Things about Internet and Nokia smartphones

Waxing lyrical about my future phone

2011-12-12T15:28:00.000-08:00

My next phone will most probably be Nokia Lumia. It looks great, it's got a very fancy touch screen that no other phone out there has (yet), and it is a Windows phone. Yes, Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of all the stuff that is edgy and independent. At the end of the day, I had been the proud owner of the Nokia N900.... up until I dropped it into the toilet on the Isle of Wight.... I had flushed by then, don't worry! (and don't laugh, it was a tragic moment for me!).
N900 is a mini-computer really, it's got a Linux based OS. I had some outrageous applications installed like VNC viewer that allowed me to see my laptop's desktop on the go (I mean I was on the go whilst my laptop was at home) in the highest quality resolution that you can imagine. Anyway, (well I do miss my N900...) my next phone is going to be Nokia Lumia because 1. Nokia doesn't want anything to do with Linux anymore, and 2. I do want to have more phone buddies than I used to have with N900. Just look at all these people with iPhones. It didn't even have a multi-tasking feature (I am not even sure the new edition has, but just in case wrote this in the past tense), it was slower than all Nokia smartphones, and it had a much worse camera, but they all flocked to it like bees to the honey and started showing each other and me (!) stuff that the iPhone could do. Well I had all the same and more in my N900 but iPhone was easy, which meant I could only admire my phone on my own.

So from now on I say 'no more!' to the mobile phone isolation. And I see Lumia as a chance to make me more phone-sociable. And when I think how it should integrate with everything that is Microsoft, i.e. my laptop's insides, I just can't wait when my current contract runs out...

Thinking of socialising and the toilet on the Isle of Wight has suddenly, just now, made me think about how people relate to each other..... I am single right now, by the way, and am very happy with it as I am just taking risks, not knowing how things will work out, but being very content with all, which is just amazing, it feels like a step towards nirvana or something... Well, may be just a little step... So, yeah, and as many of single people would agree they do sometimes, I sometimes think who I would want to be with next. And right now I am thinking that I just want somebody who would cherish me more than I did my N900 and will never drop me into anywhere... because there are lots of people out there who would do that (well, I did it to my N900!), even sometimes you meet somebody who gives you a moment of your childhood dreams and you just lose your mind a bit because of that and then he still manages to push you into the loo. And hence what I am going to do will be this: I will get myself Nokia Lumia, masquerade behind the mass satisfaction it produces, show it off to each and everybody, and will only present my N900 story (or side...err?) to somebody who cares.

There you go: a blog about Nokia smartphones and other things relevant (teehee!)

P.S. Legal disclaimer: I don't masquerade. I present my N900 story to each and everybody whether they care or not.

2011-10-09T05:30:00.000-07:00

Having restored the StumbleUpon toolbar in the Firefox I keep pressing the 'Stumble!' button and it keeps delivering most awesome web-sites that I would have never found myself otherwise. As so many times before (each time the OS is re-installed, or Firefox is upgraded, or a new laptop pruchased certain settings and software just disappear into oblivion and you forget about them as if they have never existed. Given the usefulness of something like StumbleUpon it is ever so slightly surprising how my memory dares to play such tricks!) I suddenly feel addicted to this humble 'Stumble' button. Here is a list of most recent findings:
1. Fyels service to upload and publcly share files to the total of 9Gb for free! All one needs to do is to drag a file into the black field and voila! I suppose there may be some security issues, however in two weeks' time there will be a virtual storage space available via login - with the same free 9 GB. They ask to sign up as at the beginning it will be by invitation only. So here it is: http://omnissient.com/follders/ for your convenience (yes, the address is different from Fyels, but it's the same provider and service)
2. You might have been among those 15 million who have already seen it, but you might as well not, so here is a vision of a near future by a glass maker Corning, which is amazing and utilises technologies already available so it's really coming!
3. WhatShouldIReadNext web-site does not require much explaining
4. Mood radio that I liked and the Last.fm online radio that I liked very much :)
5.Cloud computing OSs - now this is just the future coming onto us. I tried out Glide OS and it seems a little heavy and confused. Don't get me wrong, it looks all shiny with all these nice buttons but given that it comes with 30Gb free storage I thought it would be a perfect alternative for the Dropbox and signed up.

One trial sync of two folders and it was all finished for me: I don't know how it managed it but all files were uploaded in some weird way so that they were out of folders online though showing them neatly in two folders in the PC software. So disappointing! The speed of uploading was ridiculously slow as well. I don't understand how they could mess up such a simple thing! There are other OSs, too, you can check the whole lot of them through this post and this one (so many people are writing about it now). What is good in Glide is that they have a web-meeting app that provides a free web- and video-conferencing facility. If you ever tried to set up a group video call on Skype you know what I mean! Glide group video call is free!!!

And now that I compared this to Skype I have one prediction: if Facebook doesn't drastically change into a cloud OS soon it will eventually face (hmm...) the decline. Cloud systems have the same ability to connect people, to power chats and video calls, and at the same time to keep all the docs and files in one place. They bring everything conveniently together and as they fight for a place under the sun they will try to provide as much of free stuff as possible. So, I believe that Mark Zuckerberg should buy one of these and make Facebook an amazing cloud space - he will be on for a world domination for another hundred years, definitely!

6. Finally, I stumbled upon this cover of the Katie Perry song by..... oh well.... just go there and watch!

2011-08-28T14:41:00.001-07:00

I keep writing here of all the other things but not mobile phones anymore... I don't know why, let's hope it's a phase! Perhaps a lot of people have come across this video via Yahoo! site but it made quite an impression on me. I have just been walking in the town dressed in brown colours, bright red raincoat finished off with grey flat sandals and a grey cotton bag with white and red letters ('Bristol' in red) - a gift from one very thoughtful friend. As it is usual there have been some people noticing it too much: let's face it I am not in London, and not even in Bristol anymore - I am in this deep provincial leafy sleepy place where the majority looks the same and treasures their plain looking outfits that hide each and every corner of their bodies. Thank goodness for the university and its students or I would get short-sighted. For very plain looking people my look sometimes is so irritating that they cannot hide it. Often I just ignore, or laugh in my mind, but occasionally it makes me feel as if I am in a cage and need to get out of here to some place more kind and more intelligent this very second.

There is a concept in this country of 'trying too hard'. It is directly linked to the concept of 'being humble' but I will not go on to discuss this now as it is not related to fashion as much as the former. I have not encountered this before arriving here. Outside the island the related concept is in Anton Chekhov's words: 'everything should be beautiful in a man: the face, clothes, the soul, and the thoughts' calling for perfectionism that is the opposite of 'trying too hard'. It is automatically assumed here that one who takes care of their appearance is somehow trying too hard versus others. Stereotypically, a sizeable majority cannot imagine that such person tries to please herself or himself only, caring little of what others might imply. I always dress in accordance with how I want to feel today or these several hours and never ever I think of impressing anybody with what I wear, simply never. This is why I find myself out of sync with others on a regular basis.

Fashion is one of the arts, and I find it makes a dull day brighter. My clothes are in harmony with what I think and what I feel, and for these reasons I like to add something out of ordinary because I am a no ordinary person. For these same reasons I wear nice underwear each and every day even if I put on outdoor hiking rags on me. I have never worn underwear to impress my men, I only try to feel good everywhere I go: my mum usually makes it a point to go through my suitcase and count it all pointing out that I am only visiting her for ten days and with no boyfriend carrying my luggage. This is really not about others. This is me, myself, and I. Whether it is bright red, low cut, too short, long, closed or open, lacy, racy, grey, green, or black. I feel this way, I like it, I wear it. Full stop. (I wish I could print the last two sentences out on a huge banner and hang it in the middle of the town!)

I don't think I will go as far as taking pictures of myself in different outfits but I've been hooked and will be checking the Mademoiselle Robot blog on a regular basis.

2011-08-03T16:18:00.001-07:00

I've just read this article about paying £28k for kidneys and just had to say something about it. Aside go IT and mobile phones, to put some words about medical ethics.

I've read some comments by other people on one forum and they generally are representative of the society as a whole: you get overly altruistic people and those who don't care at all and those in between everywhere you go. With all this emotional response there is one thing, which is missing for me: the justification.
The only justification is the fact that the modern medicine and modern healthcare are failing to help people become healthier and hence we need to start sparing our kidneys. Dr Rabbitt Roff has noticed, within the confines of her office crammed with books and academic journals that the statistics on obesity and hypertension showing considerable growth in cases in recent decades. She then noticed the cases require more kidneys. She then thought hard how to solve it and 'eureca' she found a solution - let's legalise kidney trade. And the genius she is she even targeted one particular category of potential donors: young and foolish students overburdened with debts who think they have indefinite lives ahead and therefore cannot perceive the risks of having just one kidney as well as those who are older and have given up on binge drinking. What does this say about Dr Rabbitt Roff? To me it says she is one of the narrow minded, almost ignorant academics, who are so preoccupied by one particular subject that they cannot see anything beyond their noses. People do like to be acknowledged as achieving something great, innovating, and inventing so that they can contribute and be successful at the same time. A very very small number of people would actually try to innovate for the sake of it, only to contribute to the progress of humankind. What would be the progress of humankind in this case, ladies and gentlemen? I say reduction in obesity and hypertension cases. Would not all of us wish this? Would you not rather have a 95 year old who is capable of living a happy and healthy life till he or she dies instead of an 80 year old (because they would not live till 95) plagued with disease and unable to move? Full of transplants though! I would rather see this whole stupid system pay £5k - £10k (or may be even less) per all students and young people to enforce healthy lifestyles. I would rather see a programme that starts from school and is part of the medical education for future doctors that teaches how to keep happy, fit, and content with life and have as little of medicines as possible. There are nations that live long, happy and healthy lives with no cases of Alzheimer's, and definitely with no cases of obesity. I would rather donate my money for the research into how urban life can be transformed into something that keeps people active and moving, not just having couple of expensive gyms, but integrating the need for exercise into the urban fabric. I would not donate my kidney as I would have no say about who should benefit from that. I would never want it to end up with a person who never cared enough for his or her own kidney having had junk food all their lives. I would not sell my kidney because I would agree that obesity and other diseases cannot be prevented. Dr. Rabbitt Roff should go back to school and learn some more about other subjects - it would give her a little more perspective, a bit of a different angle on how to solve the issue of statistics. But then she wouldn't get so much attention if she was to start talking about healthy lifestyles, would she?

2011-06-24T16:50:00.001-07:00

My computer is on the brink of.... No, it's me who is on the brink of something because my lovely laptop was damaged for £75. Is it fair that I paid for it one grand two years ago in the hope that it would last several years because of sufficiently advanced features and some provincial IT 'wizards' couldn't manage to screw in its bottom cover without disconnecting the DVD drive and making the Wi-Fi button stuck in one place? Is it fair that I paid a lot of hard earned money for them to open and ruin it for yet more of my hard earned money? Is it fair for this to happen after I actually asked one of them to please be careful because I'd had bad experiences with IT shops before?
My user account got corrupted so I could not log in to both of OSs installed and I spent hours trying to figure out how to get into my own computer. Now, I don't know for sure whether the password issue was caused by their mediocre screwing or by me not using the laptop for several months but somehow the absence of the DVD drive in my Computer, the Device Manager, and its IDE controller makes me reasonably well-positioned to argue that the sleepless night I had was their fault as well! I am taking it back to them tomorrow morning and I cannot decide how I should act: should I be sweetly polite with sheepish sounds or cause some lightning and thunder in their dusty nest with a sign 'no unauthorised persons in the static electricity control zone'??????(!!!!) Thank goodness this Saturday will be filled with other better things to do or otherwise I would feel like organising a hunger strike with signs 'no to arrogant computer repair shops!', 'give me your tools and I can fix it myself better than you!', 'it's not IT it's IS (information stupidity)!' and so on and so forth right at their doorstep.

On the other, more positive note: I've been amazed to discover that it's a matter of seconds to restore one's login password in Ubuntu (any Lynux system I suppose): just write a command line in recovery mode and c'est tout! I suppose now I can say that it's a matter of minutes to gain access to Windows account if you've forgotten your password or the user account got corrupted, but it took me so much longer to get to this point! Even when I had a programme installed in Ubuntu to perform a hacker task of gaining access to a so-called 'SAM' file in Windows I still couldn't make it work for about an hour. I typed all command lines I could find on the net and none of them worked. First, there were lines that might have been good for the older Lynux versions and they were useless for my Ubuntu; then, when I'd finally discovered somebody's beautiful blog with everything laid out step by step about the beautiful chntpw programme and I still couldn't make it work I felt like diying and taking with me some of the local IT 'wizards'.... After further deliberation and a lot of to and fro I'd noticed people's comments at the end of that blog post and in particular one short comment by not less than an Einstein's re-incarnation that the command line should have 'sam' instead of 'SAM'.... And how well that worked!
Lynux systems are quite frustrating to be honest as they require a lot of 'soul searching'. The amount of time one need to spend to fix it and things in it prevents me from using it except on these rare special occasions when there is no other choice.

2010-06-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

Following the previous post I've recalled finally what the lost post draft was about: VNC viewer for Nokia N900. Yes, it all works: after installing the app on my device I am now able to access my home computer remotely... I could even work in it and send an email to my mum. The quality of the picture is as high as N900's screen resolution:

Isn't it the most exciting thing ever?! :)

Musings...

2010-06-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

I've just noticed one of the previous blog posts in my Facebook account and having read it through I thought 'hmm... this is not the last post I wrote, there should be another one... but why is it not here??!'

After some head scratching I suddenly recalled that I installed this blogging app MaStory in my mobile phone and couple of weeks ago I was in Bristol and whilst eating some cake had some kind of itch to write about something... That's all I can remember.... No, I also remember that it was a particularly amusing subject... or so I thought then... I then opened MaStory thinking there would be a saved draft of the post. No such luck. That's not good, is it? In frustration I am writing this off the Firefox add-on because I cannot believe that I'd stuck a blog posting software in each 'corner' I could think of and yet not only I didn't manage to save a draft but I also cannot remember anything about this 'exciting' post I was writing! How could this happen in this day and age? If these people in Nokia, Microsoft, Apple and all others of their ilk are not going to sort out very soon a 'mobile' chip to put into my brain so that I could post to the blog each time I think of something 'extremely' amusing I will despair of living...

2010-03-14T16:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a true geek's experience. I lost my Nokia N96 last Saturday, which was very unfortunate and made my life a misery. Can anybody live without a mobile phone? Have you ever tried it? If you say 'yes' and if you continue 'and I was happy' you are simply covering up a total failure that this experiment was! You cannot actually properly function without a mobile phone, because you cannot access the internet whenever you want, you cannot phone, nobody phones you (do they even know you exist?), nobody texts you and you cannot text either, you cannot quickly see what everybody else is up to on facebook, you cannot convert miles to kilometres whenever you need it, and your hand cannot feel the weight of something anymore so it feels quite bare. The list goes on, and the verdict is - you cannot be a happy, complete, person without your mobile phone. Full stop.

Imagine how excited I was when the new and shiny N900 arrived! I opened the box and it was perfect.... Well... until I switched it on. When N900 came to life it was all right at first, then a total disappointment, and then, finally (thank goodness!) it turned out a marvel. All right at first - because there wasn't much in the phone, and as I was getting acquainted with it I started noticing that it lacked some of the functionality of the N96. Disappointment - because Nokia failed to provide a full PC Suite support, or actually a full OVI Suite support, and I had a real battle with the Map Loader as it simply wouldn't work completely despite Nokia's claim to the contrary. Finally, a marvel - because I had discovered a world of Maemo 5 - the OS that is installed in N900. I fixed the Map Loader problem by writing a command in X Terminal provided on myMaemo.com , which was really cool! Then I uploaded each and every useful app I could think of from maemo.org web-site, and fell in love with it. It is the best phone ever. Maemo 5 is an open source OS, which means that the phone will be developed further and will be becoming better and better providing a lot of resources for free. It is similar to the fast and furious Firefox, which is the best browser in the world.

The most interesting application was Hermes. It searches my facebook page, matches friends there with people in my Contacts, and retrieves their information including pictures to add it to the Contacts. It's really convenient because adding pictures manually never worked for me - takes too much time. Now I can update and have different pictures each time a friend changes theirs on facebook. What can I say? XXI century is a good time to live! hehe.

2009-06-15T13:29:00.001-07:00

Compelled to post today because of Iran - it's close to where I am from and I have never seen or thought about its people in the way they are showing ourselves these days. These pictures surprise me as I always heard and thought of the majority of Iranians as religious fanatics. I remember various stories circulated about, for example, one our tourist man wearing a short-sleeved shirt in Iran in hot weather being hit by an Iranian with a shove because men should not expose their elbows! Iran has definitely changed during the last decade and you can see how:

Short sleeves, hey?

2009-04-30T14:30:00.001-07:00

Free-IQTest.net - IQ Test

2008-09-09T13:38:00.001-07:00

My now quite old and worn out Nokia N95 has got catastrophically broken recently ... It was a charging connector, which cracked into two pieces. I must say it is an absolute disaster not to have a mobile, but after Nokia N95 it is even a bigger disaster to return to an older phone model. Luckily I still have my old Nokia 6630, and though I can remember how excited I was when I first got it, this phone is nothing when compared to the power of N95.
The most painful experience was not to have maps and GPS. It became quite clear to me that I am as dependent on satellites around the earth as on my toothbrush.

Thank god, I have finally received the connector today and have been able to repair the phone! If you have a problem charging N95 and need to change the charging connector here is your guide :

it can be done very cheaply by yourself just order the connector online at the UK Mobile Store and don't forget to order a T6 screwdriver on the same web-site as they kindly suggest
get ready: switch on TV and tune in to either Friends or a good "chick-flick", make yourself cup-a-tea, and serve it with biscuits
locate your body strategically on the sofa
have a sip of tea and a bite of biscuit
take off the battery cover from N95, remove the battery, and then remove the back cover of the phone
remove the SIM card and locate two very small silver screws on the sides of the phone, which you need to unscrew
have another sip of tea (and don't forget the biscuit or help yourself to a second one depending on your biscuit-consuming speed!)
back to the phone: locate two more little silver screws on the bottom sides of the phone - unscrew them
detach the bottom lid, which covers the charging connector and a USB connector
remove accurately the keyboard
now the phone will be divided into three parts, two of which are connected to each other
you may need another sip of tea here as it is quite scary to look at what you've just done to your phone...
locate two more little screws, which are black, on top of the phone and unscrew them - don't forget to keep your screws in one place where you can see them at all times or otherwise they will disappear
now you will see at the bottom your charging connector. In my case it was cracked into two pieces. Remove it carefully.
take your brand new connector and place it the same way as the old one - you may need to carefully push it into its place
you can now have many sips of tea and one or two biscuits...
once your connector is in place, you can start putting your phone back into shape: first, screw the top with those black bolts, then the sides, and then the bottom. Don't forget to put your keyboard back into place before screwing the bottom
when everything is back in place you can try charging it - voila! it should all work!

I hope this can help to those of you in need!

2008-06-25T20:06:00.001-07:00

A lot of people have probably at least seen the so-called "clouds" of words (most often tags) across the web. Clouds nicely show the main themes, which are reflected in the collections of bookmarks, blog posts, articles and so forth. If until recently clouds were created on such pages powered by some tricky software now each and everyone of us, mere mortals, can create their very own special cloud on Wordle.
The piece of Java allows one to edit a newly created cloud to a limited, but nevertheless fun, extent. Obviously I have generated a cloud of this blog and here it is in all its glory:

The analysis of the cloud helped me to conclude that I have been generally writing about stuff that I initially planned to cover here: web, N95 mobile phone, various nice freeware and what one can find on the Internet. I had, indeed, "found" some "pages" and written about some topics more than the others: books, Firefox, files, something and everything (how definitive!), and Nokmote - on this I've become really fixed as the tempting app is still not available! The huge size of the words "pollutants", "potentially", "affected", "people", "type", and "metals" is due to that one repetitive post about the most horrible places on the Earth.

If the chosen colour doesn't deserve much attention, I would like to say a word or two about fonts. There is an impressive list of fonts provided, from which you can choose your own distinctive (more or less, sorry) style and they are all hilariously named! The font you see here is "Loved by the King". Simply looking at the cloud can be quite an interesting brain entertainment as the words can be merged to form various meaningful phrases or a whole story!

I also created a cloud for my thesis work and with the font called "steelfish" it took a fabulous shape:

What I like here in particular is that some words form somewhat logical relationships: "monthly - low - prices", "companies - size - sample", "positive - high - markets", or "sorted - financial - portfolios".

To summarise: just go there and create!

2008-06-18T17:35:00.001-07:00

Ok, I simply must go to bed now (as it's 1:25 am here) but I cannot leave this find unpublished on my blog! Once again I urge you to download new Firefox 3 and then install this awesome add-on: PicLens.
If you are on Facebook (or MySpace, or if you regularly visit YouTube, or if you buy stuff from Amazon) it gives you a completely different experience of viewing pictures in 3D like atmosphere straight from all these web-sites! As for me, I am off now to dream of 3D photographs of one cutie on my Friends' list!

2008-06-18T15:56:00.001-07:00

The Web is abuzz with the news about Firefox 3, and I have installed it already as well! If the earlier version was better than Internet Explorer, then this one is simply light years more perfect than IE! The time required to load a page - i.e. the main feature that anybody surfing on the net would hope to be as brief as possible - is worlds apart from the time you waste using Microsoft's piece of work. I think everybody who is sane and healthy should simply go and download Firefox 3 and use it, use it, and use it! The speed, with which pages open up is truly and utterly unbelievable.

I keep asking myself how they have achieved this. A loyal IE user, for example, can think of the page-loading speed as a result of the size of all page's elements like pictures, flash codes and etc, and of his/her computer's capability in terms of memory and processor speed (well and some other technical elements), and hence conclude that one is doomed until broadband speed is improved or until one saves some big money for a powerful machine. Firefox proves that it's all rubbish and what matters is how clever the software developers are! And I salute them!

If you want to learn more about 15,000 improvements that have shaken the world you may find it useful to visit this page.
To tell you the truth I didn't know yesterday that it was the first day the new version became available for download, and only today whilst trying to get some pictures for this post I discovered that by downloading my fresh browser on 17th of June I helped to set a Guinness Record! My certificate is below!

By the way, Firefox has already started working on version 3.1...

2008-06-11T03:01:00.001-07:00

Making a step away from technology and environment I want to tell the world how strange is that Prince Charles paid £453.15 to the Clothiers Company of Worster this week.
This is the actual amount of debt left by King Charles II for the uniforms for his army in 1651. If all of us could "honour" our debts in the same way we would certainly be as rich as the Royal family! This amount's appreciation during the past 360 years makes its real value today worth something around £47,518.07 using the retail price index. (try to measure it yourself with the online calculator on a great site "Measuring Worth"). It is somewhat funny to read that the Prince "was glad he didn't have to pay back any interest" - it should be inflation plus interest to make it a proper repayment, Your Royal Highness! And hold on to your chairs now, because the real value of this debt taking into account retail price index changes and the long-term interest rates (please, note, not the commercial high-street rates) is.... IS 31 billion 972 million 389 thousand 2 hundred and 22 pounds!! The interest only calculation still gives an impressive 291,599,676.87 pounds. It shows how important it is to clear off debts on time...

2008-05-16T16:51:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I get infected by internet-craze which demonstrates itself by my body glued to my laptop for hours and hours and hours... It's when I find something new, interesting and fascinating, which makes all the other activities look pale and boring in comparison. Today - actually yesterday as I am 10 minutes into a new day now - I've found LibriVox.
This is another social-networking/Web 2.0 plain looking, forum-based platform, but what a beauty it is! Several hundred of its volunteers produce free audiobooks for all the planet to listen to. You can find many classics in their catalogue and it's growing each day and each hour. As with everything what I write about I joined them. As overexcited as I was I could not stop from being slightly disappointed to find out that most of the books available there were in English and readers/volunteers in other languages had just started to emerge. After very quick registration process I suddenly recalled that I had an accent! However I was quickly reassured by the nicest site administrators ever that I could read in my own language and in English with my accent no matter what. Their motto is "Acoustical liberation of books in the public domain" - and this can be interpreted in many ways, indeed. Liberation as when all public domain books are easily available to all of the public, as when you only need your ears to function properly to read (well, listen to) a book, as when one can find both originals and translations of the books in many languages, and as when you can find all the books from around the world! Oh, dear, I do feel grateful for living in this day and age!

Through LibriVox I have also acquainted myself with new piece of freeware: Audacity - that helps to record audio files. It's very simple to use once you get past the fear of all the buttons, and is quite useful for recording your own voice (if you are fond of your own voice, of course, or if you volunteered for LibriVox) and for editing music tracks and converting everything into mp3.

And what it is about my diagnosis you are probably asking yourself: my internet-craze syndrom has resulted in one hour of recordings for LibriVox today... Oh well, I am off to sleep!

___________
Photo is from Flickr but ScribeFire doesn't show authors of pictures - I've found it's weak point!

2008-05-15T07:02:00.001-07:00

If you are a fellow blogger and if you use FireFox - it's quite conditional but everybody knows that FireFox rocks, - you would be delighted by this new add-on: ScribeFire 2.2 . I am currently typing this post with its help. It's simply awesome by the looks of it: no more jumping from one web-page to another when you need to create hyperlinks to interesting pages or when you need to add a picture.
Well, let me first try to add a picture:

Voila! I have added the above picture from Flickr without actually typing the URL and going to the web-site directly: it's all here, just one button away!
Well, let me know if you can read this post, because I am going to press the "Publish to "Foreign Girl Diaries"" button and will hope that it will do the job!
Have a good day!

2008-05-14T06:53:00.000-07:00

I've come across a list of 10 most polluted places in the world and would like to share it with you. Blacksmith Institute, who compile it, also have the top 30 list on their web-site, however "top 10" is the most shocking and horrendous. I could not believe what I was reading. Here are the places from hell:

1. Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
Potentially Affected People: 275,000; Type of Pollutants: Organic chemicals, oil, heavy metals including mercury.
2. Linfen, China
Potentially Affected People: 3,000,000; Type of Pollutants: Fly-ash, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, PM-2.5, PM-10, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, arsenic, lead.
3. Tianying, China
Potentially Affected People: 140,000; Type of Pollutants: Lead and other heavy metals
4. Sukinda, India
Potentially Affected People: 2,600,000; Type of Pollutants: Hexavalent chromium and other metals
5. Vapi, India
Potentially Affected People: 71,000; Type of Pollutants: Chemicals and heavy metals
6. La Oroya, Peru
Potentially Affected People: 35,000; Type of Pollutants: Lead, copper, zinc, and sulfur dioxide.
7. Dzerzhinsk, Russia
Potentially Affected People: 300,000; Type of Pollutants: Chemicals and toxic byproducts, including Sarin, VX gas, etc. Also lead, phenols.
8. Norilsk, Russia
Potentially Affected People: 134,000; Type of Pollutants: Air pollution - particulates, sulfur dioxide, heavy metals (nickel, copper, cobalt, lead, selenium), phenols, hydrogen sulfide.
9. Chernobyl, Ukraine
Potentially Affected People: Initially 5.5 million, now disputed numbers; Type of Pollutants: Radioactive dust including uranium, plutonium, cesium-137, strontium, and other metals.
10. Kabwe, Zambia
Potentially Affected People: 255,000; Type of Pollutants: Lead, cadmium

2008-05-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

It's spring and the blood rushes hot, so does the patience: we've been waiting for a "public and free unsigned version" of Nokmote on Samir's web-site for quite a while now thereby making us to betray and sign and install the RockNScroll (...sigh). I've done it. I've just installed the "RNS" app, and have been pushing and pulling for the last hour. It's not that perfect, and hence it's not that enjoyable. I may be having some kind of shaking syndrom because I think that RNS changes the actions it performs when pushing or pulling depending on its own moods. Sometimes it opens folders when pulling, sometimes it does so when pushing, and I can't figure out when to expect the change. My hand is tired now (will it become strong and muscley after a while?!) and I've decided to train my fingers instead by typing this post. Unfortunately, I am not a mobile gamer, so am unable to test its performance as a joystick (or is it more correct to say "to test my hand as a joystick"?).

Most of you lucky people out there had probably had your N95-s with Micro-SD cards installed since the very day of purchase. Alas, myself was at pains to spend 20 quid on it last year, so I bought it just last week for a fiver. 2 Gig for a fiver - can you believe it? It's Kingston and is with two adapters. It made a huge difference: the phone doesn't hang in the slightest when opening applications and folders. It works absolutely smooth now, and I have immediately filled it in with UK maps and with "The Forsyte Saga" audiobook. Nokia has hidden pages called Nokia Beta Labs where you can find various new and, most importantly, free software for smartphones. So, there I saw this handy Nokia Audiobooks app. The PC application helps to process WAV and MP3 files into 3gpp standard, which then can be copied to your memory card and then listened to through the mobile app. As with all Nokia software one needs to follow all the installation, processing, and copying steps precisely as it's written on the web-page. Yesterday I decided to update Nokia PC Suite because it kept notifying me that there were updates available, and it took me an hour to solve post-installation problems and make it all work smoothly.

___________
The 'Audio Equalizer' is by Entertonement from Flickr

2008-04-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

Before going to the pub for my well-deserved half-a-pint I have glanced at my homepage, which is Yahoo!, and my attention has been immediately glued to this piece of news: Unlocking The Internet Of The Future (it's no more on Yahoo! (12.05.08), but I found the article elsewhere). It made me dig the said internet and I found an enormous amount of resources, which all point to the fact that we are all going to face the Grid very soon! The development of the new technologies in this area had advanced a lot during past 10 years or less and most of us did not take notice of all those Grid portals posting their news hence the announcement in the mainstream media is quite a pleasant shock. Just read "The Cloud and The New Utility Companies" article to get an idea of how the world is going to change in a decade! Fantastic!!

2008-03-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

I'd been having some strange times lately (still having...) hence my techno curiosity had to wait before I could spare some minutes to stumble on new stuff. The patience was rewarded though (the patience is the virtue, indeed!) and I came accross this internet gem: http://www.librarything.com . Forgive me if it's not something new for you! They claim to have 360,000 users from all over the world and 24 million books so it's obviously been there for a while. However, for all those belonging to millions of non-members it's a very handy new web-site. As usually, I don't want to write something written before and hence recommend to pop in to Wikipedia and enlighten yourselves about the background of the LibraryThing.
The structure and idea of it is simple and resembles StumbleUpon, about which I have written earlier: it's your plain Web 2.0 social networking web-site that provides you a clean framework for cataloguing your books. If you can find that ISBN code hidden somewhere between an epilogue and a back cover or a front cover and a title page... or on a back cover... or... well, wherever you can find it really! - then the job of cataloguing has never been easier! Input the number, press Enter, and - voila! - your book is there, online that is.

My library shows only 10 books right now, but I promise myself I will be gradually building it up. The added value of this web-site is of course the networking feature, because you can see who owns the same books like yours, you can discuss all matters important, you can join and create groups, and etc., and etc., and etc.

As for mobile phones I was regularly checking out Samir's web-site for his new highly anticipated freeware feature Nokmote to only find the same page informing us that it would be released in the end of January. January has faded away from our memories but Nokmote page keeps insisting. I begin to wonder - does he mean January 2009??? Thankfully, no! As Symbian Freak informs it's been released as promised to donors and some happy chaps can now play games with N95 like with Wii connecting it to a TV! Please, see it here for yourself. No further comments! I am only regretting that I haven't donated anything :) (what was I saying before?... patience is a virtue?).

From the other hand, it appears that Nokmote has a rival. Have a look at posts on Cellnology
about Rock 'n Scroll app for N95 with very telling videos. It seems to do the same thing and is a brain-child of KEYnetik. I am not aware though whether it's going to be a freeware or not; plus cannot comment on specific differences between Nokmote and Rock n Scroll because need more time to investigate them, which I don't have right now, unfortunately.

The TV is showing "Once Upon a Time in America" right now and it strikes me how beautiful the soundtrack is... Good night, ladies and gentlemen.

*Photo is by Ansy from Flickr

2008-01-31T09:29:00.001-08:00

Today I am going to step away from all technical subjects I've been talking about here, and share some thoughts on environment, the problem of global warming and energy shortages. I came across a very interesting short article, which probably sums up my thinking quite very well. It's called "Why Recycling Can Be Utter Garbage" (I love this sentence) and is written by Dr. Eamonn Butler for the Adam Smith Institute. I am not one of those people who think that global warming isn't happening, but rather I am about taking logical actions as opposed to stupid, expensive, and a complete-waste-of-time actions all under the slogan "we must become green".

I was therefore very satisfied to hear Lord Howell and his colleague Carole Nakhle speak at the evening talk this Tuesday about their new book "Out of the Energy Labyrinth". You can familiarise with his opinions by reading the article "The vanity in 'green' virtues"on his web-site.

Yet another piece of evidence to confirm how right I am has been in the news informing us that the energy saving light-bulbs are actually harmful for our health because they have mercury in them (the article can still be found on the Guardian web-site). Thousands of people are actually having an acute reaction to such bulbs and cannot stay in spaces lit up by them for long time.

Let's hope that we will live till the day when we will find appropriate technological solutions for our environmental problems, which will minimise the harm to Earth as much as the harm to ourselves.

(The picture is taken from "kerstin_d's photos" on Flickr)

2008-01-28T12:29:00.001-08:00

I am off to London tomorrow on a business mission and having written some brief notes for my meetings in OneNote, which are not long or large enough for MS Word file to my liking, I've decided that I would give ActiveNotes (see my previous blog entry) a try. My laptop is quite heavy - about 3.2 or more kgs - and my own persona definitely does not resemble a Rambo man or Beatrix Kiddo in any way, but rather something of Elizabeth Bennet in miniature, and hence I prefer to use my N95 as much as possible to avoid carrying the Toshiba monster. So, I understood that we could open ActiveNotes files in any browser on our PCs, and along came an idea to look at the HTML code of a note and then add text and files from the computer and copy the note back into N95. I must say things are not so easy. I haven't managed to make the note work in the phone with file attachments simply because I couldn't produce correct thumbnail images of them. However I was able to add new text and leave file attachment to be done directly in the phone (in fact, it's probably more convenient anyway). The additional text should be added with very simple codes:

It's as simple as that. Of course, you need to copy both the HTML file and a file folder back to the ActiveNotes folder in the mobile. I used FrontPage to edit everything, and was using the HTML view to do it, because if you work in Regular view adding new text then FrontPage will invent some very complicated code for it, which your mobile won't be able to show.

2008-01-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

Today I am all about N95. You see, I have periods of using my phone without noticing much of it as if it is Nokia 8310: my first ever Nokia, - and even though it is the cutest phone ever N95 is like from science fiction compared to it. After some weeks of such idle and irresponsible use of the smart mobile species I suddenly realise that wow, I've got a smartphone that is evolving and I have to check out where! So, I throw myself into the cyberspace, forget all my love life and work life, forget about feeding myself and start discovering all the news, uploading and installing new apps, cleaning up the memory and deleting all the rubbish collected during the "idle" times. I am a geek, am I not...

Today I've discovered an excellent video trick called Popcorn Machine (this is a link to upload the file for your N95). It will definitely amuse the children and people who have phones to do phone calls only, who somehow equal to children anyway. It comes from www.symbian-freak.com , and many people may have heard of it by now. Allegedly it originates from an iPhone devoted web-site, and I am really happy that we N95 enthusiasts do not have iPhone as a rival! :P
When you open the file in your mobile go to Options and press Play Full Screen instead of usual Play.

I also found a very comprehensive N95 blog here on Blogger: http://sjc-123.blogspot.com with plenty of excellent new N95 apps including a Screenshot [this is a direct link to the file] and Active Notes: both are going to be in my phone in just 5 minutes. I will let you know how I've used them and if there was any trouble at all, but as I can see from SJC's blog he knows what he is talking about. Make sure to read the Active Notes User Guide first.

2008-01-16T06:21:00.001-08:00

Hmm... Internet is the most amazing thing ever! As soon as I registered with Del.icio.us, I found Digg and StumbleUpon. The former didn't quite appeal to me as it is more oriented to those who want to spend loads of time online discussing everything what they cannot with their grandma. As for StumbleUpon : it's a beauty. It combines the strengths of Delicious with very nice Web 2 interface where you can both catalogue your favourites, discuss things, see most viewed pages, and in addition stumble upon a page that falls within your interests. The "StumbleUpon" button is the best feature to my taste as I spent hours reading stuff about the elegant universe, string theory, and Einstein's brain, which I would never find on my own - not because of the lack of interest, but because of the lack of time to look for it. My page there is http://foreigngirl.stumbleupon.com/

The second find of the year is Pandora radio from Music Genome Project. You can create your own stations, but this is not original and surprising anymore. What Pandora does differently is the way it classifies songs to find those that match your preferences. You can read all about how it is done here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project . I can only say, that it works perfectly, and it's simply the best, just the very best, music / radio web-site currently available.

The only problem is that it is licenced to work only in USA. When I was registering my account I indicated a US zip code, but after several days it didn't work anymore and I was coming into an apologetic page indicating my non-US IP. Believe it or not, but I was able to solve this problem. I thought that among all those millions on the Net there should be some similar desperate people who did not want there true IP addresses being revealed. There is a solution for all us security obsessed Pandora-lovers: it's a free Tor+Vidalia+Privoxy software bundle that helps you to obtain a random IP address from different countries. It works best with Firefox as there is an add-on for this browser, which helps to manage Tor. I admit that it's not really convenient as IP address assigned is always different and I have to disable Tor and then enable it back again several times in order to obtain a US IP for Pandora, but given the benefits of accessing Pandora I am prepared to do this!

2008-01-10T04:33:00.000-08:00

After a long while I am starting this over again and will focus on my hobbies only. My hobbies are Nokia mobile phones, Web 2.0 for a general and unsuspecting user, popular science (nuclear, quantum physics, space), environmental concerns and everything related to de-mystification of various efforts to reduce pollution (like energy-saving light bulbs, which damage our health), and social networking. I should have mentioned the latter in relation to Web 2.0 but it's such a huge phenomenon that deserves its own emphasis.

My first piece is about Del.icio.us and Twitter. I knew about Del.icio.us for a long time, but it's only several days ago that I have finally decided to try it myself after one of my friends told me she was astonished at all the new stuff she could find via the web-site. I can confirm the fact everbody knows probably better than me that Del.icio.us rocks. I was able to find loads of relevant information like Chernobyl nuclear disaster pictures and the World Economic Forum site.

The WEF introduced me to Twitter here http://www.davosconversation.org/ and then off to http://twitter.com/davos. When I looked at Twitter's home page I thought it was a waste of web space. Then I made a search and found several blogs writing about Twitter in a favourable manner:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about.php
I thought if it could make me more efficient when I was on the go then be it, I would sign up. So, I am there, too: http://twitter.com/foreigngirl