I’ve just been getting back into the swing of things after the holiday, and yes, I admit it, have been too lazy to write up the rest of New York. I will try and do it at some stage, it was just that we were busy relaxing and having fun, and I just felt like disconnecting properly after the first few days, so I did. Still very relaxed from it all. But I shouldn’t use that as an excuse not to write, so I will start up again.
Category: toreview
-
Set up an FTP folder in Kubuntu
Small tip today, I found this the other day, and it’s very handy to have FTP folders set up, rather than use a separate FTP program. Just saves on a few clicks here and there.
To set this up in Kubuntu, go to System Menu > Remote Places, then click on Add a Network Folder. You then get a dialogue where you can choose the type of ftp folder you want. You can choose from Webfolder (Webdav), FTP, Microsoft Windows network drive, secure shell (SSH) or recent connections. It’s pretty useful. Pick FTP, enter your settings and click on Save and Connect. You’ll be prompted for your password, which you can choose to save, and then you’re done, and have a permanent connection you can now connect to from the Remote Places folder.
-
Sync Gmail Contacts with Kontact
So I’m on a quest to get, well, everything on everything. I want everything in sync. Now that’s quite a project, so I’m taking little steps. What I’ve done today is to get my Gmail contacts to sync with my desktop contacts app, Kontact (in Kubuntu). I do all my email in Gmail, so it makes sense to me that I have that as the base point. I thought that if I could get my contacts onto the desktop, then I’ve got a place to then figure out how to get them onto my N95 later on.
What I used was a rather nifty piece of software called GCALDaemon. What this is designed to do is to sync Google Contacts and Google Calendars to, well, pretty much most things you can think of. And it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux (as it’s Java-based). Follow the detailed instructions, and then you can have both sync’d. I’ve got it working nicely fairly quickly. The only thing I can’t do yet, rather embarrassingly, is get the Daemon itself to run automatically on login. I’m going to hassle someone to help me out with this.
One gotcha is to make sure you are running Java 1.5 or higher as your default Java JRE, I missed this first time round.
And I found this thanks to the lovely people at Lifehacker.
-
Getting Skype on the Nokia N95 with Fring
I’m starting to experiment a bit more with what my Nokia N95 can do. I had installed Fring on my old phone a while back, but not really used it too much out of worries about cost. Fring is an instant messaging application for mobiles, which allows you to use MSN, GTalk, and most usefully of all, Skype on your mobile. Now over 3G, as I say, I was worried about cost, and also for Skype I found the quality a bit lacking. However as I can use a wifi connection on the N95, it comes into it’s own a bit more. I spend the majority of my time at home or at work, in range of a connection, so most of the time I can have it turned on, which is how you want to run it. And also on the bus into London from Oxford (which I seem to end up on about once a month on average), which I’m looking forwards to trying out. Nice little moneysaver potentially.
Quite easy to set up, and it picked up all my contacts from the account I had before. I was also pleased to see it now has twitter, so I can update my status on that too. Impressed with it thus far. And in general with the N95, for one I was encouraged to see that for my normal usage of a phone (i.e. not that much in terms of phone calls, but the odd bit of messing about here and there) the battery life is more respectable that I thought. One charge in two days, and I have been messing about with it a lot. I do get the impression it drains faster on wifi, and I haven’t starting using it as a media player yet (need to get a decent memory card first). So far, glad I made the switch from the 6300.
Related Posts:
Review of the Skype Mobile Beta on the Nokia N95
Skype Beta for Nokia N95 now available -
Moving to a new phone – Nokia N95
Well I’ve been away for a week in New York, which was rather exciting and relaxing. Upon my return to work, I was somewhat delighted to find my new phone had arrived. I’m now the proud owner of a Nokia N95. So naturally I’m going to be testing out just what I can do with it and Linux. Baby steps tonight, I’ve managed to copy over a few files manually, just so I could check that video Drum n’ Bass podcasts work okay on it. I’ve just been listening and watching the Hospital Records video podcast #3 on it, which looks and sounds great, especially with headphones on. Definitely happy with how the N95 handles such things.
However the challenge is now to get it really working for me as best I can. I want to replace my iPod with it, so I need to see if I can get it to sync with Amarok like my iPod nano does. I’d like to get a reasonable level of contact management working, better than I have managed with the 6300 so far. And I would like to see what else I can do with it. Of course I’ll be tracking my progress on here too.
What I also hope to do though, is to try these things out on a few Nokia models, so I’ll hang onto the 6300, and may try and revive my previous phone as well. I’ve got a little collection now, so it makes sense to try a few things out on them, and see if I can broaden my knowledge a little further.
-
New York – Day Two
Sunday 3pm
The world looks a whole lot better after a good sleep, several coffees, and a decent shower. I think I’ve about cleared back to human now. A good start today, we got up reasonably early, had breakfast, then headed for Central Park up 7th Avenue. The Manhattan streets are a bit of a surprise, hustle and bustle, sure, but not too hectic. Still seeing a Parisian side to it all.
Eighteen blocks up isn’t that much of a walk as it turns out, and certainly didn’t feel as far as the scale on the map suggested it might. We’ve been taking in the look, the feel, and certainly the smell of it all. Smell hits you everywhere, food, cars, and especially the sewers, which are astonishing when they hit your nosebuds full-tilt.
Once you get into Central Park, it only takes about a hundred yards to lose the city somewhat. It’s huge, beautiful and tranquil. Winding, shady, tree-lined paths lead out on many beautiful expanses of lawn. Lots of families playing, couples lounging, people enjoying leisurely strolls. Near the busier intersections of paths, you’ll get buskers, nothing too hectic, lots of gentle moody jazz. There is almost an enforced slow pace to it all. The one exception however is on the roads that wind through the park itself; whilst closed to traffic in the main, they are a constant flood of joggers, inline skaters and cyclists. As a side note here, I appear to be blending in well, I was asked three times to take photos for tourists. As another side note, I may clearly need to lose some weight.
Having drank the tranquility in, we then set off along 5th Avenue. This is shopping heaven, simply put. If you extracted every single clothing brandname that met the approval of Mrsfb from her mind, you would find that is was a shop directory for 5th Avenue. We’ve set aside Monday for shopping, so Mrsfb womanfully resisted the lure of Prada et al, and we pressed on to find somewhere for a snack.
We happened up St. Andrews Bar. This would appear to be your classic English pub in America, so it was a heady blend of bar and pub. We were served by an Irishman in a kilt (don’t ask, I don’t know either. Very friendly though) and settled down for a traditional English pint of Stella Artios, followed by a substantial brunch. Omlette with smoked salmon and soft cheese for Mrsfb, fried eggs with ‘Scottish bacon’ for myself. We were presented with ketchup, however I decided to take a bold English stance. “You haven’t got any Brown sauce”, I enquired. “Sure, we’re out of HP, but will Chefs do?”. In New York, on my bacon. I almost wiped away a tear of English pride. Good food, just what we needed after a few hours of walking.
For now we’ve retired back to the hotel, Mrsfb is having a little nap, and I’m writing this in the hotel bar whilst watching NASCAR on a large television. America is alright by me thus far.
Sunday 11pm
Tonight was Times Square. In the daytime, it’s slightly under-impressive, it seems a bit smaller than you thought it would be. In the evening however, it utterly comes alive. The signs glow, the screens scroll through endless implorations to watch and consume, hawkers hawk, generally your eyes are drawn permanently upwards. Religion has something to learn here, there are a few ideas someone could really use and exploit. Maybe I’ll have a go at running a religion soon. Some form of a consumerist religion for the UK?
Wow, I only suggest new religions when I am really tired. I think I must be. I guess this is the proper jetlag then. Cool, I did come to America to experience new things.
-
New York – Day One
Saturday 12am
Wow. In Manhattan, sat on a very nice enclosed balcony, figuring out quite what part of me is jetlagged, and what part is knackered. I think that was about 17 hours of travelling and queuing, all told. Not sure if this is the best time to do the math(s).
Good flight really, quite choppy for the second part of it, but we read and watched movies to distract us. Note to Richard Branson btw: Those screens on the backs of your seats become unwatchable as soon as someone reclines the seat in front of you. The movies I watched were mainly listened too, as all the actors essentially appeared to be shadowy puppets as soon as the chap in front of me got a little tired.
Shuttle bus into Manhattan itself was amazing, just working us into the city a little. Hustle, bustle, yadda *3. However more chilled than I expected. It looks really nice at night, odd pace to it all, almost looks Parisian. Big boulevards, people eating out on the streets (okay, sidewalks). And like the French, they drive with their horns here. Mirror, horn, signal, horn, maneuver, horn.
Tomorrow we do Central Park and Times Square. I get the camera out, and go to work. I may spend half the day in black and white. But I think it is now time to retire and pass out.
-
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Okay, I said a few posts ago it had got cold. I was wrong. Now it’s got cold. Really cold. It’s still not October yet. This isn’t promising. I’d suggest buying shares in woolen mills.
Off to see Ska Cubano tonight. Should be a good gig, and it’s my first opportunity to see the new Oxford Academy (formerly the Zodiac, formerly The Venue). Looks good from the outside. Will report back soon.
-
WordPress 2.3 is out now – get it whilst it’s hot (maybe)
Time for a new release of WordPress. WordPress 2.3 brings a long awaited feature, actual tags instead of categories. Word so far is that they are quite basic, and that the underlying tables for WordPress are quite different to cater for them, so it is quite possible that it could break plugins you have in existing installations. This is the good thing about hosting WordPress on your own webspace though, you can test it out properly. I have a few blogs, including a test blog. On the test blog, I can run upgrades like this, having turned all the plugins off, then turn them back on one by one to see that they works. Saves a lot of time debugging. Since WordPress can be such an easy install, it’s really worth having such a testbed.
For more information about WordPress 2.3, I’d really reccommend listening to Lorelle Vanfossen on the latest episode (#29) of the WordPress Podcast. They really get into a good level of detail about what you can expect, and what issues you need to be aware of. I’ve installed a few .1 advances of WordPress before with various levels of success (usually good to be fair), but having listened to this in detail, I’m feeling more cautious, and will test properly first this time. I’m probably a couple of weeks away from having chance to do this, but when I do, I’ll review the process and show my workings.