Geek gets new phone (and gives it up)

I recently had the opportunity to buy a new phone for a buck (even less, actually), to choose from a short list in an even shorter time. Encourage by all my positive experiences with the 770, I decided to trust Nokia and chose the Nokia 2610.

The day I got it, I had a very hard time deciding wether to switch to this phone or keep my old one. My old one has a black-and white screen and no vibrator, but I'm so used to it that I could use it with my eyes closed. The Nokia 2160, however has a few features that my old one doesn't have:

1. A colorful screen. But that makes it harder to read in the sunshine.
2. A thingy to connect a leash. Could be useful.
3. Java. I know Java now, you know? I could write something. But I also know other stuff and haven't even tried programming anything for the Nokia 770.
4. Mp3 ringtones. Cool!
5. A compatible charger with my Nokia 770. Or so I thought. That would make one charger less to carry around, if they were the same. They're not. Now I'm really disappointed in Nokia. By the way, the cable to connect the phone to a PC is not included and is not a mini-USB like in the 770's case. Disappointed again.

All in all, I decided to keep my old phone (a Sagem my-X1 twin) and make a brother happy with this one. Brothers turned out to be unhappy about it, as nothing says "like of freedom" like "where are you right now?" or "why haven't you called?". But that's a different topic (and not a geek one).

[Picture credit]

On my wishlist: a few CDs

First, Amy Studt's new album "My paper made men" was just released yesterday.

She released an album called "False Smiles" a few years ago that had great teenage lyrics (and great music as well - Amy's parents are both musicians and she can play 3 instruments: the guitar, the piano, and something else I don't remember). Now I have grown out of teen stuff, but so has she. The LA Times said to "ignore any dim memories of her midteens pop phase a while ago", so the albums seems great (as you can tell from the singles).

Now I just have to get this album somehow. So far, it's only been released on UK iTunes, let's see if it lets me download it and if I can play the files on my Nokia 770, which is clearly not an iPod. Until now the only mp3 I have bought over the internet were Paramore's albums from the Fueled by Ramen store, which was a very positive experience: no one care which country I was from, as long as I could pay by PayPal, my technical issues were fixed within hours, and I got plain and simple mp3 files, which is exactly what I wanted.

Another important position on my wishlist, Primsleur's Arabic course:

I found it through this Metafilter thread, and the reviews are very enthousiastic (more on Primsleur's approach here). According to their site, it's what spies use to survive and cope overseas, and the courses are now used by the FBI, CIA, and business professionals everywhere. Plus, the approach is scientific, which is illustrated by this picture:

Geeks love scientific stuff and know nothing more convincing than the picture of a man dressed in white looking though a microscope to find a scientific way of teaching languages. I'm buying it.

They offer two versions: Eastern and Egyptian Arabic. So far, I've been learning Modern Standard Arabic, but here, I'd choose Egyptian. Another Metafilter thread clarifies this issue.

[Pictures source, source.]

Wow, 2008 OS for Nokia 770!

The Nokia 770 was born with the 2005 OS. Then came the 2006 OS. Then came the Nokia n800 with its 2007 OS and soon, a 2007 OS Hacker Edition was released for the 770. Then n800 got a new OS, the 2008 one. Here's a picture. Nice, isn't it?

Okay, enough history, hot news coming: there is now a 2008 OS for the Nokia 770! That's like "hacker hacker edition". Announcement here.

Okay, looks cool, BUT:

Extra swap memory is required to get a decent performance, the device reboots from time to time... This release is definitely not recommended to end users and not even to users depending on this device alone. We are releasing it to show how far we have gone but for us this is a proof that the Hacker Edition has reached its limit.

Okay, I'm not reflashing. It's nice to see that the geeks made it work, but I need something stable at the moment. Right now, my rs-mmc card is screwed (the 1 GB one) and I have to use a 64 MB card, which doesn't even hold 10 mp3 files. Plus the browser crashes when I try to log in to the hotspot at school (how annoying!) and I don't know how to fix it without reflashing.

The 2007HE OS is slow enough as it is. I tried to post here from bed the other day. The browser had to be the only program running. The Opera browser couldn't handle the JS Blogger is based on. The Mozilla browser was slow as hell and when after 15 minutes a guest came over, I gave up. It really is pushing this hardware to the limits.

Someday, I'm gonna get a giant new card, install both 2006 OS and 2007HE OS, extend the swap to the card and everything is going to work so great...

The mysterious tiny hole in Nokia 770

I did something very dumb today. Actually I started acting dumb yesterday. I installed the newest 2007HE OS and screwed a library by installing a newer version (3.3.8 instead of 3.3.5) but for 2006 OS. This screwed the media player. So this morning I was angry that I couldn't even listen to music, and I really don't know what got into me, but I pressed the bower button while it was deleting a file! I really should know how dangerous and forbidden it is... But well... So the tablet hung while shutting down for the entire day.
Well, what a great opportunity to learn more!
The Tablet has a tiny hole on the bottom. Many devices of the kind have one and it's a reset hole. This time, I deiced not to rely on my intelligence and google first. Half of the sources stated it was a reset hole indeed, and half that it was the microphone! I finally choose to believe this one:

Trust me it's not a hardware reset, I learned that the hard way.
...it's a mic.

I learned enough the hard way these days, so I played it safe. After removing the battery the device booted well.
Who designs a microphone that looks like a reset button and says "pluck me!" anyway?

Getting organized with my Nokia 770

My concentration and memory have caused me a few troubles lately. And my time planning... I almost never am satisfied with it.m So I decided to use my Nokia and get a bit more organized. Here's what I installed:
GPE Calendar + Ermining to synchronize it with Google Calendar, which I extensively use.
GPE to-do list. Cool for tasks lists, with both categories and priorities. BUT: I have plenty of ideas that are not exactly tasks and putting them on a to-do list is no good idea, because it becomes very messy, and I keep on adding and removing the same tasks over and over as I postpone realising them. That's when MaemoPad Plus becomes handy: it works on SQLite and lets you build a tree, with nodes that can be sketches, text or lists. I use that for a kind of mind-mapping. (There is no real mind-mapping software for the ITs.) That's where things that are more ideas than tasks go, like making a headband with the fabric I used for my latest dress (when the sewing machine will be fixed) or that website with a Scottish pattern as a background (when I have time for that....).
Last but not least, Gnumeric Spreadsheets. Amazing tool! I don't use it to its fullests, it has a nice bit of arithmetics implemented (and add-ons, which I haven't even installed). I just use it to keep track of health-related stuff, like my physical activities (how many times have you been told to write them down to motivate you?)

New OS2007 HE for the Nokia 770 with Mozilla engine and memory corruption bugfix.

Originally posted: 14 Nov 2007
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HOW AWESOME IS THAT? See here.
All the bad things that made me go back to 2006 seem to have been fixed!
The question now is "what do I do?" Only a few days ago I spent a bunch of precious time installing new software to get organized and I wouldn't want to see all that flushed away. I was just going to blog about it when I saw the news). So I guess it's time to learn about dualboot.
Wait a minute, "time"? School has been demanding so much of it recently. Today is a case study, tomorrow a paper in semantics is due, friday, I think I'm not going there cause I have a presentation next week (about debugging the Linux kernel, no room for improvisation here), a business use-case to write over the week-end... And I asked for all of that and I love my life! (Seriously, I do!)

Switching operating systems (back) on my Nokia 770

Originally posted: 3 Oct 2007
So, I was saying the other day how I changed the operating system of my Nokia 770 from 2006 to 2007 Hacker Edition. It was cool, lots of soft, an arabic font so I could easily view arabic pages (not write in arabic, but still). BUT but but. It crashed a lot. At first, I didn't really worry, cause I was installing lots of soft and reboots were needed. However, when it crashed while I was just looking for a network, I started doubting wether it was worth it. And when I noticed that the text editor wasn't working, I said "enough" and I'm back on 2006 right now.
Switching back to 2006 was easy, jut reflash it with the right OS. You can restore your backup information from 2007, except for settings (it made the browser crash, so I imported only the settings from an older 2006 backup I had which I am sure you have if you started flashing your Nokia).
Now, some issues are to be solved. Choose a mail client. Figure out a way to play videos, particulary from Youtube. View arabic characters. Keep a calendar. I don't remeber what else. I promise I'll blog about it when I make some progress.

My new baby

Originally posted: 15 Sep 2007

I got a new baby: a Nokia 770. It's really great and unique: it costs around 100$ and has it's own operating system, IT OS, a a modified version of Debian GNU/Linux. The average user will just click on the colorful icons, the advanced one can modify the operating system!



So, since I have a blog, I'll just post here all the wondreful things I did with my baby. Hey, I gotta find a name for it!

So... I changed the operating system for a start. Because "2007 Hacker Edition" sounds sooo cool. I did it the simpliest possible way:
1. Got the os from http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/
2. Flashed the Nokia with it usung the windows wizard from http://europe.nokia.com/A4144790

If someone prefers the good old Linux command line instead of the wizard, there are plenty of cool thing to do described on http://maemo.org/community/wiki/flasher_tool_usage.html.

Picture credit: florisla.