Gadgets ‘n Stuff

Had to get me a new phone

Jul 4, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff

Unfortunately, my beautiful, much-treasured N95 is currently more useless than tits on a nun =(

My fault entirely though – I tripped over the charger cable while it was attached to the phone and everything went flying! Now the poor thing is totally dead, won’t charge. I took it to the shop just now and they said it had to get sent away for repairs, which could take 2 months. YOWZA! And I’ll have to schlep out to Canal Walk to take it in to get fixed. Joy.

As much as I can’t stand the things, I can’t be without a phone so I’ve had to get another phone in the meantime. One that will be a good backup and see me through a few more years. I’ve been eyeing the E65 out for a long time now – I bought a couple for my team a while ago and thought it was a lovely little gadget (was quite jealous actually).

So that’s what I’ve got now. It’s nice, much smaller than the N95 though and it doesn’t have all the features, most noticeably, the awesome 5mp camera. Anyway, tough. It’s a good phone, it looks purty, and it uses the S60, so I don’t have to learn a new OS.

One dilemma though – I’ve lost all my contacts!! The backup I did when I upgraded the N95 firmware is on my old machine which is no more. Oh dear … It’s just one thing after another isn’t it? And now I know I must save my contacts to my memory card (duh!)

Please send me your vcards and what-have-you’s … I can’t get hold of you otherwise!

Work around for Vodacom’s mess

Jun 30, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff, Rants

I had a good grumble on Saturday about Vodacom’s unannounced implementation of an “improved mobile internet experience” (yeah, right!) and it seems like there’s a general uproar about the whole cockup.

It Online reports:

The South African chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-ZA) has reacted to Vodacom’s launch of a moble Internet service last week with a strongly-worded statement of condemnation, claiming the new services could actually degrade the Internet experience currently enjoyed by mobile users.

“Vodacom claimed to revolutionise Internet on the cellphone,” reads the ISOC-ZA statement. “They claimed that millions of Vodacom customers now (effectively) have the same experience of the Internet on their cellphones as they do on a PC.
“In reality Vodacom have broken the Internet for these millions of customers. This came without any warning and ISOC-ZA is united against this sort of behaviour.”
According to ISCO-ZA, a number of applications that include instant messaging, banking, specialised mobile applications such as email, Youtube, Twitter, Fring and at least a dozen others, are no longer working since the advent of Vodacom’s service.
“In technical terms, Vodacom installed a proxy service that was not sufficiently tested,” says the statement.
“The technology that Vodacom is using is not standards compliant and, considering Vodacom’s position as a dominant ISP, it should behave in a more responsible fashion.
“Furthermore, some of our members have claimed that Vodacom block many applications that it feels may threaten its business. While we have no direct evidence of this, we appeal to Vodacom to disclose what it blocks and intercepts on its networks.”
The statement goes on to advise users how to bypass the new Vodacom changes.

So how can you bypass the proxy service?

It’s pretty easy, just follow this process:

Tools
Settings
Connection
Access points
Vodacom
Options
Advanced Settings
Remove the Proxy server address

Thanks to Flint.za and fring for posting this fix. I’ve tried it on my N95 and it works.

First post from my iMac

Jun 26, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff, Work

AT LAST!!!

I have finally finished my transfer from the Acer dinosaur to this delicious iMac =)

It’s taken me weeks to get everything copied, downloaded, installed and configured, but I’ve done it!

*pats self on back*

(On Justin Hartman’s recommendation, I have ditched the M$ keyboard and gone with the Apple one. Good move too – it’s really cool.)

Thanks Dad, I LOVE my new ‘puter – now I must pay you!!!

Nokia N95 firmware upgrade

Jun 25, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff, Software

This is something I have been DREADING!!

Had to be done though – my phone’s been doing some pretty weird stuff recently like randomly restarting itself, muting my side of a call so that the person on the other end can’t hear me at all and then last night it decided that it just absolutely was not going to launch the web application. That was the last straw … I can’t be without my mobilewebs!

My Dad told me last year already that this kind of nonsense can quickly be sorted out with a firmware upgrade but I didn’t want to do it because I was petrified of losing my applications, my contacts, my data etc. (No, I don’t synch with my pc ‘cos I land up getting double/triplicate contacts and all sorts of crap) and I’d been told that losing stuff was an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of upgrading.

Anyway, after last night I knew I had to take the plunge so I did some research on the interwebs this morning to see what the procedure was and, most importantly, to see if I could upgrade without losing anything. I was so relieved to find out from the SimplySymbian.com that it was doable! Here’s the link: http://www.simplysymbian.com/2007/05/02/how-to-upgrade-your-nokia-n95-firmware

I was extra cautious and backed up to my memory card (via Tools > Memory > Options) as well as to my pc, using the Nokia PC Suite Backup application. I downloaded the Nokia Software Application, installed it, took a deep breath and fired it up, making sure that my phone was fully charged and the memory card removed before I started. It was very easy, I just followed the application prompts.

It took about an hour for the software update to happen, then I restored everything and VOILA! It’s all working hundreds – I haven’t lost a thing AND my phone is now behaving itself =)

Almost ready to ditch the dinosaur

Jun 23, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff, Work

Monday = killer day. Stupidly busy!

But …

My gorgeous iMac is *just about* ready for me to start using it exclusively … YAAAY, at last =)

All I have left to do is install PHP. And IIS (when the tech guy decides to drop off the disk I need). I’ve nearly finished copying over all my files to the new machine, which is IMO, the best damn piece of hardware I have ever worked on!

I ripped the 5 new CD’s I bought over the weekend on the iMac last night and what an absolute freaking pleasure! It seriously only took me about 30 minutes to copy all of them; as opposed to the more than half an hour it used to take me to rip just ONE CD on this old dinosaur. And Photoshop is a total BREEZE on my new baby too, I can work soooooo much faster … love it =)

I still need to transfer about 7Gigs of Outlook PST files … Urgh. (Yip, I keep EVERYTHING!) Oh yes, and I also need to setup all my email accounts – hmmm, that’s going to take a little time. I’m not even sure where I have all that info stored away. Let the hunt begin …

What else? iTunes – I’ll need to load up all my music. I’ve got about 60GB of tunes to import! That’s going to take forever, but it’ll be a good opportunity to sort through it all and clear out some of the crap that I don’t want anymore.

Really not sure when I can get around to organising all these bits and bobs – I’m terribly short staffed at the moment and even more snowed under than usual (!) Miss Boats is still off for this week, recovering from her op and one of my contract coders is out of action until further notice =( Hopefully I can have the iMac completely sorted by next Monday. I really can’t wait to get working on it.

Enjoy your evening everyone; I have to get back to the old grindstone … I sense a couple of late nights coming up!