Of Windows 7, the Nokia N97 and a 9600GT made of fail
Posted 18 Jun 2009 by Akinwale Ariwodola
After reading initial impressions and seeing screenshots of the early releases of Windows 7, I was unfazed. I simply dismissed the whole thing as features which could've been implemented in a service pack, hence why I coined up Windows Vista SP2 (which later evolved to SP3). In any case, I decided to give it a try just to see what it was all about since I had a newly built system lying around and I wasn't really liking Ubuntu 9.04. Took about a week to download the RC (thanks to my speedy Internets) and it took just under 15 minutes to get it up and running. I am so not exaggerating here. Being the skeptic that I am, I was like, "Eh, impressive, but that could've been a fluke." I logged in. Fast. Checked for drivers that may not have been detected during installation. None. Mucked around with a number of settings. Fast. Rebooted. Fast. I have to say, Windows 7 is very snappy. It feels faster and more responsive than Vista, and speedy boot up and shut down times are a huge plus.

Which brings us to the new major feature, the taskbar. I initially saw this in the screenshots and thought, "Why did they do this?" But after using it, I've come to like it very much. Basically, what they did here was take the OS X dock, and make it better. How'd they make it better you ask? The mini previews you get when you mouse over the taskbar icons. It shows you the windows that you have open associated with the taskbar icon and makes it much easier to know what you want to switch to. Everything has been polished and I haven't experienced any slowdowns whatsoever. I have been completely impressed so far. I'd have to say though, I'm still sticking to the belief that all these nice improvements and features could've been implemented a service pack. In any case, my recommendation is if you're still using Windows XP, skip Vista, and if you've already jumped on the Vista bandwagon, upgrade to Windows 7 as soon as it's released. More money for Microsoft, I know, but it's worth it. Fun fact: The initial boot up animation with the coloured dots reminds me of the Playstation 2 animation right before a disc is launched. Obligatory screenshot #1:

My Windows 7 Desktop


Speaking of the Nokia N97, I had been waiting patiently for its release, and since that's happened, I am now waiting patiently for it to be available here. If you don't know what it is, it is a smartphone with every single feature that I've ever wanted in a phone. In order to keep myself sane with the waiting I've had to endure, I decided to download the SDK for the phone which was about 630MB (newer SDKs keep getting bigger and bigger!) In any case, after so many years of trying out J2ME and failing at it each time (I mostly found something else that was shiny which distracted me long enough to forget), I have finally come to grasp it. Let's just hope the knowledge sticks this time. There are still some limitations that I'm trying to overcome, but all in all, I'm almost finished with my first complete J2ME application, an IRC client aptly called SimpleIRC. Original, I know. Obligatory screenshot #2:

Simple IRC running in N97 Emulator

My 9600GT has clearly been infected by the black screen of death. At first, I thought it was overheating, but I ruled that out. Then I installed the latest drivers and ruled out faulty software. Then I replaced the PSU in my box and ruled out a faulty PSU. Then I got a new motherboard and ruled out a faulty motherboard. Then I... Apparently, other people are having the same issue and there is no official word on it. I would've returned it for a replacement, but PNY's warrantly terms clearly state that I would have to pay for all shipping costs which isn't going to be worth it. Sadly, I'm currently stuck with the Intel integrated G33/G31 chipset on my motherboard. I'll be picking up a 9800GT sooner or later. Obligatory screenshot #3 (Yet more proof that Intel integrated graphics suck):

Windows 7 Experience Index

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Ups, downs, and sideways
Posted 23 May 2009 by Akinwale Ariwodola
I haven't been able to post in a while due to being occupied with a lot of real life activities. Real life is overrated, by the way. I turned 22 in April. There were lots of cake to be had. And then realisations that I'm getting old. I managed to be selected as one of the finalists for the Mod Dash track of 2009 TopCoder Open (one of the top 8 couldn't make it), but I didn't get a visa so I'm not attending. Apparently, this time around, the interview official at the embassy only wanted to be a jerk, giving me the ridiculous reason, "this letter is not credible evidence that TopCoder will pay for your trip." Bloody joker. In any case, the qualifications were quite challenging and an interesting experience. Let's see how it goes next year.

I've not really been motivated to do a lot of things lately. I guess I'm getting a bit tired of all these web and business applications. I also haven't been able to work on the iPhone apps I planned to. I also haven't been able to improve the TopVideo application (which got a rather terrible review; video playback is planned for a future release!) which is something I keep procrastinating about. I just want to do my game development. In any case, I think I'm going to start concentrating on mobile platforms now. Currently focusing on Android and the iPhone. Look out for the next blockbuster game on both platforms. It might just end up with me being the developer.

Meanwhile, I was finally able to get my quad core system up and running. Here are the specs (I simply yanked the graphics card out of the former rig):

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz CPU
4GB DDR2 PC2-5300 RAM
PNY GeForce 9600GT graphics card with 512MB DDR3 memory
320GB Seagate hard disk drive
LG DVD-RW drive

It's pretty sweet, isn't it? I may pick up a 9800GT soon if I get the chance. I've only currently got Ubuntu 9.04 installed, but I intend to install the Windows 7 RC once I'm through downloading (I just started, it's going to take a long time). We need fast reasonably priced Internet in Nigeria. Unfortunately, sadly, depressingly, that's not going to happen soon enough.

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TopVideo for the iPhone
Posted 22 Mar 2009 by Akinwale Ariwodola
My first iPhone app was just approved for the iTunes App Store, which is pretty neat. Basically, it's TopVideo, without video playback functionality. Now, this is a bit of a let down, but once the iPhone and iPod Touch have Flash Player support, I'd love to implement this feature in an update. It's listed as ready for sale in iTunes Connect, so I believe it should be showing up in search results within a few hours. Additionally, I've set up a discussion forum for support, suggestions and feedback for interested parties.

I've been trying to qualify for the Mod Dash track in the 2009 TopCoder Open. It hasn't been easy, but I'm hopeful. I need to make it into the top 8 in order to participate in the onsite finals.

Oh, and guys, buy TopVideo for the iPhone. It does a whole lot of amazing things and It's only $1.99! Cheers.

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Crashing and burning
Posted 5 Mar 2009 by Akinwale Ariwodola
Based on my observations, Antinormal went down on February 11. I didn't even get an email alert that Jamroll was going to go shut down and so I was completely unaware of this until yesterday. Had to do a quick recovery, and the cool thing is I managed to get it back up and running within 15 minutes of discovering its status. You know, it's pretty awesome these days that domain name change propagation only takes about 5 minutes (or up to 10 minutes on a bad day). I remember when we had to wait 48 hours just to wait for a domain to resolve to whichever nameservers you've configured it to point to. Incidentally, I cannot emphasise this enough, Jamroll was an awesome free host. It's rather sad and painful to see them go. I will miss you, Jamroll. The Internets will miss you, Jamroll. *sniff*

February hasn't been a very good month for me. I didn't get a visa to the US because apparently, I must be Mexican (they just give you a rejection later with a vague reason, so you can't really tell exactly what the official's decision is actually based on, so I'm assuming it's this because I'm sure I had everything else covered), which means I'm going to miss out on Digital Overload, again. Which brings me to one thing. The visa application process in Lagos is extremely tedious and stressful. If the waiting ticket was anything to go by, I was the 305th person in line. Considering that I had to wake up really early and leave to get there in the first place, I think that just plain sucks. My appointment time was 7am. About 5 hours later and a trip to the toilet, I was too hungry and tired to actually care anymore, and then I get smacked in the face with, "I'm sorry, but you do not qualify for a non-immigrant visa at this time." And the official didn't even ask to see any of my documents for proof of anything. Bastards! The lot of them. We'll see about DO 2010.

I've always made it my policy not to talk about woman- and relationship-related issues, but yeah, maybe just this once. There was this girl I was attracted to for a couple years, and when she was available, I got around to talking and eventually, when I asked her if she was interested in a relationship, she said no. Why am I telling you this? Because it happened in February! Yes, that's right.

I've been trying to order a book on iPhone development. Apparently, no one wants to ship to Nigeria either because I'm a fraudster by default, or no real reason that holds water. Fuck you, Amazon, by the way. Amazon simply deletes my account whenever I place an order (this is not the first time I've tried) without any explanations whatsoever. Great way to handle customers, guys. Barnes & Noble just decides to pretend to not be able to authorise my card. The order automatically gets cancelled, after which I see an authorisation charge from them on my card! Seriously? And I'm sure I shouldn't just find somewhere to download this book, right? I give up.

I haven't had electricity from the power company since... well, since forever ago actually. But it's got worse. We only get power for like 15 minutes every 3 to 7 days. And only at about 150 to 180 volts. Here's the thing, we're supposed to be getting 220 to 240 volts from the power company. I have headaches from the noise of the power generator for crying out loud. I spend too much on fuel to run the generator. At least, the price of fuel was reduced, but it looks like it'd be going up any time soon.

I've also been very demotivated, and this started in February. I've been unable to do anything. Need to pick myself back up and start making billions of dollars. I don't know why, but it seems I've kicked life in the arse so many times that it's starting to get back at me. Oh it's on! On the bright side though, I got a new notebook which is very capable of playing games. I'm sure it can run Crysis at a decent framerate. Initially planned on getting a Dell Studio, but a 9600M GT will always be better than any Intel integrated graphics chipset.

In other unrelated news, I hear about the financial crisis and people losing their jobs almost everyday, and it makes me sad. Let's just hope things get better soon enough.

PS. Why do criminals who don't get caught have it so easy?

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It's already February?
Posted 3 Feb 2009 by Akinwale Ariwodola
I thought the 1st of January was only a few hours ago! I've been meaning to post an entry, but it looks like procrastination has got the better part of me. First and foremost, Happy New Year, everyone! Secondly, season 7 of 24 is awesome.

I've been rather lazy and unmotivated lately which has resulted in me not being able to complete a few projects on time which has resulted in a bit of fallout, and that is rather depressing. People are also losing jobs everywhere. That's also taking a toll on my happiness. And the economy situation is just blah. Let's just hope things get fixed soon enough.

But it's going to be a good year. I'm looking forward to Digital Overload 2009, the 2009 TopCoder Open and making a billion dollars. Let's see how everything turns out, eventually.

2009 has got to be awesome.

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I am Coder of the Month
Posted 25 Dec 2008 by Akinwale Ariwodola
I think it's pretty awesome (TM) that I became TopCoder Coder of the Month for the component development competitions! Look for me on the left side of the TC homepage and be sure to read my interview. And no one's allowed to make fun of my mugshot.

Happy Holidays!

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Prevent the Flex TextArea from intercepting the mouse wheel event
Posted 9 Dec 2008 by Akinwale Ariwodola
Life has just taught me a lesson. Do not encounter problems that people have rarely experienced.

I have a story to tell. I had a TextArea in a VBox which prevented the container from vertically scrolling if the mouse cursor was over the TextArea. The vertical scrolling worked fine when the mouse cursor was over other parts of the container. After spending several hours on Google looking for how to fix this and coming across only a couple of solutions (this and this) which did not work, or maybe my Google fu just plain sucks, I decided to roll my own.

After doing a bit of digging, following the approach in the second solution, I discovered that the TextArea has a mouseWheelHandler event handler defined. All I had to do was remove the event listener like so:
package
{

import mx.controls.TextArea;

public class MultilineText extends TextArea
{
  override protected function createChildren():void
  {
    super.createChildren();
    removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_WHEEL, mouseWheelHandler);
  }
}

}

Problem Solved. This occurred in an AIR app, though. I haven't bothered to test this in Flash Player and I really don't feel like it. Hopefully, this helps someone who encounters something like this in the future.

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First Gentleman
Posted 29 Nov 2008 by Akinwale Ariwodola
I got to see 24: Redemption and it was awesome. I suppose it was pretty nice because I haven't had my fix of 24 for over a year now, many thanks to the writers' strike. Anyhow, it got me wondering, if the wife of a male president is called the "First Lady", what do you call the husband of a female president?

In other news, I've seen a number of movies over the past few weeks. Eagle Eye, exciting. Max Payne, quite okay. Taken, alright. Children of Men (I know it's old, but I just saw it this year), awesome. The ones that I'm looking forward to before the year runs out are Body of Lies and Transporter 3. I've never been too keen on 007, but I guess I'll just give Quantum of Solace a shot when I can get around to it.

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My WCG Nigeria 2008 Performance
Posted 5 Oct 2008 by Akinwale Ariwodola
Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, 2nd place, quite disappointing. And the first place prize was reduced because of the turn up (6 players in all).

Need For Speed Pro Street, 3rd place, got owned by a kid who took first place and I lolled. I promise I have a good excuse. I didn't take the game too seriously since I actually wanted to win Warcraft.

Age of Empires 3, cancelled because there were only about 2 people that intended to play. Pretty annoying. I spent a lot of time playing this game trying to get better; no reward for my efforts.

To be honest, I really don't like it when such changes are made at the last minute. But considering this is their first time, I guess the reasonable thing to do is let it slide. It's all good, though. It was fun and entertaining. I may do this again next year.

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My take on Google Chrome
Posted 30 Sep 2008 by Akinwale Ariwodola
Around the beginning of this month, the Internet was ablaze with rumours about Google planning to release a new browser, and they eventually turned out to be true. Google released Chrome on September 2, and like every web developer/technology enthusiast, I had to get my hands dirty with it. When I initially found out about Chrome, I was rather sceptical, because I thought like every web developer would, "Great. Yet another browser to support." Designing web page layouts so that they look the same across different browsers isn't fun because of the vast differences in the ways they've decided to interpret the standards.

In any case, I downloaded and installed Chrome, and the first thing that got me was the speed. Google Chrome is very fast and responsive. It made IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera feel very slow. I fancied that. And a couple of other neat things caught my attention: a very clean and uncluttered interface which gives me more viewing area for web pages and the browser's task manager. I find the task manager very useful as I can use it to identify what's hogging my resources if there's any problem. I haven't tried Chrome with Java applets, though. I may be wrong, but I recall reading somewhere that the Java plugin wasn't supported yet in the beta release.

Chrome isn't without its flaws though. The first major thing the interface needs is a title bar. I admire the way the tabs are positioned, but I don't like having to hover my mouse over a tab to show me the full title of the page that I'm currently on; I want to be able to see that at all times. On Vista, when I run apps that need to switch to Aero Basic from Aero, the top-right side of the interface gets rather jumbled. This is not pleasant to look at and needs to be fixed. Additionally, after you leave the browser running for a long period of time minimised, there is a noticeable problem when you switch between tabs. The page for the tab you switch to is initially blank, and it takes anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds before the page for that tab actually displays, which is not acceptable. I've also noticed slowdowns when the browser is left running for a long period of time.

In conclusion, I do fancy Chrome. It's a neat, fast browser. And I'll be looking forward to the final release which definitely has to be improved. However, I'm going to beat up the next set of people that use the term, "browser-based OS" when referring to Chrome, or any phrase that implies something like that for that matter.

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