I have just upgraded to 11.2 from ubuntu 9.10 on my IBM / Lenovo T61 laptop. ( I will post a better blog about that later)

What I wanted to mention here is that the current vMware workstation 6.5.3 does not want to run on my system.

I have found this post http://k—–k.blogspot.com/2009/09/install-vmware-workstation-653-on.html

Which has teps for compiling the modules yourself but by the look of things is based on 32bit openSUSE.

I will see if I can get it working here on my 64bit machine

Over the weekend I was able to have my mobile contract changed and part of the deal is that I get an HTC Hero.

This has made me quite happy as I have been forced to run windows mobile on my old phone for far to long and it is refreshing that I have an android phone.

The first thing I noticed was that the box was really small, I wondered if they had actually just given me the charger by mistake.

As soon as I had opened the box the shiny new black phone was there and there was even place for the charger. In past occasions when I have taken possession of a new phone I dumped the box and manual and turned on the phone, because how difficult could it be to use it?

I went against my better nature and actually looked for a manual in the box and there was none, at first I thought that HTC had eventually realised that Men NEVER read the manual and had not provided one as it was just wasteful and well useless. I dutifully plugged the phone into the socket and waited for the phone to charge, this did not take very long as I was able to turn the phone on after only 2 hours and the battery reading said full. I was in business.

I started clicking round on the application list and found the pdf reader. I thought that would be a good thing to have. When the app opened I realised that HTC had just moved with the times and supplied a PDF user guide all 200+ pages of it.

One of the things that annoys me is that your contacts get synced to a google account. I really don’t like that at all. My contacts are MY property and I want to keep it that way.

I have searched for some time now for a contacts app that allows you to use the phone without contacting google or some other company to store your data. I have looked at what it would take to code my own one and then realised I can’t code……. say no more.

I would really appreciate any help in finding this killer app for my system.

I am really excited that we could develop an app for android or the iPhone that interfaces with our whole system and then this problem goes away. I just can’t wait. Enough for now I need to search for my contacts app.

EDIT: I just realised that I forgot to mention that there is no app I can find that will sync your evolution/thunderbird PIM to the android system. I have searched high and low but as far as I can tell nothing exists.

Boy I wish I could code

The new Bongo package has been compiled, packaged and promoted so it should now be available to those running the images.

This version has a number of fixes that were highlighted by the change to the cmake compiler.

Thanks to the hard work of Alex and Patrick we are now in a position to say the the mail store is now stable. I can’t wait for the changes that we will now be implementing on the web front.

The images can be found here

Enjoy

I too have been watching the Mono debate with some interest as I am in the process of creating a Mono API for the Bongo Store.

This interests me as I do not want to spend time working on something that will stop any distribution from running such a great app like Bongo.

What worries me more is the character assassination and blatant lie telling that has been going on to in some way justify what is being said by the Mono haters. I wholly agree with Alex’s take on the subject you can find here. I think that this will have an affect on the community but I am not sure what affect it will be.

I hope this is sorted out soon and that the lines get drawn and clarity starts coming to the situation.

I wish the Mono project the best of luck for the future.

Quite some time ago I blogged about my efforts to create a mono API for the bongo store protocol, I have unfortunately been quite busy with my personal life and also at work so this has been neglected.

I have again been working on this and at the moment I am stuck trying to get the COLLECTIONS command to work.

Alex sent me his php API code that he was working on to help me out but unfortunately I am just not experienced enough to work this one out. I really want to get this working as I think it will be a great boost to the project as it will open the project to other coders and perhaps we could see some interesting work.

To help move this forward I have booked myself a course with Learning tree on how to code wit c# for beginners. I have also taken their 3 course special so I can book myself 2 more coding courses if I actually start to understand better. If anyone is interested in helping me out with this I am open.

I am excited with what is happening in the project at the moment we are almost ready to release again after some testing.

I would like to say thank you to Steve-O (his Nick on IRC I don’t know his full name) he has been a great help testing the new release of Bongo and helping find some yet undiscovered bugs. Thanks Steve.