Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

One thing with this summer's average weather: we're getting some lovely sunsets. Clouds and contrails catch the light as the sun sets over South West London.

Putney, London
August 2007

Layers of light as the sun sets over South West London.

Putney, London
August 2007

...like staying up far too late at night trying to get some code working in an unfamiliar development environment and in an unfamiliar language targeting an unfamiliar OS.

Still, we end up with something decent in the end. Here's some more words at The Register, looking at Trolltech's Greenphone:

Trolltech's Qtopia is a commonly used mobile Linux. It's used in a large number of different devices – from Sony's mylo communicator, to Motorola and Panasonic's Linux phones. While you might not have come across it in the Carphone Warehouse, it's a common platform in one of the biggest mobile markets going – China.

But how do you develop for a phone platform that's not widely available over here? And how do you develop applications that link deep into a phone's operating system – and even change the behaviour of that OS? You could work with a phone virtual machine (after all, Microsoft's phone simulators are actually custom versions of Virtual PC). Trolltech is offering another approach – the Greenphone, a phone designed for developers along with a development platform that makes it easy to work with all aspects of the hardware.

Read more here.

This time I ended up learning enough C++ and QT to actually get an application running on the Greenphone. It's a pity I'd never actually written a line of C++ before - let alone targeting Trolltech's Qtopia.

Now, can I get my hands on an OpenMoko device for a companion piece?

I'm writing a Photoshop tutorial at the moment, and one of my intermediate images came out as though it had fallen from an alternate 1950s Russia, with that stylised propaganda poster look I like.

Putney, London/Orlando, Florida
August 2007/June 2007