My New Nokia N800 – comparison with the Asus EEE

Today I finally received my Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. It is a cool PDA-like device that runs Linux — I can’t wait to get to hacking around on it! Here are some pictures I took during the “unboxing process”; click to enlarge as usual.

Originally I thought I would wait for the upcoming Asus EEE notebook. The main differences that I see between the EEE and N800 are the screen size and lack of keyboard.

It is sort of like comparing Apples to Oranges, because as stated above the N800 has the feature of being “pocketable” while the EEE is designed to be a “ultraportable notebook”. The keyboard is what discerns the two in this case, however unlike the EEE the N800 has Bluetooth and supports external keyboards.

The EEE and N800 both have 800×480 resolution screens, however the N800 screen is much smaller, sharper, and harder to read small text on. The EEE will have a larger per-pixel area, but it displeases me that it will still be limited by the PDA-perfect 800×480 resolution.

Originally I was trying to decide if I should purchase an Asus EEE 701 (when they arrive) or a Nokia N800 (at that moment) and I decided on the N800. Price was not really a deciding factor for me, since for $360+tax I could have purchased a used laptop instead of an EEE or N800; but I already have a 15.4″ MacBook Pro.

The Asus EEE 701 as it is appears to be a great ultraportable notebook, but what really mattered in this case was the size — and the Nokia N800 really hits the sweet spot there.

Update: Here are some helpful N800-related resources that I have found.

• Link to the official N800 website
• Link to a great N770/N800 forum
• ThoughtFix’s TabletBlog

SanDisk U3 Removal – Pain in the backside

I needed a new USB flash drive for school, and my old Kingston Data Traveler (one of the best flash drives I’ve owned, by the way) was starting to feel limited in use as it only had a 512MB capacity. So, I decided to take advantage of the Labor Day sales going on and bought myself a nice black 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro for a mere $20.

I respect SanDisk as a brand, since I’ve had a few of their SD cards that have lasted a long while. One of the nice features was the retractable connector, so now I don’t have to worry about loosing the cap.

The trouble started when I plugged the drive into my MacBook Pro to do an initial format. I’ve seen thumbdrives preloaded with junk on them before, but this was rather interesting. It mounted two drives: a 1.9GB removable device, and a 5MB virtual “U3″ CD-ROM containing a bunch of Windows EXE files (installers for Skype, CruzerSync, SignupShield, Avast antivirus, and a bunch of other stuff). That’s pretty cool, except I don’t use Windows.

“Alright – fine”, I thought, “I’ll just nuke it and get on with my life.” However, after Disk Utility formatted the device, the virtual “U3″ CD-ROM device with the EXEs kept showing up. I vaguely remembered having read something about this on a forum or Slashdot a long time ago, so I went to Google to find out what was going on.

Everything seemed to lead me to the uninstall page on the website of the creator of the U3 software. Of course, the uninstaller was a Windows EXE file. This really pissed me off since I didn’t have a Windows machine around to run this on – and I don’t trust VMware’s USB support for potentially device-bricking operations. The “System Requirements” on the back of the packaging specifically say Windows, Linux and Mac OS X compatible – what a lie. Long story short, I borrowed my brother’s XP-running ThinkPad.

On the page to download the removal utility, there was a “tell us why you’re removing this software” survey. One of the options was “I use Mac OS X or Linux” – which I gladly checked. The uninstall was almost painless from here, and when I plugged the drive back into my MacBook Pro, only one removable device showed up. What a fun time that was!

ThemeX/Westgen No Longer Developed

ThemeX/Westgen was an open source (GPL) site-wide template engine and a Web-based content management system written in PHP. It was created with a Web Designer’s job in mind. The backend of the program pieces together web pages from the pre-configured files it reads and display them to the viewer. The administration area allows the end-user to modify the web pages and other files included on the web site. It is modular and included quite a few features right off the bat.

ThemeX/Westgen was my first “real” PHP programming project. Unfortunately, due to the horrible code I am ashamed to have written and the fact that there are already better open source CMS systems available, I have obsoleted this project. If anybody would like to continue this project themselves, please email me and I can give you full access to the project from Savannah.

Simple Dynamic Photo Library with Thumbnail Support

I have written a dynamic PHP gallery that takes advantage of the popular Lightbox2 JavaScript. It automatically enumerates files from a directory and displays them based on a GET string. You can download it here. Source code is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2. Have fun!

Why Making Backups is Important

Now this is what I call a head crash! Look at the scrapes it made on the hard disk platters.

Nostalgic Sounds

Testing to see if a dialup modem actually works. Unbelievable that 28.8kbps used to be considered high speed Internet. Audio file link.

Happy Independence Day!

July is National Blueberry Month (August in Canada)

So in honor of that, I will be giving you a few interesting facts about blueberries:

• Blueberries have existed for around 13,000 years.
• The blueberry is one of the few fruits native to north America.
• Ninety percent of the worlds blueberries are grown in north America.
• The substance that gives blueberries their color have been found to be high in antioxidants.
• Native Americans gave blueberries to the new settlers, which is though to be one of the reasons they were able to survive the first winter.
• A single blueberry bush can give around 6000 berries per year.