Technology on Nanikore

Refurbishing 40mm Cardo Helmet Speakers

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:58:36 +0000

I’ve had the Cardo Freecom 4X Astro GX helmet for almost two and a half years too. However, the speakers were in a bit of a sorry state. Almost as sorry as the fact that I didn’t take any photos of the process described in this post. Oops. This one will have to be theatre of the mind I’m afraid.

These speaker units remind me of those headphones which came with Walkmans and the other personal stereos in the 1980s. Giving my age away there a bit.

After those two and a half years, the foam on the front of the speakers was ripping away - they were held on by a gummy adhesive to a metal frame which protects the speaker coil and drivers themselves. This left that metal exposed so there was even some rust which I suspect is a by-product of my sweaty ears.

On the rear, the foam wraps around and then on top of that is a velcro seal which sticks to the back of the speaker unit and the foam, holding it all together. That velcro then attaches to the other side of the velco in the helmet. You know what I mean.

First then I removed that velcro seal, pulled all the stuck foam off, then cleaned off the remainder of the original adhesive with a combination of scientifically rubbing it with my finger, and cleaning it with citrus cleaner and isopropyl alcohol.

Next was peeling off what was left of the foam from the speaker unit and protective grille - not difficult - then cleaning the old adhesive off the same way.

As for the small amount of rust on one of the speakers, I got some 600 grit sandpaper and gently sanded the rust off, being careful to wipe the residue off, and blow the rest outwith a small hand blower I got years ago for my old dSLR and which I’d completely forgotten about until I was about to use a can of compressed air…

So both old speaker units were now cleaned.

Next I put on the two new 40mm foams on I’d carefully selected on Amazon Japan. The foam was plesently smooth actually and went on with a nice, snug fit. I was concerned they’d be too tight, or too loose, but no, they went on really well. It’s worth noting that I did not apply any kind of adhesive to the protective grille this time, which is why I was concerned they’d be loose and cause a problem when taking the helmet on and off.

So far so good.

Next I applied a few strips of strong but thin double sided tape to the inward (non velcro) side of the the velco pad, which then was stuck down to the wrapped around foam and the metal back of the speaker coil, giving a pretty strong bond.

After doing both speakers, I let them settle overnight then stuck them back in the helmet and yes - success! Sound quality was back to normal, they look new again and it’s smoother taking the helmet on and off.

I had all the stuff I needed except the foams, which were 475yen for 4, so for this fix it was ~240yen for these two. The tape was 750yen for 20m which I bought a while back to affix some sound dampening panels to the washing machine cubby (a long story) - it’s strong and also very thin.

Given a new set of speakers from Cardo costs 55USD - about 8,600JPY with today’s rubbish FX from Japan - this refurb saved me a lot of money and even if I have to do it again I still have 2 foams left.

To be fair, since Cardo uses standard 3.5mm jack for their speakers, you can find 3rd party speakers which would likely save you money too, but I still like my refurb. Not all communicator companies allow you to easily use other people’s speakers.

So there we have it - nice clean speakers sliding over my ears…mmm…like new sheets on a bed. Or something.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Jos — 2025-12-19

Hi, can you send me a link to the foams? I have the same problem and can’t find any replacement foams for the 40mm JBL speakers.

gurahamu — 2025-12-26

Hi, thanks for the comment. These are the foams I bought from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B077155KG1?th=1

Choosing The DJI Osmo Action 4 Camera

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 05:59:00 +0000

After a long time with GoPro 2, a 5, and the most recent was a 7 Black which lasted 5 years before succumbing to a broken power button and a small water leak through a seal whilst on an epic water slide in Thailand.

So the 7 was effectively dead, but at least I was able to get those last minutes of family footage off the SD card! So what next?

Generally I don’t follow many markets unless I’m actually looking to buy, and action cams are no exception. When I went to look recently there was a lot of choice, and it seemed to have shifted back upmarket - when I got the 7 Black, GoPro were pretty much the only premium player and there was something of a race to the bottom. Now there are offerings from GoPro, Insta360 and DJI at the top, and plenty of cameras OEM’d out of China at the cheaper end. There was also the very real choice between the classic brick action cam, or 360 cameras, and even small magnetic cameras. Wow!

I spent quite a bit of time reading and watching reviews, checking long term reviews to see how the longevity for these things were, and seeing what the reliability was like. Yes, when I’m putting down what I consider to be a fair amount of money, I put the time in.

My Usage Cases

I use my action cams in these main scenarios:

On my motorbike, helmet and bike/case mounted.
On the handlebars and other bicycle mounting points.
On my snowboard and snowboard helmet.
On (selfie) sticks for the above scenarios and in the sea.
Room recording some indoor/comedy events.

GoPro Mk.12

I’ve liked GoPro for a long time, which is why I’ve had 3 of their cameras, but I wasn’t sure about GoPro in 2023. My 7Black has captured some true memories for me, but I haven’t forgotton that for the first 4 months it would crash a lot, though one of the early workarounds did significantly mitigate that issue for my usage (orientation lock, since the change in orientation seemed to be a lot of the problem). Also, audio would sometimes just not be there.

Build quality was good, but wasn’t as nice as the 5 or 2 in my opinion. It would seem the firmware and some design decisions marred the 8 and 9 gens too. Also, GoPro seem to have really begun targetting the vlogger / social media audience, which I completely understand - it’s a massive market, but it isn’t me.

So in 2023, GoPro unveiled the 12. It has a lot of great features, ongoing great image quality, and many things which didnt exist 5 years ago, like the horizon stablizing features, log recording, a slightly larger sensor, new UI, built in feet, a whole raft of ’new’ things.

There were rumours the 12 would sport a 1" sensor, and people were disappointed when it didn’t. That was just a rumour though, so no negatives to GoPro for not having that.

The 12 did have Bluetooth mic support, which seemed like something I might use now and then, but the audio quality in reviews did not sound good.

It was clearly just an iteration over the 11, and maybe that was GoPro trying to nail down reliability. They removed GPS, but that’s in line with other action cams now, and it likely helped save on some heat and power.

For me, it was a little larger (and a small amount heavier than the DJI), and the main benefit was the 8:7 sensor. I know I just don’t do enough social media format videos to want a camera that can record for both landscape and portrait as a priority over having a larger landscape only sensor.

The GoPro Quik app had always been fine for me, and seems that’s still a decent piece of software.

GoPro also has quite a few fun modes - the TimeWarp hyperlapse functionality still seems to be smoother than anyone elses, and they’d added light trails and some others along the way.

DJI Osmo Action 4

Of course I’d heard of DJI and a quite friends have their drones. The only experience I’ve had with DJI was the Tello, a tiny indoor (mostly) drone they did some of the guts of, and which was sold by Ryze. I actually liked it - did what it said, very reliable, well built, and parts were cheap and plentiful, so I had a decent image of DJI.

I looked at the v4 of their Osmo action cam, and I liked its more sparse feel, the ’larger’ sensor, the utilitarian nature of it, the UI seemed fast, and DJI had a reputation for firmware improvements and reliable performance.

I also liked the lack of things I didn’t use e.g. HDMI slots, just a USB C connector. The DJI to me felt more like it was done by engineers and outdoors people, whereas GoPro felt more influencer designed, and that’s completely fine. Buy what you need.

The front touch screen is nice, since I have at least two usage scenarios for exactly that. Of course, coming from the GP7Black, any front video screen is a bonus.

Then there’s the mount connector. No more ‘fingers’ like the GoPro, the Osmo Action 4 uses a magnet and clip system which is so much quicker when switching mounts, such as when I take the camera off my snow/motorcycle helmet and put it on a stick. No unscrewing etc., which is never quick with gloves on. That’s a good feature.

Of course, most mounts in the world are GoPro style, so the DJI mounts do tend to end in fingers on the other end, so you need a few magnet mounts!

Like the GP12, it also promised more cold resistance - a real weakness on my old GP7, which had seemed less resilient than the 5 or even HD Hero 2! I’m confident from reviews this is indeed the case.

On the downside? The connecting app for updates etc. has to be sideloaded on Android. Why? Is there something it does which fails Android’s standards? It is reliable though, if a little slow.

osmo4-2.jpg" alt=“DJI Osmo Action 4 Helmet Mount” caption=“DJI Osmo Action 4 Helmet Mount” >}}

Insta 360

Insta 360, famous for their…360 cameras … also released the Ace and Ace Pro cameras very recently, very much in the GoPro format. I did look at them, and whilst they’re going to be serious contenders in the future, these versions didn’t have anything I’d need to mitigate their lack of field testing at the moment.

The Pro’s main trick is its ‘AI chip’, which can do interesting replacements and effects, but that seems to be mostly in post production with their app. It also has some smart shooting modes to use hand gestures and follow subject tricks - that’s nice.

It also has that flip up screen like so many ’normal’ cameras. This could be another big design direction for action cams, depending on how reliable that hinge is. Only time will tell. It’s also a little heavy and pricey, and with the Ace standard not having enough beyond the hinge, this time around it’s not the winner for me.

I don’t remember well, but I think 360 cameras were still quite niche 5 years ago, whereas they’re very normal in 2023. I think they’re great and I looked at the Insta 360 X2 & X3, and there’s clearly a place for them, but there was a few things which (this time at least) took them out of the running:

Not quite rugged enough.
I’m not sure I’d put in the post production time to orient the video etc.. It’s great it’s always there but in reality, I suspect that’s more unwatched footage on the server.
Requires a pole really and on my motorbike, unlike many vloggers, I’m not sure I want a pole sticking out.

Ask me again in a few more years though!

osmo4-1.jpg" alt=“DJI Osmo Action 4” caption=“DJI Osmo Action 4” >}}

So Why the DJI Osmo Action 4?

As I’ve suggested above, I have a decent idea of how I use action cameras, and of course everything is a trade off in priorities. In the end, it came down to the DJI being more robust in hardware and software, the larger sensor and just a focus on the type of stuff I do - landcape HD and 4K video, some stills and hyperlapse, and I want better low light if I can get it since I’m often out around dawn and dusk. I’m not a huge fan of the HDR look in some videos, so not having that wasn’t a problem.

If I want portrait video, the magnet/clip system makes re-orientating the camera quick n simple. It’s not as quick as just recording the whole 8:7 sensor like the GoPro, but again, I know I won’t use it that much.

That magnet clip system is a nice idea for sure, and having played with it, it does have an effect on ease of use.

The front touch screen is great for me too - I sometimes want to check the camera status and the easiest way is on the wing mirror of my bike - the front touch screen means I can check and alter something quickly. Nice.

I got the adventure pack which comes with 2 extra batteries in a charging case, and this is where I’d like to mention some engineering attention to details - you can charge the 3 batteries in it using a USB C based power source, but you can use that same cable to connect to another device like a smartphone and charge it from the batteries in the case. It’s a small but well thought out feature. The case also holds spare SD cards, which is nice too.

The unit feels solid, the interface is fast and is mostly intuitive. I’d like to be able to rename the presets, but that’s not a huge issue. It doesn’t have as many fun modes as some of the other cameras, like light trails, but it has a few timelapse presets for sunsets etc., and I might use that. Slow motion should also be solid.

The real deciders for me were the focus on a small, fairly light unit, the larger sensor (with lower pixel count) for good 4K recording. Stabilisation etc. is somewhat a given now, and horizon levelling is great. It doesn’t level at 4K through 360 degrees, but I can’t think of a time I’d need that? (If I was doing a 360, I’d want people to know it! The DJI does do that in 2.7K).

So there we are, 5 years on from the GoPro Hero 7 Black, I’ve bought a DJI Osmo Action 4!

I’ll do a review / update after a few months of actually using it.

p.s. On the Subject of Action Cam Reviews

Just a quick note here.

I don’t generally buy on specifications alone and not on ‘brand loyalty’ but on the whole package of a device, bike, app etc., so I like reviews who use things in the way I might.

In the case of action cams, what I noticed this time is that the people reviewing them often don’t seem to be ‘action’ people, but often general camera reviewers, social media vloggers etc., and that’s fine, but it doesn’t tell me how easy it is to use the camera with gloves, or in the water. Lots of channels talked about over-heating - very few talked about low temperature performance.

I’m not some uber X sports bro either, but I do stuff outdoors so I need a rugged camera I can use in those environments.

At least Kai Wong admitted he’s not an action man and still did a decent comparison. I did find some reviews from bikers and surfers, but I really had to look for them this time. A sign of the times.

osmo4-2.jpg" alt=“DJI Osmo Action 4 Helmet Mount” caption=“DJI Osmo Action 4 Helmet Mount” >}}

Obligatory ChatGPT generated post

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 05:17:23 +0000

Sigh, so yes, this is the obligatory ChatGPT generated post. It seems everyone is generating content (either openly or not) using it, so I thought I’d chuck something out. Also, the top image is from DALL-E, and those images were all based on requests around motorcycling in Japan specifically.

For the first one, the phrase I used was, “write an article about riding motorbikes in japan, in the style of Ernest Hemmingway”. At least that should make it a little more colourful, and hopefully concise, given Hemmingway’s preference for short stories and tight writing.

For the second one, the phrase I used was, “write an article about riding motorbikes in japan, in the style of Oscar Wilde”. This one was certainly less generic, and feels different, but as expected, Mr. Wilde’s languid prose it is not.

Anyway, here they are:

In Japan, riding motorbikes is a cultural phenomenon that goes beyond the mere act of transportation. It is a way of life that embodies the spirit of adventure and freedom, and for those who dare to embark on such a journey, the rewards are endless.

The roads of Japan are a motorcyclist’s paradise, with winding mountain passes, scenic coastal routes, and picturesque countryside roads that offer a sense of escape from the hustle and bustle of city life. The sound of the engine, the wind in your face, and the open road ahead beckon to those with a sense of adventure and a passion for the thrill of the ride.

In the style of the great Ernest Hemingway, riding a motorbike in Japan is like stepping back in time to a simpler era. The feeling of freedom is unparalleled as you weave your way through the traffic and navigate the narrow streets of Tokyo, feeling the rush of adrenaline with every turn.

But it is not just the thrill of the ride that makes motorcycling in Japan so unique. It is the culture that surrounds it. From the sleek, high-tech designs of the bikes themselves to the stylish riding gear and accessories, motorcycling is as much about style as it is about function.

And then there are the people. The camaraderie and sense of community among motorcyclists in Japan is truly special. Whether you are a seasoned rider or a novice, you will find a warm welcome in the local motorcycle clubs and groups, where you can share stories, tips, and advice with fellow riders.

But perhaps the most rewarding aspect of riding a motorbike in Japan is the opportunity it provides to explore the country in a way that few other modes of transportation can offer. From the stunning mountain ranges of Hokkaido to the vibrant cities of Osaka and Kyoto, there is no shortage of places to explore on two wheels.

As Hemingway once said, “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” And for those who choose to explore Japan on a motorbike, the journey is truly the destination.

ChatGPT + Me

It’s not bad I suppose, it’s coherent, if a little bland, and that’s where much of ChatGPTs writing seems to be for me. Yes, yes, you can argue that makes it better than most of my writing on this site. And now in the style of Oscar Wilde.

Ah, to ride a motorbike in Japan! It is an experience like no other, my dear friends. It is a sublime blend of art and science, of speed and grace, of freedom and constraint.

For the true aesthete, there is no greater joy than the sight of a sleek, gleaming motorcycle gliding through the neon-lit streets of Tokyo, the rider’s silhouette a study in elegance and poise. The curves and contours of the bike, the roar of the engine, the rush of the wind in one’s hair - these are the elements of a truly beautiful experience.

But of course, as with all great art, there are rules and guidelines to be followed. The motorcyclist in Japan must navigate a delicate balance between freedom and restraint, between individuality and conformity. The strict regulations and licensing requirements are not meant to stifle the rider’s creativity, but rather to ensure the safety and well-being of all those who share the road.

And yet, even within these constraints, there is room for innovation and individuality. The motorcyclist in Japan is a true artist, constantly seeking new ways to push the boundaries of style and function. The motorcycle itself is not merely a means of transportation, but a canvas for self-expression and creativity.

To ride a motorbike in Japan is to be a part of a grand tradition, one that stretches back centuries and embraces the very essence of Japanese culture. It is a tradition that values discipline, precision, and attention to detail, as well as a deep appreciation for beauty and grace.

In the words of the great Oscar Wilde, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” But for those who choose to ride a motorbike in Japan, existence is not enough. They seek to live fully, to experience all the beauty and wonder that this world has to offer. And in doing so, they become true artists of life.

ChatGPT+Me

This second one was a little better, at least it was more Oscar Wilde than the first one was Ernest Hemmingway to me. I’m not sure we can claim riding motorbikes here stretches back centuries though. Ultimately, I don’t think they’re truly in the style of a great author, and they do 3rd person references, but hey, not truly awful.

I don’t want to get into the right and wrongs of these ‘AI’ generated pieces of content, and I’m not planning to use them again, and if I did, it’d be well sign-posted, unlike many roads here in Japan.

Also, I find the chatgpt to be slightly more on point than the associated DALL-E images, but I accept that’s because these are tools like anything else, and my wording may not be getting the results I want.

Ride on AI, ride on.

Troubleshooting A USB Charging Problem

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 11:11:57 +0000

I use my old Moto G5+ smartphone and OSMAnd+ for navigation, mounted to my handlebars with a RAM mount and powered via the Tracer’s onboard AUX/‘cigar lighter’ socket through a USB converter ( USB Power Delivery specs). Over the last 6 months or so I noticed my phone would be very slowly losing battery charge despite saying it was charging and I wondered if this was due to a failing battery in the old phone or something else, perhaps some application on the phone using more energy than the charger itself could provide. Finally I decided I needed to actually investigate and troubleshoot this USB charging problem and see if I could get it sorted out - there’s not much point having a navigation system if it runs out of power.

There are plenty of ways I could test this, such as with my Extech 330 multimeter on the AUX socket itself, but for the sake of invasive simplicity I started with a phone app called Ampere to measure the phone’s ( claimed) electrical usage, and then the amount of power the phone was actually receiving. There’s plenty of variables here, but I hoped it would be close enough to suggest where the issue was.

With the usual apps running, which is pared down to a minimum as this phone is only for maps, but includes location and GPS, the app says the phone is using ~350-450mA. However, when on charge from the bike, it says it’s only receiving around 250mA in. That explains why it says it’s charging, but it’s not enough to prevent the battery charge level from dropping.

Next thought - is there a problem with the bike’s AUX electrical output? I decided that was unlikely since my experience with bike electrics was that they tended to work or not work, rather than send out consistently reduced amounts of power - and I was certainly hoping that wasn’t the answer if only because I really don’t like troubleshooting bike electrics.

The weak link then could be the AUX -> USB adapter so I replaced the old Sanwa one with a new Anker PowerDrive 2, which has a 24W / 4.8A rating. The bike itself should be fine with this, as my basic maths says the socket is 12V and I know the fuse rating for that AUX circuit is 2A, so that should be 24W max. Upon testing with the same Anker cable I’d been using before, the phone was now receiving a fairly steady ~750mA. This obviously is enough to charge the phone and as an older micro-USB device, it’s around what I’d expect. Why did the old Sanwa adapter start maxing out at 250mA? No idea, but I suspect whatever detects/negotiates best voltage just wasn’t working correctly - perhaps the infamous motorcycle vibration finally got it? Pure speculation.

The main point though is the Anker adapter works fine, so I don’t need to worry about my navi needing its own charging battery on longer trips.

This isn’t the best way to troubleshoot this as I mentioned - a multimeter on the AUX circuit is a basic step you’d want to be doing, if only to check there isn’t some larger, hidden issue with the bike’s electrics, and certainly something I’ll be checking, but I wanted to see how far I could get without access to real tools. The measuring app - and there are quite a few in the Play store - I’d say is a very rough indicator, but that’s all I needed in this case to see whether things were close, and the issue with a phone is that the usage voltage is constantly changing so you’re only ever going to get a range, but at least with a phone running very few apps, that’s a little more consistent than a daily driver phone.

I don’t really want to get into the wit n’ wisdom of using a phone as navigation device here as it’s apparently somewhat divisive. For me, it means I could use a couple of navigation apps (e.g. OSMAnd or Google Maps) and because that’s all it does, it doesn’t overheat or struggle to keep up - and I’m not in the uncharted wildernesses. Of course it doesn’t have a SIM but you can load apps on via wi-fi still, so I can load music and podcasts on there if needed, run the Cardo comms app, the GoPro quick app for controlling the camera if I mount it behind me, and I can still make emergency calls on it if need be. It’s not fully waterproof, but it’s been fine in a downpour or two and I have a plastic cover for it for when things get bad. I wouldn’t use my daily phone for this, again, the vibrations seem to break cameras (and not just Apple ones, but anecdotally most modern phone cameras with physical image stabilization features) and I suspect the phones too eventually. I’d like to get something like a Garmin, but here in Japan they’re 2x the US price, which seems a bit of a markup.

Given the amount of time I use it though, I find the old phone navigation device works pretty well though - just don’t forget the quality of USB adapter and cables you use!

Current Cameras

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 02:18:00 +0000

I thought I’d do a very quick post about my current cameras. This blog did used to have more ’technology’ posts, but many of those are now private (or on brightblack) as over the last few years I’ve tried to focus more on outdoors and motorcycling here, though I thought for a change today, I’d do something about my current cameras.

Let me be up-front here though - I’m not a photographer, I just want to take photos to remind me of times I’ve had on the road, or wherever I happen to be. I’ll be honest - I have hundreds of photos of my bikes in front of beautiful vistas.

The ’larger’ camera

For many years I had entry-level Nikon dSLRs - a D40, then a D3200 - and I really liked both of them. I amassed a kit 18-55mm lens, an f1.8 35mm prime and a 55-200mm telephoto lens for them too. They were great value for money cameras and lenses.

Then in April 2020, I moved over to an entry level Fujifilm mirrorless camera system, the X-T200. I like taking photos but my skill level and disposable income for cameras doesn’t justify huge expenditure, so better to get a cheaper body so I can afford a few lenses down the road. So for the Fujifilm, I have the small and light kit 15-45mm, then a 23mm prime lens and a 16-80mm travel zoom I bought used. When possible I sell off old gear via online auction or more recently to Fujiya Camera, which is where I got that used 16-80mm Fujifilm lens.

As it’s a small APS-C based system, I find these don’t add much bulk or weight in a backpack or my topbox, so on days out I actually enjoy stopping, getting the camera out and looking around. And drinking tea.

Why the X-T200?

The X-T200 is light and small. It’s takes great photos, and like all Fujifilm mirrorless, has great colour and film simulations in JPG which is what I mainly shoot in. It also does very good video, which my previous dSLR cameras didn’t. The X series of cameras is being actively developed and I could move into weatherproof bodies going forwards, and there’s also plenty of weather sealed lenses - including two of the ones I have - which might not be a bad idea given some of the places I end up.

The Action Camera

My first action camera was a GoPro Hero HD2, which I thought was great, even with the required case, as it was a camera I felt safer mounting to helmets or taking snowboarding. After quite a few years, I sold it and got a Hero 5, then a few years later sold that when I got a Hero 7black as a gift. The 7black is great for video, especially it’s amazing stabilization. The downside was it was very buggy on launch (mostly fixed), and can be temperamental in sub- and near zero temperatures if care isn’t taken. I often use it for time lapse too, and I find it actually takes decent photos with a bit of patience.

Why GoPro?

Their hardware seems mostly well thought out and durable, which I think is where they lead cheaper brands and is mainly why I’ve stuck with them - I’ve never had one really fail on me. Their software and other business strategies seem to be all over though, which is concerning since I see action cameras as a niche and declining market as people just use water-resistant phones, or put the phones in waterproof covers. For example, their idea of charging 50USD to use an external mic is my favourite example of trying to make money where a lower margin would likely drive more sales. I even did a post about it. Again, well built cameras and better image quality if that’s really a factor.

The Smartphone

Yes, the best camera is truly the one you have with you. I don’t buy high end phones unfortunately, but I use whatever I have if I just need to take that photo. I used to have point and shoot cameras, like the small Canon Ixy range, but ultimately found I used the big camera more, and then the phone or the GoPro if I had them with me. Eventually the point-n-shoots never got replaced when they wore out. Currently I have a Google Pixel 4a, and yes, very happy with the photos.

A more flexible option?

Pricey, but I know a few bikers who swear by the Sony RX100 range, pocket sized cameras which take great photos and videos. There’s similar ones such as Canon G5 range that perhaps could be an option in the future. Who knows!

In Summary

Basically then I don’t have a massive number of cameras, but fairly specific ones I suppose, and I do like to take photos even if they may not be ‘good’ photos, I treat them very much as a way to trigger memories, or a way to share them with people - usually they’re a great aid when explaining something. So for example, when explaining how I stalled my bike on an inclined curve, and had to slowly lower it to the asphalt, I can describe the road, but I think this photo makes it a little easier to understand:

All the Kurviger(.de)

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:07:50 +0000

TL;DR: In this post I’m taking a look at why I use kurviger.de map and route planner, and why you should give it a try because it creates some fantistic twisty routes.

Route planning is often the unsung hero - or villain - of a day out, as we curse missed turns, closed roads or things simply beyond anyone’s control like a road sliding away, or being blocked by a tree.

There’s a wealth of sites, devices and applications available for us to find the best way to get from point A to point B, and potentially a few points in the middle. However, many of these sites and applications make this bizarre assumption that you want to get there as quickly as possible on the straightest roads. How very bizarre. One that I find myself using quite often is Kurviger.de.

Why Kurviger? Well, let’s take a look at it.

It’s a map and routing site based on the OpenStreetMap map base, with a few sub-versions available. It has all the usual functionality of a start, end, mid points, extensions, points of interests, petrol stations and all those kind of things - it also has as a nice list of GPS coordinates of your set points which is nice too.

One of the fun features is how you can ask it to calculate a route for you - as fastest, fast and curvy, curvy or super curvy road types. The latter really is a fun thing to try - a lot of turns, often going a longer, more scenic way also.

Here’s a simple example from here in Japan, where Kurviger makes hugely different routes depending on which algorithm we ask for - straight, or super curvy.

As a motorcyclist, I like this kind of feature, partly to find new roads to places I know, but also for just creating something fun to ride.

The site now also has an account system so you can create your route and save it on their server for the next time you need it. You could also technically just bookmark it, as much (I suspect not all) of the data is in the URL you’re looking at. I currently export mine as a gpx track, which I can also upload later if I want to do another version of it. I then use these gpx track files in my smartphone OSMAnd+ app to use as a navigation file. One other way to find routes on the site is via ’tourcodes’ which are rides created or recommended by various magazines and journalists.

Kurviger themselves also have a mobile app, although I haven’t used it that much so I can’t give a full review, but it does seem decent. They also have a forum if you have questions, which I’ve used a couple of times, and found the response to be quite and helpful.

So this is all well and good as a website to mobile app, but what’s it life in real life? As you can likely imagine, when we get to super curvy, Kurviger is going to find some small and real backwater roads. Better to say ‘ways to go’. A few times I’ve been down real agricultural dirt tracks. Once I ended up on a basic concrete service track just a couple of metres wide, riding a meter above some rice fields, which narrowed as it got to the real road. It was a beautiful ride, with my only fear being someone coming the other way! Another time I ended up in a road in the hills so rarely used there was debris all over it which was a fun hour clearing a safe path for my road tyres. Yes, it would have been quicker to back, but where’s the fun in that?

These are not a Kurviger issue, but highlights it will choose any road it has in its system. If you’re of the right mindset though, it’s a great way to find some interesting routes and server something up if you’re drawing a blank on where to go that day.

Twistybutt Map Tips

Sun, 10 May 2020 14:40:49 +0000

[2022 May Update] I wrote this in late Summer 2019 as a reminder for myself. It's had some good feedback, and I've learned a bit too, so please go to this updated page which I'll update going forwards!

What is GPS?

The Global Positioning System [GPS] is a US military Global Navigation Satellite System which gives you a location pretty much anywhere on the planet Earth as a set of coordinates. There’s actually a growing number of these systems being deployed as countries and companies look to reduce their dependency on something which could be taken away at some point. There’s a decent list here for those interested.

What about Twistybutts?

So when you do a Twistybutt, unless you’re one of the brave few (and probably on a Ducati classic) using a piece of paper taped to your handlebars, you’ll be using some form of GPS navigation system on the ride, aiming to follow the path TougeExpress has carefully crafted for us.

You get this file, shove it into your device or phone and then just go right? Oh, it’s not that simple? When is it ever. Let’s review this to ensure happy happy Twistybutts.

The file is usually sent by TougeExpress as a .kml or .gpx file created on Google Maps, so let’s start there.

What is .kml?

KML(Keyhole Markup Language) is a standard file type usually associated with Google Maps and Google Earth. It’s called that because Google bought the company Keyhole to start it all. These are usually .kml files but there’s also a .kmz file, which is a zipped format containing the .kml file and any other useful meta info. It’s designed as a presentation format for annotating maps.

What is .gpx?

GPX is another file format which is designed to encapsulate a lot of data about topography, including GPS data and other locations. The format has explicit formats for routes, waypoints, and tracks as distinct data types.

.gpx is generally considered the better option for transferring data between GPS devices and it’s widely supported.

However, there’s more to it than that. Again.

Waypoints, Routes and Tracks

Waypoints: These are single fixed locations which you may have set yourself, or the application may have chosen, such as a good restaurant or a geographic location, stored as a GPX location.

Track: this a larger file, but has a higher resolution, a higher number of GPS points to follow, meaning an app can usually place them on a map and get the roads you wanted more accurately. A potential downside being that some apps and devices may have a limit to how many of these points they can render. These are also usually the type files created when you record a run/hike too, like a bread-crumb trail.

Route: this is lower resolution, has fewer waypoints, fewer GPS positions and your app/device may use its own logic to decide how you will navigate from one waypoint to the next, depending on your settings. This means that two riders with two different apps or devices and settings, may go down different roads.

Basemaps

The maps we use, be them paper or digital are not the same. Indeed, some are intentionally not the same. These differences can make a difference as to how a device sees and chooses your route (also see ‘Why is my route different?’). We need to be aware then of what map we’re using and test to see what differences that has to the one the route/track was created on.

All other factors being equal, OpenStreetMap and Google Maps are sufficiently different that designing a route on one may not get you the exactly same sequence of roads as on the other. This is often because we’re going on small, minor roads with lots of branches.

So what do I do for the Twistybutts?

Let’s look at my own example:

My first year I had the source route “golden master” [GM] .kml from TougeExpress made in Google Maps. I imported that .kml file into trip planning website Furkot.

It didn’t go so well.

When I missed a turn the app running on my smartphone would then try to recalculate to get me to the next waypoint, since it was the only real information it had, and to get there may or may not on the GM route since it was finding the way between waypoints.

Some of this was my lack of understanding of the application (See ‘Know your navigation system’) but I also didn’t understand that the exported Furkot route was still using Google Maps base, and OSMAnd + is based on OSM (OpenStreetMap). An exported track would’ve been better, but not perfect.

The next year I used Kurviger which also uses OSM. I went the long way of making a 1:1 copy of the GM by comparing the route natively in Google Maps and Kurviger side by side and then exporting from Kurviger as a .gpx track. This meant I had to split the route into 3 sections as this is a high resolution solution, and at the time Kurviger seemed to struggle with more than a certain number of its route designing points.

[2022 edit - it seems that Kurviger is now able to handle more route designing points.]

Breaking it into multiple parts as a track also meant my OSMAnd+ phone app could follow it, and guide me back to the track, not a waypoint if I went off it. This took a long time but you should know what to look for along the way anyway. This worked well for me.

These days, TougeExpress will give you a Google derived .gpx track if you ask, so all you have to do now is to import that into a site / app which has your system’s basemap and check it against that GM. You may have to carve it up for the site or your navi to handle.

This was my last way - I imported that into Kurviger, did a quick side by side, made some minor tweaks, and then sliced it into 3 parts and exported it as a track.

Also, don’t forget to mark the fuel stops / places of interest in your system too, and that the fuels stops are open - sometimes they aren’t open when you think they are (sigh).

The Final Checks

Now you have your 3 .gpx files (or what is appropriate for your system - see below). Now load them on your navigation system and quickly compare to the GM - did it get it? Even at this point I’ve seen some subtle issues which could put you on the wrong road, so I’ve gone back, tweaked, re-exported/imported and checked again. I’d attribute this to very minor differences in the way the application renders the way.

(aka ‘Why is my route different?’ )

I didn’t fully understand some of OSMAnd+’s options on my first run - as well as not appreciating routes vs. tracks. It all added up to wasted time and missed turns - to the tune of ~3 hours. That was on me.

You need to know what maps your system uses. You need to know if you have a track or a route file and what map that’s from. You need to understand what your settings are for routing too. For example, if you have ‘get me there quick’ enabled, there’s a good chance it could generate an unintended route, or when you go off a route, it’ll put you on a main road to the next waypoint - that is not The Twistybutt Way. This may even happen with a track on some devices. Essentially, you need to know how you app or device works.

Some people have tried to use Google Maps, only to find on the day no data signal in the mountains, so no streaming Maps. Some people found on the day they didn’t know how to tell Google Maps to follow a specific route. You don’t want to discover these gems on the day. Learn your app.

[As of late 2019, Google Maps now allows downloads in Japan which should reduce issues with not being able to get map data when out of signal areas - providing you remember to download the map data beforehand.]

Map Not Keeping Up?

Another factor to remember is that on some systems there can be a lag (or accuracy issue) where the device/app thinks you are based on the GPS information its receiving, meaning if you’re going quickly - but still inside legal limits obviously - you might miss a turn, so be aware a bit before and keep an eye out for the kind of turn you’re going to be making.

Getting hot.

One issue phone users face (and this is seemingly less of an issue for dedicated device users) is that their devices can get hot, and either become functionally unstable or flat out shut down.

Firstly, local map solutions like OSMAnd+ seem to have this less as they’re not streaming map and position information in and out.

There are other things you can do: remove any covers on the phone, close any applications you aren’t using, turn WiFi off (even Bluetooth if you don’t really need it) and reduce the screen brightness as much as you can. Also, mount the phone where it’ll get some breeze. This might mean moving it on your handlebars, or adjusting/removing your screen. Anything to get some cooler air around it.

All good?

Get out there and ride, and be sure to talk about any issues as opportunities for exploration at the bar later.

If this all seems like a lot of work, and yours works fine out of the box, that’s great, but if you do the Twistybutts and have ‘issues with the map/route’, take the time to see if there are any potential fixes here.

Also, bring a paper map and a paper list of road and town names. It never hurts.

Remember: The is NO substitute for knowing your route, or at least recognizing when you are not on it.

[Apps I know people use include the OSMAnd+ I use, Google Maps, MotionX and Kurviger, as well as the dedicated Navis from Garmin and OEMs. For paper maps, the Mapple Touring books are excellent.]

Sorting Out : GoPro

Thu, 30 May 2019 12:30:17 +0000

Rather than just review a product, I thought I’d review a whole company and make sweeping and simple recommendations on how to improve their business with the benefit of having no experience in their market. So, sorting out GoPro.

That said, I often think reviewers and opinion pieces on the internets should spend a bit more time talking about what they wanted or expected from things in the first place, and what their experiences have been, so we as readers get a little context. So first then, let me explain my history of usage with GoPro action cameras.

My GoPro History & Usage

My first GoPro was a Hero 2 HD in early 2012. I loved that thing, in its plastic case with spring mounted buttons, 720p video and distinctive look. I had the screen ‘bacpac’, and replaced that with the wifi bacpac, which in hindsight was a mistake. I actually had 2 of them - I lost one in Guam whilst swimming with my family. I had to quickly help someone, and the floaty the GoPro was on just floated away somewhere! On the positive side, I had backed up all the footage the night before, so I didn’t real lose any memories.

I soon bought another Hero 2, whilst on sale before the Hero 3 came out, as I found it was really filling a niche for me, and it helped a lot with getting footage for family movies, snowboard and motorcycle days, and be a camera the kids could use at the beach and all the other outdoors stuff we do without worrying about it getting wet and such. I also really liked the timelapse on it, which continues to be a key use for me even now.

A few years later I sold the Hero 2 on Craigslist, and with a bit of saving, I bought a GoPro 5 Black in late 2016. I liked the higher frame rates, lack of need for case, and the touch screen. I was then gifted a new 7black for Xmas 2018 from the family, and sold off the 5 (I really don’t need 2 action cameras at a time). Broadly I’ve liked the stabilization, the new timelapse modes, the photo improvements. The crashing [potentially] due to orientation? Not so much.

So that’s me and GoPros. So what’s my opinion, and thoughts on the company, products and directions?

The Hardware

I find GoPros to be generally well made. Everything seems to fit well, and of course their mounting system has been the standard for the market for quite a while, which helps since their own brand accessories and batteries are usually at least double the cost of anyone else’s and explains why most of my accessories are third party.

The one aspect of the hardware I think is ridiculous is the DRM’d mic port. It’s just a silly way to spin up some revenue. I don’t know why GoPro don’t just let people use any adapter or even BlueTooth for mics. I’d be keen to see the economics on that.

In newer models you can now do portrait video. I’m no young InstaInfluencer, so maybe there’s a market for this, but all the people I see with action cams, and all the footage I see online from actions cams? None of it is portrait. Vertical video is from the smartphone market. I could be tainted here since watching the ‘Community’ forums, it seems that the auto orientation feature they have now seems to be causing more crashing for very little benefit for people who actually use it in social media.

The Applications and Services

Software is not GoPros strong point. At all. I suspect they know this since much of their application range has been bought in.

The first desktop app of theirs I used was Studio, which was a very, very basic, not to say clunky editor, but did let you stitch together time lapses and I used it for that a few times.

It helped organize footage, but I already have workflows for that, so I didn’t use that side so much. It also helped update the cameras and indeed it seemed to work fine for that. Ironic now that GoPro’s own support steps start with ‘manually update your GoPro’ and not use Studio’s successor for that.

They replaced Studio with Quik on mobile and desktop, but now you had to log in to GoPro to use it (since sort of dropped). It has some nice functions, but is a more limited editor than Studio in some ways (e.g. no timelapse now) if that was your need. It doesn’t help that it doesn’t recognise HEVC capable hardware correctly in many cases including mine, meaning it refuses to play those files which are often high resolution, high frame rate clips, so often I don’t use it for playback, which is ironic given GoPro market so much of their product appeal as high frame rate / high resolution… which requires HEVC. Of course you can still play it back in VLC or Quicktime if the underlying hardware supports it (mine does).

I don’t use it at all then on the desktop, and have only a couple of times on mobile where the story maker function is quite good, and it will edit non GoPro footage also. On the desktop it does let you select the overlays for the data-logging the camera does, showing GPS location, speed, orientation etc., but that’s a novelty at best, and the doesn’t seem to work with other editors anyway.

I’ve submitted a few feature requests to GoPro to enhance Quik, to make it more useful, such as for lossless cutting, SD card testing, and file fixing - things the GoPro users specifically need, so we’ll see if any of that happens. Having a basic editor is OK, but beyond that I think they’re better pitching it as a utility on the desktop, and doing a deal with an existing ‘free’ editor company like BlackMagicDesign (who also make cameras…hmmm).

The Plus offering of cloud storage and damage cover was initially too little, too expensive, and initially restrictive on quality of footage and didn’t really fit into many people’s workflows. Here in Japan the Plus pricing is 7,200JPY a year (for ‘unlimited’ storage). A 200GB Google Drive is 4,560JPY a year, but doesn’t get you the insurance aspect.

As ever, the idea of on the road cloud backup is nice, but implementation is clunky. It also shows that subtle weakness - it needs a smartphone or other connected device to get the most from it, and for most people, they’re just going to use their phone. I do think this is a good idea for the product though, because again it plays to the core - usage of cameras outdoors, in difficult conditions with the risk of damage.

Live streaming was another new feature rolled out, and unfortunately another I don’t really have a usage scenario for personally. Again, this isn’t a GoPro issue, this is my issue. I’m interested to see how this catches on compared to people just using their phones and apps like Periscope for this functionality.

Bottom Line: I don’t think the Insta crowd use GoPros more than active outdoor people use GoPros. The insurance concept is nice and to make it better for the GoPro usage scenario, so perhaps less time on chasing those ephemeral social media users who broadly aren’t the core market, and more resources on action cam users who are?

By The Numbers and the Business

I don’t believe that share price etc., should or does have an impact on product mix all the time, nor do I think equity share price reflects a company’s success or value all the time, but let’s just look at 5 years of share price for GPRO. It peaked on October 3rd 2014 at 86.97 USD just after the IPO in early 2014. It’s spent much of the last 3 years between 5 and 10 USD. That’s not healthy in the broadly capitalistic system.

Again though, latest figures show the company is showing improvement with an increase of 11% in cameras shipped, and the Plus product is seeing some improvement with an increase of 50% sales, year on year, which I suspect may coincide with allowing any footage to be uploaded. It seems clearing up the Karma drone situation seems to have helped too, and they’re done writing it off. A nice idea the Karma, just not done well, and the plug pulled.

The Bottom Bottom Line

Years on from their founding in 2002 then, they’re still a camera company. They still sell a lot of cameras, but the smartphone trend of an annual refresh cycle seems to leave GoPro with serious quality issues on release and increasingly annoyed users on the community forums. Perhaps they need to lower their cadence to every other year, and use the off year to build support and fix firmware, or the company operations need rethinking.

GoPro should acknowledge that the ‘mainstream’ days are going away. They need to re-embrace their original and new niche customers who need cameras that work in odd places, stuck on odd things, and see the target more as YouTube/Vimeo than FaceBook/Instagram. Everyone else will use a waterproof smartphone, or use ‘real cameras’ for higher quality.

As for other markets, I think there’s room for action cameras for a while yet, and whilst GoPro missed the drone market both by a wide margin in terms of the time window and delivered a seemingly flawed product in the Karma, ‘rugged smartphones’ could still be a market for GoPro until they can identify something else.

Less marketing, more support for grass roots - for something designed to capture once in a lifetime or out there footage, a level of support on forums etc. is vital. The ’ Community’ is OK, but there’s so little official comment on there or letting people know what’s considered a problem and what isn’t. Whilst Asia only accounts for ~15% of sales, getting a chat session for support outside (and sometimes inside) US hours is not easy, which is a shame, and in my experience, whilst the support is friendly, it’s very heavily scripted, and not always conclusive. (My experience was that we went through the generic troubleshooting, and when I could still replicate a freezing issue, was told to turn auto-orientation off, and there, fixed. Turning off a feature to stop a problem is not a fix. I received 2 case numbers, but didn’t get a transcript for either.)

Given DJI has just entered the high end action camera market with the Osmo Action which does 80% of what the 7 Black does, this isn’t like the days gone past of Yi jumping in and taking those ’lower end’ GoPros sales, this is really attacking GoPro’s core.

The Very Bottom Line

So that’s it; a view of GoPro, my history and usage of GoPro, and some notes on where I think they are and aren’t. I generally don’t do brand loyalty, in the same way that companies don’t really do customer loyalty, but I’ve liked what successions of GoPro engineers and the business have done, and I’d like to see them succeed, but their continued seeming belief that they’re Apple and that they’re selling a lifestyle I don’t think will translate into success in the very long term.

A Year with the Cardo FreeCom4

Sun, 07 Apr 2019 14:37:57 +0000

In April 2018 I decided to purchase some Bluetooth based intercom units for use on the motorized bicycle. There’s a huge selection of products available, across a broad range of price points, so after some thinking, then some reading, and some more thinking, and then a cup of tea, I chose a pair of Cardo Freecom4 units.

The main thing about buying anything is that it fits existing needs and might have some growth space for the future. These were my main requirements going in:

Be able to talk to my pillion/passenger, and potentially one or two others.
Listen to navigation instructions / some phone interaction.
Waterproof/Clumsy-proof as much as possible.
Not be insanely expensive.

Those aren’t big asks these days, but it’s easy to blow past your budget to achieve them. At the lower end of the spectrum, we had devices which work with a phone and a navigation system, but not a passenger, then those which would hit my requirements, all the way up to post Bluetooth mesh network systems.

Like many, I ended up looking at some Sena models and some Cardo ones. They both have higher end models, but Cardo have a range called Freecom which sits below their premium Packtalk range. The Freecom 1 is for using by yourself with a phone and GPS, Freecom 2 connects to one other unit, and the Freecom 4 allows up to four units (and non Cardo units apparently).

This latter one was the one I chose - it’s since been upgraded to a 4+ model, but the 4 is still available new. Price wise, it was on offer I suspect as Cardo had announced new Packtalk Bold units a few months before, which I wasn’t interested in, so I managed to get two units (the ‘Duo’ pack) for about 30,000 yen including shipping from Amazon. I also bought an additional helmet kit (mic, speakers and stick on clip) for the kids helmet.

The Hardware

The units are surprisingly slim sort-of triangles with a button on each edge. It clips front to back into the helmet mount which is either stuck on, or clipped onto your lid. Our two adult helmets worked fine with the clips, but our junior/child helmet needed the stick-on holder, but it was just as simple and the 3M adhesive is sturdy. The buttons are mostly fine to hit with gloves, if you can remember what the combinations do - that can be a big ‘if’ sometimes.

The low profile speakers went in easily to the adult helmets which have allowances in the foam cushions, but were a little problematic on the junior helmet. However, the Freecom speakers connect via a standard 3.5mm jack (unlike some of the Senas), so we were able to use a small pair of earbuds in the junior helmet instead, and they worked fine, we just had to get them in to the child’s head before putting the helmet on. Unlike the speakers, the mic has a proprietary connector, but with just two wires it should be simple to rework through something more standard if you need to replace it. As it is, the included mic velcro’d easily inside all the helmets, though boom mics are also included for non full face helmets. The sound quality is very respectable - intercom sounds good, music and podcasts sound very good. Listening to entertainment isn’t in my general requirements, but if you like listening to tunes, the packed in speakers are likely good enough. They’re also loud enough you can hear directions over higher speed wind noise even with earplugs in, which is my more usual usage case.

Updates, Support & the App

Firmware updates are handled via Cardo’s ’ community’ webpage, in conjunction with a download application, which as far as I can tell is Windows only. Also, the page was not encrypted for some reason if that’s an issue for you. This same page is also where you can register your products, and set certain preferences. The firmware updater has worked well for me across 2 updates (to 2.0 & then 2.2) and both units - with update 3.1 coming out just a as I was writing this. Though it failed initially on 2.0, on the 2.2 update I could change the language on one of my units to Japanese. Oddly, although it’s a community page, there’s no official forum, just some FAQs. If you want to contact the company, it seems easier to use social media - I tried emailing them, didn’t hear back, then got a mail a month later asking me to give feedback on the reply. Certainly for the first few months I had the units, a lot of the Cardo website was broken, but that seems largely fixed now.

Their app (‘Cardo Smartset’) is well laid out, seems quite stable and allows you to set things up like a favourite contact for calls and such. It also tells you when firmware updates are available, and unit battery level. I can’t say I’ve had much of an issue doing the simple things I wanted to do with it, and it hasn’t done anything exciting whilst I’ve been riding, which is a good thing as I also use my smartphone as a map/navigation system.

In Use

Enough of the talk, how is it to use? The units are solidly made, and they click solidly into the helmet holder, but be sure to test it out a few times; once I hadn’t clicked it in completely and spent ten minutes before ’re-seating’ it brought it to life, even though it looked like it was in. Connectivity seemed to automatically setup between the two units most of the time, and at worse I had to use the app to re-connect the two. The only intercom issue I had is that my unit would sometimes drop, cueing an audio alert, but a tap on the correct button always brought it back.

Sound quality is very respectable out of the box, but I did try different ambient noise sensitivities, and they do make a difference, but the defaults were often acceptable. The rain resistance seemed fine in the misty and rainy days I’ve taken them out, the battery life is excellent, with a day of navigation instructions barely having an impact, and the units seem to hold charge well when not in use. Volume and audio quality from my smartphone navigation unit was excellent, with no break-up, which reflects where Bluetooth audio usually is now.

As I noted, you need to memorise the various button combinations for some things on the unit, which isn’t too difficult perhaps, but as with any button only interface, if you make a mistake it’s not easy to cancel it all out without pulling over, though in my year I’ve only had to do that a couple of times. Answering a call with a single button, and dialling your present favourite was easy and worked as simply as it sounds. However, answering by voice I couldn’t get to work reliably, and usually resort to a button (I pull over to answer anyway). I will confess I like to sing when I ride, and on some of the more boisterous parts of some songs, the Freecom would chime in with ‘User is not available’ thinking I’d issued one of the audio commands.

As the units charge from a standard micro-USB socket under a rubber flat, it’s easy to charge, and following the v2 update, you can use it and charge it either from the bike, or from a USB battery at the same time, which could be a factor on some tours, or if you’re generally forgetful.

In Closing

These were my first comms units, and I’m actually quite impressed and happy that Cardo have rev’d the Freecom4 to a plus model as it somewhat justifies the design and pricing. It’s not as cool as the Packtalk range, but nor do I need either the features, or the amount of riding I do justify the expense. They’ve proven reliable and rugged, so no complaints really. That’s actual praise.

It’s also been good to talk to my passengers, even if it’s my partner telling me about her day if I pick her up from work, or making sure my kids aren’t sleepy on the back, or if they have any questions about something. It definitely makes everyone feel safer if I tell them we have a couple of interesting turns coming up they can expect, if they’re lost in the scenery. A usage case I hadn’t expected is listening to a podcast in insane traffic, or whilst stopping to stretch my legs or at a meet up spot (as I’m early, not because I’m fast).

Review: OSMAnd+

Sat, 23 Mar 2019 00:34:43 +0000

When I’m out and about I’ll often take a look at my map book to get a rough idea for a route or destination, and then just go, stop if I think I’ve missed a turn somewhere, or keep going if I just accidentally found a really good road. It’s a fairly relaxed approach I admit.

Sometimes though, I want to follow a specific route, either one someone has sent me, one I’ve specifically made myself, or even one the fevered algo on Kurviger.de has come up with. In early 2017 I started trying out some different smartphone apps, as well as dedicated route navigation devices such as those from Garmin. After a bit of poking around, borrowing kit from friends, and a lot of tea drinking, I settled on the (free or) pay-for OSMAnd + app on Android and iOS.

The Maps

Per its name, it uses the free and open source OpenStreetMap [OSM] data and has the benefit that you can download map regions to your phone for free via the app - no update fees like the older Garmins, no sending units away or any of that.

Having it local is also going to save on data during rides if you even have signal, and some power and heat on the phone as it works it’s tracking and calculating magic.

I should explain a caveat at this point: currently here in Japan, we can’t download Google Maps for licensing reasons, so to use them you’ll be needing need signal and when I go up into the mountains, there often isn’t any. Also, Garmin support is via a fairly pricey 3rd party.

OSMAnd+ can read . gpx files in from other navigation systems and sites, so you can make use of the aforementioned Kurviger and other routing packages and websites. More recent versions will also work with .kml files apparently, but I’ve not spent time with that, so I’ll neatly side step it.

Along the way of learning about navigation and GPS systems, I’ve had to try to teach myself a bit about tracks and routes. In broad terms, a track is a larger file, but has a higher resolution number of GPS points to follow, meaning an app can usually place them on a map and get the roads you meant more accurately. The limiting downside being that many apps and devices have a limit to how many of these points they can render. These are usually the files created when you record a run too. A route has fewer points, but then the app/device will use its logic to decide how you get from one point to the next, depending on your settings, so two riders with two different apps or devices and settings, may go down different roads.

In Use

Setting A->B (via C) routes on the phone is simple and whilst there is an array of options around that, the defaults work well. The developers frequently update the app and its user interface, and it’s become a lot neater over the last year or so, and some of the options have been clarified and moved around.

It also allows you to chose what’s on screen while you’re riding such as distance to destination, estimated time left, and even if you’ve accidentally gone a certain amount over the speed limit. There’s quite a lot of information and tutorials on their site and YouTube as well.

You can import tracks or routes to the app from an email attachment, Google Drive or a local file. If you prefer you can make one yourself on your phone by selecting points manually, and letting the app decide the route based on your preferences.

Location points you add and save you can also see on the map by folder group which is great, meaning after you’ve added quite a few, you can choose to only show the ones you need for a certain trip. It can also show points like fuel stations, convenience stores and such from the OSM database. I will admit I sometimes cross reference these with Google Maps for opening times.

It also has text-to-speech voice instructions for a lot of languages, meaning you don’t have to look down at the phone if you have a Bluetooth communicator. Given I ride a lot of tight mountain twisties though, it can get comical when it tries to keep up with the rapid turns, so I often mute it for those stages, as it trips over itself with left and right instructions. One other note on the voice, for a tight turn I would call a hairpin in the UK, the TTS (even the UK English one) refers to it as a ‘U turn’.

The app also has some interesting plug-ins, such as one allowing you to record video and audio into the app for a given location, which is a nice touch if you do ride reviews, and is free. There are also pay for plug-ins such as for nautical information, and specific data like ski areas, and 3D hill shading.

Caveats

OpenStreetMap and Google Maps are sufficiently different that designing a track on one may not get you the exact same thing on the other, though broadly they can interoperate, depending on settings. The main practical issue is that Google doesn’t like outputting .gpx, so you may need to convert with an app or a website, or try that new kml functionality.

In the near two years and multiple versions I’ve used, only once did the OSMAnd+ developers fundamentally break the app for me - a zooming issue in certain languages which sent it into a loop - though the developers did provide an older version for manual install (since Google Play doesn’t easily allow roll-backs), and that was at least a work around. It’s the old adage - “never do an update just before a ride”.

Is it worth paying for?

When I bought my copy, the main difference was the number of .gpx files you could hold at once on a device, but that’s not really a limitation for most people I suspect. I paid to help support it really, and perhaps because of that I saw decent email support responses, but the official forum also seems to get adequate response times. I personally believe in supporting developers of apps I get worth from, and I also bought the contour and shading plug-ins to get an idea of the terrain I’m riding, as I live in a mountainous area, so I can gauge how much vertical I’m looking at. All in all, I find it a useful app for the average touring biker.

Nanikore's Recommended Podcasts - Motorcycling

Sat, 12 Aug 2017 00:56:23 +0000

I have a bit of a commute for my job, so I’ve tried to find different ways to make use of the time in a more constructive manner, and one of those ways is to listen to podcasts. As I have quite a few on my list right now, I thought I’d break this up into two posts - ‘Motorcycles’ and ‘The Rest’. As an aside, I’m currently running a cheaper Android phone (a Lenovo Moto G5+) and the DoggCatcher and 2011; a few I still listen to, some have gone away.) Anyway, on with the list:

Adventure Rider Radio RAW - Out of Canada, this is a monthly panel show, usually running 90-120 mins. of experienced overlanders discussing situations, kit, their books etc.. I’ve not done anywhere near the travelling they have, but it’s often interesting for tips and funny anecdotes, as well as differing perspectives on how to travel for long periods. The same production team also make the weekly Adventure Rider Radio, but this can be hit and miss as there can be a lot of native advertising in some episodes - probably worth a try though.

Front End Chatter - Two motorcycle journalists from the UK discuss street bikes as well as some racing content and usually runs for 60-90mins every two weeks. There’s a lot of light banter and some very decent Q&A in most episodes.

Two Enthusiasts - Two American chaps, based out of the Pacific north west of the US discuss bikes, with a slant to technology and the motorcycle industry itself. This is an extension of the usually decent news website Asphalt and Rubber, and each episode goes for between 60-90 minutes.

Moterrific - Two American ladies this time make this podcast on a semi-regular monthly schedule, with each episode running around 60-80mins. They discuss areas to ride, gear, and dip in to some of the challenges women face in the hobby from perception, to decent gear, to bike height.

Tabibike Ladies Bike - A Japanese podcast which doubles up as both motorbike podcast and Japanese study for me, where the two hosts discuss bikes as well as bike culture, all the way into food and happenings during rides. This podcast is a little shorter at around 40 minutes per episode.

So those are the ones I’m currently listening to, but feel free to recommend others.

Over to a Nexus 5 and a Thinkpad E440

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 13:06:40 +0000

My mobile setup doesn’t change very often. My iPhone 4 was three years old in August, my old Core Duo MacBook (2006) died last year, and I was saving to replace it, having borrowed the netbook from the kids as needed, so it was time to move over, to a Nexus and a Thinkpad!

The iPhone’s button and battery were both on the way out, and the iOS7 mandatory upgrade had slowed the thing to a crawl. Having had a Nexus 7 for a couple of years, I wasn’t wed to the iOS ecosystem, and SoftBank’s LTE based plans for the iPhones all carried big price increases per month over my 3G plan. I shopped around and found virtual carrier Y! Mobile (what was WillCom and E-Mobile, and ironically piggy backs off the SoftBank network) was cheap, and had the LG Nexus 5 phone for a smaller monthly fee than my current 3G plan with a 3GB cap. As it’s an unlocked phone, it’ll also make trips outside Japan a little simpler with SIMs, which will really help.

Six weeks on, as a physical device, I like it, it’s very light after the iPhone, and even with the fairly chunky Spigen case, it’s still light but solid feeling. I tend to get a case which will survive well. It feels speedy, but I accept that’s relative after the disaster the iPhone 4 became with iOS 7 (not helped by Apple refusing to let iPhone 4 users update to a secure iOS6 train release after the goto fail fiasco). There are plenty of reviews though which will do a better job than I could. I do like Android, but you’ll notice I tend to get Nexus devices, and that’s because I like that they don’t ship with the ridiculous carrier and manufacturer apps, and you’re almost guaranteed to get OS updates quickly.

For the laptop, I looked at the MacBook Air - it’s a beautiful piece of engineering, but truthfully, outside of my 80,000 yen budget (it’s almost 110,000yen with 8GB RAM, 13" screen but a relatively slower CPU). I looked around at a lot of laptops, but kept coming back to Lenovo’s relatively unsung Thinkpad E design and pricing.

After prioritizing my wants, I got a unit with 8GB RAM, the higher definition 1600*900 screen (matte), and the dual antenna ac wireless. I debated i5 vs. i3 on the CPU, which had an ~8,000yen price differential, but since the only difference appears to be the turbo on the i5, and since this is mainly a movable writing rig, I went for the lower CPU. For a decent review of the unit, stum.de did a great review, especially on the BIOS.

Having installed a 128GB Crucial MX100 SSD, this thing flies with Mint Linux 17 Cinnamon on it. The only issue I have right now is suspend is a bit unreliable, and it would appear to be the continuation of a Linux tradition; in my case it may be anything from the Intel graphics driver, to the lack of a swap space under LVM with 8GB of RAM. Hibernate is fine though.

As for real world performance, I was ripping a CD to FLAC, transcoding other FLACs to OGG format, watching a 1080p video over the N based wifi from my old Buffalo NAS with a few IRC chats, and browser tabs going, and the thing never missed a beat. I think that should cover my average usage.

Physically, it’s really nice, much more solid than I was expecting, and the keyboard is probably the best I’ve had on a laptop. I’ve been a general Linux user for a long time, so it was nice to use it on a dedicated laptop, having kicked the idea around for a while. It also doesn’t seem to get very warm either, especially near the keyboard, where the old Macbook would get a little uncomfortable after a while. I have not yet tested out the spill resistant keyboard, and don’t actually plan to.

Using the Windows 8.1 the laptop shipped with and the horrific dance it likes you to do through first boot was enough in itself to put you off - really Microsoft, that obsession with linking to an MS account before you can play with your new machine is really annoying, and the first thing I switch off afterwards anyway.

For what it’s worth, if you do want to continue using it, it comes with less crapware than I’ve seen elsewhere, and is easily removed. The fact I even had to cover that tells you something. To cover performance, the machine is very snappy in Windows 8.1, and I had no problems with it, even though it was running through a 5400rpm HDD.

In the six weeks I’ve had it, I’ve taken it on an international trip, and it performed excellently, even if it is a little bulkier than a more expensive ultrabook. I’ve dragged it around the house, sat in the park with it, and generally lugged it about, and it’s done exactly what I wanted from it.

So there we are, that should be me done for several more years. Also, this is not an Apple vs. Linux vs. Google thing. Brand loyalty is a silly thing, you should buy on your needs and your available money. For me the Nexus and the E440 are exactly what I need for the foreseeable future, and whilst I like the alternatives, they don’t represent good value for money to me.

[Fixed for me] Mac rebooting during sleep

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 12:53:27 +0000

Posting this in case it can save someone else some time:

It all started so innocently. I’d bought a Logitech wireless mouse (an M325) and put the tiny receiver into the keyboard USB port for proximity, because I never use those ports. It seemed to work fine and also reduced the number of cables on my rather cluttered desk.

A couple of days later, whilst I was playing Minecraft on my Windows box, I noticed that the Mac Mini was unexpectedly rebooting, so I trawled the Macs logs in the Console.app, and found an odd error message regarding a sleep issue. It wasn’t a one off either - in one evening it had rebooted and actually shutdown three times.

9/24/14 11:35:04.000 PM kernel[0]: Sleep failure code 0x00000000 0x1f006900

I read around on the net about that message, and what it could be related to, and it seemed that some people were having similar issues and suspected USB devices, especially drives, such as for Time Machine, as the culprit.

Of course, the first thing you check for should be recent changes, and there had been some Apple patches go in, but I decided to test the Time Machine USB drive theory first (almost dismissing the new mouse!). In summary:

- Removed Time Machine drive - same problem.
- Removed the Logitech mouse dongle, but crucially, put the old known good basic Microsoft mouse in that same keyboard USB port (previously it was plugged into the rear of the Mini) - same problem.
- Tested disabling sleep to confirm it was sleep related, and yes, confirmed that there was no problem with no sleep.
- Finally, decided to plug the Logitech dongle into the USB hub attached to the mac - and yes, all was fine, no sleep problem anymore.

It would seem that keyboard port does not like USB HID devices.

The bottom line: never dismiss any change, and never underestimate the weird things which can cause issues - [Fixed for me] Mac rebooting during sleep!

Kiva Update - Two Loans!

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 02:17:46 +0000

Kiva is an organisation which works with micro-finance organisations all over the world to provide loans to help people move forwards with their ideas and businesses. Essentially, several people, sometimes many, pool their money to extend a loan to a person or group they select from the Kiva website.

I made my first Kiva loan in 2011 of 25 USD to a group in Viet Nam, the second was to a sewing services, the third was to a man in Kenya, looking to build his motorbike transportation business. I won’t deny my love of motorbiking played a part in that last one. However, this has been that same 25 USD going around, so I’ve added another 25 USD (as well as a small donation to Kiva itself) and made two more small loans this time around.

The first new loan is to another Kenyan motorbike transportation chap, and the second is to a Balinese crafts family. This latter one is the first time then that I’ve lent money into a country I’ve actually been to.

This brings my money-lent level in total to 125 USD, well below the Kiva average of 333USD. One must try harder. Kiva knows this and provides plenty of statistics and badges on your portfolio in the hope it might make you want to cover that last country you haven’t lent into yet.

It’s worth remembering that this is a loan, not a donation, and many recipients are looking to build businesses, or better themselves for their communities, and unlike a donation, you stand a very good chance (98%+) of getting your money back to loan it out again, or even take it out of Kiva.

Give it a try then. I have to say it’s quite inspirational reading about some of the ideas people have for businesses and how to better their lives in other ways, such as via trying to fund further education.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Paul Brown — 2014-08-28

Do you have a Kiva team that you donate on behalf of? Not that I have an ulterior motive and want you to join my team (http://www.kiva.org/team/smrt) or anything…

New Arai Astro IQ helmet!

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 05:32:08 +0000

After probably too long with my old faithful Arai Rapide Or matt black helmet, a couple of months ago I got around to getting down to NAPS and getting myself a new helmet. After trying on quite a few, as always, I actually went with another Arai helmet, the Astro IQ in a matt white going by the seductive name of ’ silk white’. I went for the white as my current bike is black and quite a lot of my gear is, so for the sake of visibility, I’ve gone for the lighter coloured helmet. That said, the one thing to remember about helmets: fit is everything. My fit apparently is XL, due to the size of my cranium or something.

This model forms part of Arai’s R75 technology range, making a rounder helmet, which along with the Facial Contour System should make the helmet safer in crashes, and more comfortable in use, including making it easier for emergency services to get the helmet off after a crash. Lot’s of marketing talk, but how does it feel out in use?

I have to say that I wasn’t expecting it to be that much different to the old helmet, but after a few hundred kilometres around town, on the expressways and into the mountains, I was really impressed - more comfortable, quieter, and much easier to turn my head in at speed to check behind.

Some of this I’m sure is the new design, but some I suspect is how worn and settled my old helmet was, and whilst it’d never had an impact, the padding especially had settled a bit.

The IQ does indeed feel rounder, and lighter too, and I take it as a great sign that I began to wonder why I hadn’t bought a new helmet sooner. The ventilation is impressive, with a good selection of vents made of solid slides and switchers, which are broadly adjustable with your bike gloves on; this is definitely an improvement over the old helmet - the ventilation wasn’t bad, but it couldn’t be practically adjusted with gloves on.

So that’s it, I’m very pleased with the new helmet, and the only real downside is that huge Arai logo on the front.

Nexus 7 as a laptop?

Tue, 17 Jun 2014 12:11:31 +0000

Over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of my Nexus 7. Recently I wanted to do more writing on it, so I picked up a cheap BlueTooth keyboard from Anker and yes, I know it’s chunky, but it’s very decent to type on, and gets a lot from its two AA batteries.

This made it much more usable as an input system, but somehow I now wanted to use a mouse as a pointer instead of leaning in to touch the screen from the keyboard sit-back position, and then I remembered I bought a USB OTG cable a while back to play with USB stick file systems on a rooted system. On a normal Nexus 7, you can’t use it for bulk storage, but it does work for a mouse, even an old Microsoft mouse you bought a decade ago in a bargain basement in Akiba.

The Android system is surprisingly navigable from a keyboard, and the mouse makes it pretty much like a laptop, albeit with limited right-click. Yes, I know I’ve negated much of the point of having a tablet over a laptop, but this was a cheap conversion, and I only need to take the parts I want.

The main benefit may be that it enhances the typing capability, so for email, writing, website work and such it’s pretty good. You obviously don’t need the mouse, and just default to the touchscreen. Either way, it’s an option.

Leaving Product: Microsoft Technet

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 14:52:28 +0000

Actually, to be more accurate, Microsoft is retiring it’s venerable TechNet, with renewal only available until the end of August 2013 for one final year. Mine was actually due for renewal this month for one last time, but I’ve decided to bite the bullet and not renew. It used to cost ~ 20,000yen to start, and 16,000yen to renew, so that’s [sort of] saved.

TechNet [Standard] was a way people in the IT business could get a massive range of Microsoft products to install, test, break and generally play with and get to understand, all at a reasonable price. The caveat: no production use - should really be for lab and test setups.

I started mine in 2010 and have used it a lot for learning bits about aspects of Windows and other MS products I didn’t know about, and trying to get time with systems I would never have otherwise been able to touch, or have reason to use.

Microsoft hasn’t definitively stated a reason they’ve retired it, but many things point to, if not piracy, at least abuse of the system. Some sites, including reputable places like LifeHacker had suggested Technet Standard as a cheap way to get all your software. Over the years then, Microsoft had dropped the number of licenses per application/OS, from 10 to 2, and whereas previously the EULA said the licenses for installs would work after a subscription had ended - that’s no longer the case. That does point a finger in the general direction of abuse in some ways

I actually asked Technet support how long my installs would work after my July 31st finish date, and all they would say was that I was required to remove all Technet subscription software by the end date. That’s fine.

The only long term installs I had was a Windows 8 Pro box, and a recent Server 2012 server I was using on my home server to play with Storage Spaces, both of which I’ve already rebuilt - the former with a Windows 8 Standard license I bought, and the server with a GNU/Linux Mint install, using LVM to replace Storage Spaces.

Microsoft has said that many wont need Technet going forwards, since their 30-90 day trials should be enough. Given that many of my installs were VMs, that sounds fine to me, and since it’s taken very little effort for me to get off Technet, I don’t have too negative a view of it.

However, I can understand a lot of IT Pros, small businesses and such feeling a bit annoyed by this by this - the Action Pack may be an option for some, but a full blown MSDN license is likely to be too expensive, and rebuilding machines every 90 days may be a burden (if it can’t be scripted). We’ll see.

It’s possible Microsoft’s shift to cloud offerings means these small system builders and integrators will no longer be needed by the mothership - don’t build an Exchange server, use Outlook.com, don’t have a file server, use SkyDrive Pro and so on. I can see it, but what with Microsoft’s erratic view of it’s customers of late, and that most TechNet users were the people who build for end users it may cause some ill will, but what would their alternatives be? Suddenly offer Open Source alternatives? That’s a lot of retraining.

For me then, not much change, except I have to get the time limited versions, so I can no longer tinker when I have time with a VM as I used to. A good thing is that it’s putting me back into GNU/Linux for servers again, and that’s already been fun - it’s been a while.

Home Server and Storage

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:52:00 +0000

I need to address my home server storage capacity problem. For a while I’ve been using a single disk 2TB Buffalo.)

That NAS has filled up with family video and photo backups, my over-enthusiastic GoPro footage, sound recordings, rips of my DVD and music collection (as FLAC), and so space has run out.

I decided I wanted to spec something that would last for a few more years and decided that:

It had to be reliable and quiet, even if it was going in a cupboard.
If the system failed, I needed a decent chance of getting my data back.
I needed 4TB of space, with a local 1:1 copy of that - that’s 8TB of space total.
I needed to be able to Crashplan/other internet backup it offsite.
It was going to be on a budget!

There are lots of ways to approach this issue. For example - a simple way is to buy a big drive or drive array and attach via USB to a current machine. I like the idea, but it means I need that machine to be on, or in sleep mode, all the time, which is something I wanted to avoid.

Another solution is a home NAS like my existing one. These go from single drive units up to 5 drive and above RAID systems. They are relatively cost effective, but when they die, you’re often stuck trying to find the same model to use to get data back, and since many are embedded Linux, if it dies, your only real chance is to hook up what’s left to another unit and hope.

Another option: an old style home server. Essentially it’s a PC, with a lot of drives and that’s it. After spending time reading reviews, especially at Silent PC Review for quieter parts and considerations, and kakaku.com for pricing (I live near Tokyo so I’m spoiled for PC parts at retail) I came up with the following:

Case: I looked through SPCR’s recommended cases, and saw the Fractal Design Refine R3 - the R4 had recently been released. I looked at one, and some of the competition, and decided to give it a try. One minor note, I got the ‘Arctic’ white one so it wouldn’t stand out as much where I was going to place it, and since this thing is heavy, I bought it from Amazon Japan for pretty much what I would have paid in Akiba, but without having to carry it home on the train. Mounting components is simple, and it comes with plenty of brackets and rubber washers to help isolate vibration from hard drives.

Motherboard and CPU: In my price range AMD have some good chips, but so do Intel. I was looking at the AMD A6-5400K APU, and the Pentium G2020 - yes, a Pentium, but based on the new Ivy Bridge core - this part is lobotomised though, and only has Intel HD graphics, but for what I wanted, it would do. Then I looked at the mobos - either Intel’s 1155 socket based, or AMD’s FM2. In nearly all cases, the AMD chipsets had 5-6 SATA3 connectors, whilst the Intel ones had only 2. That was the deal breaker for me - I wanted to make sure the machine would have as much SATA 6Gb capacity as possible for the future, so I went with the AMD combo. I chose an ATX board from [ASRock](http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A75 Pro4-M/), which have always treated me well, and between the two I’d have everything built in.

Drives: For the OS I picked up a Samsung 840 SSD in 120GB - I wanted a fast OS disc to get the machine up from whatever sleep / reboots it had to do. Also, it would mean a cooler, quieter machine. For storage I went for 4 * 2TB discs - Western Digital Green - these are the only thing that I wonder about, as there are some stories about the Green drives not withstanding this kind of role. That said, I’ve been using them aggressively for years and not had an issue. We’ll see.

Memory: Corsair XMS3 in 2 * 4GB - nothing special, but a decent brand.

Power Supply: I like the Antec units, and thanks to a sale, I got an Antec EarthWatts platinum 450W power supply for a good price.

So that’s the hardware

For Operating System, I was actually planning to go with Linux, but since I have an MS Technet account, I decided to give Microsoft Server 2012 a run and it’d give me an excuse to spend some time with it. One thing I liked about a Windows solution was that I could use Storage Spaces, which allows Windows to group physical discs as virtual discs, meaning I could buy cheaper smaller disks and let the system see them as a single larger disc. This doesn’t buy safety against drive failure, so the other discs made an identical space, and used Windows Backup Service to do a nightly copy. The benefit here is that if the OS dies, or the machine is unusable, as all meta data is in the Space, you can hook the same two discs (in my case) up to a Windows 8 box, or a rebuilt Server 2012 box, and still use the discs. I decided to to try this, and built the system up on Server 2012 Essentials (the old home server plus small business server) but then rebuilt it on Server 2012 base, and it saw the Storage Spaces no problem, so I’m relatively happy that’ll work in a disaster scenario.

Finally, as it’s Windows, I can run Crashplan on it as normal and have that extra offsite backup mode.

[Update: August 2013 - Just a couple of months later, MS killed Technet, so I’ve happily rebuilt this with Mint Linux 15 (into text runlevel) using LVM over StorageSpaces. Crashplan still runs superbly.]

For scale, 2 * 4TB Buffalo NAS cost around 66,000yen (~420GBP/~640USD). This machine came in a bit more expensive, around 74,000yen (with 32,000en of that being the 4 WD drives!).

In practice, after a month of usage, it’s been a great success - it’s fast and reliable, sleeps well and even when on generates very little noise, so I think I managed to hit all of my goals.

Leaving Product: Google (?)

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:23:33 +0000

Leaving GoogIe? I use e-mail a lot. I know it’s not as cool to talk about in these social website times, but the truth is, I do like to correspond with friends and groups of friends via good old e-mail. I have two types of account - I have my ‘web company’ accounts such as Gmail, MS Outlook, Yahoo for those company’s services, and for dumping signups into. Then I have a couple of accounts for myself and family members based on my own domain names where we communicate with friends and family.

I started using these domain named accounts about 8 years ago, settling on IMAP, and moving away from ISP based addresses and even from the above mentioned webmail apps.

For a while, they were based on Pair.com’s SquirrelMail implementation, and that was fine, but we’d sometimes see odd issues now and then. I looked around, and at the end of 2009, as I blogged, I moved to Google Apps. In those days, Google Apps was pretty much free for everyone, and you could even use Gmail as a web front end.

Over the years, they reduced the number of mailboxes each domain could have and originally at least, it wasn’t simple having multiple domains under one account. I could understand that - this was still a free service.

Last December, they killed the free option, and now it’s pay only, and I’m fine with that, I just wanted to put some back story in there as I’m grandfathered in with the 5 mailboxes per domain for free.

For a while now, I’ve not liked the ads on the web interface, or that theoretically my mail was analyzed for that mail targeting / profiling. Again, this is free, and when it’s free *you* are the product, as the old saying goes. I’m not a tinfoil hat fanatic, but I do like privacy, and decided it was time to pay for my email hosting again.

I looked at the Google (Apps) paid option - 5 USD a month for my 5 users. I then looked around and had a look at what MS is doing with Outlook on custom domains, and also at other hosting companies like Pair, and finally Rackspace.

It was tempting to stay with Google and Apps, but I don’t use the other Apps, just the email, and the way Google does things with it’s ‘AllMail’ philosophy irks some people, and there’s a whole post’s worth there on configs I’ve tried from app setup, to subscriptions and quite a few other things to improve that - but basically, I’m a simple Inbox n folder person. There are definitely upsides to the AllMail approach, but in my situation, people are preferring things in folders.

I decided to pitch a move to Rackspace on Twitter with a #rackspace hashtag, and quickly received several positive responses from users (and former employees) and a couple of contact people, who I followed up with, and who answered a few of my queries on quirks of my setup.

A couple of months ago, I signed up with Rackspace for a trial two weeks. Their product seems to be what I need - I can hold my two domains under a single Rackspace account, and each mailbox will cost me 2USD / month with a minimum of 5 (10USD / month). This actually works as I have 5 main mailboxes to move!

They support migration of data from various services via a migration assistant including GMail. I should note that this did not work for me from Google Apps using a preset, as my actual mail server was googlemail.com, not gmail.com. Not a problem - the manual setup worked fine. Having uploaded my from & to details in a provided spreadsheet, the script went to work, effectively logging in to Google as me, and copying the data across, and being reformatted by Rackspace.

Moving email hosts, like moving houses/apartments also gives you the opportunity to get to those things you’d been meaning to do, but never did. For me, it meant killing a few mailboxes, and rolling them in as aliases to my core addresses, meaning I have an ‘address’ for each of my two twitter accounts and a few other things, and they route into my core account, which means fewer accounts to own/check, no forwarding, and I can see where addresses have somehow attracted spam. Keeps it simple.

The web interface is very clean, very simple, and though I did need to set up some contacts, it wasn’t arduous at all. As far as my usual window onto my email - Thunderbird - it was all fine, and it pulled all my email down and let me re-sync it, so I’ve been tidying that all up as well, and slowly removing the AllMail. All in all, it’s been painless for me, and transparent to family members using their accounts, once we’d gone through phones and setup draft, sent and trash folders correctly!

It’s odd that in parallel, I’ve been moving my RSS reading habits from the soon to be retired Google Reader, to Newsblur. On my iPhone4, I used to use a syncd Reeder app with my Google account, but now just use that as a local RSS / OPML reader, as well as playing with the Newsblur app.

So, a few months on, I use Google products to very little extent - an email drop, and the odd G+ post. No more ‘core mail’ or RSS involvement, and I rarely even use the search any more (Twitter & Pocket pretty much take up my link following time). It seems a bit odd, but yes, I’m very happy with the move, and that I’ve actually managed to make it simpler.

Arduino and Raspberry Pi

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 13:41:36 +0000

Like many, it seems over the last few years, I’ve been getting more interested in some simple home brew hardware hacking. Thus, I’ve recently taken delivery of an Arduino Starter Kit, and a Raspberry Pi model B. If you’ve somehow missed these, then a quick summary on both.

The Arduino group are an open source team, bringing that philosophy to hardware. The upshot is a collection simple circuit boards, bread boards, and simple electronic components - in the fact the whole thing makes me think of school electronics classes when I was 17. I got the starter kit, which contains all the important things you’ll need to do the 15 projects contained in the guide, from a Spaceship Interface to Touchy Feely Lamp. The book is well put together, and a great introduction to the system, but a brief search around the place shows people are doing some great things with their systems. (Starter Kit costs around 100USD / 9000JPY)

The Raspberry Pi is a little different - it still has an open source basis, but is essentially a basic computer - CPU, memory, the whole thing. You just add USB power, a case, an SD card for storage, and on a simple level, install a special Debian Linux release called Raspbian. From this you have a computer which can run media at 1080p over HMDI, to simple tasks and desktop over the RCA video connector. the base board costs from 20GBP for the Model A, to 26GBP for the Model B, which is the one I bought. So far it:s been a lot of fun, and impressive something so cheap and simple can be used to stream video off my home NAS, and on a different install be a normal desktop for learning a bit of Python on.

Addendum: Note that most of my tech posts are now over at brightblack.net

New PC Build

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 13:18:13 +0000

For over 15 years, I’ve built my own PCs. The first was a 486/DX2-66 based machine just before Windows 95 came out. I’ve done it out of interest, but also to give me control over what I buy, and make replacements and upgrades cheaper. My build was getting a bit old, the parts being between 2 and 3.5 years old and was missing some current technologies, so I decided to replace the main components, and sell the parts on to cover some of the cost of the new build:

Old build: AMD Athlon II 645 4 Core CPU, AMD 5750 graphics, ASRock motherboard, 430W Antec PSU, Lian Li case, DVD-R drive, 12GB RAM.

It was a good build, and still had some legs, but was deficient in some areas. The CPU was capable, but for the increasing amount of virtualisation and editing/encoding/rendering I’m doing, something faster was definitely going to be better. Moreover, though the ASRock was a great motherboard, it lacks PCIe 3 and USB3. The 5750 is a good card, but after nearly three years, is showing it’s age, and though I don’t game like I used to, I decided it was time to get a PCIe3 1GB card and play older games with more detail, and get a bit more out of newer games. The Antec PSU has been great - so much better than the Enermax I had previously, but I felt I needed something with a bit more capacity, to handle the extra GPU load, but potentially more from CPU and other components. The DVD-R drive had survived a few rebuilds, but I’ve wanted a BluRay drive for a while since I actually have some BDs now. The RAM is actually one set of 2*2GB from an older build, and 2*4GB I bought a couple of years ago - I’m going to re-use the latter only - they’re all fine, but I expect to add a further 2*4GB kit later this year.

So what’s new?

For the first time since the very early 2000s, I’ve gone with a retail Intel CPU. That last one was a Celeron 333 I think, and I used to overclock the hell out of it. Since then, it’s been AMD all the way, but now I’m back with Intel and the i5 3470, based on the Ivy Bridge architecture. Interestingly, this model has HD2500 graphics built in, rather than the more common 4000 part, but since I have a discrete graphics card, it doesn’t make much difference, and I think results in a lower power wattage rating. Perhaps for the next upgrade, the Bulldozer/Piledriver cores from AMD will have evolved a little more.

For a motherboard, I chose to stay with ASRock, and got one of their H77 based boards, the H77 Pro4/MVP. It’s an ATX sized board, and though there is a Micro ATX version, that was more expensive, so I stuck with this one. I find the ASRock board to be reliable and well laid out. I used to swear by Abit, but again, I had some bad run-ins, and moved on. The board has PCIe3 for graphics, SATA3/6Gb, and USB3, as well as some of the tweak utils they use, and for the first time for me on a PC, UEFI instead of the old BIOS. Also, it has enough monitored fan connectors to match my case for a change.

For graphics card, I basically trawled Tom’s Hardware, and went with the AMD HD7770, which sports an acceptable price, but also a good power efficiency. I went with the Gigabyte model, which is moderately quiet, and was a little cheaper, instead of having a pile of cables and bundled games I didn’t need.

I bought a new power supply - essentially the 650W version of the previous one. I’ve always had good results from Antec and SeaSonic PSUs in all the builds I’ve done for myself and for friends, and when I’ve tried something different, I’ve been disappointed. It’s not a sexy part of a build, but it’s the one part which has the capability to blow the rest of the machine, so choose wisely.

Lastly, I picked up a cheap, bulk, LG BluRay player, so I can watch some discs on my PC, which will be convenient.

I’ve kept the memory, and my aluminium Lian Li case, which I really like, all the peripherals, and drives, and my X-Fi audio card.

I bought pretty much all the parts in Akihabara, from Dos Paradise (DosPara), which is a great set of shops, and they always seem to have decent prices. Pricing was mainly done on kakaku.com, with research from Tom’s Hardware, PCper.com and Anandtech.

Addendum: I now put tech posts over on brightblack.net .

Ripping CDs for Fun

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 13:09:53 +0000

OK, maybe fun is not the right word, but over the last few years, I’ve been ‘digitally archiving’ a few items - it started with some old photo prints and negatives (that’s ongoing), and then I tackled my DVDs, and now I’m looking to sort my CD collection out (I think it’s ~400 discs).

So why do this? It’s a combination of convenience and sound quality really. I want to hear the music as I paid for it, but it’s a bit difficult to have all those CDs available around the house, and keep them away from the kids. Also, I have ripped all my CDs once, usually into iTunes, and over the years they’ve been in a smorgasbord of bit rates and formats, from 128kbps AAC and MP3, up to newer ones which are VBR ~256kbps AAC.

Now I’m doing this final rip to a lossless format, I can then simply transcode to whatever size/quality a target needs in the future, and enjoy that ‘CD quality’ of this master.

How am I doing this? For the rip, I’m using Exact Audio Copy which is a nice piece of freeware, and rips the audio from the disc using a variety of methods to try to make sure that what you get, as its name suggests, is an exact copy of the disc. It’ll then save this, with all the meta-data it looks up online as either .WAV files, or several other formats you can set up. I’m using the FLAC encoder, so it’s losslessly compressed, and is quite widely supported across players and platforms. This is also open source, so I should be able to play/convert it well into the future.

With even my lowly Windows machine, this takes only a few minutes per disc, including meta data tweaks I need for some of the non-English discs, so it’s more a case of just feeding the machine than anything else. As for size, FLAC, depending on settings, brings most of the CDs in at around 350MB, about half their native size, but obviously nowhere near the ~65MB AAC or MP3 would give you - alas the price you pay, but given disk space costs, it’s not a deal killer.

When at my PC, I tend to listen on my Sennheiser HD-555 headphones, via Foobar2000, which I find to be a nice, simple sound app. The hardware, for what it’s worth, is a Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express card, which I find to sound better than the onboard Realtek codec, or the HDMI audio feed. On the Mac, it’s the built in Intel HD audio, which sounds acceptable, but the Creative card shows why there’s still a little more benefit in a separate sound card.

When not using the headphones, I have some ancient Sony SRS-Z750PC computer speakers which are fine for podcasts, background music and game effects, but aren’t great. In the future I may get a better set of speakers and even a separate amplifier for my computers, but that’ll have to wait a bit. (A real home music system for the living room is higher up the agenda!).

Is it worth the time? Actually, I think it has been - some of my very old rips always sounded a bit harsh, and going back to listening to the CD equivalent makes it all the more difficult to live with, and its been good to listen to all that music again.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Terrano Spirit — 2013-04-17

I have been reading out a few of your posts and it’s pretty clever stuff. I will definitely bookmark your website.

Nexus 7 (2012)

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 02:43:13 +0000

So last month I bought my first tablet - a Google/Asus Nexus 7.

There hasn’t been much in the way of gadget updates here in a while, due mainly to a lack of necessity and general interest to be honest, but one of my personal situations, is that I have a decent commute to deal with on a daily basis, and I’ve wanted something with a slightly larger screen to watch documentaries than my phone, and read some textbooks on which are mainly .pdf based, and thus a little too complex for my normal Kindle Reader. One thing I have learned from my Kindle though, is that that form factor is great for reading whilst sitting or standing on the train.

The iPad never really grabbed me for this task, just feeling that bit too bulky and heavy, and judging from my fellow commuters, that must have been right as there aren’t many people with them on my JR line.

Previous Android tablets just seemed to lack a certain polish to me, but when the Nexus 7 came out, it piqued my interest, so I put a bit of money aside, and picked up the 32GB version (24,800yen / ~290USD/ ~ 180GBP) the same weekend the iPad Mini came out - though that was 13,000yen more!

The Tegra 3 based hardware is excellent, and rugged - the rear mounted speaker is surprisingly good for film watching and podcasts, and the sound quality via the headphone socket seems decent. The tablet is snappy, and media playback of even 720p material on the 1280x800 display looked fantastic. There’s no point me going overboard on details here - you can easily pull reviews of this thing off the web. One the hardware side though, note that you don’t get headphones or much else with this - just a USB power adapter and micro USB cable.

My only previous Android experience had been on a phone I borrowed, so I was essentially new to the Android system. It probably took as long to figure out as an iOS device really, from scratch. The Google Play store isn’t bad but it takes a little getting used the scary sounding access rights the apps ask for, but basically this is just putting up front what iOS apps are doing anyway. As for finding the apps, I’m still figuring out some equivalents - all the main social apps are there, but I’m still looking for a podcatcher like Downcast, though I’m currently testing a few out. I have to say though, being able to just install stuff on this thing after plugging it in, and not have to mess around with iTunes feels great, though you now sort-of have to manage the files. Also note you need a special app installed on a Mac to mount it currently ( Android File Transfer).

In summary then, the Nexus 7 has exceeded my expectations - it’s very smooth and reliable, has decent battery life, and can survive being the recipe guide during Sunday Dinner preparations and has survived both kids abusing it. (Note that for novels, I still use the Kindle)

Kiva Update

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 00:49:04 +0000

Here’s a quick Kiva update; I’m micro-loan. The first was to a Vietnamese metalwork shop, as part of a $675 overall loan, which was repaid on time, in full, by February 2012.

This second one is to a lady in Colombia, to assist a clothing business, as part of an overall 1,700 USD loan.

I feel a little bad for her - on her first payment expected in June, she’s a few cents behind, and is thus noted as ‘delinquent’ which sounds quite harsh, but is the term used. Let’s see how she gets on in future.

What is Kiva?

“We are a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world.”

I’m going to add another $25 to enable me to do another loan, and have been looking again at manufacturing, possibly in Mongolia.

GoPro Hero 2 First Impressions

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 09:41:44 +0000

After thinking about getting one for quite a while, I finally bought myself a GoPro Hero 2 2 is often described as a ‘sports camera’, or a ‘point of view’ camera in that it’s a rugged design, comes with a durable waterproof casing, and is designed to be bolted to things, stuck to helmets, surf boards and such, to get closer to the action. It’s also different from a point n click in so far as it has a wide angle fixed lens (f2.8) thus no zoom, and is designed to be modular, allowing users to add to it as needed.

For example, I invested in the LCD bacpac (add-ons are usually suffixed with ‘~pac’ in the GoPro world) so I could view video as I go, set a shot up, or review the footage. The screen uses battery though, so I set mine to power down after 60 seconds, or you can just detach it after you think you’ve got the shot set up properly, reducing the weight, which is likely a key factor if you’re mounting it to a helmet or some other item where you want the least weight on you can get, and since you can’t see the LCD, there’s not much loss!

The accessories like the LCD also come with their own range of covers to attach to the supplied waterproof casing, so the whole unit profile is kept to a minimum but still waterproof. Some of the covers are also open to allow better airflow and mic sensitivity when you don’t need total waterproofing. My usage scenarios as really for my motorbike trips (on the bike or helmet), my bicycle runs, for the snowboarding and ski trips, and for down by the beach or swimming to get some more footage of the kids where I wouldn’t be able to take the point n click, which not only lacks a waterproof case, but is a bit unwieldy.

First off I tried some of the modes out; I wont go through all of them, but the ones I played with were the 1080p @ 30fps, 720p @ 60 fps, and 848*480 @ 120 fps all at the wide 170deg. field of view setting. The 1080p/30 looked fantastic, though this is the first camera I’ve had which supports it, and has a solid frame rate. The 720p/60 I think is where I’ll spend most time - it gave a smooth, slightly slow motion effect, and a solid picture even when moving. The 848*480@120 (WVGA) is good for when you really want some slow motion, which I tried out by running the shower at putting the GoPro in it’s casing on the floor, and seeing the droplets hit.One note for this is that it requires good lighting.

Overall, I really like the video performance - it’s h.264, and for me slots straight into iMovie, though GoPro do provide a basic editor called CineForm which isn’t bad at all for a free download, and allows you to convert the videos to other formats. Audio isn’t bad from the built in mic, but it’s very much secondary I suspect, though you can plug a mic in if you like.

The Hero2 also does stills at 5 or 11MP, and supports time lapse, and timed photos, which look very decent also. I put in a 32GB SDHC Class 10 which cost me less than 3,000yen, and complies with all of GoPro’s requirements for running 10fps still bursts, which are also useful. I bought the ’ Outdoor kit’ which comes with a lot of ways to attach the GoPro, including to handlebars, but have a look at the motorsports or surf kits if that’s more your thing.

Unlike the original GoPro Hero cameras, this has a more detailed front facing LCD which makes changing modes and settings much easier than its predecessor’s by the sounds of it, and has small LEDs on most sides so you can see it’s still recording. Another nice fringe benefit is that it charges from a mini USB connector, which is something I wish more cameras did!

I actually picked mine up on a business trip to New York, as the JP distributor’s price was 31,500yen after taxes, and I could get it for 25,000yen in the States - I think that’s a fairly generous mark-up given the exchange rate to be honest. Here’s a quick sample of some footage I shot straight off the handlebars of my motorbike. You’ll notice there’s a slight ‘fish eye lens’ look about it, which is due to the lens type. It’s rendered out at 720p/30 though there’s some loss of quality due to Vimeo’s encode and adding the player, here in SD, so it looks even better if you go to Vimeo to see the high definition version: [Update: April 2012 - I paid up for Vimeo Plus so this can be viewed in HD from here - at least until April 2013!]

https://vimeo.com/38397836

Overall then my first impression is that this is a quality product - image and audio is well above what I expected, and the build quality is very decent, so I’m looking for this to take some abuse and still get me some footage I just wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise.

If you want to see what the GoPro cameras are really capable of, search for ‘GoPro’ on Vimeo.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Gen Kanai — 2012-03-18

If you want better audio for your GoPro videos, (and while I’m no expert, I do know that audio quality makes a big, big difference- in my experience it’s more important than the video quality) you might want to consider an external audio recorder like a Zoom H1. You capture the audio separately and then sync it to your video footage with an app like DualEyes or the new Final Cut Pro has this functionality built in. You get much better audio than using the mic on the GoPro.

gurahamu — 2012-03-19

Hello Gen,

I was just looking at that H1 (http://www.samsontech.com/zoom/products/handheld-audio-recorders/h1/) and realised it’s one a friend was talking about a few months back for a project he was doing. I’ll drop him a line and see whether he got it or not. Years ago I used an Aiwa MD recorder at live bars around Kanagawa to record some great gigs, and it’s certainly something I’d like to get back to, so maybe that is the way forward on that. (I’m pretty sure it was more than the 90USD the H1 costs!).

I think you’re right though, for the amount I’d spend on a mic on-site for the GoPro, I may well be better off getting the H1.

Photograph Digitising and Preservation

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 23:38:07 +0000

Perhaps as you get older, and certainly when you have children, you start thinking a bit more about preserving family photos. All photos of my kids have always been digital, so for me preservation and archiving that has been a digital storage and backup dilemma, so have a look down the bottom of this post for my solutions on that.

However, almost all of my own childhood pictures are on single pieces of paper in boxes, some in albums, and some of which we still have the single negatives of. For me, that’s an issue as I live on the other side of the planet from the rest of my family and those photos, and there’s only that single copy, which we’d like to duplicate to have here in Japan as we start our own family, and not just to reduce that single point of disaster. I want to give my kids a giggle when they look at what I did when I was a kid.

Most of my old family photos were shot on cheap 110 film cameras with those stick flashes which melted after one use (my children will laugh at this post when they’re old enough to read it!)

110 film was widely available in the seventies and eighties, and roundly regarded as not very good nowadays. This means many of my childhood photos aren’t great technically, but from going through this process with a hundred or so photos so far, it isn’t the image quality that matters, it’s the memory of the moment, so don’t worry if that awesome memory you have in your head seems to have a coffee ring on the corner of the print and is slightly out of focus on the paper - it doesn’t detract at all.

Scanning

I have a recent, but not new, Epson GT-X770 scanner - it’s a mid range home scanner, and supports slide and negative scanning via a top lid light, and plastic negative holders. I did though, have to make my own holder for 110 film negative, as virtually no scanners support it natively. It also has some solid scan drivers and hardware elements for colour restoration, scratch removal etc.. I tend to scan two versions of each print; one a straight un-modded one, and one with colour restored because I actually find the scanner seems to do a better job of this that Photoshop for some reason.

The resolution I scan at depends on the source and the photo. There are plenty of guides out there, though I find some to be a bit off to me - a good website for reviewing some of the more technical aspects is ScanTips

Generally I scan colour paper print photos at 300dpi, and a few at 600dpi [dots per inch].

300dpi is easily good enough for most prints, and recently, what most photo print shops printed at anyway. From what I can tell from testing on the 110 prints, 300dpi is already far above what was captured on the paper anyway. I use 600dpi for some black and white prints from good sources, though again, I’m probably going too high and am pretty much capturing high resolution grain some of the time.

For negatives, you’ll use a much higher dpi setting (as the negatives are so small) and you start to see why scanners often have fantastically high scan numbers.

I tend to go for ~2400-3200dpi, but again, you run the risk of purely scanning grain in the negative, rather than capturing any real value, so no need to put the scanner on max, unless you have pristine, well shot slides or negatives. Again, for me, my sources are relatively poor, so I don’t need to go too far - to around 3200dpi for some 35mm negatives I had from early backpacking trips with my old Olympus.

Other Scanner Settings
I tend to just try to capture everything in the scanner, and then ‘fix’ in software on a copy. The only exception is really colour restore as I said, and some hardware features. Unsharp mask etc. I just leave for software adjustments later on.

File Format

When saving anything you’ve digitized from an analogue source, you want it to be in a loss-less format - this means that it’s exactly what you captured. The other system is ’lossy’ and generally you don’t see the difference, except when you do multiple generations of saves.

I save the files as loss-less TIFF files. This seems to be the most widely supported format, and holds comments and other things fairly well, it also has some lossless compression options, and handles high colour depth for those with higher end scanners. I’ve saved some of my own scans as PNG format also, as there’s nothing wrong with it, and has some advantages over TIFF in loss-less compression, but lacks support in some applications.

Never, ever, save as JPG - just don’t - always try to save a loss-less version as your ‘gold master’, and take JPGs from that. For any file conversion, I recommend IrfanView for Windows, and GraphicConverter for OS X.

Outsourcing

If the thought of getting a scanner and taking the time and effort to do all those photos seems scary or just plain painful, you can pay someone to scan your prints and negatives, and return them to you. This might also be an option if you’re looking at a huge archive.

There was some controversy a few years ago that many of the companies ship your photos to India for scanning and clean up, though there never seemed to be anyone who’d lost photos or had any other issues with any of these services, and as long as the end result is good, I fail to see how it’s an issue.

That Digital Storage
Backups for my computers used to really be about things I’d written and so on, but basically, like this blog - I always have a copy online these days, but I will confess I still backup a WordPress export locally now and then, but I think that’s relatively safe.

Prints are on paper, and you have a negative. There’s no worry about obsolete file formats, or applications, you just look at them in an album - risk of deletion is fairly low.

For any format though, there’s the risk of natural disaster, fires, theft and all manner of things - I tragically saw a lot of this when I went up to Tohoku to help clean up the tsunami damage - we all kept a keen eye out for any photos, CDs, hard drives or negatives which may help someone put their family memories back together.

I see a lot of people saying to keep a USB drive as a backup, but I’m not sure that’s safe enough. I believe in 3 copies - two different media locally, and one off-site copy. For me, most of my photos are on a Mac, that’s backed up sort-of live to a USB drive (not a portable one) on my desk via Time Machine, and then I use CrashPlan to upload another copy to their servers over the internet.

I used to back up to DVDs, but the libraries became just too large to burn, and I can’t trust small hard drives, though for a while i would keep one in my office drawer as a backup.

So that’s my setup for archiving the analogue photographic past. There are cheaper, simpler, or more expensive ways of doing it, but this is working for me. I don’t think you can go too wrong as long as you get a basic loss-less image file at a decent resolution, and back it up - and keep that original print or negative.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

sadie — 2011-10-03

Greetings! I have been trying to get in touch with people that might know something about the salvaging of Tohoku family photos, so perhaps you could help. I am an American artist living in Tokyo and have been trying to get this next body of work underway for a last minute show at the end of this month concerning our neighbors up north. Many artists here in Japan have focused on the Daichi plant and the problems with nuclear power and radiation (very important and frightening for all of us of course) but I feel like in the city many have forgotten the individuals that were effected. I will be in an art fair here in October and really want to get copies of the family photos left behind in the debris to paint, whether the subjects are known or unknown, as a memorial. What do you think? If you can offer any help or advice, I certainly appreciate it! Also, if you are still taking volunteers I am very interested of course.

Many many thanks, Sadie

gurahamu — 2011-10-03

Hello, and thanks for the comment.

I’m not really sure where would be best to start, You could try the organisation we worked through on the clean-up trips - http://tonomagokoro.net/ and perhaps they can walk you through the scale of the media recovered and what happens to them. We basically took all photos and negatives, and any CD-Rs or camcorder tapes and separated them into their own containers, and then they were taken somewhere else. I know one team spent several hours trying to get some boxes of photos out from the sludge in a basement, which again were taken away. Sorry I can’t help much more with ‘what happened next’, but I’d still try with the volunteer coordinators first.

Let me know how you get on.

Curse you, MX records! Sorry, my fault.

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:49:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I put a techie post up on here - shame on me! Here’s one about me doing something stupid, cursing my MX records then apologising for it being my fault.

Like many, I have a couple of email addresses. Actually, I have a silly amount I’ve set up to play with services over the years, but I’ve been slowly culling them. Anyway, I basically have two main addresses now - one which I use day to day for sign-ups, and one based on a domain name I own, and is mainly for friends and family which is now quite a few years old.

That, for a while now has been run from Google Apps, a relatively under appreciated offering from Google as far as I can tell. Essentially what it is, is a Gmail and Google Apps backend for your own company/domain, so all my mail for that address comes and goes from my address @ brightblack.net account, but is purely going through Gmail and gets all the benefits of the spam filter and 7GB+ of storage, for free. I like it - so much better than a Hotmail account or an ISP namespace.

My problem actually started a few weeks ago, but I didn’t notice as it’s not a high volume account, but I wasn’t getting any new mail. Then, last week my parents mentioned they’d actually got a bounced reply. I actually replicated it straight off from my phone thanks to Softbank’s insane timeout setting:

Action: failed Status: 5.2.0 Remote-MTA: dns; brightblack.net (___.___.___.___) Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554 5.7.1 : Relay access denied

(IP address obscured there!)

Odd. So I logged in to my Google Apps account, nope, all looked fine there, but no new mail. So I went further up the chain. My domain registrar is called PairNic, who have always been good to deal with, and the www.brightblack.net domain pointer seemed fine. So the next logical question is: what had I changed with this domain - any aspect of it - lately?

Answer: I’d re-set it to point to this blog … a few weeks ago.

Ah.

That’s a coincidence.

From Google Apps, I did a quick MX records test, where it basically does a DNS lookup (of which MX records are a component) on my domain and as somewhat expected, no MX records found. Well that explains why I wasn’t getting mail and people were getting bounced. As far as the internets were concerned, I wasn’t there.

So, I logged in to Pairnic again, went into their DNS/email config, and lo and behold - nothing - so a quick check at both WordPress and Google apps showed me my MX records should look something like:

Priority          Mail Server
1           ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
5           ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
5           ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
10         ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
10         ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

So I entered that into PairNIC’s pages, waited only a few minutes for it to replicate, and then the test from Google showed I had MX records again, and a quick email from my phone successfully arrived, followed over the next day by a small deluge as spooled messages came in.

You can actually get some good, simple steps to troubleshoot this in the Google Apps Tech Support area, as I discovered mostly after I’d fixed it.

So how did it break? As I suspected, it was when I re-pointed my old brightblack website address to this blog through PairNic, I missed a large amount of red warning text saying exactly what would happen:

Warning: Enabling any Forwarding features (E-mail or Web site Forwarding or Parking) will remove any previous DNS settings that you may have had with your account. Any previous nameserver, DNS, or e-mail settings will be lost.

How I missed that, I’ll never know - PairNic obviously make it pretty clear, but I must have thought that since I was only playing with NS (website) settings really, my email would be unchanged. I should have re-read that! All in all, I got off lucky - it took me less than an hour in front of the computer to realise what an oaf I’d been and to fix and test it - looking at some of the Google forums, some people have much larger issues.

If nothing else, I’ve refreshed my rusty knowledge of DNS, MX records and how my own email setup actually works, which is no bad thing. It’s also got me delving a little more into parts of DNS I hadn’t really looked at, like priorities, CNAMES, SPF records (sender-permitted-from), and gain a bit more knowledge on the subject of email in general, and some of the changes coming with IPv6!

Read the red text. Twice.

[Not] Unlimited Mozy

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:40:22 +0000

Something interesting happened on February 1st. in the incredibly exciting realm of online backups we found that it’s not unlimited at Mozy. Let’s just address one thing first: backups. Please make backups and make them regularly. Even better, have an onsite and an offsite backup. For me, offsite used to mean burning to DVD-R and shipping to the parents, nine time zones away, and thus preserving all my family’s pictures, video and a few other bits in case something Bad (™) happened.

Initially I went with JungleDisk/Amazon S3 for this, but in November 2009 shifted to Mozy - unlimited backup for 5USD a month which made more sense for me and meant I could also backup all the .dv videos and music, then about 140GB in total, now about 175GB.

As I say then, on Feb. 1st. Mozy dropped their unlimited plan, and implemented a tier based system. Instead of unlimited for 5 USD/month, it would be 50GB for 6USD/month and additional fees per 20GB above that. For me then, that would be about 21USD / month - a decent price increase.

As I posted on their forums, on the now 847 post complaint thread:

“I appreciate storage (even with EMC behind you) costs money. Bandwidth costs money. I can understand your move to a tiered, non unlimited plan, I really can. That said, here’s my two thoughts:

- you set the baseline too low - I see a lot of people on Twitter, and myself between 150-200GB, and for us, there’s just no economic reason to stay once our plans expire. For me that’s 10months, though I need to be careful to avoid the auto-renewal if I decide to leave (and unfortunately take my parents with me). I don’t think we’re abusing your generous unlimited offer with that amount per month. My fee likely covers my cost to you.

- but honestly, what irks me most is that I learn about this on Twitter, and on Lifehacker. I don’t have an e-mail from you, I don’t see anything on the blog from you. That just seems to imply you’re not interested in customer relations. As I implied above, that I only get mail from Mozy after they’ve charged my credit card, but not for a product offering shift like this means that I think you’re going to have a painful reaction from users who don’t watch every product announcement not in their mailbox.

Again, it’s a bold move by Mozy and I’m sure others will follow, and users will chose to stay or go, but really, whoever handled the rollout of this announcement needs to be given a little talking to.”

The first company blog entry for the change came on February 3rd. A touch late for many. That support forum thread is 99% complaints, accusations, as you can imagine.

I didn’t get the email notification Mozy say they sent. I use Google Apps for mail and had a look but found nothing. I asked about this and Community Manager Mike responded that so many e-mails going out at once probably set many ISPs spam alarm bells ringing. I find this fairly plausible, but given I’d already seen it on Twitter it was essentially moot within 24hours anyway.

“Mike, thanks for posting, and I wish you all the best too.

Business needs change, strategies change, sheer costs change, and that’s part of the world. Per my previous post in this thread, one thing I hope Mozy is hearing, aside from people’s unhappiness with the costing, is the communication. I found out via Lifehacker - no email for me. That’s not impressive. When I went to the blog at http://mozy.com/blog/ there’s nothing there either.

Given this thread, and the pounding #mozy is taking on Twitter and elsewhere, which I’m sure Mozy anticipated, it’s obvious a lot of people liked the service as it was, and many will leave due to the change. I hope those who work in Mozy stay employed in whatever direction Mozy is going. A company is always made up of it’s staff and it’s customers.

As for me, I have a few months for myself and my parents until renewal, so I’ll likely wait and see what happens.”

To which Mike responded:

“Thanks. The emails went out last night, however because of the volume of emails, it took a while for all of them to be sent. Also, because of the volume, I wouldn’t be surprised if it hit a lot of spam filters. The Mozy blog was supposed to contain this content here, but they moved it because of the high traffic (they didn’t want to bring mozy.com to a crawl).”

I’m actually finding this quite interesting, both in how to manage this from Mozy’s point of view, and how to seize some advantage. You only have to check out some Twitter streams for Feb. 1st. to 3rd. to see how this works: mentions of Mozy, #Mozy

Note that the hashtag seems to have a lot of spam like entries still pimping the unlimited and free plans - it’s fair to say Mozy has zero control over this.

Basically, it’s a pounding at best. Mozy in their Twitter stream is obviously on the defensive and they don’t really have any carrot to dangle. Also, note that up until the end of January, Mozy would go for days without posting - now it’s more than hourly.

Now see how competitor Crashplan is working this with their ‘mozyonover’ 15% discount link thrown out all over. @crashplan.

There’s a key couple of key phrases repeated in there such as “We appreciate your business.” and “Welcome” as well as careful retweets, and the re-iteration of their migration discount URL.

What comes out of things like this is that it makes people go and take a look at competitors - I looked at quite a few but I should say that I’ve gone with Crashplan. Crashplan have an interesting client which allows me to use their app to backup to another local machine as well as their online service (or even a friend’s PC).

Sustainable?

One thing that did occur to me is why. Obviously Mozy wants out of the large storage consumer market - chances are it just doesn’t have the profit margin they need and is more trouble than they feel it’s worth. I suspect the sweet spots are indeed these sub 50GB people, and the small business users. I wonder how long till others decide to drop ‘unlimited’; I suspect that may depend on how Mozy fares.

I think there are questions over anything called ‘unlimited’ though I honestly believe 170GB isn’t a huge amount of data, people backing up terabytes is almost impressive. Perhaps its because to me Mozy was a last resort - my main machine, a Mac - has a Time Machine drive as live backup, and I take weekly snapshots to a couple of attached hard drives.

Mozy, with it’s download speed even on my nice fibre connection, isn’t going to rival an eSATA2 HDD for restore. However, if someone walks off with that drive and the diminutive Mac Mini, then Mozy just paid for itself.

As you can see from my posts, and some of the others, I just can’t get angry about this. Yes, it’s a pain uploading all that data to another site, but my Mac is happy to do that whilst I sleep, and it’s still on Mozy whilst I move. If anything, I hope it makes people think more about offsite storage.

Instagr.am

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 12:23:12 +0000

Just a quick post here for an iPhone app I’ve been playing with this week. Up front: this isn’t going to change your life. However, it is a bit of fun - instagr.am, but allows you to apply to some filters and such to make them look quite interesting, and then to add an extra feature in comparison to the other apps which do that, it allows you to very simply send them to several social networks from within the apps such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. If you set the GPS, you can check in to Foursquare there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support Wordpress yet.

It is kind of fun. Here’s a couple I’ve done over the last week, and if you do post from your phone regularly, it might add a bit more atmosphere. Of the currently available filters, I quite like the ‘1977’ one, since of late I’ve been scanning some old family pictures from that time, and they do indeed now look pretty like that, so I took a picture of my battered iPod Classic in that format; I quite like it.

New Screen First Impressions

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:38:14 +0000

After almost seven years in my desk here at home, I’ve finally retired my old Iiyama AS4314UTG 17" LCD. It’s still functional except some pixels stick and so it’s retired to the loft, to wait till the child wants her own Tuxpaint machine. The new one is also from Iiyama and here’s some new screen first impressions - it’s a nice 24" 2407 widescreen model. As it supports VGA, DVI and HDMI, I can dump my switcher also!

So far all is well - very bright, crisp picture, and of course, at least for a while it’s going to feel huge, and a real bargain for 18,900yen, probably half what the last one cost.

Power Reduction

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:42:38 +0000

A quick update on my Linux_’ server. Given that noise and power reduction whilst also increasing storage space was the goal of the recent updates, here are my wholly unscientific findings based on my Watt checker over a couple of hours.

Functional rest at the desktop: was ~80 Watts, down to ~ 60W (-25%)

Being used normally on desktop: was ~90-100 Watts, down to ~ 68W (-32%)

Peaks during high CPU/HDD use: was ~115 Watts, down to ~ 75W(-35%)

I think that’s a pretty successful outcome to say it is quieter and such. It’s still much, much lower powered than I thought, and I’m sure the ’new’ HDD and the ATI card are mainly responsible for that power drop.

"Typhoon" Upgrade Completed

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:03:58 +0000

Finally, the “Typhoon” Upgrade was completed. Just to explain the title, ‘Typhoon’ is my old Linux box. After a while of little interference save the recent fan and GPU replacement, it’s been happily churning away since April 2008 when I rebuilt it to merge my Windows and [even] older Linux box.

The reason for this upgrade was simply that the two 320GB drives which act as my rsync’d archive drives have essentially become full and thus in need of swapout. After a bit of looking around and review reading, I went for two 1TB Western Digital Green drives. I used to only use Seagate, but over the last few years I seem to have drifted to WD. These are 32MB cache and 5400rpm drives - I didn’t need more speed, just power efficiency and capacity. Thus far I’m happy with both.

Essentially then, one of the 320GB is now wrapped in a safe place just in case (TM) and all that data is now on the two terabyte drives. The other 320GB drive has replaced the 160GB drive as the home of my GNU/Linux OS itself. On that subject I took the opportunity to upgrade from Xubuntu 8.04LTS to 9.04. there’s another one out next month, but it’s somewhat nice to know this version has been hammered a while.

It’s been running for a few hours and passed all the tests I’ve thrown at it, so I’d say that was mission accomplished.

Screen Burn or Just Tired?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:22:39 +0000

I’ve been saying my venerable seven and a half year old Iiyama 17" 4:3 LCD was on it’s last legs for about a year now, but it plods on. I like it. It’s dependable. Certainly the backlighting has been a bit uneven of late, but it’s fine for what I use it for. That said, I noticed a few weeks ago a bit of screen burn in the top left corner; a burn in of the Apple logo and Finder menu item, since I largely use my Mac on this screen. Hmm, so is this screen burn or just tired?

‘Well, it’s not interfering with play, so let’s push on.’

Today though, after almost a full day using my Xubuntu box on the same screen, that ‘burn in’ is now pretty much the menu bar from the XFCE desktop.

So is this really ‘burn’ or is it more of tired, old pixels just taking a break. Well, if I do swap this out, I’ll keep it to one side just in case, and any new monitor will likely be from Iiyama, which is odd for me as I tend not to let one purchase affect the decision very much on another. That said, it seems most of my friends have been through a few monitors in the time I’ve had this one, so I think Iiyama deserve a second shot.

Original Comments

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Gen Kanai — 2011-06-23

I have a 17" Samsung I’m not using anymore if you’d like it (just pay for shipping!)

Cable Cull

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:24:36 +0000

Like most people with an enthusiasm for the technical, I seem to amass, attract, or otherwise acquire cables, connectors, converters, other paraphernalia of a mobile life, forming the skeletal remains of previous generations of technology and other items which end up in boxes and on shelves. To my family this is known as ’the cable junk pile’. Tonight then, in an effort to procrastinate over doing some real household chores, I took it upon myself to go through the back storeroom, which is home to most of the computing equipment, and through some boxes and decide what things I need, and what I don’t. The Great Cable Cull.

Actually, I’m quite practical and ruthless when I have these clear-outs. There’s almost no emotional attachment involved, except when it comes to my old Palm IIIe which I will keep in a box near me forever, you hear me? Forever!

After about an hour I had no visible cables on the shelf and places, and was down to my one small cardboard box and toolbox again. All the things I might need are in the former, and the day to day items like chargers and such are in the latter.

The big losers this time were: S-video cables, a joystick which has been broken for at least 4 years, some RCA cables, about 3 USB -> mini USB cables, of which I have many, some coax cable I didn’t know I had, a fan I will never use in my PC and various other things which I just don’t have the devices to use (old Canon Ixy charger) or have duplicates of (the aforementioned cables).

Anyway, it’s done and I’ve pruned my burgeoning cable nest sufficiently that the rest of my family are satiated with the sacrifice for now.

RRoDeathed

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:28:34 +0000

Well, it had to come I suppose. The Xbox 360 I bought in late February 2007 finally Red Ring of Death’d tonight. Actually, it’s been crashing a bit over the last week, but tonight, it’s totally d.e.a.d. or rather RRoDeathed. (Note the second image is a Flickr! video.)

I’ll call them up tonight and see if I can get it replaced before my copy of Dead Space arrives.

Tell me the file Apple

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:19:35 +0000

Like a lot of people, I’ve been bitten by a problem syncing my iPod to my Mac, in that I see the following error, and the sync stops wherever it was. For me, after a bit of tinkering I found it seemed to not like one of my photos very much, towards the end of the sync, and if I get a few more minutes to take a look at it, I’ll figure it out, but really, what kind of an error message is that? It knows what files caused it to stop, so why won’t it tell me what it is? Tsk. Insecurity and fear of loss of job seem to strike again. Just tell me the file Apple.

Sennheiser HD-495

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:58:57 +0000

Alas, after years of faithful service (about seven I think) my Sennheiser HD-495s finally went silent for the last time during a quick game of Assassin’s Creed. I don’t blame the game, or Sennheiser. It was just their time to go. I’ll miss you.

Original Comments

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Salex — 2012-04-08

That is BIG disaster. It is like you lost close friend

Playstation Three (Shhhh)

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:01:23 +0000

OK, now despite saying a lot that I wouldn’t get all three consoles for this generation (hey, the Wii is my wife’s!) I decided to get one of the ’new’ 40GB Playstation 3 was when I got that back in February. To be honest though, the thing that tipped me over the edge was that I managed to buy it all on points, saved on purchases from Bic Camera over the last two years. Had I not had them, it’d still be on the shelf.

Initial impression: very happy. I bought it with Ratchet and Clank Future, which is a beautiful and fun game. The machine build quality is great - far, far better than the noisy 360, and it has a built in PSU, unlike the enormous gray brick the 360 comes with. The cross bar interface is OK, I personally prefer the MS blades, as I think XMB shows too much info when you’re looking for a specific game function; it seems to need some kind ‘simple’ mode to let people get to the important bits first.

As for controllers, the in-box Sixaxis is rubbish. Really. It’s too light, small, no rumble. R&C tries some six axis mini-games almost apologetically. They’re dull. Compared to the Wii, it’s laughable. Once you try the DualShock 3, things feel better, and the rechargeable-via-USB Sony uses is a nice touch, but overall, the 360 has the best in hand controller of the two.

Overall, the PS3 so far feels like a well made, classy home appliance. The 360 feels like a great games system. The jury is out on a winner, but as I have both, I hope I can get the best of both worlds.

No Beacon here...

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:41:53 +0000

I maintain a very minimal Facebook page which I check maybe twice a month now, as I hinted at a while ago. I’m just not the social network site kind of person. Facebook is kind of funky, but I still conduct most of my communication via IM and e-mail. Anyway, with Facebook’s [Beacon system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_(Facebook%29), and the fact that you opt out rather than opt in, I decided to go and opt out, though it’s not amazingly clear that you have opted out. No Beacon here…

Personally, as I’m not a zealot, this wont impact me much either, but I wonder if this is the beginning of the decline of Facebook. Or even if I’d notice. But hey, if you want to contact me, give it a try!

Bye Bye VHS!

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:19:06 +0000

Actually this happened a few weeks ago, but I thought I’d blog it as I just found the photo of the offending article. This is the Sharp VHS player I bought about eight years ago for about 15,000yen, which means it was cheap in those days. I’m afraid it’s now bye bye VHS.

“We watched a lot of X-Files together. We watched a whole slew of terrible B movies together. They were fun times. Still, I’ve moved on. I’ve been seeing a DVD player for a long time now, and recently I bought a DVR, so I’m sorry, you’ll just have to move out. And take that 2 hour Sony tape with you.”

Tokyo Game Show 2007

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:21:23 +0000

I managed to drag myself to Makuhari Messe yesterday for the final day of the Tokyo Game Show 2007. I’ve uploaded a few pics here to add to the thousands already on the net. Overall I thought it was OK. Not fantastic, but OK, and worth the trip and the 1,000yen entrance fee (1,200 on the door).

I’m getting kind of tired of watching Metal Gear Solid previews and CG films, I just wish they would finally release it. Nintendo did pretty well considering they weren’t officially at the show, judging by how many stands has DS and Wii games; Microsoft had a good booth, though the ‘Games for Windows’ section looked bare (Crysis being the star and only on a couple of stations), but more than ever this was a console and mobile gaming show.

Also, the cosplay section between the two main halls was as ever, amazing, impressive and only a little disturbing, but star prize goes to the Katamari cosplayers. Roll on!

New iPod 'classic' 80GB

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 15:03:32 +0000

I finally decided it was time to upgrade my 4.5 year old third generation iPod since Apple refreshed the lines last week. I plumped for the new ‘iPod Classic 80GB’.

Yes, it is weird having a new product so much better than the one I have, but be called a ‘classic’. I suppose this means it’ll disappear after this. Anyway, here’s a comparison with my old one - it’s a similar footprint, bigger colour screen and it’s much thinner.

I put some pics on flickr! too [now removed]. I’ll add a mini review to Brightblack after a couple of weeks with it. So far, it’s great.

IPRED2 - because we love you

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:08:36 +0000

Well, it seems another region is looking at an interesting copyright law. The EU is about to vote on IPRED 2 [Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive - the Second], which though it may be a good title for a comic, makes lousy law. From the EFF’s CopyCrime page:

If IPRED2 passes in its current form, “aiding, abetting, or inciting” copyright infringement on a “commercial scale” in the EU will become a crime.

Penalties for these brand new copycrimes will include permanent bans on doing business, seizure of assets, criminal records, and fines of up to €100,000.

EFF CopyCrime

That seems rather vague to me, and everyone else it seems. The EFF have a lot about it, and though I’m not expert on law, it seems like a pretty random law which plenty of lawyer shops posing as tech companies (hello SCO!) will use to annoy, irritate and generally rip off. Amazingly, even the UK government is against it in its current form!

Have a look anyway. Personally I think it seems like a rather general ruling to target a more specific type of problem.

Original Comments

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Mirai The Great — 2007-04-27

Gave up on the Xanga site and created my own WordPress powered blog server. Check it out:

http://mirai.hayashi-web.net (my blog) http://baby.hayashi-web.net (for the offspring)

Sony to punish reward customers?

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:51:06 +0000

It’s become de rigueur recently for the upper management of Sony to make some fairly outlandish, or even completely false statements in interviews, with the goal of boosting the hype level for the Playstation 3, in the face of less than raging demand, and tougher-than-expected competition. The only problem seems to be that with each month they show more contempt for their customers. Maybe within Sony there’s some kind of arrogance crown to be won, possibly currently held by the spin guru who came up with 2005’s root kit fiasco. Yeah, that guy actually invaded people’s PCs and didn’t tell them. Woot! pwn3d! (or similar, complete with high fives in the Sony company canteen).

So how is a Playstation division person supposed to show potential customers what Sony really think of our patronage?

I’ve got an idea, and the best thing is, they can field test it at the swanky Sony Building in Ginza. To show how much they value us, their customers, Sony should beat people upon entering their showcase building commensurate with how many Sony products they own.

For my friends and I then, ‘L’ will likely just get a clip round the ear and told to do better as he’s actively shed all Sony gear in the last year. I’m probably looking at a sound kicking in the corner for owning a PS2 and a PSP, and my cries of “that was a present!’ will be ignored by the cheering Sony minions as they forcibly satisfy my alleged customer cravings.

Save your pity for ‘SMC’; as a bit of a Sony fanboy (though currently in remission), he’s looking at a beating which starts with a friendly knee in the happy sack and goes downhill from there. When they find out just how many games he owns he really will need serious medical attention, but damn will he know how much Sony care for their loyal customers.

Finally, for what’s worth, you can buy a PS3 in pretty much any shop in Tokyo, but getting a Wii requires mad ninja skillz or the ability to wait in line. Let’s see how our masochistic consumerism does over the next year though.

8cm CD Stupidity

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 01:22:01 +0000

Maybe it was because I took a day off; maybe it’s because I’m just too curious, but for whatever reason, I decided to try and take a look at the contents of the 8cm CD which came with my new Sandisk 2GB SD card, and within a couple of nano-seconds the combination of it not being sucked into the machine, and it being out of my reach hit me. Oops. I didn’t even need to go to a search engine to know that this drive did not support 8cm discs.

At that moment, my only option looked like prizing the whole thing open and trying to get it out. Not nice. However, the benefits of having a female around the place mean that I have access to a cornucopia of odd shaped beautification tools which include tiny tweezers, which not only can extract nanobots from tiny hair follicles (or whatever), they can also pry 8cm CDs from Mac Minis, put there by complete idiots. So armed with this and a thin flat blade screwdriver for some leverage, I managed to get the offending disc out.

Moral: don’t put silly small freebie CDs into your more expensive computer.

Nikon D40

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:29:52 +0000

After three years with my little Canon IXY 500, I recently received a new camera, and it’s my first stumbling footsteps into the world of D-SLR cameras in the shape of Nikon’s new entry level model, the Nikon D40 ( Japanese).

Whilst I’ll still be taking my IXY out for quick point n shoot bits, like snowboarding, I wanted to learn to use a ‘real’ camera, and hopefully get better family and day to day pictures. The Nikon sports a 6.1MP sensor (only 1MP more than the IXY) but excels way beyond the compact in image quality - even I was amazed at the different in depth, light and colour the Nikon has, so as someone who stuck with tiny cameras for years, I would definitely advise people to check out the weird, and increasingly ‘cheap’ world of digital SLRs. As ever, before we bought this, we spend time at DPReview.com, where the D40 got a great review.

Hopefully, after I’ve finished learning what all the buttons do I can actually upload a few decent pics to the Gallery and spend a bit of time doing spot the difference.

The Yoshinoya Mouse Mat

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 12:24:57 +0000

Whilst wandering listlessly through Bic Camera at Yurakucho last week, I somehow managed to find myself in a sea of mouse pads. Actually, I’m not sure what the group term is for a number of mouse pads (herd? flock?), but whatever it is, that’s where I was, and then by some incredible divine intervention I saw this:

A Yoshinoya mouse mat. Now, I love gyudon and butadon at least as much as the next man, but sadly I couldn’t bring myself to buy it. I feel like I’ve let the side down, and I apologise.

Emergency Radio

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:03:59 +0000

Of late I’ve become somewhat more aware of the fact that we don’t have an Earthquake Kit in our apartment, so I’ve decided over the next few weeks to get something together as based on the notes on the UKNow website, and the official Japanese recommendations.

First up was the tech toys of course. We don’t have a small portable radio so I thought I’d go to Bic Camera and start there. First I looked at what I call the ’ ojiisan radios’, the small credit card sized radios with one earphone which so many older salarymen have, I suppose for news and sports results. The would fit the bill, and were priced between 3,000 and 11,000yen generally going from analogue tuners to digital ones. However, I thought there must be something out there, and whilst a small size and power efficiency would be useful, their receptions weren’t great, and I just thought we could live with something bigger.

At the other end of the spectrum were larger multi-tuners, some with cassettes - a bit too large and power hungry I thought. Then, I saw something which completely fitted the bill, and then I realised that it was made by Sony!

The catchily named ICF-B01 is exactly what I wanted: not too big, AM/FM/TV tuner, and on top of that, a built in torch, soft light, and converters to charge mobile phones from the unit, and to top it off, you can run it from the built-in winder if the batteries die. I’ve already tried the winder out, and it really does work as advertised. Basically then, I’m very pleased with it - and it’s my first Sony hardware purchase since my Playstation 2.

Browsers at Narita Lounges

Tue, 16 May 2006 00:18:49 +0000

One of the benefits of traveling on business is that it’s the only time I get to fly business class to anywhere. Aside from more space, it also means I can make use of the airline lounges. Today I managed to get through immigration in time to spend almost an hour at the Cathay Pacific at Narita airport lounge. For me the best things about these lounges are the comfy seats and the free food and drink.

However, judging by the comments made by some fellow travellers, hardened business class types were none too impressed.

“This is the worst lounge in the world!”

- quipped a man near me into his mobile phone; he then chuckled before telling whoever was on the other end of the call that they’d made 500 million in India the previous day. I wonder if it’s cheaper to rent a seat in business airport lounges than actually employ a financial adviser.

Anyway, for my more modest requirements, I went in search of coffee and internet access. The former was a few metres away. The latter took a bit of looking around for. This lounge doesn’t have wireless or any customer access points, but it does have four aging PCs in cubicles, and as they are free, that was effectively a done deal.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a ‘Windows 98’ sticker on a PC, but there it was, on what I think was a Pentium 2 based NEC machine, sporting a whopping 192Mb memory and Windows 2000 SP4. Anyway, they each have an ISDN connection so I should be OK I thought.

There were two browser icons on the desktops: a Netscape one labelled ‘English’ and an IE one labelled ‘Japanese’. The IE was version 6.0x but amazingly, the Netscape browser was 4.76. After the nostalgia had washed over me I remembered why it’s not common now: it doesn’t do CSS and a whole host of other things and thus couldn’t render most pages as anything other than text and a few images, though it did manage to supply a usable Gmail page, but how secure it was is anyones guess.

I decided that I’d try to download Firefox but usually these things are commendably locked down; this one wasn’t locked down at all. I was able to download and install Firefox with no issues. At least I could read Slashdot more easily now. Just as an example, here’s a couple of small screenshots, and please, Cathay, use better browsers on your PCs - if only for the security of your customers connections if nothing else.

Also, thanks for letting me be able to use my USB clip disk!

Are bookmarks dead?

Mon, 01 May 2006 12:28:50 +0000

Firstly, I just want to say that I am not some weird collector of physical bookmarks; in fact, thinking about it, in the book I’m reading right now I think I’m marking the page with a receipt from Denny’s, or wherever I was when I was last reading it.

I can’t remember when I last had a real bookmark.

Anyway, I digress.

Like many, I have hundreds of browser bookmarks, not so carefully, in fact, promiscuously added over the course of years to the point where, when I was having a quick look through the other day, I actually had no idea why about fifty percent of them were even there.

Since I’ve recently started using Shiira as my main browser, I can easily view all my other browser bookmarks from one drawer on the side of the window, and so I thought it was about time to start clearing the whole thing out.

I’m currently about ten percent done and I have to say that a good percentage are now for dead sites, some have moved and the link I have now tells me of places a few thousand miles away where I can buy a cheap car.

In all seriousness, some of these sites have been dead for years. Where the hell was I? Probably asleep. Anyway, I know some browsers tell you when you last accessed a site, but that’s just not enough for someone like me who drifts around the internet like a drunk cheetah on the Serengeti. I need an active browser to tell me useful things about my link collection. Even a random quip generator might help:

“Hey, did you know you haven’t checked XXXXX blog for two years?? Ha ha - what a loser!”
“Quit staggering around the Serengeti and go and check out the update on this site:”

Or something like that.

How can I keep an up to date list of useful links?

I’m slowly updating them where they’ve moved, but increasingly I’m wondering if I should bother. They’re usually in my recent history, or on my del.icio.us page (link dead) or hell, easily searchable on Google. I was wondering how I do track sites, and the answer for most is via RSS in NetNewsWire.

Really, are bookmarks as we grew up with them in Netscape 1.0 dead?

Zenwalk Linux 2.4

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:58:49 +0000

All my computers have specific functions: the Mac is the day to day box, Windows is for games and mild browsing, and my old faithful, made-from-all-the-old-bits Linux box runs (somewhat noisily) in the corner as a file server and general workhorse machine.

I first tried Linux in 1999 (OpenLinux 1.3), then left it for a couple of years (no hardware), then got into Mandrake, then RedHat/Fedora, then Gentoo, back to Fedora, and now, I’m on the Slackware based Zenwalk. I never became proficient beyond what I needed: a backup desk top, and a basic file server.

Gentoo is a lot of fun, but it demands a certain level of dedication and tinkering (for me at least). Fedora on the other hand does most stuff out of the box (except MP3s!) but just seems to get bigger and bigger (5 CDs now!) whilst what I need to use stays pretty much the same. I tried Debian, and that was nice. I tried Ubuntu, and that was OK, but I wanted something in the middle - Debian’s stability, but with that small, perfectly formed feel Gentoo has. In the end, I found Zenwalk, which is a stripped down version of Slackware…yeah, I’ve become a Slacker (officially now).

Zenwalk comes on a 420MB CD, installs in minutes, runs the XFCE window manager, and comes with the best of class in most apps; GAIM, Firefox, Azureus, nmap. All the things I actually use on my Linux box. No more, no less. It’s fast, simple and it runs great. I can see this surviving on the box a lot longer than most distros.

Solio saves!

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 12:43:02 +0000

One little gadget I got last month was a Solio. Basically, it’s made of three solar panels connected to a rechargeable battery. It’s multi purpose really - either charge the battery from the sun, and then via connectors, charge up a mobile device (e.g. iPod, Palm, GameBoy Advance etc.), or run whilst charging. if there’s no sun, you can charge the Solio from a wall and just use it as an extra battery.

It ships with the iPod connector, but there are quite a few more. I’ve just send off for the mini-USB one to charge my Palm 72 with. I’m waiting for one to work on the PSP and/or the DS Lite too.

You can order it from their website, or from a few major retailers - here in Japan Bic and Yodobashi allegedly carry it, but I went into Bic’s main shop in Yurakucho here in Tokyo and the only one they had was in a small glass case near the stairs - and not the main stairs either. The Japanese press release we showed to staff was met with weird looks and “ask in the iPod area” responses. That said, if you go to Bic Camera’s website, you can order it easily from there, but it may be cheaper ordering it direct.

I have to say I really like it - not just because I like odd eco-friendly things, but because it’s really useful either for charging as you go, or as the bolt-on battery. worth a look.

Cool Graphics

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 09:52:05 +0000

Since building my new PC, I’ve been feeling like tinkering a bit, and one thing I’m trying to do is keep my PC quieter. As much as the Elsa 6800GS is quieter than an nVidia stock part, it can get a little noisy after a couple of hours play, so I wondered just how much a GPU cooler would cost, and whether there were any decent ones out there. A few reviews led me to the Arctic Cooling 5NV Silencer.

After about 30 minutes I had the new cooler attached (it takes up another space on the back of the PC effectively!), and not only is it much, much quieter (nigh on silent in the case to be honest) it also keeps the GPU and the temperature around it much, much cooler. Here are some very un-scientific numbers I got from the nVidia control panel:

Elsa Cooler vs. Arctic Cooling Silencer

At boot / rest in Windows
GPU core: 46 C 38 C
Ambient temp.: 35 C 32 C

After 3DMark05
GPU Core : 61 C 42 C
Ambient temp.: 41 C 35 C

After 30mins in Half Life 2
GPU Core : 65 C 50 C
Ambient: 50 C 40 C

So as you can see, not only is it quieter under load, it’s much cooler too. The benefits to me of this are that in the summer I don’t have to worry as much(!), that the rest of the PC stays a little cooler, and that if I like, I’ve got a bit of overclocking headroom there.

BOINCing again

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 09:56:24 +0000

BOINC, as many may know is a grid/distributed computing client, which in some ways sprang out of the Seti@Home project. Indeed, the ‘Seti Classic’ client, as of last month no longer functions, and in a process which started over a year ago, users of Seti@Home have been asked to migrate their work over to the BOINC client.

Since about July 2000 (according to my Seti@Home profile anyway), I’ve tried, whenever I remembered, to set up a client on machines when I built them, but I’d sometimes forget. I started on Seti, then got a bit bored of it, and moved onto United Devices, with their cancer and anthrax research, and then the Folding@Home project, which I find quite interesting, even if my brain can’t quite handle the whole concept. I’m doing that via WorldCommunityGrid.Org.

Nowadays, there are a few general purpose clients, with United Devices and BOINC being the main ‘multi-project’ ones, so organisations like WorldCommunityGrid.org will accept work units from both on most platforms.

Which client then? I’ve used BOINC, Seti@Home Classic, and the United Devices clients previously, though I prefer BOINC purely because it’s open source and happens to work on all the platforms I have - United Devices is Windows only. Also, BOINC supports all the projects I want too. Therefore, on my Windows box I have BOINC working on the Proteome Folding@Home project, and on my Mac, Seti@Home, mainly because Folding@Home via WorldCommunity.org wont accept Mac analysed units via BOINC for a couple of months.

So, I get to continue supporting both efforts on all my home machines, whilst they’d be doing nothing but running a screen saver. It’ll also be my first Seti units in almost a year, and the one person left in the old team from 2000 who has been keeping an old machine chugging along is now very far ahead of me. Time to get those CPUs cranking.

The Seti team is called " Tokyo Coffee Support". Since a lot of this is from such a long time ago, here’s a five year old page from the Brightblack site on it. Time to bring it out of retirement!

Palm Space Trader

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 06:17:42 +0000

In these days of PSPs, Nintendo DSs and all that, it says something that my favourite portable game right now is on my Palm. I’ve been playing Space Trader on and off for about 3 years. It’s just what it says it is: a space trading game for the Palm where you have skill scores and buy sell, fight and flee around a galaxy trying to get as much cash as you can to retire. Just a note then that it’s been updated to version 1.2.2, which since I’m running the three year old version 1.2, I’ll be upgrading to. The news page for the game is here.

My tip: don’t get the tribbles. They’re a pain in the neck to get rid of although it’s a great Star Trek in joke.

Palm Space Trader

PC Rebuild

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 10:43:26 +0000

This post is just under a month late, but anyone who visits here a lot will realize that that is about par for the course! In mid December, I finally decided it was time to do a full on rebuild of my x86 PCs, constituting my Windows games oriented box, and my Linux ‘donkey’ machine.

Basically, the very old Linux box was dying, and my (almost) 3 year old PC was struggling with some of the newer games, including my beloved City of Villains, so it was time to upgrade, and move components around. To keep posts on this site to a reasonable length, I wrote the full saga on my BrightBlack site, so have a look here.

In a nutshell, the new Windows XP box has: Athlon 64 3700+, ELSA GeForce 6800GS, DFI LANparty UT nF4 Ultra mobo, 2GB Hynix RAM and my old Audigy 2 sound card.

US$100 laptop is GO! (Sort of...)

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 23:54:04 +0000

It was good to see some good news come from the project to produce a USD100 laptop for poor regions and developing countries. Nicholas Negroponte, MIT MediaLab personage, and co-founder of Wired magazine was at a UN forum, and along with the project’s CTO unveiled a prototype of the laptop which they’re hoping will help the developing world get on the internet ladder and bring awareness and communications to those people who currently just don’t have the means to get it.

Basically, they’ve developed a small laptop running Linux, and using a very clever LCD, a wind-up battery, wireless, speakers, microphone etc. which by late 2006 will weigh in at USD100 (currently it’s 110 apparently), which they’ll sell to governments, charities etc. for exclusive usage in poor areas of the world. Go to the site above, or check this link to the pics - the machine looks very cool, and hopefully they can sell them in wealthy areas at a big profit sometime to fund even more into poor areas.

Overall, I think this kind of project is really useful, and combined with things like Geekcorps might help a lot of people get on the ladder to help their own countries. Of course, this kind of relies on bringing food, shelter and safety to huge numbers of people beforehand!

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

wayan — 2005-11-20

You’re right, the MIT laptop, in combination with training, support infrastructure, and well thought-out distribution, will be a geat boon to the developing world.

Its only too bad we’re not hearing an equal amount of hype about that implementation environment for the shiny, flashy, new thing. Then again, as one of those building that environment, I’m a little biased.

gurahamu (the nanikore guy) — 2006-01-25

Sorry for the delay. I actually considered joining GeekCorps (or at least trying to!), but got waylaid with marriage en route! However, I have tried to follow it’s progress, and yes, I do think it’s doing valuable work. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t get their work mentioned along with this little hype bubble. Whilst Negreponte’s heart may be in the right place, a little more inclusion may help.

Root Kit Fallout

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:12:19 +0000

It’s always nice to read a piece where you whole-heartedly agree with the author. For me, one piece was by Bruce Schneier in Wired. His article gets to what I think is the heart of this whole ‘Sony rootkit’ fiasco: if a big company sticks software on your PC, the ‘security’/antivirus companies don’t consider it a virus/malware/spyware, even though it is under any definition of those terms.

What I got out of this whole thing is that Sony are exactly the corporate filth you always knew they were, but also that these so-called security companies are just there to stop the rabble infecting your computer so it’s nice and clean for corporate sponsors to get their code in.

Cheers guys.

All respect in the world to Mark Russinovich for his work, as stated in his blog, when he first broke the news just over two weeks ago. I hope Mark benefits from this through recognition of not just his other blog entries (some of them are excellent) but also of his freeware at Sysinternals, which we’ve been using for years and are excellent, and for his paid stuff at Winternals including books and software.

Electronic dictionary

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:47:45 +0000

I’ve been pondering lately about ‘upgrading’ my Japanese to/from English dictionary, from my trusty Sanseido printed pocket edition, to something electronic, if only to make look-ups faster in meetings.

The obvious place to look was the array of Canon WordTanks, and as impressive as they are, they start at 35,000 yen for the C50, and go up to 70,000yen for the new G70 model. That’s a lot of cash, even if you can get them 5,000yen or so cheaper than that in most electrical shops - especially when a MacMini costs 58,000yen!

I’m not saying I’d never buy one, as I know enough people who have bought one and have said they’re real life savers, but I thought I’d look in a different direction, after all, I already had a portable device - my Palm Zire 72. I went off in search of a software solution that might come in a bit cheaper, if only to test. After a lot of hits on Google, I stumbled upon an open source initiative called PAdict which is based on the legendary edict/JDic dictionary developed at Monash University by the amazing Jim Breen - Japan enthusiast, tech enthusiast and all round bright person. (He’s a bit of a Linux guru too).

The app itself is GPL’d, and written by Lars Grunewaldt, who on the app’s homepage, does a decent introduction to the app and explains installation and all. I’ve only used it for a couple of days, so I’m reserving judgement, but it does work, and it seems to work quite well. It’s certainly not a WordTank, but doesn’t really claim to be, but it did help me out with a couple of words today, so I’m going to give it a run for a couple of weeks and update here when I decide what I’m going to do.

Nmap and Interview

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 12:56:17 +0000

I was just about to write a quick post regarding Nmap’s new 3.93 release when I noticed on Slashdot that WhiteDust had an interview with Nmap creator and all-round interesting person, Fyodor. It’s actually a good read, so definitely give it a look.

What is Nmap? Well, it’s many things, but generally, it’s a port scanner. It’ll scan a subnet(or nets), assess each IP address, and try to tell you which ports are open, what they do, and what the device and it’s OS are. Very useful if you’re looking for ‘interesting’ (i.e. unauthorized) devices on your network.

The reason I was going to note 3.93 is that on my XP box, for the first time since XP2, it worked completely 100% correctly. That may also be because WinPcap which Nmap uses (and others like Ethereal) has moved it’s version 3.1 release out of beta. Either way, it’s good to have it back to it’s reliable best. I should say that Nmap usualy works anywhere, but my XP builds just seemed to have issues!

Of course, you can get around this problem as I did by having either a Linux box (or Mac OS X) available, or make use of of a liveCD edition of Linux such as Knoppix.

5 on Slashdot

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:00:10 +0000

Just a geek note here, earlier this week I scored my first ‘5’ rating for a post on Slashdot. Apparently my post was ‘informative’. Read it here.

Sad, I know, but it’s been the kind of week where this ranks as an achievement!

MacOS X 10.4.2 and Samba problem

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:06:01 +0000

I’ve just finished about a 45 minute troubleshooting session, I’ve discovered why my Mac wouldn’t connect to my Linux box to let me back it up. After going through the Mac logs and trawling through some web sites, I found the problem - a bug in the OS X Samba client when used with certain versions of the server - specifically 3.0.14 and variants of it, which just happens to be the version I have on my Fedora Core Linux box. The workaround is to use the command line rather than the ‘browse’ function, and then update the Linux Samba server as soon as possible.

The reason I mention this is because as I’ve found quite often, when troubleshooting an OS X problem, never forget that it’s closely related to BSD, and those people really know their hard core stuff. The BSD page I found is here, the Samba bug note is here, which is then referenced on an Apple Support discussion, which illustrates why it’s better to follow BSD pages.

Tokyo Game Show 2005

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 07:14:03 +0000

Yesterday I went down to Makuhari Messe to check out the last day of the Tokyo Game Show 2005. The big events this year were the XBox 360 as it ramps to launch in a couple of months, and a preview of the PS3, due out in about 6 months.

Overall, I think the Xbox outflanked Sony on the home console side. It was obvious that Sony had virtually no games ready to preview and relied heavily on CG rendered movies, especially for Metal Gear Solid 4, which ran to nearly 10 minutes, but which featured virtually no in game footage, though Sony claimed the movie used the game engine.

Despite it’s revelation of the Revolution controller on Friday (Press Day), Nintendo didn’t really have a presence, leaving Sony a clear run on the handhelds, which they took, offering ‘shared versions’ of some upcoming games, providing you had the 2.0 firmware in, and if you didn’t you could download that there and then too. I’m still yet to be impressed with a lot of PSP titles - many are badly shoe-horned PS2 titles, and often don’t take account or advantage of the mobile form factor. However, Metal Gear Acid 2 looked interesting, as did Puposaru Academy 2. DS owners can at least look forward to ‘Akachan wa doko kara kuru no?’ (literally, ‘where do babies come from?’. To be honest, It looked more like a variant of the dating games which are getting more and more popular.

Of course, the booth girls were there, and provided a good distraction to their legions of fans, whilst others tried to squeeze past to actually check the games out. Of course there were the amateur cosplay people there too, as usual holding court between the two halls, and as usual they ranked from amazingly authentic to wacky, to just downright odd (the girl in the junior high school swimsuit - I’m talking to you).

Anyway, I’ll stick a full review up on Brightblack.net at some point. Needless to say, it’s always worth going and all the more so as it’s only 1000yen if you get a ticket before hand, so it’s quite a cheap day out.

2005 Tokyo Game Show

Game Boy Micro

Wed, 07 Sep 2005 13:12:47 +0000

Today I got a look at, and play with Nintendo’s latest GameBoy - the Micro (it’s due on sale next week).

Basically, It’s a Game Boy Advance in a tiny, ‘smaller than most mobile phones’ format. (Comparative spec here). In fact, the screen is indeed smaller than the one on my mobile phone, and in the few minutes we played with one, I could feel myself squinting.

At 12,000yen, it’s not cheap either. True, it’s half the price of a PSP, but more costly in most places than the (albeit) larger GameBoy Advance SP.

Sometimes, Nintendo just leave me confused. I think it’ll be a hit with school kids and maybe some commuters, but those commuters are keitai (mobile phone) otaku anyway, so maybe that market has gone. The question is, will the next ’new’ GameBoy be an Advance 2 or a DS 2?

PSP v2.0 Firmware

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 00:09:57 +0000

With Fuji Rock Festival coming up soon I thought I better get my camera, phone and PSP charged for the trip and the event.

After a tip off that the PSP was getting a firmware update, I decided to download it and see how it was. The update adds a fair few features across several applications. The crown jewel of course is the official release of the new web browser, and with the exception of no flash support yet, it works really well - the acid test being that it successfully rendered the Slashdot site (ironically, that bastion of freedom is one of the biggest foulers of W3C standards). It even rendered this site well, and even managed to send some mail from gmail (though in truth it’s slow for anything more than URL input).

I’m not sure it’s a killer app, but I can definitely see it being useful in a coffee shop during a bored moment, and of course it’s a free update.

There’s also updates to the different types of audio and video it can take, but thus ar I haven’t really played with it, and right now, it’ll have to wait until after 3 awesome days of music festival!

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

ruuku — 2005-07-29

hey typing this from my PSP! took a while to get used to the browsing & text entry. of course being trained on typing on cellphones for years helps a lot! enjoy Fuji Rock!

EU software patents revisited

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:03:40 +0000

As most of you know right now, the EU rejected the software patents bill by a huge majority (648 - 14 (18 abst.)) which has made a lot of people in small/medium enterprises very happy.

I think this will be a good thing long term, but it’ll be interesting how the supporters of the patent rules try to get this other ways. I think eWeek are premature to say the nail is in the coffin and this doesn’t mean that patent law in general doesn’t need tidying up across the EU.

Just say NO to EU software patents?

Sun, 03 Jul 2005 02:54:11 +0000

Ah. It seems we live in an age where the big player *must* be right, and people don’t like buying something from that small shop, by a maker they’ve never heard of. Sigh. However, there have been glimmers of hope, especially online where the barriers to acquisition (i.e. download) are so low, and there aren’t any real national boundaries, no matter what the FBI and US Secret Service would have you believe.

It looks of course like that’s being threatened to via the EU Software Patents Bill currently due to go through the EU Parliament this week (July 6th). For deeper info, check on the NoSoftwarePatents site. Even Slashdot have covered it a fair amount.

There’s been a lot of FUD on this long running issue, and a lot of it seems to be confusion on what is a patent and what is a copyright. Copyrighting of a way of doing something is fine, patenting it really restricts innovation, especially in software.

I think what’ll happen here is that the rule will pass and big companies will claim patent on all manner of things, rightly or wrongly and subdue the nascent European software scene, meaning fewer big innovations. Sigh.

AirTunes

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 14:11:27 +0000

Last week I bought myself an Apple Airport Express. It’s a fairly regular wireless 802.11b/g access point amongst other wireless functions, it’s very small, stylish box, and, being from Apple costs a bit more than other slightly less well designed rival products.

The only wireless product I own right now is my PSP. So now I can get game downloads on my PSP! Great! Hang on, I could do that from hotspots around Tokyo anyway. So why?

Actually, both of the above, but also because of Airtunes. Airtunes is an extension of iTunes which basically pumps out a stream to Airport Express which then pumps it out through it’s small optical/3.5mm jack socket on one of it’s sides and from there into the back of my stereo. The benefit is that in my apartment there’s a wall mounted network port just behind my TV / stereo which my Airport Express is wired into. Thus, I can send my huge iTunes library to my stereo for almost 10 days of continuous songs!

Distributed Karma Returns

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 01:15:48 +0000

It occurred to me the other day whilst I was clearing out some old bookmarks that it’d been a long time since I’d been involved in any distributed computing projects. These are projects where you download a client, and maybe in the background, or as a screensaver, it analyses a tiny fragment of data, part of a larger experiment which would take a university mainframe months to assess, but when split into small chunks and a few thousand home PCs, it can be done much quicker.

Along with a few friends I’d been involved in Seti@Home about five years ago (July 30th 2000 to be exact). That had reached almost fanatical levels for about a year, then I suspect in late 2001 we got a bit tired of it, and they’d made certain changes which had lowered our interest.(I had a page over at brightblack about it here. Later, the Seti team, in parallel with their funky little client (they also had a command line app which ran on pretty much any architecture you can name) also set up a BOINC based system, which I tried once, but it never got much time on my PC for one reason or another.

Towards the end of the Seti involvement a couple of us moved to a United Devices campaign to look into cancer cures (April 4th 2001). Unfortunately the client only ran on Windows and after a very short time it seemed to get lost in a PC re-build.

Then nothing, for a few of years until this week when I dug up that bookmark, and decided it was time to get back into using my PCs spare time to help somehow, so I downloaded the current client, figured out what my old login was, and checked how things were going for United Devices. It seems a few things have changed, projects added, and it’s now run under the umbrella or grid.org, which is quite a nice site. The client still only seems to work on Windows though. That said, it’s a worthy cause and it’s nice in some ways to have the client as my screensaver again, and to think that my tech fetish in some way is helping people again. Incidentally, the project I’ve chosen is under the World Community Grid.

Widescreen time

Tue, 31 May 2005 14:54:57 +0000

After 6 years of looking at my Toshiba 19" 4:3 ratio CRT TV, we finally bought a new TV this week - a Sharp Aquos 32" LCD TV. Certainly not cheap, but thanks to a 20% points discount it made us finally put up and buy a new one - and it was worth every hard earned yen!

It’s a beautiful screen, takes up less space, and is nicer to look at. But forget that - DVDs look fantastic on it - we watched The Matrix on it tonight, but that film isn’t exactly known for it’s colour scheme, so we put on Fellowship of the Ring, and quite frankly it looks like a different film - the picture was just amazing. Normal TV channels looked great too, both from analogue and digital transmissions, with the latter obviously looking much cleaner.

There are hundreds of settings and options to play with on the bilingual menu system, but we found the auto defaults were usually good enough. I also played SSX3 on my Playstation 2, and it looked amazing, but unfortunately, at that size, the PS2 resolution starts to show.

One pleasant and somewhat unexpected result is that the built-in speaker system is easily as good as my cheap Sony mini-system I usually use, maybe even clearer, so I might be able to save some cables there. Another saver is that since the TV has 4 inputs, I wont need the switch box I had before which should simplify everything!

On the whole, expensive, but definitely worth it, especially for me coming from such a low spec. level to this. All I have to do now is re-watch all my DVDs again!

BBC RSS Strikethrough

Thu, 05 May 2005 10:57:34 +0000

Like many, I use RSS a lot. Really. Not as much as some, but more than most. It means I can browse the headlines of about 20 sites in the time it would take to looks at one of those site’s HTML pages. Most of these RSS feeds are auto-generated by the companies themselves, so I was curious to see this as part of the BBC feed today:

Er…looks like an editor changed the story there! No biggie. Out of curiosity, here’s how that story looked on the page:

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Ken Ming — 2005-05-05

haha.. really..? or is that just photoshop edited… :D

graham — 2005-05-07

Nah, that’s real. Actually, in the few days since I posted this I’ve noticed a few more examples in the BBC RSS feed. Ah, workflow systems, I know them well. Actually, I’ve seen documents from companies in Word format who have neglected to remove edits and revisions which make for some pretty ineresting reading.

Golden Golden Week

Wed, 04 May 2005 18:34:38 +0000

One thing Japan is blessed with is an insane amount of national holidays, which is great really. Currently, we’re part way through ‘Golden Week’ [GW], a collection of days (almost a week’s worth depending on how they fall) for various and sundry events. It really kicked off last Friday with ’ Midori no Hi’ (Green Day), but this week we have 3 days off: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday though a glance around town on Monday showed many people had headed out for the whole week, and I can’t blame them - the weather is fantastic.

Today we were just relaxing, but I hopped on the scooter, down to Akihabara to pick up a 512MB Memory Stick Duo for the PSP and was quite surprised by how many people were milling around - not buying, just wandering and looking. I suppose the pedestrianized streets (for the day) and an increasing number of new buildings and places to sit and chat make it quite attractive.

It’s a shame so many tech shops in ‘Electric Town’ have gone out of business, or moved, to be replaced by coffee shops, anime and manga shops, and even *normal* shops, and of course, the huge new office/apartment/convention centre which is almost finished. Ho hum.

Still, if you brave the back streets, there are still curiosities and deals to be had - my favourite today was a shop with over 50 Sun Cobalt 1U servers in varying states of functionality going for between 1000yen and 50,000yen. Not bad! Combine some with with the Cisco 4000 they had in the same shop, and it’s almost an office in a box!

New keitai

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 11:28:00 +0000

Anyone who has looked at the Flickr pictures I just mentioned, may have noticed that the ‘camera’ used to take the more recent ones is different from that used to take the first few. (Sanyo vs. Toshiba). This is because I have another keitai (mobile phone). Unfortunately the 4 month old Toshiba didn’t survive the stag night, so I went out, braved pathetic service in a few shops before finally finding a decent phone in a decent shop. I’m still with Au though as a carrier as they have good service and decent coverage.

The new one is a Sanyo W31SA, which is one of the uber-new WIN phones, meaning it has a camera, GPS, BREW, FM radio and all the normal things, but also a 2.4Mb download ability. Yup, that’s more than my UK friends can dream of getting on their ADSL landline, and I get that to my mobile. The English page is here.

Two interesting functions are a real two way English/Japanese dictionary (the other keitai I had faked this by letting you input your own words and definitions, which is pointless), and for Japanese users, and OCR English dictionary - you point the camera at a sign or word in English, and it tries to recognise it and do an instant lookup, and I have to say that it works pretty well.

LAN Party II: Griefers

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 09:23:50 +0000

Yesterday saw the second Tokyo Pimp Daddies [TPD] LAN party of 2005. It was held at my apartment, and we managed a new high of 15 gamers playing at once.

I’d definitely like to say a big thanks to everyone who came and took part - each one seems to get bigger and better. Also a big thanks to Kevin, Sean and Jon for the logistical help.

It took me most of Friday night and Saturday morning to move furniture, hide anything breakable, and get all the cabling set up. 3 * 8 port hubs all rigged together, with an uplink to the building hikari fibre internet link which meant that not only did we have a decent 100Mbit switched LAN, but also a nice 10-100Mbit internet link too. The latter was useful for urgent tip site searches, tech support pages due to machine issues, and for relaxing with a beer and reading slashdot, and falling for April Fool’s posts.

It’s often said that the biggest issue for a LAN party is power - and that’s true - we turned off all the lights and generally powered down all non-essential systems to get 15 PCs running, but when we tried to add a 16th, after a few minutes all went dark. It’s an important skill to be able to find your breaker box in the dark, navigating through a crowded room to get to it, though using a mobile phone as a weak torch is also helpful. In the end we cut back to 14 PCs. Another side effect of the power-cuts was that 2 PCs had a few problems though both were back up and functional within an hour - one was a trip switch in the PC waiting to allow itself to come back up, and one was a screwed up config file.

Curse the person who suggested we turn the fridge off - there’s beer in there!! Another thing which nearly became an issue was the heat - it was a cool night and all windows were open, but the back room where four of us were was definitely heating up, but then, turning the aircon on would’ve meant taking a few PCs out of the mix so we decided to just live with it, though there was as a certainly a slight burning smell in the air by the end of the night. I think more people will turn up in shorts to the next one I know I will, especially as Tokyo’s temperature begins to climb.

As far as games go, we got through large amounts of Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena, Counter Strike Classic and Enemy Territory; they’re all old games, but that meant that even older machines got a decent frame rate. I was a bit disappointed it didn’t go all night like the first one, it was only about 11pm when people’s energy started to flag and slowly they headed out. To be fair though, many had been in front of screens since 2pm with very little break. The one break we did have was for a mammoth 22,000yen pizza delivery of 13 pizzas plus side orders courtesy of Dominos Pizza via their web order page.

The coveted ‘Last Man Standing’ award goes to Sean who, despite a later start, was finishing up an epic round of ‘Lord of the Rings’ at 6am this morning.

Other tips we adhere to are encasing everything in cardboard to protect table tops etc. - also, you can make monitor stands out of cardboard boxes quite easily (nod to kevin there). Certainly, when we came to tidy up this morning, whilst it took a few hours, it wasn’t too bad - most of the 70 or so beer cans had found there way into the right bag, the pizza boxes were stacked up, and most other snack wrappers were in assorted rubbish bags. There were no other unpleasant surprises - no spillage, no damage to the apartment itself, so I think that was a good result. A few hours later, the living room was back to normal again, in time for some Nintendo DS and Playstation 2 action.

All in all I think most had a great time, and it’s a good social event; personally, I can’t wait for TPD LAN Party III: Ganking N00bz

IM & Audio Software

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 22:18:06 +0000

Just a quick blog here to go over a few things I’ve been playing with on my various computers, and one thing I finally sat down and sorted out and was massively impressed with.

IM Clients
I remember using AOL’s AIM on my old Mac in 1997… and it crashed whenever it felt like it. Things have definitely improved and like many, I use Instant Messengers a lot, and generally, that’s via my Yahoo account, though I have friends who prefer other systems. There are some great 3rd party clients out there that not only let you do everything from a single app, they also cut out a lot of the rubbish too.

For example, if I want to talk to friends on MSN, Yahoo and AIM, I would need 3 ’native’ apps, or just one of these third party apps. That’s great, and it also dumps all the advertising an IMvironments too, which I don’t really use anyway. Of course, you can’t send from Yahoo to MSN, but when you’ve set all these accounts up, you start forgetting who’s using what anyway, because it’s all in the one app.

On my Mac, I’m using Fire, just because it’s Mac-like and simple to set up. On my Windows and Linux boxes, I use Gaim and though not as friendly, it’s just as simple. Both of these pieces of software are open-source, and both carry the caveats that they are not supported by the carriers - if MSN changed their protocol in a client upgrade, then these wouldn’t work until the designers reverse engineered the change and applied it. That said, I haven’t been burned yet, and if I was, well, it would just be a couple of days using all 3 until the patch is released.

Skype
I can’t remember when I first saw Skype, which is still officially in beta - maybe middle of 2004, but I remember thinking of it as yet another IM system but with a nice audio codec. That’s not all it does though - with it’s SkypeOut service, you can call from your computer to a normal telephone anywhere in the world, and thanks to the joys of VoIP, you only pay for that last leg. This is paid for by buying credit from Skype online and using them to pay for calls. I was initially put off when it rejected my Japan-issue credit card three times, but a look at the FAQ and a chat with friends who had also tried it revealed that yes, where your card was issued makes a difference. So, I dug out my old UK issue credit card (unused in years) and bought 10 euros of talk time. I’ve been using this on my Linux box (though it’s available across my other 2 systems too) today to call my family in the UK, and the call cost me about 15 yen for 7 minutes. Compare that to 60-120yen a minute from IDC!

I think that last bit really sums it up. Cheap, and the audio quality is at least as good as telephone - maybe better. Give it a try!

MiniMacWorld 2005

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:31:01 +0000

It has to be said that some people were saying Apple had wrung everything out of the iPod with the rather lackluster iPod Photo and the bizarre U2 model a few months back, but this week’s MacWorld came a shot in the arm to everyone who likes Apple gear.

Apple stole the show with the iPod Shuffle and the Mac Mini. Both of these are excellent products in my opinion - the new iPod not only gives Apple a contender in nearly every sector of the portable music market, but at USD100, it might even appeal as a second iPod for some, wanting something for sports etc.. The MacMini is similar - it’s after people wanting to get into Macs, but is really targeted as a 2nd machine for Windows owners who have iPods and want to check the Mac out - hence the lack of keyboard mouse (and monitor), which also of course, helps keep the price down. I can’t help thinking this is ‘Son of Cube’, though at the correct pricepoint - something it’s predecessor lacked. For all Apple’s new toys, check out their website.

Macworld is also a time when software vendors release and preview upcoming products. As usual there were some stunners, such as a sneak peak at the new Transmit 3 from Panic, but to me, the biggest announcement was not just that Barebones would release TextWrangler2, but that it would be free (it was USD50 I think). I got into BBEdit via the old BBEdit Lite, a free editor with a subset of the features, and I ended up mpoving up the the incredible full version. Although Barebones deny TW2 is the modern equivalent of BBEdit Lite, in the market, I think that’s how it’s seen. I wish them luck with this, they’re a decent company, and they make good, solid Mac software.

PSP vs. DS (Part 1 of many)

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:52:08 +0000

I’ve been kind of avoiding this topic as the office has been buzzing with it for weeks.

I’ve played with both for a couple of hours each, and as many have pointed out, they’re both great, but for wildly different reasons.

The PSP has a great single screen, and is virtually a portable PS2, it’s only drawback being a weak battery, but it’s swappable, so that’s not too bad. Video playback on my friend’s PSP he downloaded to MS looked good, but where is the ability to record to the UMD, or connect to the web via Wi-Fi?

The DS, despite it’s wrong-headed ‘Game and Watch’ (too old to catch many I suspect) design has 2 screens, one being the touch screen, which is gagging for RPGs and some dodgy mahjong games. Also, an oft overlooked feature of the DS is that it can hold a GBA and a DS game at once, so effectively having 2 games in there to play at any time - that’s a lot of Zelda.

Personally, I judge a console by games, not spec, and so far there’s nothing I want right now - Ridge Racers bored me in handheld format after about 10 minutes just like every other version of it. Same goes on the DS … Mario 64, great. I finished that on the 64 and learned hiragana in the process.

In summary, I’m waiting to see what new games come out, and how each company tweaks their hardwares’ feature set. I think the PSP has the sex appeal, but the DS is just so odd, it might pull out the more interesting games, after all, a great home game may not make a great mobile game.

As for Microsoft, the X-Pod will be out next week, dual Pentium 4 with er…40gb hard drive built in, ATI X800XT graphics and er…a gig of RAM but if you buy another mobile console before then you can’t buy an X-Pod. They’ll be designing this to look like a novelty VCR too.

Japan Tourism PDAs?

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 00:43:17 +0000

I just saw this on the venerable Slashdot - the Japanese government is planning to give out PDAs to tourists to help them get around. This is all part of the government’s drive to get more tourists over here, and goes to show the lengths they’ll try. I think they mean well, but I can’t help thinking they’re barking up the wrong tree. Tourists numbers dropped off again after the World Cup which was a deservedly great showcase for the country.

So what are the issues Japan faces as a tourist spot? Well, several. Some cite the sheer cost of ‘doing’ Japan, but to be honest, if you look around, there are decent places cheap, providing you can convince some of them to offer this deal to a foreigner, but it shouldn’t be that hard. Lonely Planet often has decent info. Whatever you do, don’t read crap like Radio One put out.

Language is an issue, as signs outside of the main cities aren’t in anything other than Japanese (which is fair enough), but these are seldom of much use to Japanese either - there’s a reason car navigation systems are popular. Many Japanese speak or understand a small amount of English, and a map and pointing is pretty universal; however, get at least a phrase book, and for a change *actually* read it. The Japanese language is mercifully phonetic and like most places, people will try to help you more if they think you’re trying!

I think a key point is what you want to see - many guests on a Japanese talk show were amazed when they compared interesting destinations listed by travellers, and what they thought were interesting - they listed all the usual suspects: Fuji, Kyoto, shrines and such; many travellers wanted to see Shibuya, Akihabara, the Fuji Rock Festival or wanted to do some snowsports in Nagano or Hokkaido.

I suppose that’s a difference between domestic and international traveller inclinations - groups trips versus backpackers. Anyhow, no matter what people say about Japan, it is relatively safe and secure, and yes, it might be expensive than other Asia destinations, but compare it to places like London. The problem with Japan, especially from a Euro or US perspective is that it’s so different you really have to witness it to believe it.

bad tech week, good tech week

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 03:19:21 +0000

Well, it’s been one of those weeks for personal technology - first my Palm 515 started having power/reset issues, then my mobile phone just stopped working.

First things first - I’ve had my 515 for just over 2 years, and it has served me well, housed in the nigh on bullet-proof case I bought for it. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago it would just randomly restart, admittedly with no lost data, but just restart - which was kind of annoying. Then, earlier this week, it just wouldn’t take a charge from either of the 2 cradles I tested it on. This is a something friend had seen with his, and the only fix seems to be to do a hard reset (though some say a soft sometimes works) and then power up and re-sync. This is really annoying though, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new Palm and keep the 515 for reading on snowboarding trips.

After spending a couple of days reading reviews and being honest about my own usage patterns, I decided on the Zire 72 - especially when I found the ‘Special Edition’ one which was metallic silver instead of the standard blue. I say metallic, but the Zire’s at the lower end of PalmOne’s current range, and have plastic bodies rather than the metal my 515 had. The 72 has a lot of features I will use though - a 1.2MP camera which can do movies, Bluetooth for syncing, (and it now also has an industry standard mini-USB for that too, which means you don’t have to buy expensive Palm cables to take another sync cable on the road) and actually comes with a decent software bundle for Macs, including ‘Documents to Go’. The screen is a huge improvement too, a ‘hi-res’ 320*320, double the 515 and it shows. It’s also much faster with apps I use like AvantGo, Plucker and Metro thanks to OS5 and a much faster CPU.

At 30,000yen, it was cheaper than my 515 by 20,000, though that price was inflated because at the time, getting English language PDAs in Japan was really hard (it was just after Ikeshop started shrinking), and most internet companies wouldn’t ship to Japan. Now Palm OS in Japan is pretty much just Sony, and the import shops like LAOX are still really expensive, but on the internet there are several people who will ship to Japan. The company I used is called Expansys, and though they’re based in the UK, my Palm was shipped from their Hong Kong office at not much above PalmOne’s retail price, which is great.

All in all then it was a decent result from a rather disappointing hardware issue.

The second issue was my cell phone. My Sony Ericsson just died on Wednesday, so I took it apart, cleaned everything up, and put it back together and it seemed OK. Then on Friday it died again. Completely. I couldn’t even get in to get photos or mail out. It was a dead phone. It was deceased.

I toyed with the idea of getting the 18 month old S-E one replaced, but it was battered and bruised and the shop didn’t look at hopeful that it could be for less than the price of a new one. I should also say that that was my second SonyEricsson, and I haven’t been massively impressed with it, so I thought I’d look at another manufacturer. As I decided to stay with the KDDI/Au carrier, I looked at their new uber-phones - the CDMA-WIN series. They do everything, TV, radio, blah blah blah but these phones are getting huge. I liked a Sanyo one but it was just enormous, and I’d already decided that my old SonyEricsson was the largest keitai (mobile phone) I would have, so I looked at some others in their more standard CDMA 1X range, and settled on a Toshiba A5506T model, which is bilingual, has a great screen, and a really nice design to it - it’s smoother and more rounded than many so is more comfortable to hold. the screen is really nice, and the whole interface is much better than the Sony’s. It also takes miniSD cards, which means I can _back-up_ my contacts and photos - everything on the phone - to a mini-SD card, and even use it in my new Palm! That was pretty much the clincher, so I got it with a 128Mb miniSD and off I went. Hoping this one lasts longer!

All in all then, it’s really annoying I had unplanned expenditure like this just before the snowboard season, but not too bad in that I think I got 2 even better items which I use on a daily basis - believe me, my Palm and keitai are probably the 2 most used things I carry around with me - except maybe my wallet.

Darth Vader works for NTT

Sat, 27 Nov 2004 02:07:23 +0000

As I’m in my new apartment, a few days ago I got my phone line cut over from my old place.

Now, whenever you do this (or pretty much anything else with NTT), they tell you that you should be in the building in case they need to do wiring work. Of course this is a safety net for them, and I’ve never had anyone turn up, but this time an NTT engineer did turn up. He was a nice guy too, chatty but polite (usually they’re a bit miserable), had a photo on his business card for security and generally seemed keen on the job.

He also had a tool belt with a hammer, screwdriver and a few other bits and pieces and generally looked the part. However, he then asked me for my phone unit, which I’d cleverly left in a packing box, but which I then managed to fish out. Of course I’d packed the handset in a different box as you do because they’re so bulky, so it took me another five minutes to find that too.

I asked if he could test it with his test rig (the phone/line tester/handset most telecoms people I know usually have with them) and he breathed in through his teeth and hit the familiar ’ chotto’, which is usually followed by a ’ muzukashii’ for ‘it’s a difficult [situation]’, but this was left in a hanging ‘chotto’ which I took to mean ‘I forgot it’, but rather than leave it at that, whilst I was checking the corners of the few remaining unpacked boxes for my errant handset, he continued to breathe through his teeth and breathe out heavily, so there I am looking at him doing a Darth Vader impression, and I can’t help thinking that hammer on his tool belt looks a bit like a light saber … or maybe I need some sleep.

Before anyone questions that hammer by the way, I see no problem with *any* technician carrying a hammer. If you can’t fix a problem, hit it with a hammer, if that doesn’t fix it, get a *bigger* hammer. Or a light saber maybe in this case.

So there it is, NTT employ the Sith because they’re good with telecommunications which is probably a good sideline to have in these uncertain times. If they employed Jedi they’d have to send two people to each job, because we all know how the Jedi only attack in pairs, (like women going to the ‘rest room’ at a nightclub) with the honourable exception of Yoda-chan. I’m thinking of changing my line to ADSL again (not needed here as the building has Hikari Fiber) to see if a guy turns up with suspicious horns claiming ‘soon we will have more bandwidth than cable TV, soon we will have our revenge’.

Firefox mania

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 14:05:52 +0000

Is it just me, or can you not escape Firefox in the media this last week? For this I heartily congratulate The Mozilla Foundation and all the app’s supporters for putting the word in the street. It’s rollout really seems to have got through to the average PC owner who didn’t think there was anything outside of IE to browse the web with. At first I couldn’t figure it out, and was a bit befuddled by all the press - and all the people coming to talk to me at work about this ’new browser which is killing IE’, hence my rather low key posting last week.

Through virtually no effort on my part since I started using the web with Netscape 1 in 1994/5 I’ve never really used IE that much as my personal browser. Obviously I have to use it when I do any work with websites, but for actually doing my own browsing I’ve always looked to Netscape and then Mozilla/Gecko based browsers. I always felt that what killed Netscape was the ‘all in one’ solution of it’s Communicator offering - whereas MS with IE and Outlook Express had the right idea. I was disappointed to see Mozilla go the same way as Communicator, so when Firefox (then Phoenix I think) became the focus, I thought things looked up. Consequently I’ve been on Firefox betas since early on, and before that Camino on the Mac (Firefox’s closest relative really, and has had as many name changes too).

So when Firefox hit 1.0 I was a bit surprised by the level of new interest; “This thing has been available for ages” I kept thinking, but the bottom line is that most people won’t touch beta with a barge-pole, even if they know it’s available. I also misunderstood something else - the scope of the release - this is just a new browser right? I have to suspend my own experience to appreciate this - imagine you’re an unadventurous IE user and you cut to Firefox - hey TABBED BROWSING!! HOLY *&!@! (I can’t remember *not* having that), RSS wow - I can quickly check all these sites! A real bookmark manager! Easy-to-install extensions! Real cookie control! Pop-up blocking (SP2 excepted). I’m sure the Firefox team can list hundreds of others, but for the people who are now trying Firefox and are loving the above features - welcome, we’ve been expecting you.

The extensions you can plug into Firefox are really good too, and there are hundreds to choose from - the two I always have running are Adblock and Foxytunes.

If you’re liking Firefox, take a look at the mail client Thunderbird, and the less developed but very promising calndar app Sunbird.

Old Audio Laid to Rest

Sat, 13 Nov 2004 06:34:20 +0000

The digital music revolution, many believe, was sparked by the MP3 format, and is now transforming into a DRM/paid for download market of iPods, Windows Media, AAC and a whole raft of other things which may or may not be a good thing for artists and home users and their rights.

However, it was interesting to me in the last few days to see 2 old apps from simpler days effectively disappear from active development - Winamp and Audion. Actually, I should qualify that - Winamp will continue, but all of the original team has now left the parent company and it has been in a state of lacklustre development for a while. Audion, on the other hand, has been officially put into retirement and is now officially freeware.

I used Winamp in about 1998 when I was working for a ‘digital media’ company [sic] - with it’s llama themes demo track and it’s different skins Winamp really was a nice way to listen to MP3 and CDs at the time on Windows - add in visualisations and it was a nice little app. Unfortunately, it (Nullsoft) was bought by AOL and it seems the bloat began - the small app added more and more windows and popups. Version 3 wasn’t as good as 2 and as if to admit this, version 4 was skipped and the next one was (to me) the equally disappointing version 5. Added to this that other players in the Windows market such as Microsoft, Real, MusicMatch and even Apple with their iTunes had better apps it was obvious that Winamp had become an add-in to AOL and not much else, as mentioned here as the last Nullsoft person has now left the building.

Audion was around since OS 8 (and still works on 9 I believe), and I used it a lot, and even licensed version 1 - it was a nice app, and the company who made it - Panic - are a great bunch of coders who have released a lot of very cool applications. I bought it, and the N2MP3 encoder and between the two of them, put in as many MP3s from live recordings I made in Japan’s live bars as I could on a Powerbook 190 (68K processor running at 66MHz on a 1GB hard drive). I liked Audion - it’s faces were cool and it did what you wanted - had simple functionality and was nice to look at, but faded into the background when you needed it to. What happened? Well, the long and the short of it was iTunes, the iPod and the Music Store. Panic founder Cabel Sassar has written an amazing page on this situation, and I encourage everyone to read it - and to click on the pop-up links - there’s some great things in there. Ultimately, iTunes and it’s iPod and store were just too big a juggernaut to overcome. I commend Panic for retiring the app though to conserve a small company’s resources to move on and live to fight another day. Another Panic person, Steve Frank has put some more thoughts on his Blog here.

Ultimately it shows how a market place can change and how competition truly works. Winamp I think was the victim of a corporation and a startup just not understanding each other, whereas Audion seems to have been the victim of the market convergence between a player, an encoder, hardware and a music shop.

WLAN run

Tue, 09 Nov 2004 11:18:53 +0000

Something I forgot to post last week.

I was in the back of a taxi at about 3am going from Tokyo Station to my place in Setagaya-ku - a trip of about 15km - and I had my laptop with me, so I thought I’d just run Net Stumbler, and see what wireless networks were around. I haven’t gone through the results in any great amount of statistical analysis, but the basic results were: 81 networks - about 40% were 54Mb ones, a similar percentage have no security (not even WEP!), and the most popular brand seemed to be Buffalo (Melco?). Also, it seems that most SSIDs are set to a MAC address, and either people don’t change them, or they try to give them ‘anonymous’ names. OK, I know this post should carry a geek warning, but I’ll try to get some accurate stats up, and post them on brightblack, just out of curiosity.

AvantGo back again.

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 09:47:48 +0000

About two years ago I stopped using AvantGo even though I was big fan of it from 1999 till then, and in fact it was the software which made me decide to make a ‘mobile’ version of the brightblack site - offering lighter versions of many of the pages. Unfortunately, AvantGo decided to become much more enterprise based, and even dropped any support for the MacOS X system, so I stopped using AvantGo and finally settled for Plucker, which I think has a lot of advantages still, to get web info on my Palm on a daily basis. The only thing is though, is that I know quite a few people use AvantGo to view my mobile site and I was concerned that I may accidentally serve a broken or ‘odd’ version of the the site. This meant that I really needed to see that AvantGo version through my Mac.

At first I tried Mark/Space’s Missing Sync which advertised AvantGo syncing (I actually wanted the SD mount-ability and the image viewer in that package too) but the problem with that software is that it wants to use your Mac as an internet sharing gateway to sync, and I didn’t want to do that.

So I went looking again, and found MalSync, an open-source sync solution, but I just never seemed to get round to trying it out. Today I finally did get around to installing it, and I have to say that it works fabulously. Just install one piece of software of my mac, and follow the simple readme, and put AvantGo viewer back on my Palm, and there we have it - fully functioning AvantGo syncing.

This ties in nicely with a response from AvantGo (or iAnywhere judging by the mail address) about changing the image they carry on the AvantGo channels page for my channel (search for ‘brightblack’). So I suppose the AvantGo train is pulling out again as far as I’m concerned.

I’m hoping they pay more attention to small providers like me again, as another reason I pulled ‘official’ support for AvantGo before was because of the very terse messages I got from them a few years back asking for up to USD1000 to allow having brightblack as a channel I said I couldn’t and wouldn’t pay for what is essentially a search listing, and that they could delete me if that was their position. They never did, and I’m glad they seem to be a little more open to content providers. So, I’ll be updating my sync info on brightblack and thank MalSync for such a great piece of software.

.Mac bye bye

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:54:25 +0000

After 2 years of using .Mac, I finally say goodbye to it next month.

Unlike many who felt that the USD100 was too much for the service, I actually found at first that it was worth it. However, recently I realised it was more effort and nuisance than it was worth. At first I wanted to use the online backup feature, but as my home directory is huge now - much bigger than my iDisk space - I no longer use it much, and back up to another hard drive and DVD. As I thought about it I realised that even though I use my Address book, iCal and iPhoto a lot, I barely use the online abilities.

On top of that, my @mac.com account was a spam magnet, bringing in almost 99% of spam in my inbox. I wont be sad to see that go. Also, I used to use the photo gallery a lot, but now I just use my own Gallery software I set up, so I’ve barely used that of late either.

I think the final straw was the poor support I got from .Mac when I asked why my 2000yen voucher for renewing last year never arrived. They said it had (it hadn’t nor had it been cashed, as they confirmed, and had actually expired) and when I said that I wasn’t happy with that reply and said it was things like this that make people leave, the support person helpfully sent me detailed instructions on how to unsubscribe. No negotiation, or ‘I’ll look into it’, just a point to the door. Ah well, in truth, the decision had already been made.

I should say though, that I do think .Mac has a place, but ultimately I don’t think it’s for me anymore. Therefore, if you contact me on my @mac.com account, stick a comment on here and I’ll get back to you.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

neal — 2004-09-29

Yup, I’m using mine at the moment but I can already see that when I get my own site sorted that it will come to an end. There has been a lot of discussions on various sites about the level of service and space etc. I think it is a bit of the old apple creeping back in, ipod and itunes are the flavour of the month so they forget about other areas of the company until it needs a radical rethink or rebuild because only the most dedicated mac users are still there. Shame really.

neal — 2004-09-30

spooky…..

Dear .Mac Member,

We’re excited to announce that your .Mac membership now comes with 250 MB of combined .Mac Mail and iDisk storage. And, in another move designed to make life easier as traffic grows heavier and files grow larger, we’ve increased the maximum email message size to 10 MB.

Wow, if that works with my .mac I wonder if it works with anything else…. I would like a car and a house and loads of money and and and…..!!! ;-)

Tokyo Game Show 2004

Sun, 26 Sep 2004 11:31:07 +0000

These last three days have also had the Tokyo Game Show out at Makuhari Messe, so we thought we’d take a trip down and see what was coming. I’ve posted some pics in my gallery, here.

The big story was for many a look and play at the new PSP from Sony, which is not far off a portable PS2. There were also lots of the new *much* smaller version of the PStwo too, but back to the PSP. I had a play with one for about 15 mins, and I was very impressed. The graphics are amazing, full 3D, lighting effects, the whole bit. The screen viewing angle is impressive, with a lot of brightness and contrast. The range of games was impressive too, with PSP versions of Metal Gear Acid, Minna no Golf, Train Simulator, a raft of RPGs, and a damn good version of Ridge Racer. As for the UMD disc system, they’re MD sized discs in a protective cartridge which load in the back. I don’t know what the price will be like, but it looks excellent - I’d get one over a GameBoy Advance. Unfortunately Nintendo didn’t attend again, so no chance to have a look at the Nintendo DS, though a few companies were showing preview demos of their games for the new, dual screen machine.

It was loud, noisy, and had lots of girls in mini skirts, and customers in cos-play, as is traditional at this event, but I couldn’t help feeling it had lost it’s edge a little. Perhaps it’s because we’re in mid-product cycle right now, and people are waiting for Xbox2 and Playstation 3. Indeed, that was a common theme - sequels - lots of them. Lots of beat em ups and racing games, not many ‘Dance Mania’ machines, but a few old faces made appearances, notable Half Life2 demos, apologetically displayed on one screen in the ATI booth, whilst Nvidia showed off Doom 3. Of course, Gran Tourismo 4 was shown off again, with a release slated for December 2004. Honest. No really, this time it’s ready.

The message was though, that despite consolidation amongst the gaming houses in Japan (Square Enix, Sega/Sammy and a list of others), the industry itself is healthy, just changing at the mad pace tech markets do. Games of note off the beaten track were ‘Genji’, with live music, and a demo real which looked cool; ‘Devil May Cry 3’ which shows they can keep squeezing the format, with their now bare chested Beckham-esque hero, and a new Front Mission game.

Of course, all the usuals were there too - more Final Fantasy games, Winning Post 7, and even more 2D fighting games from SNK (shock!), this time for every platform ever, including mobile phones. Indeed, there were lots of mobile phone games, especially promoted by NTTDocomo and Vodafone, from Street Fighter 2 to online RPGs. In fact, that seemed to be a solid theme: mobile phone, and online version. It’ll be interesting to see what pans out.

2004 Tokyo Game Show

Gentoo Typhoon

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 14:27:59 +0000

After Saturday’s fun, Sunday in the apartment with the constant humid rain outside didn’t seem like nearly as much fun.

At times like these you look to those projects you’ve been putting off for a while (OK, you could tidy the trunk room too, but who wants to do *that*?). I decided it was time to rebuild my little Linux box, and add a few things I’d been meaning to, and take off some other bits.

The bottom line is that that box is now based off Gentoo kernel 2.6.8 (2004.2 distro), with an X.org display system, gnome and even audio now (I forgot to get that sorted out before), which is an improvement all around in my humble opinion. It can go back to work as my backup server, test web server and general utility machine. Hardware spec is here.

The link to the typhoon by the way, is not just the weather, but that the box is called ’typhoon’ as it used to have a really loud fan system in it.

GPS2

Fri, 18 Jun 2004 11:28:43 +0000

I’ve been following this story for a couple of years, and now seems as good a time as any to mention it. The European Union is building a system called Galileo.

This is basically a brand new kind of GPS, which will compete with the GPS system, whose technology is nearly 25 years old. Wired has an interesting story on current negotiations. Negotiations because the US military, which owns the GPS system, doesn’t want anything which could challenge it’s benefits - guiding cruise missiles, droneships etc., and of course the commercial benefit of all the locators which use GPS.

The challenge then to Galileo is more commercial than anything esle - GPS is effectively free, but runs under the shadow that he US military can discontinue it at any time. That’s very unlikely, and with Galileo being presented as a commercial venture, finding a decent business plan might be a challenge. However, I’m hoping that new technology and the increasingly wireless world will allow both systems to succeed, especially with some of the cool new signals that Galileo will provide.

I want a Wheelman

Wed, 05 May 2004 04:59:17 +0000

OK, OK, I’m way behind on this one too, but I thought I’d put it in, especially as it ties into my scooter ambitions, but with a dash of snowboarding. It’s the Wheelman, and is basically a 43cc cross between a scooter and a snowboard - it has two wheels, a motor in the middle and you stand on it a little like a snowboard, and thus ride ‘sidewards’. It looks great, but you can’t shake the nagging doubt that although it would be fun in a park, or at the beach, it would be a death sentence on the 246 (the double decker, insanity infested road which runs past my apartment). Anyway, apparently there’s a dealer in Tokyo, so I might go and take a look.

New camera

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 22:46:41 +0000

After 3 years of great service, I’m semi-retiring my Canon Ixy (2.1 Megapixel) in favour of my new Canon Ixy 500 (5 Megapixel). I can’t go into all the details here, but needless to say, this thing has a whole raft of new features, and the picture quality really is amazing, as I think you can see in the Niseko gallery. I’m really loving how many more pictures I can attempt now, and see if I can do some more justice to the things I see around me.

All I have to do now is figure out how to take decently framed shots of interesting stuff. I think I should head over to Bastish.net for some inspiration. His stuff is amazing (and I thought that even before he left some comments on this blog !) I just wish I could find the shot of the monk looking at the girl on the train again - curse my failing memory!

On the subject of cameras, the best reviews seem to be on DPReview, and Steve’s Digicams.

If you’re a Mac owner and have .Mac, they also have some good tutorials as part of the iPhoto information.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Rudolf — 2004-03-21

Monk Checks Chick Out:

http://www.bastish.net/rememberwhen/002392.html

Kevin is a rock star:

http://www.thewesternworld.net/blog/pics/BloggerMeetup2.html

kevin — 2004-03-21

The trick is to take hundred, and hundreds of photos…. about ten may end up with interesting stuff… of those, one or two may be interestingly framed :)

BTW, my camera is only 2 megapixles, but I too am thinking to upgrade to a DSLR. Not because I am not happy with the quality, but because I want to play with all the cool photographer-lingo features, like aperture, and other things I have been learning about, but can’t control with my camrea.

graham — 2004-03-22

Thanks for the comments. I really liked my little Ixy, but it did sometimes do odd things with colour and such. The new one is great though, but yeah, I think I should maybe just take more and abuse the 512Mb worth of Compact Flash I have (50% donated or came with camera!)

Softbank database

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 18:55:01 +0000

This story on the excellent Register website was a bit scary - Softbank Japan admit they may have released 4,500,000 currenty and former customers of the YahooBB! service details to other parties. Maybe not credit card details, but pretty much everything else. The most bizarre aspect is, it was most likely an inside job, and some people are even using the words ‘blackmail’ and ’extortion’. It turns out that 130 people had access to that database, and over 90 were temp staff - of course, many others may have shared logins.

As a gesture, Softbank will give all those affected, a 500 yen gift voucher.

For those who live outside Japan, YahooBB!s strategy is to hand out free modem routers on street corners in bright red bags - if you don’t like the service, you just send it back. This is how YahooBB! got so many names and addresses.

I don’t know why, but this makes me think quite a lot about the sokaiya rackets of the mid/late nineties. It has to be said that there are still some people getting away with big things.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Gen Kanai — 2004-03-09

Hey Graham, nice blog! I’m not sure if you are aware of it, but we have a nice mailing list of bloggers in Japan as well as a webring. We meet up once a month in Tokyo. Would love to have you join us!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JapanBloggers/ http://www.souzouzone.jp/japanbloggers/

Taiko no Tatsujin

Sun, 04 Jan 2004 04:39:15 +0000

One game I picked up for us this Xmas for the Playstation 2 was ’ Taiko no Tatsujin’ (Taiko Drum Master), which is a simple game, set in a summer festival scene, where 1 or 2 players bang the plastic drums in sync with symbols scrolling across the screen. It comes with a variety of tunes, from folk (enka) to J-Pop and some hard hitting punk. It’s a lot of fun.

Just saw this: Taiko no tatsujin merchandise. If you buy any, let me know if it’s any good. The game link is here. Looking at Namco’s site, it doesn’t seem to be available outside Japan. Has anyone seen it elsewhere? It’s a very ‘Japanese’ game, so I’m not sure how well it would fare outside of the Japanophile market.. Shame though - if you can get the game and the drums, get the set.

Bits and pieces

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:42:34 +0000

Bit of a catch all post this - everything from Linux to Japanese politics :)

Early in the week, I was glad to see that Takenaka-san had held his job in Koizumi-san’s cabinet as the Banking Sacrificial Official. This is the guy whose job it is to try to sort out the Japanese banks. You know he’s doing a good job for 2 reasons: banks are slowly admitting to some of the bad loans they have (trillions of yen - no one seems to know exactly how much) and 2) all the banks *hate* him! Check out stories on Koizumi-san’s re-election within his own party here, and here.

Non-tech freaks miss this bit: This week, I upgraded my windoze box to an Athlon XP2500, and bumped my Linux to XP2000. I need to sort Redhat 9 on there now. I also got some decent sound recording software called Audio Hijack Pro for my Mac for getting sounds out of DVD and so I can get the whole ‘Hichhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ from my tapes into MP3.

I’ve been reading a pretty good concise History of Japan from Tuttle (a very interesting subject), and for some reason I got thinking about another of my pet subjects - Thomas Paine - so I’ve kind of semi-decided to write a much bigger article on him, because there just doesn’t seem to be enough good stuff on the Net. Just thought I’d mention it.

Song of the Day: ‘Guilty’ - John Belushi - “Made in America” Phrase of he day: The Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster - like being smashed in the face by a slice of lemon, wrapped around a gold brick.

Beer = Ogg

Sat, 22 Feb 2003 13:17:25 +0000

The weekend … you have to love it. Well, after a night on the beers last night in Nihonbashi" first as it’s a classic. I’m using Audacity as the recording software. Whilst all this is going on, I think I’d better clean my balcony. The fun never ends.

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Refurbishing 40mm Cardo Helmet Speakers

Original Comments

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My Usage Cases

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p.s. On the Subject of Action Cam Reviews

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[Fixed for me] Mac rebooting during sleep

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Original Comments

New Arai Astro IQ helmet!

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Nexus 7 (2012)

Kiva Update

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Original Comments

Photograph Digitising and Preservation

Original Comments

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[Not] Unlimited Mozy

Instagr.am

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Original Comments

Cable Cull