After much umming and ahhing I finally decided to get an iPhone 3G 16GB and wow, what a fantastic bit of kit. Feels so good in the hand (you’d have to try it to understand) and the OS is the slickest mobile OS I’ve seen by a good margin. Definitely the best thing I have bought in a long while!
If I had a complaint, and obviously I was aware of this beforehand, it is that it needs iTunes for syncing etc… I don’t have any macs here, I’m a long term Linux guy as you know but I do have a couple of XP boxes around so that’s not the problem, it’s just that iTunes always seems so laggy and unresponsive on windows. Might be getting a Mac Mini before too long though as I want to have a look into iPhone app development.
Managed to drive over my xda on Thursday when leaving work… it faired better than you would think, still turns on and makes noise, syncs with pc etc but the screen is smashed, case a bit battered and the phone part no longer works… tits… and guess who never took insurance out (cos I’ve never broke a bit of kit in my life )
Tried household insurance but… I also didn’t take out “cover for personal possessions outside the home” (cos I’ve never broke….. grr)
So wayed up all options and o2 were cheapest at £279 for a replacement.
Oh well, probably saved that in not having the insurance over the years??
Ofcom proposes to allow local religious and community organisations to operate within the UK Citizen Band allocation, to begin with, by licensing a number of such organisations to transmit services in a limited number of pilot areas.
Can see trouble when mic keyers and worse key over the vicar though!
and how about this, they said it wasn’t possible – a GSM mobile phone interceptor – a scanner for GSM phones, a snip at £228,000
Law enforcement agencies only so looks like I’ll have to give it a miss :p
Just been over to Homebase and bought myself an air conditioner for home. £149 for a 9000 BTU unit (1000 more than the one I have in my office), not bad at all.
Had enough of hot and looks like there’s gonna be quite a bit of it!!
Online UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) interface. There is something wrong with the graphs page when you click on UPS1 though… the values are bollocks and change each time you load the page although if you hover your mouse over each column the tool tip shows the correct value… strange!
I feel a graph of input/output voltage coming on next… want to see how often the power is dropping.
Also finally did something with my barcode reader and made up a database for keeping an inventory of things, don’t know what yet though, automated shopping list or something like that I think.
Definately need to get the outside temperature sensor moved so it doesn’t get direct sunlight. I know it’s warm today but I don’t think it reached 100F!!
This afternoon the X10 home automation gear I ordered yesterday from letsautomate.com arrived. Home automation is something I’ve been wanting to do for years and finally the day is here. So far I’ve got the CM12U computer interface which came in a kit with a lamp module and an appliance module plus three bayonet fitting ’socket rockets’ and a Mini Controller.
Software wise I’ve installed the HEYU command line util and the BlueLava web based front end and I’m just about to make some nice scripts and set up some crontab schedules Very cool indeed.
The plan is to add more modules and some wireless controllers over the next few months. There is no shortage of ideas out there.
New toys! I got myself an 802.11b access point and a wireless nic for my laptop a couple of weeks back so I’ve been spending a lot of time surfing from bed recently! Highly recommended. I could sit in the back garden as well I suppose, at least I could if it didn’t look like this! I might have to try a bit of this War Driving sometime though.
It has been a bit hotter here over the last few weeks and I’ve been suffering from some overheating problems with my main Athlon machine. Between dead CPU and Northbridge fans and DIMMS making a bid for freedom it has been driving me mad! I should probably turn one or two of these machines off to reduce the ambient room temperature, it does get pretty toasty in here at times!
Photo credit: AlexLawrence
Very cool indeed.
