Lots of people are finding this post through search engines. What are you looking for, people? Something that can show text and play mp3s, something that can change text into mp3s, or something else? Please do tell me in a comment! I’m not just curious, I actually know how to change text into speech automatically. I just haven’t tried it yet. OTOH, if you’re just looking for an ebook reader that can play mp3s… I don’t know, why don’t you get yourself an EeePC or something?

Every once in a while, a geek’s gotta do what a geek’s gotta do, so… Report, meet mp3 player. Mp3 player, meet report.

We’re going to try to display a report I wrote in LaTeX as a slideshow on my large screen (ho hum) mp3 player.

First, we’ll adapt the LaTeX source file so it will generate pages the size of the screen of our “ebook reader”.

We don’t want a4 paper (duh), and we want a small font so more text will fit on the screen, so we replace

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

by

\documentclass[10pt]{article} .

We look up the screen resolution of the “ebook reader” on the net, it’s 128 x 160 pixels. We add the following:

\usepackage[vcentering,dvips]{geometry}
\geometry{papersize={128pt,160pt},total={108pt,140pt}}

Note that the second two numbers create a tiny margin. I know points (pt) and pixels are not the same thing, but for our purpose they will be.

We disable the useless automatically generated parts of the document by prefixing their commands with a % :

%\maketitle
%\tableofcontents
%\listoftables
%\listoffigures

Now we’re ready to compile the document with the usual command:

latex report.tex

Oops! We get lots of warnings about overfull hboxes. LaTeX has very nice two-side justification enabled by default, but on this scale it just won’t work because not enough words will fit on a line to make it look good. So, we’ll use the less pretty left justification instead. Insert this somewhere after \begin{document} : \raggedright . There, problem solved. Now re-run latex report.tex until it stops complaining about cross-references.

Now we have a dvi file, but what we want is a set of jpg files (the mp3 player doesn’t support any other image format). Fine. First we’ll make a postscript document:

dvips -o report.ps report.dvi

And then we’ll convert it to jpg files:

convert -antialias -negate report.ps rep%03d.jpg

Convert is part of the imagemagick package. This will generate a bunch of jpg files, named rep000.jpg, rep001.jpg, etc. -antialias should make the result a bit prettier, and -negate will change it to white text on black background, which should be easier on the eyes and maybe also on the batteries.

We use our favorite image viewer to verify everything looks alright (it does), and copy the files to our mp3 player, er, ebook reader. We’re done, only the mp3 player shows black screens instead of the text. I guess it doesn’t even support jpg very well, maybe a firmware update will fix that but I can’t be bothered to take the risks of that for something as silly as this. It’s a samsung yp-z5f if anyone’s curious.

We failed at the last step, thanks to proprietary software on the mp3 player. Still, I’d like to see you try this with an MS Word file, and get as nice results with this litte work:

Because LaTeX takes care of most of the formatting for you, it is much more flexible than WYSIWYG word processors.

Just to prove a point:

file rep000.jpg
rep000.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01

See? It’s a real jpg. Nothing wrong with it. Oh well.

LaTeX tip of the day: include images this way:

\includegraphics[width=<SCALE>\textwidth]{<FILENAME>}

where <SCALE> would be, for example, .5 to make the image half as wide as the text. This way your images will never be too wide for the page, no matter what paper size you choose.

This year, I have two favorites among my Christmas card designs. One is a bit wild, the other extremely simple. I’ll let you choose which one you save (and possibly print) .

Please note that if you want to use these images for your own cards, you must obey the CC-BY license (see link button somewhere on the bottom right of this page), meaning you must put my name (Taco Buitenhuis) somewhere in your print or email message or whatever you put the image into, so it will be known who made these nice images. If you want a higher quality image (more pixels), just leave a comment asking for one (do tell what size you want) and I’ll email it.

Happy winter solstice!

Today I found an excellent small website about the gender imbalance in Free software. There’s been a lot about the topic on the linux/free software news sites too.

Large parts of the free software community are rather hostile towards women, as unfortunately is usual in communities with a huge male majority. Which then prevents the community from becoming balanced because it will be unattractive to women.

I think it is odd the proprietary software industry is closer to gender balance. Aren’t people who care a lot about freedom supposed to be more friendly to others who are different from them in any way?

Perhaps the difference is caused by the strong connection between hobby computing and Free software. Not everyone who has an IT job also likes to tinker with computers in their spare time, although probably the majority does have that hobby. For some reason it is a typical male hobby… I don’t really understand why. So with more spare time programmers involved, it makes sense there are less women involved in Free software.

Another possible cause for the difference is the image of the Free software community being a resistance movement (against microsoft), which is of course nonsense, but half the community thinks it’s true and so does almost everyone outside it. Resistance movements are more attractive to young men than they are to young women. Why? I’ve noticed most women just won’t get as angry about microsoft as men will, but I wouldn’t know if this has to do with testosterone or with those women being less informed because of not being part of the Free software community. Anyway I still think being angry at microsoft is a very poor reason for joining the community.

So what are we going to do about this gender imbalance? Labeling projects as friendly to women (or any other group) isn’t going to help, because it will imply all the unlabeled projects are NOT friendly. Live in the ghetto or fear being discriminated… not a great choice, is it?

I think we need to make more clear to everyone what Free software really is about. It’s not a bunch of geeks who have trying to kill some company by giving away an imitation product for free. It’s a community of nice people who want to get things done, who will write their own software if needed, and who don’t want to be prevented from helping each other. Maybe that will help, and if it doesn’t, it will still be an improvement in other ways.

PLEASE NOTE: snippets copied from dictionary.com are not under the same license as the rest of the text. If you want to reuse this post for something serious, you may need to remove these snippets and replace them by some other explanation of the same concepts. The bible is in the public domain in most if not all of the world (even though apparently the author isn’t dead ), so you can safely leave that bit in.

I know there is nothing about evolution and hardly anything about communities in this post, but it will fit into the final work somewhere. Please bear with me.

—

From dictionary.com:

talent

1. a special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.

6. a power of mind or body considered as given to a person for use and improvement: so called from the parable in Matt. 25:14–30.

7. any of various ancient units of weight, as a unit of Palestine and Syria equal to 3000 shekels, or a unit of Greece equal to 6000 drachmas.

8. any of various ancient Hebrew or Attic monetary units equal in value to that of a talent weight of gold, silver, or other metal.

—

From the bible, king James version, through gutenberg.org (note: entering “God” in the author field doesn’t work):

40:025:014 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.

40:025:015 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

40:025:016 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.

40:025:017 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.

40:025:018 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.

40:025:019 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.

40:025:020 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.

40:025:021 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

40:025:022 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.

40:025:023 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

40:025:024 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:

40:025:025 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

40:025:026 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:

40:025:027 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.

40:025:028 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

40:025:029 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

40:025:030 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

—

One interpretation of the parable is that if we receive a gift from god, we owe it to him to make use of it and develop it, to his greater glory, or at the very least don’t let it go to waste (bring it to the bank instead of hiding it in a hole in the ground).

Another interpretation, if we take “the kingdom of heaven” to mean something like “a state of happiness”, is that to reach that state one has to use ones talents. Ignoring ones talents leads to deep unhappiness.

—

from dictionary.com:

gift

1. something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; present.

3. something bestowed or acquired without any particular effort by the recipient or without its being earned: Those extra points he got in the game were a total gift.

4. a special ability or capacity; natural endowment; talent: the gift of saying the right thing at the right time.

—

So the choice of word for the same thing makes a big difference: either having a talent obliges us to use it, or nothing is required of us both before and after receiving the gift!

So are talents really gifts or do they create a debt somewhere? And which of the interpretations is the best way to read the parable? Let’s consider some options:

Talents make us owe to a god: This concept I dare to immediately reject. If a god or goddess gives a talent to someone who will not use it, he or she could have used his or her infinite wisdom and have known this would happen. It would be what is called in Dutch “finding a stick to hit the dog”, creating ones own right to punish someone. If (a) benevolent giving god(s) exist(s), the gifts would be true gifts, not traps for those who fail to see what they received. That is not to say it wouldn’t be unwise not to make use of the gifts. (too many negations in the previous sentence!)

We owe to humanity that we use our talents: Being a social species, we feel responsible for the well-being of each other. Talents may be useful for taking this responsibility. Also, we need the help of others to develop our talents, it is only fair that we help others develop theirs, either by teaching or by taking away barriers. These need not be the same others, it will even out over humanity as a whole.

We owe it to ourselves to use our talents: This is an easy one. Who would feel happy doing a job that is much too easy for them for the rest of their lives? Who would like knowing they have a talent and never show it to anyone, not even to themselves? We are much happier when we are able to develop and express ourselves, and as a social-creative species we are most happy when we can do this while connecting to others. The big problem is that many can’t, or think they can’t live a life that makes optimal use of their talents.

It is debatable whether we are obliged to use our talents, and in the end it doesn’t matter. Nobody is going to get any happier by choosing not to use their talents (except perhaps in exchange for something else, but even that is most likely a bad choice), we really owe it to ourselves to do what we can do best and what makes us most happy.

—

Thanks to Carmen for inspiration!

Both shadowdoubters (a certain type of atheists) and rabid creationists are advised not to read this. I’m not trying to provoke a hateful discussion, just putting a load of linked interesting thoughts from my mind to the screen .

Chatting with a new friend who is no less than a priestess of Ishtar reminded me of something else that is missing from the old half-finished article about communities, selfishness and selflessness, and evolution of information (search for it in the libervis wiki). Love.

Selfless behavior usually doesn’t come from rational decisions, it is something we do because our hearts tell us to.

In fact communities tend to be tied together by multiple forms of friendship, love and spiritual(-like) thoughts.These shouldn’t be omitted from a text about the way communities work!

There is a bit of a problem here, though: when one starts talking about love and other spiritual matters, this will be hard to integrate with the scientific style reasoning on which the other ideas from the article are based.

Spiritual and rational truth both are valid, but they are very different beasts. In science it doesn’t matter that you have a feeling something is correct, you have to have evidence and you have to have tried hard and to falsify your theory. Then you will still not have found an absolute truth, but your theory (provided that it is simpler than equally tested alternatives) will be the best available theory. For spiritual matters, the best you can do is follow your heart.

A simple example of the two types of truth operating on the same domain: If the weather report says there will be rain, you take an umbrella with you, instead of having faith (the) god(s) will keep you dry or will have an intention with your getting wet. On the other hand, if you’re outside without an umbrella and it starts to rain, you may feel a whole lot less miserable if you react by meditating on the feeling rain gives on your skin and the cleansing of the world it symbolizes, instead of wishing you had an umbrella.

A special case is dogma: In science you have to make certain assumptions and then reason in a logical way starting from those. One such assumption is that statistics can be used to make predictions. For example when you flip 100 coins, the prediction is that about 50 of them will be heads. There is absolutely no reason to believe the universe won’t suddenly change and always make all coins fall on the same side. Of course there is no reason to believe something like that will happen either. You could say we can use statistics because they have always been correct, but that is circular reasoning. So, science requires some assumptions that seem sensible: 1 + 1 = 2, statistics can be used for predictions, the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same, etc etc. It is of course important to make the set of assumptions as small as possible, because any extra assumption is an extra potential point that can be proven incorrect.

Religious dogma combined with logic is different. There is no way such dogmas can be compared with reality. Accepting a set of dogmas crafted by a malicious individual and then following a series of logical consequences can lead to becoming a suicide bomber or an exploited sect member. It leads to abuse of selfless behavior, the destruction of the individual and possibly part of the larger community. A good advice is to follow your heart and let your mind protect you, not the other way around.

One interesting “conflict” between religion and science are the origins of the universe, life and humanity. Most religions have creation myths, and science also has theories about the subjects. When one reads creation myths as symbolical instead of factual/historical texts (follow your heart instead of your mind!) there doesn’t appear to be much of a difference at all, though. But why do religious literalists make such a big deal of creation myth vs science, and not of other myths that science disagrees with?

It could be because the creative process is something nearly every member of our species cares about. Humans are builders: houses, airplanes, websites, networks, clothing, etc etc. All those things that make humans different from most other animals is caused by our love for creating things. It’s not surprising we have strong feelings about what created us.

We are far from the only species on earth that builds things. We even aren’t the only animal that builds things that are far larger than our own bodies. Others are ants, bees, naked mole rats… All of them social species of which most individuals are exceptionally selfless. Humans are very democratic, even anarchic in comparison, but we are just as social.

Cooperation between many individuals is needed to build large things. Humans are the only builders on earth that are intelligent enough to cooperate without a need for strong authoritarianism. (That doesn’t mean individual ants don’t make their own decisions, it means they base their decisions on what serves their queen best, unlike humans who make more balanced decisions.)

Logic shouldn’t have a leading role in spiritual matters, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at science for inspiration just like we may look at (creation) myth for inspiration. Multicellular organisms most likely evolved from colonies (communities!) of singlecellular ones. Individuals aren’t objects, they are processes just like communities are, processes of thought and constant regeneration. Evolution is a method of thought mostly used by communities (evolving species, the scientific method, …). We all are and are part of multiple levels of thinking entity-processes, with one living, thinking, loving universe at the root of the tree.

It would appear being cooperating builders is our natural behavior. Choosing being a cooperating builder as a meaning for life sure feels like a good spiritual decision to me .

About a year ago I started writing an article about evolution of information and processes in communities. You can find it in [a now undisclosed place due to conflicts] if you’re curious. Although the main ideas of the article are valid, it contains some naiveties.

For example I wrote “we” (eukaryotes) are more advanced than bacteria because we reproduce sexually, allowing our DNA to be mixed. The truth is, bacteria have their own way of exchanging DNA (which is also called “sex” to add some confusion), which doesn’t have anything to do with reproduction. What’s more, they are capable of doing this across very different species. The reason they are primitive (for some definitions of primitive) is that the trick only works for single cells. Of course our different trick also only works for single cells only, which is why it is linked to reproduction, the only moment at which we are single cells. And then there are the single-cellular eukaryotes, some of those do have ways of sharing DNA, about others I’m not sure. Some of those are way more “advanced” than bacteria, others aren’t.

Also, consider the fact our bodies contain more bacteria than human cells. Who is more successful now?

The whole analogy about sharing of information leading to better results just falls apart. The right thing to conclude from the analogy is that keeping your information well-organized (in a nucleus) leads to the ability to create more complex designs. A wise lesson, but not what we were looking for. On the other hand, the fact that (nearly?) all lifeforms are capable of sharing information with each other still leads to the old conclusion: sharing ideas is good.

Another thing that doesn’t appear in the article is that the idea of all ideas are part of an evolutionary process isn’t exactly new. One person who wrote about that is Karl Popper, who also wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies, see also: Open Society, something I really should read.

The conclusions of all this? I should probably discontinue but save the article, dig deeper into biology, philosophy and sociology, and then write a book rather than an article. It would keep me busy for a few years, so I’m not sure if I would… Anyone willing to give me a well-paid parttime job after I finish my computer science studies?

Those of you who have known me for a while will know that I once wrote a specification for a window manager, in which all buttons had two functions, selected by left or right mouse button. The “more powerful” would be activated by the right, and grouped under the same button with a “less powerful” similar action. In short:

• left: iconify / right: close
• left: resize / right: maximize

Keep this in mind while I tell you about my portable music player. It has a color screen and an image viewing function. Short-clicking an image thumbnail will show it fullscreen, long-clicking it will set the image as a background for the user interface. No clue is given that long-clicking will do something special. How is the user ever going to find out how to do this if he isn’t even aware it’s possible to set backgrounds? Okay, the player is preloaded with a image folder called “backgrounds”, so there’s a clue, but then still the long-clicking thing is totally non-obvious.

Back to my window manager thing. Right-clicking may be slightly more discoverable than long-clicking, but it suffers from the same problem. To a programmer this kind of left/right schemes look elegant and easy to understand, and someone who cares to read a two-line manual will have no trouble with it, but people don’t read manuals. If it’s not obvious without reading a manual, no matter how short, then the design could use some improvement. The fact that a right-click action exists could be made obvious by placing a small icon on or next to a widget, but when you do that with a window manager button, you end up with two icons again, which could be used more easily by making two separate left-clickable icons.

A lesson is learned.

Let’s have a new look at the problem I was trying to solve: user interface clutter. I nearly touched the right solution by grouping similar actions together: having multiple very similar items in an interface is a sign something is wrong elsewhere in the design.

So what do we need close buttons for? Most programs also have file -> close, which takes one more click. More specifically: what do we need a close shortcut button for?

We need it because we’re closing windows all the time. If we could somehow avoid so many windows being created in the first place, that would be a huge improvement.

Remember that design decision in Nautilus (GNOME) that everyone loved to hate? Each time you opened a folder, it would create a new window instead of reusing the existing one. On the other hand reusing an existing window has the disadvantage of hiding the previous folder, which you may need again.

An elegant solution is found in NEXT (or MacOSX if you don’t know your history ;P ): each folder you open is placed next to the previous one, in the same window. There is a horizontal scrollbar that conveniently automatically scrolls to the right position.

Why not do the same with files? Just replace the usual applications for viewing & editing with filemanager plugins. (You probably want each file manager window to be a single process, to avoid bad plugins from taking down your whole desktop, but let’s stay out of the technical details for now.)

• To create a new window, drag a file or folder to the desktop.
• To create a desktop icon, minimize a window showing whatever you want to create an icon for.
• When a file has been modified and another is opened in the same window, ask if it should be closed and saved, closed without saving, or possibly tabbed.

There you go, few enough windows to be closed to make file -> close sufficient.

But wait! What about the maximize button? We can’t remove it, but since it would be a good idea to slightly change how it works anyway, maybe we don’t have to. Maximizing should maximize only the current file, not the rest of the window (showing a few directories) with it, that would be annoying cause maximizing clearly means you want to see only one thing. Do let a listing of the current directory appear when the pointer is moved against the left side of the screen, it would also be on the left in unmaximized view. Sure, the horizontal scrollbar may be shown too when the pointer is moved against the bottom of the screen. For maximizing a folder I suggest showing both the folder and its parent (vertically split screen), and showing the horizontal scrollbar for moving up in the directory hierarchy. An animation may help clarify what happens to the user interface when maximizing.

Clearly, maximize isn’t a variant of resize anymore. It may make sense to move it to the filemanager toolbar. Or perhaps, since nearly all windows are filemanager windows now, the filemanager toolbar can now be merged into the title bar.

Pretty radical, eh?

(comments disabled because of spam)

FYI I don’t own an iPod nor do I want to. I’m quite proud of the raven, I could have traced it but I made it all by myself. Go me!

If you like Free/Libre software, it’s also very likely you find a certain big software company annoying, because they keep trying to hinder the development of free software, which they do because they want everyone who owns a computer to buy their software. Probably just like you, I have nothing personal against that company (well, their software ate my files a few times, but that’s my own fault: shouldn’t have used it…), but I would like to get rid of that pesky whale sized gnat. How do we do that?

Kill the PC.

It’s hard to get rid of a monopolist, but it could be easier to get rid of the thing it has a monopoly on. Then what is capable of killing the PC? Let’s have a look at some devices that are somewhat similar to PCs…

• PDAs become more and more powerful, and there isn’t as much of an operating system monopoly on those as there is on PCs. Some are Linux-based.
• Mobile phones learn new tricks with every new model. For a while already, they have at least the potential of doing the same task as a PC with a webcam. There are more people who own a mobile phone than there are people who own a PC. There is no monopoly at all. Some run Linux.
• Portable music players also learn new tricks with every new model. Some now also have okay image viewing software. Their interoperability is very nice: most pretend to be USB storage when connected to a PC, meaning you can use them with any PC OS and also with some devices that aren’t PCs at all. Again, there is no monopoly in sight.
• Web based replacements for desktop apps are also promising. Most of these run on Free UNIX-like operating systems. This is the market in which we already won.

So, it seems reasonable to assume it’s possible to replace the PC market with the mobile phone market, using a phone that is also a portable music player and a powerful PDA that can browse the web… if only it had the ease of use of a PC: a big screen, keyboard and mouse.

Of course nobody wants a “mobile” phone with a big screen, keyboard and mouse. How do we make those available when they are needed? Here’s my solution: PCs running you-know-what-OS are everywhere. Let the phone pretend to be USB storage with autorun information on it that starts cygwin’s X server connecting to the phone. Let the autorun software also provide the internet connection of the PC to the phone. There you go: a screen, keyboard, mouse and even a wired internet connection! Because we’re connecting to the “phone” through X, it could run any not too heavy Linux (or BSD or …) app in this mode. Firefox, thunderbird, abiword, it’s all possible.

What about connecting to a PC running a free operating system? Well, those already have what is needed to connect to our phone: usbnet and Xnest.

I bet you’re confused now: how can we kill the PC if the device with which we want to do that depends on PCs for non-mobile (home and office) use? Easier than you would think. We have moved all the computing tasks away from the PC, either to the phone, or to web based apps. The PC has become just a terminal. Does it need all the computing power current PCs have? Nope. Could it be replaced by a cheap unconfigurable docking station that does nothing more than providing a screen, keyboard, mouse and internet connection to a phone? Of course!

Such a docking station could even contain some special-purpose hardware for image/sound/video processing and still be cheaper than a PC. For gamers and other users who need lots of processing power, a docking station containing a Cell chip might make sense. I guess that option would make the phone + docking station combination about as expensive as a PC again, but still a much nicer choice except for those who would buy a gaming laptop. Those would probably like a device containing both the mobile and docking station hardware in one. And even if they won’t, then making the-OS-that-shall-not-be-named a laptop thing would solve most of the monopoly problem.

Anyway, I don’t see why I, or anyone else who is not a hardcore PC gamer, would want to buy an expensive PC if the alternative is a nice beautiful small quiet energy saving thing that does exactly the same when combined with a phone. PCs are so 90s!

Since yesterday was my birthday, meaning I didn’t get to do any work all day (*gasp!*), I’m rather busy, and don’t have time to draw anything complicated. Making apologies by letting your weekly silly drawing refer to your own life is rather “meta” and I’m not really sure where this joke begins and where it ends.