Open Kosmaczewski

Wow, that’s a long title, but it should drive people with this problem right here. If you have upgraded your WordPress installation to 2.8, you might have encountered a nasty error in your Dashboard, which says something about a

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/user/www/wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php on line 647

This has been reported in the WordPress site but no fix has been provided. I found elsewhere a possible fix, but in my case, the new URL would not be saved at all, and the problem would persist.

I fixed it using a good old method, enabled by Open Source™: editing the code directly; I’m posting it here for those of you who would like to do it, until 2.8.1 is released:

Now that the NDA on the iPhone OS 3.0 SDK has been lifted (which happened much faster than what I thought it would take!) here’s my first contribution to the world of iPhone OS 3.0 open source code: sample code about how to use OpenGL ES 2.0 on the iPhone 3GS, something I announced in Twitter last week.

As you might know by now, one of the biggest enhancements (and yet, one of the most obscure) of the newly released iPhone 3GS is the new GPU chipset, which allows developers to create applications using Open GL ES 2.0 (together with Open GL 1.1, which was already available in the first two iterations of the iPhone). This is a major advance, invisible to the end user, which, coupled with the unprecedented performance boost of the iPhone 3GS, opens up the possibility to developers to create applications with new textures and effects, yet unforeseen on this platform.

Given that Xcode does not (yet) bring an Xcode template to play with, and that the OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide book, by Aaftab Munshi, Dan Ginsburg and Dave Shreiner does not (obviously) bring iPhone examples, I have created a project in Github where I will be publishing the code samples in the book, as I progress in the lecture, ordered by chapter, ready to compile and play with.

Enjoy! I’m happy not having to use the word “[REDACTED]“ any more now (there’s the other OS, the bigger cat, but, oh well…)

Update, 2009-06-24: I just found this blog post by the folks of Black Pixel (Daniel Pasco’s company) with benchmarks about OpenGL ES on the iPhone 3GS… and the first line says it all:

Holy crap, this thing is fast

Update, 2009-06-24: Jeff LaMarche just announced that the authors of the book have published iPhone – compatible code in the book website! That effectively renders this project useless :))

Seen on PvP today:

No comments :)

Thanks to Brett Terpstra (who interviewed me) and the TUAW guys for publishing the interview!

This is something that does not happen that often to me, so it deserves a blog post of its own: here’s two appearances of yours truly in the Swiss press last week. The first one is an article in the Tages Anzeiger of last Wednesday (full text available online), and the second one is an article (with photo) on the SonntagsZeitung last Sunday. Since the SonntagsZeitung article is not available online, here’s the scan of the article.

Yay! :)

… and WWDC 2009 is finally over.

This year’s event has been nothing short of amazing; maybe because not only the technologies presented blew my mind, but also because I met and spent some time with incredible guys, and getting in touch with the right people changes everything. So, to all of you, many thanks: @cigumo, @dlpasco, @sophiestication, @davemark, @jeff_lamarche, @markuspalmanto, @serpah, @raminf, @geraudch, @ayasin, @octopus_prime, @pjay_, @2009wwdc and all the others, in and out of Twitter, like Julio from Guatemala, the guy from Adobe (met in the queue to the hotdogs in the beer bash of Yerba Buena gardens), Sandro (aka “The Crazy Swiss Guy” of the Stump the Experts session), etc, etc, etc… with whom we’ve shared laughs, ideas, emotion, friendship and beers.

WWDC is an inspiring event: listening to the above guys, or the conferences from Smule or ngmoco:) talking about their companies, and how they grew up the past year, all of that makes me think about this new path I’m taking right now:

akosma software is born. Expect a lot.

I won’t go into details into all the stuff shown during the keynote; this is just a single comment for Scott Forstall: STOP THE BLOODY DEMOS. Last year it was pretty unbearable, yet this year you managed to make it even worse.

Thankfully I am not the only one who thinks that the interminable series of demos is just a waste of our time, when all we want is to see new stuff in the SDK. We’re developers, not marketing people.

I arrived to San Francisco yesterday night, after a dreadful connection in Frankfurt (note to self: to never, ever again book connecting flights with less than 90 minutes in between) and a great flight accross Greenland and Canada. My internal clock insists in saying that I had breakfast at 5 o’clock, but other than that, I feel great, really excited!

That flight, by the way, could have been dubbed the “WWDC Express”, as the number of guys (and gals!) typing code on Xcode was waaaaaay above the average. I had the opportunity to chat with Markus Palmanto from Finland and he showed me his amazing Accordio application! Check it out on the App Store. One of the best music instruments I’ve seen so far on the iPhone – from a great musician, too!

I won’t go through all the fuss and rumors about the next version of the iPhone… but indeed, I’m sure that we’re ready for big surprises tomorrow; for the moment, I know that tonight I’ll be attending sfMacIndie, and tomorrow evening the iPhone Intelligence party; I hope to meet many of you this week!

Argies, time to chuckle:

This blog has been surprisingly quiet lately; lots of things going on. Next month is WWDC! Stay tuned.

repression |riˈpre sh ən| |rəˈprɛʃən| |riˈprɛʃən| noun from repress |riˈpres| verb [ trans. ]: subdue (someone or something) by force : the uprisings were repressed; inhibit the natural development or self-expression of (someone or something) : too much bureaucracy represses creativity.

For all of you asking me “how are things in Argentina today?” here’s the answer:

• On February 28th, 2009, people were using a public space in the city of Tigre (60 km north of Buenos Aires) for an improvised puppet theater for the kids; this was happening on a sunny morning, with families and artisans selling their handcrafted items;
• The local police came to say that they are not allowed to stay, without identifying themselves properly (no visible IDs, some of them dressing like civilians), and without clearly stating the reasons for their presence;
• The gathered people decided to go to the municipality of Tigre to reclaim their right of peaceful use of a public space in daylight with their kids – a constitutional right;
• The police forces blocked them from reaching the municipality and proceeded to repress them, arresting many all while doing injuries to babies, kids, parents and people gathered around the improvised theater.
• Finally, these events were not covered nor relayed by mass media afterwards.

In countries like Switzerland, “unauthorized” gatherings in public spaces of more than 50 people or so are (as far as I know) forbidden (I have yet to understand why, and then try to agree with such a ridiculous law). This is not like that in Argentina. The Argentine Constitution guarantees freedom of gathering, expression and trade, and the crowd in this case was just using this liberty. The public space is exactly that: a common area for everyone to use in lawful and peaceful activities. I can’t conceive a more lawful and peaceful activity than a puppet theater.

The argentine police still uses the same methods and training while during the last dictatorship in the 70’s. They have no law, they obey no orders other than theirs. Their chief has stated publicly that they are the democracy, that they are the law.

That’s how Argentina is going these days. You can now continue reading about the beautiful hotels in the glacier Perito Moreno or the Iguazu falls, if you insist in burying your head deep in the mud.

Otherwise, watch this.