The tablet market has really skyrocketed recently with the release of the iPad. From the image below you can see how really unjustified this success is. In my opinion its about a company who found a gap in the market and used it to exploit their customers. Anyway one good thing has happened from it all – the popularisation of the tablet. Companies are starting to create their own versions of the tablet and that is creating lower costs, new designs and greater specs.

So for a new computer I decided to get a tablet, and not just any tablet – one that could actually be used for everyday computing. I searched for quite a while and in the end came up with two products which fit the spec exactly. They are the Eee Pad EP121 and the Touch Book II. The thing they both have in common is that they are not just tablets – they can be used as laptops as well. This is, for me, the perfect compromise between a tablet and a laptop – because it is a tablet and it is a laptop!

The Eee Pad Ep121 hasn’t actually been released yet, but it is expeceted to be announced on the 6th January at CES 2011. A full list of specifications has not been released, all thats known is that it’s a 12″ touchscreen powered by a Core 2 Duo CULV processor. It runs Windows 7 Premium and weighs 1.48 lbs ( less than the iPad ). It supports multi-touch, has 2 USB ports, a SIM card slot, a HDMI out and has a 10 hour battery life. The size of the hard drive is not known, but since it has a big screen that leaves plenty of space for a big one. It is detatchable from the keyboard and touchpad part as seen in the video below:

The Touch Book II is made by a company called Always Innovating who openly support open source software – even the custom Linux distro that runs on their tablets is completley open source. The Touch Book comes pre-installed with Chrome OS, Ubuntu and the company’s custom Linux distro. They support the “do what you want with it” approach and even offer free technical support for people trying to install other OSes on their devices.  The tablet comes with 512 MB RAM, 8GB main storage, bluetooth wireless keyboard, two internal batteries, 3 USB connections, a HDMI out and all in just 3lbs:

At the moment I have to say I am swayed towards the Eee Pad, but it will have to have some reasonable specs for me to buy it. What would be ideal is 1GB RAM, 32GB Hard Drive and an SD slot capabale of holding a 32GB card or 64GB card. I do like my space and going from 500GB to potentially 64GB will be tough but the future is in cloud computing and Asus offer 500GB free cloud storage ( for the first year ) with the tablet. I think I could live with that.

The Touch Book II ships at $399 which is quite cheap. There is no current price indication for the Eee Pad but I would be willing to pay more for space, memory etc. It will be pretty cool if I get it, anyway I’ll update on January 6th if the product is announced.

First you need to download the swatch package from here.

If you haven’t done it before you will have to set up cpan and it’s a lengthy process. Run cpan in the terminal. It’s safe to say yes to all the options. Once it’s installed you need to add some perl modules. In the cpan prompt add the following modules:

install Date::Calc
install Date::Format
install Date::Manip
install File::Tail

That’s the perl part finished anyway. Now change to the swatch directory and compile:

perl Makefile.pl
make
make install

Ok swatch should be installed now. So set up the configuration file: vim ~/.swatchrc Add the following lines to the file:

watchfor /PHP Parse error|PHP Fatal error/
bell 3

Save and return to the command line. Now to add swatch (and also optionally apache and mysql) as a startup item do as follows. Create a new directory named StartUpItems, then create the following files so your setup should look like this:

StartUpItems
StartUpItems/StartUpItems (a file with no extention)
StartUpItems/StartupParameters.plist

Now add the following contents to StartupParameters.plist:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
< !DOCTYPE plist SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd">

    
        Description
        Various Startup commands including Swatch, Apache and MySQL.

        OrderPreference
        Late

        Provides
        
                Starts up Swatch, Apache and MySQL.
        
    

That’s just a file required by OS X to recognise the startup item, don’t worry to much about it. Now to the StartUpCommands file which is a bash script:

#!/bin/bash
. /etc/rc.common

StartService(){
        ConsoleMessage "Starting Apache, MySQL and Swatch"
        apachectl start
        /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start
        /opt/local/bin/swatch --daemon --config-file=/Users/conormacaoidh/.swatchrc --tail-file=/var/log/php/php-error_log --pid-file=/var/run/swatch-httpd-errors.pid
}

StopService(){
        ConsoleMessage "Stopping Apache, MySQL and Swatch"
        PID=`cat /var/run/swatch-httpd-errors.pid`
        kill -9 $PID
        apachectl stop
        /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server stop
}

RestartService(){
        RunService stop
        RunService start
}

RunService "$1"

The file

/etc/rc.common

is provided by apple and makes the process a lot easier, though it is not needed. The lines in StartService and StopService do the opposite of each other but are very similar. You may need to change the apache and mysql start/stop commands according to your own setup. If you are using MAMP this file will start apache and mysql:

/Applications/MAMP/bin/start.sh

As for the swatch line you will obviously have to change the config file location and the php error log location to what’s appropriate on your machine.

And that’s it really. Then copy the items to the correct directory for OS X to recognise them:

sudo cp -R StartUpCommands /Library/StartUpItems

It is vital that you change the permissions or else the startup item simply won’t be executed:

sudo chown -R root /Library/StartUpItems/StartUpCommands
sudo chgrp -R wheel /Library/StartUpItems/StartUpCommands
sudo chmod -R 755 /Library/StartUpItems/StartUpCommands

That’s it. You can test the configuration by running SystemStarter -n -D which will emulate what happens when the computer starts, it is useful for de-bugging.

So restart you computer, load a php file with an error in it and your machine will beep thrice!

My Macbook

A few weeks ago I saw a bargin mac on ebay – link. After careful (spur of the moment) consideration I bought the thing. It arrived about a week later from Spain.

At first it seemed alright and I began configuring. Then I noticed that there was something wrong with the battery. It would only last for about ten minutes and then it would run out – even though the icon on OSX said that it was at 100%. Turns out that the battery is worn out and won’t charge properly. I contacted the company i bought it off and they told me that they would send me a new one. A week later it hasn’t arrived – but I trust that they will send it. It’s not a major set back as I can still work with the computer plugged in.

On the first night I got the machine I downloaded a combo software update, to upgrade from 10.5.4 to 10.5.7. When I restarted to complete installation I was greeted with the infamous macbook blue screen. Anyway what happened was I fell victim to a fault only affecting spcefic macbooks with this specific update. So, not much of a problem. Just stick in the installation disks and either repair the OS or re-install it. Oh shit, I have no installation disks. The feckin fella forgot to package them. I got in contact with him and asked for him to send them out.

When the disks arrived I stuck them in, then realised that they were Tiger install disks, not Leopard – which is a completley different OS. Adding to that the disks wouldn’t even install because they were built for a a different model! At this stage I got sick of waiting and went to a local mac guru to fix it. He re-installed Leopard for me and fixed it. A few days later I got the blue screen again!! I was so angry. I rang Apple for help and they asked me to pay them €50 for phone support. Not a chance. Then I tried to obtain a copy of OSX Leopard and was asked to pay $130. Not a chance.

After trying about every trouble shooting option available I gave in and began searching for somewhere to download Leopard. About 10 days, 3 Disks and 2 Bottles of Whisky later the 8GB disk was downloaded, let’s just say that I didn’t pay €130! Burnt it and installed. Works a charm! Finally, hopefully the problem won’t recurr again!

I like OSX generally. Web development works well with Mac as well. I can have the best of both worlds – Windows and Linux. I can have Adobe CS4, which I am downloading atm, and xampp at the same time. Pretty sweet! Anyway now I can enjoy the world of Mac and stability and all that…!

Anyway after making some #webme templates I got paid today. So I was casually walking around the town with a good bit of money on me. I started by buying a new book, Learning Java by O’Reilly, a whopper at almost 1,000 pages. And the price certainly reflects that! After that I thought; I wonder how much a new iPhone would be?

Turns out that all the bills that are on my account, phone x2 and broadband, had combined to, in the space of 8 months, offer me a platinum upgrade which is pretty much “the shit” when it comes to upgrades. So a normal non-billpay user would pay €350 for an iPhone. They quoted me €50 for mine! Which is in fact a quarter of the quote that Apple gave me to fix my old iPhone!

So while casually walking through town once again, thinking about getting a new iPhone, I mentioned my stroke of luck to one of my friends. He proceeded to offer me €50 for my current iPhone which had a broken screen. Why would I say no to that offer? Remember that if he wanted to buy one it would cost him €350. Basically he was just buying me a new iPhone!

So that’s how I got my new shiny sparkly iPhone! It’s great – even better than my old one! I am undergoing the process of jail breaking as I speak but keep that on the down low

On another related issue I broke the screen of my iPhone the other day. Annoying but it still works. Apple quoted me €250 to get it fixed. I’d rather just use a broken iPhone to be honest!