Final year project

Mat has generously given me some space on his web server to host a copy of the project I completed in the final year of my degree about ten years ago.  It’s called An Implementation of Donald Knuth’s MIX and is a Java applet version of a mythical computer that Knuth wrote about in The Art of Computer Programming Vol 1.  I’ve added the source code to the page which has never been out in the big wide world before.  Hopefully someone will find it interesting!

Test post from Pocket SharpMT

This is a quick test of whether Pocket SharpMT can post to the new WordPress version of the Apple Crumble blog.

How to stop being nagged by autoupdate in Windows

I installed IE7 this morning. Even though I don’t really intend to use it, I like to keep my computer up-to-date with the latest software. The problem with the Windows update mechanism is that once it’s done the business and installed whatever security fix, software or patch that you required, Mr Naggy-Pants doesn’t stop nagging you to reboot. Why can’t you just silence it and reboot when you really do feel like it? Well, now you can.

USB rechargable batteries

This caught my eye – standard-sized batteries that you can plug into USB ports to recharge! Rechargable batteries are great but you always have to have the clunky charger around – this solves the problem. Quite expensive but then so are good-quality AA batteries these days; I’d imagine that these would work out cheaper in the long run.

(via The Register)

Sony Ericsson W800i – not all it’s cracked up to be

I’ve had my new phone for quite a long time now and although in general it’s a pretty good mobile, there is a little thing that’s been niggling me since I got it and a major fault that has developed in the past week.

First of all, the niggle. My old T610 had a great feature whereby you could ‘reply and delete’ to a text message so that you didn’t have to worry about your inbox filling up. It’s a little thing, but why oh why does this phone not have the same feature? I thought that the W800i was a logical progression from the K750i which itself was bourne out of the T610, so I don’t see why any of the features should regress. Disappointing.

The major fault is to do with the camera lens cover switch on the back of the phone. It’s a tiny little thing that sometimes gets caught when you pull it out of your pocket, turning the camera on. Not the biggest deal when the phone’s working okay, but the switch has recently developed a fault whereby it is as sensitive as a bad tooth. This means that the camera switches on at any given opportunity – when you pick it up, when you put it down, when the alarm rings, when you go to make a call, and even when you’re doing absolutely nothing and the phone is a hundred paces from the closest moving thing but it has just decided that the lens cover is now open. This would just be a big annoyance if it wasn’t for the fact that the lens cover being open also means that they keypad is then unlocked – if the phone is sitting in your pocket it can then decide, seemingly randomly, to do other things. For example, over the past week it has sent a photo message to somebody that I haven’t spoken to in a long while (sorry, Tijen!) and tried sending two massive video files so somebody else. So now I’m looking forward to a lovely big data bill from O2. I’ve now blu-tacked and sellotaped the button so it’s permanently open and the phone has gone from looking like a sophisticated and sleek orange machine to Jack Duckworth’s glasses. Great.

If you’re thinking of getting one of these phones – and if when it’s working well it is pretty good despite all of the above – go for the K750i, which is the same phone but with slightly older software (the Walkman functionality is crap anyway) and a much better camera lens cover switch.

Bringing an old Pocket PC back to life

I’ve had my iPaq for a few years now and for most of the time I’ve been disappointed with it. Many moons ago I used to use a Psion 5mx which, although it had a monochrome display, was a fantastic piece of kit – a ‘proper’ keyboard, applications that worked and a slot for AA batteries so that if you ever ran out of power you could just pop to the shop and buy more. The iPaq is colour but it slows down for no reason, used to crash on occasion (until I upgraded the firmware), is in portrait mode (which isn’t so great for reading PDF files) and has a crappy battery life – when the battery goes you actually lose all of the information and have to restore from the last backup! At the time I bought it I thought it was the way forward, with its colour screen, bluetooth connection and the fact that it was supported at work so I could sync all of my business appointments. Syncing things up was never straightfoward, however, as I wanted to sync both at home and at work and home computer kept telling me that it had found a new device and wanted to sync everything every time – not great. When my Pocket Outlook started to retain ghost messages that no longer existed and my bluetooth connectivity failed to work with my new phone I kind of gave up on it. I had searched Google far and wide for solutions for both problems but couldn’t find anything.

That was, until I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done book last week. The book is fantastic, but more on that in another post. I wanted to get my iPaq back up and running so that I could get my task lists in order and start to get them done. I made a ‘final push’ on Google and came up with the following two gems…

New mobile

I picked up a new mobile phone today, courtesy of my wonderful brother – a Sony Ericsson W800i. Until two days ago I had never heard of it; I’m not really one for keeping up with the latest in phones, although I do like mine to have a lot of functionality – Bluetooth, tri-band etc. My T610 has been fantastic for the past two years but has developed an annoying problem with the navigation joystick in that every time I pressed ‘down’ it thought I meant ’select’. I’ve sent far too many text messages by accident with that phone. Thanks to my brother I now have the latest incarnation of this range.

I’ve spent a little time today getting myself set up and am pleased to say that it has been extremely easy and I haven’t had to look at the manual once. The phone itself is aesthetically pleasing, if a little garish with it’s orange theme, and has some great features such as a loudspeaker, MP3 playback, 550Mb (yes, half a gigabyte!) of storage and a 2 megapixel camera with a light. I’ve taken a couple of photos and uploaded them to Flickr – see for yourself how good it is.

I’ve had loads of phones over the years, but the series of camera phones from the T68i, T610, T630 (owned by my wife) and now my W800i must be the best series of phones that I’ve seen. I used to swear by Nokias with (what I thought was) their very friendly user interface but their software started to get buggy right around the time they released the 7110. I didn’t fancy paying for my phone software to be upgraded when I felt it should have been tried and tested in the first place. Sony Ericsson phones seem to be relatively bug-free as well as extremely easy to use; since switching I haven’t looked back.

The main ’selling point’ of the phone is its Walkman functionality, but as I already have an iPod I think that I’ll be making most use of the camera, especially for mobile photo blogging!

Amusing printer messages

Here’s a great webpage that offers a program that will change the message displayed on your LaserJet printer. I haven’t tried this out at work for fear of something going wrong, but it did make me smile to think of one of our expensive colour HP printers with ‘Insert coin’ written on the display!

Skyped-up

Installed Skype today – looks like a great service and seems to work very well with a bluetooth headset. It allows you to chat and call other Skype users, much like an instant messenger. However, there’s also a feature included that lets you make extremely cheap phone calls to foreign countries where you pay the same rate no matter where you are! You can even pay for a ‘real’ number in any of a number of countries, such as the UK, US or Finland, and have the calls routed to your desktop or Skype voicemail.

So far I’ve only placed a test call to the Skype answering machine, but the utility included with the software did manage to locate four people I know from my Outlook address book so maybe I’ll see them online soon. My ID is adoran2 if you want to give me a call!

Dell X1

Work has been getting busier and busier of late and there are lots of things to do in our house, so I’ve been finding that I have almost no time for emailing and blogging. I’ve always been crap at keeping up with my friends through email and constantly find myself thinking about a number of things that I haven’t got done so after much thought I decided to treat myself to a laptop. The idea is that I’ll be able to just pick it up and keep up with my emails as well as use it on the train to and from work and so far it’s working.

I went for the Dell X1, an ultraportable model which would make lugging it around nice and easy. I knew that I wanted an ultraportable but had been considering the IBM X41; I’ve been using IBM laptops at work for a number of years and find them very functional and easy-to-use. However, the massive price difference between the IBM X41 and the Dell X1 – especially with the 7% discount I get through a scheme at work – meant that I plumped for the latter. They each have a few features that the other doesn’t as shown by this detailed comparison.

It’s a gorgeous machine – very small, very lightweight and with just enough features for me. The built-in bluetooth means that it is very easy to connect a number of peripherals such as a headset, phone and PDA and the 60Gb hard drive is all the space I’ll probably ever need away from home. It has even got built-in slots for SD and CompactFlash cards making it easy to transfer files from digital cameras etc.

Hopefully the blogging drought is over!