Act different

Kindle 2 PDF format

Mihalis — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:37:32 +0000

Very recentrly Amazon has added an update to Kindle 2 to support the PDF format. It’s a step to the right direction, however, the result is kind of dissapointing. The text is too small to read, has no support for switching sizes and no support for highlighting. The only thing one can do is set the orientation to horizontal but though better, not satisfied (you can’t read the whole page). Two hundred $ are too much for this trick.

Amazon has to update further it’s PDF format support.

Outlook 2007 too slow

Mihalis — Thu, 06 May 2010 17:15:28 +0000

Today I got my gmail account working with Outlook 2007. I wanted to be informed for new messages and thought to myself: why should I install gtalk, I have Office 2007. Well, I realised, installing gtalk would be much easier, at least for my nerves.
It is unacceptable in 2010 with such power characterizing the machines to have such an issue. Nothing fantastic is asked. And did you hear MS’s advice? Lol… Reduce mailbox size. Ok thanks for the advice. I will go one step further: get rid of outlook…

Mobile Intel 4 Series Express (GMA X4500) native resolution on OSx86

Mihalis — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:10:59 +0000

After searching I found a workaround for those who have installed OSx86 on their PC with Intel’s graphics card Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family (GMA x4500). The workaround works for Chameleon bootloaders only and just gives you native resolution, has nothing to do with kexts and is claimed to be the safest of the ways to get better resolution. Just do the following:

You have to use Chameleon so if you don’t, install it (I use Chameleon 2.0)
Download this file and replace the file boot on the root of your Leopard drive
Make sure to put the key and string Graphics Mode for your desired resolution in com.apple.boot.plist both in /Extra folder and in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

Note: I use 1366x768x32 on my VGN-NW240F vaio on Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

Simple custom code benchmarking

Mihalis — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:02:22 +0000

If you’d like to calculate the time it takes for a code block to execute in C++ here’s an easy way:

SYSTEMTIME t1,t2;
GetSystemTime(&t1);
for(int i=0;i<1000000;i++)
i++;
GetSystemTime(&t2);
int dif = t2.wMilliseconds – t1.wMilliseconds;
printf(“Execution time until this code line: %d milliseconds\n”,dif);

Don’t forget to #include

Ext JS

Mihalis — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:53:09 +0000

A great Javascript framework for creating Ajax based web applications: http://www.extjs.com/

Snowboarding…

Mihalis — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:37:35 +0000

Finally managed to install Snow Leopard (Hazard) on my Sony VAIO VGN-NW240F. However my intel mobile 4 series graphics card is not working. Neither do my wired and wireless cards. It’s ok, I just wanted to experiment with iPhone programming and Xcode seems to run ok.