piotrzurek.net

…all the time. Here’s the reason:

Happy baby, originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

A few weeks ago I have noticed a lot of traffic on the Psycho website. A quick look at referring sites showed me that it’s all coming from the Gnome page of Google Summer of Code ideas. Some kind soul has mentioned Psycho in the mind mapping proposal. Turns out that increased traffic on my website was the only positive outcome of that proposal. For some reason it was not picked us as SoC project. That was one of the things that made me decide to seriously get back to work on Psycho. It’s haunting me all the time anyway so I can just as well put the constant thinking about it to a good use and get into a usable state. As a part of that resolution I have decided to spend at least an hour a day hacking. We’ll see how that goes. The important thing is that I have also decided to rewrite the whole thing, although rewrite is probably not the best word here. It would mean that something valuable was already written… :-) Anyway, I’m starting from scratch and that should provide me with some additional motivation as I have a lot of new ideas that I’m going to be very eager to try.

• Complete separation of data and its visual presentation.
  Last time round the main object (Topic) was based on Gtk.Widget which didn’t really make a lot of sense. Even though it was using the MVC framework the data was still tightly coupled with the with. That will change and thanks to that it should be possible to write different frontends, not necessairly based on Gtk.
• Mind map widget as a separate Gtk# library.
  The first reason for that is the same as above but there are some additional benefits. I’ll try to make that library usable for others so maybe someone will be able to use it in some other projects. A mind map is an amazing way of visualizing all sorts of data so someone may find it useful. Beside it I was inspired by the amazing work that Aaron Bockover has done on his ListView widget and Banshee in general.
• Using MonoDevelop and Linux as primary development environment.
  I decided that it’s time to put my money… er… my freedom, where my mouth is. I’m complaining about being stuck on Windows all the time and still I’m choosing to use it when nobody forces me to. Of course the biggest factor here is the amazing progress happening in MonoDevelop which actually makes it possible.
• Using Git for local source code management.
  Well, just being trendy here… I’m using Git-svn to communicate with the Google Code SVN repository. I’m actually playing with it so much that most of my commits have around 2 lines. It’s better to commit too often than not often enough, right?
• Supporting Mono.Addins right from the start.
  That’s just something that I’m considering right now. It would be cool to enable other people to easily enhance Psycho’s functionality, but first I need learn how to do it. I guess it should be easier if I start doing that right from the start of the rewrite.

OK, so as you can see I have a lot of plans and I certainly didn’t abandon the project. As usual, some help would be nice. I have a lot of questions and doubts that someone experienced could easily answer. Without those answers I’m wasting a lot of time and I get very frustrated sometimes not being able to progress as fast as I would like to. So, if you were going to mentor a project for Google SoC but it wasn’t accepted, I could really use your help. Especially if you know a thing or two about Gtk(#) and cairo. Please.

Happy 2008
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.

Note to self:
Remember, it’s never so bad that it can’t get any worse… :-)

I’ve read it somewhere on the Internet a few days ago. Somebody was saying that Apple was looking at buying Autodesk and switching all their products to Mac OS only. It’s obviously a ridiculous speculation and I really don’t believe it could happen. EVER! Nevertheless I’ve let my imagination run wild for a moment and decided to write down what I was thinking…

Why would it be so beautiful?

Just a few of my personal reasons why I would love to see that happening:

• Big blow to Microsoft’s dominance
  I have nothing against Microsoft as a software maker. I just hate that I have no choice and when I’m not happy with their product I can’t simply switch to something different. For me, just like for millions of engineers, designers, detailers, draftsmen and other technical professionals there is no choice – we run whatever AutoCAD and other Autodesk products run on.
• I would get to work on a Mac
  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not an Apple fan boy. My system of choice would probably be Linux, but since I am stuck on an evil proprietary platform I’d rather be stuck on something as good as Mac OS (security, performance, stability, usability) additionally running on beautifully designed hardware.
• No funny looks at work
  Our industry (CAD/CAM/CAE) is so Windows centric that when I tell my colleagues at work that I am sometimes using a Mac at home they look at me as if I was trying to be original. A snob with a girly notebook (my gf’s MacBook).
• Just for the fun of it
  It would be really exciting to watch, just like a big storm on the sea. Not a lot of people would probably see that one coming and implications of such a move by Apple would be huge to the whole industry.

What could make you think it is possible?

During the last couple of months a few things have happened that could be seen as signals of something significant going on. No hard evidence but still enough for a hungry mind…

• This job posting.
  Autodesk is looking at hiring a BDM for AutoCAD and Apple is mentioned as one of vendors who would be selling and marketing it. Here’s an excerpt in case the original expires:

Business Development Manager: AutoCAD	Posted 02-Nov-2007
Location: 3950 Civic, SRF
Are you ready to travel the world, develop partnerships with major technology players, and grow a half billion dollar business as the Business Development Manager for AutoCAD? You must be a highly-motivated business person ready to develop a product strategy for selling and marketing AutoCAD with vendors such as hp, Dell, APPLE, Lenovo, Amazon, CDW, and many others.

• Windows application compatibility in Mac OS
  A few weeks ago someone has noticed something that was interpreted as a chance for Windows compatibility coming to Leopard in future versions.
• Autodesk buying out its own shares
  I won’t pretend I know what and why they are doing but maybe they want to accumulate some stock to actually have something to offer to Apple?
  (Edit 1:10 pm, 20 Dec 2007)
• They both like nice new toys
  Multitouch namely. We all know the beautiful and intuitive multitouch interface of iPhone and iPod touch, but if you read Scott Sheppard’s blog you have probably seen this and earlier posts on the subject. Multitouch interfaces seem to be perfect for CAD software and Apple definitely knows a lot about them.

Why I don’t believe it will happen?

I would be happy to eat my gym shorts if I’m not right but I simply think that Apple buying Autodesk is not possible. No matter how strong you wish for something to happen it won’t happen JUST BECAUSE you wish, unfortunately…

• Autodesk and Microsoft are too close
  Autodesk is all buddy-buddy with Microsoft. The next version of AutoCAD looks as if it was an Office 2007 application (ribbon control). They have created their DWFx file format as an implementation of Microsoft’s XPS and it is natively viewable in Vista. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation omnipotent file format called DWGx (if rumors turn out to be true) would be somehow based on the OOXML format.
• Too much work to port products to Mac OS
  I can’t even imagine how much time and resources would it take to port, even just the most important Autodesk products, to Mac OS. Maybe temporary use of some kind of Windows compatibility (as mentioned above) would be a good temporary solution but I find it hardly believable that anyone would like to use critical applications in non-native environment.
• Too much resistance from Windows users
  A lot of computer users don’t cope with a change very well. Especially if they use their computers as tools at work and they only care about getting their job done. For them a change of platform would be just an unnecessary disruption.

Why would it make sense for Apple?

Obviously it’s all about the number of users and revenue that they bring to the company. Think about over 8 million of seats of AutoCAD (only legal) and multiply that by the price of a single Leopard license. That alone would give a number close to $1 billion and although it is the biggest, AutoCAD is not the only Autodesk product that people would like to use on a Mac.

• Access to a huge community of technical clients
  Apple hardware and Mac OS would become an instant standard in a number of different engineering industries. They are already pretty strong (or even dominant) amongst professional photographers and graphic designers. There is also a decent number of architects using ArchiCAD on Macs but bringing Autodesk products to the table would introduce Mac OS platform to all sort of engineers and big corporate customers.
• Halo effect or platform synergy bringing new customers
  Huge number of people use Windows at home just because they use it at work. Either because they simply don’t know Mac OS or they don’t want to use two different environments. Bringing AutoCAD (Inventor, Revit, etc.) to Mac OS would introduce it to a lot of people that would simple prefer it over Windows or again use it at home just because they use it at work (or school). This way the number of new Mac OS licenses would probably be much bigger then the number of Autodesk product licenses.
• Media & Entertainment products
  Over the last couple of years Autodesk has acquired a few companies that that are widely used in TV and movie production. Disney and Pixar are probably amongst significant users of those systems. Can you smell the connection already? Huge render farms running on Mac OS on XServ must sound appealing.
• Leverage in product politics
  Apple never knows when Microsoft decides to kill off Office for Mac. If they decided to keep Autodesk products running on both platforms they would have something to keep Microsoft playing nice. Of course before iWork becomes a full blown Office replacement. It would also give a lot of ISVs a reason to treat Mac OS on the same conditions as Windows.

Why would it make sense for Autodesk?

Well, I don’t believe it would unless they make it run on both platforms, but that’s not really the point here. If Apple buys Autodesk it is supposed to be good for Apple, but looking at the graph below I know in whose boat I would like to sit. Apple is still worth half of Microsoft but its value is growing quickly and consistently. They have overtaken IBM already and probably have enough cash in the pocket to buy Autodesk as a Christmas gift to all the people patiently waiting for AutoCAD on a Mac all those years.

Click the image for 6 year value growth history.

Update (10:40 am, 20 Dec 2007):
We all know how impossible that story is, but if you have something that would back it up I would love you to see your comment. That could develop into a nice bogus gossip. :-)

Recently I have been seeing a lot of dark themed screenshots and I think I could get used to that. But you know what I could get used to even easier – not coming to the office every morning to start my Windows machine. Somebody put me out of that misery, please…
Click the image for a full size screenshot.

Wow! I have just noticed that the “Hybrid” button in Google Maps was replaced with a “Terrain” button. So when I use it on my Google Maps default location it looks like that:

View Larger Map

Of course there are better things to look at than your own neighborhood. Like for example those fascinating features of the terrain in Venezuela:

View Larger Map

Over the weekend I’ve felt a sudden urge to listen to one of Ben Harper’s records. I went to iTunes to check the price and availability – $17.99NZ for a DRM-ed version. Ahem… A bit pricey compared to what I’ve seen in Amazon MP3 downloads – $8.99US for unrestricted MP3 version. Of course, I knew Amazon shop is US only, but nevertheless I clicked the button to make sure they really didn’t want my money. Turned out they didn’t:

We are sorry…

We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions.We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

I understand that Amazon and music labels treat that project as an experiment and after it proves to work it will be (hopefully) extended to other countries as well, but without a given time line when that could happen, it’s really hard to accept iTunes conditions. Beside it, it doesn’t really take a lot of special powers to predict that a globally accessible MP3 shop offering what Amazon currently does, would beat iTunes hands down and could easily become a standard in music distribution. Come on Apple, Amazon – you can’t overcharge like that or make clients jump through hoops when illegal sources are so easily reachable.

So, guess what?! Nobody got my money and I’ll leave it to you to guess to what I’m listening right now. Oh, and of course I’ll buy that album as soon as Amazon or any other shop offers me the same deal the US residents get.

It’s up to you – that’s what Radiohead say when you ask how much is their latest album. The album is released in 2 versions: as download and as discbox. The discbox is basically ÂŁ40 worth of goodies which is a bit pricey, however the download version costs… as much as you wish to pay for it + credit/debit charge. I’m not the biggest fan of Radiohead, but I loved the idea so much that I ordered the download straight away. I declared ÂŁ5 as my price – it’s about $10 at the moment so somewhere around what I would have to pay in the Amazon MP3 Downloads. I wonder if my order was accepted if I declared that I want to pay ÂŁ0.01? Anyway, cool marketing idea – I wouldn’t buy a Radiohead album otherwise…

I use Google Spreadsheets to let everyone interested how my blood test results look from week to week. It’s so cool that you can just publish them for everyone to see. Today I have been playing with charts and as a result of that, you can see how my white cell count looks since I have started taking Glivec. It would be nice if the chart could be created as a separate sheet but it’s really a minor thing. From the first moment that I started using Google Docs it was pretty obvious that feature-wise it will be very hard to replace full blown desktop applications. Unless… there is enough added value that desktop apps cannot offer. For me there are three things that provide exactly enough additional functionality to dump desktop spreadsheet. First of them is the collaboration tools (sharing the document with others for editing), the second is the possibility to publish the document as a website for everyone to look at and the last feature that is rather hard to manage on desktop is revision management. So, I’m a complete convert – I’ll never buy M$ Office (not that I ever have).

On the leukemia-side-of-things – seems like currently I’m slightly below the norm but it also looks like my blood is stabilising and I hope that in coming weeks it will climb up a bit.

Amazon selling DRM-less mp3
Good on ya, Amazon! I have gone straight in and bought an Elvis Costello’s album (which I highly recommend) with songs that I already owned on CDs but didn’t bring them over from Poland. It will be nice to listen to them again. I have paid US$8.99 for 22 songs which is a lot of bang for a buck… In order to download the whole album you’ll have to install the Amazon mp3 Downloader – currently available for Windows and Mac with a Linux version coming soon. After songs are downloaded they are automatically imported into iTunes and are ready for upload to the iPod. Theoretically the service is limited to US but it’s not verified otherwise than by a zip code matching to a state. So, if you’ve ever seen fabulous adventures of Brandon and Brenda, you’ll have no problem coming up with a zip code that you can easily match with appropriate state. Anyways, seems like Apple will have to rethink their ugly monopolistic strategies. Cool stuff…

My progress with leukemia
Well, if you look at my results it seems like I haven’t got it any more. Of course it’s not that simple. The Philadelphia chromosome is still there and if I stop taking drugs it screw my blood picture back again. The only real way to get completely cured is getting a bone marrow transplant, but that is not really possible at the moment. But the drug works fine and hasn’t got any really sever side effects. From what I noticed so far I’m getting tired very quickly. Usually around 2 p.m. I am so sleepy that I have problems keeping my eyes open. Also, if I don’t eat enough before taking the drug I feel pretty sick, but that is easy to avoid. The problem is that a lot of food together with a constant feeling of being tired doesn’t really improve my fitness.

Immigration stuff
I have finally decided that I haven’t got much energy to spare and decided to get a lawyer and allow him (in this case her) to get it sorted for me. It’s going to cost a bit but at least it’s one monkey off my back. That should give me some peace of mind. I hope it’s worth it because if I get kicked out I’ll find myself in a real financial black hole – with no income and a lot of things to pay for.

Hacking on Psycho
Yes, I’m back to it. Again… Currently I’m working on a style manager and at the moment I’m writing it as a separate application. After I figure out how exactly I want it to work I’ll plug it into the rest of the project. I just wish I wasn’t so tired in the afternoon so I could focus a little better and do some more work.

CAD on Linux
This is something that, because of my job, interest and education, I really care about. That topic appears here and there (and even here – btw, some really stupid comments here) from time to time and then disappears without any constructive result. In my opinion this whole thing boils down to two separate issues. No proprietary CAx (CAD/CAM/CAE) system running on Linux (Solaris, BSD, whatever) being one of them and no free and open source CAx that could replace (not even remotely) proprietary applications on the other side. Big dry desert and no hope for rescue. On top of that there is one more battle to lose. DWG seems to be the standard format for CAD data. Everyone who wants to exist in CAD has to work with DWG. Now, rumor has it that Autodesk has DWGx file format in works. Basically CAD equivalent of Office Open XML. The problem is that there is no ODF in CAD, so if Autodesk decides to standardise it they will have a much easier job then MS with OOXML. OK, enough about that for today. I think that I have a long post about it coming pretty soon…

Update: 
Seems like Amazon has done something to restrict mp3 downloads to US only. I get a “geographic problem” message when I try to download anything.