Bevan Rudge on drupal, usability, open source, tech...

UPDATE: iTerm version 0.9.5.0821 has been released which is intended to fix this. I haven't tested it.

I just upgraded to iTerm version 0.9.5.0820 from 0.9.5.0611 on Mac OS X Leopard, and found that iTerm had forgotten or lost all of my preferences and bookmarks.

I fixed it by;

1. quitting iTerm
2. going to ~/Library/Preferences/
3. moving net.sourceforge.iTerm.plist to net.sourceforge.iTerm.plist~
4. copying iTerm.plist to net.sourceforge.iTerm.plist
5. starting iTerm

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A short, quick and easy tip for views theming and customization.

To customize the text or the destination path/url of a 'view more' link in Views. Add this to template.php in your phptemplate theme and add cases.

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My attempt to upgrade my unlocked and jail-broken first-generation iPhone were badly timed with Apple's release of version 2.0.2 firmware about 24 hours beforehand. This meant I initially couldn't use quickpwn because I couldn't restore the 2.0.1 firmware.

Nevertheless quickpwn (windows only) worked once out of 3 attempts on 2.0.2, but wouldn't unlock the phone for my vodafone-NZ prepay SIM card. It stopped everytime after operation 0, and once restarted at operation 5 or so after I disconnected and reconnected the phone.

Then I discovered how to select alternative IPSWs (like iPhone install/restore disk images) in iTunes with alt+'Restore'-button (Thanks CNET) and managed to install my custom IPSW created by PwnageTool. bl46.bin is required by PwnageTool, but not included; I think for legal reasons. After accidentally downloading bl39.bin instead, I found bl46.bin here and here.

I now have everything working. Remote app and WPA2-entreprise (radius server) are 2 apps / features I really appreciate! Things.app is also syncing and working fine!

iTunes restored my settings and some of my data (Notes/stickies, alarms etc) when I connected the newly-pwned phone to iTunes for the first time. Although, as expected I lost all the jail-broken 1.1.4 apps which do not run on version 2 firmware. Some of the main ones (namely twinkle) have new versions in the iTunes store or through Cydia (Alternative to Installer.app; Installer doesn't really work yet). Twinkle and some other iTunes-store apps are free.

I have 2 4 relatively minor problems;

• WPA2 Enterprise at my university requires ienabler, or a similar tool, to get past the firewall. I can't find such a tool for the iPhone.
• I can't open Bash (via Cydia) to show on Home after installing it. Am I missing something?
• The phone doesn't lock itself after one minute, even though I have it set to do so.
• MobileMe doesn't seem to work with CalDav-synced google calenders and has made a big freakin' mess! (I got it on the free trial for the experience, and to see if it might be useful; but I don't expect so).

To rebuild the menu in Drupal 6 you have to go to admin/build/modules.

In drupal 5 the menu is cached in the cache_menu table, so it is easy to invoke a menu-rebuild by emptying the table with a simple mysql command like TRUNCATE cache_menu;. (I have a handy script that empties all tables starting with cache_).

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On Saturday I was fortunate to be able to see Richard Stallman speak right here in Christchurch, NZ. He spoke on "free software in ethics and practice"; the issues of non-free software, how it affects our society, what the FSF is doing about it, what we as individuals and computer users can do about it and free software in schools and education. He spoke extensively on the "four freedoms" that software users should be entitled to and even suggested they should be classed as human rights. He also promoted the FSF, giving away stickers, selling his book, selling stuffed (animal) gnus and encouraging folk to join the FSF.

While the talk was thoroughly enjoyable, I don't agree with some of the fundamental ideas on which the free software foundation and movement is founded. I wouldn't consider myself part of the "free-software movement" as Richard defines it, nor would I consider formally joining it. I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software.

I use and I am happy to use and pay for proprietary software while;

• no equivalent and useful free or open source software exists
• I have no reason not to trust the distributor, and
• the software remains reliable, useful and worth any costs.

I find Richard's points of view rather extreme. I believe that proprietary software can and does have a place in our society and economy, without negative effects on society. Of course, as in any industry, there are nasty folk, often tending to be monolithic corporations, whose behaviour, such as the moral abuse of software they create, has negative effects on society. However even if all software were free, these people would still be nasty, greedy and contribute negatively to society -- possibly in different industries or with different media.

Further, I believe that without sales-funded development of non-free software, software, whether free, open source or proprietary, would not be as advanced as it is today. That is not to say that I prefer proprietary software over open source or free software; I don't. But I do accept it.

There were a few points and quotes that I found particularly interesting, controversial or entertaining;

• "When a friend asks you to share [proprietary] software with them, you can either say 'No' which is evil because they are your friend, or you can say 'Yes' which is evil because you are breaking the agreement with the software distributor. There are two solutions to this problem; 1. Don't have any friends, that's what proprietary software implies, or 2. don't use proprietary software."

  (or something to that effect)

• "It's as if there's someone drowning. If you can swim and there's no one else around, you should save them -- as long as that person is not Bush.

  (or something to that effect)

• Richard considers most popular GNU/Linux distributions, including Fedora, Ubuntu and most derivatives to be non-free, because they contain non-free binary firmware (device drivers). Richard himself pointed out that source code does not exist for much of this firmware. Fubuntu (spelling? link?) is free, but Richard won't endorse it because it is too similar-sounding to non-free Ubuntu and "He can't practically support one, but not the other", or something to that effect.
• Richard considers SaaS to be non-free based on the principal that you do not have control over the system computing your data, even if the server-side and client-side software employed in that SaaS are all free.

As I have noticed elsewhere in my limited observations of the free software movement, I noticed a number of subtle similarities to religious movements. Personally I find this a little off-putting, almost disturbing. Richard's sketch on "The Church of Emacs", although it was entirely fictitious and entertaining, suggests to me that Richard realizes this, and perhaps even enjoys, provokes or encourages this.

The "Church of Emacs" sketch.

The talk was at the University of Canterbury where I take some Computer Science papers. It was well-attended and was part of the "GNU Zealand Tour". Richard recorded the session and said the recording would be made available under a creative commons no-derivatives license. If or when I find it I'll update this blog.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of Bevan Rudge, and are not representative of any company or other individual.

UPDATE: I found someone who seems to, at least in part, agree with me; foobar on geekzone.

Jakob Neilsen has written about the 10 best application UIs of 2008. And NZ-made Xero comes in at #10! First of all, congratulations to Xero, the Team and Rod Drury!

Neilsen is recognized as one of the leading usability, analysis and UI design experts in the world. So his recognition of Xero, from little old NZ, is significant. He went one step further and used Xero as an example of how to implement lightboxes / modal dialogues well. He also gave Xero extra kudos for the emotional design, given that Xero targets a traditionally 'dry' audience:

But Xero might be a more interesting example, simply because it targets the traditionally dry domain of accounting. One of its main features lets users automatically reconcile bookkeeping entries with bank account transactions. As a match is made, the 2 matching entries are removed from the list of stuff to be reconciled. Users compared this interaction to playing Tetris and described it as fun and addictive. Come on, making accounting fun? That's an award-winning design.

(Emphasis is mine).

Disclaimer: I use Xero, enjoy it and find it extremely valuable. I recomend it to NZ freelancers and home, small and even medium businesses. I am not affiliated with Xero in any other way.

The Usability Testing Suite is in Beta! Google Summer of Code student Jimmy "boombatower" Berry has been coding hard and fast all this great usability testing tool.

The Usability Testing Suite is intended to be used for remote 'guerilla' usability testing. Currently it allows a usability test designer/engineer to create a study with a bunch of tasks, and invite participants to attempt the task, whilst remotely capturing data about the pages / urls the participant visited, the forms they submitted, what data was entered, and allows the participant to log typed live feedback as they go. More data capturers are planned (outside the scope of SoC) that will make this tool a really valuable asset to the Drupal Usability community.

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Drupalcon Boston sessions were all recorded on video and have been made available on archive.org, thanks to numerous drupal community members and other Drupal resources.

(This is quite out of date now, but better late than never.)

Here are the videos from my talk on Scalable Theming: Theming for 100s of node types, CCK fields, and views:

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I've been away from home for the last 12 days. CivicActions' Full-team and Engineering Offsite Advances in Playa Del Carmen, México, started last Tuesday 8 July and finish last Monday 14 July. I arrived in Cancún 6 days early and did some backpacking around the South-East of México, El Petén Northern Guatemala, and Northern Belize.

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Mozilla has finally announced Firefox 3's launch date; this Tuesday 17 June. (Note that's probably US time, so it will be Wednesday in NZ).

Mozilla wants to break a guiness world record for number of downloads in one day and I'm sure they'll achieve it. You can go pledge on spreadfirefox.com (A drupal site): http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord

I created a "FF3 launch party" event in Christchurch for kicks on mozillaparty.com: http://mozillaparty.com/en-US/events/view/101

I think we get some free gear if enough people come or something.