Google I/O 2009 keynotes and "resuming video" feature in YouTube

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]

Indeed, it was about time I watched the 2 full keynotes of Google I/O 2009. (For the record, I have watched bits and pieces over time, so I wasn't that lazy, but never actually watched the 2 full keynotes, so I was lazy to some degree.)

Anyway, here they are for the ones too lazy to click on the Google I/O 2009 page:
Google I/O 2009 - Keynote Day 1 (full)
Google I/O Day 2 keynote - Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

On this occasion, I've noticed YouTube has introduced a new feature I had no idea about - resuming video... - should one stop watching a video and minutes later reopens it, then it resumes from where one stopped last time. Pretty awesome I might say. - Did I say new? Well, it appears it has been launched quite a long time ago - if interested, see the post with the detailed description of the feature on YouTube's official blog - the "Resume where you left off" paragraph of the post.

Google Maps problem

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]

Apparently there's a Google Maps bug that screwed up a bit my Netherlands map.
Cool bug - due to all entries having the same place details (this is the bug), all my entries show the link to my latest NL blog post now! I shall feel sad when they fix it but happy that my map will be correct again...

Firefox 3.6 runs very slow - Solution

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]


Problem:

I've installed some 2 days ago the Firefox 3.6 and noticed several problems:

1. GTalk: first, it took some 1-2 minutes to detach/pop-out the window when video conferencing, then when it finally did it, the conference got ended due to some error - this was extremely annoying
2. Opening pop-out pages became extremely slow, somewhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes

Solution:

Research:
I've read a lot of googled solutions, none worked.
I've installed Firefox 3.5.8 and then 3.5.6 and the problem persisted - that was strange, since 3.5.6 surely worked.
I suspected (frightening!) problems due to interpreting JavaScript or whatever, which in turn (even more frightening!) could be because I've installed recently some cool stuff, i.e. MacPorts.
I've tested the same pages with Safari and everything worked fine.
Then finally the solution hit me...

Actual solution - short and simple:
It was because of the extensions I've installed some time ago.
Really!
I went to Tools > Add-ons > Extensions and just uninstalled all of them; all pages seem to load fine at the present time.
Therefore I'm running Firefox 3.6 with no extensions.

Now surfing life is again fast and pretty.

MacPorts, Xcode, gnuplot

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]


Problems on a Mac OS X 10.5:

P1: One needs to install on Mac OS X commands like calc, wget (although Mac offers the equivalent curl) etc.

P2: One needs to install gnuplot (wikipedia on gnuplot), but would prefer not to go through all the steps (i.e. configure, compile etc.) with the source code of gnuplot.

Solution:

First, install MacPorts. According to Wikipedia, DarwinPorts has become MacPorts - I recommend the easiest installation possible, i.e. Mac OS X Package (.pkg) Installer.

Second, get familiarized to using MacPorts, by reading that specific part of the manual describing the port command.

From now on, you should install the piece of software causing your problem:


P1: calc, wget etc.
sudo port install calc
sudo port install wget 


P2: gnuplot (It will be installed in the same way as above, but I encountered a few problems)

When I first tried to install it, I encountered an error:
On Mac OS X 10.5, gnuplot 4.2.5 requires Xcode 3.1 or later but you have Xcode 3.0.
Error: Target org.macports.extract returned: incompatible Xcode version
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

, so I cleaned the failed installation:
port clean --all gnuplot

Given the error, I uninstalled Xcode 3.0 (pages on uninstalling Xcode: 1, 2, 3) and installed Xcode 3.1.4 which I've downloaded from Apple.

Then I ran the selfupdate for MacPorts

sudo port selfupdate

and checked for outdated ports

port outdated

but there weren't any, so there was no need to upgrade any installed ports.

Should you find any outdated ports, just run (as it recommends when finds those outdated ports)
sudo port upgrade outdated
You can also use the other command, which tries to upgrade all installed ports
sudo port upgrade installed

Then I finally installed gnuplot

sudo port install gnuplot

in order to upgrade all your installed ports and their dependencies.

Feel free to check its man page, or type gnuplot in terminal etc.

End.