Screen Sizes

It is almost impossible nowadays to get a 16:10 1280x800 screen on a laptop but they are common on tablets.
On laptops almost all screens are the 16:9 1366x768 which is a pain for programming/text editing  tasks.
I wonder why all the producers think that the laptops are just mouse driven jukeboxes. They are business machines and at least the business series/ultrabooks should have been designed as such. Unfortunately none of the ultrabooks or laptops I have checked have 16:10 screens anymore (HP Folio, Lenovo U300s/U310, Asus X36/UX31).
It seems that the last 16:10 display is on the MacBook. I am wondering why?

O Brother Where Art Thou!

Excellent choice for this weekend. The music is awesome and the cast shines in this excellent comedy. The best part is that many of the goofy moments of the election campaign in the movie could be also seen even today in Romania's election. Each and every character in the movie can be associated with one on our political scene.
I am wondering if TVR did it on purpose... :) 

Sci-Fi days

I have recently watched two SF movies I haven't seen when they were first launched.

1st is "Star Trek (2009)". A pitiful story with angry Vulcans and cruel Romulans  of the universe and with idiotic Spock and Kirk. Only McCoy keeps something from its original character while Scotie, Checkhov and Sulu are just pathetic. Overall it was quite a waste of time.

 
2nd one was "The Chronicles of Riddick". Inspite a thin plot the movie is visually impressive and is catchy. I admit that I like the anti-hero Riddick and  his serious-violent-funny character. The story focuses on the action and lacks explanation on the necromonger's technology and underverse.

MIDI over network

I have just finished a small toy for my personal HAM training.
I mad a small app to stream messages over network in Morse code and decode them at the other end as MIDI sounds. I have to listen to them and compare what I hear with the exact message I received.
Maybe I will port it to Android also.

No More Facebook

Account deleted... All birthdays saved.

Wishful thinking (2)

Enterprises missed a big opportunity in internal communication by NOT using Google Wave.
As wave was both a document and a communication it would have simplified the email pollution with tons of people in CC and countless Reply All... Not to mention the "OoO" answers.

Google, please give us the wave back (or at least sell cheap boxes to enterprises) in order to keep our communication sane.

Wishful thinking

I think Eclipse is a great IDE. It offers probably the best tooling possible for Java based languages and also for related works. What it really annoys me on Eclipse is the lack of organizing the plugins. With Eclipse either you  have all the plugins altogether (albeit they step on each-other's toes) or you have to install redundant copies of the IDE in order to keep plugins separated per installation.

It would be great to have the choice of having profiles (Java, C++, Python, Web) and install on every profile a set of needed plugins (or use some of the global plugins) hence clearing up the mess.

Most of developers work in time on various technologies so this would help them use the same IDE but customize it for their needs.