"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Tuesday 31 December 2013

Greetings ...

I've been off line for Christmas so I missed blogging my greetings. So with my belated Christmas greetings let my wish a sincere ...

Happy 2014!!!

Saturday 21 December 2013

Upgraded the EEEPC 900 RAM


I at last decided to buy a 2GB SO-DIMM to install on my old EEEPC 900. The installation process has been quite simple just matter of unscrewing the rear cover, unplugging the old module and replacing it with the new one.

The EEEPC performances have been improved only marginally, at least during everyday uses. By the way the upgrade did cost me only 25€.
So this short post is mostly a reminder, to my readers and myself, that all test I'll do on the EEEPC since now will be with the upgraded 2GB RAM and not with the original EEEPC 900 configuration.

Tuesday 10 December 2013

Test Drive: Linux Mint 16 “Petra” on the EEEPC


With the end of November the latest Linux Mint distribution release has arrived. Even I haven't got Mint installed on any of my computers anymore I decided to give it a look to see how it behaves, at least running live, on the EEEPC. I so downloaded Mint 16, the version shipped with Cinnamon 2.0, and prepared a USB disk using Unetbootin.

First impressions

The system started with reasonable speed and booted into the (good) old fashioned view of the Cinnamon desktop.
Mint 16 behaves smoothly enough and is responsive even on the EEEPC 900 limited resources.

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Fun programming: Andengine


Here I am back on the “Fun programming” theme: finding ways to have some fun while programming. A way I use to detach myself from daily routine while seeking for new techniques or languages to learn. While visiting back this blog I noticed many articles about Andengine: a promising 2D games engine for Android developed by Nicolas Gramich.

Setting-Up Andengine

The starting point so set-up a working Andengine environment is to have a working Android development set-up based on Eclipse and Android SDK. I had prepared it before during my previous Android experiments. Also is needed a Git plug-in for Eclipse, like EGit.

Andengine is available as a Android library project it can be easily downloaded from its GitHub page by selecting Eclipse import wizard (Choosing the “File → Import …” menu first then the “Git → Projects from Git” option).
After copying the project URI in the wizard request …
The project branch must be selected, I did choose the GLES2 branch the latest and the one currently under develop.