atomicvindaloo.com – the occasionally drunken ramblings of an urban philosopher

Social stuff ….

Ξ May 6th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Life, Me, N95, Site |

As you can see, I’ve amended the geo-location icon on the right to use Google Latitude (as that’s the one that is generally live) – add me if you want …….. the domain name of this site at gmail.com.

I’ve also added Ovi to the N95 8Gb – have a dig around for Ragingaardvark and, again, add me as a contact if you want.

Who knows, I may even jump into bed with the devil one day and get a Twitter account too.

Old Skool on the N95 8gb

Ξ February 25th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ N95 |

First off, I know it’s been a while – but it’s been half term and Jules and I have been “relaxing”(tm) by re-decorating the kitchen. I’ve also been busy adding more spam sites to the block list on the server.

Anyway, today’s little pearl comes from a combination of a nice Polish chap, the Nokia n95 8gb and a load of hard work in getting things up and sorted. Sounds interesting?

How about running Windows 3.1 on your N95

First off, you’ll need to install the port of DOS box for Arm. You can download the file from the site here.

You’ll need to extract the file to your memory card (second drive) and then take the following steps ;

1. Use your file explorer to install every file within the Install directory
2. Now try to install the DosBox_Full.sisx
3. If that fails due to insufficient memory, then install the DosBox_Slim.sisx

Next, you’ll need to install the OS package. You can download it from the site here.

Unrar the package so that the Data directory is in the root of your memory card. You’ll see a dosbox.conf file that has been lovingly edited to support the N95 8gb.

Now you should be able to open DOSBox from the applications menu which will then fire off Windows for you.

Notes:

• To switch between keyboard and mouse, use the call key.
• Use the # key as right-click.
• To end the session quickly, you can use the disconnect call key.
• To increase the font-size, press # when in mouse-mode, select the last option, third option and change the number from 14 to 22.

Review: Viewranger for the N95

Ξ October 23rd, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ N95, Review |

Well, I promised a review of the GPS software that I’m using – so here it is.

The let-down that I have with “normal” GPS software is that I have a real affinity for Ordnance Survey maps – and the smaller scale the better. After a bit of digging around, I came across Viewranger for the N95 (and a whole bunch of other devices too). The site offers topographical maps (read, Ordnance Survey for the UK) for a number of countries; either pre-defined maps such as national parks or, through a useful little tool, you can define your own area and scale.

Perfect!

I downloaded the tool, selected 1:25000 and, for the princely sum of twenty quid, managed to select almost the entire Chilterns. You submit the selection to the site and in the twinkling of an eye, your downloaded data is ready.

Opening up the application on the N95, you’re faced with an OS map;

Like so. At the moment, you can see from the bottom right of the screen, that the map is not locked to the GPS so I can scroll around and zoom in and out at will. Pressing the hot-key to Lock on my phone (and apologies here, I’m at work and that’s the edge of my downloaded map) I get the following ;

with the red circle and cross indicating my current position. If I start to walk around a bit, the image changes slightly ;

and the arrow indicates my direction of travel and speed (by the length of the arrow). You can also see from this image that I have set the option “Auto-rotate” to On, so that the map orientates itself on the screen according to my direction of travel – a very useful feature.

Another useful feature is this one ;

to disable the screensaver, as there’s nothing more annoying than having to keep “Unlock”ing the phone. As you can see, you can also access most of the phone’s functions from within the application.

The application comes pre-loaded with a freebie set of maps; 1:1M of England, Scotland and Wales

together with Nature Reserves POI, Lake District Trial, Lake District Altitude and Panorama.

Another handy feature that I often use is the trip manager ;

Here’s the walk that I did with Shelby on Sunday morning!

Once into the application, there are an absolute plethora of things that you can do ;

• Download new maps on the fly (best via wi-fi – as they can get quite large)
• Search on place, postcode, co-ordinates or POI
• No more sitting at your PC to create routes – you can do it from within the application itself. You can either set a series of waypoints and follow that route or, more fun, you can set a target location and the application guides you in – green arrow for on target, red for “You’re arrived” or blue for off target.
• Routes can also be displayed in an altitude map – in case you get a little enthusiastic.
• Buddy beacons – you can sign up for a free server account and display your current location for others to see. You can also use this to find your friend’s location – great for meeting up at the pub or when separated in thick mist on the mountainside in the English summer.
• Panorama;

You can access a panorama view by centering a location and selecting the panorama option. This powerful tool allows you to zoom in/out, pan and virtually change altitude to see what’s around. What’s more, you can access POIs and content that other folks have left – for example an image of your current location. You can also set the view radius, altitude skips and add daylight shading to the panorama.

Another feature is the ability to geo-tag phots (useful for the N95) and upload them as “buddy” content or POIs for all to see.

There are more features within this application, but I haven’t had the opportunity to use them. However, I can safely say that this application is a truly staggering find and, for the paltry sum it costs, easily lords it over other systems costing ten times the price.

Added to all that, the support for the product is fast, helpful and friendly and I can only find a single fault in the product. That being that I can’t believe I didn’t discover it earlier!

I give Viewranger 10/10 – you have all the pros in the review, and I honestly can’t find any cons whatsoever.

You can run but you can’t hide!

Ξ July 16th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Me, N95 |

The groovy new widget on the right-hand toolbar now shows my exact location – when the app is running on my phone. Jules – no more hiding down the pub for me!

Nokia N95 8gb

Ξ June 26th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Me, N95, Review |

Well, as you’ve probably noticed from previous entries, I’m the proud owner of a Nokia N95 8gb. I’ve had it for a few months now and, since yesterday’s events, figured it’s time for the review.

I’ve previously owned “dry” company communication devices – Nokia nothings and Blackberries. I’m not complaining of course – after all, the company are kindly paying for the call and data charges – but, after continually shelling out for shiny new phones for Jules and the kids, it was clearly time for techno-Daddy to enter the fray. And, if I’m going to do so, then I’m going to do so all singing, all dancing.

There were a few main points that attracted me to the N95;

• Internal GPS
• WiFi, Edge, 3.5G and every other protocol known to man
• Huge 8gb storage
• MP3 ringtones (I know, I know)
• 5 mega-pixel Carl Zeis camera ()
• Lovely big screen
• Compact size
• A very extendable Symbian OS

So, the phone arrived, I unpacked it, drooled a little and charged it up.

There is no arguing that this is a serious sexy phone. The call quality is very clear, it has all of the above and I was able to install some very useful applications. On a day-to-day basis, I really don’t think that I could have made a better pick. The one thing that surprised me too was that, for a device with so much going on, the battery life is superb.

I did, however, have a couple of gripes which – until yesterday – I had kind of accepted as being inevitable;

• GPS. Bloody hell, it took ages to get a lock. The device boasts aGPS – which uses the cellular network to speed up the acquisition process – but it could still take up to five minutes to get a lock. I figured that this was down to the fact that the internal antenna was so small that it struggled to get that initial data.
• Camera. When shooting video, the camera would stutter quite alot – resulting in very choppy film. There was also a very noticeable delay in “processing” stills before being able to take the next picture.

Neither of these were show-stoppers, but they conspired to annoy me just enough to keep my trying to find workarounds.

I fixed the camera issue by copying the contents of the 8gig mass-memory to my laptop, formatting the mass storage and moving everything back. Bingo! No more stuttering and no more lag in processing stills.

The GPS issue – together with a bit more – was solved yesterday when I appplied the v20.0.016 firmware to the device and, stone me, what a difference it has made!

The average GPS lock time is now about ten seconds! Even in a moving car – and that’s impressive. It’s holding the lock indoors and the response is terrific. Furthermore, the whole phone is spinning along alot quicker than it was before too.

In all honesty, I think that Nokia must have been bordering on criminally negligent with the last firmware version – as I really can’t understand just how such an enormous improvement in GPS performance can come about unless they’d really arsed up the previous version.

That said, however, I don’t really give a toss now. As it stands, I honestly can’t fault the device in any way whatsoever. The MP3 and video playback is excellent, the web-browser superb, the communication protocols all lightning quick, the storage huge and my MP3 ringtones wonderful! Not only that, I can send my photos straight to my Flickr photostream and blog to here on the go.

Pros:

Pretty much everything. This is one serious piece of kit

Cons:

With the firmware updated nothing really. I guess, being picky, that the lack of a linux version of the integration software sucks, but at least I can run the Windows version in a VM

Overall:

10/10 (This is the uber-phone)