January 25, 2012
Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics
This workshop provides a venue for work in computational psycholinguistics: we invite a broad spectrum of work in the cognitive science of language, at all levels of analysis from sounds to discourse. It will be held at NAACL-HLT'2012 in Montreal.
Find the full Call for Papers here.
Posted by dr at 2:28 AM | Comments (0) - Leave a comment now!
December 6, 2011
Full-screen mode in Mac OS X "Lion": a solution to the DVD watching problem
Lion's concept of reserving a separate space for full-screen windows is great in principle.
However, this doesn't work so well on multiple-display setups. One example is DVD Player not being able to play a movie on a secondary display.
Even when the external display, such as a projector, is set up as the main display, the user won't be able to do work while projecting the movie.
One idea for a friendly and intuitive fullscreen concept would be to modify the function and appearance of the fullscreen button (top right of window) if the window is on a secondary display. In full-screen mode, the window will then behave as on pre-Lion systems: it will not occupy its own space, and the primary display is retained for regular use. In this mode, the fullscreen window on the secondary display is the topmost layer, and all other displays behave as if the secondary display was not part of the display set. In particular, switching screens will not change the secondary display. (Internally, when the user switches screens, the full-screen window is moved automatically to the new screen and kept as full-screen, top-most layer, so it will appear static. The animation for screen-switching will have to adjusted accordingly.)
This mode of interaction seems conceptually intuitive, even though it introduces a second kind of fullscreen mode. I think it matches the use cases that people have quite well.
Posted by dr at 10:07 PM | Comments (0) - Leave a comment now!
September 16, 2011
Pilot's Logbook
I've uploaded the first version of my Excel spreadsheet for pilots, which gives you an electronic log book. While geared towards glider pilots, it should also work fine for other General Aviation pilots (who may need to add a place of landing and a large list of airports).
The log book prints statistics about currency as pilot-in-command, in single/multi-seaters, different launch types and high performance sailplanes, and it minimizes the work needed to make entries.
It's free, licensed under the GNU General Public License, and available here.
Please send me useful changes, ideally via Github. I can't promise to reply to support requests due to my general workload.
Posted by dr at 6:45 PM | Comments (0) - Leave a comment now!
January 13, 2011
The new rockstars
Posted by dr at 10:44 PM | Comments (1) - Leave a comment now!
January 11, 2011
iPhone 3G with iOS 4.x and jailbreak: Fix for crashes and a battery drain issue.
Plenty of trouble with my jailbroken iPhone 3G, which I run on T-Mobile in the US. Apple offers its iPhone bundled with an AT&T contract, which keeps the initial payment down (attractive for delusioned customers) and the total cost of ownership up (good for Apple and AT&T.)
To use an iPhone with any GSM network (such as AT&:T or T-Mobile in the US, and virtually any provider in Europe), it needs to be "jailbroken" and "unlocked". The process is simple: download a program called "PwnageTool" from a website, run it over the iOS operating system that was downloaded with iTunes (.ipsw), then install the operating system on the iPhone with iTunes. Once the firmware update has been installed, start the new Cydia app on your phone, find the Ultrasn0w application and install. That's it: your iPhone will now accept GSM SIM cards from all carriers and in all countries. PwnageTool only runs on Macs. If you are still on Windows, have a look at a program called Redsn0w.
The real know-how is in the details, and the iPhone-Dev team makes you read a lot of text before getting a corse idea what to look for. On top of that, crashes and battery drains have made my life difficult over the last few months. Here are the solutions I found. The apply to the iPhone 3G, but not to later iPhones (3GS, iPhone 4).
Installing iOS 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 on iPhone - slowness, crash and reboot issues
Lots of trouble. First the incredible slowness IN IOS 4.0. The solution was to upgrade to 4.1 when it finally came out. This wasn't as slow, but buggy in conjunction with the iPhone-Dev team's Jailbreak. Crashes galore all complete with a reboot that took many minutes, just when you're urgently looking for directions. A clean slate supposedly helped: restore the iPhone via iTunes and a jailbroken operating system file but one had to avoid restoring one's data and apps from a backup in iTunes. The manual restore is easier done than it sounds: ITunes synchronizes all data from the Address Book and Mail.app. Of course, if one keeps mail accounts or phone numbers in the phone without syncing them back to a computer, the install process will be much more involved. This solved the crashes for me.
I upgraded my phone to iOS 4.2.1, with the iPhone-dev jailbreak and the ultrasnow unlock. The trick here is to make sure that the phone's baseband version is compatible. Then, no baseband upgrade should be performed. Pwnagetool will ask you whether to upgrade the baseband.
Battery drain issue with iOS 4.x
The ordeal wasn't over for me, though. Now I dealt with a phone that drained its battery At an impressive rate - it would not last an afternoon. Online pundits have suggested many solutions to the problem, but the correct one appears to be that the iPhone keeps checking for "push certificates" via a Wifi or EDGE or 3G data connection. These certificates fail to validate, and the checking goes on. The Data Usage statistic (in Settings -> General) demonstrates these transfers.
One solution is to use a new version of Redsn0w for the jailbreak. If using Ultrasn0w, install a further Cydia package called "Push Doctor". This has fixed the battery drain issue for me and others. Important note: uninstall OpenSSH afterwards, or at least change the iPhone's root and mobile user passwords.
Posted by dr at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) - Leave a comment now!
