N900: Ah, Linux in your pocket

I recently, as anybody who keeps an eye on this blog may have noticed, got my hands on an N97 mini and found it nice but wanting.

Then, in a rare (not being sarcastic, it really was rare) moment of brain-fartery I left it on the roof of my friend's car, from where it hit the ground and was run over by a tram in Melbourne.

Which left me back on the old N95. Which is now unusable because the ribbon cable to the screen broke.

Which, of course, left me needing a replacement and, despite the availability of the brand new Nokia N8 and a swag of new Android devices, I went for something with confirmed power but an uncertain future. Oh, and a keyboard and a Debian-based operating system.

I got a Nokia N900.

This is therefore my usual rambling sort of things-I've-noticed post, and this time not only am I writing it on the device, I'll be posting it as well, using the MaStory blogging app.

So anything could happen.

It is, first and foremost, a Linux computer. This is very, very cool. It means that all sorts of things that wouldn't normally be possible, are. Application having problems? Run it from the command line and see what it says. Try doing that on a different platform!

I am, right now, cheating slightly by writing a few paragraphs from my desktop computer, using vim, after ssh-ing into the N900. Yes, that's all possible.

This is not a phone that grew up and wants to be a computer - this is a computer that shrank enough to be a phone.

The build quality is up to Nokia's usual standard, which is to say: potentially great, but on this device about 95 per cent of great. There are a couple of little niggling things to do with fit and close lines, but generally absolutely solid. The biggest worry is the neat little kickstand that folds out from around the camera housing. It just feels fragile, quite apart from being off-centre.

Now, some specifics:

The screen isn't up to capacitive levels of sensitivity, but is rather good and the image quality is truly stellar. Everything is fantastically crisp.

Camera: great. Software interface less so, and I am disappointed to see that the excellent night mode available on the N95 and N97, with the same camera hardware, is not there. Dual LED flash very nice and there's a program available to use it as a torch.

Speakers: as good as the old benchmark N95, just about.

Text entry: for some reason, there's no on-screen display of the old Nokia standard 'abc/Abc/ABC' lower-case, first-letter-upper, all-upper notification. As it sometimes but not always automatically capitalises first letters (there's a setting for that), it would be nice to know, you know?

The Notes application is a different approach to the 'list of simple notes' application in S60, and damn it's good. A proper little rich-text word processor. I'm using it here (or I was, until I copied and pasted - which is not only possible, but uses desktop-standard keybindings - into MaStory.

Which brings me to: the keyboard. It's so much better than the N97 mini's keyboard, actually friendly to my slightly long thumbnails, good feel and nice rounded profile for easier usage. Could be even more pronounced, but that would probably impact upon the already, um 'noticeable' thickness of the device. Also, having the apostrophe needing an extra key press is a bit annoying for those of us who know how to use it properly. The only other issue is that, as All About Symbian noted, it would be slightly easier to use if taller.

And then there's the writing aids. Has auto-completion but it's quite weak. Has no auto-correction. Having said that, it copes fairly intelligently with punctuation and seems to learn for the auto-completion, which is nice and will no doubt be quite helpful.

Now: Nokia didn't provide any MMS functionality on this device. A fantastic camera, all data options, full multi-tasking, but no MMS. Didn't they *learn* from the first iPhone? There is, however, fMMS, from The Community Of Developers, to fill the gap. Nokia have even released a semi-official statement saying, in essence, "We're not going to provide MMS functionality because, well, gee, isn't it just *swell* someone in the community did our work for us?"

Now, the first problem with that approach is the comment from early in the development cycle to the effect that "I can't make it work yet because it's a proprietary Nokia API." The second problem is the hell of a time I had making it work. I managed it, but I still have no idea how (I think you have to have the right GPRS and WAP APNs configured, but *not* an APN for MMS, let fMMS take care of it).

The third problem is the fact that, as I was swearing with it, I found that my current provider, Crazy John's, don't provide MMS configuration settings for the N900 because it's not necessary on a device that can't do that. Crazy John's have quite another problem in insisting upon doing everything with auto-config SMS instead of just providing a list of bloody settings (you can find them if you go to the Android FAQ pages) but you should be able to see my point: no official supply means no support. Good one, Nokia, for ignoring a fundamental piece of a modern phone.

Oh yes, and not only but also: WTF were you thinking, Nokia, when you built Ovi Maps for Maemo with no provision to keep, let alone sync, bookmarks? There is a workaround - have a Contact for each bookmark, with full address, and it will give you a little globe icon that opens that place in Maps. But oh dear, for a company that invested so much (buying NAVTEQ, for a start) in GPS and mapping - just not good enough.

Moving on.

Multiple homescreens: I'm not convinced it's the greatest idea of all time. There are more efficient ways of launching applications, and it's really only an advantage for dynamic widgets. I think that HTC's way of doing an overview - thumbnails of desktops filled with widgets - is an excellent idea if you're going to have multiple screens. The N900 could do this - it would just be a modification of the current, fully dynamic and live task manager view of running apps. Damn, I wish I had the skills to program that.

There's a problem with some Qt applications. After spending huge amounts on purchasing Trolltech and their Qt, and coming up with two cross-platform device strategies, some twat at Nokia let a release out the door with a default setting for some text fields of black on black. Truly, WTF?

When it was launched, it was notorious for not having any form of portrait mode. That has slowly improved, but where it does appear there are bugs and issues. In typical Nokia fashion, we find a huge WTF in the web browser which, in portrait, gives you a couple of option buttons but no way to access others until you rotate back to landscape. So you can't, for example, close a web page. This is annoying.

Overall, I am enjoying it immensely. None of the twitter clients are as good as Gravity on Symbian (not much is) and at least one of them still hasn't been updated for OAuth and some of them don't work very well at all and the best of them isn't in the repositories yet, but that's a niggling issue next to the sheer power of the device.

Unfortunately, I also have to say "potential" about a device which has run up against a change in Nokia strategy and may be orphaned very soon, but there are some very good developers and they are doing some very good stuff.

And oh, the shiny is great with this one.

Please sir, Godot asked if you could wait a little longer

Excuse me while I waffle for a moment.

Samuel Beckett was a genius.

No, I won't hear anything else.

There was a period many years ago - it was while I was still living in Tasmania, so at least 7 years ago - when Sam had an anniversary, or something, and a project was begun to film all of his plays, using Irish actors. I saw as many of those as I could, and may even have some of them on tape lying about.

He was a genius. I didn't know any of the actors, I had never seen any of the plays before, although I had read some of Waiting for Godot in a drama class, as an exercise.

But I sat, spellbound at times, as two or three or even one actors, in minimalist sets with nothing happening except perhaps the weather, transformed dialogue or monologue about nothing into the most potent, powerful drama I had ever seen.

Krapp's last tape confused me, but I simply didn't care. All I could see was that old man, bitter, listening to diary tapes he had recorded years ago, eating bananas while rain hammered on the roof, swearing at his younger, smoother voice and abusing his older self. It was a master-stroke of writing and, in that moment, a master-stroke of acting - one actor, alone, with no special effects, nobody else on set, just him and the camera, maintained some of the finest characterisation I had ever seen.

Endgame remains, of all those I saw, the one I would most like to see live. Four characters - a blind master, his servant, and his parents living in rubbish bins in the corner - created all the world that necessary.

I sat and I listened to blind Hamm abuse and berate and proclaim, and I thought it the most compelling monologue I had ever heard. At the time, as I was still doing some theatre myself, I decided that I would track down one piece of his monologue and use it for auditions. I still think it would be a powerful piece to use.

Hamm's roar of "You're on Earth, there's no cure for that!" remains with me still.

And then there is the one piece that people who know not of Becket may have yet heard of - Waiting for Godot.

Only his second play, it has famously been described as being "about nothing" but has also been voted the most important English-language play of the 20th Century.

I had considerable doubts going into it but, also, I was spellbound throughout it. I thought then, and I only think more so now, that Beckett wrote plays which not only made enormous demands of the actor, but which provided enormous opportunities, as well.

A truly great actor, in Godot or any other Beckett piece, would turn in a performance not to be exceeded. And an actor who could not manage those demands, well - we know the truth now, don't we?

So: Ian McKellen, Matthew Kelly and Roger Rees are touring in a production of Waiting for Godot, and will be in Melbourne for two weeks in May. We know people in Melbourne we need to catch up with.

To say we are excited about this would be a colossal understatement.

If I don't see any other live theatre this year, I may not care provided I get to see that.

Nokia really, seriously, desperately need to work on their sense of timing, the bastards

I was walking through my local shopping centre yesterday afternoon, hunting down a dry-cleaners I knew was there but I knew not where, when I passed the Crazy Johns shop.

What to my wondering eye should appear but a hastily printed flyer stapled to the front of their catalogue, advertising the immediate availability of the Nokia N97 Mini.

Yes, those callous, casually cruel bastards from Espoo have finally condescended to launch the Mini in Australia, months (it only feels like years) after the rest of the world.

The Mini is the N97 with most of the bugs fixed. Slightly smaller, it lacks the camera shutter cover (which sounds like a step backwards, except the original N97 design scratched its own lens) and the largely superfluous (it's a touch-screen!) directional D-pad next to the keyboard. It's comparable in size to my N95 - slightly slimmer, slightly taller, massively bigger screen, proper QWERTY keypad, hardware two generations further on, software at least two generations further on.

And now it's available in Australia.

It was, in fact, so new that the latest catalogue needed an update stapled to the front. It was, in fact, so new that the bloke I spoke to left work on Friday not knowing that it would be there when he arrived on Monday. It was so new that, as I type, it doesn't even appear on their website. It was so new that when I asked them if they had a demo model, he pulled out a box and turned on a proper one, because they didn't have one of those fake models they stick to the wall with elastic for customers to hold and say "Yes, that's a phone, with buttons." Which was nice.

You see, this is why I'm mad:

I'm paying $49/month to Vodafone. Thanks to Vodafone recently rejigging their bill (long overdue, I may add, and just did), I have been able to determine that the reason I need to pay $49, for $350 worth of "value", instead of $29, for $150 worth of "value", is data charges. I am being charged more for mobile data, which I use sparingly, than I am for SMS messages and calls.

Which means, I calculated, having been prompted to do so by my nearest and dearest getting an E71 on a $29 plan (for which I may yet forgive her), that I can replace $49/month with $29/month plus a $5/month data bundle.

Which makes $34, which is $15/month less than the two-year contract I have nearly reached the end of.

This makes me slightly sore but hey, two years ago I got an N95 for nothing, so I can't complain too much (N.B.: Some people say that it is actually, long-term, a better idea to buy a phone outright and go on the best month-to-month plan/prepaid for you. Quite apart from the fact that I couldn't have afforded an N95 when I got it - not in this case, it wasn't. I got the better of this deal).

However.

I could, at the same price, get an N97 Mini which is, let's be honest, worth at least twice as much as an N95 would be if were new, now.

Or, I could buy any phone I liked (a friend has an Android Motorola Milestone - touch-screen, sliding QWERTY, 5MP camera - which he will sell me for $600 when he gets a different model that works on Telstra's NextG HSDPA network), and pay less, per month.

You see, this is why I hate Nokia. Not because they've made such a very desirable piece of kit available cheaper than I had any right to expect, but because they've made my life difficult.

Plus, there's this:

$49/month, for 24 months, is $1176, which is not much more than the phone's worth.

$34/month, for 24 months, is $816. The difference, you will see immediately, is $360. Which is not what the Milestone would cost me, or indeed anything else capable of replacing an N95. Unless I get really lucky on eBay.

Yet, please note, I'm not sure I want another Symbian device. I may want to play with Android for a while. I may want to explore a different ecosystem that is not driven by a company I personally don't trust to build services or developer communities, no matter how competent and even brilliant they may be at designing the devices.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I have taken a deep and abiding dislike of Nokia, for this week.

Stay tuned for some musings and thoughts on the N97 Mini itself.

Random headline wool-gathering and commentary - 3

Greetings all,

Another collection of more-or-less random gems pulled from the news this chilly morning:

Vitamin supplements may cut benefits of exercise - New Scientist. Ha! Suck on that, supplement freaks! Question, however: What about eating fruit after exercise?

Via William Gibson's twitter (@GreatDismal): Cave Panting Depicts Extinct Marsupial Lion - LiveScience. That's rather cool.

Patient declared dead was actually alive - Courier Mail. Cue Monty Python: "I'm not dead yet!" "Yes he is!"

Violent inmate tricks hospital in escape - Courier Mail. For the love of Cthulhu, this is why you insist upon paperwork!

Cool! Zombie animals!


US Biker runs a red light, crashes into police car - Visor Down. You dickhead.

It Came From Beyond The Flyscreen

Courtesy of the Cairns Post, your daily monster!

I find this incredibly cool. It has all the elements of classic horror: Non-mammalian (and therefore scarier) protagonist, cute and fluffy victim, elements of Shelob (still fairly topical, don't you think?) and right in our own back yard! Run for the hills!

For size comparison, although the uncredited journalist at the Post conveniently left this out, that bird would be about 10cm long, and if you look at the other photos linked off that web page, you will see that they have carefully selected the one that makes the spider look biggest, and therefore scariest.

This is called not lying, because that would be dishonest, but Being Tricky.

Open letter to PortableApps.com

Dear PortableApps.com,

ThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyou!

The ability to install Firefox on a USB memory stick and run it on any Windows computer (or Linux using Wine - works okay for me!) is one of the greatest and coolest things I have ever come across.

I have plugins for Google Bookmarks (personal) and del.icio.us (work - there are historical reasons for this) so that I can share bookmarks with my home FF on Linux, or access them if some prick of an IT officer tries to lock off the USB ports.

Thanks to full support for plugins I get crash restore, I get sensible handling of tabs, I get tab scrolling with the mouse wheel and tabs loading in the background.

I had forgotten quite how much I relied upon this as I shuttled between Uni and two different jobs until I forgot my keys, and left them hanging in the door at home when I slipped out without waking my partner, and therefore don't have my USB key.

I am now approximately five minutes, or one more IE7 crash, away from complete apoplectic rage, tantrum and going home. I have now seen more IE7 crashes than spam, all in one morning, and I've only been clocked on for 87 minutes so far. I haven't lost anything, or links, but it's been a close-run thing (and thank you to Blogger, too, for autosaving!)

Please, PortableApps.com, don't give up or fade away. I don't care if portable FF never gets the ability to update itself safely and I have to download and install the full file every time, I forgive it. I don't even care if I never need to install any other PortableApps.com app (although... Gimp might be handy...). So long as I have my FF with me at all times, with my settings and my plugins and working how I need it to in order to be productive, I will forgive a lot.

I will never, ever, forgive Microsoft for IE7.

Yours Sincerely,
Dubito.

The absolute coolest thing I have ever heard today

Dave McKean illustrated Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck Cookbook.

Squeee!

Random comment...

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese national hero, was a pastry sous-chef in Paris and London!

I have just been watching The Hairy Biker's Cookbook and damn I want to ride around Vietnam eating everything in sight, now!

Hey, that's neat...

So, it seems that Samsung have been trying to redeem themselves and be builders of desirable high-end phones instead of desirable looking phones that, like a slightly dim girl blessed with natural good looks and a scholarship to a finishing school, disappoints you halfway through the date by giving you a confused look and saying "Huh?" in their original accent.

Behold the first 8, that's eight, I repeat eight megapixel camera phone, the (oh dear) Innov8. Top marks for the design and the hardware, but honestly guys? It's a lot safer to just do a Nokia and stick with numbers.

It's got fancy camera software, and built-in GPS, and everything else, and normally I would be saying "Yeah, yeah, it's better than my phone, so what, it's new" and moving on. But this thing has an optical mouse. I have commented before that I really wish the next sweeping change in mobile design would be Blackberry's trackball, which Samsung, the design tarts that they are, have played with. Well, this phone goes one better. In the same way that mice moved from lint-attracting balls to optical sensors, there is an optical pad which serves the same function as a trackball, but is cooler. 

Earth calling Nokia: Copy this.

Link to All About Symbian review.

Oh, yes, please!

It's a flying motorbike! Sort of!




Courtesy of the always entertaining Hell For Leather, who got it from The New Cafe Racer Society, who got it from Aircraft Maintenance Technology Online and the actually company is Samson Motorworks.

It's actually a trike and uses a motorbike engine (which isn't surprising, given the power-to-weight advantage that your average common-or-garden sportsbike has over, say, a Ferrari) but it's still cool.

"I recommend a nihilism cleanse"

One of my current favourite oddball social commentary web comics is Welcome To The Future, or WTTF.

This is one of the reasons why:



I love it.

P.S.: If you can't see the whole thing, click on it.

They even made it look like an Aardman design

Meet The Robotic Lawn Mowing Sheep (Geeks are Sexy), which was designed in homage to Philip K Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which was bastardised, but effectively, for Blade Runner.

I don't really think I need to add to that.

Link to Geeks are Sexy article.
Link to Blade Runner on IMDB
Link to Androids on Amazon
Link to Wallace and Gromit official site (any excuse)

Several cool things

Tired with using a straight wine bottle? Using a carafe but bored? Well, try a carafe that looks like the branching air tubes in your lungs! Courtesy of Etienne Meneau.

Enjoy freakishly complicated animated mechanical sculptures? Artist Choe U Ram had an exhibition at The Bathhouse Gallery in Japan. Images and limited text in English, complete with a link to a Google-translated Japanese site, courtesy of Gizmodo.

Like futuristic concept art with more than a hint of H R Giger/Anime/Steampunk distorted weirdness? Proceed to Digital Manipulation, the website of highly weird artist William B. Hand. You will not be surprised to find that he lists Giger, H. P. Lovecraft and Heironymous Bosch among his influences.

Hey, where the hell did that heart-warming moment come from?

I have a confession to make.

I'm sick.

I like politically incorrect jokes (that are funny - most of them actually aren't), I like comic strips in the tradition on Far Side, and heartwarming stories of people overcoming adversity by playing with the normal children make me want to vomit (I know, I made a great career choice getting into disability services, didn't I?). Oh yes, and: If you use the spelling disAbility or the phrase "differently abled" or even "taking the dis out of disability" in my presence, don't be surprised if I scream apoplectically and launch myself at your throat.

So this morning I'm slowly going through the archives of sick and twisted Internet comic strip Killer Spoons (contains fecal humour and abortion jokes) when I stumble across what may be the only actually good "disabled getting out there" example I've seen all year: Speed Wheeler.

That kid needs one of these.

P.S.: I wonder how much of the Paralympics will get televised this year?

Link to strip Speed Wheeler.
Link to ParaPros Racing (check out the gallery, then practice saying "Gnarly, dude!" until you stop feeling self-conscious about it.)

Oooooh.... Pretty.....

I love optical illusions, but I'm a bit sick of the "which line is longest" and "hey cool, it looks like it's spinning!" ones.

I have just stumbled across (cheers, Gizmodo) a hole new class of coolness. Most 3D illusions rely upon feeding each eye a different image, through colour filters or one feed direct to each eye through lenses, or something like this. These images demonstrates that it's possible to get a 3D effect by throwing the two images at both eyes, but alternating them and confusing the brain into thinking that it's seeing an object with depth.

Joshua Heineman (lala.cursivebuildings.com) has simply taken the photo sets used in old stereogram goggles and built an animation which rapidly flicks between the images. The technique is not unique or even particularly new, but I think there needs to be more of it.

Unfortunately, the migraine you're liable to get while watching this would make the creation of a full 3D movie out of the question.

Oh, yes, please!

Now this is a fantastic idea. I myself have in the past attached dead CDs to the front of a hay bail and shot arrows at them (they go all to pieces so spectacularly!).

Passive-Aggressive anger release machine (Gizmodo Australia).

A camera disguised as... a camera

This is proper retro, not steampunk made-up retro, and is possibly even cooler through being subtle.

A digital camera replica of a hand-cranked Rolleiflex. I'm a little disappointed by the 'mere' 5MP sensor, but the square images it produces are neat, if not entirely pointful.

For added effect, drink blood

Hey, here's something new: I desperately, desperately want a set of these, and they're not made out of brass and wood!

Seven Deadly Sins wine glasses. How is Lust supposed to work, exactly? Like one of those water bottles you get for rat cages?

Like making a moto purse out of a sow's tractor.

Now, this is just plain wrong. If you're going to make a female robot out of a sports-bike, not only is a Buell with a Harley Davidson tractor engine in it an entirely inappropriate choice, but it means that you passed up the Ducati 1098R and the MV Agusta F4 as options!

Buell Firbolt transforms into Transformer.

How does a skeleton drink?

There so desperately needs to be a movie made in here:

Skeleton bar designed by H. R. Giger.