I’m not a believer of one application does it all, but more on “do one thing , do it good” side, but for Yahoo! Messenger I kinda put my expectation a bit diversed. And the latest update really does excite me. It can do voice, so i can voice chat with my overseas friends without having to switch to other software, although Skype still a champion here, but I think it will be nice if software that I use nearly all the time to connect to my friends can also do voice call once in a while. It can save transcript into message archive, a good feature for business and long time feature on Win Y!M. And many other thing, that makes me thing that Y!M Mac developer team really know how to prioritize. I couldn’t care less about audibles or changeable smiley sets, so I missed nothing in that area.

One thing that bothers me is Sending SMS to mobile number. Okay, it is a text message to mobile, but WHY the hell the UI have to resemble cellphone keypad ? I know it only for phone number entry, but I see no reason to play cute here, even on a Mac. It’s a desktop PC, no space limitation, no keyboard limitation. What make it worst is that it was not intuitive at all. I click Send sms, a big icon on top of a chat window, then pops up that clumsy little mobile phone keypad… what the hell is that ? do i type the message there, or do i enter number there ? Why not just pop a dialog asking enter recipient mobile number , then go back to chat window. Sigh.. Not sure where or what is wrong, maybe it’s just me, or maybe the UI design team are wacky enough to create such annoyance inside a great sofware… Come on, Kai Krause’s concept never really took off, why trying too hard to catch with it… Once again.. Sigh…

It was launched just 2 hours ago ( I check the time countdown counter )and I know that it’s all intended for marketing purpose, but i know when i see it that it’s not just MS-ish whistle and bells demo… Just take a look at the new desktop, it’s as clean and tidy as Tiger desktop, but subtle difference let you know that it isn’t Tiger, namely the perspective look of the Dock. Look deeper, and you find Stacks, Cover Flow view, Quick Look and all other hoo hah hidden neatly in simplicity.

Then take a look at Time Machine, now that, is backup system done right… Really, it has visually great looking interface, let you freely roam into backup filesystem as if you’re working with your current files, but with time dimension added. It let you do preview, full view of the files in question, and restoring is a simple click away, right down in file level.

Spaces, hmm, I’ve using this in Linux machines for quite a while ( years actually, right from the start ) but now I can have it built in OS X is simply a great news. Expose is cool, Spaces make it even cooler…

Other stuff like iChat are cool also but I don’t think I will use it as much due to lower internet bandwidth I have here at home, Mail also greatly improved and it works much like Google Calendar with the date recognition.

So, this is how a desktop OS should be done, simple, no fuzz, with everything you need right there when you needed them. I’m not trying to start a OS war, but comparing to Vista ( yawn ) it is waaayy cooler… I tried to setup Vista on my sister’s new laptop to connect to home wireless network, and it was a pain, the OS gets in the way, asking too much security confirmation … Hell, what am i doing, i’m not trying to break into DoD here… and then i just knew that it was just a simple checkbox to turn on the wireless module… worst thing is that checkbox was hidden under one of wireless setting which there are several different types of them lying around. No wonder MS have so many user certification for it’s product, let alone all those books and tutorial teaching you simply how to use the OS, and you’re not even close to being productive with the OS and application that run on it. And with all that flashing button, semitransparent look and 3D stuff, what the hell was that for ? I don’t mind with all those flashy stuff, i certainly do mind if they become the cause of animated waiting circle on *every* click i made, even in 1Gb RAM machine.. sigh…

I’m not kidding you, but even Linux has done much better job on this department than Vista tried to claim to be.

Anyway… I just can’t wait to get my hands on Leopard upgrade DVD now

Okay, it’s time for replacement… then i found out that the warranty period was ended, at exactly the time that thing broken

Anyway, I’m happy now, because i can get a new one, with the same features like 4 ports ethernet, plus wireless G connectivity, all in one compact package… yaayyy !! Now i can get online while watching tv downstairs in the living room… hooray !!

But wait… it doesn’t have power switch ?? yikes, i could be in trouble here, because the internet service is time based, so the billing varies depending how long i get connected… and i’m too lazy to open the web browser and do connect disconnect through control panel… oh well, maybe it’s time to get unlimited service, if only internet cost in this country goes down more… I wish …

why ? because i can, that’s why… okay, okay, because i want to be able to use that oh so great and almighty Ruby on Rails, brother !

Actually, many have advised that you just need a handful of Ruby basic to be able to use Rails, but i think that will be equivalent of having a ten thousands French word traveller dictionary and then fly to Paris.

The bigger picture is that i’m sick and tired of all those “mine is better than yours” attitude when it comes to programming language. I believe that a programming language is no different with natural language. You use it because you need to communicate and furthermore, get things done.period.

I only believe that one language could do specific purpose better than others, but i never believe that there is one ultimate, do-it-all language. I also have preferences, mostly because i need to get things done quickly using language i deem fit for the right job. Hey, why should i write a servlet if all i need is just a simple contact form and mailer ? spare 10 minutes of your busy time and use php, that will do fine.

There’s a saying : “Good programmer learn one new programming language every year”. There’s nothing more i could agree with. My first language was BASIC, the version for IBM PC-XT, then Pascal as in Turbo Pascal, then a little bit of Assembler, because i think that will be cool if i can directly control PC hardware using it, which i then drop because it brought me more headaches than fun, then a little bit of C/C++, javascript, then PHP, which i find useful to make a living… I learn a bit on some more exotic language, like Scheme, Haskell, and even Erlang, and … it’s like learning Latin, what the hell was i thinking … I learn and then use Java by force, because i have projects that require it, which is okay, at least i can create nice software for my phone, then came Python, by which then i also learn the beauty aspect of a programming language, and now came Ruby, which is even more beautiful, because it has strong resemblance and logic of natural language, namely English language, a human language, yay !!

No, I’m not praising Ruby, but the point is, every language has it’s own strength and weakness. And also depend on your habit and common sense on using them. Human has uncanny ability to adapt, while paradoxically make them averse to changes. Like hitting semicolon in Python and BASIC, or forgot that indentation is a must in Python, i think those are glitches commonly happen in natural human language, of course , syntax is more stringent in programming language, but you see the big picture.

I truly believe that programming language is like natural language, in a sense that every individual programmer has one language the know best, like native language, although they’re not necessarily like it, because that will be the earliest language they learn to understand the concept of programming. And then came another ( or several other languages ) they learn, and then like to use, because they find it easier to fit their needs, and make their good living nonetheless

I strongly encourage learning multiple programming language, just so we know that there’s no point on “mine i is better than yours” attitude. PHP tends to become a mess of spaghetti, we all know that, Perl is arcane and makes me feels old, Java is slow and resource hog, etc, etc… but also remember, PHP is easy and forgiving, Perl has short list of reserved functions, while having a huge repository of nifty modules ready to be used by anybody around the world. So, I suggest, go out and play, find out about lots more programming languages, from the cryptic one into the most elegant one, and you’ll see why becoming (programming) language neutral won’t make you less valuable from the rest of the world. It will only teach you to tap the best of each programming languages, and never the other way around.

No different with AJAX, since there is nothing new in the technology, just good old Javascript plus some ingenuity on using dormant browser feature, then you get a whole new buzzword, which in turn, if you can do it well enough, will raise your self esteem among your fellow programmers, or maybe raise in salary or fee since now you can say “I can do AJAX too” to you boss or your client.

From user perpective, no one cares… all user see is that now they can click on your website and the information pops up quickly, without having to wait for the page to reload. What does it mean for them ? You may say, better user experience. But, be aware, user comes from all walk of life, meaning, they access your site using many different kind of browsers, devices, and don’t forget, many different levels of infrastructure capacity and capability.

Internet users still varies greatly these days, even with all broadband, wireless whatever technologies.. major portion of the world is still using dial up, yes it is true, and believe it or not, old OS like Win95 is still alive in many many places, meaning IE5 is still around ( yeah, bad enough to have IE around, let alone the old one )

I’m not exaggerating things here, because this is what happen in my country. I once had a shocked overseas client when I told him I had to switch to dial up connection because he broadband connection went down.

Ok, regarding the title above, in my opinion, a good developer should be aware of everything above mentioned. Developers rarely concern about accesibility, many of us simply trying to create “cool” stuff, create the next Facebook, or Google, or WhateverCoolToday sites, then after that wonders, why there’s only a few people visiting, let alone registering and become returning user ? When that day comes, look back at your codes, don’t look at marketing people, at least, recheck your codes before you throw flames at marketing

What does these have anything to do with AJAX ? AJAX is cool , and it provide better user experience isn’t it ? Hmmm… AJAX put more strain to the server than ever before. that’s one for a start. Back in the days, a hit means one user accessing one url, or one web page, if she stays for 10 minutes on the same page, doesn’t really matter because no request sent to server during that 10 minutes ( well sort of …). These days, take example of a page with autoupdating AJAX widget, when a user access it , read that page for the same 10 minutes, she wouldn’t even realize that during that 10 minutes of her visit, her browser has sent hundreds of request, AJAX request or XHR if you prefer geekier term. Put more variables into the situation, let’s say, her PC is a rather old Pentium 3 laptop, with bundled Windows2000 and yet to be upgraded IE5.5 … She connect to the internet using 50kbps residential shared broadband connection, on peak hour which only give her only a portion of the term “broadband”… chances are she won’t even stay for 10 minutes, but if she survived, then that will become a strain on her PC too.

Think about this when developing web application in general, not just when being cool developing AJAX. Good developer do test, meaning, not just testing for the functionality and reducing bugs, but also test in every condition possible. Remember, you develop for user, not just for your personal enjoyment ( but if that the case, then good for you, you may scrap all my blurb here ). In my experience, you can throw anything you want to the user, they will grab it instantly, but on the other hand, they are smart enough not to swallow everything, and when it happens, they simply move on and forget about your site entirely.

Other thing is mash ups and APIs… I personally like the concept of sharing with the world for the better, but I never understand how one can build a business out of somebody else’s application API. How realiable could it be for the user ? Fine if the API come from Yahoo, Google or the glorious Facebook, but what about so many more that provides API because they want their application to grow bigger, not because they think their application is usable, unique and people really demand API to get connected ? reliability is the main concern here. Just take example of pre Ajax mash ups, the banner exchange… nothing too smart about exchanging banner, but when a website has too many different affiliates, with different infrastructures, and different server loads, it will become hell for the user because pages will load with random and somewhat significant speed difference, and hell for the developer to figure out which affiliate link cause the problem. Things get worst when banner exchange start to use javascript, which is NOT threaded, therefore, it will be executed in blocking sequence, and once it stuck on one affiliate code, it will attemp to finish that block of code first before moving on to another block. If it stuck forever, you’ll get crashed browser, or simply half complete page staring at you.

Okay, no worry.. I do believe in progress, and I also believe that technology will solve it’s own problem, but in the mean time, there’s nothing wrong with becoming developer with conscience. A developer with good understanding on what user will need and use, rather than developing something too advanced and too sophisticated that will defeat it’s own usability.

Doing some googling on ffmpeg again last night, and then attempting another install on my ubuntu server, which I actually thought just another useless attemp, but I got nice surprise this time, here’s the story :

I was stumble upon this url :

http://desukyu.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

an Indonesian blog with nice step by step instruction on how to install ffmpeg in Ubuntu Dapper. The result I got was just barely working ffmpeg… This is useless… I want my amr and aac codecs !!! …

Then I notice one of the step mention a url that finally lead to this url :
enable-mp3-and-amr-support-in-ffmpeg-ubuntudebian

It was an old one, which I saw and try to follow before, but no luck… Anyway, what the heck… I’d try again… and again, no luck, it’s working but no amr and / or aac… Hmm, I saw that there’s one thing I haven’t try, install from precompiled binary… yep, there it is.

I remove old ffmpeg ( apt-get remove ffmpeg ), then download the precompiled binary from here

Install…
dpkg -i ffmpeg_0.cvs20050918-5ubuntu1_i386.deb …

then wala !! amr_nb and aac pops out in supported codecs formats … sweet !!

I’m not sure if the precompiled package comes with all necessary dependencies, or it was result of the steps I previously taken, but the stuff works, and that is all I need

Feeling turbocharged I move on to find a way to install ffmpeg in my mac, and here’s what I found…

http://www.ffmpegx.com/download

Yeah, I know, it’s a GUI software, but hang on… The GUI is just front end for many other back end programs, and one of them, the big part of it, is good old ffmpeg. So, I figure it must be there somewhere to be utilized via command line. After another googling while waiting for the 30Mb download, I’ve found another enlightenment :

http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:Modules:ffmpeg#Usage

Which says :

if you are using Mac OS X for development/test/webserver and you have Gallery2 installed on it, use the steps listed below to get and install the ffmpeg binary and to configure the ffmpeg Gallery2 module:

1. Download ffmpeg [1]
2. Open the .dmg package
3. Control-click on ffmpegX.app and select “Show Package Contents”
4. Find Contents/Resources/ffmpeg
5. Copy ffmpeg to somewhere like /usr/local/bin
6. … ( the rest is irrelevant to my need …

Installed ffmpegX, find the ffmpeg binary and copy to /usr/local/bin… check

run ffmpeg -formats … sweeet !!! amr_nb, amr_wb, aac nicely sit there

run a couple of tests converts from and to 3gp, mp4 and flv, everything worked… video ok, audio ok, it simply works like a charm.

Oh the joy of open source …

Okay, I need to sleep, suddenly got a headache… just realized the sun is rising, it was 6 am, another all nighter, but nice one…