FunkyNERD Mind | Body | Soul

The NEXUS ONE is officially AWESOME!

So I've been hanging out for my new phone to turn up for the last week since I did the dodgy and ordered it from the US via an flesh-mail forwarding service. Well, last Wednesday, it arrived, and I've had a few days to play around with it.  First off, it took exactly one week (almost to the hour) since ordering it from Google for it to arrive on my desk.  Pretty impressive.  It actually would have been a day earlier, but it was a public holiday.

So, my initial thoughts on the Nexus One?  Well, I've never been as excited about a phone as I am right now.  This thing is amazing! The AMOLED screen is everything they said it was, and that is crystal clear with a contrast ratio that is unmatched.  Android 2.1 is fast, polished and a dream to use.  In fact, to this point I don't have any major gripes about the phone at all.  If anything, the only thing I dislike is that the screen gets all smudged from my fingers.  No biggie.

Setting it up

Of course, the phone came from the US so I was expecting the usual set up issues with trying to get it to work on Vodafone.  Even my old HTC Magic, which I bought in Australia (but not from Vodafone), had some issue getting working on Vodafone.

To my shock and amazement, the Nexus One worked OUT OF THE BOX and I was for the first time ever, able to use the initial Android set up wizard to configure my Google account and sync my contacts, calendar, gmail, etc.  Brilliant!   So after un-boxing the phone I was up and running with full 3G service in 2 minutes.  I love it when things work like that.

Android 2.1 Impressions

Well, I've been using it for almost a week now, and I'm a bit of a power-user when it comes to Android having developed some stuff for Android 1.5, so I like to think I know my way around.  Already I can see a vast improvement in everything.  It's way more polished than previous versions.  The 3D app scroller is a nice touch and works well.  I love the animated 'Life Wallpapers', but they really suck up the battery juice, so I've switched to a traditional static image.  The 'Car Home' is very convenient and I'm sure that when car accessories start coming out it will automatically switch to that app when plugged in.  Messaging now, by default, is on a white background which I prefer as it is easier to read.  The Lock screen is A LOT nicer, with a big clock and current battery status by default, or the pattern unluck which I may use one day.  The new market (which has been around for a while now but I missed out on with my Android 1.5 HTC Magic) is much better and rivalling the iPhone app store.  Although I still dislike the lack of an 'Update All' function when there are multiple apps with updates.

Generally, I'm just VERY pleased with the new OS and can see it only getting better considering how far it has come and how fast.  Steve Jobs was have a cry last week about how Google are evil and trying to kill the iPhone.  Well, Steve, my little black pot, screw you because the Nexus One is miles better than the iPhone and Android is going to kill off your dumb little cash-cow and no silly little iFad is going to save you.

That is all.  I'm off to play with my 'phone'.

I’m getting a Google Nexus One!!!

by julietteculver

Ever since I bricked my last Android phone, an HTC Magic, I've been hanging out for the next great Android phone.  One that would do everything that I want, and do it well.  My requirements were simple.  Must run Android 2.0+, have heaps of memory with MicroSD, a decent touch screen and be powered by the 1Ghz Snapdragon processor.

I did think that I was going to be waiting until at least March for the release of the Sony-Ericsson Xperia X10, which looked to be the next killer phone.  Then last week, Google decides to drop a bomb on us all and announce that they are releasing for immediate shipping, the Google Nexus One.  As it turns out, the Nexus One is everything that I've been looking for in a phone and while the Xperia X10 is surely a mighty little phone, it's just not available soon enough.

by louisvolant

So then Google drop another bomb on us Australians by telling the world that they are only shipping phones to the US, UK and Singapore.  Bastards!  Then again, I'm sure the ACMA has something to do with the hold up.  They are a bunch of knobs in my opinion.  Either them or the mobile carriers out here are being slow dumbasses as usual.   I can say these things because I worked in Telecommunications for 6 years.  I've had Optus engineers fall asleep during meetings and while testing out equipment I was trying to get installed into their exchanges.  I know how the big machine works.

Anywayz, so there I was all depressed after my little ride on the emotional roller-coaster when I discovered a service called usunlocked.com.  Now what these guys do is quite simple.  The will supply you with a US shipping address that you can have stuff you buy over there shipped to, and then they will forward it on to you for a small fee.  How awesome is that?  So I set up an account with them and generated a shipping address for my Nexus One order.

The next problem was that Google know what country my IP address is in and won't allow me to order a phone.  I get the standard "Sorry, the Google Nexus One is not available in your country".  So I go hunting for a decent proxy server to hide my IP address.  Now, the standard web-based proxies won't work as they do too much filtering and re-writing of addresses that they just don't work with Javascript heavy web-services like google.  Then I found hotspotshield.com which looked VERY promising.  Apparently they are the most well-known VPN proxy service on the 'net and I read many good reviews about them.  So I downloaded their software, started it up and BAM, I'm a US citizen.

So after all of that, I have a Google Nexus One phone on order which should be getting shipped to USUnlocked in the next day or so, at which point they will forward it on to me and I will have it in 3-5 days (so they reckon).  I'll let you all know how it goes and then maybe write up a little review on the phone itself.

That is, if I don't get screwed over by someone and end up not getting the thing.  Fingers crossed it all goes well.

Merging multiple AVI files into one on linux

Occasionally I come across AVI files that have been split up, for whatever reason, and I want to put them back into one file.  Every time I do, I end up having to dig through tonnes of Google search results to find what I want and then make sense of it.  Therefore I decided to figure out the best way to get this work for me and then do this little write up.

What I discovered, is that it's actually VERY easy and you can do it in one command.

Step 1 - Install mencoder

This is easy.  Simply execute the following:

sudo apt-get install mencoder

This will install mencoder which is the program we'll use to merge and fix up the AVI files.  This will also install any dependencies along with it.

Step 2 - Merge and re-index

This is the meat of it.  It's just one command that until now I never knew could actually take multiple files for input.

mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy file1.avi file2.avi -o output.avi

This command does a couple of things in one go.  Not only will it merge the file1.avi and file2.avi files, it will re-index the streams so that the audio and video are synced correctly.  This is usually a problem when you merge files the 'old fashioned' way by simply running cat file1.avi file2.avi > output.avi.   Now because this isn't actually changing any of the audio or video data (it's just copying it) this should be quite quick.  I merged two ~700MB files and it took about 5 minutes.

You could also, if you want, change the -ovc copy to make it re-compress the video to make the file smaller.  So maybe I'll do that in another post.

uShoot – Job management software for freelance photographers

Even though I am a software developer by day, in my spare time, I am a freelance photographer (hoping to become full time).  Right now, I'm in the process of  starting my own business. There are standard things that need to be done such as,  business cards; marketing materials; websites; etc.  Most are going well, and are either completed or almost done.

However, the biggest pain in the @$$ is finding an accounting software that suits all of my needs. So far, I have not been able to find anything that does everything I need, and in a nice easy-to-use package.  Sure, there's Blinkbid, which comes close but is missing job scheduling;  then there's Light Blue : Photo, which comes even closer but is expensive and has a very cludgy interface.  There are also a few others that exist, but these are designed for large studios with even larger budgets. So, unable to locate the perfect sofware package for my business, I decided to write my own.

Introducing:

The purpose of uShoot is to handle my day-to-day scheduling; estimates; invoicing; and contacts.  I'm sure it's duties will grow in the future, but these are my immediate goals for the software.   To get the word out there, here are a few features that I already have in mind:

• Web Based - so it will work from anywhere.
• Google Calendar Synchronisation.
• 'T&C in a Can' - allowing Terms and Conditions to be generated in legalese just by selecting a few drop down options.
• Contact Management - hopefully with Google contacts sync.
• Workflow Management.
• PDF Estimate and Invoice Generation.
• Much more...

What's with all the 'google sync stuff' you ask?  Well, this is actually the major feature that I wanted from this software, and this is what others don't really do too well, if in fact, at all.  With mobile phones talking to 'the cloud' (god I hate that term) more and more these days, it makes sense to have my mobile phone show up my contacts and calendar.

I'm also thinking of offering this as a service, as well as a package for sale.  This means, if you don't want to pay a few hundred dollars for it, then you can just pay 10-15 bucks a month and use it over the internet.  With this, there can be some multi-user/community stuff incorporated into it as well.

Well, that's it.  I really just wanted to get the word out there so that other people in my boat, who are looking for software for a small photography business, can see that there's an alternative solution coming.  Feel free to contact me if you have ideas or to express interest.

Update on using Kbluetooth

In my last post (Using A2DP Bluetooth in Kubuntu Karmic (KDE))  I mentioned that I used gnome-bluetooth to setup my A2DP headset and then I remove it.  Well, I did some more thinking/playing and I have completely switched over to gnome-bluetooth.

So far I haven't noticed and downside, apart from the initial manual configuration.

So, all I ended up doing was

apt-get remove kbluetooth

apt-get install gnome-bluetooth

After that, to get gnome-bluetooth to start when I log in I went into System Settings and clicked the Advanced tab.  Then start the Autostart manager and add a program to execute bluetooth-applet and that's it.

Works a treat!