it’s the same hardware, but how come this runs way better?

It’s been over six months since my last post. I have been fully engrossed in my grad school applications. I just want to write down these thoughts before delving what I have for this year. I will be starting a series on CakePHP in the coming months.

Just yesterday, I was looking for a media player for my Nokia E71. I needed one that could play the popular video formats such as .avi, .mp4 etc. I did not want to have to always convert it into a mobile compatible format like 3gp. Not only is converting it time consuming, but the image quality depreciates and it also take space which I am not willing to spare.

I found DivX Mobile Player for Symbian phones. I was really excited to find this program, in fact, it was exactly how i wanted it to be. After using it for sometime I noticed that after the video had played for a few minutes, the images and sound gets out of sync. There were settings for that so I adjusted it. After all that, the synchronization wasn’t even close to perfect.

Another issue I encounted with the DivX player was that anytime I tried to seek to another time location, it was really slow and it only allowed 1second at a time. I did not like that at all.I was really pissed.

I searched for another player. I got one named PowerMovie. I was a little hesitant to try it initially because I did not know the developers but I later did. After using it for just 10mins i loved it completely. The seeking was perfect, the video was smooth and it consumes less power.

The question that kept sounding in my mind was, it’s the same hardware, but how come this runs way better? This bring me to the subject of this post. The problem of the world is not an issue of hardware. With the level of hardware that is in the market now. We have not even utilized 1/4 of the power available. I personally believe that software has a very long way to go in allowing us to fully benefit from the existing hardware.

I agree that software along can only go so far. Without the underling hardware to support it, software can’t do much. Let me elaborate, let say you have mobile phone without built in GPS hardware, no number of lines of code can provide you with that facility. What I am saying it that assuming the phone in question has a built in GPS receiver, Are the current tools, techniques and more importantly existing theories enough to completely exhaust the benefits and uses of this piece of hardware? That is what this post is about.

More resources should be dedicated to research in software solution. Not only should the research make but they should be implemented. Also, concentration should be placed on the biological and psychological science with emphasis on their relation to natural sciences like mathematics and physics. With goals like efficiency and effectiveness in mind, the possibilities are infinite. With existing infrastructure we can easily achieve what we hope to achieve in the next 100years now.

The bottom-line is we need well suited software. Software that meets needs, I understand that as programmers we want to include features that are “cool”, but are they really necessary? Are we ignoring the rather weightier issues?

Facebook, the new standard…

I initially hesitated to write this post but I later decided to write it. I was discussing this will a friend the other day. You see I needed to buy some hosting space and a domain name for a site I am working on, I did not want to use my usual hosting service. I wanted a better package (who doesn’t).

So I went to Google and I started the search. I was so happy to find a couple of hosting packages that were fantastic. I think I had 3 or so. Okay now I have 3 very attractive hosting packages from different companies. They were almost the same in the features they promise to offer.

What was the driving chose behind my choice? Have u guessed it yet. Facebook “talaaa” let me explain.

I say recommendations given on all the sites from their customers, I even saw all the awards the various sites had won. The thing is there was no way I could authenticate those testimonials and awards with a very short time. What made me choose what I chose was because that particular company had a Facebook page. Voila! I quickly went to the facebook page to check out the comments on the service they were providing for people and I was really impressed. I actually believed what they said on the page.

Facebook has come to stay, I believe it is mainly because facebook tries it possible best to prevent spam and also authenticates it users. Very soon all companies, individuals will validate people, events, and societies on facebook. It is going to be the standard; it’s more than just social networking it’s a social directory.

Drupal School Site. St Louis Jubilee School Drupal in Africa (Ghana)

Here come another drupal success story. The building of St. Louis Jubilee School. This is a primary and JSS school (Junior High School) in Kumasi. Kumasi is a city in Ghana(West-Africa). The site is a basic website with normal functionality. The website contains information about the school and the activities of the school. Some of the features that allow the website to stand out from the rest of it’s kind is the following:
1. Online Results System
2. User and email Account for the staff
3. Accounts for the Students
4. Events/ News and Articles organization
5. Galleries
I just want to go through how I built the website. This is a write or some sort of documentation about how the tools,modules and how the site was built. We all know that drupal is a very powerful tool. I even called it the “drupal framework”. I see it as more of a framework that a CMS. We usually see it being used for high end sites like New York Observer, Eureka and the rest. I must say that they are really performing a awesome job with those site. I have actually learnt a lot from these sites and how the developers built it. In this case drupal is being used for a lower end site in terms of functionality , if I may say so. (A high school web site/CMS)

Connecting Nokia 6230 to Ubuntu 7.10 and using it as a gprs/edge connection. 1

Firstly, let me apologize for not posting for a while, i was finishing up my semester examinations.

Okay let me get on with the post. Connecting Nokia 6230 to Ubuntu 7.10 .

Before you start make sure that the phone you are using has a working gprs connecting and you can browse using the mobile phone. After that is settled make sure that the you have settled all billing issues with your subscriber and you know how the billing is done. Then make sure you get you DKU-2 cable for the nokia 6230.

NB:I have used only DKU-2 and Nokia 6230 and ubuntu 7.10 so i can only vouch for these.

1. Connect the Nokia 6230 to the computer using your cable. After which you type this command.

“lsusb”

Send emails in PHP-Using PEAR extensions II

 

In the previous post we looked at managing and installing PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) packages, as well as how to use such a package from a PHP script. Now we will look at some of the other packages in the PEAR library.

The packages required for this column are available from www.pear.php.net.

To install them into your local PHP system, copy all packages from the PEAR site into a temporary directory, then type:

$ pear install

Where <package filename> is the filename of the package you are installing. The packages are stored in tar gzipped format, so you may get an error like this:

The extension ‘zlib’ couldn’t be found.