Support for Logitech mice in KDE 3.4
A few days ago I installed beta 2 of KDE 3.4, and really enjoy the small improvements that has been done all over the desktop since 3.3. Some are very visible, like the improved KPDF, but other changes are more subtle, like the new "Translucency" tab in the "Window behaviour" configuration. If the X server has the composite extension loaded, it will allow you to enable window shadows and transparency. It looks pretty nice, but as the whole concept of the composite extension is relatively new, it is not 100% stable yet. Hopefully, the next versions of X.org will improve that.

Since I am quite a Logitech fan, I am glad to see the new additions to the mouse configuration in the control center. Brad Hards has added recognition of 17 Logitech mice and wireless receivers, Some mice, like the MX510 I use daily, support sensor resolution switching between 400 and 800 DPI (Dots per inch). The MX510 defaults to 400 DPI, but with the new mouse configuration tool it can be switched to 800 DPI, making the mouse report more detailed info, which again makes it more precise. Anyone who plays first-person shooters (Like Enemy Territory) will have a great advantage of this mode.

Since I also have a MX1000 Laser mouse and a Cordless Optical Mouse (M-RM67A) lying around, I also tested them. As you can see from the screenshot, when a wireless mouse receiver is connected, you will also be able to see the remaining battery capacity of the mouse. If the receiver is dual channel - as those that come in kits with both mouse and keyboard - it will show what channel the mouse currently is using.

Just to see if I could confuse the configuration screen, I tried having both the MX510 and MX1000 plugged in at the same time. I was pleasantly surprised. It seems like someone already had thought of that, as all the control center module did was add a new tab. Both mice worked instantly without a hitch.

I really hope someone will follow up with something similar for keyboards, i.e. battery status of wireless ones, and especially easier configuration of multimedia keys. There are options to configure them in the control center, but they can be a bit confusing, and requires that the X server knows the layout of the extra buttons. Gnome seems to have handled it in a different way, as all my girlfriend's laptop mm keys was mapped in a minute under Ubuntu.

There are also work to be done to make the configuration of the extra mousebuttons easier. As it is now, the left/right mouse buttons and scroll wheel always works fine by default, but additional buttons require manually editing configuration files. A lot of people has requested a configuration tool for mice in KDE's wishlist system, but the developers have pointed out that it can not yet be added to KDE because of limitations in QT (The UI toolkit used by KDE).

KDE 3.4 is scheduled to be released on March 16th. I might add more info here if I find something else worth mentioning.
- posted by Mikal @ 20:45 0 comments

 
Transmetropolitan and Antipornguy
I'm currently plowing through Transmetropolitan, a very good comic book series by Warren Ellis set in the future about a journalist called Spider Jerusalem. In issue 41, I stumbled upon a monologue I just knew I had seen before. A mental patient is given a full page to express his views on issues like porn, abortion and homosexuality. Now, the funny thing is that some of the sentences are exactly what David McNamara, AKA "Anti-porn" gave on his web page a few years back. The page resided on home.dal.net/anti-porn (and later on www.antipornguy.com), and was his own presentation of himself and everything he wanted too see banned. It was a typical page you would send to your friends to point and laugh at. The quote "I am in favor of the death penalty for murder (including performing an abortion), attempted murder, rape, incest, pedophilia/child molestation, bestiality" matches to the letter, so I'm not talking about "remotely similar" here.

That finally proves that "Anti-porn" was fake, right? Made up by some bored geek for a cheap laugh? Wrong. Or, the page could of course have been made as a joke, but it seems like the author of the page did not rip off something he saw in a comic book. Google Groups shows sightings of McNamara's website as far back as June 2000. Issue 41 of Transmetropolitan was released in February 2001. Conclusion? My guess would be that Mr. Ellis surfed upon the page, thought it was insane, and then wrote David McNamara into the series. Of course, if McNamara finds out and wants to file a lawsuit, it will probably be because he is portrayed as black in the comic.
- posted by Mikal @ 22:47 0 comments

 
Oracle Night
On the second day of Christmas, we slept till three and read some more. I finished Paul Auster's "Oracle Night", a small book that I'm not really sure what was about. One thing I know, is that Paul Auster has gotten a new, bad habit. On every few pages, he inserts footnotes containing whole stories, and they can span over three to four pages. Bad Auster. He writes good, never gets directly boring, but this book really has nothing happening in it. I read Mr Vertigo. It had a story. I read the one about the silent movie maker (The title always slips), and at least it built up to something. Oracle Night can be summarized as "Main character is an author who had an accident. He fears writer's block, but gets away quite well thanks to a Portugese note book sold by a Chinese businessman who also arranges oral sex from a stripper for him. Has conversations with wife and wife's godfather. Godfather's son is a junkie who breaks into the author's apartment.". The End.
- posted by Mikal @ 20:14 1 comments

 
The Da Vinci Code
Preparing for my Christmas holiday in Norway, I brought three books to enjoy the time, shifting into a slower gear. I just finished the first one, "The Da Vinci code" by Dan Brown. It is quite famous by now, but for you who don't know, it is a present time crime/mystery where the main characters are thrown into a drama where they expose the history of secrets surrounding (among other things) Jesus, the Catholic church, goddess worship and secret cults. Apart from the religious/mystical theme, it is built up like a classic crime novel. The author paints the full story with broad brush strokes: The reader is spared of advanced nonsense like parallel story lines and jumps in time, and the need to go pages back to "just get into it again" is simply not there. The number of characters in the book is very low too, something along the lines of an average Hollywood movie. Now, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, as I still remember the pain of trying to keep an overview over the Buendía family in "One hundred years of solitude", but when reading this book it felt like the author didn't expect much from his readers. Another annoying element is the cliffhangers: The book is littered with sentences like "She opened the door and froze for a second, gasping at the scene displaying in front of her", followed by some "At the same time, somewhere else" paragraphs before revealing what the shocking sight was. Cheap. Really cheap. And transparent. But yes, I guess that makes the book a "page turner". The villain of the book is of the kind whose true identity you just know will be displayed at the end of the book, and then of course it will be someone that is in the main characters' vicinity. When that finally happens, he is so stereotypical evil /stupid that you just have to shrug. Not exactly Agatha Christie.
Dan Brown has been accused of mixing fact and fiction in this book, something I have no problem with at all. I really enjoy some of the subjects discussed. Secret societies, conspiracies, ciphers. It just has been done so much better before. Reading The Da Vinci code is like reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy after it has been cut, blended and poured into a low-fat crime novel sauce pan. If you like the secret society mythology in The Da Vinci Code, The Illuminatus! Trilogy will give you a solid overdose, and if you like codes and ciphers, especially with a bit of the history behind it, please check out Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Both books are fiction and very entertaining, but not on a "Reader's digest" level as The Da Vinci Code. Hail Eris.

- posted by Mikal @ 01:06 0 comments

 
A try
So, I just signed up to Blogspot, just to see what the fuzz is about. I probably will not even tell anyone about this page before I have written something that could mean I bother following it up. We'll see.
Celebrating Christmas at my parents' place now. I sleep, eat, read and watch tv, and my belly will for sure be bigger before 2005 is here.

- posted by Mikal @ 23:58 0 comments