Recently in General Category

I bought the N900 back in May 2010 after much searching for a new phone. I had some specific features I wanted, which limited me to a few phones. The iPhone, a couple of Android-based phones (HTC Desire, Google Nexus One, Motorola Milestone) and the N900. Ultimately I managed to whittle it down to two choices and went with the N900 based on some first hand reports.

The N900 arrived and straight away I was concerned. I noticed GSM radio interference in the earpiece during the first call. At the time, I hoped it was just that call. But it turned out to be persistent. I was enjoying the phone in any case, it was pretty cool to play with. But the call problem was bugging me. After about about a couple of weeks of software updates and comparing my experiences to others with the same phone, I decided my N900 must be faulty and contacted Nokia's support. Their response was slow and after a bit of back and forth they suggested I bring it in to one of their Nokia Care Points for repair. 

There aren't any Nokia Care Points in the Isle of Man (at least, not according to their website). I told them this, asking whether I could courier it to them instead and they responded with a canned response telling me to bring it in to an NCP. Just as I was about to escalate my support issue and generally be angry, I found their repair page, which told me (as the default option) that I could courier it to them at no cost (the very thing I was asking support whether I could do at my own expense). So I run through the process. All very simple. N900 packaged and ready to go. Picked up and off for repair.

I get it back today, about 2 weeks after I sent it off. It seems they've replaced it (my screen protector isn't on any more regardless). Excited to have it back, I power it up and make a call. to my voicemail. "Wow", I think. They did a good job. No interference, not even any line noise. After about 14 seconds I start getting concerned. No line noise, no ringing, no answering. Strange. I call my land line. Land line is ringing, but I can't hear anything. I switch over to speaker phone and suddenly I hear the N900 ringing. I answer the call and play around for a bit. I can hear myself fine through the speaker phone, but am greeted with silence through the earpiece.

After all that it seems that the solution to the earpiece problem was to remove it entirely. I guess it really wasn't a phone after all. 

So it looks like I'll have to go through the repair process again or start looking for a new phone :/

Update: I've called them. Apparently I need to do a repair again, but if it comes back faulty a second time they'll do a full replacement. So we'll see what happens.

My coping mechanism for stress has been broken for a while now. This means that when I'm stressed out, I tend to ignore things and prefer to focus exclusively on the [probably misidentified] primary source of the stress - and my ability to focus is severely diminished. This results in a feedback loop where I get more stressed out because I'm not solving the problem. I'm also having major issues 'switching off' when I'm not working. This makes doing things in the evenings/weekends difficult and even if I take actually time off, I often end up constantly thinking about work and come back just as worn out as when I left. I don't want to complain about it too much though. It's all my fault. Basically, I'm broken at the moment and this was my punishment :)

I've got a new phone (Nokia N900) and spent a bit of time customising that. I have historically always had retro game ring tones on my phones (the last one was the Leisure Suit Larry theme - the jazz version from Larry 7). The N900 has a lot more customisation options, so I've gone with a Space Quest theme. The N900 has multiple desktops available, so I created a few seamless backgrounds. The one I ended up sticking with was an EGA background from Space Quest 2. It looked suitably retro enough. The VGA backgrounds generally looked more like low resolution/badly resampled backgrounds - although a couple did look pretty cool. For my ring tone, I recorded the theme from SQ3 as produced by the PCjr 3 voice track (I recorded a straight PC speaker version too, but I liked the bass line in the PCjr version better - it was less shrill and felt more ring-tone-y).

Here's a video I recorded of it (first time uploading to Youtube!). Apologies for the crap video quality, I was out of focus it seems and I don't have time to re-record it. I had to use my Nikon D90 as the Screencast recording software I have on the N900 doesn't record UI animation, which was the whole point of having it seamless.

I made it outside for a while on Sunday afternoon. Went for a walk around Douglas and took a couple of pictures with the N900. It was astonishingly nice out. I really enjoyed it. I snapped a few pictures (5 I think) in order to test out the camera on the N900. You can see the rest in the Mobile Uploads set on Flickr if you're interested. I didn't do any manipulation to these, they're straight out of the phone.

I did manage to do a bit of gaming on Friday night and Sunday evening. I played some Mass Effect 2 and did the Kasumi recruitment/loyalty mission DLC. So I now have 100% achievements on that. I then started up Splinter Cell Conviction on Realistic. I had planned on playing some Red Dead Redemption, but even though my order shipped on Thursday, it didn't arrive in time for the weekend. Paul was also most displeased :) (Edit: He's happy now though, it arrived today).

My long weekend consisted of some gaming and some programming/web development. I finished Battlefield: Bad Company (the original). It's been on hold for a bit because I started achievement hunting in Mass Effect, so it was good to finally get back to it. It ended better than I thought it would. Looking forward to starting up its sequel. I've also started up Mass Effect 2 again to try and finish up its achievements, it's a lot less effort than Mass Effect was (in fact, I am almost done). I also started Heavy Rain. I'm enjoying it for the most part, but I have some complaints. I'll post about that later.

I have been working on a little web project. I've been tracking my workout stats in an excel spreadsheet and want to be able to update it from my iPod Touch/iPhone (rather than memorising numbers each morning. Initially I was thinking I'd just use a Google Speadsheet, but I want to do some stat processing and graphing. Rather than cobble together some existing tech, I figured I'd just write something. I've been primarily designing and planning so far, but it's coming along quite well. It's probably not going to be a public site, but the results of it might end up here. I haven't decided yet. In the process of planning, I ended up doing some work on my server, including switching OS. The details of which I'll go into later.

I am going to be making a concerted effort to work a bit less this month. That long weekend couldn't have come at a better time as I was basically out of steam at the end of March.

I don't really have much to talk about right now. I heard some cool work related news last week. Hopefully I'll be able to mention it soon (after the official announcement). But if not, trust me, it's cool :). Otherwise, work is a bit busier and stressful than usual. I seem to be managing to keep rather zen about it though. We'll have to see if that holds. I'm sure it's helping that those around me have managed to stay (at least outwardly) calm too, for which I'm grateful.

I think I watched one movie last week, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I'll update this if I recall its name, but that goes to show how tired I've been recently :/. I played some Mass Effect over the weekend. I'm now 2 achievements away from finishing that up, then I get to move onto Mass Effect 2 (or perhaps the backlog of games that's stacked up on the shelf, I haven't quite decided yet). Otherwise I've mainly been working and trying to acclimate to the new schedule (by staying awake).

Update: The movie was Black Sheep starring Chris Farley and David Spade.

To add the challenge, I was moving to a much smaller machine (500GB HDD down to 16GB storage) so I couldn't just move everything across and worry about it later (dealing with the subsequent downtime when the machine was switched off) as it simply wouldn't fit. There were a couple of big sites as well as backups and files I was storing temporarily (some from 2007, temporarily indeed) for which I needed to find a solution. 

Ultimately, the solution became taking some sites offline and a judicious use of rm (and occasional sprinkling of rm -rf), but I managed to get it all moved over. I also noticed that Linode had just opened in a London datacenter. So I moved my VPS from Newark to there at the same time. It's much more responsive when working on the server now.

It was my birthday yesterday. It passed fairly quietly although I still had fun. I was given a PSP Go, which is really awesome. So far I've been playing Final Fantasy VII and GTA:Liberty City Stories. It took a bit of work to get the wifi working on it (it could see the router fine but would either timeout or complain the signal was too weak), but it turned out I needed to re-enable 802.11b on my router - which I had turned off previously because we weren't using it. I got myself a book (Effective STL) and the 9 Limited Collectors Edition on Bluray. After work I ended up eating chinese food, having a couple of drinks, playing some Rock Band and watching Jaws (still a cool movie). Paul worked his bakery magic and made a very tasty cake. All told a really good day. Many thanks for all the birthday wishes.

Update: As I may not have been clear, Paul actually baked the cake himself, he didn't purchase it from a shop.

I started up Battlefield: Bad Company as I'm interested in playing the sequel when it comes out next month and missed the original game when it was released. Not bad so far. I've also got BioShock 2 arriving this week which I'm reasonably excited about. All I need to do now is invent that time machine so I actually can get through all of this; lots of new releases over the coming months and not enough spare time.

I've finally got some of the prints I've been collecting over the years framed. I'll post some pictures once a few more have arrived. It's something I've been talking about doing for about 5 years and it's nice to finally have some movement there.

I'm playing Mass Effect 2 currently. It's really impressive. I have some complaints about some of the story choices and new gameplay mechanics, but nothing really major. I'm having a blast saving the galaxy again. The import feature is probably my favourite thing they've done, as being able to continue my story that reflects my choices is pretty amazing. It feels like I'm nearing the end though.

Recently I've watched Moon.  A very nice movie - even after I had most of the major plot points spoiled. Sam Rockwell does a really good job in it (especially considering the bulk of the movie is just him and Kevin Spacey's disembodied voice). I also watched Blue Harvest and Something, Something, Something, Dark Side. I haven't really watched any Family Guy in the past, it came on after I stopped watching TV, but I really enjoyed those. I might have to pick up some of the episode box sets.

Rest of photos here.

<Alan sits down to start work for the year>

It's actually been snowing since I took this picture, so it's even worse now.  Might grab another picture later.