If you know me, then you’ll know that I wasn’t really ever into flashy phone hardware.  To me, a phone was something to make phone calls and send text messages.  Even though I would consider myself an early adopter of most computer technologies, I just never really had that with mobiles. About fourteen months ago I finally traded in my old Motorola for an Android phone.  Specifically, I bought the HTC / Google Android Developer Phone.  I love that phone, and have hacked it many many times over the last year. I installed new ROMS from jesusfreke and cyanogen, and even cooked my own ROM with the applications I wanted installed.

The hardware in the Developer Phone is wonderful, albeit very slow.  The processor runs at 528MHz and there isn’t enough memory to easily allow the newer versions of Android.  The screen is also showing its age as it only runs at 320 x 480.  With that in mind I decided a month ago to update it to a new model.  So I bought the HTC Desire. I’d imagine you’ve seen this phone advertised or on the internet somewhere but don’t know as much about it as you should.  First of all, it has a huge 16.7 million colour AMOLED touch screen.  At 480 x 800 pixels the 3.7” WVGA screen is incredibly crisp and dominates the front of the phone.  The entire phone isn’t much larger at 119mm x 60mm x 11.9mm, and it feels light but strong in the hand.  The case is metal and hard plastic and it doesn’t feel particularly fragile which is a great thing.  I have accidentally dropped it, but slowed it with my foot before it hit the ground and it escaped unharmed.

It is incredibly fast.  The ARM Snapdragon processor runs at 1GHz and has no problems with anything I’ve run on the phone so far.  Screen transitions are crisp and smooth, and CPU-intensive tasks such as Flash video run without stutter.  HTC have enhanced the Android experience with what they call Sense, and it changes the operating system from something functional and good looking into something very user centric and highly visually appealing.  One of the things that pissed me off with the Dream was that I couldn’t play background music at the same time as doing pretty much anything else.  That just isn’t a problem with this processor.  I have used Google Tracks to track my movements continuously in the background while playing music and looking through maps.  That’s a huge win for me, and supposedly the operating system is going to get even better when HTC release froyo in a couple of weeks.  Froyo is short for frozen yoghurt and is Google’s codename for Android 2.2.

As is typical for Android phones these days it has a 3-axis accelerometer,digital compass, proximity and ambient light sensors, as well as the ubiquitous A-GPS receiver.  It also has a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with a LED flash on the back of the phone.  The camera has the ability to detect faces, though I have to admit that there is no indicator for that feature and it doesn’t seem to change the depth of field when taking a portrait.  The A-GPS can tag photos with the exact location they were taken, which is a great feature, though one that would be a battery drain should you take a lot of photos with it enabled.  The photo quality is pretty nice, and several examples of photos from this phone can be seen here, or on my Flickr page.

I haven’t had any problems with the phone quality.  I can’t really type a whole paragraph about it as it just works. It’s quad-band so will work everywhere on earth except large swaths of North America.  Data connectivity comes in the form of 3G (HSPA / WCDMA / EDGE), GPRS and WiFi (up to 802.11g).  It has Bluetooth which I’ve never used, and internet tethering for a laptop through a cable.  When Froyo comes out it’ll get the ability to act as a wireless access point which means I can power my laptop from it when on the road.

The model I bought isn’t carrier dependant.  Our carrier is Alice, which is a MVNO on the O2 network, which was later bought out by O2.  I don’t “have root” (the ability to install programs that require privileged control), but that’s because I just haven’t needed to root it yet.  That’s how good sense is on it… there just isn’t a need to root the thing to install extra software.  Anyway, when I upgrade to Froyo I’ll either root it or not, depending on my mood.  The process is relatively easy, though a little time consuming.  The nice part about it is that (unlike some other phones) the software I install won’t invalidate the warranty.  Its my phone and I can install whatever I want on it!"

I gave my old Dream to Anna, who is completely addicted to the hard keyboard on the thing.  Unfortunately she just doesn’t use it for anything except texting and phone calls.  I think there’ll be an upgrade for her to the HTC Vision in the future, which will have the same (or better) specifications as the Desire but with a larger and more comfortable hard keyboard!

Once again this post will begin with something like “it seems that I haven’t posted in ages”.  So, here goes.  It seems like I haven’t posted in ages.  There actually is an excuse this time, which is nice.  I have a bunch of updates to post here which I’ll either do in this post or over a couple of posts.  Lets see how it pans out…

I mentioned that I had been busy.  This freelancing thing is starting to get serious, and I find myself with far less time than I used to have.  That’s the good part.  The not-so-good part is that the difference between what I earned in my old job and what I’m earning now is huge, and not in a beneficial way.  However, I’m getting more regular work and some customers are coming back for repeat business so its all going in the right direction.  Its just slow. The rate of increase in business is (not unexpectedly) very slow, and I wish I had concentrated on it more about three years ago.  Just in case you didn’t know, when I freelance I do so under the moniker DnAWebDev.  Eventually I may turn that into a company name, but for now that site is just my freelance portfolio. 

So in a week we’re going on holidays.  We’re doing a three week driving tour around the eastern part of Germany, and western part of the Czech Republic.  Its a road trip of about sixteen hundred kilometres which is going to take us three weeks.  We’re staying in some places longer than one night, which is why it takes so long.  While on the trip we’re going to meet some of Anna’s relations in eastern Germany.  Map of the route is below, courtesy of Google.  If we change it dramatically on the way then I may update it from somewhere.

Summer 2010 Road Trip (click for larger version)

Right, so I’ve been talking about writing this post for what, two weeks now? Three?  Dave bas posted his memory of the events of that night on his blog, and I urge you to read it as he is a far more eloquent writer than I.  It all started on a business trip to Dulles in May of 2002 (I cheated and checked here). We were due to fly home on the Friday morning after a fairly intensive week of doing something or other that I have long since forgotten.  It was around the time when work wasn’t as enjoyable for me as it used to be, as I had been forcibly moved to a different department from the one I had started in. This new department was one with a different culture from the one I had come from.  Different culture, and a very different atmosphere.  Not the fun one that I came to love.  Anyway, we (Dave, John and I) were in Dulles, and along with working hard, we were playing hard too.More...

Right, so back in the depths of time I wrote a post about installing Windows Vista from a USB key in order to speed up the process.  I thought I had updated that for Windows 7, but apparently not.  So, as Windows is installing on my desktop machine right now, I decided to update that post for the new version.

When Microsoft released Windows 7 they also released a small tool to make installation from a USB key far easier than it was in the past.  This tool is called the “Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool”, and there are two pre-requisites to using it.  You must have access to a downloaded ISO of Windows 7.  You can’t use this method to burn a DVD to a USB key.  You can get the USB Download Tool from various places on Microsoft’s website including this page.  The second condition is that you need to have a PC whose BIOS is capable of booting from a USB key.  Most modern PCs can do this.

You need to obviously do this before you kill Windows on the target machine, or do it on another PC. (Interestingly I was going to suffix that sentence with “that has a USB port or DVD ROM, or an internet connection.  However what PC doesn’t have those these days?)  Download and install the Tool, and then run it to begin.  When it loads, you will see a screen like the one below.  Use the Browse button to navigate to your ISO of choice and select it.

You will then be asked whether you want to copy the files to a USB Key or DVD Rom.  Select USB Device.

The next step is to select the destination USB Key.  In this case I have actually two keys; One for my ReadyBoost data and one which I’ll use for the installation.  Make sure you choose the correct key if you have multiple USB devices.

When you click “Begin copying”, the program will do just that.  It can take a while depending on the speed of your PC and USB Key, but the cumulative time to image the key and install Windows is less than the time to install from a DVD, so its a worthwhile exercise.
 

When it has completed you will see this screen.  You can then remove your USB key (don’t forget to eject it) or restart your PC if you are installing on the same machine.

I previously ran a post about the keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio 2008, which turned out to be one of the more popular posts on this blog.  So, I dug out the beta two build of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and grabbed the same data from it.  VS2010 is due to be released soon and when it is I’ll update this if there are any changes.

Updated: I just found out that Visual Studio 2010 is due to be released on April 12th, but I’m still going to post this now.  However, if anything changes in the RTM build I’ll simply change this post to reflect that.

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Warning, this post is purely technical.  If you were looking for something fluffy, then go here instead.  I’ve just completely reset my phone. I’ve been running a continuous set of Cyanogen updates on it for several months now, and it has slowly been getting slower and slower.  In fairness, I’ve had Apps2SD running for a while and I suspect that the whole thing had simply become too fragmented and cluttered.  Apps2SD is short for Apps 2 SD Card and is a small hack that allows me to use a section of my SD card as internal phone memory.  Because I have a first generation phone, the internal space is limited and so this hack is required for installing the amount of applications I use.  I’ve been thinking lately about upgrading it to a newer model, but that’s a topic for another post.  Anyway, over the last several months it has been getting gradually slower, so I figured it was time for a reset. 

The procedure for doing this isn’t as complex as I had thought, but it is long-winded.  First thing to do was back up all data to the SD card.  In my case, that meant only one application; “Note Everything Pro”, which has a nice in-built backup/restore to/from SD card routine.  Everything else gets backed up automatically, or is stored on Google’s servers ready for syncing back later.  When that was done, I backed up the contents of the card to my PC, and then restarted the phone in Recovery Mode.  Once there, I was able to erase all three partitions on the SD Card (Linux EXT4, Linux Swap and Fat) and create some new ones.  I went with a 1GB Linux EXT2 partition (which I just remembered that I have to upgrade to EXT3 or maybe EXT4), 32Mb of swap partition, and the rest (approximately 7Gb) as a fat32 partition for data.  After that was done, I used the wipe commands to erase the user data on the phone completely and restarted.

Instead of booting into my usual screen, I was prompted (very quickly indeed) with the Android Setup screens which took me through the new-user process.  Within five minutes everything was completed.  Unfortunately for me, that’s when the real work started.  I had to then shutdown the phone, restore my data from the PC to the SD Card, restart the phone and start re-installing all the applications.  I post all of this because the commands that are needed in PARTED (the partition editor) always make me surf for about twenty minutes looking for them.  So, pay attention because this is the important bit.

That’s it… that’ll clean off the card and you can begin again.

Continuing on from the last post, I was telling you about Christmas in Ireland.  After we came back from the North, we settled in for an icy and snow-packed holiday.  I’ve never seen Ireland quite so icy before; driving to Dublin for example typically took over an hour instead of the usual forty five minutes I would expect.  A couple of times on the Trim road we were limited to about 30mph simply because the traction was so bad.  It was really interesting seeing the difference between a country that is prepared for ice and snow, and one that isn’t.  I’m not being snobbish here; the ice and snow in Ireland was extreme, and we usually only get a few days of mild ice or frost there.  Of course they aren’t prepared for it.  In Munich they get far much more snow and ice, and they have a three week stockpile of salt for the roads, and two months of grit for the paths.  They grit the footpaths!  Anyway, it was damn cold.  Anna’s parents came over too, so we picked them up from the airport. Slowly.

Speaking of snow, we’re going to Bayerischzell tomorrow.  We are going to spend a week snowboarding and skiing.  I promised James I’d take some pictures this time, particularly of me getting serious air… which means I have to charge the battery in my camera. This post had started out with the title “on piste in twenty four and counting”. Now its more like twelve to be honest.  Anyway, I’m really looking forward to this next week.  Last year I ended up in hospital with a severed ligament that had to be operated on two days before our skiing holiday, and didn’t get any snowboarding at all. Tomorrow that’s going to change.  Provided I don’t crash the car on the way there ;-)

What else?  Oh yes, there’s a reunion of old AOL heads coming up.  Really old timers too, not just folks who were in Fulham Road, but further back.  This is for those who were in the Fulham Broadway office, which I got invited to on a technicality: Although I wasn’t in that office originally, I moved there early on from Fulham Road when we re-located the Marketing department there.  I don’t really think I can justify the cost though, and there aren’t many there that I would actually pay money to see again.  A couple for sure, but they’ll wait until another time.  We’re already going to London in July, so those that I really want to see will be covered.  Sorry Scally.

I started another German course on Monday last.  This time its with the Deutsch Akademie, and the teacher seems to have has a relatively illustrious career having worked in directorial capacities for both the Goethe Instutite and Berlitz previously.  The course is far more what I need, I’m finding the pace just about right, and unlike the last one it seems more at my level.  I may stick with this group for a bit for a couple of reasons.  Firstly they have a higher quantity of narrower scoped bands (twelve as opposed to Berlitz’s ten), and secondly the class sizes are really nice.  There are ten people in my class at the moment, which is so far working out really well.  I’ve had two in a class at Berlitz, and twenty eight at the Volkshochschule, and ten is nice and comfortable.

Right, gotta go get packed and wax my snowboard…

Right, so then… Happy New Year.  Glad we got that out of the way, no need to belabour the point.  I haven’t been blogging at all lately, though in fairness the last couple of months have actually been busy for me.  I have been working.  Sort of.

We have been just over two and a quarter years living in Germany and in all that time I haven’t earned much money, nor do I have a full time job.  I’ve done some freelancing stuff for a couple of companies back in London, but never enough to ensure our monthly expenditure was lower than our income (actually, there was one month, but its only one out of twenty seven or twenty eight).  Over the last couple of months I’ve picked up some more solid work from some online freelancing sites, and its possible that its all turning around a bit right now.  I have two things on the cooker, that might prove to be worth pursuing right now.  One of the two is potentially fun, and involves building portals (and plugins) for OastOne.  We have a nice test version up and running right, which I won’t link to because its ephemeral.  The second is setting up a company with some guys I know online (one of whom is a customer from one of those freelancing sites I mentioned earlier, but there’ll be more about this in a later post).  Actually, I have three things, but the third is just to continue trying to build up freelance customers and jobs as best I can.  I’ve also built out a small portfolio site with which I hope to establish a presence on teh interwebs.  So, with all of this you can see why I haven’t been blogging as much at all over the last couple of months.

We were in Ireland for Christmas, and took a three day trip to The North at the start of the trip.  I have to prefix this by saying that I had never before been further north than Newry (and that was with my dad¹ on a technical call at some point).  We drove to Belfast and stayed there in an incredible hotel that was cheapish, new and incredibly comfortable all at the same time.  (I can’t remember the name, but if anyone is looking for a place to stay in Belfast in the near future then let me know and I’ll dig it out.)  Belfast is a pretty cool city. I’m not sure what I was expecting really and I guess my perceptions were clouded by twenty years of looking at the Troubles on the news. I just had a really interesting segue through Wikipedia there.  Anyway, so my perception of Belfast was completely different from the reality.  It’s a lovely city, and one I would visit again should I have the chance.  One thing which we couldn’t do was see the Titanic museum in the Harland & Wolff shipyards, or the graving docks for her or her sister ship; the Olympic.  We did get to see the huge cranes (Sampson and Goliath) and the whole rebuilding of the docklands, which looked much the same as Canary Wharf does in London.  I also re-discovered Subway!  I had stopped eating in Subway about twenty years ago because I hated the bread they put on their rolls. Turns out that after twenty years you can be wrong about something – and I had a monster sub with just about everything on it :-) 

Anyway, the next day we headed north around the coast road for Antrim.  We stopped for lunch in a place which worried us (actually just me) when we discovered that we were two of the only four customers in the place.  Turns out the food was amazing.  Its a little off the beaten path (actually its about 5 miles off the coast road, at the end of a cul-de-sac) but totally worth visiting if you’re in the area.  Again, ping me for more details.  We eventually got to Portballintrae, after driving through the highest snow I’ve ever seen in Ireland.  There was a good metre of it up in the hills.   There we went to see Dunluce castle (awesome, and very very cold), and finally the Giant’s Causeway.  Twenty years of living less than two hundred miles from this amazing feat of nature tells me that I really am fucking stupid for dismissing such beauty without ever having actually seen it.  Its breathtaking.  The weather really helped too – it was fucking cold, and misty, and the sea was rough.  It wasn’t the kind of day that I’d suggest going to the beach on, but it was just spectacular. The picture really doesn’t do it justice (it was taking with my phone), though I think even with my SLR I couldn’t have captured the heart of that place at that time.  We walked the long way back to the car, heading further around the bay, up the cliffs and then back over the top to the car park.  The view from the cliff path was… white.  We could hear the sea breaking below, but couldn’t see it because it was all hidden by this carpet of low-lying fog. I loved it there, but you probably got that already.  Anyway, we headed back to Trim after that, stopping off in some huge (by Irish standards, tiny in comparison to Leesburg corner or Jersey Gardens for example) outlet mall for some retail therapy.

Okay, I’m going to post this now, because I have to get some homework done for tomorrow, and its getting late.  If I have time, I’ll start the rest of this post a little later.  If not, then it will be tomorrow.

¹ SceneMaker.eu is very much currently under construction. In February and March 2010 it'll be broken and down while we figure out exactly how it's going to work.

Today, Google launched their public DNS project into public beta. The results are in, and they’re okay, but only okay. Over 1,003 queries for random domains from a pool of 10,003 Website addresses. I used Silverwolf’s excellent DPT to perform this test, and the results are below.

My ISP’s DNS Server
Number of Successful queries : 1,003.
Best Query Time : 62 Milliseconds.
Worst Query Time : 1,061 Milliseconds.
Average Query Time : 220 Milliseconds.
Timeouts (Not Counted in Stats) : 25.

Google’s Open DNS Server
Number of Successful queries : 1,003.
Best Query Time : 15 Milliseconds.
Worst Query Time : 1,186 Milliseconds.
Average Query Time : 167 Milliseconds.
Timeouts (Not Counted in Stats) : 32.

As you can see, the average query time is about 25% faster than my ISP, but there are more failures and a slightly higher worst query time. However, the best query time is 15ms from Google, which is pretty good in comparison to my ISP. Of course, results will vary depending on where the nearest Google data centre is to you, but its worth giving it a try.  It should be noted that certain content (streamed content for example) may actually be slower, as the servers that decide where to send you a stream from may think you are actually in a different location. I think I’ll configure my router with the new DNS now.  By the way, the addresses of the Google DNS Servers are awesome – 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (IP addresses actually owned by Level 4 Communications).

I’ve updated my GUID Generator based on some user feedback.  Thanks to Joel for pointing out that it would be great to be able to download the results. Joel, your wish is my command.  Now there are two buttons on the bottom of the page – one to generate the text, and one to generate a file with the results.  I have also limited the amount of results to 1000, simply because much more than that would kill the server. Also, if you need that many GUIDs, then you can get them in chunks.

GUID Generator