Schinckel.net

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I’ve not commented on iPhone related stuff before: mainly because I don’t have an iPhone, and won’t be getting one any time soon. It’s not that I don’t want one, but they aren’t coming out in Australia, and my new phone has still got a long way to go before it is out of contract.

The latest post, however, piqued my interest. Because it doesn’t just apply to iPhone, or any handheld device, but any computing device in general:

How are they even going to know which apps do continue to run in the background? They won’t. A likely reaction would simply be to regret ever having junked up their iPhone with any third-party apps at all.

From Daring Fireball: Foot, Meet Bullet

I have a Nokia E65, and one of the “great” features is true multi-tasking. I say “great”, because this feature burned me not too long ago.

I use Salling Clicker – mainly as an automated syncing system, but also for interaction between the phone and Mac in other ways – from a Growl message when I receive a phone call, and my iTunes pausing, to sending SMS via bluetooth. Typing is much faster on a normal keyboard! (Granted, this is using emitSMS, not Salling Clicker, but, meh).

Recently, I installed a bit of software that allowed me to download call and SMS lists, so I could access them and interpret my data usage patterns. It installed a background helper agent, which I didn’t even realise. Some time later I noticed I wasn’t receiving as many phone calls as before. It wasn’t a big difference since I mainly use the phone for calling, rather than receiving calls, but nonetheless it was a difference. When out at dinner with family, it came to a head. It turned out that every time someone tried to call me, the call was rejected, but not to voicemail. A second call immediately worked.

When a call came in, the phone displayed a (very short) out of memory error, and then this immediately disappeared. The light came on, which made me realise just how often it had occurred. I had seen the phone light turn on sometimes while my phone was next to me, but because the message was so short-lived, it had vanished by the time I looked at the screen. I’m talking less than a second here.

It turned out the faceless background app was using up all of the phone’s memory. Receiving a call initially failed, but if another call came immediately after, then it would work. I guess some memory was being freed, but being used again a short time later.

Long story short – I didn’t use the software I had installed, so junking it (and removing the installed helper, which wasn’t real easy) fixed the problem. But because the problem was intermittent, it was pretty hard to nail down.

I don’t even remember what the software was called. But I’m much more cautious about what I install onto my phone now.

I ffffound a wwwwebsite today. It hhhhas llllots of ppppictures on it. Ssssome of them aaaare vvvvery ffffunny!

I’m currently sitting in my new favourite place – the Flinders Uni Tavern.

It’s been a long time since I was a regular at a Uni Bar, but it looks like it will be starting again. I can sit in this place, view lectures I’ve missed, or even just seen, and drink beer. And do my work, while Alanis Morissette plays in a double-play.

Feels like the early 90s again. Except I have money, and a laptop.

And I plan on finishing this degree.

Java almost handles arrays well.

Almost.

Maybe I’m spoilt by python, but having datatypes that are effectively a hybrid between lists and arrays is excellent. You get both of the advantages – being able to iterate easily, and access by index (attributes of arrays), and having dynamic sizes and non-sparse lists (the only decent attributes of lists).

In fact, the text I am reading now has a three-and-a-half page code fragment called “Partially-filled lists”, which is about 200 lines of code, which implements what I describe. Except the upper limit of the size, which must be determined at compile-time. And it requires a new class if you want it to be for anything other than doubles, or whatever you have written it for.

The other thing which was bugging me was the looping of arrays. In python you can do cool stuff easily iterate over elements of an array. Recent versions of Java can also do this.

Python:

1     for element in theList:  
2         print element

Java:

1     for (element: theList)  
2         System.out.println(element);

It gets pretty close. I think I still like the simplicity of the python notation – brackets only where they are really required to indicate function/method calls, and for expression ordering. Having a required bracket around if test-expressions and the like just makes me think if, switch and so on are functions. Which they can’t possibly be, since Java doesn’t have functions, only objects and methods.

And don’t get me started on braces…

I’m studying at Flinders Uni this year – so far it has been pretty cruisy, with a summer school subject I think I got 93% for, and lectures started proper this week. Pretty much all of the topics I am studying, and a whole lot more are available as podcasts or video streaming. You need to be logged into the FLO (Flinders Learning Online – an excellent tool, from what I’ve seen) to get the streaming video (I think), but the podcasts are technically available to anyone. If you know the URL, for example:

COMP 3001, 2008 Audio Feed : http://video.flinders.edu.au/podcasts/COMP3001/audio/COMP3001_2008.xml

You should now be able to figure out the URL for any topic. Just replace the COMP3001 with your subject code, and audio with video, if you desire.

The files are quite large, but no larger than regular podcasts.

I wasn’t able to find anything on the University website(s) that prohibit me from making this information public, but it may be under copyright restrictions. So only use it if you are allowed to…