Wandering Jew
Here, there and everywhere

A short lecture

A friend of mine - technically interested, but not particularly knowledgeable - asked me about Chrome OS stuff. I wrote her a short lecture in return, and thought I'd dump it here as well :)

We'll start with 'cloud computing', which is actually an appropriately nebulous term... It's been traditional for a long long time, particularly when teaching computer networking, to use a cloud in a diagram to represent "all the stuff which happens on the network between computer A and computer B" - http://www.yourdictionary.com/computer/cloud - we don't care how the communication happens between A and D, we just assume they can talk to each other. This usage has been changed a bit, in the past 5 years or so, to add the idea of *services* which live in 'the cloud' - we don't care where they are, as long as we can communicate with them over the Internet, using standard tools from anywhere. A simple example would be using gmail/hotmail/yahoo for your email, rather than an email system supplied by your employer, school or ISP. Another simple example would be Facebook - you don't know anything about how it works, you don't have any relation with them other than being a user of the service, you can access it from anywhere...

So 'cloud computing' is the idea of taking things which previously ran either on your computer, or at least on your local network, and shoving them out into the cloud. It relies on a combination of 2 or 3 technologies, which are just about available now, but weren't 5 years ago - ubiquitous broadband, standard network protocols, and, to a slightly lesser extent, cheap/ubiquitous computing.

Chrome OS is what falls out of all that, if you're Google. It's an OS designed to run on cheap portable computers (i.e. netbooks) which are always on-line (wifi or 3G) and running a standard platform called a 'web browser'. It assumes that you use Gmail in your web browser, rather than Outlook connected to an Exchange server. It assumes that you use Google Docs rather than Microsoft Office. It assumes that you stream music and even video (TV, etc.) from the web, rather than storing and playing it locally. It assumes that you're using Google talk through your browser, rather than running a local chat program. It assumes that you're doing all of this on a 'secondary' computer.

They're not claiming that you can or should run your life like this yet. What they are saying - correctly, in my opinion - is that if you are willing to trust the 'cloud services', you can move a lot of what you do online without losing very much, and gaining ubiquitous access in return. You've got a big heavy laptop... I've got a little handheld phone... they both access the same online data, to a great extent, and my phone has a longer battery life, built-in 3G, and lacks the potential for spraining my back by carrying it.

As for running Chrome OS to take a look at it, there are a couple of options. You can't run it directly on your Mac, because it only runs on netbooks, and a small specific list at that. What you can do is run it under virtualisation - same same way I, for those rare occasions when I need it - run 'Windows in a window'. VirtualBox is a virtualisation tool, which will let you run Chrome OS in a window on top of your Mac OS. Alternatively, and much more simply, just load up the Chrome browser - technically, the chromium open-source browser, which is the core of Chrome, since Chrome is still Windows-only. Chrome OS is, in essence, a modified form of the Chrome browser running on streamlined Linux OS, so if you want to know what Chrome OS looks like today, running Chrome (or chromium) will get you a lot of the way there...

Chromium is pretty usable as a browser - I've been using it as my main browser for a few weeks now, with little trouble. Chrome OS, however, is not usable yet. It's expected to be released to hardware manufacturers sometime around the spring, and be on the market latish next year.

It's more than a little insane

Anyone looking to feel like a minor celeb or rock star, and who happens to be a) white and b) fat (and possibly c) male) should head to Lan Kwai Fong (henceforth LKF) on Halloween. It gets very very very busy, and you'll be pretty popular with the crowds.

For minor background: LKF is the leading nightlife district in Hong Kong - it consists of two L-shaped streets on a hill just south of Central, Hong Kong's main commercial area. The bigger of the two streets is called D'Aguilar Street, and the smaller one, which fits into the angle of the bigger L, is LKF itself. The area holds many 10s of bars, pubs, restaurants and nightclubs, is moderately busy on a random weeknight, can be very busy at the weekend (when it's pedestrianised) and insanely busy on holidays like New Year (both 'secular' and Chinese), Christmas and - yes - Halloween. It can get insanely busy enough that in 1992 a crush formed at New Year and 21 people were killed, ever since when there have been police crowd control measures on holidays.

If you were a cynic, you might ask why Halloween even features in Hong Kong, which is a largely Chinese city with a Christian minority left over from colonial days, but it has absolutely zero religious connotation here. Hong Kong is nothing if not a party town, and Halloween is the sort of party they like - dressing up, going out, special offers and decorations in shops and restaurants - and LKF is the epicenter of party life in Hong Kong. Every bar, pub and restaurant is fully-booked, and the the streets, well, they would be a crush if the police crowd control didn't calm things down slightly. As for the crowd control, it's typical of the Hong Kong police - it's reasonably effective, while still being relatively laid-back, friendly and pragmatic. In theory, once the crowd control is in action, you can only enter LKF at the bottom of D'Aguilar street (the bigger L) and leave at the top, and you will be moved through slowly and smoothly. In practice, as long as there's no trouble, they don't work too hard to move people along, and you can easily walk against the official direction. There are plenty of officers around, and I'm sure they'd tighten things up if needed, but as things weren't too mad tonight they weren't too bothered. They had recorded announcements playing in Cantonese and English (slightly randomly, quite clearly Scottish English), as LKF is a central point for expats in Hong Kong, but other than half-heartedly moving people on every now and again if knots were forming, they mainly held back and kept an eye on things.

Costumes. A small minority of the crowd (including my gf, and a friend of ours) wear 'serious' costumes, some traditional Chinese things, some pop culture (at one point, there were two rubber-suited Batmans having photos taken together) and some more traditional costumes - witches, cats, policemen/women, etc. Most of the rest of the crowd have something small, a token nod to dressing up like some horns on a headband, a bit of fake blood, or just something silly. Having worn a large foam rubber wig in the form of a quiff last year, I kept things simple this year - just a novelty oversized green bow-tie and a novelty oversized green plastic glasses frame. Also, a non-novelty oversized green(-clothed) stomach. I was asked a few times if my stomach was real, which is a little disturbing, but other than that it was pretty much the star of the show.

Everyone in the crowd has a camera. Everyone in every crowd has a camera nowadays, of course, built in to their phone, but quite a lot of people in this crowd had real cameras, from point'n'shoots, to DSLRs, to serious pro cameras, as well as cheap handheld video cameras, and one or two professional video rigs. A lot of the people who aren't in serious costumes are there to take photos of the people who are, and that's where the minor celeb feeling comes from. Standing with my gf and our friend, both of them in full-face makeup and costumes, I was at least as popular a photo target as they were. Even in Hong Kong, which genuinely has different norms for privacy and public behaviour from 'the West', it's not common for a local to approach a stranger and ask to take a photo with them, but at LKF on Halloween, it's perfectly normal. I spent maybe 2 hours standing in the street, having my photo taken, mainly with completely random strangers. Young, old, male, female, dressed-up or not, there were times when I had 2 or 3 people asking for a photo at the same time, virtually queuing to have their photo taken with me. It's quite odd, quite enjoyable in small doses, and I can imagine it would be quite infuriating if it happened all the time, wherever you went.

This is the second year I've been to LKF at Halloween with my gf - she has been going in costume for years - and I had a look around online last November, and found not only photos of her from that year, but from previous years. There's something slightly creepy about strangers publishing photos of her online, even if she does go wanting to be photographed...

Photos of the event are available on Facebook, or by request :)

It's a long and bureaucratic process

As we left the story last time, I was waiting to hear if I'd been approved-in-principle for a Quality Migrant visa. The results being published approximately quarterly, I was expecting end-of-August results to be followed by end-of-November results, but the end of November came and went without any sign of results on the QMAS website. I will admit that I got a little obsessive, checking the website hourly, and getting more and more frustrated. Finally, while out for dinner in the first week of December, I checked the website on my phone and found that - woohoo! - it had been updated. Unfortunately, as mentioned before, the list is published as a PDF, and - boo! - my phone didn't have a PDF reader on it. I managed, tapping away madly on my phone in a restaurant, largely ignoring two understanding friends, to find a web-based PDF reader which worked, only to find - double boo! - that all they publish is a list of approved application number, and I couldn't actually remember my number. Rushed home, pulled out one of the letters with the application number on it, loaded up the list, and...

My number was on it.

After more than 4 months of waiting, I had an approval-in-principle, meaning that they had accepted my application, and as long as I could prove that all the papers I'd submitted had been genuine, and that I hadn't otherwise falsified anything on my application, I should be in. Sounds simple, isn't. A couple of weeks later, I got a letter confirming the approval-in-principle, and instructions on what paperwork they needed me to bring to my 'interview', which should be booked by calling them within 3 months. They asked me to bring:

• That letter
• My passport
• A completed copy of an attached survey, just for their records
• Proof of no criminal record from UK and HK police
• Originals of a variety of papers which I'd previously submitted copies of

The letter, my passport and the survey weren't exactly a big deal. For the police paperwork, all I had to do was submit the appropriate forms to the Metropolitan police in London, and similar to the Hong Kong police - except that being local, I went in person and got fingerprinted. I will admit that I'm not too fast when it comes to paperwork - I just hate doing it - so by the time the police processing was done, it was time to go for my interview.

Except there was one other little issue. I got my Dad (aka my lawyer/solicitor) to send me the originals of some papers he holds for me, so I had all the other paperwork I needed - all the paperwork I'd submitted, that was. For some odd reason, something had apparently got mixed up at the Immigration office, and they asked for the originals of some references I'd given them to support work visa applications in 2005 and 2007. I don't know where the papers are from back then, so I just decided to ignore them and hope they'd go away...

Paperwork collected or on the way, I called to book my interview mid-February and was given an early-March date. I got my papers together, rechecked them a few times - yes, slightly obsessively - and was all ready when the interview date rolled around.

Or Android 1.5, as it's properly known

About 20 minutes ago, jbq (aka Jean-Baptiste Queru, Android engineer and community friend par excellence) announced on the #android IRC channel that Android 1.5 - the release formerly known as Cupcake - was done, tagged and released. And that being done, he was going on vacation...

There's a somewhat full feature list here, but the things I'm really interested in are:

• A2DP, or stereo Bluetooth support, coupled with AVCRP for remote control. To be honest, I'm not hugely bothered about it being stereo as such, since I mainly listen to podcasts and other spoken content, but without A2DP, only calls can go over Bluetooth, regardless of the number of channels in your audio. I had A2DP on my Treo years ago, thanks to Softick Audio Gateway, a third-party shareware A2DP driver, and it's good to know that Android has caught up a bit.
• On-screen keyboard. The G1 is the first phone I've ever owned which slides, flips, rotates or otherwise isn't a single block with a keyboard on the front, and while the slide keyboard is pretty decent for a phone, it's pretty annoying to have to flip the phone open to enter a URL, a search term, or some other short text - and it's almost unusable one-handed, say when holding onto something in order not to fall over on a moving vehicle. I've had a fiddle with the soft keyboard in the 1.5 preview SDK, and it seems pretty usable, at least for short things. Not sure I'd want to type an email, blog post, IM, etc. on it, but we'll see
• Widgets. One of the most-requested features for the home screen - apart from not taking a few seconds to rebuild itself after being kicked out of RAM to make use for something else - widget support appeared as somewhat of a surprise a couple of months back, and not quite in the expected way. Rather than being HTML/CSS/Javascript widgets, they are implemented as an application interface, so they are richer (and probably faster), but a little harder to write. There are already lots of ideas floating around, and at least one community widget competition which should hopefully produce some interesting things. I wonder how long until the 3-screen home screen becomes limiting?
• Browser performance. Not that the existing browser is particularly slow, but it'll be nice to see it faster.
• General polish and performance. There's been a bunch of screenshots floating around recently, and thing are looking a little more form-over-function. Not that it really really matters, of course, but prettier phones sell more units, and I want Android to sell as many units as possible - both because I think it's a good platform and good for the mobile market, and because, selfishly, I hope to release some Android software soon, and more users (customers?) would be better

The interesting question, of course, is when it'll get shipped or pushed to users. The HTC Magic should be the first device shipping with 1.5 out-of-the-box, and it's expected to be released on May 5th, which really isn't far away. For the G1, T-Mobile Germany have already announced that they expect to push a 1.5 update to users in May, so it's not unfair to expect T-Mobile in other countries to do something similar - I have a US G1, so I should get the push whenever T-Mobile US gets round to it. I suspect Dream (same device, but not T-Mobile branded/released) users might have to wait slightly longer, but hopefully not too long.

Roll on donut!

Just a little thing

I got a T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream) back in November, the first Android device to hit the market. There's a partially-done full writeup somewhere in my draft folder, but for now, I wanted to get down a little tip I discovered today:

I've been trying to sign up with the new PCCW Wifi 'Single Device Plan', which is a very cheap ($28, around US$3.50 per month) unlimited wifi plan which uses the MAC address of the device for authentication. You have to manually login once, entering the activation code you got by SMS, and from then on it'll recognise your device and log you straight in. Their regular wifi service is virtually unusable on a regular basis with Android, since you have to connect to the service, then login before you can get to the internet, but as soon as you connect the device tries to reconnect to gmail, IM, etc. over wifi and fails. Very annoying... One limitation of the single device plan is that the $28 rate is only applicable to mobile phones, not laptops, and they use server-side user-agent sniffing to make sure you're activating a supported device. Android is, of course, no supported.

No problem, says I, since the webkit rendering engine in Android has support for choosing an Android user-agent, a 'desktop' user-agent, or an iPhone user-agent. I knocked together a simple web browser which pretends to be an iPhone, and went to register. Problem, says I - there's something a little funky about the SSL setup used on the activation form, and I can't get it to work with my toy browser. The built-in browser uses undocumented APIs to handle SSL errors, and while I probably could hack something up to work, I really can't be bothered.

I originally discovered that webkit had optional user-agent strings from the famous Mr. Romain Guy - author of the Android Home application - who mentioned something about a debug mode in the browser. Unfortunately, this debug mode is, while not exactly secret, also not well-known, and I went off on a wild goose chase to make my own browser. Today, while randomly browsing the bug list for the best-known Cupcake-on-G1 build, I see a mention of the debug mode, complete with instructions on how to enable it. In short, what you need to do is load the URL "about:debug" - this won't load a page, but will enable debug mode, which adds a bunch of options to the bottom of the 'Settings' panel, including a User-Agent picker.

As soon as I found it, and tested it on this site, I popped down to the PCCW shop in my building, loaded up the activation page, and bang! working fine. I haven't tested it, but according to original instructions, the setting doesn't persist (across a restart of the Browser, or a reboot, I don't know), but it's very useful to know if you just need to access a page behind a stupid iPhone-only user-agent check.

For the record, the other toggleable options which show up are:

• Single column rendering
• Use wide viewport
• Normal rendering
• Enable tracing
• Enable light touch
• Enable nav cache dump

Don't really know what any of them do, but I'm sure there are one or two people out there who might want to play around with it...