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.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Sporting TV
It's been some months since my football team, Real Sporting, renewed its web page. I do not like the design very much, but it is nice that to be able to enjoy the TV section. It is based on a Flash video player, and they allow you to link and embed the videos.
The most recent video is a wonderful oldie, which shows and overview of FC Barcelona-Sporting in 1987-1988, with Sporting defeating Barça 0-4.
The most recent video is a wonderful oldie, which shows and overview of FC Barcelona-Sporting in 1987-1988, with Sporting defeating Barça 0-4.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
The death of a master
I went to bed really late last night. I was dealing with the update from Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10. Supposedly, this post would talk about it. But I want to bed and turned the radio on as I love falling asleep on Saturday and Sunday nights listening in Onda Cero to La Rosa de los Vientos, a radio programme that has been talking about history, science and mystery for the last 9 years, driven by radio master Juan Antonio Cebrián.
They were only broadcasting music. This sounded really weird to me. I started to listen to other radio stations and I managed to listen the end of a section in the programme of Iker Jimenez in Cadena Ser, where they were saying farewell to Juan Antonio. I went back to Onda Cero and waited until the next hourly news report where they confirmed that he had died yesterday afternoon because of a heart attack, at the age of 41.
I started listening to him in Turno de Noche, maybe the best night radio programme I have ever listened to, in 1991 (I guess). I was studying in High School and he was a great company when studying for exams. I felt alone when sports programs ended and nothing but boring music or gossip ones were the only thing to listen to. He was not only company. He also taught me lots of stuff about Ancient Egypt, the Order of the Temple, both World Wars and many other stuff. Not to talk about paranormal experiences, parapsychobiophysics and other hidden sciences related things. And, in Turno de Noche (not in La Rosa de los Vientos), it was really great the final hour of humour so I usually fell asleep with a smile on my face.
I am not one of those fans who follow their myths looking for an autograph, that disturbs them when they walk peacefully by the streets and so on or that even would love to become a friend of their idols. But Cebrián was a different person: he sent such good feelings like quietness, proximity, ... even friendship. His legion of fans felt him like a friend. As it never happenned to me with any popular person, I would have really loved to have him as personal friend, I could have talked with him for hours.
I know I shall have the chance to fulfill that dream, because we'll meet one day in Hades. And I shall be "Encantado y feliz, como una lombriz", as he always said, when that happens and we'll have all the discussions we could not make before. Until then, you will not be missed, because I know that Bruno, Carlos and Jesus (the other Cs in the 4Cs) will carry on with the spirit of your manners of making radio. The show must go on!
As a final epitaph, I will include here this mourning video that I found in one of the dozens of sites dedicated to Juan Antonio. It made me even shed some tears. How not?
I still wonder why it is always the best ones who first leave soon. My condolences to Silvia and Alejandro.
¡Fuerza y Honor!
They were only broadcasting music. This sounded really weird to me. I started to listen to other radio stations and I managed to listen the end of a section in the programme of Iker Jimenez in Cadena Ser, where they were saying farewell to Juan Antonio. I went back to Onda Cero and waited until the next hourly news report where they confirmed that he had died yesterday afternoon because of a heart attack, at the age of 41.
I started listening to him in Turno de Noche, maybe the best night radio programme I have ever listened to, in 1991 (I guess). I was studying in High School and he was a great company when studying for exams. I felt alone when sports programs ended and nothing but boring music or gossip ones were the only thing to listen to. He was not only company. He also taught me lots of stuff about Ancient Egypt, the Order of the Temple, both World Wars and many other stuff. Not to talk about paranormal experiences, parapsychobiophysics and other hidden sciences related things. And, in Turno de Noche (not in La Rosa de los Vientos), it was really great the final hour of humour so I usually fell asleep with a smile on my face.
I am not one of those fans who follow their myths looking for an autograph, that disturbs them when they walk peacefully by the streets and so on or that even would love to become a friend of their idols. But Cebrián was a different person: he sent such good feelings like quietness, proximity, ... even friendship. His legion of fans felt him like a friend. As it never happenned to me with any popular person, I would have really loved to have him as personal friend, I could have talked with him for hours.
I know I shall have the chance to fulfill that dream, because we'll meet one day in Hades. And I shall be "Encantado y feliz, como una lombriz", as he always said, when that happens and we'll have all the discussions we could not make before. Until then, you will not be missed, because I know that Bruno, Carlos and Jesus (the other Cs in the 4Cs) will carry on with the spirit of your manners of making radio. The show must go on!
As a final epitaph, I will include here this mourning video that I found in one of the dozens of sites dedicated to Juan Antonio. It made me even shed some tears. How not?
I still wonder why it is always the best ones who first leave soon. My condolences to Silvia and Alejandro.
¡Fuerza y Honor!
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Tricks to stop tricksters
A phone falls into water and it stops working. That is something that people say that usually happens. And it looks like many people wait for them to dry and go to the shop and say that it mysteriously stopped working so the warranty makes them get a new phone.
I had read that some phone makers had created phones with materials that changed their colours if they get wet.
It looks like the iPhone has something like that, as said in MacBidouille. They say there is a small ball in the headphones jack that changes from white to blue when wet.
So it looks like tricksters will have to stop playing tricks like that with Apple's phone.
I had read that some phone makers had created phones with materials that changed their colours if they get wet.
It looks like the iPhone has something like that, as said in MacBidouille. They say there is a small ball in the headphones jack that changes from white to blue when wet.
So it looks like tricksters will have to stop playing tricks like that with Apple's phone.
Moving from Windows to Linux...
... is not easy. And just because of one single reason: Microsoft Office.
Although I would love to, as hardware support for virtually any PC (desktop or laptop) is really good these days (I found out the other day that there is even support for Thinkpad's HDD shock protection), and I have free software to do almost everything I want to do.
Games were a reason in the past for me not to move, but not now. I got sick and tired of wishing a new computer every year so I could play all those cool games. After buying my Dreamcast, I stopped playing on a PC. Then came PS2, PSP and now PS3. And they confirmed my intention.
But I have to deal with complex Word and Excel documents taking all the power out of these tools. And, I am sorry, but OpenOffice is still far away from Office. Also in terms of usability and productivity (mmmmm, those cross-references should work easier, as Word does, even if it is a field in which Microsoft still has a lot to improve).
I am reading in Barrapunto, SlashDot's Spanish brother, that OpenOffice 3.0 will compete with Outlook: Thundebird+Lightning to handle mailing and event calendars in a coupled way, PDF import and export, import Microsoft Office XML, and lots of stuff. I am looking forward to it, but if it does not let me open Office documents, feel them the same way as Office, modify them and be able to send them to others having Office without them noticing that I did not use Office... then it does not work for me.
So please, may OpenOffice be fully interoperable with Office (really sorry that an open format is beaten by a "de facto" proprietary standard). Or, instead of that, every organization start using OpenOffice so I can move from Windows to Linux :-)
I'd really love to. In the meantime, I am enjoying Ubuntu a lot and using it except for documents and spreadsheets.
Well, I cannot bind my N80 to my PC in Linux with all the possibilities that Windows (via Nokia PC Suite) offers, or use SDKs like the ones from Nokia's phones, from RIM or a whole lot of phone emulators.
But that is not a problem of the OS, but of developers' closed mind... Linux has a huge community of developers behind willing to start programming in everything supported by Linux.
If Nokia or RIM made all their development tools available to the Linux community, I guess that lots and lots of more free programs for those platforms would be available. Same might be said about supporting MacOSX.
Errrr. This post has ended with an off-topic, sorry. As I said before, I want to go to Linux, but my job does not let me use it all the time.
Although I would love to, as hardware support for virtually any PC (desktop or laptop) is really good these days (I found out the other day that there is even support for Thinkpad's HDD shock protection), and I have free software to do almost everything I want to do.
Games were a reason in the past for me not to move, but not now. I got sick and tired of wishing a new computer every year so I could play all those cool games. After buying my Dreamcast, I stopped playing on a PC. Then came PS2, PSP and now PS3. And they confirmed my intention.
But I have to deal with complex Word and Excel documents taking all the power out of these tools. And, I am sorry, but OpenOffice is still far away from Office. Also in terms of usability and productivity (mmmmm, those cross-references should work easier, as Word does, even if it is a field in which Microsoft still has a lot to improve).
I am reading in Barrapunto, SlashDot's Spanish brother, that OpenOffice 3.0 will compete with Outlook: Thundebird+Lightning to handle mailing and event calendars in a coupled way, PDF import and export, import Microsoft Office XML, and lots of stuff. I am looking forward to it, but if it does not let me open Office documents, feel them the same way as Office, modify them and be able to send them to others having Office without them noticing that I did not use Office... then it does not work for me.
So please, may OpenOffice be fully interoperable with Office (really sorry that an open format is beaten by a "de facto" proprietary standard). Or, instead of that, every organization start using OpenOffice so I can move from Windows to Linux :-)
I'd really love to. In the meantime, I am enjoying Ubuntu a lot and using it except for documents and spreadsheets.
Well, I cannot bind my N80 to my PC in Linux with all the possibilities that Windows (via Nokia PC Suite) offers, or use SDKs like the ones from Nokia's phones, from RIM or a whole lot of phone emulators.
But that is not a problem of the OS, but of developers' closed mind... Linux has a huge community of developers behind willing to start programming in everything supported by Linux.
If Nokia or RIM made all their development tools available to the Linux community, I guess that lots and lots of more free programs for those platforms would be available. Same might be said about supporting MacOSX.
Errrr. This post has ended with an off-topic, sorry. As I said before, I want to go to Linux, but my job does not let me use it all the time.
Friday, October 19, 2007
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