to not ‘draw you into it’ as much. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading about this exceptional computer system and its uber-geeky creators.

I figure that the book would be perfect for Mac users and fans, but even for a Linux/Windows guy like me I’d heartily recommended it.

It’s an exceptionally interesting biography, if you care for technology and some personal computing history.

I listened to Wozniak via IT Conversations before (it’s the highest rated talk over there), so I already knew some of the anecdotes and developments, but the humor and engaging style of the book make up for it.

The history of the Apple I and Apple II are very interesting, if only for the fact that they were the start of the microcomputer revolution that continues until today. As a bonus, Wozniak himself is one of the most interesting and entertaining figures in the tech industry.

The end of the book I found a bit disappointing, but it did not make me regret to have read it.

Thanks to the Apple fan (who else?) to have lent it to me!

I was sad to learn that early versions of ‘THE’ (The Humane Environment) were quite disappointing — not so much in innovation but rather in quality and maturity. It was even more sad to read in in 2005 that Raskin had passed away.

I wondered whether this new direction in human-computer interfaces would die together with its inceptor. Would someone ever build a workable system according to these concepts? Would we ever be able to check whether Raskin’s ideas were right?

It seems so.

Jef’s son, Asa Raskin, recently gave an impressive presentation at Google, which you can watch (of course) at Google Video. It’s called “Away with Applications: the Death of the Desktop“.

Raskin presents Humanized Enso, (currently) as desktop add-on with a ‘humanized’ user interface.

I could elaborate on how this all makes so much sense (and I probably will at a later time), but for now I recommend you to watch the presentation.