+ <item>
+ <title>Navteq bruker 3-12 måneder, OpenStreetmap.org trenger noen dager</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Navteq_bruker_3_12_m_neder__OpenStreetmap_org_trenger_noen_dager.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Navteq_bruker_3_12_m_neder__OpenStreetmap_org_trenger_noen_dager.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 7 Sep 2010 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Jeg ble riktig fascinert av
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3800967.ece">en
+artikkel i Aftenposten</a> om hvor hardt Navteq jobber for å oppdatere
+kartene som brukes i navigasjons-GPSer, der det blant annet heter at
+"på grunn av teknikken tar det alt fra tre til tolv måneder før
+kartene er oppdatert". Når en kjenner hva slags oppdateringshastighet
+som er tilgjengelig på
+<a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> som
+oppdateres på dugnad, blir det litt trist å se hva noe av det beste en
+kan kjøpe for penger får til.</p>
+
+<p>Fra en endrer kartdataene i databasen til OpenStreetmap tar det
+ca. 15 minutter før endringen er synlig på kartet som alle kan se på
+web. Dernest overføres det daglig til en kartdump som lastes ned av
+personen som lager Garmin-kart for Norge ca. en gang i uken. Med
+OpenStreetmap.org og <a href="http://www.frikart.no/">Frikart.no</a>
+kan en altså ha korreksjonene på plass i sin Garmin-GPS i løpet av en
+uke. Det er også av tekniske årsaker at det tar så langt tid.
+Jobbene som tegner kartene, henter ut kartdumpene og konverterer til
+Garmin-format tar minutter og timer å gjennomføre, slik at de ikke
+gjøres kontinuerlig men kun regelmessing.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
+popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
+second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
+most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
+working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
+users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
+installed.</p>
+
+<p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
+(«<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
+i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
+stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
+schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
+Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
+web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
+the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
+good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
+
+<p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
+said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
+everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
+comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
+non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
+understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
+example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
+it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
+distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
+pages they want to visit.</p>
+
+<p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
+and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
+distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
+Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
+to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
+the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
+unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
+The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
+release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
+with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
+accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 1 Sep 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application. The last few
+days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
+aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
+that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
+It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
+allow me to drive the robot around. I picked PerlQt as I have had
+positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
+browsing the web for examples. Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
+cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
+compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
+libqt-perl. Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
+drive around.</p>
+
+<p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
+controlling the robot. Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+use Spykee;
+Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
+my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
+my $spykee = Spykee->new();
+$spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
+$spykee->left();
+sleep 2;
+$spykee->right();
+sleep 2;
+$spykee->forward();
+sleep 2;
+$spykee->back();
+sleep 2;
+$spykee->stop();
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
+peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
+implement the protocol used by the robot. I've implemented several of
+the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
+support to make it possible to control the robot from remote. First I
+want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
+the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
+without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
+so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
+going. :).</p>
+
+<p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
+where to make it available first. I will add a link to
+<a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
+those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+