Even though I’ve had my Nokia N900 for some time, I’ve never really tried out the video recording ability, So here’s my first.
It seems quite adequate as a recorder of the present reality.
Ireland
N900 3G speed test
I have been in Stockholm this past week on a bit of a holiday, and while I was nursing my pay-as-you-go Vodafone account I tried out both the GSM Edge and 3G speeds while in the Stockholm Arlanda Airport
Disregard that it says it’s testing a Vodafone.ie connection to Dublin, it’s from Stockholm to Dublin and what it indicates is that it’s more than 30% faster download speed than my Eircom DSL and more than 3X faster upload speed. So much for DSL. And compared to a test I ran from Vodafone 3G in Cork a while back, it’s was fully 3 Times the speed both up and down link. Why do we put up with such third world performance from our broadband providers? We’re Sheep, has be be, ready to be shorn.
The Press is facilitating a Fianna Fáil Ploy
If you haven’t heard there is a vote in The Dáil on Tuesday, A No Confidence Vote against the Fianna Fáil Government. But listening to RTE and the Newspapers, you would only hear about Fine Gael frontbenchers ousting Kenny . What? No! We are voting AGAINST Fianna Fáil ! Where did all the kerfuffle about Kenny come about. In a word Fianna Fáil! It’s a ploy augmented by the gullible and lazy press to deflect attention away from the Tuesday No Confidence Vote. A lame attempt to displace attention away from their criminal activities which created the Irish Banking Crisis and to make a mockery of the Vote.
A GPS for Genealogy
One of the things that i’ve found very useful about the GPS in the Nokia N900 is that when the wife and I are out investigating the back-and-beyonds the N900 is suppyling us with townlands as we traverse. In genealogy often the only locational information you can find are townlands, and many modern maps do not label them. Now I don’t know if othe GPS’s have this data, but it’s nice to have them in the pocket, in the form of the N900.
Nice day at Black Rock Castle
A very nice sunny day at Black Rock Casltle, what more can you say more than that.
I’m an Ass H__e
I’ve being rude at Gateway Ireland I’m an Ass H__e. But I’m a Ass h__e that gets things done! I have spent my whole life moving from project to project simply on my reputation of being a high tech firefighter. I stomp out project fires, and make things work. I complete projects that are spinning out of control and either cash in the reality check and close them, or bring them to fruition. And the one thing that gets my blood up are projects without any clear goal, or ones that have floating goals. This Gateway Ireland project sounds great, but is clearly unfocused and directionless. Doomed to failure, much like the Mobhaile.ie project which I could see from it’s outset would fail. And the aftermath shows that there had to be ulterior motives at work here. Observing the expense items listed, points directly at a government rip off, a government money laundering operation. Clearly meant as a payoff to political friends.
What Ireland needs now, is a clearly defined, and completed project to demonstrate real Irish skills, not another political farce to act the maggot. Real developers, operating on clearly defined goals to solve clearly defined problems. There is no such thing as an all encompassing solution in this recessionary environment. Fix as many of the small problems, the big ones will take care of themselves.
Internet freedom of speech and Irish Neutrality.
While reading this article 5 Reasons Why Online Freedom of Speech Does Not Exist I was encouraged that a person of Arabic decent wrote it. And is spot on about the real lack of freedom on the internet.
And a thought came to mind that what Irelands ‘Smart Economy’ ought to be, is to create a genuine open internet connection to the world. An Internet free of ALL censorship, blocking, filtering and snooping both into and out to the rest of the internet. Even so much as establishing free VPN connections into the country for people living in internet ‘oppressed’ world areas thus giving an open gateway into a free, and (as) open as anyone could make, Internet. It would not prevent countries from blocking export of banned information into Ireland, but Ireland would not add any blockages. And it would not prevent information from Ireland into censored countries. but it would create a cloud of truly free internet.
I think this could foster an internet ‘Switzerland’ much like Switzerland is to banking. Businesses like Google, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Skype would find this an attractive country to expand and centralize in. It would make Ireland an Internet sanctuary for complete and open exchange of ideas and communications.
Nokia support is indescribable, really indescribable.
What can say Nokia support is indescribable, as in not available. I have an New Nokia N900 purchased through Expansys U.K. Which shipped it to me, from london (as in U.K.) but it turns out it was acquired by them from the U.S. and Nokia Europe does NOT service (as in repair) Nokia handsets that are sold by Nokia U.S. in the U.S.
Ok, What? Nokia will NOT service Nokia handsets because it’s a U.S. Nokia warrantee and not a E.U. Nokia warrantee. It’s a Nokia, and it’s a their warrantee!
BIG FAIL, NOKIA!
Now I have to ship my phone to the U.S. to find warrantee service on my NOKIA Phone!
Fianna Fáil to fund criminal Pension Managers
Fianna Fáil is now preparing to force every working man into funding Pension Funds that have been losing money every day. In other words they are funneling 8% of everyones paycheck into a black hole where there are no controls on pension fund managers. These incompetent Pension fund managers are allowed to lose money without regard to their customers. And there is NO need, you can earn interest on a pension WITHOUT risk. In fact this should be the number one requirement. Instead this is a gift to the criminal behavior of Pension manager. Should a regulation be put in place to guarantee that funds placed into pensions will never be less than the value of the investment. These crooks would scatter back under the rocks where they came out from. And Fianna Fáil would lose some more of their brown envelopes.
(The employee is forced to give them 4% and the employer is forced to reduce the employee’s paycheck by 4% to sent along with the employee’s to net the Pension thieves 8%)
UPDATE: The employee will only lose 6% in his pay slip as the the employer only has to add 2% probably paid as a benefit. This will create less jobs, and put more people on the Dole.
Irish Banks to ripoff NAMA
That headline isn’t really news, at least to the people of Ireland. And only the, very disconnected, Irish Government believe that their spinning of any other message has changed that public attitude.
But here is another one, Rent, the very nature of the overinflated rents, which are driving companies out of business. This has only one value, and that is to the Banks which are utilizing the higher rents to increase the apparent value of their holding before passing them on to NAMA. In any other country, this is called Fraud
Accounting fraud
In order to hide serious financial problems, some businesses have been known to use fraudulent bookkeeping to overstate sales and income, inflate the worth of the company’s assets or state a profit when the company is operating at a loss. These tampered records are then used to seek investment in the company’s bond or security issues or to make fraudulent loan applications in a final attempt to obtain more money to delay the inevitable collapse of an unprofitable or mismanaged firm.
While this deceit may be well know to many, it was new to be. I could not understand why anyone would increase rents which were driving out tenants. Or how the rents were still overinflated with all the empty property’s currently on the markets. This more or less points to a second issue, that of Price Fixing and is, in reality, another for form anti-competitive fraud.
And there is no revolution yet? I suppose the bankers can have, and eat your cake too…
Vodafone Speedtest with Nokia N900
The first time I tried this I was getting better than 1.2Mbs but I forgot how to do a print screen, this is what I got the second time, too bad that it showed so much inconsistency, but typical from what I’ve heard from other Vodafone users. It’s interesting that the upload speed is faster that my Eircom DSL line by almost 2X while the Eircom downlink was rated a 2.7Mbs.
A Neighborhood solution to water supply
If you live close enough to your neighbor (most semi-detached homes would fit this description) you can attach your external faucet, from your non functioning household water, to that of your neighbors FUNCTIONING water supply with a common garden hose and By opening the valves on the waterless house, and then the working house. The house with the functioning water supply will supply the non functioning house.
You might call this an Irish solution to an Irish problem. And since we are not currently paying for the water, we aren’t stealing water, just loaning it.
The Nokia N900 in use, a perspective.
I’ve had my Nokia N900 for almost 48 hours, and while I’ve have a few frustrations, I’m equally satisfied with the product. And so to keep it geeky and simple:
- I’ve logged into the device (not really a phone) with SSH from my desktop. And it just looks like a standard Linux system.
- I’ve logged in to my Opensolaris from the device shell (X Terminal) with SSH and that works like normal.
- I’ve connect to the VLC server on my server, with VLC, from the device, and while the navigation of the screen size differences will be ‘fun’, it works as expected
- I’ve Blogged from the device using MaStory.
- I’ve sent SMS and received SMS’s, I received Phone calls. (gee)
- I’ve been fetching emails, full html support (must turn off images)
- I’ve found my location with GPS.
- I’ve loaded up some songs, and they sound great with the stereo speakers
- I’ve listened to internet radio, that works great.
- I’ve used the keyboard, and I’m getting faster the more I use it.
- I’ve browsed the internet, and it’s amazing, although my blog identifies it as a PDA (must fix that)
- I’ve used the device to diagnose a neighbors laptop WiFi connection
- I’ve taken a photo, not so great on the first try, no image stabilization, but relatively sharp
- I’ve managed to post a photo to my Flickr account.
- I’ve synced up my calendar and contacts with my Nokia 6300 backup using the Nokia PC suite (as OVI suite does not work)
- I’ve connected to AOL and Yahoo IM with the Pidgin application.
However there is another list, of frustrations;
- Battery life really sucks, mostly because I’ve had everything turned on (default) and have not found all the places to ‘tune’ them to better setting.
- I can NOT get the Twitter application Mauku to connect to Twitter
- I can NOT get the weather with OMWeather it won’t connect
- I couldn’t get the MaxRoam SIM to dial anyone, though I could SMS
- Some Apps from the App Manager WILL NOT DOWNLOAD no matter what I do, and there no indication about why they won’t download
- I can’t get the FaceBook application which came pre-installed, to actually install, or function. It’s the same with several of the ‘pre-installed’ apps, they just don’t work without being ‘installed’ and they won’t install.
I am currently using a Vodafone Pay-as-you-Go SIM and it does indicate that I am connected with 3G. I have NOT tested it for dataroaming, or performance. The MaxRoam SIM did indicate that I was connected to a 3.5G O2 network But like I mentioned, I couldn’t call anyone, only SMS. I assume that it was my ignorance of setting for the MaxRoam SIM.
As for the phone itself, I like it, it’s a bit heaver than I thought, but a great deal smaller, it is not really any wider or taller than a Samsung Tocco Lite, but it’s almost twice as thick.
The keyboard is very small and not really thumb friendly, I started out using my fingernails to type. Now I can feel the contours of the keys, it sped up my typing a bit. I have a clear snap on case I bought from Amazon a month ago, but the screen section obscures the upper row on the keyboard, so I don’t have it on, so just the back is attached.
The resistive touchscreen is very sensitive. I have a Palm T/X and I know! It is nothing like the resistive screens of the past. There is virtual NO give to the surface, and while you can tell that it is ‘softer’ than a capacitive touchscreen, it has a great deal more precision. Just try and draw something in the ‘sketch’ app or better yet, the XJournal application.
Overall I could say that it’s a keeper, a Geeky keeper, and looks like it will be a learned love. It does do what I need it to do, be a computed device, with a phone in it.
I’m sure there will be other revelations, but I may be too busy playing with my new toy.
UPDATE : I’ve managed to get the missing FaceBook App to install and Mauku and OMWeather are working after I changed some of the connection setting on device to fixed ip addresses on my WiFi router.
About the Weather at @abouttheweather
With everyone twitting about the weather conditions in Ireland lately, I created a weather twitter account that will save anything you twit to it with @abouttheweather and will keep them in a Weather category at Idea Forecasting
Brian the Coward leader of the Lost!
I almost never link to Twenty Major, more because I have no comment on what he comments on, but this posting Brian Coward is probably worthy of another award. And I could not recommend it more.