Blrg - Hardware

Nexus One!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:25:30 -0400

So I've gotten myself a Nexus One, an Android-powered cell phone, hoping to have a good platform to test Android apps on (Only to learn that months ago, Google was giving away phones to developers).

Anyway, so far it's been great. The only gripes I have is that the touchscreen seems to be a little off and the wifi has issues remaining connected now (it used to work fine), but the Wifi Fixer app works as a work-around for the latter.

Furthermore, I've gotten the phone connected to WIND Mobile, and so far my experience with WIND has been OK. Even ignoring the issues getting started (the people signing me up were kinda new, so I forgive them), every now and then I seem to drop out of their towers' reach and be considered roaming! Also, in some situations where other providers would manage to get *some* signal, I get none at all - but I shouldn't be too surprised, I guess. These situations are the usual suspects - elevators, bus network basements, etc..

On the bright side, though, the cost is fairly small (~30$ for voice+voicemail+data) and I have unlimited texts for a year.

Updating Rogers HTC Dream

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:03:58 -0500

Yeah, so I have an HTC Dream from Rogers because my boss wants me to be able to get e-mails and calls when things go wrong - expensive for an on-call phone, eh? - and I was having difficulty updating it. See, Rogers has been for the past month demanding that users update their phone due to a bug concerning dialling 911 (apparently, if you have GPS enabled and try to call 911, the call fails or somesuch; but I never have GPS enabled anyway, since Google tracks you if you have it on and I have no use for it - besides, the cell location works better), and they disable your data plan until you update. After trying to update it on two Windows systems and trying to manually put the firmware on it as well as calling Rogers tech support, I finally found these instructions:

Windows 7 Instructions for Rogers HTC

It's actually pretty simple, but here's the real problem I was encountering:

I had mistakenly assumed that since it was a new device, the SD card was formatted FAT32, as they need to be for the update. However, it was not (Good job, Rogers). After getting everything off the card and formatting it to FAT32 then replacing the firmware onto the card, I was able to update the phone without a hitch.

I'm still disappointed that it took Rogers so long to update the HTC Dream... ...and didn't even provide a real update. Geez, guys, get with the program already.

Stop the widescreen craze!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:13:54 -0500

I don't understand this obsession with widescreens. I don't.

No, I don't like widescreen at all. It has it's uses, but for me, I'd rather it stick to TVs. Leave my monitors and especially my laptops alone! Arg!

The only laptop I could find that was still being sold that isn't a widescreen is Eurocom's D700T Enigma. A fine laptop, but I'm having an incredible amount of difficulty with them and getting a working laptop. (When I bought it, I had to bring it back the "next" day to get it fixed. Only about three weeks later did they finally stop trying to fix it and basically gave me a new system; Even so, the video card appears to have issues and I may have to bring it in again!)

I'm still looking for a portable media player that can be truly customized. First one to suggest an iPod will be shot. It may seem silly, I want to load the 10+ different file types that I use and not have any problems playing them (companies looking for small codecs may be interested in looking at the source code of foobar2000). Bonus points if it comes with (or there is, somewhere on the internet) software that can re-encode certain formats to lower bitrates (since you aren't going to get full sound quality from a P.A.P. anyway) automatically and still manage to handle changes on both sides transparently (e.g. if, on another computer, I change the tags or add/delete files, those changes will affect the library on my main system).

What? I can dream, can't I?

On a related aside, I've been looking at the GP2X (official) (which has found it's way into my wishlist) and VirtualCogs - specifically, the Portable Computing COG which I may yet use to build and sell a mix between P.A.P. I'm looking for and the GP2X. Hmm, I could sell that. I wonder if Virtual Cogs Embedded Systems Inc. has anything against that sort of thing.

Palm m500, Spybotics, and Linux

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:46:21 -0400

So I've gotten a new Palm.

My reasoning for this purchase was that I could use it to write while on the go, or even just if I felt like writing somewhere other than at home. Naturally, I got a keyboard for it as well as I wasn't going to be able to write all that much using the stylus (it has character recognition (at least technically), but I don't enjoy handwriting). Sadly, I neglected to notice that it didn't include a sync cable/cradle in the bundle, and had to get that separately. While waiting for it to arrive, though, I've been fairly impatient about getting programs on there.

Especially the driver for the keyboard!

Thus, I decided to try the only two other methods available to get data onto the Palm: infrared and SD card. I don't have a card reader/writer, so I thought that option was out (turns out it isn't quite - more on that later), so I proceeded with trying to communicate using the infrared port. You see, I eventually remembered that the Lego Spybotics kits that I have came with infrared transceivers; I figured they'd be good enough to transmit data to the Palm.

I first thought of trying it with my Windows system, but the transceivers connect on the serial port and I didn't bother putting a panel for one (the onboard ports of this motherboard don't actually include a serial port), and didn't feel like going through the hassle of adding it (not that it's that much effort, mind you). Instead, I used my laptop, which currently has Zenwalk Linux installed on it. Getting the infrared support was fairly simple (new kernel config plus the tool package), and one reboot later I was in business.

Sort of, anyway.

Linux seems to receive the data from the Palm just fine, and it seems to respond in kind; However, the Palm makes no sign of receiving anything, and eventually gives up on the connection attempt. It seems the problem stems from the most unlikely-seeming source: The Spybotics infrared transceiver. It's not meant for this sort of thing, really; When you use it to transmit data to a spybot, it's actually plugged in directly. I think you can use it to "broadcast" infrared signals to it too, but I don't really remember how that works and if it actually transmits any information. Therefore, I believe it's only meant for really short distances, and the problem with that is that the transmitter and receiver on the Palm aren't spaced the same as the ones on the Spybotics transceiver, and thus one doesn't see the other in one way or another.

I might try putting a much larger distance between the two and see if that works better... infrared is supposed to be able to do more than an inch or two, after all, but unless I had a very specific distance between the transceiver and the Palm, nothing showed up on either side... it's weird.

It's... been a while.

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:55:37 -0400

Time flies. I really don't know what it is, but it seems I've little time for anything these days. I guess it's more a matter of prioritising things, and I haven't been doing that; Problem is, that's a task on it's own. I figure, though, people deserve an update, especially a certain someone out there who doesn't seem to be fairing too well and probably doesn't have the time to contact my directly. My heart goes out to you and I hope things get better... and yes, I'm na?vely thinking they will.

Well, let's see - my posts have been far and few between, as well as rather bare. I'm going to take what is probably going to be a few hours, and try to give some detail on what's going on. Knowing myself, though, I'm probably going to get tired of it halfway through or forget things I wanted to mention.

On the job front, I now have no job. My time as a casual ended in mid-may, and for the next month I was working as a contractual worker. Thankfully, I was still able to apply for EI and that seems to have gone through without a problem - either I applied correctly, or they were able to mistake my misunderstandings. Either way, seems to be just fine there. I just have to keep in mind that EI's only going to pay me if I can prove I've been trying to get a job - sometimes I get lax about these things for over a week, and it seems that's not going to be an option ;> It's possible that I get a permanent position at my old job, though, which is kind of interesting. I have mixed feelings about that, honestly, but I'm not sure how in-depth I want to go about that in public - maybe I'll write another protected entry for that.

I've been trying to add some content to my forum - hopefully I'll get a few more interested people. I'm not certain whether I want to keep the politics (et al.) sections hidden to members only, though; I'm thinking of opening them up until I can get some regular (if sparse) traffic. By the way, I've resolved the spam issue for the time being. Until the Akismet plug-in for punBB matures, I won't be using it: It apparently does not have any setting other than "ban immediately" - I don't care how easy it is to unban people, I don't think they deserve to be banned outright. It's bad enough that punBB claims that hidden forums are "invalid" (I wish that were an option, but I may just manually hack that in myself) and don't suggest that maybe you need to log in.

I've just updated my copy of Windows Live Writer; Functionally it seems mostly the same, but they've added their fancy UI to it now. Seems a slight bit more sluggish due to that, but that may also be because I had to lower my hardware acceleration setting (My mouse does not move if I have hardware display acceleration set to the maximum. Not sure why, and I really don't know what caused it. I may have to get myself a new... uh... sheesh, I don't know. I'm at a loss on this one.). Sadly, my hardware woes don't end there; About as recently (But no, not simultaneously) my DVD drive has decided it no longer wants to eject - and before you try to help me with it, I'm convinced that it's a mechanical issue; It seems to be the same problem that "Drive X" (for lack of a better name) had: when the tray attempts to eject, something gets in the way and instead it just goes "clunk" and fails to move forward. This one doesn't have a pop-open door, though, so the only way I'll be able to inspect it is to open it up. For the curious, I have a LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1633S finally showing it's true colours, and it's way off the warranty (not sure it ever really had one anyway).

Interestingly, it seems I didn't post on my birthday. Hmm. Don't remember what I got; I'm sure I updated my wishlist, though. Speaking of getting things, ... wait, I did mention the camera. One thing I didn't mention was the 160 GB USB drive I got (Wee~!). I'm actually planning on taking the drive out and replacing it with a 20 GB, and using that; The 160 GB will likely go either in my PC, or in a future NAS that I'm planning to build when I move out (or right before, since that might help with moving). On that subject - I'm now the one that has no job, and now Eth has to put up with me :P

On the technology/news side of things, ignoring the over-hyped piece of crap that is iPhone, Apple has announced that it will offer non-DRM music in it's iTunes store at a higher price - but I think what's more interesting is that EMI says people love it. I'm reading between the lines when I say this, but, I get the impression Steve Jobs is doing this intentionally as to try to give DRM a shove away from domination. If so, I've more respect for the man than ever, to be so bold as to actually consider the option.

(Certainly more respect than I've got for a particular worker from Futureshop, at any rate, but I'm going to blog about that only later once I've got a response from him about his blatant goof - much to Futureshop's shame I might add - and know whether or not he was letting himself get hot-headed on the subject.)

Among my other findings on the Internet are an interesting view on global warming, which if you are about to watch I strongly suggest you watch all videos posted by the same person (It really doesn't make sense to only get half his opinion - people are entitled to correcting themselves, as the above paragraph demonstrates ;>).

And finally, one last thing and this one's from the paranoia department: Why use email encryption? It's an interesting view on e-mail encryption, though personally I believe that encrypting every e-mail might be a tad overdone - but then again, since once you've got it set-up it's mostly a "fire and forget" type of thing (Not that you can't change it's settings, mind you), you almost might as well. I currently force all e-mails going out on my name-e-mail-address (Yes, I have an address that's my first@last name) to be digitally signed, even if the recipient can't necessarily verify that signature, since I use this for official contact (e.g. work, applications, etc.).

Phew! On the project side of things, I've gotten a co-worker (well, was-co-worker since my contract ended) interested in helping me translate Ozy & Millie - I think I'm going to write to the author and webmaster again soon once I've got a steady stream of strips going and tell them that someone's actually going to get things going for the French version ;> (It seems a few other people have already gone at it - sadly, there's not even fifty strips translated yet! Arg! What a sad state it's in!)

I've been really tempted to buy myself a GP2X - but there's four things holding me back:

The cost - Buying a GP2X, though possibly worth every penny, costs about as much as a PSP right now. And that might even be without taking shipping into account.
The lack of stores having it in stock - The only store I know that stocks the GP2X in Canada is one I've never heard of, GamerSection. It appears to be a Qu?bec company, but oddly the French translations are poor if even present. On the other hand, there is a representative from TigerDirect who tells me he can get it custom-ordered for me; We'll see how the price ends up looking like soon.
The apparent lack of quality games, as playing games that already exist on other platforms seems to be one of the few quality options. The fact that it would be possibly to port any SDL-based game as well as easy develop my own games for it is nary a comfort.
I'm not even sure I'd use it! I've not finished the games I have for my PS2, never mind the ones on my GBA, and I hardly use my portable audio player during this time of joblessness. Speaking of joblessness, I'm also not sure I want to spend money while I have no job.

Eh, it finally happened. I forgot what I was going to say. Good enough for today, I dare think.

New camera, new pictures: Need opinions on quality

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:53:08 -0400

Despite having told myself I'd not spend such amounts until I've gotten most of my money into investments, I couldn't hold myself back on a few purchases recently. One such purchase was a new Kodak C433 digital camera. However, I'm curious as to whether or not the purchase was worth it; The new camera supposedly has four times the quality in pictures than my current camera (4 Mpx versus 1.3 Mpx), and has video support... but I'm not entirely convinced.

Thus, I've not only taken pictures with the new camera and placed in an album, I've also created a sub-album with comparison photos taken with both cameras.

Comment here, let me know what you think. Some of the things I've already noticed myself is that the new camera produces photos that are less "faded" (in terms of colors; I don't mean less blurry) than the old camera.

New color printer! Weee!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:30:54 -0500

I gots m'self a Canon PIXMA iP1600 Photo Printer for ~40 CAD. Mmhmm. Ish sweet. :>
It's fast, it prints colors, and it prints in fine detail. What more could you want? ^_^

(And yes, you can tell it to only use the black cartridge and spare your color cartridge for when you really want to use it.)

Another day, another worry...

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:29:04 -0500

Shibby shibby.
(What does that mean, anyway?)

Last night, a friend of mine and I were playing Unreal Tournament 2004 again. It had been a while since we had... and boy did I miss it. Just being in the game, waiting for him to connect, and looking at the intricate detail and amazing rendering... I miss it all. He remarked, later on when he had to go, that we had to do this more often.
Yes, we do.
Come play Invasion with us sometime, will you not?

That's the "highest" point on this post, though...
I was modding my DreamCast a day or so ago: I had ordered a transparent blue case for my DreamCast (looks pretty much like the original, but transparent blue) a week or so ago; When I got it, I disassembled the DC, and reassembled it within it's new case. At the same time, I took the opportuniy to do another mod for it: I unsoldered the power L.E.D. (orange) and replaced it with another one - a dual-color one (well, I soldered it in place to green, though it could've been red, but I don't like red).
I shouldn't have.
Seems I've fried the controller board - specifically whatever handles the controllers. Everything else in the DreamCast works just fine. The L.E.D. lights, the fan goes on. CD spins up, and the DC asks me for the date and time.
But I can't give it, because the controller has no power, no communication... I can't tell if this is due to permanent damage (honestly, I did a really bad job), or just from a "link" (short circuit) that shouldn't be there. Hopefully the latter, as I don't want to have to buy another DC just to fix this one... or something.

And Firefox is beginning to bother me. While I'm glad I can finally use the BlackJapan theme (BlackJapan theme for Thunderbird), it really irks me that it once again has decided to forget my address bar URLs. God damnit, STOP DOING THAT FIREFOX!
Another thing I've noticed is that it's got a severe memory leak, probably due to one of the extensions I have. As I write this, firefox.exe takes a whopping 129,104K of memory on it's own. My computer can handle it, but it doesn't stop me from being annoyed.

As much as I am willing to try relationships, I don't think I can handle them. Not with the way I currently am, anyhow.
She wants me to call every day. I can't even manage that... aren't I just pathetic?
I don't like subtleties either. I don't think we'll get along well, though she seems to think differently. Her language mannerisms (assuming that's the correct term for it) are annoying me, too. I've only once before thought that repeating things like that could bother me (Arkos, I'm looking at you.). I mean, I've read thing and spoken to people who would repeat certain expressions, and it has never bothered me so much before. Why, oh why, does it bother me to hear "I don't worry", now?! I wonder if it's because of the lying way she uses it.
*sigh*

My todo list isn't shrinking.

Of Linux, servers, and Dreamcasts

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 18:50:43 -0400

If you've ever had the "bright" idea of opening a console with the idea that, seeing how modular it seemed to be, you might be able to upgrade some part of it -- desist. While I was rather certain that I'd get nowhere, I did it anyway.

The thought originated from seeing that Linux could be run on a Dreamcast - pretty sweet, if you have any use for it. But I didn't want it for playing games or what have you; Rather, I had the intention of running a server on the DC. Hey, if it had the necessary hardware, why not? As a bonus, I could even run games on it if I wanted to. First, however, I had to check the specs - and 16 MB of (main) SDRAM isn't all that appealing, especially since my server currently needs much more than that.

But I already had the idea of running my server off a DC, since the thing could be equipped with a LAN/broadband adapter. So why not at least check? Knowing it was most likely a waste of time, I decided to open the DreamCast and see if I could upgrade it's memory - after all, SDRAM is (or was) fairly common.

(Though this is the first time I've opened a console, I have opened computer cases before, laptops included. I strongly disrecommend opening any such device on your own if you haven't done so before, and aren't being supervised, especially if you haven't bothered to read any advice and precautions.) Having never opened a console before, I was fairly impressed: everything was well kept together, yet still very modular and easy to take apart. In the process of taking everything out, however, I had mistakenly believed that I needed to disconnect the GD-ROM from it's base (the actual GD-ROM "drive" -- the part with the lens and motor -- is seperate from the part that connects to the DreamCast's mainboard); this became a problem later. Naturally, when I got to the mainboard, I found that everything was integratedly soldered on: no (easy) modifications possible. I know that if I really had wanted to try, I could have still removed the chips and replaced them with other SDRAM chips, but for all I knew (and in fact, was informed of later on) these could be specialised chips used in conjunction with a special memory manager. So I decided, at this point, to stop.

I was then faced with the problem of having to put it back together. "No problem", I thought, as I had already learnt by now to keep parts well idenfied and organised when taking something apart. But when I was to put the GD-ROM's connector cable back in, I found that I couldn't actually reach in there - my fingers were much too big and clumsy.
Uh oh.
I persevered a bit, but I was never able to completely push in the cable - either half of it would go in lopsided, or barely at all. Then I had the bright idea of using pliers, which did manage to get it in - and bend it, too. (For this is a sensitive type of cable that isn't meant to bend sharply.) This worried me, but I had finally gotten it in, so I figured I'd might as well see if it worked before letting panic settle anything.
Once I'd gotten most of the parts in, I plugged in the DC and turned it on, to see if it worked.
The VMU beeped (It's battery is dead, so it performs a self-test whenever it gets power from the DC), the disc spun up...
...but nothing showed up on the TV. The disc was not being read, either.

This lead me to believe there was one or more of the following problems:

Part of the mainboard was now fried. I noticed, after turning off the DC, that I had forgotten to place the protective plastic shielding under the power convertor section; it was possible that a current had went from underneath this section to somewhere it didn't belong.
The GD-ROM was damaged and possibly irrevocably confused.
Some part had been shorted by an electric shock I hadn't noticed (unlikely, but it happens, or so I hear).

I tried taking things apart and putting them back together, checking a few various things in the process. Nothing seemed damaged nor fried (other than the previously mentioned bent cable), yet the darn thing wouldn't show anything useful, nor read the GD for some reason.
Annoyed and exhausted, I just put the whole thing back together, and shut everything (DC, stereo, TV and VCR) off. I quickly checked the connections behind the VCR, but everything seemed okay. I sat back down at my work PC - which is right beside my two consoles, the DC and the PSX (No, it's not a PS1, it's a PSX! It actually has a parallel port.) - and decided I'd work on something else.
While it booted up, a little optimistic voice in my head said, "Go on, turn it on again." as I stared at the DC.
Alright, fine. Couldn't lose anything more of the DC at this point. So I turned on the VCR and TV again, then the DC.
Lo and behold, the DC starts up normally, logo and all. Then I get my answer as to why the GD was never read:
Because I unplugged the DC's power, it forgot what the time was and was asking me for it. >_<;

At this point I tested the DC, and it seemed to work just fine. I'd say I'm lucky, though, since what I did to the GD-ROM wasn't bright. All in all, though, I knew it was pretty much a foregone conclusion and a waste of time. But hey, I had to try ;)