No more Qtopia

Apparently, Qtopia was killed off in late 2008, re-released as Qt Extended, then dropped by Nokia/Trolltech early 2009.  Finally, source was “liberated” by a fork as Qt Extended Improved.  I was considering it for the GUI layer of an embedded PowerPC project with an Embedded Linux (or maybe eCos) substrate.

Scratch Programming Language for Learning/Play

During some early morning googling to see if anyone had started a port of Java as Wii homebrew I came across Scratch.  Described as: “Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.” 

EnvMan Windows Environment Variable Editor

I wanted a convenient way to edit Environment Variables on a Windows box.   Some googling brought me to EnvMan at SourceForge. Worked for me.  YMMV.

eBook library managers - eLibrary and calibre

If you’re collection of electronic books is growing unmanageable you might want to check out eLibrary or calibre.

My favorite feature of eLibrary is source file renaming after it downloads the book information.  The program is Windows only at this time and is focused on library management and reading on the computer. 

Another option is calibre.  Calibre is also an open source project hosted on SourceForge.net.  Calibre supports file format conversion for several popular ebook readers as well as a built-in ebook reader. 

Install TAP for Wippien on Vista x64

I wanted to try out Wippien on 64-bit Vista.  Had to download the 64-bit TAP driver then run the “hdwwiz.exe” to manually install the TAP driver.






Unfortunately, Wippien didn't work out the way I hoped it would. Still looking for a VPN solution that I can run on my home network for remote access. Probably will need to look at using a hardware solution like a VPN concentrator.

Multi-core/Many-core OS research

The Barrelfish Operating System is research effort addressing how to build OS for multi-core/many-core and heterogeneous core computers. AMD also has some related many-core publications.

Windows Vista on Acer Aspire One (A-150)

Windows XP on my wife’s Acer Aspire One finally died an ungraceful malware induced death and instead of re-installing I figured I’d give Vista a chance.  First step was to get an external USB DVD drive.   I booted a 32-bit Vista SP1 DVD from an ASUS DR-08D1S-U and the basic install went without a hitch. 

Next the adventure of locating drivers.  Out of the box Vista SP1 did not support the wireless NIC, onboard NIC, video, or sound.  Not a big surprise.  Unfortunately, Acer does not provide Vista drivers. 

The first thing I usually try in the situation is the onboard NIC.  It was listed as a “Realtek RTL8101 Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)”.  At the time of this post a driver is available from the Realtek driver download site.  Followed the menus shown to get to PCI Express Software.

  The driver that worked for me was version 6.225 dated 2009/7/17 in the file named Install_Vista_6225_0709.zip.

After installing the onboard NIC is listed as “Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller”.

Since I had a wired connection to the network I activated Vista and started Windows Update.  Let that chug away downloading and installing for an hour or so.  After all the updates the onboard wireless NIC, sound and video are working.