Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Opera Mini 4 is here

I was going to comment how good Opera Mini 4 is, but there is a very interesting article in Opera's developer site. Opera Mini is not only fast and offers a lot of interesting features to mobile web users, it also compresses information thanks to Opera's proxy so data traffic is much much lower than any other browser promising "desktop" web experience or adaptations to mobile of such experience (it is the only one I use when roaming).

One of the problems of "desktop" browser engines in a mobile is memory. My N80 has not enough memory for some rich desktop pages (while the same pages is perfectly viewed in a E61, as it has much more main memory installed). Opera Mini also fixes that and I find it hard to get a page that fills free memory in my device.

It is implemented in Java and it works even in many low-end Java mobile phones.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Drivers matter

I have always complained about the poor quality of the WiFi interface in ThinkPad laptops. I like the good work of IBM and Lenovo about them, but WiFi simply stinks.

I always disable their tool to manage network connections as Windows software is more basic but works much better. What I cannot change is the drivers: I get disconnected a lot with poor quality APs (Belkin, US Robotics, ...) and once in a while with better ones (Linksys, for example -special mention of the WRT45GL, which is cheap and works best-).

The problem is not only the disconnection itself. Sometimes the interface drops and I have to repair it via Windows option for network connections. Some other times I have to use the Thinkpad menu to reactivate the wireless interface. And it also happens that I have to use the physical switch for wireless interfaces (including bluetooth) and switch it off and then on to make it work. It has also happenned to me that I had to reboot the computer.

This is not acceptable at all.

And then comes Linux to fix the situation. I have recently installed Ubuntu in 4 GBs of space that were occupied by a hidden partition used for back-ups (which I do not use, because I prefer to back-up onto a different physical disk). The fact is that I get more WiFI signal in similar conditions, the driver never crashes and, at most, I only have to reconnect (and the only reason for this is that I -have to confess that I- am really far away from the AP and signal level is poor.

An important issue that Lenovo should fix soon, as new generations of Thinkpad come and they all suffer the same problem in Windows.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Another historical match

I am afraid you are all doomed to carry on with all the movies posted in realsporting.com with old matches played by the team, as I guess I will also post them and comment them here.

Now it is time for a Sporting-Valladolid in the 95-96 season. Pay special attention to the second goal that Sporting scored (authored by Hugo Leonardo "Perico" Pérez), as it is considered one of the best 10 goals in the recent history of the Spanish Football League. The oriented control by Eloy Olaya should also be taken into account, because it is half a goal.

As all the matches played in El Molinón (there is also an entry for it in the Spanish version of wikipedia), I was there, and TV images match with the memory in my mind for Hugo Perez's goal. By the way, the striking couple, Julio Salinas and Igor lediakhov, is one of the best ever in the history of Real Sporting.