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Google Chrome

Google Chrome

A few days ago, Google released its own browser, Google Chrome. As the author of a web browser (Voyager), I think they did it right. Here’s why:

Multithreaded

This is something I always wanted to implement within Voyager but it was too difficult because of GUI issues (the toolkit used was a mess to use from threads). As far as I know, the first browser implementing rendering in its own process was Internet Explorer but when they implemented tabs, they left that out. Apparently they fixed that in IE 8. The advantage to such a design is that the main GUI isn’t locked anymore when rendering CPU hungry website, and you can even switch to other tabs meanwhile. It is tricky to implement such design and I noticed some refresh problems in Chrome when writing in TEXTAREA fields for example. Scrolling speed can also become slow because the refresh is asynchronous then. But overall this is a very good idea.

Fast

Well, I’m impressed by the speed. The browser chews tons of HTML without problems. This is not just a minor speed gain but it’s really noticeable on usage. And most important, the browser launches in less than a second, without preloading files or anything. I was quite getting fed up of MSIE and Firefox taking more than 5 seconds to launch. Their JavaScript engine uses JIT techniques, which is the first time it is in a browser I think. Although I don’t think JavaScript execution speed is really a burden in most common webpages (yet) this is a nice addition.

Nifty features

The tabs drag & drop, search in the address bar (without search words being recognized as URLs or other nonsense), uncluttered GUI, automatic fullscreen mode, URL completion that actually works, all plugins working without hassle.

Stability

Not a single crash as of yet. Perfectly usable as a main browser.

So there, Chrome is now my default browser. I was getting fed up with Firefox’ bloat and MSIE had too many annoyances. Nice job Google. Chrome is how I always wanted to make Voyager like. Now good luck fixing all the quirks 🙂

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New Mix: Aurora Mix #2

Aurora

Once again a new mix played at Aurora for the beginning of 2008. Download location is here and the tracklist is as follows:

  • DT8 Project – Hold Me Till The End (Truly Deeply Dub)
  • Pablo Roma Marcelo Vasami – Pushing Me Away (Riko Mix)
  • Nick K – Space Dough
  • Scope – My Generation
  • Cyro – Score A Million (Original)
  • Martin H Oliver Klein – Club Game (Simon Shaker Remix)
  • Hauswerks vs Gaz James – No Disco
  • Dave McCullen – B*tch (Club Extended)
  • DJ Jose – Stepping To The Beat (Dave McDonald Remix)
  • Tim Deluxe – It Just Wont Do (Club Mix)
  • Dave Spoon – Sunrise
  • Gabriel Dresden – Dust In The Wind (Album Version)
  • Marco Petralia ft. Jimmie Wilson – Come Back (Erick Decks & Marco Petralia Dub)
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New Mix: Aurora Mix #1

This is the mix I played yesterday at the Aurora. You can download it here.

Tracklist:

  • 16 Bit Lolitas – Passing Lights
  • Plus49 – Rock On (Pole Folder Unfaithful Remix)
  • Gabriel & Dresden – Dust In The Wind (Album Version)
  • Ashtrax – Freeload (Freelove)
  • D. Ramirez – La Discotek
  • Jackson Q – Our Melody
  • Jorgensen – Untitled (Deadmau5 Remix)
  • John Dahlback – Don’t Speak (Album Version)
  • Audiofly Paul Harris – Miscalate
  • D Ramirez & Mark Knight – Colombian Soul (Gabriel & Dresden Tuscan Soul Mix)
  • Robot Needs Oil – Defected (Olivier Giacomotto remix)
  • Booka Shade – Tickle
  • Ida Engberg – Disco Volante (Sebastien Leger Remix)
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Indexing on Linux not ready yet

Beagle Tracker

On the Linux Desktop there are at least 2 ongoing efforts to try to bring indexing support to the platform. That is, a way to quickly search for files spread around the user’s home directory. One is Beagle and the other is tracker.

But both projects have a major flaw: they can’t properly track file changes. To do that, they use Linux’ inotify feature which allows to watch directories and files. Although you can watch the content of a directory, notifications do not recurse, which means that you have to watch every single directory of your home.

So what happens? Upon startup watches have to be put on every directory and that requires quite a significant filesystem activity. Beagle seems to defer this when the system is in an idle state so it is less noticeable.

The proper solution would be that the Linux kernel provides an inotify that does recurse. This shouldn’t be a performance problem as indexing softwares would only need one watch then.

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Gnome creating problems

Gnome

Funny how instead of trying to solve problems, Gnome apps are actually creating new ones, all by themselves, without any outside factor. They must be really bored or something.

All modern desktops have an area called a systray which is a small area where apps that keep running in the background but still provide an interface that is accessed from time to time can be found, usually by displaying their icon here. Such apps are usually music players, instant messaging software, news aggregator, mail clients, etc.. This is useful because the app doesn’t get in the way by being too intrusive. For example you don’t need an instant messenger to take unecessary space when no one is messaging you. Same for a music player, you don’t need it to display anything once you did your music selection and it’s playing.

For these apps, when you press the close button, they go to the systray.. or so you’d think. Because some people think that the close button should be used to close apps, and that for minimizing to systray you should use some obscure keyboard shortcut (ctrl + w, the ‘w’ stands for ‘wankers’) or press the icon in the systray again. Of course, the former behaviour is still available in other apps.

So what happens is that when pressing the close button, some apps will go to the systray and other will just exit. A good example is Rhythmbox which exits when you press the close button. How many users are really running Rhythmbox to play a few seconds then actually quit the app? Probably very very few. How many users said “oh shit” when pressing the same close button? Probably many.

But as usual I bet they’ll spend years and years on that “problem”..

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New Mix: Top Models

DJing

I finally moved my DJing setup to my current place. There are now 4 speakers “surround sound” and lights to make my neighbourood happy.

You can download a Trance/Progressive mix I did last week here. If you use Windows I recommend Winamp to play it (AAC+ format). Let me know what you think about it. Yes, I know I fucked up a bit at the end, this is the wonders of realtime mixing 🙂

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Sonar 2007

Sonar

Sonar 2007

So there was I at the Sonar. Actually it reminded me a lot of Energy 2006, Sonic 7 or Infinity 2006 except it was even bigger and there was an open air area, which is great. The organization was good except you had to take silly tickets instead of being able to pay directly to bars.. well perhaps it’s quicker that way, I don’t know but it seems lot of events are doing it that way now.

Very good set by Damian Schwartz vs Tadeo, which are DJs I didn’t know. But afterwards the music style completely changed in all rooms. Instead of separating the rooms by music style it seems artists are randomly showing up in all of them. Well, so no music I liked during 1.5 hour. Later on, started Jeff Mills in the biggest room, which unfortunatly had no lasers! There must be something wrong in Spain regarding lasers and is one of the few reason I might go back to Switzerland a few times. They add so much to the visual effects, I’ll probably get one for my flat 🙂

Then there was Dave Clarke and.. wow. His set was perfect technically. There was no single glitch or anything, wonderful. That made me last until the end where he left quite abruptly.

There was a bus service to reach the center of the city. Very useful and pretty fast too. All in all a pretty good event but it misses some more music style separation between rooms, and lasers !

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Armin van Buuren at She Discoteca

Armin van Buuren

On the 1st of June, Armin van Buuren was announced at the She Discoteca so I thought it would be a good idea to go there.

The She Discoteca is located in Vilassar de Mar, which is about 30 km away from the Barcelona city. The only way to go there, other than using a car, is by train, which is an awfully painful process. Not only it’s a mess to find which one is the proper train (basically you have to ask around) but they also have some silly schedules (where you also have to ask around). The trip takes about 30 minutes as the train stops every 3 minutes.

I met some people in the train who were going to the same place and asked around where the club was. Turns out we still had to walk a little bit more. Finally, there I was and I took an entry ticket (18 € including a drink). The club wasn’t too crowded yet and a DJ was trying to warm up the room with an average set, quite boring.

The She Discoteca, despite its silly name, is a good place and reminds me a lot of the clubs in Ibiza. The lights were good but unfortunately no lasers to be seen. Dammit! There was a VIP area above which was empty. When will they understand that such area is not needed for trance events?

Armin arrived at 3:00 and started to warm up the room with some progressive sets. I found it a bit slow.. took about one hour to really become trancy. The area was pretty crowded by then. While going to the bathroom I noticed an “hip hop” room with about 10 people in it, funny.

The party ended at 6:00. All in all, it was good. Damn, and the train again on the way back.