wahlau's online hut

missing from action i am. Busy i am, but lazy i hope i am not. :)

this weekend we are visiting our friend in frankfurt. we have decided to travel light - in other words, no heavy stuffs, no non-sense and no notebook. but i would not want to be totally disconnected, so naturally i need my gadgets around. therefore the n800 has been called into duty again.

this time i do it slightly different. i tried the thumb keyboard since i find typing using the stylus rather slow. so far it does the job pretty fine, surprisingly! it is not 100% like using the normal keyboard but it is also not as bad as i thought. perhaps it is just a matter of getting used to.

since lack of updates, perhaps it is time to announce what kept us busy :)

trying to switch between display modes under linux had never been easy. At least with xrandr 1.2 things are much better than before - i can finally change display mode without restarting Xorg. But the "standard" FN-F7 was never a working trigger i can use. Being lazy, i never go looking for solution... until today.

it turns out the installation of canola 2 wasn't as easy as i thought. i started today with clonning of the os to the sd card, and despite  the troubles with repository for efs2progs and wget, i  managed to things  done within an hour. perhaps i have done that many times, and i know where i can find info fast.

just right before christmas, i finally have some time to look at some left-aside RSS feeds - indeed pleasant news! OS2008 for N800 is finally official, and Canola 2 Beta is out yesterday! So while the OS2008 is being downloaded now (not too slow, at 17% now) and i have not much time now, i plan to do it slowly perhaps tonight, or tomorrow. Still have to make a video showing the installation and first impression of Canola 2 (it's a promise i had with Marcelo, so i will try to do it :p ) therefore i better make sure i do it at leisure... today is the last work day anyway :)

so stay tuned, and perhaps i can play a little with Canola plugin development this holiday...

update: can't stand the itch - flashed the box and restored settings. wonder is that a good thing since some reported backup from the OS2008 BETA is a BAD idea.

still scratching your heads for a nice gift? for geek-inclined recepients, perhaps you can consider the Nokia N800 now - since N810 is (already?) in market, N800 is now pricing at 228.95€ in Germany. At this price it is a good buy. With the availability of OS2008 soon (and beta already there, if you can't wait) plus a whole bunch of nice 3rd party software, it is far more than just a gadget. if you prefer something more like a notebook, then you need to hike up the budget a little and go for a Asus EeePC (Amazon at 299€) instead. They both are nice portable device that are not over pricey, and can be used for productive stuffs.

It was the St. Nicholas day here in Germany yesterday. It is a traditinoal day where children will get their gifts or sweets (put in their boots), and some believe that St. Nicholas is the traditional Santa Claus. Even adults will buy simple small gifts to give to each other to share joy and love. In the university canteen we usually get special menu - for example, yesterday i had one of the best roast duck ever in the university. they should do this more often. LOL :)

It's finally weekend, and i have decided to take an hour out, to play with the OS2008 on N800. it is already a week since an official beta was released, but i have been considering hard whether to do it or not. Guess now you get the answer already ;)

had tried and used opensync a little a while ago, and did got things almost working. "Almost" is because my phone entries somehow went cuckoo because of the syncs, and i am too lazy to be disciplined. so this round, i have decided to be more organized and focused - hence the attempt again to get opensync working and to serve me.