11.25.07
Posted in PC Gain, WM PDA Phone at 9:39 pm by emerym
Thanks to Vodafone’s minor OS upgrade and repair of my HTC TyTN I find it’s now got Internet Connection Sharing (“ICS”) installed. I’ve got a USB cable in the rucksack. I plugged it in, told ICS to connect, and wonder what to do next. ipconfig on the PC reports a new IP address and default gateway so I pinged Google and got a reply. Sweet!
I logged into the office remote access portal just to see how well it works over ICS with a 3G connection. The ~6MB Citrix ICA Client for Windows downloaded in a few minutes and I was soon logged in looking at a lab server. I was very surprised at how well it all worked. There was far less latency than I’d expected. It’s no wonder so many carriers are now doing 3G USB Wireless Broadband. They’ve got to recover their 3G license costs somehow, nobody’s doing video calls.
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09.19.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 8:03 pm by emerym
Trey Ratcliff and his HDR photography was recently given some air time thanks to Kate Russell and BBC News 24’s “Click”. See http://stuckincustoms.com/ for some fantastic images.
I used to have a Canon T90 but gave up on 35mm film. As I’ve yet to replace it with an EOS 30D I have to make do with “snaps” from my Canon 4MP SureShot or 2MP HTC TyTN.
One nice thing about the TyTN is that I can control the camera via MortScript to give me some exposure bracketing. The not-so-nice thing about the TyTN is that it’s exposure compensation controls don’t give you quite the results you’d expect. To the naked eye many of the shots look the same. Even so, Photomatix is able to take two or more of the images, create an HDR image and then tone compress it down to something that can be displayed or printed.
In the quick 2-image test I did tonight it’s easy to see how the colours are pulled back into the shot. It looks much closer to the real thing.
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05.24.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 2:07 pm by emerym
Thanks to a blog comment from Wei Li I’ve started to look into the Python scripting language. I’ve got Python on my Linux hosts, but wanted it on the TyTN too so I can experiment with it wherever.
Thanks to PythonCE I can now do this. Venster, or in this case
VensterCE adds a Windows GUI layer. VensterCE also comes with an IDE with built in console for writing and testing Python apps. Python 2.5 docs here.
If you want to try them out note that config.py and pyceide.py will probably need editing. Config.py has “EDITOR_FONT_SIZE = 5″ which makes the Python script way too small to read. Pyceide.py has the line “self.nbfont = Font(face=”Tahoma”,height=25)” which makes the icons at the bottom way too big! I changed 5 to 10 and 25 to 14.
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05.20.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 9:57 pm by emerym
I ordered a few bits off eBay a couple of weeks ago, total ~ £20 with shipping. A rubber/silicon skin was one, I thought it might help stop the phone vibrating off shiny surfaces and it does the job quite well. I’d expected it to be blue but got black, hence the Spiderman “Venom” skin I’m creating for rlToday.
I also ordered a couple of cables. A three way adapter that allows any combination of 3.5mm headphone jack, mini USB and HTC 11-pin plug to be plugged in at once. Ideal for listening to music while charging at the same time. The other cable is a 3.5mm socket with microphone and volume control to HTC 11-pin. With either I can now use my Bose headphones with the TyTN. Anyone listening to the TyTN via the earphones it ships with may wonder how good the sound output is realy like. It’s very good and I can now understand why software developers have been adding lossless FLAC support to media players.
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05.18.07
Posted in Art, WM PDA Phone at 5:37 pm by emerym
I’ve always been a visual person, liked drawing and did Art and Engineering Drawing at school. I was alright with still life but any people I drew looked like cartoons. The proportions were always wrong.
A number of years ago I bought Vectorsoft Draw for my HP Jornada when version 1.23 was current. I though I’d lost it but recently found a copy on a small Compact Flash card, it works just fine on the TyTN. I’ve started drawing again, and found the site “Invention to Human Figure” by Riven Phoenix. He’s got a fantastic series of lessons on how to draw the human figure. The first set of lessons are online as YouTube videos, a 5 disc DVD set with all of the videos in full is only £35. When you see his client list includes the likes of LucasFilm and ILM you know the guy’s good.
I took one of my wire frame figures drawn to Riven’s rules and put it over a photo of myself. It’s a reasonably good fit.
Sophie and I have gone through lessons 1 and 2 of 227. After only these two lessons our drawings are already looking better.
Only another 225 to go!
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04.30.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 11:59 am by emerym
I need to invest in some of those anti-slip mats you can get for a car dash.
I’d left my phone on my bedside table while I went into my wifes office to send a FAX. It was plugged into the laptop via USB. While in the office my father called, setting of the phone. He left a voicemail which Vodafone then tried to deliver three times within a few minutes.
The vibration from those 4 calls and slight pull from the USB cable was enough to send it off the edge of the table three feet to the floor! Luckily there is no sign of any damage.
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04.14.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 4:01 pm by emerym
Hi,
The Mozilla based Minimo web browser has been updated to 0.20. I last tried the 0.16 version mid Feb, and found it way too slow. So far I’ve found 0.20 much faster and it’s GUI has improved a lot. Well worth trying out and keeping an eye on. It supports Javascript, AJAX, variable font sizes, etc. It’s so much better than PIE already.
I’ve been using MortScript 4.0 on the PDA to do a number of things, such as provide a method for updating Registry keys for my rlToday skin. Highly Recommended for the PDA hacker.
Sorry no links for the next lot, try XDA developers, Aximsite then Google. I’ve included the file names to help with searching. If you still can’t find it add a comment and I’ll see what I can do.
If you want to change your keyboard layout track down RipBoard (RipboardV02B2.zip). The XML config file allows you to change where each key is, it’s size and what it does with caps on or off. Great for making a coding keyboard with all the {}; etc you need.
If like me you’ve got a pre-WM5 PDA or two with a half dead touch screen track down PIrazu (pirazu-pocketpc2002-204.zip). It uses the D-Pad to control an on screen cursor. My old Jornada PDA, close to going in the bin, is now fitted with a SanDisk 128MB WiFi card and is a streaming Ogg Vorbis player for the kitchen. “Keep on moving don’t stop, no..” 
Another one worth tracking down is File Dialogue Changer (filedlgchg.zip) If you have an app that uses the default file dialogue that doesn’t let you control file locations this is just what you need. I can now have my Interactive Fiction files in another folder and open them okay.
The last one for the moment is “FloatMe” (floatme_cab.zip). It makes full screen windows into windows that can be moved around. Not that 240×320 gives much space for multiple windows.
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04.02.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 12:27 pm by emerym
I got a 2GB MicroSD card for my HTC TyTN. Unfortunately the phone doesn’t support the newer standards, so 4G and 8GB are not an option.
One answer? A wireless pocket server the size of a credit card!
Not only does it increase the capacity of music you can carry with you, but allows you to hold important documents outside the phone, in case your unfortunate enough to have it stolen. If the write ups are to be believed you can connect the phone to it via WiFi, Bluetooth *and* mini USB. Being able to connect it via USB would increase the battery life of both devices, assuming you can shut down the WiFi on the server.
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03.25.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 9:21 pm by emerym
rlToday’s been updated to 0.1.21. It can now read Registry keys to create cool views like this one by forum member Zeon:
TimeRule and PocketClock from megasoft.com look quite good, I’ve just started looking at them today. TimeRule gives you a count up/down entry on the Today page. E.g “Flight takes off in.. 2h 00″. PocketClock is a world clock, timer, stopwatch, etc. Both are shareware.
If you’ve got a HTC TyTN and want to play Doom in landscape mode with the keyboard look here. [Update] If you want to frag a few more monsters then this site has a working Quake I.
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02.28.07
Posted in WM PDA Phone at 3:04 pm by emerym
One thing that’s kept me ammused over the last month is my new phone. I’ve got a Vodafone VPA Compact III aka HTC TyTN / Hermes. With a 2GB SanDisk microSD card installed it’s been a great all-round device.
It’s primary function has been an Ogg Vorbis music player, powered by Conduits Pocket Player , an application I’ve been using since my first HP Jornada 568. (If you want a free Ogg player check out GSPlayer). I’ve been able to relax to some music and not miss calls thanks to Pocket Players good phone integration. With it’s built in WiFi I’ve also had full access to my full CD collection thanks to streaming support from my SlimServer. It’s sure helped February pass faster.
I’ve been able to keep up with some world news thanks to David Andrs pRSSreader, though I wish someone had created a “Good News Only” RSS news feed. David’s Birthdays Today plugin is also worth getting.
With rlToday I’ve got world clocks on the Today screen so I’ll know what time it is in NY and HK when I return to the office. rlToday can also be used as an application launcher if you need to save some Today screen space.
cLaunch is a great tabbed application launcher, well worth checking out.
Marcel Tiews TodayAgenda is also a good plugin for showing a summary of appointments and tasks. It can also show Birthdays, but I prefer to show them under Davids app, so use both.
Magic Button by TranCreative is a must have application switcher/closer. Thanks to Wei Li for point it and MoDaCo out to me.
DotFred’s Task Manager v2.7 CPU Uage page has also been good for working out what’s slowing down the device at times.
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