I think the title just about says it all!  See you in 2008.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted and I’ve no real excuse other then laziness. But that’s not to say I haven’t been doing anything with my time. Far from it, this is the first weekend that I actually have nothing specific to do.

So what have I been doing, I’ve been to two weddings, two weekends away for meetings, a weekend in Cumbria for a fiends birthday, trip to Sheffield to go climbing, many parties in and around York, across to Leeds for the fireworks, family birthdays combined with a geeky weekend.  And oh yea, I quit my job and got a new one (more on that later).

As my Mum so delicately put it “You get around”.

Unfortunately it’s raining today, otherwise I would be in town to pick up a few bits and bobs.

I distinctly remember reading about SCO v. Novel when I started my university placement in summer 2003.  At the time I talked with a long term unix user and colleague who hadn’t seen the news.  While I don’t remember what my colleague said I do remember that the general opinion from Linux users around the world was that SCO couldn’t win – and that it would damage SCO badly.

 Well it did damage SCO badly, especially when they lost the court case.  But today comes the ultimate news: SCO files for US bandruptcy protection

Good bye SCO.

Just discovered FoxyTunes. If you listen to music and always have Firefox open as one of your major application then I suggest you take a look.

Since I bought my new phone 4 weeks back I’ve discovered something new about it each day.

To anybody looking at my phone the biggest thing they will notice is the customisation that I’ve done. I like the default blue theme that O2 sells the phone with, but the bubbles on the O2 background doesn’t quite work with all the text and I wanted to put my own touch to it. I probably spent about 2 evenings (and one lunch hour!) trying to find a suitable to replace it, how ever all the different themes I tried didn’t look as good on the phone screen as on my pc screen. The colours were either too bright or too dull and boring. The only one that came close had a very nice background, but the rest of the scheme was bright pink, ew! In the end I learnt quickly how to create a theme and used the default blue colour screen with the one nice background. Since I’m not sure on the license yet I’m not posting it here.

The other customisation to the main screen was to remove the Owner Information, I know who I am and don’t need to be reminded. I then added Spb Weather (and excellent little app that displays the weather for the next 5 days), and Spb GPRS Monitor which acts like a little monitor program with some shortcuts that I use often. I also have a list of running programs at the bottom of the screen.

Other stuff that I’ve installed includes Smart Map and WM5torage. Think of Smart Map as like a TomTom, it shows you where you are on a map and tracks you, but it doesn’t guide you to a location like a TomTom does. It’s not something you can really use around town as there isn’t enough detail, but when I’m travelling and on the hills it will be good to see where I’ve been. It doesn’t cost that much ($24.95) and the maps are fairly cheap ($4).

WM5torage is the answer to my Linux compatibility problem. In a nut shell this little gem presents your phone as a usb stick to the computer. What the means is that you can plug it into any computer that understand usb mass storage (i.e. any modern pc), then it appears like any other usb stick. No need to install ActiveSync, and of course no need to be running Windows. I’ve done a quick test on my main pc (Ubuntu 7.04) and not only does it work a treat, but it’s faster than transfers through ActiveSync.

At the start I played quite a bit, installing and uninstalling different applications. Using the WiFi and GPS frequently. The battery life held up quite well but still need charging every other night. Since then I did a total reset, reinstalled favourite applications, set it up as things are now, and now it only needs charging twice a week or more if I hammer it one particular day.

From the start I knew that O2 didn’t make the Orbit, but now I’ve discovered that it’s actually a rebranded HTC 3300.  Now I can get some accessories.

I went and treated myself to a new phone last week. My previous phone was a Nokia 3510i which I believe was one the first phones to have a colour screen. It has served me well since the summer of 2003 and one of my friends continues to user hers today (although I don’t know when she got hers).

My new phone is the 02 Xda Orbit. Actually it’s not just a phone, it’s a PDA, phone and GPS receiver all squeezed into 58x108x16.8mm. That’s about the size of a Blackberry (depending on the model). Since my boss has a blackberry I was able to compare them side by side and they weigh about the same. My original plan was to get the 02 Xda Mini S but the O2 shop in York didn’t have one in stock when I went in, and the Orbit was £10 cheaper – plus the sales guy included a £40 bluetooth keyboard for free!

After a week of use and installing some extra applications I’m just about at the stage where I’m happy with it. Since I’m not on the top contact the GPS package is isn’t included, but there is plenty of other software that will work with the GPS reciever so I’m using them. This includes the TomTom software, just a pity that it’s so expensive.

Since the Orbit runs Windows Mobile 2005 getting it to work with Linux may prove to be a challenge. For now I’ve been using my work laptop to install application and sync it with a PC and for the most part this works quite well. At least I’m still able to charge it from a USB port in Linux even if I can’t do anything else with it.

I’ve another 6 days to decide if I want to keep it or go back and pay the extra £10 for the Mini S, at present I wont be using that option.

P.S. You don’t need to update your address book as I’m still keeping the same number .

So you’ve installed Linux (Ubuntu in my case), added your prefered dvd player (if not already installed), and installed libdvdcss.  Great, now you can watch your film.  But your new dvd wont play.

Check that you have set the region for you dvd drive as this was my problem.  I’ve never had this problem before and it was only by chance I tried this solution.  The program to do it was regionset and you can learn more about it at this web page.

I’ve updated my gallery with the pictures taken on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year, and my Graduation.

That’s 101 pictures for your vieiwng pleasure! There two I particularly like:

php bug #40514 just bit me. At first I couldn’t work out why most of my php wasn’t working. In the end going through the include statements one by one pointed out which included file which was causing the problem.

There is nothing fancy in that file, it just sets up a few variables and sends the <head>…</head> section of a web page. Since it does nothing fancy I couldn’t see the problem. I hit the php documentation to double check sessions since that’s the only thing remotely complicated in that file (it just sets the session variable up), and it’s the one thing I was a bit rusty on.

Just as well since it appears that php 4.4.5 has a bug in it that causes it to crash on setting up variables in that manor. And guess what version my host is using… Yup, 4.4.5.

*sigh*