Happy Birthday NutMeg!

I was shopping for my little sister NutMeg. She has asked me to buy her a copy of Etiquette by Something with Numbers. The store I went to said it was no longer in stock, as it was a older release, and it was increasingly hard to find. While telling me this from their storeroom, I noticed the following poster:

Autographed Gyroscope Poster

It was going to be a prize, but they noticed that they had damaged it with store tape. I was lucky enough to grab it, and I know NutMeg is a huge Gyroscope fan. If you ever have the privilege of meeting NutMeg, ask to see her back! She'll be getting this next time I'll see her!

Happy Birthday little sister!

Football and Basketball in 2010

There is one thing that all sports fans need to come to terms with when supporting their teams at a distance - NOTHING you do will affect the outcome of the results of a game. I have experienced this first hand in two separate scenarios on the same day.

Firstly, the Socceroos were handed a 4-0 loss against Germany in the World Cup. While it was upsetting to witness this, as well as the red card handed to Tim Cahill for a soft, but "from behind" tackle, I have hope for Socceroos to come back from this situation. I base it on two things I notice about the Australian line-up.

1. At least two key strikers did not enter the game against Germany - Harry Kewell and Joshua Kennedy. Both men are able to alter the game. Harry is able to dribble and control the ball well, opening up opportunities for himself as well as other players, while Joshua has the advantage of height - leading to aerial control of cross kicks.
   
2. Tim Cahill played out of position, as well as possibly some other Australian team members in the formation against Germany.

If coach Verbeek is able to address those two issue in the team, the Socceroos should be able to provide a better opponent against Ghana and Serbia in Group D. While I had ever hope that Australia would either be lucky enough for a win, or at least hold on for a draw, I did not think it would come to a 4-0 loss.

Secondly, I really want the Boston Celtics to beat the L.A. Lakers. I have supported the Celtics from the 1980s when I witnessed Larry Bird lead the team to wins over the Lakers as well as the Rockets. In 2008, I was filled with nostalgia, as I witnessed the Celtics beat the Lakers in 6 games. Now, it looks like they have a good chance of repeating that, with a 3-2 lead in the current 2010 NBA Finals series.

Going back to the first point I was making, no matter what my intentions are for either team, it is the actual players of those team that produce the results - not me. No matter how much I hope, pray, will, or wish - none of that affects the final result. It does not matter how loud I yell at the television, or at some streaming over the internet, it does not make my team score, and hold back the opponent from scoring.

Saying that...

GO CELTICS!!
GO SOCCEROOS!!!

Optus World Cup streaming works - sometimes

I can verify that the Optus free streaming of the World Cup works on the Nokia N900. It works out that the streaming is about 15 seconds behind the broadcast on television.

Optus Free Streaming World Cup Website on the N900

Media Player on N900 receiving stream

Nokia N900 multi-tasking the World Cup

The links on the Optus page opens up the N900's media player, and the image and sound is good, but definitely not as clear as on the television. If you're after the link to the Optus page, see my previous post, or this.

3G streaming of the 2010 World Cup on Optus

I've been hunting around the internet for the URL to stream World Cup 2010 games to my 3G mobile, as I have SMSed "World Cup" to 966 to find I get nothing back. After some searching, I've found the following URLS:

• Optus Moblie – http://optuszero.miaccess.com/worldcup/
• Optus iPhone – http://optuszero.miaccess.com/wc2010/

You'll need to be an Optus customer for this to work, and you'll need to register with their OptusZoo service. Hopefully this may assist some other people looking for similar information.

Lastly, well done to France in securing a 0-0 draw against Uruguay, and good luck to the Australian Socceroos in their match against Germany.

World Cup free streaming and Celtics in the finals...

It appears that Optus (phone company) is allowing its customers to stream the World Cup games to their mobile phone in for free. I'm an Optus customer, and I'm pleased they are offering this service. Saying that, I'll probably end up watching most of the games on television, as it's much easier to watch the matches on a big screen than on the N900.

I love football (or soccer for other people) - and I really appreciate watching the world cup. Last time it happened in Germany was in 2006, and I took the whole month off work to watch the games. I probably should have found a way to go to South Africa this year, but other things happened in the past few years, and I'm in the process of fixing up things...

GO SOCCEROOS!!!
Allez Les Bleus!!

Kitty Kat would like to add:

GO GREECE!
GO ITALY!

Maybe this year, Italy won't win on dubious actions. Their skill in football is only overshadowed by their skill in acting / simulation. From Germany 2006, they have proven that while having some talent, they will resort to anything to give them an advantage to win - whether that be fair or unfair in the spirit of the game.

Lastly, it's been a fantastic from the Boston Celtics to dismiss the Miami Heat, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Orlando Magic to go to the 2010 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. In doing that, the Celtics have come from the fourth seeded team in the East to beat the top two teams in the NBA, and now face the Lakers for the second time in 3 years in an attempt to win the championship. While they have lost the first game of a seven game series, I believe they can easily come back and win the rest of the series - in a similar way to how they beat Cleveland.

GO CELTICS!!
Beat L.A.!!

Nokia N900 PR1.2 Multi-tasking

Just a quick update today!

I am very impressed with the Nokia N900's latest update PR1.2. It makes switching between tasks very quick. Here is a screen with 16 different applications open:


I am writing this based on the fact that a few people at work have obtained the new Apple iPad. While it does look very well well polished, the fact that it does not multi-task is concerning, especially since the base system it originated from is built from the ground up to multi-task very well. Therefore, Apple must have removed the feature on purpose.

Other people have documented other reasons why the Apple iPad is not really that great. Even then, I'm sure the iPad will sell well, as the general population will always purchase form over function.

Kitty Kat has used her N900 for the past month, and is more impressed by it every day she uses it. And she did express that she originally did want an iPhone. Even the Apple iPhone is not really that great.

Updating the N900 to PR1.2

I have just completed updating my Nokia N900 to PR1.2. The update was very smooth. I just went into the App manager, tapped on the update icon, and around 130MB later, it was installed. The aspects of the upgrade I have already noticed is:

• GPS is faster and Ovi Maps has a better interface
• Browser has portrait mode switched on and working
• You can choose to only SMS mobile numbers
• Things start up and multi-task faster
• I had it multi-tasking 17 different tasks, and there was little slowdown, and must faster swap between them

Ax has also upgraded his N900, but for some reason, he had to do it via the Nokia PC Suite. He also had to re-install his applications, whereas my installation was smooth, with no noticeable corruption of data or applications.

Lastly, it appears that the N900 is finally being sold in Australia - well at least by the Optus carrier.


Here is the new kernel, as well as some screenshots:

BusyBox v1.10.2 (Debian 3:1.10.2.legal-1osso30+0m5) built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

mullen:~# uname -a
Linux mullen 2.6.28-omap1 #1 PREEMPT Thu Apr 15 09:47:09 EEST 2010 armv7l unknown

Desktop #1

Desktop #2 - With "living" wallpaper (this one actually drips with the code)

Desktop #3

Desktop #4

Application List

"About product" page

Ovi Maps new interface

Celtics make 2010 NBA Finals!

Well done to the Boston Celtics for making to 2010 NBA Finals. In the journey to making the finals, they have had to go up against some of the toughest teams in the NBA, including the Miami Heat, the Cleveland Cavaliers (the #1 team in the NBA for 2009-2010), as well as the Orlando Magic.

GO CELTICS!!!

Multitasking on Nokia N900 and Ubuntu's new 10.04

I recently tried to push the limits of multitasking (running more than one application) on my Nokia N900. I have not reached the limit (yet). Here are some screenshots of what I've tried:

1st desktop on N900

2nd Desktop on N900

3rd desktop on N900

Multi-tasking on N900

At this point, I am running 14 application on the N900 as well as the 4 desktops. I do not have anything on the 4th desktop, hence why I have omitted it as a screenshot. It does not appear to be slowing down the performance of the N900 down at all. Some of the applications open include:

• Maps
• Instant Messaging (IM) Chat
• Phone interface
• Contacts interface
• Sketch pad
• Photo Browser
• Media Player
• Web Browser (accessing Gmail)
• XTerm
• Calendar
• eCoach
  

After transferring some large files onto the N900, I encountered my first bug. It was in the form of corruption of the VFAT /home/user/MyDocs directory. Fortunately, there is already a documented fix for the error - being that the filesystem is "read-only". The long term fix (also documented via a link on the same page) is to convert the VFAT filesystem to ext3. Fixing the VFAT bug (using fsck) caused a second bug - a double directory listing in the N900's file browser. The fix was also documented, being to get the number of files in /home/use/MyDocs to under 32 individual files. This will be properly addressed in the next firmware release.

I've also updated my main computer to Ubuntu 10.04. It is very early so far, but there appears to be a lot of integration with social networking sites, as well as being able to access all the chat / IM protocols they use. I don't know whether this is due to demand from the current users of Ubuntu, or whether it shows that Ubuntu wants to capture a more "youthful and chatty" audience. It also appears that Ubuntu is also starting up services in the form of Ubuntu One.

Overall, it appears to be another good effort from the guys at Ubuntu to produce a usable desktop. Below is a screenshot of my desktop, while I was using GIMP to edit the pictures you see in this post:

Editing images on Ubuntu 10.04

Additional repositories on the N900

I've added some additional repositories to my N900. Kitty Kat's N900 is pretty much out of the box. I do not think she will alter hers as much as I will mine. In that regard, I don't believe I will alter mine as much as Ax will alter his.

Over time, we will all compare our N900s. Hopefully opening up to new repositories will not mean a lack of stability of the phone / tablet itself. For those that are interested, my repositories look like this:

mullen:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# cat hildon-application-manager.list
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ssu/apps/ ./
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ssu/002 ./
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ovi/ ./
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ fremantle free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-testing/ fremantle free non-free

Ax's look like this:

$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hildon-application-manager.list
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ssu/apps/ ./
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ssu/mr0 ./
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ovi/ ./
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ fremantle free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ fremantle free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/ fremantle free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-testing/ fremantle free non-free
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/apps/ ./
deb http://repository.maemo.org fremantle/tools free non-free

In case you are wondering how to add repositories to your own N900, there are many tutorials on the web.