Hardware

I treated myself to some nice new toys and I am very happy with them, so here comes a short review. Logitech G9x Laser Mouse I already have a G9 at home, which is the best mouse I ever used. It is really a gamer mouse, but the high resolution laser, free rolling scroll wheel and the cable make it perfect for programming and desktop use. It also comes with adjustable weights, which helps to make it feel just right. I just bought a new one because I wanted to replace the G5 I had at work with this one. The G9x is pretty much the same with a better case and higher resolution. The new colour scheme also goes better with the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (which is the only Microsoft product in my house). As the G9 and G9x are the same price, the choice is really easy. With the G9x you can also adjust the colour of the LEDs and as everyone knows: a gadget is not a gadget if it has no blue LED. Nokia microSD/HD map 16GB MU-44 This is a memory upgrade for my Nokia N79. And when did memory get so small? The size of this is just silly, you can breath it in if you are not careful. SHARKOON SATA QuickPort PRO The main reason for this order. I needed another USB backup drive, because I want to make a backup before I do the Fedora 13 upgrade. I looked around for 2TB external USB drives or NAS, but they are all much too expensive. I also usually have some old hard-disks around that are leftovers from computer upgrades and needed a use for them. The Sharkoon is a dock where you can insert "naked" Sata drives directly. You connect it with e-sata and/or USB to your computer and that is it. It also acts as a USB hub with two ports and has a slot for SD/MMC/MS memory cards. It also has a switch to turn it off when not in use, which is a lot better than the usual external drives. It is also bloody fast over e-sata (they do a simpler version which just has USB). And that is it already. I am backing up everything now so Fedora 13 is next.

Recently I started using twitter, facebook and blogs more and I got a little bit annoyed that I couldn’t update those sites with my mobile phone. And then my digital camera died on me, which resulted in no new photos by me in the last couple of months. The final point which made me want to get a new fancy phone was me getting lost on Tibidabo without a GPS. My old phone is a Ericsson t39m, which is one of the best mobile phones ever made. It was one of the first phones with bluetooth and does stuff like email, WAP & T9. It also supports lots of accessories, like different sized batteries, different antennas, docks and travel chargers. It also pretty small and has a nice monochrome screen. But there comes a point where you need a new toy and after looking at all kind of phones I finally came up with a list of requirements: 3.5 mm headphone jackdigital camera > 3MGPSsmall and lightnot too expensive, because it might get stolen here in Barcelonanormal phone keys, no touch phonesome way to program for it WLANbluetoothUSB storage support for photos and music This ruled out pretty much most of the phones including the iPhone, which was out of the question anyway, because my recent experience with iPods and Linux. At one point I discovered the Nokia N79 Active, which was announced beginning of the year. It also has one nice additional feature which is was the real selling point for me: it comes with a Polar heart-rate belt. Buying one turned out to be a bit more difficult then I hoped. First it was just released in Finland, Sweden and South Africa, and not available on-line. It was announced in Germany, but the date got pushed back every month until they finally took it off their website. Then it got released in the UK and was available on the Nokia on-line shop, but they obviously don’t deliver to Spain. Finally a friend of mine in the UK ordered it for me and forwarded it to Barcelona. Now I have it since a little bit over a month and are fairly happy with it. I use it every day as my phone, for photos, web browsing and twittering. Together with the Nokia Sportstracker website and software it is also brilliant to track your sports activity, which is in my case mainly cycling and mountain biking. Here is the information about my last long ride on Tibidabo: 4h on Tibidabo Here are some other things I like about it: pretty light and small for a smart phonesome good software available, like GPS tracking (AFTrack), twittering (Gravity), Puttythere is a Python version for itsome nice google stuff, like Maps, Latitude, Youtube, …good Nokia mapping softwarethe podcasting client is nice and you can add your own OPML files as directoriescontacts & calendar can sync with googlecamera is good enough And some stuff that is rubbish the software and menus are structured very strange, you can reorder them but some stuff just makes no sense at all. The worst bits are all the different settings and preferences. Others think so too there is a “Media” button & menu, which doesn’t make any sense the whole Sportstracker thing seems to have a unsure future the WLAN and 3G selection should just do the right thing, like the iPhone doessome non-Nokia software has a completely different UI, the google apps and opera for exampleOVI (Nokia online services and app store) is a messit crashes sometimes, even doing simple stuffout of the box it comes with three different types of maps (google, OVI, Sportstracker)annoying start-up screen & sound and horrible ring tones Overall I am happy though, because I had rather low expectations as most mobile phones I had in my hand in the last couple of years were pretty rubbish. Except of the iPhone, which had the first good user interface for phones since the rotary dial, but it just was not right for me.

My new computer has finally arrived and last weekend I had time to put it together. With the Fedora 10 release this week I should be having a good time now. Here is what I got: Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe AMD 790FX / SB600 4GB RAMAMD Phenom X4 9350e Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate2 * Western Digital Caviar WD10EADS 1TBa couple of new Papst fansI tried to order things which save a little bit of power and are easier to cool so I can run them quieter. I also decided on a ATI graphics card because they are releasing information about their hardware and are not stuck in the past like Nvidia. So I cleaned my old computer case, removed the dust from the last five years which required me to take it apart and put the new stuff inside. I first tried it with my old hard disks and Fedora 9, because 10 had not arrived yet. The computer started and everything was nice and fast and shiny. But after a few reboots the only thing I got was beeeeep - beep beep beep. After a trip on the internet I found out that I picked one of the motherboard + graphic card combinations which don’t seem to work. So now I am running with a borrowed Nvidia card until I buy a new motherboard or Asus comes up with a new BIOS. I obviously also contacted Asus and Sapphire support, but it just confirmed my opinion that this is completely pointless. Asus answer was along the lines of “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” and Sapphire did not even bother. But I still had Fedora 10 to look forward too. And so I installed it on the new hard disks. It is pretty much the same, but maybe I am just difficult to please. Here are some short notes: the faster boot is indeed faster, but I don’t care because I don’t boot that oftenthe flicker free boot just works if you have the right graphics card and on a full moonNetworkManager still hates me and static addresses … but now system-config-network hates them too …and so does anaconda …so install with dhcp change your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* chkconfig NetworkManager off chkconfig network on service stop NetworkManager service start networkcompiz does not work with either the Nvidia or the ATI cardI am looking forward to play with the new versions of eclipse & co To NetworkManagers defence I must say that it is very nice on my Eee PC, I just don’t see the point on a desktop / workstation. The Eee PC is still downloading with preupgrade, so lets see how that goes. Next hardware upgrades are for the firewall, backup server and htpc, which are all from 2002. I can mostly use hardware I already have and just get new cases and fans so that they stop sounding like a fighter jets landing. And I obviously have the spare M3A32 too, so that gets a Athlon X2 and goes into the htpc. Hardware can be so much fun … Oh … and I am probably the last person arriving in multi core and 64 bit country. nice.

My current home office setup. The newest addition is the Samsung 245b 24" 1920x1200 TFT display. It is probably not the best one around, but is pretty good for the stuff which I do, which is mostly programming. The main computer is an old Athlon XP 2400. I am currently waiting for replacement parts. I brought most of the stuff with me from London, which means it is from 2003 or older. At the moment the machine is running Fedora 9, but will be upgraded to Fedora 10 once it is out and the parts arrive. I think the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is the only Microsoft product I use. It is the UK version, because I can’t get used to the local versions. The mouse is a Logitech G9, just upgraded from a G5. I am not sure about the G9 just yet, the previous mouse somehow feels better in my hand. I also got two old Dell Dimension XPS B600r. One of them is used as firewall and the other one as backup server. You can see in the picture that the backup server has a front mounted fan, otherwise the three disks stop working. Both of these computers run CentOS 5. The computers and router are protected by APC UPS, because we have a lot of power problems here in Barcelona. In the cable jungle next to them is also the ADSL router, a KVM switch and a network switch. Behind the monitor is also an old scanner to scan old photos and just off the picture to the right is a HP OfficeJet scanner/fax/printer combo. The Sony TC-KA6ES tape deck is currently broken and I am trying to fix it. While this is not working I am using the Technics tape deck, the amplifier and the two JBL Control Ones to digitize my tapes with the tape recording software I am currently writing in python.

Recently I was affected by the Steve Job Reality Distortion Field. After watching the demonstration of the iPhone developer kit and the iPhone in general I wanted one too. I thought I get myself a nice Apple Power Book or maybe an Air plus the iPhone and start developing. As it is also very much UNIX based I could still go to the command line if I want too and most of the tools I use every day are available on Max OS X and work very well. My girlfriend has been using her PowerBook Titanium since 2002 and it still works well. She now also got the iPhone, which is the best phone you can buy at the moment. For someone who just wants to use computers, these are perfect. But after seeing the problems software developers have with the AppStore and the sharing of information about iPhone development, I decided that this whole closed source thing is not for me. I have been using Linux since my Amiga days and Red Hat Linux since 3.0.3 and I just can’t imagening using software which doesn’t have the source code available for me to learn and thinker with. Most people now will say that you probably are not going to this, but it is not true for me. I fixed, patched and changed Apache, Rhythmbox, PHP and Perl. I build my own RPMs for the changed versions to keep my system clean and I want to have this option in the future. But it is not only the source. It is also the community and things like open bugtrackers. If I report a bug with some Apple or Microsoft product there is no way of knowing if this was reported before or if someone has a fix already. This just happened to me again with a USB mouse problem on Fedora, I just hat a look at bugzilla and there was already a solution which I was able to apply before the fix goes into the updates. I still need to upgrade my computer though. My Athon XP 2400 (IIRC) just doesn’t do the trick anymore. I also want to switch to an ATI graphics card to use open source drivers. So I decided to spend 1000€ on an upgrade to the machine, which probably consists of: 24" TFT monitorsome AMD four core CPU which doesn’t use too much powera passive cooled ATI card4GB of memoryASUS motherboardtwo 1T hard disks for RAID1all running the Fedora of course. I might also get an OpenMoko phone at some point, but I am not really a phone user so it would be just a toy. The only close source products will be my iPod Classic and iPod shuffle. But they are well supported now in gtkpod and Rhythmbox.