Yeraze's Domain 3.0

So, I figure it’s about time to do the quick review.  I was one of the lucky people to get an iPhone 3g on release day, after a short wait in the line outside.  I got the 8Gig version, and i’ve had it for a few weeks now.  I even had the perfect opportunity to test it as 2 days after I bought it I left for a week in Seattle for the HPCMP User’s Group Conference.  So I spent that week trying out various bells and whistles, and since then I’ve pushed it even further.  So, what’s the verdict?

What I like:

• The App Store - The ability to download apps and install them on the phone is great, and ability to do it for free is fantastic.. The ability to get useful and fun apps that actually look like desktop software and not like old VT100 terminals is the real impressive part.
• GPS & Location Awareness - The ability to see your location on google maps at pretty much any given time is great, especially if you’re a traveler (This feature saved my butt several times in Seattle).  Pull up maps, let it find you while you type in "borders" and then you get a blue dot where you are, and red dots showing all the nearby borders bookstores.  And lots of other apps are location-aware too, so you can Geotag your photos or Tweets.
• Data - Lots of phones have data support, and lots of them have websurfing ability, but (in my knowledge) the iPhone is the only one that rivals a desktop.  I almost never use my laptop or desktop anymore, since I can use a real browser (complete with AJax and JavaScript support) on my iPhone.  It integrates perfectly with Google Mail (unlike Blackberries), and everything works seamlessly.

What I don’t like:

• Instability – The new iPhone 2.0 firmware is simply buggy.  I’ve had the keyboard wack out on me several times, thinking it’s horizontal when it’s vertical, or simply disappearing.  The only solution i’ve found: reboot.
• Location problems - The GPS isn’t terribly accurate in urban areas, I’ve had it "lock on" (no blue circle, just a pin) and then float up to 2 blocks while i’m standing still.  Also, the location features seem to simply "stop" sometimes, and the only way to get them working again is reboot.
• Signal Strength – The iPhone doesn’t seem to have a very good antenna.  My friends with Razr’s often still have a bar or 2 while i’m staring at No Service.
• No background apps - To preserve battery life, Apple doesn’t allow any App Store application to run in the background.  This makes Instant Messaging a no-go, unless you JailBreak.  Hopefully this won’t be much of a problem when the new 2.1 firmware with Push Notifications comes out.
• Poor Camera Quality – the CMOS sensor on the camera is slooooow. This makes taking non-blurry photos almost impossible.
• Battery Life - yeah, it’s all over the net.. Read it there.. synopsis: Charge daily for usage around home, Charge 2x daily when traveling.

But, it’s still simply a fantastic device.  Being able to send/recieve email anywhere, use twitter, surf the net, see my google calendar, update Sandy, listen to music (either iTunes or Pandora), GPS Locate, get Directions, etc.  It’s simply fantastic.  I highly recommend it for anyone.

[tag:iphone][tag:review]

Just found this pic of the "MareNostrum" at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain.

The MareNostrum is currently #9 in the world (according to the latest Top500 list), and it’s definately gotta be #1 in the most styling.  Why can’t more multi-million dollar computers look like this?

Pic courtesy of OpenRCE.
[tag:computer][tag:hpc][tag:marenostrum]

My dad was kind enough to give me a $10 Airlink AWLL3026 802.11g USB WiFi Adapter.  I had been looking for one for a while to replace the long Cat5 Ethernet cable strung around the house, but I had no experience dealing with Linux’s WiFi support.  It was a bit of work, but I did finally get it working.

At first when I inserted the device, my System Logs showed that it was recognized, by the zd1211rw module.  Unfortunately, the module failed to load with a Firmware error.  After downloading the new firmware from sourceforge, and following their instructions got the module loading properly when I reinserted the device.  However, when I reinserted the device I noticed that it was loaded as "eth0", which is incorrect.  Running the "iwconfig" tool showed it on eth3, but all attempts to actually bring up that device resulting in error messages.

Around this time, I found a forum post indicating that the zd1211 driver has a bug that only allows it to load successfully the first time.  So when I removed the device & re-inserted it, the driver got confused and, hence the eth0.  A reboot later, I saw the device up and running and set out to configure linux’s WiFi support for my access point.  This is where things got tricky.  I edited the /etc/network/interfaces file, and added the following:

I tried to bring the interface up, and no matter how long I waited or how many times I tried, it would never successfully get a DHCP address.  I tried several combinations, before stumbling upon one oddity:  If I ran a "iwlist scan" (Which scans for Access Points), then it could retrieve a DHCP lease.  It was an odd behavior that I could never fully understand.  I ran test after test after test, before I finally accepted the unusual truth:  The USB WiFi dongle simply can’t get a DHCP lease without performing a scan first. 

With that knowledge in mind, I finally built my /etc/network/interfaces file like the following:

This file loads the interface as a Static IP of 192.168.1.1 .  Then, once the interface it up, it performs a "iwlist scan", then starts up dhclient to get an IP address.  It’s a bit cumbersome, but it works.  Hopefully this will help someone else get their Airlink key up and running.
[tag:linux][tag:wifi][tag:airlink]

For my MythTV, I have a Microsoft MCE Remote to control it.  It’s supported under linux via the mceusb module.  As much as I typically hate anything Microsoft, it’s a surprisingly good remote and works very well.  I reprogrammed the "TV" button to operate the Power control for my TV, and made some fairly extensive customizations to the lircrc file to configure the extra buttons to work better.  The biggest change was moving the "Menu" controls from the "OK" button to the central Windows button.

But over the last few weeks, the remote has started randomly "shutting down" for no apparent reason.  I’ve heard of this before, and most people claim to simply replace the remote (It’s only $35 afterall) and everything’s better.  Most folks simply chalk it up to a fragile design, but it seemed pretty odd to me.  Of course, the first thing I checked was the batteries.  My multimeter showed them at nearly full charge and they worked just fine in other remotes.  I did some more research, and couldn’t find anything to fix it.  It seemed the only solution was to simply remove the batteries, wait about 10 minutes, and then reinsert the batteries.  That fixed it every time, but it’s an annoying thing to have to do when you’re navigating the list of recorded programs.  A 10 minute "please wait" is really not very WAF-friendly.

Today, however, I replaced the existing Energizer AA’s with my NiMH Rechargable AA’s (I love these things).  To my surprise, the entire remote seems to be "cured".  The previous batteries still test just fine, but there seems to be some kind of sustained voltage drain problem.  The remote would only shut down after I hit many buttons in long sequences (Navigating long menus or long lists), and I guess there was just a slight fluctuation that would cause the remote to "lock up".  Anyway, it’s fixed now and if anyone else comes to this page with similar problems: Just try switching the batteries.
[tag:mythtv][tag:mce][tag:remote]

The internet has been abuzz about Apple‘s new latest product: the IPhone.  As the reality distortion field enveloped everyone at MacWorld, the world reveled in the potential that a fully loaded OSX PDA (it’s really not a Cell Phone with all the WiFi features) could bring.  Of course, as the field disappeared and reality returns to normal, people are slowly realizing that the iPhone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  To summarize:

1. It’s expensive: $499/$599 + a 2 Year Contract with Cingular (and only Cingular)
2. It’s locked: No programs/widgets installed unless supplied by Cingular or Apple
3. No 3G: So slow 2G on cellular networks, or WiFi

As for the positives, it’s common Apple to have taken lots of existing ideas and simply combine, present, and market them better than anyone else.  Nothing the iPhone does is particularly innovative or unique, but the integration and presentation seems to be better than anyone has managed so far.  Will it be successful? It’s hard to say, we’ll know more as June comes closer.  What really interests me (and many other people) is how Apple is able to call it the iPhone?  It’s been a well-known fact for several years now that the iPhone Trademark is owned by Cisco Systems, although they haven’t had a product using it in quite some time.  So how was Apple able to use a trademark owned by another company for their new flagship product?  With Cisco’s latest lawsuit, it seems they’re wondering the same thing.  Well, let’s take a look…
[tag:apple][tag:iphone][tag:cisco][tag:trademark][tag:legal]

I won’t post the entire review here since I’ve already got a long review of the Sharp Aquos LC-65D90U on VizWorld. But I wanted to post something that was a little off-topic for the review and non-objective for something like VizWorld.

One of the big selling points of that huge 65″ LCD display is its 1080p capability. Check Sharp’s FAQ and you’ll see the 65″ Aquos listed as one of only 2 of their LCD TV’s to support 1080p. Read the specs for the TV and you’ll see it listed as 1920×1080 display resolution and 1080p capable. But the reality is that it only accepts 1080p on broadcast. The HDMI and Component inputs are all limited to 1080i, and the DVI (which you’ld think would be ideal for this, afterall my monitor is on DVI at 1920×1200) won’t go above 1280×1024! So if 1080p is only available via broadcast, what’s broadcasting ?

From Wikipedia’s 1080p page: (emphasis added)

So they specifically advertise a feature that they know people want, knowing full well that there’s no way to use it. Frankly, it pisses me off to know that I can’t use any of the 1080p sources out there (Computers, 1080p upscaling dvd players, PS3′s, Blu-Ray/HDDVD players) with this $10,000+ TV, even though they advertise that it will do it. All of us here in the office are pissed about it, and it really seems like Sharp is just out to con folks with this.

Is it false advertising? Technically it does do 1080p, it’s just that nothing on the market produces the 1080p they want. All the things that do produce 1080p wind up dropping back to 1080i.

Update: I just got off the phone with Sharp Tech Support again and got a clarification on all this.  They’re just flat out lying to us, the TV only does 1080i.  I updated the vizworld article with the new info, but apparently just because the LCD operates at 1920×1080, they think they can say it’ll display a 1080p signal.  I guess their 1080p stands for “pixels” instead of “progressive”.  It’s 1080SHARp, not really 1080p.
[tag:vizworld][tag:sharp][tag:1080p][tag:hdtv][tag:lcd][tag:aquos]

For the last few years, geeks everywhere have been drooling over the “Optimus Keyboard” by Art Lebedev. For the uninformed, the Optimus Keyboard is a full-sized keyboard boasting an OLED display on every key so that the images on the keys can reconfigure dynamically to match the running application. You can hit his website for some interesting artistic renderings of it in “Quake” mode showing the weapons & directional arrows, and in “Photoshop” mode showing all the tools.

Every geek wants one of these things, but noone really knows how much one will cost. ~130 OLED’s can’t be cheap, but some people (Like government institutions /wink) don’t care how much it costs. Over the last couple of years, the designer has levied the popularity of the Optimus into the Mini 3 and the Upravlator. Both interesting ideas, but mere ghosts of the possibilities in the true Optimus. The Mini 3 sells for around $130-$150, with proceeds funding the development of the Optimus. But if 3 screens are $130, what would be the ungodly price of a full keyboard?

Unfortunately, we may never know. Over the last few months, they’ve begun leaking information about the Optimus and alot of sad announcements have been made:

• October 16th – Screens will be only 32×32 pixels (Smaller than the Mini3), and will not use OLED afterall.
• October 26th – Keyboard scaled down from 113 keys to 103
• November 10th – 11 Programmable keys stripped from the left side (if you miss them, you can buy the “Upravlator”, whenever that comes out)
• November 21st – Many keys of “secondary importance” will not have an LCD display.. Evidently both shifts, the spacebar, enter key, arrow keys, and the numeric keypad are of “secondary importance”, although I’ld love to see anyone try to type without a spacebar or enter key.
• November 27th - All the keys with displays will be Black and White.

Of course, all these changes were made to lower the price to something reasonable while targeting the “90%” of the market. What I don’t understand is that a keyboard like this won’t be used by the 90%, rather by the 10%. The 10% that want, and would be willing to pay for, the extra keys with color displays. I know that even as excited as we were about finally getting Optimus keyboards for the office, we don’t really see the usefulness of the one portrayed above, and I doubt we’re alone.

Of course, the “Optimus 103″ will make money for the “Optimus 113″ and “Optimus 133″, but if noone buys the first will the others ever appear?

Update

• November 29th – An announcement is made that the Optimus 103 will cost $1200.  One Thousand, two hundred dollars. 

He’s stated earlier that the price will be announced publicly on December 12th, so with any luck this is a joke.  If it’s not, then I think we might have just witnessed the death of the Optimus.
[tag:optimus][tag:artlebedev][tag:keyboard][tag:hardware]

Earlier this week I broke down and ordered a Motorola RAZR V3 (Blue) to replace my old Samsumg phone. Laura’s had one (the Pink one) for a few months now and it’s been fantastic. It’s got alot of advantages over the Samsung, including:

1. Faster Response on menus
2. Voice Recognition Dialing
3. Better Signal Strength (My Samsung was unusable in the hospital, but her RAZR worked flawlessly)
4. And alot of other stuff I didn’t really care about (Java, MP3 Ringtones, Camera, etc)

Unfortunately, I’m somewhat disappointed in the Cingular loadout of the phone. It comes with absolutely 0 games (It has a 1-level Demo of Bejeweled, that’s it), only 3 real ringtones (none of which are a phone ring), and very minimal other options. Cingular has done a great job of stripping down the phone to it’s bare essentials, forcing you to fork over $1.99 for every ringtone and $5.99 for every game.

So I ordered using Cingular‘s Online Store and had it delivered. When it arrived they were kind enough to pop in a SmartChip for me, and provide instructions for activating it via phone (Call their office, register the new SmartChip, etc). Laura said it took them about 10 minutes to activate hers when she bought it. Seemed a bit fishy to me since our existing Samsung phones used smartchips, and shouldn’t you be able to just move the chip and viola? They told laura it would “confuse” things and not work. Well, I’m here to tell you that it does work. I simply pulled the smartchip out of my Samsung and popped it in my RAZR, and viola it worked. I did have to rebuild most of my address book since almost none of it was on the SmartChip, but that’s easy enough to do.

So after playing with it for a few days and using the “Cingular MediaMall” to download Bejeweled, I decided it was time to figure out how to connect it to the computer and get free games (Like these, nothing illegal) installed. I had noticed when Laura first got her phone that the charger is simply a Mini-USB connector, but the computer was unable to recognize and automatically install any drivers for it. So the search began…

So today my new hardware arrived for my MythTV rig. I had planned on spending about two hours moving the hardware over, and have it all running just in time for another run at Nip/Tuck tonight.

So first I cracked open the nMEDIA HTPC 400BA. It’s a beautiful case, sleek black with bright blue LED’s. On the front it’s got a huge power button that looks like a stereo volume knob. It also has 4 memory card readers, 2 USB ports, a firewire port, headphone and mic jacks, and a LCD readout of temperature and fan speed (if you hook it up to your fan). It also has a DVD drive cover to maintain the “Sleek” look of the system. Inside, it’s got plenty of room for either an ATX or micro-ATX motherboard, 2 3.5″ drives and a DVD drive.

Read on inside for my notes on setting it all up…
[tag:mythtv][tag:nmedia][tag:htpc][tag:computer][tag:hardware]

Almost a decade ago, back at Ideal Software, a co-worker turned me on to the beauty of the Logitech Trackball. The simple grace and beauty of that simple blue trackball was only surpassed by the beauty of the MarbleFX laser-based, 4-button trackball.

I still have that MarbleFX trackball, and still love it. Unfortunately, the buttons are starting to wear out and it’s pretty badly stained from the sweat and grime of everyday use. I would love to simply replace it, but Logitech has discontinued it. They discontinued it so long ago that even EBay, purveyor of all things unwanted or discontinued, doesn’t have them anymore.

So here begins my quest: To find a new trackball. The requirements:

1. Corded – I’ld like to get one of these at work, but security does not allow cordless peripherals (So no bluetooth)
2. No thumball – Drive it with the Index finger
3. Minimum of 3 buttons, but more is better
4. (Optional) Scroll Wheel

So far, the only thing that even comes close is the Logitech Marble Mouse, but I don’t like how the ball sits perched atop in the middle. I much prefer the ergonomics of the original MarbleFX, which the Logitech Cordless Optical Trackman approaches. But, like I said earlier, cordless isn’t really an option. Any suggestions?

I’m not “locked in” to Logitech, so any vendor will suffice. I just want something high-quality, comfortable, and usable.

Update 9/18/06:
Just checked Ebay again, and now they have some MarbleFX up.  However, one is at a bidding price of $91  and the other is at a “Buy it now” of $150.  Geez…..
[tag:logitech][tag:trackball][tag:peripheral][tag:mouse]