I am starting to sketch out a python library for wordpress that makes wordpress appear to python as native lists and dicts. Maybe it’s a phase I’m going through but so many things can be expressed in terms of either lists or dicts. Wordpress could have quite a nice fit for this. The posts are dicts is the format {“title”:””, “body”:””, “tags”:[]} etc. The tags are a dict with each tag being a key and the value being a list of posts. I would have to make things as lazy as possible so as not to try to pull down your entire archive when you log in…but it could be quite handy. I’ll let you know if/when I have a tinker with this.

Trying out ‘Blog Entry Poster’ (catchy name) as it is about as minimal as you can get…to be honest I really like it so I hope this works!

As mentioned before I’m using “Blog Entry Poster” on ubuntu. Its small and fast and well check out how little there is to it…

I’m using this as an opportunity to test the media uploading as apparently its just drag and drop…if you see the image above, it is!

EDIT: Bugger…I’ll have to dig into that then!

..since I’ve posted here. To be honest after google+ came out I was certain I was going to delete this and migrate there fully. It was an inspiring talk by lorna jane mitchel at ogg camp however that has kicked me in gear and got me back here and realizing that I’ve got a lot of tech bit and bobs I could be posting. So hopefully some of this will end up be useful to someone, lets get cracking !

Sweet I’m sorted for a client now. For those on Ubuntu who are tyring to get their client to talk to a wordpress hosted blog the path you need is: http://yourblog.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php Don’t worry about looking in the settings to ‘remote publishing’ thats an option for those who host their own wordpress blog. Awesome well now to business!

Today sees the forition of a very geeky dream I’ve held for a long time. The picture above is my office for the afternoon. The dappled light of the woods is so bright that I can barely make out the screen on the phone yet the Adam tablet is crystal clear. Yes I’m a geek, but I’m an outdoor geek and finally embracing both my passions at once is very cool! The setup does still needs some work however. All mainstream mobile OS’s seem designed for consumption and not really for making stuff. I guess that’s why people fawned over Garage Band for the iPad, its a slick app but it actually looks like you could make some serious music with it. Its a bit crap that this suprises people as these are computers but still I can see how this would be enough for many people: take a photo, answer a text, find a place to grab lunch…nice but not enough for me. Luckily the xda and notioninkhacks forums have some sweet efforts going on to get ubuntu on these things. Right now they are just trying to get them working side by side with android but a native install is obviously the way to go at some point. Back on the coding side of things I’ve had a quick play with ASE and touchqode. Python definately works on here and touchqode isn’t a bad editor but as my projects rely on libraries which are not pure python I’m still not abe to work on the same projects as I can on my humble netbook. So yea this is a epic step in the right direction and I’ll keep an eye out for what’s next.

Ciao

Ok so it’s been a couple of days and this tablet really is an amazing mix. First off I have found myself saying to people a lot that you pretty much have to be someone who intends to hack their tablet, this thing really is not prime time material yet. The issue comes down to the fact that Notion Ink’s spin on adroid, Eden, is too big a goal for them to achieve. The guys at Notion Ink have created a fantastic piece of hardware (I’ll get back to this soon but roll with me for now) but are trying to own the experience from start to finish and that just isn’t going to be possible with their size team and given how much ground the big guys have already covered. They should stop, look at what their actual strengths are, and push forward in making the best android experience leveraging their frankly awesome tablet. Ok, so its clear that I like the device, I do, but its not without its faults. The big pull factor for me was the screen, Pixel Qi is great, I am drifting outside during my lunch breaks more and getting used to whipping it out in public to read and browse (this still is a little weird as a tablet is far from being as socially inconspicuous as a phone but hey) and coupled with 3G and firefox (I may have to dedicate a post to a passionate rant about firefox on this thing as it is wonderful) it is a beautiful experience.

The hardware in general is good, the processor is plenty fast enough, 3g & gps work very smoothly. The device is a touc too heavy in my opinion and you find yourself arranging yourself and world around you to rest your tablet on. The camera is poor considering what they could fit in the housing given the space, but saying that it does work (arbeit with very slow autofocus) and the spin feature is actually very useful. When you get using this thing though you still end up running back into the OS and realising that you have a very unfinished experience. A tablet is a thin layer between you and experience and all that expeirence is dictacted by apps and there aren’t any that take advantage of Eden, and with no android market place you are placed at a huge disadvantage to even those who bought crappy underpowered chinese tablets. Logically the only thing to do was root the device and root it I did! This video at youtube is a wonderful thing for the first time ‘rooter’ asit is one continuous shot of a guys rooting his adam while clearly explaining what he is doing. I quite honestly just sat down and rooted right along with him! ( I’m sure any australians reading this a smirking away to themselves right now!). Once complete the android market is available and this just transforms the device; I have all my podcast and rss feeds pouring into this thing, along with wordpress, bbc, youtube, winamp…the list goes on. The point is that I suddenly had a computer. Yet still, as before, you find yourself bumping into the interface again and so soon I am looking at two things.

• First I am going to get stock android on here. No it’s not designed for tablets but still I expect it to get in my way less

• Second I am going to start trying to get Ubuntu booting on here. THis really comes down to the fact that this tablet as it is is a great consumption device but a really poor creation one, let’s face it…touch keyboards suck, and as a coder I just don’t have the tools I want on here yet. Ok so the summary (as I really need to get some sleep):

The hardware is great. A little heavy, and not nearly as thin as soem tablets but still, if you want Pixel Qi this is awesome.

This is a tablet for techy people right now. I have no doubt that Notion Ink could make this very appealing to people but as it stands you really need to root it to start getting real value from it. Anyhoo Goodnigt. I’m going to try and make shorter, less rambling posts, in future as I’m still getting the hang of this.

Thanks for dropping in!

I’m back (who am I telling? no one comes here!) I have just got an Adam tablet after many months of waiting and the best part of a year wondering if it was vapourware. For the uninitiated the adam is a tablet with a pixel qi screen which allows viewing in direct sunlight (think kindle with all the features of a regular screen.

It has been a major bugbear of mine for the last few years that I could only do my geeking from indoors (a limitation which has helped me cultivate the geek standard in skin pastiness!) so when I heard of this screen I knew it would let me knock this on the head once and for all.

Right so for the next few weeks i’ll be posting about the adam, any hacks I undertake, and anything else that springs to mind. Catch ye later

http://hackaday.com/2010/08/14/google-maps-wristlet-navigator/

I will be posting again soon Ciao

This has been around for a while but it still is lovely. It’s a great example of human engineering and our personification of anything with a recognisable features. Enjoy! TweenBots

p.s. Make sure you check out the videos!