Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper

Having spent a few days with his MacBook Pro…

Saturday November 14, 2009

I recently blogged about Desktop Linux possibly having some core/fundamental problems that might be keeping it from enjoying mainstream adoption and 3rd party developer attention as compared to, say, OS X. To my immediate defense, I’ll say that it was actually more of a brain dump and rant (True Story!) than a well-thought-out dissertation on all of the issues at hand. The impetus in this case was: Frustration with a particular admittedly proprietary application that didn’t use to have any problems in Ubuntu 8.10, and since then has been nothing but trouble for me and roughly 90,000 other people. You may say that it’s unfair to fly off the handle at one proprietary application having problems and condemn all of Desktop Read more…

Apples, Desktop, Linux

Why Isn’t Desktop Linux “There” Yet?

Tuesday November 10, 2009

It’s a shame that my first blog post in months is something so antithetical to my normal posts as this, but 1) I haven’t blogged in forever (darned Twitter/Identi.ca/Facebook!!!) and 2) I just bought a MacBook Pro and am really happy with it thus far. So bear with me. Or don’t. I don’t care. If you’re in the mood for a good rant or are bored beyond belief or want to hear about how to get Ubuntu Karmic installed on a MacBook Pro (system 5,5), stick around. Otherwise, I’ll understand. So, I’ve realized that I need to buy a personal laptop for a while now but have been putting it off because it’s expensive and a big ordeal. I don’t do Read more…

Gadgets

I Can Haz a Palm Pre AND IT IS AWESOME!

Monday June 8, 2009

Woot, I got one! I’ll post again once I get the pictures off of the camera, but I got to the local Sprint store at 7:00 (AM!!!!) this last Saturday, waited for an hour, and managed to snarf up 2 Palm Pres– one each for my beautiful bride and I. I realize I need to put up something more deep than “WOW! AWESOME! OUTSTANDING! I LOVE IT!”, but honestly, that’s about all I can muster right now. This is definitely the device I’ve been waiting for the last 10 years. Amazing interface. Excellent graphics. Beautiful applications. Perfect synchronization with my Google information (it does desktop syncing too, iirc, but that’s so early 90’s!). REALLY fast USB data transfer (like, I’ve Read more…

KDE, KPilot, Music, Open Source

The Palm Is Dead. Long Live The Palm!

Thursday May 28, 2009

I believe I am one of the last few die-hard nutjobs on the face of this earth who still use (and “use” here is a highly subjective word meaning that I have a bunch of Palm devices lying around, am currently the only semi-active (and “semi-active” means that I get probably a good 2 hours of KPilot hacking in per year =:( ) KPilot developer, and occasionally even turn some of them on) Palm PDA devices. I have successfully resisted the siren call of the iPhone for the last 2+(?) years–partly because there is no functional synchronization solution between my Linux desktop and it, partly because it’s pretty bloody expensive, partly because Cingular has atrociously high data plans compared to Read more…

Life in General

Need New Linux/KDE4-friendly Laptop

Saturday April 4, 2009

Dear Lazyweb, I need to buy a laptop for personal use. I’ve been using Thinkpads as work laptops for so long that I think I’d like to try something else out for a change. It needs to be Dual Core/Core 2 Duo/whatever. Would be nice if it had a fast 200+GB drive in it. And it absolutely MUST have a fast, awesome graphics card in it that has zero problems with compositing, Linux, KDE4, suspend/resume, or anything else. Having dealt with nVidia cards for quite a while now, I’m guessing this means that the new laptop shouldn’t have an nVidia graphics card in it. I am so tired of the constant problems I have with KDE4 and the nVidia Quadro Read more…

Life in General

A Tale of a Flat Tire and God’s Goodness

Tuesday March 3, 2009

I pray a lot for my kids. I always have. I ask God to protect them, shield them, guide them, and watch over them when I cannot. Watching your oldest child reach 18 years of age, start college, start driving, and be out of your line of sight and protection for large parts of the day make you pray even more. And so it is that I missed God’s blessing entirely and went straight to angry, pissed off, frustrated, groaning, belly-aching, and in general no fun to be around this morning when my darling bride and I drove both cars down the driveway to get the annual vehicle inspections done. Thankfully, I noticed the flat tire about 30 yards down Read more…

Life in General

My Childhood Guinea Pig Named Squeaker

Thursday February 12, 2009

<kergoth> anyone messed with protobuf? <vanRijn> kergoth: i once had a hamster i named protobuf, does that help? <kergoth> fraid not <vanRijn> actually, it was a guinea pig <vanRijn> and it was named Squeaker <vanRijn> but still <darth_mall> vanRijn: that’s practically the same thing! <kergoth> hehe <vanRijn> darth_mall: I KNOW RIGHT! I think I’m getting too in touch with my emotions as of late. I actually got a little teared up, thinking about my cute little childhood Guinea Pig named Squeaker and his untimely demise. *sniffle*

Linux

Screencasting in Linux!

Wednesday February 11, 2009

I’m excited. I love learning stuff, I really do. I just did a 12-minute screencast for work, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to get everything to fit together nicely. I’d never done a screencast before–not on any platform–but being that I needed to showcase some development work that I’ve done for the next release of VMware Workstation/Player, and being that I’m working from home for the time being, I needed to get this all working in Linux, and as I said, I think I’ve finally figured it out, woot! For starters, I used qt-recordMyDesktop to capture the full-screen (1600×1200 resolution) video. I wanted to use it to also capture the audio portion of the screencast at the Read more…

KDE, KPilot

KDE 4.2 Released!!

Tuesday January 27, 2009

Woohoo! KDE 4.2 is released!! I only wish the last few KPilot bug fixes would have made it into the 4.2.0 release, but we were too late. Still, if you think you knew what KDE4 was all about, think again. Check out KDE 4.2.0. =:)

KDE, KPilot

KDE 4.2 KPilot coming! (how to both be excited and have realistic expectations)

Monday January 19, 2009

I just sent this to the KDE PIM mailing lists, but I know not everyone who uses KPilot subscribes, so I’ll re-post it here… Howdy all, I just wanted to get a note out to as wide a distribution list as possible to spread some important news about the upcoming KDE 4.2 release and KPilot’s (exciting!!) part in it. If you don’t care about KDE PIM, data syncing, Palm devices, or KPilot, you may stop reading now and I won’t be offended. =;P For the last 2 years, the talented Bertjan Broeksema and I have spent our Google Summer of Code months doing some major rework and redesign for KPilot. You can see our sync algorithm redesign Use Case here: Read more…