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I have a Palm T|X (well since my wife abandoned hers I have two).   I loved it.  It was useful.  It was helpful.   I even managed to get it online.   I moved on over to my Nokia N810 now though, and it does everything I used to use my TX for.   So does anyone have ideas on what I can do with the Palm without completely putting it out to pasture?

Maximum PC recently ran an article titled 50 Skills Every Real Geek Should Have, I wanted to go through and see how I ranked in their skill list.   Let’s find out.

1. Name the Connectors – yes I was able to :)

2. Run your essential apps on a USB stick – no I don’t do this, I could – I just prefer to run everything in the cloud or on my N810 – which is with me most of the time.

3. Straighten Pins on a CPU – I have done this too many times

4. Know the 13 basic HTML Tags – well I kinda know most of them – I use freaking wordpress I hardly need to use HTML and when I do I look it up and hav ethe answer in seconds.   Though I do know quite a few by heart that aren’t listed in the basic 13.

5.  Get through to executive customer service – hey I read the consumerist.

6.  Beat quake in 60 minutes – maybe at one point in time, but I’m not big on FPS games.

7.  Build a Hackintosh – I know how, I just don’t the components that seem to work, and I’m a cheap bastard that won’t buy parts just to run OSX - I’ll stick with ubuntu as my alternative OS.

8.  Watch TV Online legally – um that’s how I watch 100% of my TV these days.

9.  Get around a content filter from a public computer – yes I know how, I’ve helped friends at other companies, it’s not worth it to do it at my own job though.

10. Recite Pi to 23 decimal places – nope – I have no inclination to ever learn either.

11. Replace the controller board on a hard drive – hey I did that once, it’s not a skill that comes up at parties though.

12.  Benchmark your computer – really?  Is this even on this list? Yes, I was doing this before I fully understood what the benchmarks meant on my 386 DX40.

13. Decorate your room with only printer paper – am I physically in the skill set to be able to do this?  Yes I am – would I?  No.  I’m more likely to decorate with NES cartridges.

14. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered – yes I am capable – it would be easier if you encrypted it first though.

15.  Get into a windows computer if you don’t have a password – yes I’ve done this quite a few times.

16.  Hide data from anyone – yes encryption, hidden volumes, stegnography (which I got bored with in 2001) – I am capable of doing all that – I’m more likely ot share my data then hide it though.

17. Explain what e=mc2 means – yes I would like the e=MC2 with a side of fries please – yes I am capable, but refuse to put in the details here since I want to make it through this list.

18.  Abstain from buying extended warranties – I may have bought one, once – it was on something i thoguht it fall apart though – so it’s all good.

19.  Use photoshop or gimp – yes I am capable.

20. Use a DSLR in full manual mode – I can – I’m just lazy and prefer it to do the work.

21. Mooch your neighbors wi-fi – my neighbor doesn’t have wi-fi but I’m ready to mooch when they do.

22. Protext your wi-fi – Wep2 currently – For a while I had mac filtering, I hated to keep getting mac addresses from visitors though.

23. Create an animated spray in Valve games – um – I don’t think I’ve played a single one for more then 5 minutes….so this one is a no.

24.  Setup RAID – yes I’ve done this a few times over the years for my home network.  Now implement Iscsi raid across multiple computers – that’s a challenge.

25. Calculate a Pitchers ERA – no I don’t know how – but I know google will give me the answer quicker then I can calculate it.

26. Run two Operating Systems – um I dual boot currently……

27. Install a hard drive in laptop – done before and some day I’ll do it again.

28. Pull off an elaborate prank – I think have the skill set and knowledge – I just never have – unless stealing street signs as a teenager counts.

29.  Rocket jump with a macro – um – I said I don’t really do FPS games – so no I can’t do this.

30.  Wire your home with ethernet – um every place I’ve lived with my wife we have had wired ethernet – we even used RG58 at one point.

31.  Know the 6 most important linux commands – yes I get command not found when I’m not thinking and run them in windows.

31. Rip your CDs to Flac – we did this for awhile then went back to MP3

32.  Stream Music, Movies, Pictures to any TV in the house – I’ve done this before – now we just carry our laptops around – shrug.

33.  Install and configure a VM – yes I’ve done this for literally years (maybe even a decade by now)

34.  Run multiple monitors – yes I use to dual monitor and run SWG on two different ones at the same time – I’m sad I know.

35. Run hacked firmware on a router – yes liek the rest of hte world I have a hacked linksys router /yawn.

36.  Pick a lock – I’m not good at it, but I’ve done it a couple times.

37.  Tell the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – it’s been awhile but I think I could.

38.  Avoid DRM on everything – well streaming video legally that they talked about above seems to contradict this one doesn’t it.   However all my local video, music, picutres, and ebooks are DRM free.

39. Download a flash video and reformat it – yes I’ve done this – youtube videos locally stored on the N810 ftw.

40.  Get around in DOS – I grew up and DOS and resisted windows for a long time – so let’s just say yes.

41. Rip a DVD to h.264 – yes been there done that.

42.  Overclock your PC – yes I’ve done this my pride and joy was overclocking my AMD 133 mhz 486 to 160 MHZ – and it benchmarked and ran like a pentium 133 for half the cost.

43.  Use remote desktop – it’s part of my job – so yes.

44. Debate the merits of a star destroyer vs. the enterprise – yes, and the star destroyer would win.

45. Buld your own computer – built too many to actually count – I’m serious to – I worked at a small PC store and we sold hundreds – thousands of machines – so I cna build my own.

In irony they don’t seem to actually have 50 things on their list – so I think most geeks should know how to count also.

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So I’m back to playing World of Warcraft – I’ve made it about a week this time.  Out of the 3-4 previous attempts I’ve had the highest level I attained was 20.   Currently I’m already at level 13, since I’ve only been back a week you can either take this as how much I’m playing now, or how little I played before.   Each time though I seemed to go through another character.

There are three of us playing together and communicating via Skype (I get to use my N810 for the skype client :).   Maybe we’ll stick it out or maybe I’ll get bored again – who knows.

You can see my character information and track growth here.

If you don’t have the game and wish to play with our group you can pick it up up at amazon.com here for 19.99.

Since moving to Diablo on my N810 I can no longer have Canola2 sync the RSS feeds of my podcasts.   I was at a loss, I didn’t want to set up another podcatcher and move them over manually.   I also didn’t want to install anything else on my n810 to try and do this for me (you Canola2 folks better be happy for my loyalty).  So for lack of anything else I decided to start listening to audio books.

I used to listen to audio books in my pre-teen age, trying to cram more books into my skull at the same time.  The problem is that I didn’t absorb them the same way as I do the written word.  I’m still sure I miss a lot listening to the audio book of something versus reading it, but I get enough of it that it is still enjoyable.   I decided to start with John Grisham’s The Appeal.

The book is pretty much standard John Grisham fare, if you like his criminal law dramas then I would definitely recommend picking up a copy of it.  Pick it up in hardcover or paperback or audiobook from Amazon.

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Always being on the bleeding edge, I upgraded to WordPress 2.6 today.  I upgraded all the blogs hosted on my account to the latest and greatest wordpress installation.   Since according to article that announced the release, the inner workings and plugin system remained the same as 2.5.  I’m hoping this means none of my plugins break.

I don’t think I will be that lucky though.  I do know upgrading my N810 to Diablo caused breakage in the applications I used.   As long as all of my crossposting still works I will be a happy upgrade monkey.   We’ll see how it goes.

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Sunday night I was bored, so like all bored geeks I updated my device to the bleeding edge.   The N810 feels peppier, but then again that could be my imagination or just the fact of cleaning out all the programs.   Either way it feels faster.

My biggest heartbreak is Canola2 is not fully updated and I can use the old installtion but it only half works.   I’ve read the most common reason for applications has to do with the supported version of python has changed, but who knows.   Until I can use Canola2 as a podcatcher and video player again, it’s dead to me.

I also lost alot of my network security tools, my solitaire game, and the program that synced my Google calendar with my local GPE calender.   Writing this all out I’m not sure what exactly works.  The new built in mail client works better (yet still crashes), Pidgin seems to work, and browsing is fine.

The applications will get ported, I’m just on the bleeding edge and now need to wait.   That doesn’t mean I can’t throw a hissy fit.

Picture taken from here

Yesterday I couldn’t find my N810.  The hunt started on Sunday night and was reinitiated yesterday morning.   No N810, nowhere in sight.   As the night waned on yesterday I renew the hunt.  It was like I was looking for the great pumpkin Charlie Brown. Eventually it was found where you always expect ot find these things, behind a cushion on the couch.

This device (even when I don’t use it) has become so integral to my daily life that I flipped out more over that missing then I have or missing a wallet or cell phone for an extended period.   It may be the cost of the device, but I think it’s more the functionality and freedom it gives me (I’m sure it didn’t help that I was in the middle of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother E-Book).

It’s strange since i could go for weeks without seeing my ipod or my Palm TX, two things that this has replaced.   Now it’s working on becoming the extension of myself that fills the gap when I’m away from a laptop or computer.

I’m quite happy with it.

Picture taken from here

Mobile computing is becoming my newest fascination.  My previous fascinations included network based storage, network redundancy, and network security.   I enjoy making things do things that they were meant or designed to.   This is part of the sould that drives my curiousity to the edge of insanity and teeters over the maw of the great beyond.   I think eventually I will completely loose it and tumble into that gaping mouth that will swallow my soul and my body whole.

Mobile computing isn’t what it was even 3 years ago, mobile computing by traditional defintion means being able to computer while having the ability to travel.   Mobile computing devices were originally laptops, then PDA’s were taking over, now cell phones and custom Internet devices like my N810.   The question you need to ask is this still what mobile computing is, or is it being morphed into the new Internet buzz phrase “Cloud Computing”?

While I’ve been doing my crossposting series I’ve been thinking about what it truly means to be mobile and to work in the Internet cloud.   Ironically there is more to my online activities then my blog and how far reaching I can make the posts go.   I have pieces of me that exists in the cloud.  Part of this is my blog postings, sometimes this gives you an intimate side of me.   There is more that make up who I am and my goal is to see how I can migrate that online so I can access it any time and anywhere I have a net connection and an interface to the online world.

I have the basic or myself, my memories in the blog posts.  As I go on and digg further in my past more of these will survive through that.   What about everythign I create?  What about my pictures, my videos, my friends, my documents; will these things always be able to exist in the cloud?  While there are methods to storing these data types online, what about when a service goes belly up?  If a company goes out of business and you are relying on them with your data, where do you turn?  Even the great and powerful Google isn’t immune to canceling a service and dropping your data.   How do you stop that?  How do you save your data?  Is there even a reason for home storage anymore?

I can say just typing that out that there will always be a reason for home storage.   There will be private documents that you never want to show online.  Private thoughts that will always remain yours alone.   Until extrememely heavy encryption is ubuiquitous and tied soley to you, there is no reason to trust this data online.  If you don’t want ANYONE ELSE to ever see it, keep it away from the Internet.

I’m going to start a new blog series that investigates working in the cloud.  I know that this has been done before, but I think it will work nicely with my crossposting god series.  Why?  Because I’m going to focus on data redundancy and survivability in the modern Internet age.   I’m going to touch upon security and point out the insecurity that exists that most of us seem to ignore.

There are pieces of me scattered in teh clouds, I want some semblance and organization before I run into the hurricane.

So last night I did try to turn my laptop into a hackintosh, and it didn’t turn out so well.  After installation I seemed to have an issue with my video not working (ironic that it works for the installation screens).  I futzed with it for awhile and since have given up on it.    I’m willing to work around issues and change my methodogy to do something becuase I’m not using it the way it’s supposed to be used (part of the mantra of everything I do – My old home network used to have 16 PC’s on it).  I can only go so far in futzing before it’s more a nuisance and get’s in the way of getting things done.

After following the Kalway steps that should have enabled to work, I relented and went back to Ubuntu Hardy Heron 64 Bit – a fresh install (plus the addition of 2 GB of ram) has mad it more “peppy” then it was before.   I guess my next step will be working on getting VMware working so I can get the couple windows programs (Finale) that I want to work with running on my laptop.   One great thing about a fresh install is that Ubuntu detected my wireless NIC right away – that took a couple hours to get working when I first installed Gutsy Gibbon.

Xie had been having issues with Vista and we salavaged her data and loaded Ubuntu on her laptop as well.  She remarked to me that it seemed to simple.   I explained how complex do you need your operating system to appear?  We’ll see how it goes with her, if she likes it, and if she’ll stick with it.   She has become a bit more like me in the belief of the cloud computing dream and as long as the browser functions as well she’ll learn to work around everything else.

I can say that I did have mixed feeling migrating to OSX since I wouldn’t be able to test Gnome Conduit anymore (except the N810 port), which would make it alot harder for me to work on documentation.   Regardless it seems I’m now a linux for life type of guy, though it’s not like I don’t have an XP desktop 5 feet away from me, a 2k3 server in a basement, a first gen mac mini in the next room hooked to the TV, and my work assigned Mac Book Air next to this laptop.   Maybe since the N810 is linux based I should have done a BSD on this laptop?   I do think I’m very comfortable switching between OS’s and machines.

So most you know that I was running Ubuntu Hardy Heron, but during some patching I hit some data corruption that caused my laptop to go all screwy.  The first thing I noticed was the touchpad stopped working.   Um….ok.   Then I was getting errors on boot up, more or less when I logged in some packages kept crashing and wouldn’t restart.   Upon trying to fix and reinstall packages I managed to loose gnome and then I couldn’t do anything.

I did manage to get into the laptop last night with a Hardy Heron live DVD, after getting i I setup an FTP server and managed to save everything I cared about in my home directory.  With this migration and the thought that I’m going to have to reinstall Linux anyways (yes I could sit down for more hours and repair the ubuntu installation, but I’m originally a windows guy I’ve saved my data it’s quicker at this point to format/reinstall),  that I would try to get OSX working on my laptop.   I have heard with the Intel GMA video driver there is some mouse artifact issues, but I didn’t notice any problems when I booted up the install DVD (this was when I was trying to decide my course of action and before I saved the data).  Since I’ve read that the wifi works now, and the toushpad and audio should work, I don’t really give a care to the fact that the built in web cam might not work.

I’ve been using my work Mac Air most the time at home and figured it is time to take a plunge to try to go more OSX based.  I’m going to try to dual boot between OSX and Ubuntu, but I think that’s mostly to stick around for gnome conduit since that’s the only unique app worth me sticking around for.   I do have it running on my n810 and I’ll still have linux on there, so I’m it’s not like I’m running.  It’s like I’m experimenting around.

So after I’m done I’ll let you know how successful I am.

So I was leaving for a smoke break and I had my headphones in, I just listened to a TWIT episode 133 which featured Jonathan Coulton the musician who released the song “Code Monkey” back in 2006. I happened to have it on my N810 and I was just going to get up for a smoke break.   I started the song and reaction hit me, I almost starting singing it out loud – not just out loud, I was going to sing it very loudly.   I caught myself.   I had the feeling where your vocal codes start to open up and your ready to let a sound loose, well I didn’t hear it by I would assume I probably let loose a gurgle out of throat, it may have been too far gone down the pipeline to shut it off completely without leakage.

Now I’m sure Xie is reading this slightly amused, to finish off the picture I on the way out of the building I was doing my little dance type walk.   I’m not a teeny bopper anymore (well compared to most people here I’m sure I seem that way), but a guy in his thirties doing a jerky little head bopping dance while he’s walking out of the office is sure to garner some attention.   So far though no one has said anything.

The best thing I can offer you is to not listen to “Code Monkey” in your office.   I do suggest you check out Jonathan’s site for more of his great music though.   I’ll leave you with the “Code Monkey” WoW music video.

I’m a geek.   There is no doubt or question about that.   We’ve established this now, let’s move forward.   I had a great idea today.  I was going to hook up a bluetooth adapter to my windows file server at home and make a blue tooth file server at home.   I also wanted to be uber geeky and send a welcome message via blue tooth to any new blue tooth devices that came within range.

However.

It seems that no one has really made a bluetooth file server.   If I had access to such a server I could browse it from my Nokia N810 (yes I know I can already browse via TCP/IP – go back to where I said I’m geek), I could also pull pictures automatically off my cell phone when it was in range, and then have those pictures automatically upload to Flickr.   I could sync new ring tones on my cell.   But it seems that no one has really built a blue tooth file server, at least not on windows.

I know this idea may seem farfetched, but I can find out how to tether a cell phone to my dog that will send me me GPS updates via twitter and google maps data in a ton of different places (all for 30.00 a month).  I can have my plants send me an SMS message when they need watering.   I can build my own electric induction field to charge my cell phone battery.   To install a bluetooth file server on windows – I must be insane, or so the google return stats tell me.

I know the full geek out there would drop down and write a new bluetooth stack via assembler and crosscompile it via a web interface so it was cross platform, I however am not that geek.

I think I may have to go crawl under a rock now until I can figure out how to get my cupboard to twitter it’s down to it’s last pop tart.

This weekend I didn’t get to play with my N810 as much as I had hoped (but the day isn’t over yet.)  I did manage to get a few things done this weekend though.

Yesterday we made it out to the flea market to browse around and hopefully snag a good deal.   Unfortunately since the arrival of e-bay to the main stream, the flea market isn’t as good as it used to be (the same can be said about antique stores), so we didn’t manage to spend any hard earned money.   I’m not really that heart broken.

I was going to transpose some music for my sister, but I though I would run to the music store and pick up something for her to play immediately.   We made it to the music store and for alto saxophone they had 5 booklets of music, and none of them any good.  For trumpet they had one extra book, still nothing of interest.   I guess musicians don’t buy music at the store any more or at least not in northwest Ohio.

Then we got it into our heads that we wanted to buy a pair of Doc Marten boots, ironically these are next to impossible to find these days.  Four malls and many miles on the road and still no Doc Marten boots.   Plenty of Doc Marten shoes (of the same 8-10 styles), but no boots.   On a saturday so far we were coming up dry.

On the way home we stopped at Home Depot and picked up a new garbage disposal.  There was two prices on the thing, one for 99.99 on the display, and 109.00 on the shelf.   We picked one up and headed to the self check-out, and it rang up 109.00.   Now I was more then willing to pay for it at that price, but I wanted to know what the discrepancy was.  We picked it up off the self-checkout (without paying of course) and wandered back towards the appliances.   After managing to hunt someone down in the proper section they came over and looked at the area I pulled the garabage disposal from.     He stated that it was mismarked, since the 99.99 was a sale price they didn’t remove.   They adjusted the price to the 99.99, saving me 9.01 in the process.

When we arrived home we were still on our Doc Marten kick, so I managed to find a web site that had them at a price we were willing to pay – 109.99 for mine and 149.99 for Xie’s which is about 40-50.00 below retail.   When we got the checkout page it asked for a promo code, so I searched online and found a 20% of coupon.   Applying this saved me another 53.00, plus free shipping and no tax.   This leads to believe the purpose of physical retail location is becoming the place you go to get quick buy it now items, or physically check something out before ordering it online.   The new Doc Marten’s are identical to the one’s I wore almost every day for 3-4 years straight.   So I have a strong belief in the durability of Doc Marten’s and think they are worth every penny.

As the night started winding down we started to watch 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.   Xie fell asleep on my chest (I had fallen asleep first.) At a round 11:30 she roused us and said it was time to head up for the bed.   I sat and smoked a cigarette and was immediately wide awake.   At this point I thought I should do something useful so I spent 40 minutes and replaced the garbage disposal.   It seems the last owner of the house didn’t like plumbing very much, the pipes are just kind of pushed together with nothing really securing them. I managed to get htem back together but made a mental I would need to replace at a later date, so my plumbing job is about equal to his, but my wiring is infinetly better since I don’t have exposed wiring showing.

I was sitting down and smoking again and the door bell rang.   I wondered who the heck was ringing the door bell at 12:30 at night so I wandered over and opened the door.  I was ding dong ditched.  Grrrrrrrrrr.  I then took care of the dogs and wandered off to bed.

Today I went and installed magnetic fasteners on the cabinet doors, our cats are too smart for their own good.  This should keep the cats out of the cupboards.  One of them still has a problem with eating a pack of cigarettes a day, we’re getting better at putting them out of his reach when we go to bed though.  Last night he dug through Xie’s purse and pulled the pack out, at that point he then proceeded to dine.   I’m just waiting for him to get into the rum.

So last night was a work in progress/real world scenario time.   I was going to be out with a few hours to kill, and I didn’t take my Mac Book with me.   During my hour commute to work I listened to a couple episodes of “Cranky Geeks” with John Dvorak.   In the afternoon I had to go onto the lab and do some testing with users.  While waiting for the users to show up I decided to take my N810 onto the guest wifi.   While doing that I installed Vim and the GPE suite.   I’m going to be working on getting GPE calender to sync with Google Calender.   I should have realized that vim was a command line only utility since it was a port.  I don’t think I’m going to stay usingit though, I know vim is the more friendly vi, but I have a severe hatred of vi.   I think it’s the difference of growing up with the extremely easy to use Microsoft Edit in DOS that vi seems so hackneyed to me.

One thing that was an issue for me yesterday was I installed the “Camera” application from the repositories.   I installed and saw how a picture would look, then I clicked the folderesque button on the lower right hand side and that locked up my N810.  I tried to hold the power button down that didn’t do anything, after about 5 minutes of waiting I yanked the battery.   In that 5 minutes I went from 75% of my battery to 25%, so whatever happened taxed the hell out of the CPU and storage space.   Needless to say that application is not staying around.

I then went up to Vermilion and met with my sisters and had some pizza, after that I wandered to the local library and decided I was going to attempt to get some work done.   I managed to login to my work’s exchange webmail, I wrote a full blog using maemo-wordpy, and used it happily as an MP3 player listening to my podcasts.   Writing a longer length blog post took some time compared to what it would take with a normal keyboard.   However, I managed to get it done and my typing skills are definetly improving on the N810 keyboard as a whole.

The annoying things I found out yesterday.

• The Vermilion Public Library’s Public Wifi doesn’t allow IMAP – grrrr no Gmail via Claws for me at that time
• Canola won’t “save” songs to scrobble at a later time, if it doesn’t have a network connection you are SOL – grrrr – does anyone know if maemo scrobbler will save before submittal?

One thing we both have in common beyond family ties is that she discovered this year that she has a love for playing music. She’s in her first year of saxophone, while I’m in my seventeenth year of playing trumpet (and I didn’t start until I was 15. Hopefully she stays with it longer then my other siblings. Besides myself my family has seen a drummer, a trumpet player, a clarinet player, a violin player, and now a saxophone player. The rest of them didn’t make it out of junior high playing their respective instruments.

She is doing well in sports and thinks she has a shot at making the seventh grade basketball team next year. Something she has in similar to my other siblings and not myself.

In a way I wish we could have talked longer, but she was working, so I thought it best to let her work. I made sure I left her my email and phone number so she could stay in contact. I also gave her Xie’s e-mail address and let her know we are always there to talk.

I would definetly spend more time with her if I didn’t have to see my mother.

P.S. This is my first fulland normal blog post from my N810 so please excuse the typos.

Why is there a cat pictured in this article?  Did he damage the N810?  No, I just didn’t want to use the stock N810 image again.   Moving on.  Last night was more of a bust then a boom for me.    I had some specific goals in mind and I can’t say I really accomplished them.

The first goal I had was to attempt to upload pictures directly to flickr.  Doing some hunting I found the latest revision of maemo-publishr which supports uploading to flickr and to picasa.   I thought great, this is exactly what I need.  They even have a video demo.

I can say that it didn’t work as well as I had hoped.   The applications was extremely slow before i imported pictures from my external memory card and worse after pictures were actually involved.   I gave up on the application after failing to figure out how to intuitively upload (no I didn’t watch the video at that time, I saw it afterwards to share with you).   I know maemo-wordpy can upload to flickr and I am using that, but I want somethign that handles more bulk uploading so the hunt for that continues.

Before I get onto my next bad experience, let’s move onto a good one.   Using my N810 as my lifeline to my online life, I needed it to integrate with my other online lifeline, email.   After going through and reading reviews I knew better then to use the built in e-mail application.   I knew that if I wanted to use IMAP from my gmail account I had a  choice between Modest and Claws Mail.   Xie had tried out Modest on her N810 when it came in, it had caused memory issues and she stopped using it and doesn’t plan on doing IMAP.   I knew because of that Modest was out.

So Claws Mail it was, after a couple configuration I did get Claws up and working.   It is a bit slow, but I knew that going in, especially using IMAP.   At least I can cache my email instead of holding my full 2 GB e-mail archive on my N810.   Sending is fine.  Overall as an e-mail application I’m quite happy with it.   That’s pretty impressive since the only other e-mail applications I’m really happy with is Outlook and the Gmail web interface.

Claws-Mail screenshot from their web site

Now we’re back to one of the issues I wrote about yesterday, pod catching.   I found out that while I couldn’t activate the function menu in Canola that I could manually hold down the function key and hit the key I wanted at the same time (shift works the same way for these poorly written applications).  With this method I could enter in my podcasts feed and download them directly on to my N810 – goodbye slow memory hog gPodder.   At this point I uninstaleld gPodder and decide that Canola was going to be my choice going forward.

I played more with Canola and I wasn’t aware of the kinetic scrolling.  I sat there like a monkey with the stylus trying to scroll and was extremely frustrated.  I finally figured it out.   I exited it and rebooted after a different application seemed to lock up my N810 – I think it was the maemo-publishr previously mentioned.   When I came back Canola started and said loading for like 3 minutes and when it did load no icons were visible and it couldn’t do anything.   I uninstalled Canola and reinstalled Canola, same behavior.   From their repository I saw an installation clean up utility.  I installed that and it did clean it up.  I reinstalled it and it’s working again.   Unfortunately I need to spend 30 minutes again entering in  all of my podcast URL’s, grrrrrrrrrrr.   Benefit is that Canola can automatically scrobble to last.fm with a plugin.   The plugin is a bit over anticipating though, it scrobbled two podcasts that I haven’t listened to yet.   I have a feeling Canola is going to be a love/hate relationship.

Finally I rounded out the night loading Doom on my N810. I was surprised that we don’t need to load wad files for these cross platform ports, and the game controlled a little bit Metroid Prime-ish, but it’s Doom and it works.   Ironically it works better then it did on the 386 25mhz computer that I first played doom on.

So for day 2′s report I leave you with this youtube video someone did of Doom on the N810.

A couple days ago I asked the blogosphere should I get an N810 and like the blogosphere normally answers I got nothing back. That’s fine, I’m used to talking to myself on my blog.  However I decided that I would give it a go.   I knew that if things didn’t work out I would return it.   It arrived last night and I thought I would describe what I went through.   It is also interesting that this morning from the blogosphere I got a comment on my article that was crossposted to my vox blog (hey I’m sorry vox users get weird characters).

Hyphn on vox asked:

Nice article. I’m in a similar situation to yourself. I’ve got a Palm TX and an Nokia 770 (& N95 8GB).

I use the N95 8GB for all of my music and podcasts (it automatically downloads them over the air). I have a Palm Infrared keyboard for my TX, which is nice, but the problem is that you just can’t really see the screen when you are out in bright sunshine. – Is the N810 screen readable in bright sunshine?

The N770 is ok, but it’s a bit slow and the lack of a keyboard (of any description) is a killer…. Not sure I can justify the extra 280GBP for another device thought…. (?)

So I’m going to cover this comment in this article.

I’ve never had a keyboard for the TX, I’m a fast on screen keyboard typer.  I knew however when my wife tried out the N800 it wasn’t for me since I’m more active online these days, the keyboard would be essential.  I never really wrote long blog articles on the TX so this is a hope for the N810.  I tried it the N810 outside today and in bright clear sky direct sunlight the screen was washed out but readable.  So I think the transreflective coating they advertise does work as designed.    For thoughts on whether the device is worth money, well I’m going to be writing about the device for the next couple weeks or so, what I find, how I make things work, and some things that people may not know because they are not widely published.   Hopefully yhis will help you make a sound decision.

New Toy

So everyone now knows I have an N810, I also added an 8 GB micro SD card (with mini SD converter card so it would fit).   Xie ‘anthia still feels that I’m going to feel cramped on space.   I unpacked the device last night and imeediatly had it flashed to the newest OS 2008 revision, curse the mobile ubuntu team for not having the port finished and ready to go.   I then paired it with my phone and installed everything that seemed interesting.

After trying to uninstall somethign I discovered that I had the rare N810 bug that sets the internal card read only and corrupts the data.   At this point I reflashed the device, formatted the internal memory card (virtual ram made it so I had to reflash before I hear any comments), and started over.   I had spent so much time installing software on the previous run that I wasn’t going to go through all of that again in one sitting.  Let’s however looked at what I did do.

I went through and chose a theme to my liking, I cleaned out the bundled maps and documentation.  I removed the demo music, video, and images.   I removed the map application and the welcome application.  In essence I stripped down the device as far as possible befoer starting over.    I didn’t need those things, and for map GPS data I plan on using maemo mapper, so I’ll get to that in a future blog article.

So what did I install?

Seeing as I have some guidance from Xie ‘lanthia on what is good and what is not so good, I followed her lead on some of my applications.  The first thing I installed was Pidgin, if you are unfamilar with Pidgin think of it as an IM product similar to Trillian.  It allows you to connect to many other IM networks at once.   The included chat progam bundled with the N810 really is good for gtalk, but what if I wanted more.   Pidgin right now is configured to connect to the following IM networks (some I rarely use) – Gtalk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Myspace Chat.   Also I installed Skype, thought I would mention it here while I was talking about IM.   So the N810 allows me to connect six instant messenger networks at the same time.   I’m all about ubuiquitous internet communication, especially when I can talk or broadcast across everywhere from a single point.

Pidgin Screenshot from maemo.org

Next I needed a media player.   I had read that the Canola2 would subscribe to podcasts as well as scrobble tracks to last.fm (last.fm connectivity is important from me in this device’s grand future).   However there seemed to be a bug in Canola2 that wouldn’t allow either copying and pasting a url in to the subscription field, and it wouldn’t allow me to use the function keys, so that ment no forward slashes.   Essentially the data entry for podcasts is broken.    Well this thing is going to keep me from carrying an Ipod around so I wanted some way that was simple to get podcasts on to my unit.  I found a way, but I wouldn’t use simple to be an accurate description, I used the Gpodder podcatcher to handle pulling down podcasts.

Conola2 Screenshot from maemo.org

gPodder Screenshot from maemo.org

The thing that drove me nuts over Gpodder was the fact that I had no easy way to add subscriptions.  Sure they tell you just point to a directory.opml online, but goodluck finding one.  I think I spent an hour on this before I found an article that explained that I could setup subscription in Itunes, export the opml file, put it on my N810, and then subscribe to the correct feeds in Gpodder once I opened the opml file there.   *WHEW*.   Then it seems that gpodder isn’t a fast and responsive application if you attempt to queu two or more songs it hardly moves, so load your subscriptions one at a time for the best response.  I limited it downloading one podcast at a time but that didn’t make much difference.   The last problem with Gpodder was that it doesn’t (rarely) save the podcast in it’s naming scheme, it downloaded most of my podcasts in a 34598745893475.mp3 style format.   These aren’t bob’s podcasts, except for one or two they are all from twit or revision3.   I can say gpodder will work since it will be a set it and let it do it’s thing overnight application, I wouldn’t however recommend living in it.

The next thing I installed was rdesktop.  This allows you to use the windows remote desktop function, so last night I was able to access my Windows 2k3 server from my N810.   The responsiveness was adequate and I can definetly see myself utilizing this.   I use RDP quite often and I think this is a life saver.   If you want to know how to setup and see screenshots, I just found this article on another blog (I figured it out myself).

The last thing I installed before fighting Gpodder to sync my podcasts for the next day was Maemo Wordpy this application is a blogging client (wonder what I want that for).  It allows me to post directly to my wordpress blog, like the test post I did last night before I reflashed the device.  It works, it’s a bit complex and you have to jump to different tabs for more options for you post but it works.  I had to however disable my myspace crossing plugin on my blog because I was getting duplicate post issues.   Wordpy still allows me to post a notification or blog post across about a dozen services (well my blog does all that work).   Wordpy does however support Blogger if WordPress isn’t you cup of tea.

Maemo Wordpy Screenshot from maemo.org

Some of the side things that I discovered last night.

• I can pull pictures directly off my phone, before I had to use esoteric software on windows or ubuntu to get them off via USB, with the N810 it just works via bluetooth (I have a RZR since I’m a cheap bastard and take the free phone).
• The Samba implementation on the N810 allows you to see hidden windows shares by default – good for me, bad for windows.
• Too many large files or directories in a share will absolutely lock up the N810′s file manager.
• The keyboard get’s easier to use the more you force yourself into it, with more training I may not need another bluetooth keyboard for “serious” writing
• Exchange Webmail works in the browser

Tonight’s goals (after I do some automotive repair unrelated to the N810) is to get a mail client working that I like (I’m leaning toward IMAP versus POP3, we’ll see how that goes.   I would also like to get a decent media player that can scrobble my songs to last.fm (who knows it might be great to find one that supports last.fm and pandora).  I did have some problems getting online via my cell phone so I’m probably going to following Xie’s article on how to set it up to properly use t-mobile as an internet connection.   I’m sure I’ll have some other information for you also.