Whew, finally found some time to write another post. This time we’ll be using Maemo’s alarm framework to do, well, almost whatever we want at a specific time, or even repeatedly at specific times :) So let’s get to it.

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The N900 is a piece of work. A smartphone running Linux. What more could a geek want? Well, for one thing, leveraging an existing application framework (Qt… wink, wink) for developing cool applications. And we would also like to be able to use platform specific widgets and whatnot. Well, duh.

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Standard push buttons on the N900 are functional and look good to boot. But let’s say you need something different for your next “instant-hit” app. Is there a quick and (relatively) painless way of getting that extra shine. Drumm roll, please. Enter the Qt Style Sheets…

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We all know that the need for external resources while doing our development is a pain. We all want the utopia of taking our laptops and sitting somewhere nice (forest, meadow, glacier, …) while developing Carpal tunnel syndrome. So let’s get a step closer to this image while doing our web thing. For this we need to build a completely self-sufficient development environment on our machine. It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds.

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We’ve all been there at one point or another. You need to do some complex but repetitive task for the x-th time (where x tends to be a very high number indeed). And since I am a firm believer that everything I need to do more than about 2 times I have to do it with a click, or key-press, or some other similar simple feat of manual dexterity I will discuss some one of the solutions to this problem.

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In my previous post we looked into equipping or WP blog with widgets to give it a new look and hopefully make it a little more pleasing to the eye. Today we are going to take a step further… hopefully. Since object orientation is the best thing that happened since the wheel (or so I hear ;)) we should try to tap into some of that godly nectar and ambrosia. So, we will be giving our RSS widget introduced in my last post an OO makeover.

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Let’s talk widgets. More specifically WordPress sidebar widgets. So why should you care about this particular type of widget. Let’s start from the beginning…

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Users accustomed to CTRL+C/V keyboard shortcuts may find themselves reaching for the mouse when using gVim or Vim in a terminal because aforementioned commands do not work by default. So, how to do it?

Short answer would be to select a text in a Visual or Select mode, type "+y and you have the selected text in a system clipboard. If you need to paste, position your cursor where you want it and type "+p. "+ is just a register, so you can use different yank/put commands with it like "+6yy or "+gP.

Long answer would be … well, long. Vim uses registers "+ and "* to communicate with other applications. How it does that depends on the operating system Vim runs on.

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A few days ago I came upon an interesting little bit of writing in a book called Assembly Language Step-by-Step: Programming with Linux by Jeff Duntemann. What interested me is that the author, in a few short sentences, nails the idea of what being a programmer really means. So here’s the quote for your (and mine) pleasure:

Being a programmer is one thing above all else: it is understanding how things work. Learning to be a programmer, furthermore, is almost entirely a process of learning how things work.

I guess now we know why curiosity maybe killed the cat, but it certainly made it a better programmer in the process.

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