Micro-Blogging

So far I’ve had some success at blogging at daily intervals. As you may have noticed that the brievity of my recent blogs. First, the device I blog from now doesn’t let my type as fast as a regular keyboard. Second I am concentrating on the science fiction novel I’m writing now. Just finished the rough draft of chapter 3.

Oops, I broke something

I broke my Internet Tablet today. Not physically.

Rather I used Dolphin from KDE 4 for some file transfers yesterday. Me and my obsession running beta versions. And to add insult to injury, yanked out the cable without unmounting (safely removing) the device. Silly me.

Well now the internal memory is read-only. Dmesg reports filesystem panic, and fsck.vfat errors out. So it looks like I’ll need to backup and reformat that partition. But hey at least I learned to gain root access on the N810 (install rootsh and run sudo gainroot in the x-terminal.

A big thanks to johnx, and others on #maemo on irc.freenode.com for all the help.

Football (Soccer) Madness – A Quickie Update

Ok, I’m just gonna post a quick update as part of my resolution, to post daily. I reckon that my life is not as half boring as I make it out to be…

I surprised my system admin at work that my N810, is in fact a Linux device. It is true that there isn’t too many Linux of such a small form factor. Updating to the newest version was a great idea.

Also we played a round of soccer (European football). I played a fantastic game. Maybe a bit aggressive, but thats just my intense focus when I game. I would love to do this on a weekly basis.

These past few days, I’ve a bit panicky. So many new adjustments and things happening to me. I am still adjusting. Please bare with me.

A Day in the Life of an Internet Tablet

While I’m writing this in Notes application instead of Blogger, I’m impressed with my new Internet Tablet. Not as powerful when not tethered to the seamy underbelly of the Internet, the N810 performs well as a handheld computing device. Even the thumb keyboard is quite comfortable. The device can seem a bit heavy at times. But I prefer a heavier sturdy construction, than a lighter flimsier one.

Ok it is not a phone. But that’s a good thing: I don’t have to pay for data charges, etc. That said, relying on open wireless LANs is not best way to go. I’ve seen interesting networking combinations involving USB-OTG cable, which I’d like to explore.

I like the fact that maemo (the operating system stack running the Internet Tablets) lets you run a large number of applications. I will report on some of them, once I upgrade to the latest version of Internet OS2008 later on tonight.

Waiting for Maemo

Last Thursday I got the chance to play with a Nokia N810 at the TigerDirect store in Mississauga. A pretty nifty device, but the price was not so nifty. So I ordered one via the Web. And hopefully it’ll arrive sometime today. Yay!

My initial review (after using for a few minutes) is that the N810 is a nice little device. I love the fact that I can carry an Internet-capable device in my pocket, without paying gigantic data transfer. Definitely useful to keep connected with people. And having a computing device that I don’t have to share is very useful.

A few negative points: the N810 loads slower than I thought. Faster than most Linux workstations, but slower than my Palm Pilot Tungsten E. The GPS doesn’t lock quickly. And tablet comes with a plastic stylus, instead of a nice rugged metal, rubber tipped stylus.

Getting to run on a Linux environment, means I’m familiar with the applications. Screen resolution is decent enough to handle the majority of sites. The slide-out keyboard is way more convenient than the infrared wireless one I have to tug along with my Palm. And there are a lot of apps already ported to it.

Overall I looking to playing on, working with and developing for the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. I can hardly wait to get mine. 🙂