What a handful Calculator !

I got lot of bitter experience with Windows 8.1 but still quite noob with it. Often I click the wrong shortcut for calculator from the start page where I launch App version instead of desktop version which on the next right list.

Just want to show that Software maker will race to make bloatware that parallel with current hardware level. MS said 8/8.1 has lower RAM requirement than 7 (well for some Windows 7 feature cut off that's already make sense). But probably they're after to compromise something else...

The inherently RAM sucker WindowsApp. After took several seconds to launch an eightened/flattened version of MS Calculator Plus (2005), I decide to look how much RAM it took.

A WindowsApp Calculator took 20MB (more than Virtual Box manager need)
A Vista/7 Calc need 3.5MB
And for the record XP Calc is about 750KB

That's roughly 5x increase for each generation to do the same task: crunching numbers. You could apply this comparison to other WindowsApp too. Also imagine if everything ported to WindowsApp...

Maybe when 32GB RAM  is common for consumer PC the next-gen calc will need 100MB to do "1+1" calculation... complete animated full 3d button with raytraced soft shadow and fully reflective OSD. Wait... at the moment it's backward evolution remember? we're heading to low tech mobile device where you can only view, read, write and play. Wake me up when Ipad can construct the next gen Game.

At the background of the screenshot, you can see the container of an App.. uhh ohh remind me of OSX's App bundle eh? Indeed while you could see numbers.exe there, it won't run by just double click on it (not in desktop mode at least). The container (the main folder) is a hierarchy of executable, settings and resources. This I think is how in the future apps will be standardized for Windows hmm I wonder. I need to have a look more at this stuff considering MS unlikely change their mind to retire desktop app in the future.

Windows 8.1 64bit was run as Guest under VirtualBox 4 under Windows XP 32bit

Weeks of Maps and TPX

I've been spending 2 weeks dealing with maps for several related projects, exploring several (new to me) better projections such Cahill-Keyes-Waterman and Fuller. Probably GIS guys already knew this stuff but in case anyone (newly) interested in maps I have some tips.

OK first what about google maps, google earth or wikimapia? well if you ever find a reason for not using online resources then read on.

Since many Earth datasets has fall under public use, there are many efforts to bring "open source" friendly yet highly detailed maps for mere mortals. Unless you're GIS guys you may not need SRTM, Landsat, VMAP, WVS, CDC's shapefiles and others as there are several ready to use (or easy to setup) maps for people with zero GIS experience.

Vector maps:
- Wikipedia users have made accessible vector maps here (the most detailed svg): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World98%2B.svg
- Duncan Webb's Cahill-Keyes World Map (draft) : http://www.genekeyes.com/DW/DW-1.html
- Gene Keyes's map sources also made available in OOo draw format (need GIS knowledge) : http://www.genekeyes.com/MEGAMAP-BETA-2/
- CIA's factbook (less detailed but up to date) : https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/download/‎

Raster maps (not ready to use but easy to setup) :
- http://www.paulillsley.com/gia/index.html

Among above vector maps, wikipedia map probably the one that readily editable. For inkscape users, 15MB file is quite common/average but 15MB of just polyline is really heavy one! I have been using Tpx for some months now and it fulfill my need of semi-technical drawing. When I try to open World98+ map above, I thought it will suffocated but Tpx handle this file with just 60MB of RAM. Trying to do this with inkscape will freeze your computer winamp's playback -_-! But then how to edit this file efficiently?

Well in Tpx the drawing area is "barely" movable and zoomable, redraw takes several seconds (at any zoom) but no redraw for undo though. So maybe with more powerful CPU it may do. But there is easier way. Since Tpx spend little memory, you don't need to worry of running out of memory (how convenient).

Tpx don't have layering system like inkscape nor understand xref like CAD. So we do chunked file management.

- break the groups

 - copy-paste each region into new session of Tpx

remember that copy-pasted chunk will preserve coordinate/location, so to merge back simply use copy paste operation again.

- the ideal editing workspace is at country/states level:

Lesson learned:

Good application is the one that have good combination of stability and features not bloatness, and part of the stability is smart memory management. Tpx may lack much of SVG features such as gradient ramp/mesh but talk about mission critical apps: "before you can edit you need to open it!". Sorry if I sounds like making a dig to inkscape, but damn they sure know how to make bloat. I want my old sodipodi back!

 Additional note: In case you wonder how the world98+.svg created from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World98.svg. The metadata says:

"Generator: Adobe Illustrator 14.0.0, SVG Export Plug-In . SVG Version: 6.00 Build 43363)"

yeah a real world app huh!?

Another dropbox failed

Ah I'm not learning from past experience to stop using dropbox for crucial files in this blog, look now, many images are goner. >,<

Yeah I finally lose another dropbox account few days ago.

I really wish Google stop their menacing "chrome 'em all" campaign, first blogger's image uploader always fail under Opera browser (otherwise I'd not use dropbox), then translate.google.com behave infinite recursed iframe  under non-chrome browse, then they stop providing pr0n friendly google image too, ok the latter is irrelevant.

But dear Google, I'd never use your browser until it could run under Guest account (or much restricted one if any)! I'm a privacy freak, I'll eliminate all updater (*pointing at google and others) that try to run without my consent, I visit sites with multiple level of proxy (stupid government, they put most of global internet access redirected to Singapore) and I mostly browse in private mode with alias of course. Oh and I avoid "please invade my privacy by default" OS such as Windows 8.

Back to dropbox, I have made backup to several place although wont do it to all files. Sorry

List of UPX Illiterate AntiVirus

I want to make a black campaign and my target is some consistently ignorant AntiVirus makers.
Thanks to virustotal.com for make this painless

Simple case:
1. gplc.exe (gnu prolog) https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/9e2acb4176669e48f7a0aadd3fcbb39ade979b8843be87db9da5a42fe10ec290/analysis/1362534179/
2. pack gplc.exe with UPX https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/381976956f94d747407e9beaa9231dacdbd6bc19093621cc8058a3bbd09f3b06/analysis/1362534370/
3. unpack packed gplc.exe with UPX https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/86323543730fc67432854d6ff4eceaa6b0a8096befbce37fa6062d9e4450d4ff/analysis/1362534576/

The suspect file http://osspack32.googlecode.com/files/GPLC.7z

And the award goes to:

1. TheHacker
2. TrendMicro
3. TrendMicro-HouseCall

Now that's just a simple case, but if an executable involving networking functionality the analysis of our AV "champion" will goes into cosmic territory and hallucination... such pathetic and irresponsible (they will rely on user report) behavior should never exist in a software of AntiVirus caliber. More.. some big company make actually malware-behaving software and force AV maker to whitelist them as reported by nirsoft. But when false-positive involve open source technology it become ignorance

UPX itself is an open source software to compress executable.

So stay tuned with this page for most updated list of antivirus whose programmer can't read any single line of UPX source codez. ha ha

So what? Why just "don't use UPX" and that "UPX is useless, bla bla... anyway" ?
Well because we're human dude, and we fix our mistake !

Overhead! overhead

The next tuma mingw should be a big one, really... a bloated one! thanks to the fairly long period after 0.6x the last release, it's now really turned to a distro of console based apps inside ConEmu box. I got miktex and whatever tex (asymptote, dblatex, jade, etc) integrated, along with dozens of additional tools. But I have big problem: clean-up

The cleanup turn out really overkill, I have done it almost every weekend since the end of december and still not finished yet. The total size expectedly grow almost exponentially. The number of apps? sheesh I've lost count of it, one thing for sure all of them are OSS and not even freeware can be included (maybe one grey area exception).

My msys folder has been accumulated to the level that executable lookup (those in PATH environment) is slowed down to a noticeable 1 second. But then wasn't it is the same condition for a fully installed cygwin too? dunno but it's really annoying.

I think it needs renaming too, something like Crossblaw: Console oRiented OSS between Linux and Windows. Afterall it's not about my gcc build anymore... Now now the name get bloated too lol

I hope it could benefit many Windows users (especially newbie) who want to taste the best that generic Linux has offered, powerful loads of console apps. Because I know that the GUI part of Linux is still no match for the undead XP. Vice versa of course.

Final problem: How I supposed to upload this monster (if it ever done)? too bad I'm living in a country with medieval internet infrastructure.

Gotta sleep now

A Peek at MyPaint on Windows...

Not exactly what I want to write, but I have skipped the whole month now. Last weekend I tried latest mypaint and things are out of my reach. I couldn't build it normally at all and quite lost in the scons scripts but nonetheless I managed to made it. Still http://gna.org/bugs/?19948 (I'd personally call this release blocker for Windows) is here to stay. I try read the commits which trigger this windows specific bug but it seems to be a part of larger internal changes in mypaint.

So guys it would be nice if someone step up and fix this annoying bug, your help is greatly appreciated!

mypaint

Sorry about the lame void in the shot (gosh that's XP still living?), I have made some nice technical sketches but when I hit F10 (resize to fir) all my drawing has lost in space. Current MyPaint get basic pseudo-vector ability which great for prototyping, symmetry mode and more supported colorspace. Actually there is several performance-related experimental features that can be enabled but I'm not getting there at the moment.

About the future of MyPaint well this is just an opinion, a speculation from experience. With MyPaint migrate to gtk-3 thus using pygi (and possibly python-3), It would be most tedious migration I've ever seen before for Windows platform, I meant where is PyGI now? Not even a release yet... and GTK-3? usable but not ready. Lets just hope Windows get some priority in the upstream sooner.

The dreaded question is how gtk-3 handle tablet this time? with gtk-2 there are many users complaining about their tablet which likely gdk<->wintab issue and since gtk is a gnome project (a dominant linux GUI), priority for other platform is somewhat lower than other cross-platform GUI. In the past decent releases has been fewer too. From interface point of view, last time I checked (gtk 3.4.4), it's already native themed but I can't made it work with mypaint since my experimental pygi build can't deal with gtkbuilder (maybe because I use 64bit off_t and time_t which is ABI breaking?). Anyway it still a bit early for pygi in windows...

This build here is a manual build and unlikely I will maintain that build environment anymore.

MyPaint_011212git.7z

Test and report bugs! your reports are very valuable in the release process, I believe the lag bug is workaround-able.

Freenode banned toonel.net

Just noticing now why pidgin so stubbornly not logged me in into #freenode IRC. Why banned? what about my privacy? People with public IP? Come on that's no fun at all, I need to hide my ass from any possible intrusion and penetration. Even now, some sites have also banned Opera's proxy a.k.a "Turbo mode" which also hide your identity. Now what? should I use the sluggish Tor network?

Really.. is this part of ACTA SOPA or PIPA so they could catch their prey easily? arrrgh

Oh no I'm the admin

It's complete BS if one said linux is much^2 secure than windows. I remember clearly when I use Linux as root it took only few hours to render it unworkable and later unbootable, it was 10 years ago when Linux at its infancy. Few years ago many "friendly" distro started to ban root account usage with the rising popularity of sudo practice.

Linux as desktop/workstation OS?

Root usage
Linux IT guy: man you do it the wrong way
Me: But Windows worked that way
Linux IT guy: Windows is flawed and ignorantly user friendly
Me: But most people are flawed and ignorant too
This explain why Linux adoption is slow for desktop, now that NT 6 is adopting the Linux way.. things getting harder for Linux to convince people.
Lesson? the one that ignorant is OS with no ignorant user (noob) awareness, Windows' system did give lot of safety measurement even for reckless administrator! need more? practice LUA (this rendered as UAC in NT 6) if you're still on NT 5 like me

The Bullshit of Mega Tsunami Documentary

Hard Evidence vs Marketing Mumbo Jumbo
So the movie made by western and the research "presumably" took place only at Mediterranean sea (in oddly prehistoric timeline). The claim (computer generated prediction) is brave too!

I just watch it by now, a post 2004 Aceh tsunami documentary movie production to remind the recently Japan tsunami. The first time I heard the words "prehistoric mega-tsunami happened in Mediterranean sea" is like RETARDED. Of course it doesn't *sounds* nicer if they say ahem Pacific right? I meant who's the audience anyway. This similar to err the super volcano from US documentary instead of the more scientifically provable Toba super volcano. Then I think, so what cause that mega tsunami? wait there is no significant moving seabed there! so if it's not tectonic then volcanic? (still on my mind) of.... ETNA?!

Guess what next they mention it!