Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 25, 2007 in
Symbian S60 Not much more than cross linking, but after much searching I found a great resource on debranding an N95. Make sure you read the comments as they add some missing details the author left out. It does require Windows but Parallels works fine. I’ll update this post once I’ve finally finished nuking the Orangeness off my phone and updating to the newer sexier Nokia firmware.
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debrand, n95, debranding, orange, nokia, s60, symbian
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 24, 2007 in
General How many executives actually blog?
I was reading an article on the head of the BBC world service who is a prolific blogger that prompted me to wonder. After putting together the Yahoo Blog Directory I noticed that Bradley Horowitz blogs. I found it interesting that Jerry Yang used Yodel Anecdotal to talk about the CEO changes at Yahoo and has started vlogging to us Yahoos internally.
Personally I find blogging insist I think about my topics. Blogging daily insists I find something worth talking about daily, well mostly. I can see that blogging could be an incredibly powerful tool for passing down thoughts, ideas and culture from upper management without the usual middle-management Chinese whispers filter. I’m going to start following every blog on the Yahoo blog directory and see what I see. I’m thinking it may be a very interesting insight into the place where I work.
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blogging, blogs, management, executive, yahoo, jerryyang, bradleyhorowitz, richardsambrook
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 23, 2007 in
General I love Opera on my phone. However it does cost money. They also make a stripped down version which works on virtually anything using the power of J2ME. Opera Mini is now in Beta 4 and man does it look good. Arve Bersvendsen wrote some great commentary on Opera Mini including screenshots of it passing the Acid 2 test.
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opera, acid2, symbian, mobile, cellphone, j2me, browser
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 22, 2007 in
General I just made a directory of Yahoo blogs and Yahoo employee bloggers. Please let me know if you see any mistakes or missing blogs, there is a comment form at the bottom of the page.
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yahoo, blogs, blogging
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 21, 2007 in
General For our 1st anniversary Rosemarie and I had a meal at The Gate. It’s one of those places with a great reputation that has been recommended to me but I never quite made it to. Now we live another 10 miles away, of course we have.
Finding our way their was slightly strange, it’s just around the corner from the Hammersmith Apollo, but on a very residential street. It’s not until you are right on top of it that the hidden little entrance is obvious. You enter via their beautiful garden which has a patio with space to sit and eat. After having looked at the upstairs, one giant if well decorated room, we decided to eat outside.
They had an excellent selection of drinks but were all out of vegan beer due to a large party upstairs. However they did happily offer us still, sparkling and tap water. It’s nice to be given the choice without feeling embarressed. We started with the mezze platter of the vegan starters. We were enthralled with this eclectic dish. While the Caesar Salad was lacking the Thai Salad was well balanced with the crushed peanuts. The broadbean falafel was just great, however the crowning glory were the indo-iraqi potato cakes
. I think these will be my start on our next visit, despite the quality of some of the other options these stood out head and shoulders.
For the entreé we opted for the Cajun Aubergine and the Shitake Won-Ton & Pumpkin Laksa. The laksa was of a good standard, the won-tons especially but it was missing some pizzaz. Perhaps I’m jaded by the amount of Thai food I cook at home. The Cajun aubergine had a good flavour although there was a hint too much chilli in something, we think it was the guac. The roasted okra in complemented the roast aubergine well however some of the okra were a tad stringy which somewhat ruined the effect.
For desert we had a pineapple & chilli crumble. I found this to be an interesting dish. I enjoyed the heat of the chilli with the sweet tart pineapple. However, I thought they used too much chilli as they were in visible strips in the base. The pineapple was also a bit sweet, which I think led to Rosemarie’s thoughts It’s like tinned pineapple topped with granola with some chilli thrown in. It’s way too hot
. Not quite damning, but close. I think I’m more of a sucker than her for anything with heat.
Despite the food going gently down hill after the starter the atmosphere was good and it was refreshing to talk the duty manager. He was extremely friendly and we have a very pleasant chat about our favourite veggie restaurants. I’m definitely going to look at going back to The Gate, however I think I’m going to be more fussy about what I pick from the menu.
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thegate, review, restaurant, hammersmith, london
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 20, 2007 in
General The British government has made the best carbon footprint calculator I’ve seen yet. So calculate your carbon footprint and take some steps to reduce it.
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green, environment, actonco2, carbonnuetral, carboncalculator
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 19, 2007 in
General I’ve been playing with a neat little app on my N95
. It’s called Cell Spotting. The idea is to collect the IDs and locations of Mobile phone cell towers. On each network you can assign a name to an area (collection) of towers. You can name each Tower, and describe some information about it such as nearby useful stuff.
I love the idea, I love user driven data. However there are a few issues I’ve found. This morning I named a tower Hammersmith Station
. Today I connect to it on the way home when I was in South Ealing. For those that don’t know that 2-3 miles. Quite a long way really, especially in London.
What I’d like to see is something like this project that uses the internal GPS on my N95 or an external GPS to create bounding boxes around cells. In other words if I know my location when I enter the cell and I know my location when I exit then I can create a line across the cell. That marks two points on the circumference of coverage. If you had just two people take two vectors through a cell you could map it. This of course assumes cell coverage is elliptical, but I’m not a network engineer so I’m not really qualified to say that’s a safe assumption.
Since the Cell Spotting app just launches a web page passing the network, area and cell IDs it shouldn’t be hard to make a new version of the application using PyS60 and the GPS library. I might have a crack if I get chance. But then I always say that.
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cellspotting, s60, symbian, mobile, pys60, n95, GPS
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 18, 2007 in
General Simple rule. It works for me. “You are worth talking to, and they are worth talking to.” As soon you grasp this simple concept you can find the courage to talk to anyone and listen to them and their ideas. Eventually you will get to the point when you find out something worth knowing.
I will admit sometimes that thing is they are not worth talking to twice.
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networking, theartofnetworking, communication, peopleskills, lifehack, lifehacker
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 17, 2007 in
London Events Wow. I’m beat.
Hackday was fantastic. Other people I’m sure are going to comment on the hacks and the band and other things. The range and breadth of the people who came, was fabulous. They provided a wash of skills ideas and talent. I think while Yahoo and the BBC organised it, it was the people who came who really made it. Thanks to everyone involved, especially understanding that there is only so much organisers can do to deal with crazy lightening strikes.
What I thought was awesome was the buy in from Yahoo. I’ve never seen so many senior people in one place. How often do hackers, even inside Yahoo, get to talk to a billionaire like David Filo? The only thing that got me a bit upset was the wireless. It was mostly ok, but certainly not flawless. The BT engineers themselves were really helpful, but it annoys me that a gig like this isn’t totally routine to the point of it never going wrong. The problem that the Carson summit had became notorious. Why is decent networking so hard? One suggest someone made to me, was start with ethernet on desk and the add wifi. Convenience built on top of reliability.
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bbc, yahoo, hackday, davidfilo, bt, britishtelecom, wifi, londonevents, conference