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I'm officially scared now

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If you've not seen BigDog the Quadraped Robot, be very scared. Imagine this thing chasing you down as you run for your life ... Forget the Dr Who monsters, this is a level beyond fear.

Technorati Tags: bigdog, quadraped, robot, run, walk, jump

A solution to my Dell Laptop Suspend problem? Solved!

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Ok yes its partly my fault but I seem to have power control panel for KDE and Gnome working on the same machine. If I use just the Gnome settings and close the lid of my laptop, it will lock up and the only way to get back to normal is to power the laptop off again (aka hold the power button in). If I use the KDE power setting and close the lid of my laptop, it powers down correctly and when I open it up again, I get Ubuntu exactly where I left it after entering the user password again. Why?

Actually I'm almost not interested in the why but the how do I use KDE's Power settings instead of Gnome but still use Gnome? Right now I have to remember to start the KDE setting otherwise its back to powering off the laptop again. Oh just for bug reports and the record, I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 with Compiz Fusion (this only became a problem in 7.10). on a Dell XPS M1210 with an Intel Graphics card and restricted driver a/b/g wireless card. Everything else is fine except suspend and hibernate (which never works)

So anyone with a solution?

Glyn solved my problem. The problem is to do with the Gnome Power manager, so we disabled it from starting up in the boot manager and wrote at the end of the file /etc/acpi/lid.sh.

grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state
if [ $? = 0 ]
then
/etc/acpi/sleep.sh
fi

This forces the Laptop to sleep when the lid is closed. Oh you should try running "sudo /etc/acpi/sleep.sh" from a command line to double check your machine will sleep ok. I'm planning to put up a bug report for this pretty soon.

Tracking fingers with the Wiimote

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One of the guys at BBC R&I sent this around today. I only just watched this today but I'm really amazed. This is awesome stuff and reminds me I need to get my Wiimote working with my Ubuntu boxes.

I've also been thinking, everyones using that pinch movement/behaviour to indicate scale but what other interactions/behaviours? Is there more which have yet to become standard? Maybe a cycle of the fingers in tandum could indicate master volume or something more? Maybe 3 fingers down the screen could indicate something which should be deleted and 3 up something to be uploaded. The beauty of this low cost setup is that anyone can play and make up there own commands, its no longer just in the research labs. This is great and I'm always in favor of that.

NBC Dateline Reporter flees Defcon 15

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NBC Reporter with hidden camera in purse refuses official press credentials hoping to catch conference attendees committing to crimes (according to Defcon staff). She ends up fleeing Defcon 15 after being outed on stage.

Enough said really...

Interview with Chris DiBona and Ed Parsons of Google

[ All Technology ] | Tags: gdd07  gdd07uk  googledeveloperday  developerday  google 

While at Google Developer Day, I caught some time with Chris DiBona and Ed Parsons from Google. Chris is well known in the Open source and Free software worlds for his work on Google summer of code and the book Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. Recently he's (sometimes) hosts a great podcast with Leo Laporte called FLOSS weekly. Its hardly weekly but worth subscribing to anyway. Ed on the hand was the key man at the Ordnance Survey and tried to kick start the mapping craze well before Google maps hit the net. It made sense for Google to poach some a key man such as Ed.

Anyway, the interviews are up on Blip.TV as usual, and filmed with my Sanyo camera.

• Interview with Chris Dibona at Google development day
• Interview with Ed Parsons at Google development day

A couple of new things came out of the Google Developer Day. Google Mapplets, Google Mashup Editor and Google Gears.

First up is Google Gears, an open source browser extension for enabling offline web applications. Now developers will be able to create web applications that don't need a constant Internet connection to work. Users, meanwhile, can interact with Gears-enabled websites anywhere, whether they're on the couch or on an airplane. With this early release, we hope the community will provide feedback and move towards an industry standard for offline web applications. Read more on the new Gears blog.

An experimental product debuting today is the Google Mashup Editor, an online editor that enables developers to create, test, and deploy mashups and simple web applications from within a browser. Now developers can turn out those weekend projects more quickly. We've also launched a new blog where you can learn more about the Google Mashup Editor and get the latest news.

Finally, we released Google Mapplets yesterday at the Where 2.0 conference. Mapplets are mini-applications that any developer can build on top of Google Maps so that users can easily discover the creative genius and usefulness of the mashup development community. You'll find more about Mapplets here. And we're also quite excited about the interest that has been shown in Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Since its launch last May, there have been over 1 million downloads. You can read more on the GWT blog.

Mapplets is interesting but what makes me excited is the Mashup Editor which somewhat fits in area of Flow* and Gears, which seems to be the final step in the move towards the Google Operating System. I would usually say who cares but Google Gears will be a open source project and they already have Adobe, Opera and Mozilla on board.

Generally Google once again made it clear there commitment to open-source and developers. I look forward to hacking about with this stuff really soon.

Switching to Ubuntu on Desktop for real this time

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The other day I was installing some new wireless points around the house. My very 1st generation Linksys 802.11b access point had pretty much had enough and needed to be put out of its pain. And the pocket Asus wireless point (smaller that a Airport express) wasn't really made for constant use.

Anyhow, I happen to flip the switch on the Belkin 10 way power supply under my desk. Off went the Desktop machine. Thought damm it, and switched the 10 way back on. Well Windows was screwed, so screwed that I had to reinstall it again. Only this time when I reinstalled it, it kept getting upset about the hardware and would restart its self.In the end I got so pissed off with the whole thing, that I threw the Windows CD across the room and went looking for my Ubuntu CD.

Within a few hours I had Ubuntu 6.10 dapper installed (had to do some data shifting with partition magic) and before you knew it all the applications I needed, thanks very much to Nat's guide to Ubuntu she sent me over Twitter. I had a few problems on the way including writing to NTFS partitions and getting Azureus to run correctly. However this evening I got all those working without too much work. Now I just need to clean things up, get Hamachi running and sort out the Samba shares.

So far, its all god...

Little Big Planet

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I watched the demo of this recently and was wowed by the level of graphics and parciptation in and outside the game. Its on Playstation 3 only which is a shame but really shows off the power of the PS3 better that anything else I've seen to date. Theres also a level creator like you have never seen before and of course the levels are sharable. If they could make the PS3 a bit more affordable, that would be great. Right now, I'm still considering a Wii because its simply great to play and much more friendly to non-gamers.

More thoughts about the iPhone ongoing drama

[ All Technology ] | Tags: mobile  phones  europe  apple  windows  linux  openmoko  iphone  windowsmobile  nokia 

So the truth is starting to trickle out. First a note on openness via Kid666.

In The New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms every developer’s worst fears about the iPhone:

‘These [iPhones] are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.’

If Microsoft said that, everyone would jump and down (like they are about Vista) but Apple says it and the follows shake there heads like zombies. As Kidd666 says, nooooooo!

3G also looks like it won't happen says Engadget

It's not unheard of for a firmware upgrade to unlock new features or functionality in a device, but the sources we've spoken to have made it pretty clear that Apple hasn't wedged a UMTS or HSDPA radio into this thing.

A couple of other things. Did Apple steal Visual Voicemail? on top of stealing the maybe dropped trademarked name of iPhone by Cisco. I kinda of agree with Nokia no usable 3G and europe (which is a bigger market and us europeans are use to something small and powerful in our hands? DLTV) will have to wait comments. It is also worth checking out what DL.TV make of us Europeans.

And I'm also pretty much done talking about it now. Still very worried about the closed nature of the device but then again the iPod is also a closed type device and you can even run linux on it now. Its also worth pointing out that the Candy Bar touchscreen devices are very much the way forward now.

AppleTV and iPhone

[ All Technology ] | Tags: apple  iphone  applephone  appletv  keynote 

I couldn't go to sleep without saying something about the Apple announcements today.

So first up the Apple TV. This for me was disappointing, I was hoping to have something which maybe I could upgrade to. But for now my XBox running XBMC will still have a spot under my TV. I had expected something a little cheaper and cleverer. Its a worthy device which I would recommend to others but the software on it is underwelming. For example no 1080p support, yes its a very high standard but with shows going out on the net in 1080p (macbreak for one) and with the xbox 360 and PS3 supporting it. You would have thought Apple would get on board too. Anyway hopefully its a software upgrade. I'm also hoping someone ports XBMC or something better to it. Frontrow doesn't seem to have been upgraded that much and looks simply boring compared to the open source efforts of XBMC. Final thought for now, great hardware underwhelming software.

And now the iPhone or Apple phone. I do like what Apple's done. It seems like they've taken a HTC Windows mobile device and built a much better interface for it (multitouch). Finger based instead of Stylus, ok cool but not revolutionary. The features of the phone are good, I'd expect they will have 3G for the European (Q4 2007) and Asia models (2008), and it has most of the stuff you see in current phones - EDGE, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc. These may sound amazing to the usual phone buying people but nothing special to a Windows Mobile owner. For example the fact the music pauses when a call comes in is nothing new. My Ericsson T28 use to that with the MP3 attachment, most phones do that. Matt at work didn't believe me and Ii showed him and earned myself a pound in the process. People wondered how Googlemaps could pin point your location without GPS, well Wifi and GSM can be used to pin point location. Oh one more thing the Proximity sensor isn't a new thing either. My old gold bar Ericsson had that feature, so you could answer the phone by waving your hands over it and it wouldn't do anything to the buttons while its next to your ear.Widgets on your phone, been done by Opera already. Multi-session text? Sounds like IM to me. High DPI screen is nice but the Nokia's also have high DPI screens. 8 or 4gig, well teh Nokia N91 had 4 gig over 12months ago and Samsung already have a 8gig phone. Suprised Apple didn't go with just Yahoo or Google instead of both. Also very surprised Google didn't offer Push email. There was no mention of Java support, or its poor 2 mega pixal camera. Lessig talked about read/write ability a while ago, well this is certainly a read device, it certainly doesn't feel like an empowering device for writers.

Don't get me wrong, all the tweaks to software and hardware to add up to a great phone which I would buy if it came out sooner that Q4 of 2007. The price point is not too high, but I expect it to be at least 250 pounds on Orange with a 18 month contract. Would I say Apple will put some more spice back into the mobile market and force mobile and software makers (Microsoft pay attention) to spend more time looking at the functionality of simple things like text, email and voicemail. For example Microsoft don't actually provide a MMS or voicetag client for Windows Mobile 5, so you get some 3rd party solution which usual suck and is totally inconsistent with the rest of the phone. Visual voicemail makes sense and is one of those tweaks which I can imagine not living without once you have it.

So overall, yes I wouldn't mind one but I'm not holding my breath or rather next upgrade decision for it. I'll get one in Q2 of 2008 when its been tried and tested and Apple have upgraded some of the lows like Battery life.

Anyone want to buy a Toshiba Portege 3500?

[ All Technology ] | Tags: laptop  tabletpc  dell  order  sale  toshiba  linux 

Today I received my Dell order(s) (one with bluetooth, one without - go figure). This at least confirms I will be getting my new Dell XPS 1210 Laptop sometime on the 8th Jan. So that means my current laptop the Toshiba Portege 3500 is up for sale.

There's nothing wrong with it except for the two things. The CPU fan sometimes rubs against the sides of the case if you shake it around too much and the touchscreen has a area where it no longer works as expected. Otherwise its all good. Pentium 3 1.33ghz with 768meg of memory and a 2.5 inch 40gig Hard drive which has and had no problems (spinrite says its fine). 802.11b Wireless, Bluetooth 1.1 and Card readers for SD, CF and PCMCIA. The tablet pen still works fine and I have all the media which came with the laptop. Its general condition is ok, its has wear marks of almost 4 years of everyday use. The new battery lasts about 2.5 hours with wireless and bluetooth turned off. I also have the first one which lasts no more that 5mins on full charge if you want to redo the cells inside of it.

Ideally I would like to see closer to £300 for it but I'll consider all decent offers.

If no one else wants it I'm deeply considering installing Ubuntu Linux on it and using it for browsing the web and to act like a ambient device for me and Sarah. If I underclock it down to about 733mhz I shouldn't need the fan anymore and it could make a great electronic picture frame, group calendar display and clock. Maybe use a widget engine or rss screensaver. I've also found a really good guide on how to take apart the Toshiba laptop which could help if I want to really go the whole process of converting my laptop

The other thing I could do is use my laptop is use it as a media centre by sticking a fresh version of windows media centre on it and adding a VGA to Svideo adapter on it. Its only a 1.33ghz processor but it can playback 720p video under the correct conditions, unlike my xbox.

Jim Louderback reviews the best small laptops on the market

[ All Technology ] | Tags: notebooks  laptops  ultralite  video  dltv  jimlouderback  hp  pcmag  dell 

This was taken from the dl.tv episode 124. Whats very interesting is the 4 laptops reviewed are exactly the same as what was on my final list and they also recommend the Dell XPS 1210, even over the Mac Book.

Oh I forgot to mention my wife also bought a new laptop. A HP DV2000 from Comet which she loves at the moment.

Dell call centres and final orders

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Ok so what happened next in the saga over my Dell Laptop? Well keeping a long story short, I ended up ordering it through Dell's phone system. The system is one of those indian call centres which everyone talks about. See I usually don't have a problem with them but explaining my web specs over the phone from memory to someone with english as 2nd language is simply painful. Its also not helped when the guy claims to know more about what I want to order that myself. Yes at one point he suggested I don't need Bluetooth because I already have Wireless. Ummm hello! 1. they are different 2. I'm the customer and thanks for your advice but its time to drop it. He (Hitesh) also didn't want me to get the 1x1024meg Memory module. He told me if I buy the one memory module, the laptop will only have one slot. But if I buy the laptop with 2x512meg Memory configured, it would come with 2 slots making it much easier to upgrade later. In the end I gave up questioning why Dell would make the same laptop with different amounts of slots depending on your configuration (I can only do so much research).

So why would I put myself through this hell of the phone system when I already ordered it online. Well £150 discount if you order it on the phone. Sarah found out about this, thanks sweetie. My current order is roughly the same with exception of memory but now down to £963 in total. This is great, but I still don't have a set date yet. I'm expecting it to come by the end of the next week latest.

I've choosen the Dell XPS 1210

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I've made my mind up, I'm going to go with the Dell XPS 1210. It really came down to the MacBook vs the Dell XPS but ultimately the Dell won because its simply very powerful and the 9 cell battery can give up to 4.5 hours worth of normal use (wifi on). This is insane, and although its thicker and heavier that most 12 inch laptops, its got all the features you would normally see on a 15 inch laptop. The Thinkpad X60 lost out because its hard to get it very configured in the UK and the price made it a non-starter when you added the 2.0ghz Core Duo 2 processor. Dell also just added a discount of 50 pounds on the XPS and a free USB TV tuner if you order before 2007.

What tipped me over was the reviews by a few bloggers and notebook reviewers (notebookreview, cnet, ). Don't get me wrong the Macbook did well in these reviews (notebookreview and cnet) but I got the general feeling that its lack of extras really let it down and although I can get a good deal out of it. I would always feel like I was missing out on things like card readers and usb's ports. These might sound stupid to most, but everything I own supports SD cards and even my new batteries for my camera support USB. So realistically I can take a XPS and Canon S3 on holiday and nothing else. (no card readers, no usb cables and no charge cable for the camera). Once Moixa bring out device driven batteries I'll be able to add my Sanyo Camera to that list too.

Dell also offer a 2 year warranty and support as standard with the XPS which suits me perfectly. I can extend it later if I like and I know the Apple Care is good but I was really put off by some of the things I heard about long delays, etc. Dell tend to be quite good about replacing machines.

So what about the 2gig of ram I loaded into the MacBook? Well I've selected the 1 stick 1gig option for the XPS and decided I might put in a 512meg or another 1gig myself using Crucial's memory wizard (41 pounds for 512meg and 82 pounds for 1gig). Also please note, once you add a 120gig hard drive to the Mac Book it hits £1000 with only 1gig of ram, so the Dell isn't that badly priced (although you do get the faster 667mhz memory with the Mac).

Some people will also turn their nose up at my choice not to include a Nvidia Graphics card but its an extra £230 and I'm not planning to do anything more complex that second life or some X3D stuff. The intel card can support OpenGL and DirectX 9.0 and runs cooler - so I'll be happy enough. This means I can spend the extra money on the 9 Cell battery and Bluetooth card. I was also tempted to get the 802.11(pre) N card but I'm worried about it using more power because its dell not Intel, plus I really don't need it. You may also notice I didn't add the free Vista upgrade to my list, I might add it because its free (11 pounds p&p) but just not use it. I looked into installing Linux on the XPS 1210 and it seems not too difficult.

The Dell XPS 1210 isn't as beautiful as the Mac Book but nor is my current Toshiba Portege 3500. But Funny enough the XPS 1210 is built from the material which kept my Toshiba safe all these years and it looks like the same machine from the lid. Its certainly road ready. The last thing which I think convinced me was Dell Media direct. This is buttons for DVD and CD playback without having to boot into Windows. The latest version goes one step further by being able to play mpeg3's from the HD and Storage cards, do file transfers, play office files, etc. It seems to be a cut down version of Windows Media Centre 2005, so I'll be very happy being able to do quick and dirty things like watch files on the train without booting up windows.

Anyway, here's my current setup in the Dell basket,

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7200 (2.0 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
• Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
• Premium XPS Service, 2 Year (incl. Gaming and On-Site Support)
• 12.1" WXGA (1280x800) TFT Display with TrueLife™ and integrated 1.3 mega pixel web cam
• 1024MB 533MHz Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM (1x1024)
• 120GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive
• Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW with Software
• 5-in-1 Multi Card Reader (MS, MS Pro, SD, MMC, xD)
• Intel® Media Accelerator 950 Graphics Up to 256MB shared graphics memory
• 9 Cell, 80Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery
• Intel® Pro WLAN 3945 Internal Wireless (802.11a/b/g 54 Mbps) for Core 2 Duo Processors
• Dell™ Wireless 350 Bluetooth 2.0 Module (up to 3Mbps) with Enhanced Data Rate
• Money Off Savings: Save £50 inc VAT
• £1,041.35 (includes VAT & Shipping, nothing to Pay Until December 2007)

Thanks to everyone who helped me decide what to get. I almost got a macbook but its lack of features is perfect for someone who just wants a great laptop. I'm more a tweaker and the extra features on the dell will be used by me. Now does anyone want to buy a Toshiba Protege 3500 Tablet PC with a noisy fan?

Technorati Tags: computer, coreduo, laptop, notebook

Buying a new laptop, last minute thoughts

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So I'm on the look out for a new laptop. The Apple seems like a good deal (I can also get quite a percentage off). Also from what I've been reading I should get a Intel Core Duo 2 chip, at least for the 4meg Cache and future 64bit processing support but its not essential to get a high clock speed. Hard Drives have doubled again, so I dont need to worry about that. Here's top of my list at the moment, bearing in mind I only want a 12inch laptop (13 if I'm pushed)

Apple Mac Book = 2GHz Core Duo 2 with 80GB HD and 2gig of memory is £1,014.01 (1 year AppleCare)

Lenovo Thinkpad X60s = 1.66Ghz Core Duo 2 with 80GB HD and 1gig of memory is £1,021.98 (3 years warranty)

Dell XPS M1210 = 2Ghz Core Duo 2 with 120GB HD and 1gig of memory is £960.22 2 years warranty)

Toshiba Satellite Pro U200 = 2Ghz Core Duo 2 with 100GB HD and 1gig of memory is £1,173.83 1 year warranty)

Thoughts?

All support 12.1inch screens (bar Mac with 13.3inch), WXGA (1280px by 800px) except the X60 which has plain XGA, dual layer DVD burners, Wifi and Bluetooth. Although I had to add Bluetooth to the Dell configuration. The 2Ghz models have 4meg Caches. The PC;s have card readers while the Mac does not. The X60 and U200 both come with biometrics. The Dell and Mac have a built in Cameras and those new Express card slots (aka not PCMCIA). All have Firewire and USB2 ports, the mac only having 2x while the X60 and U200 have 3x and the Dell has 4x. The mac loses out on a lot of things here but I've loaded it with 2gig of memory and its still cheapest machine generally (and thats before my discount even). I even did a test config at 1.87ghz and it came to under £950, but its also got the 13.3 inch screen. I like the Dell and X60 because they both have options for bigger cell batteries (9 cell in the Dell), Svideo and bigger warranties. Generally the U200 is too expensive and its really down to the Dell, X60 and Mac.

Technorati Tags: computer, coreduo, feature, laptop, notebook

Posted by ianforrester at Tue, 26 Dec 2006 02:51

Feedback (4) blogging it? digging it? googling it?