Tech

For a while now I've tried to get a balance of a really useful thumbdrive that I can carry around. I've found a solution which appears to be rather cool and multifaceted, so without further ado, let's dive in.

For a long time now I've autojoined servers and channels on XChat, recently I added one and today I finally snapped and removed one. The channel for the Techrights.org website (formerly known as Boycott Novell) becomes a joke at times, and today I finally had enough. They have 2 channels; the old one #boycottnovell and the new one #techrights. Apparently the old one is a kinda off topic area and not a lot of people join the new one as of yet. Until about 5 minutes ago I autojoined #boycottnovell.

I've found an unusual solution to using Identi.ca on my old P4 desktop that I thought I'd share. To be fair it's a split solution between my desktop my new Samsung Galaxy Portal Android phone. I found that any GUI Twitter / Identi.ca client consumes quite a few resources to have sitting open all the time on the notification applet, some are worse than others. So I now split it with Twidge, Shorten URL and Mustard.

I have an ebook reader and I love it. For people who enjoy reading for fun and who are fine with the whole electronic screen thing they can be a great investment. They are not cheap however, so it's not a throwaway purchase by any means. I happened to get a great deal on mine and only spend £150 on it. It is still a niche product, so how can this change?

For those people using XMarks and NoScript in Firefox who are having issues with the latest update not being allowed to sync here's a solution I've found. Other solutions may be available. I am using Linux Mint 8 XFCE with Firefox 3.6.6.

Within a week of using my HTC Smart phone, I was gradually feeling more and more underwhelmed with it. Given how limited it is by design, multiplied by the limited functionality O2 put on it with a Pay&Go deal it turns into a very basic but flashy touchphone. I decided to return it for a lower end touchphone, the Samsung Tocco Lite. Turns out O2 (and the other networks) may be onto a nice little illegal earner.

In the previous part I talked about my new HTC Smart on O2. This post deals with the O2 specific issues around it. Due to my location I only get a consistent signal from O2. I am too high up, I believe I am higher than most transmitters, which are all pointed horizontal and downwards. With all of the others I have to press myself against the window to get a signal, which drops out if I step more than a foot away. Luckily then that the HTC Smart is available on O2. It is in fact an O2 exclusive. Life is not all rosey with the O2 side of the deal however. O2 strike me as kinda disingenuous on several points.

Last week I joined the smartphone revolution by buying an HTC Smart on O2. It's a budget, entry level smartphone with many limitations and not intended to compete with the high end iPhones and HTC Desires of this world. For the money and my needs it's rather nice. This is the first of a few posts about both the HTC Smart and O2.

A little while back I used Linux Mint 8 Main Edition, as I wanted an easy encrypted home partition and my usual XFCE edition wasn't released. For those who don't know, the Main Edition of Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and is a Gnome environment. It was quite a pleasant experience although I couldn't switch long term. One application I gained a new respect for was Nautilus, the file manager in Gnome.

It's occurred to me just how close MP's resemble search engines. It's all about keywords and advertisers. When you type something into a search engine it sorts out the most relevant answers (links) to those keywords, and give extra relevance to those who pay to be higher in the results. Politicians work in the same way when asked a question, they don't hear the full question, they hear a handful of keywords to then trigger a pre prepared response, with relevance to who donates to their campaign funds.