Early versions of Google Chrome now are available for Linux. If you are subscribing to Google repository, you can install it right away:
yum install google-chrome-unstable

Here is the instructions to setup Google repository with yum. Other Google software is also available in the repository, e.g. Google Desktop, Picasa and Google Gadgets.

I find Chrome very fast, and now I seldom use Firefox anymore.

One symptom of Wikipedia addiction is you dream of editing Wikipedia when you sleep. I have just experienced that. It is quite worrying. Still, it doesn’t bother me enough to stop me from ploughing through mathematics articles in Indonesian Wikipedia and whip them into shape. They are still messy.

Although it was advertised in Pidgin 2.6.0, voice chat in Pidgin wasn’t really functional. But now I have found that with version 2.6.2 finally it works. Pidgin now supports XMPP voice chat (this includes Google Talk). I only test it with Linux version though. Should be handy for people with long-distance relationship.

Have I told you learning calculus is hard? At least, when you try to use formal approach (i.e., the approach used by mathematicians). Physicists, and I suppose engineers too, tends to assume a certain function is well behaved and manipulate it right away (derive, integrate, etc). Mathematicians seems to worry a lot about what seems to me who have physics background, petty things. Well, admittedly it is fundamental, like existence theorems. Still it is annoying.

But I suppose learning the fundamentals helps to think more carefully and less sloppily. I hope so.

The upgrade from Fedora 10 to 11 was not smooth. I knew that the DVD drive of my laptop that ran Fedora 10 had problems, and it showed. It failed to read the Fedora 11 DVD. Fortunately I still have another machine, the iBook. I made a DVD image, then copied it to an external hard drive, and then transfer it to the laptop. Then I proceeded to upgrade Fedora 10 to 11 from the laptop’s hard drive.

Strangely, even I can ran the installer without problems, it didn’t do the upgrade. I decided to nuke the OS and do a clean install. My /home directory was in a separate partition, so I didn’t bother to do a backup ( risky behaviour, I know). But, although the installer was for Fedora 11 (I rechecked), it still installed Fedora 10!

I scratched my head. Then I decided to install from the external hard disk: the DVD image was still there after all. This time the installation suceeded.

Soon I noticed some stability problems and graphical glitches, which was expected. Sadly it is not completely gone after installing updates. I also has problems with hibernating and resuming. Which is a pity, for Fedora 11 features some nice improvements (fast booting, presto updates …).

Like it or not, Office documents editing application bundled for Palm devices (such as my old Tungsten E2), that is Documents to Go, is much more superior than any apps for other platforms. Office Mobile/Pocket Office in Windows Mobile, or QuickOffice in Nokias or BlackBerries cannot compare favourably.

QuickOffice in my Nokia E63 lacks one important feature for journalists: word count. So does the version in BlackBerry. One of my work colleague often complains (and then asksk for me to help her counting words) because of this. It is easy to type reports and send it by email to the editors, but she cannot count how many the words are…

Luckily for certain Nokia E Series owner QuickOffice offers free upgrades to version 6.0 of their application. This new version is equipped with lots of new features, but the most important for me is, certainly, the word count. Yes, of course E63 is eligible for the free upgrade.

I am still exploring and discovering my new phone. I manage to make Nokia Messaging pushmail work as intended. I am also able to configure so the new mail titles will show up in the home screen. I install Mail4Exchange, and sync contacts and calendars to Google.

Somewhat miss touchscreen features, and task manager found in my old Sony Ericsson M600i.

After much procrastinating and delaying I relented and buy a new phone. I have decided it was either Nokia E71 or Nokia E63. I chose the latter because financial reasons: I was not prepared to spend too much money for a phone. I have tried it for several days for review and at the time I couldn’t find any complaints.

Well, it is different when it is your own. You explore it much more intensely. And quickly found several annoyances.

The device itself is good-looking. I bought a black model which looks elegant. It is quite slim but not the keyboard is of comfortable size for the thumbs. My complaints are actually about the bundled software.

For starters: email. For a device that assumes messaging as its strength, the experience is disappointing. The email client just merely adequate, not outstanding. Okay, the email accounts setting is easy and quick, but from there it goes downhill.

It is already well-known that new Nokia phones doesn’t support Blackberry pushmail. But from the experience with Sony Ericsson M600i, I found IMAP IDLE adequately replaces it somewhat. Nokia E63 features IMAP IDLE but I cannot find how to activate (or deactivate, if it automatically supports it). In M600i you just choose the option “Always on Pushmail” (which is actually misleading, because it is IMAP IDLE).

Oh, and when you exit the email client, it disconnects. I want it to stay connected in the background, like in the M600i. Perhaps this is just different behaviour you should expect when switching phones, but it is still annoying.

The email client also forces me to always include the original message when replying, which is sometimes unnecessary. There is no option to discard the quoted message. It also enforces top posting. Good God.

The Nokia Messaging client, the part of the new Nokia pushmail solution, also suffers from the same sucktitude. It always quotes the original message. However, it is kind of nice looking. I reserve further criticism for this because there is an update, and I haven’t upgraded to it yet.

I am also still waiting to see whether device will choke when handling lots of emails, that is, about more than 1000 emails. It is snappy now. I hope it will stay that way.

Today I have just looked up this blog’s stats. Evidently the most read post is my complaint about the difficulty of getting free WebDAV service. Well, from the comments and some research of my own I now can inform you at least there are two free WebDAV services: Mydisk.se and Swissdisk.com.

Mydisk.se offers 2 GB free WebDAV storage, with caveat: if the account is inactive in 3 months, the files will be deleted. Swissdisk.com only offers 50 MB of storage, but doesn’t have activity requirements to retain your data.

I have been reviewing calculus seriously again these days, after years leaving it, since I want to improve the mathematics articles in Indonesian Wikipedia. Not only reading books and articles quickly, I also took up pen and paper and tried to prove some theorems and worked out problems.

I understand now why some people found it hard. I know some friends that barely passed it, and one of them tried n-th times before barely passed it (if I am not mistaken, n=4) and teased endlessly because of it.

Another friend of mine said mathematics is actually not that difficult, but it is tricky. It demands a fairly imaginative mind to go through the theorems and the problems quickly. My lecturer once described there were two approaches to solving problems in maths: the “corporal ways” and the “general ways”. The “corporal way” seem easy and obvious, but generally long and tedious (and perhaps needs lots and lots of papers). The “general way” require tricks and imagination, but are usually short and elegant. Here I will not ponder the obsession of mathematicians for “elegant proofs”.

I actually passed freshman level calculus with more than satisfactory grades, and could not comprehend what was the fuss of it being “difficult”. Clearly I was imaginative enough or (more likely) I spent enough time for studying it.

But now I find it actually difficult. Either I do not have enough time nowadays for learning maths, or (more alarmingly) my intellects and imaginative powers have eroded. The latter explanation is rather scary for me to think about