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Android Initiation

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

In August of this year I was adopted into the Android family sold my Nokia N95 8GB (after replacement post beer immersion) for a decent sum using the massively over-advertised service MazumaMobile.  After a fair bit of research I was attracted to the Samsung i7500 (Galaxy), but after waiting a number of months for its delayed release, went with the HTC Hero instead.


The HTC Hero with Sense UI

In hindsight this was without doubt the best decision  due to a few reasons:

  • it’s the first Droid with custom UI (SenseUI), and while slow/buggy at first has moved in leaps and bounds since (now other manufacturers have their own UI
  • the developer community supporting HTC Android devices helps with update and optimisations
  • hype around the Hero and its release (as well as an ‘award’) have made it very popular boosting community support
  • right from the start there’s been a few dedicated devs who’ve been releasing custom made and highly optimised ROM’s/kernels based on pre-released HTC and Google builds
  • did I mention SenseUI yet?

In contrast, the Galaxy has a large OLED screen with fantastically vibrant colour output and clarity, but there’s just no dev community and the hype has all but died since its initial release.


The Samsung Galaxy i7500 with stock Android UI

Stating the obvious, but one of the things that makes Android a great platform and sets it apart from the iPhones, Symbians and Blackberrys of the world is its open nature and customisability which doesn’t help when there’s no developer community to hack away at kernel compilation, optimise builds and boot process, make customised themes or cross breed apps/software accross other Android devices.

With Motorola Milestone, Sony Experia X10 and a multitude of models from Acer, Dell, HP (some big names in the computing industry there!) as well as a whole list of upcoming HTC Droids, the next few years is looking exciting.

Stay tuned for a series of posts about the Hero, and its hackery.

http://www.hd911.com/2008/01/nokia-n95-yes-the-black-8gb-one/

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The Longest Read

Monday, November 17th, 2008

I’m not sure what happened to me in the last six weeks, I got back from Greece and apart from a brief post a few weeks ago, I’d all but forgotten about HD911.  I seem to have been floating in some kind of bubble for the past 4-6 weeks and have forgotten all but a few responsibilities and I’m starting to go stir crazy in my own head at the boredom that i’ve created, in my head… Or something like that.

I figured I’d pick up where I left off, and give an after thought on the book I was about to read at the time called Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, and after reading the blurb on its cover, I sniggered and panned it like an arrogant film critic pans a Rob Schneider flick.  Well, shame on me for doing so, and I hate to be cliche’d, but there must be some truth in that saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover…”

Quite frankly if there’s one author who can turn a short story about a failed NFL footballer who gets shipped off to Italy to play in their (minor) league and gets friends, a girl, a love for pizza and a championship trophy into a good story, even in my short experience in reading, I’d have to say it’d be John Grisham.

I’d love to say it’s taken me all this time to read and was a really complex story, it wasn’t, but I was interested from start to finish, and I liked not having to thnk about what I was reading.  So kudos to you, and shame on me for my quick judgement and poor form.

I’m almost 800 pages into the 1,000 page mammoth that is Shantaram Gregory David Roberts, which has kept me right on the edge of my seat since I first picked it up, until last Thursday, when I left it at the pub, moments before stumbling on to the last train home, only to pass out and wake up one stop from Windsor (yes, the place with the castle) in the lovely town of Datchet, to finally get home an hour later cost of £50 as a result of a late night cab ride from the outskirts.  But that’s a story for another day.

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Reading, not the City

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

John Grisham does In a League of Their Own crossed with The Wiggles

I finished my latest book the other day (Andy Mcnab’s - Crisis Four), which ended dissappointingly I’m sad to say, but we’ll get back to that later, and my housemate handed me a book by the famous author, John Grisham. Not that I’ve read any of his wares, apart from about an hour spent trying to get into The Firm, but a world famous author with such titles (and Hollywood movies) as The Pelican Brief, The Rain Maker, The Firm and The Innocent Man I was expecting a top notch crime thriller.

The books title is Playing for Pizza, and this is it’s blurb:

“Rick Dockery was a quarterback for one of America’s most famous football teams when he gave arguably the worst performance in his league’s history.  Overnight Rich became a laughing stock and unemployable in his own country.

But somehow RIck’s agent finds him a job.  He is guaranteed a starting position and a salary.  The only problem is that the team that wants him is in Parma, Italy.  The American footabll league in Italy is tiny and unlike RIck, the Italian players only get paid in free meals.

Rick has never been to Italy, so it’s no surprise that the country has a few surprises for him.  What follows is a delightful, heart-warming storay of an innocent abroad.”

Now, I’m not one to judge.  I’m not a critic, and my experience with reading books for pleasure only goes back about 9 months, but could you think of a more boring (nor ridculous sounding) synopsis for a book?  It’s like every 80′s American sports movie (… You know the ones, underdogs fight hard to win all season, then drama, then the team wins in overtime), crossed with the likes of Home and Away (an Australian soap opera).  

I honestly thought I was being had, and the cover was indeed a satircal ploy to get you sucked into a book with all kinds of death and debauchery, but on inspection, its a real book, by a real author, and a good autor at that.  The top of the book even claims it to be, “The International Number One Bestseller”, though I’ll garuntee that has nothing to do with this particular title.

As I said though, who am I to judge?!? The quagmire of life experiences undertaken in the story surely leave my solid reading history of crime thrillers for dead, and put the reader at a new level of enlightenment.  At least I hope this is the case.  I’ll read it though, it sounds interesting enough, and I’m intrigued to find out if there’s something I’m missing like the short for a movie that tells you nothing at all about the movie in general.

Time for me to get started, and report back as soon as possible.

What a movie!

The Growing List

Since I started reading again I’ve notched up fair few titles on the literaty bed post, whatever that means, and I’m loving it so far.  I’ll be looking at branching out a bit and trying some new genre’s too.  Any suggestions?

The list so far, in the last 12 months:

 

  • I Hope They Server Beer In Hell – Tucker Max
  • The Alphabet of Manliness – Maddox
  • Gun’s Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond
Then since May this year:
  • One Shot – Lee Child
  • Tell No One – Harlen Coben
  • Bad Luck & Trouble – Lee Child
  • Killing Floor – Lee Child
  • The Woods – Harlen Coben
  • Hornet’s Nest – Patricia Cornwell
  • Die Trying – Lee Child
  • Tripwire – Lee Child
  • CityBoy, Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile – Geraint Anderson
  • Crossfire - Andy McNab
  • Fallen Dragon – Peter Hamilton (my first forway into Space Sci-fi, what an awesome book)
  • The Visitor – Lee Child
  • Echo Burning – Lee Child
  • Remote Control – Andy McNab
  • Without Fail – Lee Child
  • Crisis Four – Andy McNab
See the issue here?  I’m basing my time almost completely around two authors, and I’ll run out of their work soon enough which will be horrible, so I need to branch out a bit more.
I’m planning to read:
  • Playing for Pizza – John Grisham (I’m looking forward to it now!)
  • Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts (Sitting here waiting to be read)
  • Freakonomics – Steven Levitt
  • Digital Fortress – Dan Brown
  • The rest of the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child
  • The rest of the Nick Stone series by Andy McNab
  • The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll
  • Kite Runner
  • One of Peter Hamilton’s Trilogies
  • More Harlen Coben
  • Try John Grisham’s more serious titles
  • One of Len Deighton’s Non Fiction books (a recommendation)
I’m always open to suggestion though, so post any replies, please!  I’m turned off by girlie stories (Danielle Steel), middle earth Scifi (like Lord of the Rings, I’m not sure why) and Mills and Boon (If I wanted porno, i’d download it).

Afterthoughts

I said at the top of this post that I’d get back to why I found the end of Crisis Four (the third book in Andy McNab’s Nick Stone series), and it won’t mean much without having read the book, but I just thought it was too transparent.  I could see the outcome of the story after about the first 15 – 20% of the book, and it just ended so abruptly.  

I’d say this is a really good reason to space out these series I’ve been reading as I guess like anything else thats done repeatedly you get to know the author, and how his/her writing works, and can quickly weed out plot lines if they’re similar to previous titles.  Not only this, I found a dissapointing book a bit of a kick in the guts from what is so far such an awesome series, I’d imagine its better to space out the pleasure of the other books as long as possible.

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Enter The Nikon (D40)

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

It’s not quite as catchy a title as Enter the Dragon, nor does it pack the one-inch-punch shown off by Bruce Lee, as shown in the movie, but my new toy can take a fantastic looking picture.

It’s my new Nikon D40, an entry-level Digital SLR camera that’s small, light and packs a load of features that I couldn’t list, nor describe off the top of my head.  I’ve had what you might call a keen interest in hobby photography for a while now without good equipment or any real knowledge of what I should actually be doing.  Basically this has meant keeping my phone or our Sony Point&Shoot camera in my pocket and pointing it at anything (everything).

Nikon D40 – My new baby

I’ve had my eyes opened though, not just with the quality of the photos or beauty of the camera (yes, its awesome looking), but I’ve very quickly started to understand all the photographic terms and tools in a way that I’ve never been able to before.  Having full control (SLR helps.. a lot) over manual settings and seeing the result has helped to immediately see some of the places I’m going wrong and how to improve on these.

I can remember from a very young age my father (an avid photographer hobbyist from way back) explaining in super technical terms what exposure, aperture, ISO speed and shutter speed were, or what a light meter, polarising filter or macro lens does.  I felt I knew the basics, but it didn’t really help to understand when to use a high aperture, or change ISO speeds (an old Canon Powershot I own allowed manual controls over such things).

I’ve had a whirlwind introduction to the basics and I’m starting to understand how differing ISO speeds affect the shot in different situations (low light, speed/motion blur, etc), and how changing the aperture or f number (ooooh techy!) can give a different depth of field.  The main thing is though, just how good the photos come out as a finished product.  WIthout any post editing (though most still need it, I’m in no way perfect) or cropping here are some examples of a few shots:

Temple at top of Acropolis, Athens

Late Afternoon in Santorini

Dusk in Paros

The main thing I’ve noticed is the colour and clarity, (I know, I sound like a diamond salesman), in the photos, like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  The detail that comes out from a closeup portrait is nothing less than amazing, and this is all from the basic entry level Digital SLR with the standard kit lens (18-55mm) taking 6.1 megapixel photos.  And crazy enough, the resulting JPEG image is smaller than our previous camera, the lower resolution and MUCH, MUCH lower quality Sony Cybershot.

So much to learn, but I’ve found the main thing I’ll have to master first is how to compose each shot, as I found from almost 900 photos taken over the week in Greece at least 90% of them are either completely wrong (out of focus, wiped out exposure), or are just taken incorrectly with the wrong amount of information in (or out) of the photo.  Learning exactly what to photograph in a way that actually looks good is the first hurdle.

It’s going to be an expensive hobby though, as upgrading the lens (to a much higher zoom such as the 18-200mm) costs almost three times as much as the camera did to start with!

Check out Ken Rockwells site for some D40 lovin: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d40.htm

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Tagggit – Geotagging/Social Networking Application

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

An exciting new app was bought to my attention recently, and it goes by the name of Tagggit.  Tagggit is a social networking application where you add friends and build communities, and then tag locations with photographs to share with the public or those within your communities.

The interesting part comes when you add it as a mobile application (avaiable as a Symbian application), using the inbuilt location finder (GPS, Wifi), geotagging your current activity is as easy as pressing a button.  From here, your friends, family, and the public around you can see where you’re currently located, or the event/location/highlight you’ve just tagged, depending on your desired privacy level.

Some obvious uses for this are listed on the site, such as:

  • Tagging points of interest around a city (Streets on the Monopoly Board anyone?)
  • Tagging a location for a party/dinner with photo/directions on how to get there
  • Telling your friends which pub you’re at for after work drinks

I was thinking some other idea’s could be:

  • A digg-styled tag system where users can Vote Up/Vote Down other tags
  • Location finding game where small snapshots are taken around a city and have to be located by other players (like naming a movie or product from a small cut-out of a bill board or poster).
  • Non vandalistic Graffiti?!  Maybe not.

Clearly the best thing is the Symbian application which works perfectly on my phone (yes, the same Nokia N95), and is a welcome addition to the growing library of apps I’m using on a daily basis.

Tagggit is in private beta release stage at the moment, but is soon to be available to the public, so stay tuned.

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Curiously Perverse Outburst on Packed Train

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

I was reading my book on the train on the way to work today, Remote Control by the British author (and ex-SAS soldier) Andy McNab, and came across a line that made me laugh.  It wasn’t just any laugh though, but a sudden outburst, the kind that makes you look like the special autistic child or some kind of greasy pervert, the kind that directs eyes toward you.  Hundred’s of the beady little f$%kers.

I should prefix this with a bit of background, after about thirty or forty pages of the authors build up to an action scene, the main character, Nick Stone,  describes in detail how stealth is the key to any subtle operation.  He describes in full the surveillance required in the stake out, and how each part of the target (IRA headquarters) was broken into without extreme force.  This goes on, and on, and as you’d expect thing’s eventually go hay wire as Stone is discovered and is seconds away from death via handgun down his throat after being taken out by a fire extinguisher to the back of the head.

By this point, I’m engrossed, the build up was enormous, and I’m literally hanging off the end of my seat wondering what on Earth is going to happen next.  There’s a small scuffle and Stone jams the gun, temporarily disabling it and a scuffle breaks out eventually resulting in the enemy being shot in the head.

This was followed by:

“He was going to die soon.

Tough Shit.”

It’s a pillow, what a horrible prank!

In hindsight it doesn’t seem anywhere near as funny, but it blew me away at the time.  After such an enourmous build up with everything and every moment described in such precious detail, the climax was abrupt, like a kick in the guts.  I have to liken this to getting amazing sex, mind blowing passion with the ultimate build up:

"mmmm...."
"ah..."
"MMMMmmmmm yea!"
"Oh.  Job's done"
"Yea, would you like a cup of tea?"

I’d half expected another ten pages describing the blood as it made its passage from the chest driven by the last few beats of the heart, up the arteries, and out the convinient new escape vent in the head.  But no.. He was dead, and that was it.

Bloody good book though, both Andy McNab books I’ve read so far have been an excellent read, which makes them incredibly hard to put down.

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Weather

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Here I am, the summer-seasoned Australian wishing it was Winter again, because the English summer may have got the better of me.  I’ve been away from Perth for a while now, but I can feel I’ve got a relatively good memory of what the 40o+ celsius days were like, and even going to work in those temparatures for weeks on end didn’t seem as bad as this last week has been in London.

I still feel like a nance, especially as I keep seeing others wearing long sleeves, and even layers (one thing I will never understand about English people, their ability to layer clothes is second to none), but I can’t wait for the winter to come back again.  It was nice being able to walk to work without sweating, and sit at the office without sweating, though that is partly due to the terrible quality air conditioner we’ve got in our basement Nike factory, despite the fact its in most expensive area for office/business rent in all of the European Union.  Perhaps that’s the reason the air conditioner doesn’t work.

Here comes the worst part, it was only 28 degrees today, which is only just bordering on acceptable swimming weather in Australia, but I’d have happily taken a swim in the Thames to cool down.  Yesterday was a little hotter again, at 31 celsius, but its a different kind of heat, and there’s a whole lot less air conditioning.

What have I become? My sweetest friend…

Johnny Cash – Hurt

Johnny Cash – Hurt (Nine Inch Nails Original)

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Software Development: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back..

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

At the office, we, the Web Services team form a team of four people who handle the core data storage and communications centre for the companies main application.  It’s by no means the most complex (it’s extremely simple in fact) or even the most important, but none the less, it forms the glue between each of the client applications and hosts the file/data store for all shared information used throughout the system.

As part of the build process we’ve done a recent refactor which improves performance and security and aims to generally make our service easier to consume by every device that uses it.  This process has taken the better part of six weeks next to full time work by four of us and at least two weeks work from a fifth person that left recently.  I don’t want to say I’ve poured my heart and soul into it, that would be lieing, but its definitely been something that we’ve become immensely proud of.

The Software Development Life Cycle
The Software Development Life Cycle

Anyway, today the decision was made to drop all the work completed toward the new version, and continue where we forked off on the previous release, which really is a huge shame.  Now I feel like we’ve taken a step backward, erasing a bunch of work that would have ultimately made the project a lot more stable and laid a few of the foundations for future-proofivity, if thats even a word.  I shouldn’t get too aread of myself though, in reality it was months away from the final goal, but at least there was move towards that goal.

I shouldn’t be surprised though, there seems to be many examples of this and far worse (mal)practices in the IT industry around the web, and it seems to me to often be the way the things work, especially in smaller Software Development situations.  I’ve even seen it before at previous jobs, and its never pretty.

The thing that gets me though, is the absolute waste of resources and man-hours that goes into a mistake such as this.  Assuming we worked two thirds of the week each, I’d put the time spent at:

4.5 staff x 27 hours x 6 weeks  = 729 man hours

By my crude calculations this is just about enough man hours to build a small skyscraper, or the Titanic if you will, but… That’s Life, after all!

Who knows, in another month, the project will probaly take another path altogether requiring a complete rewrite, refactor or perhaps disbanded altogether!

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Cornwall again…

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

So amidst all the stress about money, and pressure to get stuff ready for the trip to Russia, I’d almost completely forgotten about our four day trip back down to Cornwall again.  Although I’ve now seen it several times before, its sure to be a fun relaxing weekend with some sunshine, good company and of course good liquor.

Golf in Cornwall

Going down there as a foursome should be interested, just like old times again.  It has its advantages too, I wasn’t there to pick up the hire car, which means I don’t have to drive.  This is a good and a bad thing, bad because I desperately want to drive an automobile again (even if it is a four door Focus), but good because I’ll compensate by drinking, and catching up on some further reading of a new book or Arrested Development episodes.  I swear, this show gets better every time I watch it.

I’ve taken it upon myself to come up with a challenge for this extended weekend, but this challenge won’t involve the best sub £1,000 replacement vehicle for a UK Police Astra Diesel (ala the latest episode of Top Gear). I’m going to attempt to try every Cornish beer I can find, and write a small set of notes on each, The Great Cornish Beer Review.  This will involve going over my favourites from previous trips down to the foot, such as:

  • Tribute Ale – A deliciously smooth brown ale, continuously drinkable all night, available in both Oxford, and the Twickenham Tup (20m from our front door), plus probably many other locations around London.  (Warning: ghastly when warm).
  • Sharps Doom Bar – If I remember correctly, this bitter had a deceivingly strong taste to it, not that it’s in anyway a low alcohol beer.

Tribute Cornish Ale

The hardest thing about this of course is, despite my vast vocabulary (riiight), I have a pallete about as sensitive as the calloused palms of a full time grave digger.  Indeed, I think the words are in there, but picking the taste of raspberries from a 20 year old bottle of Shiraz doesn’t come to me naturally, at least not without reading the label.  I know what i like, but why I like Guinness, Tribute, Victoria Bitter and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale even though they’re vastly different types of beer, I don’t really understand.

We’ll see how that goes, anyway.

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Posted in Drinking Culture, Life, Travel, UK | View Comments

Sonique, and the dawn of the MP3 revolution

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Remember the days of Winamp, that funky, light (~v2 anyway) little MP3 player? It was the ultimate accessory on every geeks tools belt, along with ICQ, mIRC, Netscape and possibly Eudora (though I never cared for it).  I remember it, very fondly, it was in my opinion responsible for bringing MP3 music to the masses, or at least to those geeky enough to have gone out looking for it.  It did, what every good music player should, and what many of todays media players faily miserably at (especially a certain Media Player that’s at ver 11).  Simplicity is what it did well, and at the time it worked fantastically.

Winamp 2 (simplistic)

Winamp v2 – Basic, like a crappy car stereo

Sonique media player was a funky upstart that was in development about the same time, which had a completely different approach to to the MP3 and media playing application.  It went outside the box, of what a normal application looked like with funky designs and skins that didn’t fit into the shape of a normal window, and if I remember correctly came standard with a host of plugins, visualisation and other addons.

Sonique Player

Sonqiue’s interesting style

Now, to the point of my post!

I was talking to one of the guys at the office the other day, and it turns out he was one of the lead developers on the Sonique application and some of the plugins that came with it to produce oh so clear crystal sound.  He spoke of the hype surrounding the application, and the chance at millions when bought out by Lycos (I think??!), and subsequent downfall as the other competitors tried different/more successful things.

This proves basically nothing except that once again, the world is a tiny place, but oh well, I still think Winamp was the better player!

Off topic, but I still happen to have the original set of MP3′s I first managed to download all those years ago (digitally copied many times of course), but the tracks have managed to stay (embarrisingly) in the collection all these years and have kept their original script kiddie style filenames.  These include such greats as:

  • John Denver’s, Thank God, I’m a country boy (aptly name Denv-ThankGod.mp3)
  • various Smashing Pumpkins songs
  • Paul Simon, You can call me Al
  • Pink Floyd
  • Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin

and many more! Random!

Posted in Development, Music, Online, Other, UK | View Comments

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