Gentoo for Pandora Replaced by Gentoo Embedded June 5, 2009

There’s an official Gentoo project caleld Gentoo Embedded which is supposed to handle porting Gentoo to various embedded systems. When viridior and I started Gentoo for Pandora, they were not handling armv7a processors (yet), so our project filled in a gap .

However, I’ve been recently informed that Gentoo Embedded will receive a BeagleBoard before too long, and they’ll use their tool called “autobuild” to generate up-to-date stage3’s on a regular basis. This is essentially what viridior and I have been working towards.

When another group of people come along and completely invalidate the reasons you’ve been working on a project for 4+ months and you think is going to benefit a lot of people long-term, you’re pretty much done. I’m going to run through the motions of releasing our latest 0.0.3-rc5 image, but after that we’ll have to move on and figure out what we can add that Gentoo Embedded hasn’t already done.

Last.fm: The Ultimate Hub of Music Activity April 7, 2009

I used to use Pandora.com. I loved it. It showed me all kinds of tracks I didn’t know about. But, then it got steadily repetitive. It couldn’t think outside the specific box I’d given it.

last.fm is different, and it because it does things differently, most people instantly get aggravated and move back to Pandora. Hey, I did that a few years ago myself, but now I was back to try it again.

And now I get what last.fm is doing.

Gentoo for Pandora January 16, 2009

I have a new project now. It’s called Gentoo for Pandora. It’s pretty easy to figure out what it’s all about, but I’ll summarize for those who don’t know:

Gentoo is a distributon of Linux, and it features a very flexible, very powerful package system called portage (though some would say otherwise). Gentoo’s recommended installation media doesn’t actually install anything for you, either. The entire system is all about customizing everything to your needs, which means you can leave out extra junk you know you’ll never use. Gentoo also practices “rolling updates”, which means there’s no “Gentoo v1″ or “Gentoo v2″. There’s just “Gentoo”, and whether or not you’re behind is determined by whether or not you’ve updated recently. This means that you’re always up-to-date, and never have to do a time-consuming upgrade that Ubuntu requires every six months.

Now, there are problems with using Gentoo on a handheld.

Pandora.com Client-Side Advertisement Centerpiece November 15, 2008

I really do dislike the ads that appear all around the Pandora screen. They’re big, they take out a lot of CPU space on my processor (which causes the entire site to run slower) and are even at times obnoxious (again helped by their size).

I rely on Adblock Plus to take out most of the ads out there on the internet, but it seems like they’re fighting back. Pandora.com, for instance, gets through the filters. This wouldn’t do, of course, so I used my trusty Firebug plugin to dive into the Javascript.

The solution is actually pretty simple. All you have to do is block one Javascript file, the centerpiece of the entire advertisement operation:

http://pandora.com/include/Patron.js

With that in place, Firebug reports Javascript errors (because other elements in the page, when clicked, try to reload the advertisements) but beyond that I have a clean, fresh Pandora.com page.

Then again, I’m slowly moving away from Pandora.com anyway…

Pandora Now Has 256MB of RAM and 512MB of NAND! November 1, 2008

It’s official: the Pandora’s RAM and NAND memory have both been doubled to 256MB and 512MB respectively.

There are two possible reactions that people’ve had so far:

• This is great, and I love the addition, but it doesn’t really thrill me.
• Wow, this is outstanding! This was a major problem for me, but now it’s fixed!

These two usually result from two different ideas of what the Pandora should be. The first is usually involves gaming, and the second a full desktop experience. Personally? I could go either way. Really, I have no idea which I’ll use it more for, so I rock between the two mild extremes.

However, the Pandora now has the potential to make it big. What did you say? It always had that potential? Ah, but you’d be amazed at how much a little extra RAM can help! At 128MB, you could run just about anything you wanted. At 256MB you can run just about anything you wanted, alongside Pidgin and a few tabs in Firefox. Or, it could run a game written by a lazy programmer who didn’t want to deal with efficiency.

So, yep, RAM’s good, I’m excited (just not to the level of being thrilled like I was when I pre-ordered and got my order cancelled due to security issues), and the world keeps spinning.

Until, that is, the US government collapses and USPS stops shipping. That would provide quite a thrill right there.

Pandora Pre-orders… Or Not September 30, 2008

We would if we could, but us Pandora fans cannot pre-order. The reason? See for yourself. At the time of this writing, the site is either slow in the dialup extreme, or simply resets. The Digg publicity it got last night is really taking effect now.

Last we heard, Craig, the head of Pandora development, said they needed another half-hour or so (I think). The “or so” part is important – now that the so-called set time for pre-orders has gone by, it’s anyone’s guess as to when they’ll actually open.

This would be exciting, if it weren’t for the fact that over a “couple thousand” users are reported to be visiting the site today. Keep in mind there’s only 3000 units available in the first batch. Chilling, isn’t it?

OpenPandora Pre-orders! September 16, 2008

If you haven’t been keeping up on the Pandora handheld I talked about a while back, you probably don’t know pre-orders begin on September 30th. Well, they do. If you want to stay up-to-date with the Pandora, sign up to the low traffic newsletter on their website (look in the upper-right corner).

The latest e-mail really sums up all that has happened within the last three or four months:

Last.fm: Not What I Expected March 18, 2008

I’ve always considered last.fm to be more… well… social. You get together with your buddies, and talk about music, and try different tracks. Well, it turns out to be as good, if not better than Pandora. Not only can you listen to music in more locations outside your browser, but its formula seems to work better.

So, just for reference, here’s my profile link. Nothing spectacular yet, as I’ve only just begun listening today.

Craiginator = Pandora @ OpenPandora.org December 21, 2007

If you haven’t been tracking on the latest and greatest news at the gp32x.com website, you’d better scoot right over there this moment. The forums are a-buzz with the latest information, pictures, and designs.

If you don’t know where to start, let me point you in the right direction(s):
Here’s where all the information posted is gathered (pandora.bluwiki.org)
Here’s where all the community is discussing it, and where new information is posted (gp32x.com)

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The “Craiginator” (Previously “GP2X: Take Two”) Just Got Sweeter October 13, 2007

Someone posted some examples of what this device will be capable of. Because screenshots don’t do justice to the amazing quality and detail of the videos, I’ve provided direct download links to the movie files. For you Linux-friendly folk, these are not in EXEs, despite the URLs.

If you’re looking around for a mobile gaming/entertainment device, this is worth your time!

http://www.imgtec.com/Downloads/DocumentDownloads/Demos/EXE/PowerVRCity.zip
http://www.imgtec.com/Downloads/DocumentDownloads/Demos/EXE/Water.zip

If you’ve never heard of this device, I recommend you keep reading.