Michal Čihař - Blog Archives for English

Translators troubles

While translating CouchSurfing to Czech, I again noticed funny mistake which often repeats in Czech translations of web mails or similar applications.

In English there is "File into folder". Some translators tend to translate this as "File in folder", which changes meaning a bit :-).

I have no idea why this is so popular, but I saw this for first time in Sieve plug-in for Squirellmail and several times since this time.

Restaurant Orlík - fair prices on waterfront

Restaurant Orlík is yet another restaurant in Prague center I will write about. It lays on waterfront just next to Šítek water tower (Czech only), few minutes of walk from National theatre.

You can select from many traditional meals, I guess everybody will find something what will attract him. Everything I tasted there so far was very good, so I can really recommend you this place to have a lunch or dinner.

You can drink Budweiser Beer here, it is not cheap, but also not expensive and it tastes good. They also offer variety of wines, which are good priced.

Orlík is yet another restaurant in Prague center, where you can go without affraiding that you will pay too much for food.

CMake support in Gammu

New version of Gammu I anounced few minutes ago brings among other changes support for building using CMake. So far it should be able to handle without problems situation on Linux hosts, but I don't have environment for testing Windows and MacOS build. So I'd like to receive some feedback, if it will be possible to completely get rid of autoconf in future.

Gammu test version 1.09.17

I just released new version of Gammu, you can download it from download server. There is quite a lot of changes:

  • First release by Michal Cihar, this changes some URLS, see readme.txt.
  • Experimental CMake build support, so far not completely working (Michal Cihar).
  • Improved vCard RRULE parsing (me, Rene Peters).
  • Added support for location of alarm (Peter Ondraska).
  • Fixed Slovak operator names (Peter Ondraska).
  • Improved battery reporting for SE phones (Michal Cihar).
  • Fixed small c-cedilla decoding (Samuel Adam) (bug #64).
  • Fix memory leak in dll (Petr Stasa - Gord).
  • Add some functions to dll (Petr Stasa - Gord).
  • PostreSQL support for SMSD (Andrea Riciputi).
  • Build fixes for Darwin (Andrea Riciputi).
  • Identify M341i over IrDA (Michal Cihar, flewww, bug #65).
  • Callback functions now take pointer to state machine to allow full identification of used state machine (Michal Cihar, bug #66).
  • Fixed LAC and CID reading for AT phones (Michal Cihar).
  • Update operator list (Michal Cihar).
  • Updated README.
  • Added installation instructions.
  • Change RSS URL to my weblog, where will be posted release announcements.

Time to sleep after evening with Gammu and cMake

Today it was quite busy day, but I managed to push Gammu sources closer to weekend release. I merged various fixed that I collected in last few days. Mostly they are just small fixes, but they could make using Gammu harder.

Besides that I played a lot with cMake and the build system is in very good shape. There is still some parts missing (some header/function detection and installation phase), but these should be pretty easy, the only trouble is to find time to write them :-).

Next Gammu release

It looks like next release will have quite a lot of new features thanks to contributed patches. Probably largest improvement will be PostgreSQL support in SMSD. This was many times required feature and Gammu will now finally have it thanks to Andrea Riciputi.

Another important change is completely rewritten vCalendar RRULE parsing, which should be able to handle all standard fields. The only part which is questionable right now is how to decode YD repeating. As I read specification, I think that it should be by day of year (eg. 32 for 1st February), but from real world (and especially Siemens phones) it looks like it is used for date repeating (which means same as YM). Anyway as real difference between both is only on leap years, I will probably switch to date repeating to be compatible with Siemens.

Last small change I want to mention is CMake build support. I'm going to bring it to usable state before release, so that it can be tested in wide set of environments. Then we will see whether it is worth of changing build system.

PS: You can expect testing release this weekend.

Weather complications

For most of winter, we had troubles because there is no snow. Right now there is trouble because there is too much snow. And it is still falling. This happens just few days after Kyrill has caused quite a lot of damage, maybe the Earth wants to get rid of people who destoy its environment ;-).

In most places in Czechia 15 to 30 centimenters of new snow occured over night. Many people can not drive their car safely in these conditions and this causes lots of traffic problems. Maybe they should think before going out and use public transport instead, but it is not as comfortable as driving damn slow, because they still have summer tires…

Advertisements in phpMyAdmin demo

I probably made something not popular, but I decided to add (minimal) advertisement on all demo pages (using config.footer.inc.php). You can dislike this step, but if number of visits for demo server will grow this way, it will soon need hardware upgrade and I'm not willing to pay it from my money.

If you want me to remove ads, the only way to do it is to donate some amount which might be used for hardware upgrade. In really near future server will probably need more memory.

Petřínské terasy - nice outlook on Prague

In middle of Petřín hill, there lies small restaurant called Petřínské terasy (this website does not contain much information). You would not go there for low price, but for nice location, where you can see whole Prague centre.

You can select from variety of special meals, starting from some salads and ending with big steaks. I choose second option and I was pleased by the food. It was really good and I was not hungry after eating it :-).

This time I can not report beer quality, as I didn't drink it, but there was good selection of Czech (well Moravian) and Italian wines.

If you're looking for nice place where to go for some special occasion, or just exclusive view on Prague, this restaurant is definitely for you. Prices are not too high, but you can not expect something at this place to be cheap :-).

Gammu maintenance

As Marcin today officially moved Gammu maintenance to me, I'd like to write down some facts:

Phones support

I will improve AT and OBEX code and related Gammu parts. You can not expect much work for Nokia protocols as I have no experience with those. So if there is somebody willing to help me with this, he will be welcome.

SMSD

Almost same as for Nokia applies to SMSD. However I know this is quite important part and I will do my best to fix errors found in this code, anyway somebody willing to give this piece of code some love is velcome.

Releases

Development will go on in version control system (currently Bazaar, but it might change), there are available daily snapshots, so that you can easily test latest code. Releases will not be regullar, they will happen only if I will feel there is enough stabilised new code.

Future

I'd like to thank Marcin for all his care he devoted to Gammu and I hope I will follow in his steps. The future will show whether he will have enough time to bring Gammu+ to final state.