C. Zhang's Technical Track

The Creative Zii

2009-01-10T02:07:00.003+08:00

Recently I saw some news about Creative Zii SoC solution:
http://www.zii.com/

It is very interesting.

Quote from flier's comments on Google Reader:

The computing power in the Information Era just like the electric power before. After power station (Mainframe), dynamo (PC/Server), the battery appears now.

That's cool.

My new Laptop

2008-12-12T19:34:00.002+08:00

Recently I got a new laptop computer, HP Pavilion dv4-1120us. The hardware spec (4GB RAM, 250 GB HDD and Core 2 Duo T5800 CPU) and price of the computer are both great, and the appearance is good. I like the HP logo on the back of screen. It will be on with soft white light when the computer is running. I also like the touch controls above the keyboard to control media players and WiFi.

I like the computer's Vista system, too. It is the first time I use Vista in daily life. It runs smothly, except that the computer management is so weak - there are no gpedit.msc! Also I found some issues of my TabIMSwitch. It failes to detect the count of valid input method so it cannot work. I am analyzing the problem and I will fix it as soon as possible.

When trying the multimedia effects, I found some issue in the sound output. The sound crackles when I play music, movie, even Windows sound. I tried different media players but the problem persists. After googling the problem, I found the reason is the sound card conflicts with the WiFi adapter (so strange, right?) Someone suggest to disable WiFi adapter - it is impossible for me because I rely on WiFi to connect to my home network, and my company network. At last I found an acceptable solution: you just need to disable 802.11a bands of WiFi adapter:

Start, Computer, System Properties, Advanced System Settings, Hardware Tab, Device Manager, expand Network Adapters, rick click on Broadcom, properties, Advanced Tab - Property - Disable Bands = "Disable 802.11a"

Someone says the battery life is short. I definitely agree with them. Even use the "Power Saver" mode, the battery can only support 2 hours of programming, and even less if I play background music at the same time. Maybe I can do more twists to make the bettery life longer. Most of time I use power supply so it may not be a very serious issue for me.

I also find the mouse touchpad has a design issue. When you type on the keyboard, the root of your right thumb may touch the pad and trigger a click. Depends on where the mouse pointer is, it may cause edit focus lost or fault operations. Fortunately there is a button above the touchpad, by clicking which you can disable the touchpad. Now I always disable the touchpad when typing.

Generally, the laptop is a high cost/performace ratio selection.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 and TabIMSwitch

2008-10-15T17:27:00.003+08:00

Yesterday Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 was launched by Mozilla. The new version of Firefox supports many new features, within which the most exciting thing may be the new, fast TraceMonkey JavaScript Engine.

How fast the new engine is? The anwser may be "Beyond your expetations" (See this comparation). Go to about:config now, type "jit" to filter box, and set both value to "true" to get the free lanch!

However, newer version of Firefox means more work for Firefox extension authors. We authors must do a regression test to ensure our extensions works for the new version. If you are not lucky, you may have to change code and repack the extension again.

I am glad to announce that my Firefox addon, TabIMSwitch, version 1.1.0.44, is 100% compatible with Firefox 3.1 beta, and even better, with the performance improvement of TraceMonkey engine, the latency of switching input method is shorten a lot.

I have updated the TabIMSwitch to latest version 1.1.0.45, which is a repack of 1.1.0.44, while supporting Firefox 3.1 Beta 1. Update your TabIMSwitch will not effect your Firefox 3.0 installation.

OpenInkpot 0.1 beta live mode quick review

2008-10-05T22:30:00.004+08:00

Today OpenInkpot 0.1 beta has released.

OpenInkpot is a Linux-based, open source, free firmware for e-ink based book reader device. Currently the Hanlin V3 device is supported, and supporting for Sony PRS-505, Kindle and many other device models are in progress.

OpenInkport 0.1 beta supports a very cool feature known as "live" mode. The mode allows OpenInkpot running from SD card, without flashing firmware. The live mode works well on my Hanlin V3, but I have to change the "boot-OI-v3.exe.txt" to "boot-OI-v3.exe.fb2" to make it execute. After boot, you can see familar Linux boot screen, and finally enters bookshelf. The bookshelf also shows book information such as author.

Selecting books from bookshelf is as easy as the offical firmware. However, because the book reader is based on FBReader, which does not support PDF format, it is not very useful for PDF collectors such as me. Moreover, Chinese font seems missed from the firmware, so I am not able to read my Chinese novels.

Although PDF is not supported, chm files are supported perfectly. Moreover, the important feature missed in Hanlin offical firmware, the supporting for hyperlink, also works here.

The last problem I encountered is the shutdown. I press the power button but no response. After consultanted openinkpot IRC channel, I finally exit from OpenInkpot: OK->Script->Shutdown.

I am really looking forward for the offical release of openinkpot now. Hope it not very far. :)

The yet another blog starts

2008-10-04T20:08:00.003+08:00

Recently when I read Eric S Raymond's articles, I decide to blog in English about my technical thinkings. My old Chinese blog on Live Space will just record my life.

Just as the name, the blog focus on my technical interests. I will select some valuable old Chinese blogs and translate them recently, maybe leverage Google Translate, :D. Also I will post new technical related essays, too.

Keep moving and keep tracking. :)