GeekNomad

It´s not every day that Portugal appears on Tech News:

"Intel has scored a massive low-cost laptop deal with Portugal's government to provide primary school students with 500,000 computers based on the company's Classmate PC notebook design.

Chipzilla plans to deliver the half million machines — which will be manufactured under license in northern Portugal — in the upcoming school year."
[Via The Register]

"An impressive deal... until they tell you they are going to make them in Portugal. I smell euro-politics everywhere here. Well played, Senhor Intel."


[Via Gizmodo]

Firewire has come a long way. From the initial development by Apple in the late 1980s, to the technology’s completion in 1995 and surge in popularity in the early 2000s, the technology has become a serial bus interface common in Sony and Apple computers as well as a range of consumer electronics devices such as video cameras.

With the new faster speeds, available starting in October, IEEE 1394 will remain competitive with the upcoming USB 3.0. Looks like that controversial 2010 launch of USB 3.0 just got upstaged a little, huh?
[Via TGDaily]

It's been a long, leak-filled wait, but Apple finally took the wraps off its 3G iPhone. Thinner edges, full plastic back, flush headphone jack, and the iPhone 2.0 firmware -- Apple's taking a lot of the criticisms to heart from the first time around. Obviously 3G is at the forefront, but they're also making sure it's available all over internationally, works with enterprises, runs 3rd party apps... and does it all for cheaper. Apple claims its 3G speeds trounce the competition, with pageloads 36% faster than the N95 and Treo 750 -- and of course it completely trounces the old EDGE data speeds.

Battery life isn't getting put out to pasture though, with 300 hours of standby, 8-10 hours of 2G talk, 5 hours of 3G talk, 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio. GPS is also a go. Apple is using A-GPS, which supplements regular satellite GPS data with info from cellular towers for faster location. (WiFi data is also worked into the mix, which should give users a pretty solid lock on where the heck they are on this planet.) Unfortunately, as expected there's no front-facing cam, and while its edges are thinner than before it's still about a millimeter thicker at the center (12.3mm over 11.6mm before). Apple hopes to launch in 70 countries this year, with the black 8GB going for $199 and 16GB for $299 in black or white. (Both price points require a contract, of course.) Apple will be hitting the 22 biggest markets, including the US (and Portugal), on July 11th.

This will do the trick:

FOR /F "tokens=*" %%G IN ('DIR /B /AD /S *.svn*') DO RMDIR /S /Q %%G

If you're thinking WTF?:
DIR /B /AD /S *.svn*
lists all files that are named ".svn"
/B makes the output "bare" with nothing but the file name
/AD only lists directories
/S recurses subdirectories to include their contents if they match the listing criteria


RMDIR /S /Q [path/name]
deletes the directory [path/dir] and all of it's children

FOR /F processes each item (in this case directories) in the set IN ('[command]') by executing the DO [command]

%%G is a parameter, which in this example is a directory name
"tokens=*" says that all the characters output in a line (i.e. by the dir command) are assigned to the parameter %%G

See the Microsoft Command Line Reference for more on FOR:

The new Prius is the most technically advanced car on the road today, and not just because of its revolutionary hybrid engine. Both behind the wheel and under the bonnet, there's a wealth of new technology, all designed to maximise performance and enhance the driving experience.

Starting in the dashboard, there's the car's Multi-information Display, a seven-inch LCD that allows the occupants to access trip information and hybrid system management and energy levels, as well as control the audio system and air conditioning. The screen is touch-sensitive and on T Spirit models is equipped with a voice recognition system.

Voice recognition control is the most advanced system currently available in the car's class, allowing control of the navigation system, audio and air conditioning through almost 300 vocal commands, allowing drivers to maintain total concentration on the road and keep their hands on the steering wheel. In fact, drivers can control 16 different functions without taking their hands off the wheel.
[...]
How to provide for our ever-escalating daily transportation needs without destroying the environment is one of the most important questions we will face this century. One answer has just appeared on the horizon in the shape of Toyota's new hybrid car, the Prius.
[...]
read whole article on guardian.co.uk

According to Engadget, Trolltech it's the "biggest little company you've never heard of", since it's software is used in more than 10 million devices, and it the owner of QT, wich is used by Skype, Google Earth, and Photoshop Elements.. etc.

Remembering the acquisition of MySQL the other day, it's another tool widely used by the Open Source community. Is it a bad sign ?

Read more.

One of my first Blogger compelled quests: How to pretify code on by blog ? Among others, I found google-code-prettify that seems to work well (as can be seen in the previous post). The only problem is that it seems you have to host the files somewhere else.

I found an article on VBAExpress that helped me to implement Regular Expression search on Excel, using VBA:

Sub RegExp_Late_Replace_1()
'Late binding
'Dimension the RegExp objects
Dim RegEx      As Object
Dim Myrange As Range, C As Range

' create the RegExp Object with late binding
Set RegEx = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")

' set the RegExp parameters
With RegEx
  'look for global matches
  .Global = True
  'look for strings that are not numeric
  ' Dave's original pattern was "[^\d]+"
  .Pattern = [Example1PatternB]
End With

' set the Excel range to parse the ActiveSheet B3:B12
Set Myrange = ActiveSheet.Range("B3:B12")

For Each C In Myrange
  ' Replace non numeric strings with ""
  C.Offset(0, 1) = RegEx.Replace(C.Value, "")
Next

Set Myrange = Nothing
Set RegEx = Nothing

End Sub

My new adventure on the blogosphere... because I think I'm a geek, and a nomad!
The objective is to keep a record of my work, gadgets, wishes, milestones, end everything else I find interesting to remember... my digital scrapbook!