HelenOS 0.11.2 is out. What's new?

HelenOS 0.11.2 was released on Friday, December 17th. I also posted a screencast highlighting the new features, like the new HiKey960 port, Navigator file manager, UI and text mode improvements.

Some things didn't make it in, like mouse support in EGA console, Unicode support in serial console. I also forgot to show Calculator and Hello running in text mode.

It felt really good to get this release out of the door. And now, back to work!

Skywatching & my very first astrophotograph

Enjoyed some sky watching with the kids in the evening. Good conditions to spot Venus, Jupiter, Saturn & the Moon. Took out my old small refractor and attempted the very first atrophotograph in my life. I had no idea what I was doing, thought I had to remove the eye piece. After putting it back, here's the result (or rather the best of several attempts).

Considering I was just desperately trying to hold my mobile phone camera next to the eypiece, and using a crappy 20-year-old telescope, and considering a mild haze, the results are pretty stunning, don't you think? Well, at least I am stunned ^_^. For your convenience, I mirrored the image back to the right orientation (since the refractor is mirroring the image).

Doodle quiz

By the horrible power that be my miserable doodling skills, I present you this quiz. Here's a 'cartoon' (I really have no choice but use quotes) commenting on current happenings in the microkernel OS world:

Can you describe what is happening in the scene? If you can, than you're really really good.

A letter for you

I have been tasked to deliver this letter from our dear friend.

Oops I did it again!

When you are working on even a small project for more than one day, you are risking loosing your work if you don't take preventative measures. Over the years I've encountered many horror stories from people losing their work.

Like working on their school thesis for months only to loose their only copy which was on a USB stick. Or to have their hard drives crashed after months of working on a computer game project or thinking their computer was infected by a virus.

They never learn and always take the wrong lesson (be careful about your belongings, don't visit suspicious web sites).

I should really know better. And yet I did it again. After having practically finished Text Editor port to libui (wich took me around a week) I accidentally deleted it.

I had the source only in git cache + a backup copy in a patch file and when I wanted to put the changes away in a patch to work on / commit prompt dialog first, I re-generated the patch and then removed changes from my working branch. And then I realized my patch file was empty! It sets me back only by a week, but it's very embarassing! I really should have tracked my work in changesets even if if was WIP and back up on Github, squashing into one commit later.

So it's good to remind ourselves of the risks and the rules how to mitigate them that we should all know, but don't always follow.

The top three risks are

1. You accidentally delete/overwrite/damage your project
2. Your computer/storage medium is physically lost
3. Your computer is broken rendering your data inaccessible

And here's the golden rules when working on a project:

1. Back up your work!!!
2. One back up copy is not enough. Use multiple physically separated copies.
3. Revision control is your first line of defense.

Coffee In Space

One of the best jokes I've ever heard (or rather read)

"In space, how do you keep your coffee cup on the table? Velcro. How do you keep your coffee in the cup? More velcro."

Why do I find it so funny? I don't know, perhaps because it's so silly and absurd. I classify this as "funny always" per the classification introduced in Robert Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". Anybody knows where this joke comes from? I don't remember and just can't seem to find out.

Time to be a'weldn'!

When it comes to becoming good at stick welding, I think it requires the five Ps: Patience, Preparation, Premeditation, Process and Practice. I am a total noob, this is my second real weld job (not counting some amount of pure practice welds).

It actually looks good just in a few spots, the rest of it looks .. well .. still miles better than the previous weld job somebody did on this which broke and I was fixing. And that's something. I feel like I'm making some progress here.

We have contact!

Raspberry Pi Resolution Detection

Maurizio implemented a nice new feature in the Raspberry Pi video driver. It now detects the display resolution, making it more useful on screens with resolution greater than 640x480 (^_^). He posted a nice screenshot:

Sure looks great!

It's difficult to distill a lot of fun and cool stuff into a few characters that can be printed on a T-shirt. But when you succeed, the idea just wants to go out.

T-shirt, anyone? ^_^ (Designed using Spreadshirt)

Look ma, no graphics!

Here's HelenOS calculator, viewed side-by-side in text mode and in graphics mode (note that this is still work in progress):

From the beginning of my UI rewrite project, one of the main goals was to create a single UI library that can handle both graphics mode and text mode (pseudo-graphics, actually). While the original goal was to be able to use the same library to write either graphics-mode applications (e.g. calculator) and text-mode applications (e.g. text editor, file manager), an 'unplanned' side effect is that it is possible to make the same application work in either mode (with relatively little effort).

With all the prior work done, putting the final pieces together and making it work was almost .. shockingly .. easy. I think this is a pretty cool and unique feature. There is still lot of work ahead, though. It is not possible currently to set the foreground and background colors individually (hence the strange text background colors) and doing that properly will require supporting different pixel formats in GFX. Also more customization needs to be done for text mode (perhaps a separate color palette) to make it look really good.

You can try it today in HelenOS master, just run "calculator -d cons@" in the terminal window.