Geekdom Incarnate

Hotspots in Antwerp
There are lots of WiFi access points in Antwerp, but if you want to know of two definite open nodes where you can sit outside and have a drink, try "De Muze" on Melkmarkt (where this photo was just taken, and where they pride themselves on playing good jazz, sometimes live), or "Hessenhuis" on Falconrui.

From De Muze, Antwerp

Geekdom Incarnate goes RSS

I've just added a news feed for this site. If you use a news aggregator to read RSS feeds, you can add this site to your list of feeds so you will automatically be notified when there is a new post. Click on this: .

However, if your browser (like mine: Safari) isn't smart enough to pass the handling of an xml feed to your RSS aggregator/reader, then you'll have to explicitly subscribe to this URL in your RSS reader: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GeekdomIncarnate .

Does anybody know of a fix for this? I heard mention of an info.plist for Safari which can be edited to change associations between types and helper apps, but couldn't find such a plist on my machine.

I'm using feedburner.com to convert my Blogger Atom feed (free) into an RSS feed (free), thus avoiding paying for Blogger Pro -- many thanks to Blogger for suggesting a way for me to avoid paying them money! But I'm puzzled by one thing: I explicitly did not select the feedburner option which strips away links from my feed, thus forcing users to connect to my site in order to link to further content. Nevertheless, the links are in fact stripped out. Is this a "feature" of Blogger's Atom feeds?

Also, I chose the option of having an image associated with my feed, but the image is not appearing in my RSS reader, even though images for other feeds do appear. Any explanations for the discrepancy?

From Chichester Terrace, Brighton

PubSub problem

Dear PubSub,

On the recommendation of Steve Crossan, I decided to try PubSub out. It looks like an excellent service.

As of yet, only one entry has appeared in my RSS reader (NetNewsWire Lite), and it is puzzling: A headline of "Untitled", no summary, and it does nothing when I click on it.

The details of the subscription are:

PubSub: "non-conceptual content" or "nonconceptual content"
RSS: http://rss.pubsub.com/65/a0/4548b18b40bf042bdebfdc04cd

Through manually inspecting the feed, I saw reference to http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss , but when I looked at that URL with my browser, I could find no reference to my search terms.

Thanks for any help

Ron

Sony Ericsson T630 issues



Cellular Services came through and upgraded the firmware of my new T630 from R4C003 to R6C005, but there are still some issues. Most annoying is something that used to work on my T68i, but doesn't on the T630: Recording (and playing) voice memos through a bluetooth headset. I found this to be very useful while driving. If I thought of an idea, or a task I had to do, I could just tap the button on my headset, say "record", and the T68i would then start recording through the headset until I tapped the headset button again. The T630, however, does something stupid: Once it recognises the "record" command, it disconnects the headset and records through the handset. Useless. Same for the "play" command. I seem to recall that either the T39m or an early firmware version of the T68i did the same thing, but it was definitely fixed. So, why the bug reversion in the T630?

O2 isn't offering Wireless Village, I guess, since they deleted the "My Friends" application (one of the few bits of functionality that sets the T630 apart from the T610, as far as I can tell) in order to brand my T630 with an O2 icon on my desktop. (By the way, O2 blew it as far as publicising "O2 Active", their fancy WAP site. I had a compatible T68i for the past year +, and would have been willing to take advatange of their promotions on O2 Active, but never heard about it until I read the leaflet that came with my T630, and saw that all of the cool offers had expired. Still, it didn't come close to what's on offer from T-Mobile USA, which apparently is no longer metering GPRS usage for their voice plan customers!).

Once I weeded out old contacts on my G4 OSX Powerbook so that there were fewer than the maximum 510 on the T630, bluetooth syncing via iSync seemed to work OK for the most part. But:

• I would have preferred flawless, in-order copying of contacts up to the 510 limit, and then halting with a warning message for any contacts beyond that, rather than what iSync and the T630 actually did: mixing up names and fields and not informing me that not all conatcts were copied.
  
• You have to underestimate the number of contacts to sync; I synced 377 contacts from OSX Address Book, but my phone says that I am using 463!
  
• A lot of my contacts are companies or other notes that don't have anything in the Last Name or First Name fields. Address Book has a box you can tick on a contact to indicate that the contact is a company, so that it uses the Company Name field for sorting, etc. Too bad the T630 doesn't seem to use this: all my companies end up at the end of my contact list, with ".." as the name. That would be OK, even desirable, if the companies were then sorted by Company Name. But no, they seem to be randomly arranged, making finding a particular company very time consuming. I guess I'll have to go modify all my company contacts, putting the company name into the First Name field or something kludgy like that.
  
• Since Address Book and the T630 both associate pictures with contacts, it seems natural for syncing of pictures to at least be an option. Apparently it isn't.
  

I am not big into games (I play on my PC sometimes, but I've never played Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, or even GameBoy if you can believe it!), so I am surprised to find that one of my favourite features of the phone is the inclusion of the classic game Qbert, the only arcade game that I ever finished (way back in the 80s). Too bad there's only one other game on the phone; I downloaded some free games from the internet and installed them, but they only use a quarter of the screen, so they are too tiny to play, in my opinion.

Another plus is that the caller name feature actually works: If someone for whom I have a voice command phones me, then the recording of their name is played, which is especially useful while driving and wearing the headset.

What about the T630 and the internet?

• WAP seems to work fine enough, but I have noticed that I am disconnected if I don't don't do anything for a minute or two. I thought one of the big selling points of GPRS is that you can stay connected, and thus have instant access when you need it, instead of having to dial up each time?
  
• GSM is another matter. I was annoyed by the fact that the T68i could only connect to my Powerbook at 9600 baud, even though I now that the phone itself is capable of connecting at rates up to 28k. Can bluetooth really be the limiting factor here? As a matter of fact, I can't find any OSX modem scripts for the T630. If there are any, perhaps they solve the problem?
  
• I decided to see how the T630 does accessing email on its own. I looked at the data accounts on the phone, saw one called "changeme.co.uk", and foolishly followed its advice. I took 10 minutes or so carefully modifying the account with my Freeserve server data. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the name of the account, so I'm stuck with "changeme.co.uk". I would have been better off if they hadn't put that dummy account in there.
  
• One reason why it took so long to enter my details is because of an annoyance that first showed itself with the T39m. The dummy account has something like "pop.changeme.co.uk" as the incoming server, so you would think that you should put "pop.freeserve.net" in its place. If you do that, as I did, you get a "Server not found error". I recalled that after several hours of frustration and fruitless tech support calls, a Sony Ericsson (then just Ericsson) tech support finally told me that you had to put the actual IP address, in numbers, in those slots. So I put in 195.92.193.154, etc. and sure enough, that did the trick. What a pain.
  

Otherwise, the phone is a pleasure to use. The display is wonderful, the response is fast.

Wanted: Replacement scanner lamp for HP OfficeJet G85

A colleague was kind enough to give me his old G85, which is a Printer/Fax/Copier/Scanner. He warned me that the scanner lamp didn't work, and that it is impossible to get a replacement from HP. I thought it would still be useful as a printer, fax and copier. Of course, I forgot that copying and sending faxes also require the scanner lamp, so all I have, in effect, is a huge footprint printer (and a fax receiver, I suppose).

So, does anyone have an old G85 with working scanner lamp that I can cannibalise?

From the University of Sussex

Using Sony Ericsson T630 with OSX Address Book

Just got a T630, and there are lots of issues (no "My Friends", sound recording doesn't work through BT200 headset, sync errors with OSX iSync, etc). But I'm going to upgrade from R4C to R6 today, so I'll wait until I get the latest firmware before launching a tirade.

But one problem that wouldn't have been solved with an upgrade has to do with the connection between the T630 and OSX Address Book. Good thing I'm wary, and tested sending a few SMS's to myself before assuming that my SMS's to others were delivered. (That's an annoying thing about Address Book: no confirmation of successful sending of SMS. And keeping a record of sent SMS's would be nice.) Turns out they weren't delivered. Instructions on how to fix the problem are here. All's working well now.

From Chichester Terrace, Brighton

Poor user interface on the T68i

(I'm posting this using the Blogger website from my H5550 over WiFi. I have to say "WiFi" now instead of "wireless", since on my last trip to the States I finally realised that the latter term is used there to refer to mobile phone (GSM, GPRS, etc.) technology.)

I've been waiting since February for O2 to get in some T630s so I can upgrade, but no luck. They wouldn't even give me a temporary T610, which I could return when the T630s came in. Oh well.

In the meantime, using the T68i has its annoyances. For example, auto-keylock is a must if you want to avoid making unintentional calls all the time. And yet, how do you unlock the phone? By hitting the delete key, and then the confirm key. (See where I'm going with this?)

So, alout a million times a day, you take your phone out of your pocket and hit "delete-yes" automatically. Which leads to a nasty side effect when combined with another T68i quirk: if you are looking at an SMS message, or a picture, then autolock does not come on, no matter how long you wait. So what happens
to me frequently enough to be annoying, but not frequently enough for me to unlearn my habits, is this: l look at an SMS message, get distracted by something for 5 minutes, come back to my phone and unintentionally delete the message, which I probably hadn't read yet, or it wouldn't have still been ''active". Ugh.

Designers, please: never use the "delete-confirm" sequence for any other functionality!



(Oops. Can't post this by WiFi now, as battery is too weak. Another use for AvantBlog!)



From the University of Skövde

Yahoo Messenger Problems

Ok, so AvantBlog seems to work (although it doesn't seem to handle umlauts well - I've gone back and corrected them using the Blogger website and my knowledge that ampersand-"ouml"-semicolon will do the trick). But it seems it only makes sense to use it when you don't have wireless access - if you do, why not use Blogger's web posting system?

Anyway, about Yahoo Messenger. As far as I am aware, it is the only IM system with which Windows users can see my iSight. But now I can't use it anymore. I was using it fine last night to talk to my friend Khash, but had to log out for some reason. When I tried to log back in again, it stopped me, saying that I had been logged out because it detected me logged in on some other machine (I'm not). this problem, which several others have reported on the web, is very robust: I tried other usernames, and even re-installed Yahoo Messenger, but the problem persists. Any help appreciated. By the way, just before these problems started, Yahoo Messenger told me it couldn't start my webcam because the webcam servers were too busy. A coincidence?

Update 6/5/04:

I fixed it. After trying over and over, I finally decided to try logging in under "invisible mode". That worked. But now I can only log in under invisible mode.

From the University of Skövde

AvantBlog

Ok, let's see how easy it is to blog on my iPAQ H5550 using AvantBlog. The wireless network I have access to here won't allow AvantGo syncing through its firewall. I find this to be very common. And yet, if I use Missing Sync to establish a bluetooth connection between my iPAQ and my Powerbook (which is sharing its internet connection from the same network), Avant Go syncing works fine. Weird.

From the University of Skövde

WiFi Hotspot in Stockholm

There are lots of wireless hotspots in Sweden in general and Stockholm in particular, but as time goes by fewer and fewer of them are unrestricted/free. So here's an exception: On Kungsgatan, at its Stureplan end, outside Cafe Vivels (opposite McDonalds). The name of the AP is PowerNet SurfZon. Enjoy.

From the University of Skövde

Greetings from Sweden

It's been a while since I posted here! Lots to say, but not enough time...

Since I carry my iSight with me wherever I go, I've decided it might be fun to take snapshots with it whenever I blog, to build up a kind of visual diary. Here's me outside my office, but within reach of the wireless network, at the University of Skövde in Sweden, where I am giving a lecture series on Advanced Logic and Computability. Nice weather, eh? In my ear you can see my audio feed from Air America Radio, and in my glasses you can see my powerbook.

From the University of Skövde

audio/x-pn-realaudio plugin error in Explorer on OSX

I'm trying to find out who is still in the race for the Democratic nomination so I don't throw away my vote when I send in my California absentee ballot today. So I look at the Kerry website, and there's this video that they are posting in response to Bush's recent smear of Kerry. But when I say that my preferred client is RealAudio (I have Real One Player installed), the video fails to load, saying that I lack the audio/x-pn-realaudio plugin. I click on the link it provides, but is just sends me to a site where 1000s of people are posting the same question: "So, where's the audio/x-pn-realaudio plugin the link promised?". One or two people try to help, saying "Download Real One Player". But I already have it installed. Do I have to install it again?

No: Here's the solution. If you are using Explorer to browse the web (and if you already have Real One Player installed), under the Explorer menu, go to Preferences, then File Helpers. Click in the right pane, and press "r". You will see three entries that say "Real Player". That's wrong; they should say "Real One Player"; we're going to fix that. Click on the first one of the three, and then click "change". under "Application" you should see "File type:" and then "PNRM" in a box. Remember that, since we're going to have to type it back in in a second. Click on "Browse", then find your copy of Real One Player in your Applications folder. Click on it, click OK, then re-enter PNSM in the box that has just been cleared. Do the dame for the other two "Real Player" entries. Click OK. Now (this is important) quit Explorer, and re-start it. Now click on the link you were trying before, and you should have Real Player start up in your browser.

So the way I figure it, there were at least three bugs involved here:

• The original bug that had the wrong application name (and presumably path, but there was no way for me to inspect that to check) in the File Helper settings;
  
• The unhelpful link that was provided when the missing plugin was detected;
  
• The clearing of the "File Type" box when the proper application location was found.
  

If you found this useful, email me at ron@chrisley.freeserve.co.uk.

Pocket Blog RIP

Great. Pocket Blog dies before I have a chance to use it. It worked fine a month or two ago, but now when I try to update the cache, I just get "error while refreshing cache". Also, I spent 30 mins tonight inputting an entry at Riki Tik's in Brighton, but since I couldn't post, I wanted to save it to post some other way. Was there any way to do so? No. I could select all the text, but there was no way to copy or cut it so I could paste it somewhere else. What a waste of time.

So I look around and people say nice things about AvantBlog. But it doesn't accept my login info to Blogger for some reason. What’s worse, I now can't get the login screen, no matter whether I delete cookies, history, temp internet files, soft reset, unsubscribe/resubscribe, etc! I just keep getting "Could not connect to Blogger server or you don’t have any active blogs. Please try again later" I want to get the login window just in case I typed the wrong user name or password, but how?

What a pain. Perhaps big corporate software companies which can afford to properly test their software are the way to go.

Update 16/02/04: A few days after my post about AvantBlog, I got this email:

	From: 	  beau@dentedreality.com.au
	Subject: 	Re: Problems with avant blog
	Date: 	12 February 2004 00:50:04 GMT
	To: 	  ron@chrisley.freeserve.co.uk
	Reply-To: 	  beau@dentedreality.com.au

Ron,

my apologies - I had to modify AvantBlog the other day because the Blogger API
is having problems and not responding properly to authentication requests, but
I completely forgot to include a 'try again' link at the bottom of that page.

I've added it in and you can try again now hopefully, but don't be too worried
if you can't log in - it's more likely Blogger's fault than yours.

Regards,

Beau
-- 
Beau Lebens
Information Architect
beau@dentedreality.com.au

So it seems to work now. But I haven't actually posted with it yet...