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I really like my HTC Desire (purchased from Mobiles.co.uk about 2 months ago) and intend to blog a proper review soon.  There are niggles that I have with it but overall I’m very satisfied with it. One major pain in the backside though, is the micro-USB port used both for data transfer and for charging. In a word, it’s shit!

When I first got the phone it didn’t take more than a few days to notice that the connection was loose and it would shut off mid-charge etc. Not good. After leaving my charger in a hotel I bought a replacement from Argos. This was better but still has issues.

It was after this that I realised that the data cable for my work phone, a Nokia 5230, also had a micro-usb connector on the end. Guess what: it seems to fit perfectly!

So are HTC just cutting corners by supplying shit peripherals?

I’ve posted twice recently about my problems following an upgrade of Ubuntu Netbook Remix to Lucid Lynx (10.04).  In short, I upgraded both the BIOS of the netbook (an Asus Eee PC 1008HA) and upgraded Ubuntu from 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).  Once I did this the sound would disappear after the first time I logged in following each boot, and only work properly if I logged out and in again.

One kind commenter (thank you “ThrasherC”) suggested a solution to a similar problem.  I haven’t followed the story of the bug report and probably don’t know enough about Linux to understand it so I’m not taking responsibility for anyone else doing this. This is a statement of what I did, not advice

1. Open a new terminal
2. Issue command “sudo gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa”
3. Find the line that says “load-module module-device-restore” and creplaceomment it out by adding a hash at the start so it reads “#load-module module-device-restore”
4. Restart

Hope this helps someone – be that you, or me in the future.

Further to my recent post where I explained that I wasn’t getting any sound following an upgrade of Ubuntu to Lucid Lynx (10.04) and my EeePC’s BIOS (which, incidentally, seems to have fixed the WiFi problems I was having with a particular Belkin router specific to Linux), I just wanted to post up some extra facts I’d discovered.

I should also point out that I added my user to the “sound group” as described in the Ubuntu Sound Troubleshooting Guide, however I’m not convinced this was relevant.

Anyway, further use has led me to conclude that:

• The login splash-screen sound is audible. There is no sound after I login at first. If I log out and login again, the sound is fine.
• Only the internal sound is affected. If the netbook is plugged into speakers, sound is fine.
• As stated previously, the sound issue only appears on Ubuntu, not on Windows.
• Asus don’t give a shit.

How annoying is that?!

Right, at the weekend I upgraded my Asus Eee PC (1008HA for those of you interested) to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS – Lucid Lynx from the previous version, 9.10.  Everything seemed fine (I think).

Update: The problem described in this post has subsequently been investigated and solved.

On Monday or Tuesday night I then upgraded the BIOS to see if it would fix the fact that the wireless was shite when I was using Ubuntu.  (Incidentially either the BIOS or OS upgrade seems to have fixed the probelms I had connecting to one specific router)

I didn’t notice a problem at the time because I’m dual booting Windows XP and was using that, but when I booted into Ubuntu again on Thursday night, the audio didn’t seem to be working.  I quickly discovered that the sound did indeed work at the login screen, but once I logged in there was nothing (including no welcome sound).  The audio/volume functions on the Fn keys also now do nothing (though brightness ones still work!)

I think the sound was fine following the Ubuntu upgrade, but I’m not sure, so I think the BIOS upgrade has ballsed it up.  Which is a pain.  It looks like I’ll have to try reverting the BIOS and/or Ubuntu to a previous version.  Watch this space…

I realise I haven’t written anything here in a while but I thought recent developments warranted a post.  Basically my mobile phone contract with Vodafone is up for renewal.  My contract expires at the end of May and I’m already into my "eligible for upgrade" period.

I have decided on a phone. I want an Android phone. I simply MUST have an HTC Desire. So much that I already want to start writing apps for it!

Things looked good at the start of April when it was available on T-Mobile for £15/month and £129 up front for 24 months.  This came with 300 minutes, unlimited texts (they say 300 but you get a choice of flexible booster free and mine would go on unlimited texts)  and "unlimited" (1GB) data.  This is much better than what I’m currently paying Vodafone £30 a month for!!

Unfortunately while the plan is still available on T-Mobile the price of the phone was hiked to £191 fairly quickly.  It’s still a very competitive contract, and still better than what Vodafone were offering, but I was already nervous about taking out a contract on a network known (to me) mostly for shit signal, based partly on my experience with them about 6 years ago, so I went to do more research.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching the best deals from all networks (except O2 who don’t stock it yet, but I’ve found ways round that) from at least a dozen retailers.  Really it would be a waste if I kept this information to myself and didn’t share what I’d found out with the world (or the 3 random people who happen to stumble on this blog over the next year and probably don’t even speak English).

Anyway, to got a long story short(er), I’m going to post a summary of what I’ve found over the next couple of days. Keep your eyes peeled.

I’ve just released an update to my lolcats gadget for Windows, which displays the latest LOLcats from ICanHasCheezburger in your Windows Sidebar. This release (1.0.2.0) updates the URL used for the RSS feed, as IcanHasCheezburger have changed it again.

The gadget is in no way endorsed or approved by ICanHasCheezburger.com – it’s just a personal pet project that I thought I’d share.

As I write this I’m on hold with Vodafone customer services (tech support) trying to find out when they’ll approve/build a version of the new v30 firmware for the N96.

For those not familiar, when Nokia update their firmware, the updates can only be downloaded by those with generic (unbranded) phones. If your phone comes from a network, it will have a different product code depending on the network. When you run Nokia’s Software Updater it reports back what code you have, and if your network haven’t approved an updated version of the firmware, you don’t get any upgrade.

Vodafone haven’t approved an update for the N96 firmware since v11.018 which was released in September 2008. The problem is that there have been several updates since this time to fix poor performance and other issues, including two major updates in May and July which I really want to get hold of.

So I’m trying to get a call centre to tell me when Vodafone are going to get their fingers out of their arses. What do you think of my odds?

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On the face of it Nokia’s N96 seems like a device that does pretty much everything. Unfortunately it’s handicapped by pathetically miserable battery life (you’ll be charging this bugger at least once a day in all likelihood) and for some reason your text message inbox doesn’t display the date/time when messages arrived (like my old N73 did).

It doesn’t stop at the batter life though. Sadly BBC have seen fit to also cripple the N96′s iPlayer. The N96 comes with everything, headphones, a car charger and even an RCA cable to let you connect your phone to your TV and watch videos on your TV.  Which is great – except the iPlayer’s DRM prevents the video from being sent over the video-out line. WHHHAAAAT?!

I don’t know, it’s like they want people to download their shows from BitTorrent instead! At least that way you can do what you like with it once you have it.

In their defence, I guess it’s because it would make it possible to plug the TV-out cable into a PVR (or video recorder if you so wished) and record the programme without any DRM restrictions on it and retain it for as long as you want, but if someone’s THAT keen I’m sure they’ll find a way anyway.

The verdict? Swing and a miss!

Oh dear – my heart’s all aflutter!! According to reports (from dialaphone, PC World magazine, Trusted Reviews and many more) Nokia’s long-awaited (by me, anyway) N96 has been released.

It hasn’t made it’s way to the shops or web sites of any of the operators yet, but Nokia are apparently shipping N96s already! The phone’s still showing as a pre-order on Nokia’s online shop, but presumably this is because they’re shipping to customers who pre-ordered first.

I also noticed yesterday and today that Vodafone are pushing the Samsung Omnia, which is free on a £35/month contract including data (oh, yes, the inclusive data plans that hit the shops 3-4 months ago are finally available online – I think).

I think it’s safe to say things just got quite interesting.

For those who don’t know, my Astra was attacked in Donegal at the end of July.  Woke up to the damage on the Saturday morning. The windscreen was fixed for just the £60 excess on the Monday (apparently these guys don’t do weekends).  The Garda were nice but never inspired much hope of catching anyone and were ultimately useless.  Anyway, having left work I finally got around to shopping around for estimates and thought I’d share my experience for anyone else looking to get a car repaired in the Belfast area.

My Experience

I actually got one from Bodytech Collision Repair in Carrickfergus a few weeks ago, because they seem to be the only car body repair outfit open on a Saturday morning.  They came in at £666 + VAT which was £783.31 to you and me. They seemed very professional (nice modern office, ample parking, full-time receptionist) despite the out of date web site which still reports an operation in the Village area of Belfast (I think they said that branch just closed in March or April, though don’t quote me on that).

I would have probably just gone with that, since getting another estimate outside of office hours was so bloody difficult; I could tell people over the phone what it needed (a new tailgate) but they all wanted to see for themselves. Since I knew I’d have 2 weeks between jobs coming up I thought I’d wait though, and I’m glad I did (so far).

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