Category Archives: Gear

Native boot

I’ve been running my development enviroment in a Virtual Box for a while. Ubuntu in a box on top of Windows 7 (on dual 2.2GHz, 3Gb ram).

Best of both worlds right?

Well it isn’t exactly fast. Here’s a few rough timings:

Windows boot cold to online: 170 seconds

Boot virtuel ubuntu maskine to login: 53 seconds

Start Aptana (in virtual machine): 54 seconds

Start rails (in virtual machine): 35 seconds

So I found my old desktop, which I though had died, but fortunetly it hadden’t, cleaned it up and installed ubuntu(a bit old and slower CPU (dual 1.8GHz, 3Gb Ram)).

Boot ubuntu maskine to login: 50 seconds (about 15 of those are bios)

Start Aptana: 20 seconds

Start rails: 15 seconds

Quite a bit faster – and best of all, it doesn’t seem to lock up all the time, like the Virtual machine did..

 

Samsung i780 GPS

I’ve never had a GPS device before,  but one of the place the i780 got points, was on the GPS as I would like to play with one, and especially do geotagging of my photos.

In this blog I run through the software I’ve tested. Please note that my i780 is unlocked and unbranded. Yours may be locked to a specific set of services making impossible to use other GPS software.

My wants and needs are not for navigation – there’s 14 days trail version of Garmin XT included, which I’m still thinking about buying, but there’s also Google Maps which works flawlessly, but needs to download data. So unless you make it cache data before you go or has a “unlimited” dataplan with your provider you are going to pay as you go. And open street map software is getting better…

What I’m looking for is a simple piece of software that will capture my route and allow me to read it into a program that will syncronize it with the photos that I took while walking that route. This blog will mainly concentrate on the logging software. I’ll look at the PC (windows) side later. I’ve limited the search to software that didn’t require payment.

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First impressions: Samsung i780

I got my new mobile phone yesterday. A (unlocked) Samsung i780. Not the LG KS20 which was my previous favourite, but thanks to the nice people at clicksalg.dk (I mailed them and asked if they really had it and when it would ship. The reply was “yes. Is today fast enough?”. Cool.), this one became available to me first. It was down to that for me. Which one will become available to me first… 🙂

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Casio Exilim EX-S500 Wheel of Fortune mode…

While hunting for a way to access the service menu on my Casio Exilim EX-S500 pocket camera, I found a wheel of fortune function.

With the camera turned off, hold down [left], and press [Play] (the little arrow in a square), and the camera will randomly flip through all the images on the screen going bip, bip, biiip, biiiip, slower and slower until it stops, displays a random photo and goes “swuuuush”. I’m not sure how drunk you have to be for that to be useful…

I never found the service menu.

Installing Web cam in Asus Eee

My Eee didn’t come with a webcam. I didn’t really think about it and, anyway I just wanted one, and as they are in short supply, I just got what I could get.

Then I found a Eee webcam in ebay. Somebody fried the motherboard of their Eee and was selling of the parts. I end up paying 35au$ including freight. Not cheap, but most of it went to the postal service.

This a picture description of how I installed it – Mostly done as an excuse to do a few macro shots. The shots was prepared for web using gimp on the Eee…

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Nokia N810

I held one of these things in my hand the other day. Very beautiful device. A bit heavy, but very sleak and thin. The keyboard seems a lot more usable then I expected.

Didn’t play much with the software but it seems nice.

If it did GSM I would buy one on the spot. As it is now, I’m tempted to get one and a really small G3 phone to pair it with. I wonder what the smalles G3 phone is…

Edit: I’ve read a bit more about and apparently the ever important ability to sync with MS-Outlook is currently missing, making it a non-contender. I guess that the same could be said aboit the FIC Freerunner (previouly FIC1973). Sigh.

Samsung SH-i780 date and price!

I stumpled upon this page, which has the SGH-i780 as expected in stock on january 11th and at us$688 (unlocked, no plan).

It’s still in the running as my next mobile, but I’m not sure that I wont wait a bit and see what the reviews are saying. The fic1973/OpenMoko should be out soon, and at us$450, it’s quite a bit cheaper, and the vga screen really is a big plus for me. And with my new Eee PC, I don’t really need a keyboard that much on my mobile phone. Then again, the fic1973 date could easily get moved further into the future…

And my Moto V3’s battery is failing fast, and I would rather spend money on a new phone than money on a new battery for a phone that will soon be dumped.

p.s.: Found a Danish dealer that expect to have the i780 in stock on January 30th, febuary 29th, at 4628.- Danish kroner (910 us$, but that includes 25% sales tax).

P.P.S.: With the i780 release date slipping and the OpenMoko (dev edition) date on track, it could be come interesting…