After a long wait, Adobe finally released a native Flash plugin for 64-bit Linux, which is quite great because my desktop PC is 64-bit. That means I no longer have to use ugly/slow hacks like installing nspluginwrapper (I actually never got that to work) or installing 32-bit firefox binaries just to watch YouTube.

Although this is still an alpha release, I find that the plugin works great as I had no problems so far with YouTube, sound, fullscreen mode or 3D graphics. So if you want to try it out, you can download it directly from the Adobe Labs website.

Finally, there is an interesting tidbit about a 64-bit flash for other operating systems in the FAQ:

Q: Why aren’t the Windows and Mac 64-bit alpha versions available on Adobe Labs?

A Release
of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step
in delivering upon Adobe’s commitment to make Flash Player native
64-bit across platforms. We chose Linux as our initial platform in
response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue
management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship
with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by
default. Until this prerelease, use of 32-bit Flash Player on Linux has
required the use of a plugin wrapper, which prevents full compatibility
with 64-bit browsers. With this prelease, Flash Player 10 is now a full
native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions. We are committed to
bringing native 64-bit Flash Player to Windows and Mac in future
prereleases.

It seems that complaining to the big companies CAN work!

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This morning Trolltech (now part of Nokia) released a preview of new application called Qt-Creator, a lightweight IDE optimized for developing Qt applications. Being a big fan of Qt, I’ve decided to give this IDE a quick spin and in the process I decided to play around with WebKit that is included with Qt 4.4 and up.

The result is what made me write this post; within minutes I had my very own functional (but very basic) web browser! The surprising part was that it did not even take many lines of code. All I had to do was to open Qt Designer (integrated into Qt-Creator), add a web widget, back/forward buttons, an address bar and connect it all with Qt signals. The only important actual code I actually wrote was to connect the address bar with the web widget.

Fain, this browser is very simple and doesn’t really do much. But nevertheless it is impressive what can be done with so little code. Instead of having to mess around with parsing and displaying a web page, one can spend more time improving the UI… I already have a few ideas that I want to try.

In the meantime if you want to see the source or play around with it, I made a few packages of version 0.1 available here:
Source Code
Linux Binary (Needs Qt4.4 Installed)
Window (Coming Soon)

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For the last one or two months I’ve been running the alpha releases of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex on my Thinkpad X61 Tablet, and I’ve found that many things got broken. However I will not blog about them right now, since Ubuntu Intrepid is still in the “testing” phase and so it won’t be fair to complain about the bugs at this stage. However there is one problem that affects me greatly; the hdaps module responsible for reading data off the accelerometer does not work. Since this a very important feature of the tablet, if combined with automatic screen rotation (a much improved script coming soon, I promise!), I figured others would be interested in knowing how to fix it.

But first, a description of the problem. If you have tried Interpid and tested hdaps module via the hdaps-gl or hdaps-pivot application, you would find that no matter how you move your laptop, the module will give you the same value over and over again.. Right now I have no idea why the problem is happening, but others have come across it too and there is a bug report for it opened on Launchpad.

The fix for this problem is quite “simple”; you just have to download the sources to the module (found with the tpctl project, more specifically the tp_smapi packge) recompile manually. If you do not know how to accomplish that, I suggest that you try the guide that I wrote during Hardy Heron’s trouble with the hdaps module. The only difference is that you will have to make sure to use tp_smapi version 0.39 or greater, as anything below that is not compatible with the 2.6.17 kernel shipped with Ubuntu Intrepid. Of course, the guide has been already modified to reflect this.

If (or should I say when) Ubuntu fixes this problem in their version of the hdaps module, I will make sure to write a follow-up post. Another alternative to receiving a fast update is to subscribe to the actual bug report mentioned earlier.

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A few days ago I’ve come across an interesting puzzle at the Physics Forum. The general answer given is the same one as what I though, but I think you should give it a try too before reading the rest of this post.

You’re in a room with three switches that open three light bulbs in a separate room. You don’t know which switch turns on which light bulb. How do you find out which switch goes to which light bulb by entering the other room only once? You don’t have any help, you can’t see the other room while you are in the room with the other switches or vice versa, you can’t make any device that extends your reach into the other room, etc.

Show ▼

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This joke was mentioned in a discussion over that the Physics Forums about proving the Big Bang Theory. For some reason, I found it to be very funny.

The famous joke about a bunch of scientists observing a cow from a train.
Look says the astronomer - all cows in America are black
No says the physicist - there are SOME black cows in America.
Then the mathematician says - there exists at least one cow which is black on one side.

(And finally the computer scientist says - look at the moo-moos !)

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Watch the video above to see an example of CERN physics at work. Well, someone has to tell the public about the “deadly” experiment they are running.

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The above video demonstrates what happends when you place a cornstarch-water mixture, a dilatant, on top of a speaker. A dilatant is a material that responds differently to pressures; if you hit you apply a lot of pressure it will solidify but if you apply a little bit of pressure, it will act as a liquid. Now combine that with a source of varrying pressure, like a speaker, and you get some amazing effects.

What someone has to do now is to do the same expreiment on top of a speaker emitting a constant frequency in order to try to get resonnance patterns in cornstarch.

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If you haven’t heard yet, Team Firefox did it and set a new Guiness World Record in most downloads in a 24 hours period. That’s right, over 8 million people downloaded Firefox 3 the day it was released.

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Happy Canada Day, eh!

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Today is Firefox Download Day, so make sure to do your part in helping to set a new world record. That’s right, the Spread Firefox project is taking advantage of the release of the brand new Firefox 3 by attempting to enter the Guiness Book of Records for most downloaded software in 24 hours. So do your part, and DOWNLOAD FIREFOX 3!

If you have never user Firefox before, checkout the list of top features or watch the tour to see why you should download it.

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