Archive for January, 2008

In Spain at the minute

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 30/1/2008
in Personal
. 7 Comments

I’m in Spain at the moment. I flew over here on Sunday for my brother-in-law’s wedding. All good.

However, this has been a nightmare journey. I woke up on Sunday morning with a temperature of 38.8C. And Tomás, our four year old, had a temp of 38. We managed to get the kids and bags ready and arrived at the airport on time only to have our flight to Spain delayed by four hours.

We arrived at our hotel in Malaga (after deciding to overnight there) at 2:30am.

I drove to Seville the following (Monday) morning. I still had a high temperature and collapsed on the hotel bed when we arrived and awoke 3 hours later. I saw a doctor later in the day and he told me I had a bad lung infection and was heading for pnuemonia. I am now on antibiotics and getting better but still haven’t eaten since Saturday lunch!

To cap it all, Pilar and Enrique are now sick as well (Enrique’s temp was 39.9 last night) and there is no wifi in the hotel room so I am getting online extremely intermittently.

Still, the weather here is beautiful. I looked out the hotel window last night and one of the street signs which also gives the temperature was reading 17C. At 8pm. In January. Hard to beat that!

Shai Agassi’s Better Place project explained

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/1/2008
in Global Warming, carbon neutrality and energy
. 6 Comments

In my post about the DLD conference yesterday I showed the video of Shai Agassi’s presentation because I thought it was an amazingly good idea, well explained.

However, when I checked out Shai’s blog I found the following video of kids doing a far better job getting Shai’s idea across (sorry Shai!).

It is a three minute video. Watch it. You’ll be glad you did!

Then head over to Project Better Place, check it out and get involved.

DLD Conference Highlights

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/1/2008
in climate change and energy
. 3 Comments

I spent the early part of this week in Munich for the DLD Conference in Munich. It was an amazing experience.

The conference itself is a free invite-only event. The speaker list is unbelievable. The speakers included politicians, business people and convicted criminals!

Apart from the usual tech rock stars (Clay Shirky, Marissa Mayer, Matt Cohler, Jimmy Wales, etc.) there were people from the world of biology (Richard Dawkins, J. Craig Venter), literature (Paulo Coelho), extreme sports (Karina Hollekim), politics (Paul Kagame, Viviane Reding), and unclassifiables like Naomi Campbell (super-model and business woman) and David Silverman (the original animator and director of the Simpsons!).

One of the most impressive talks was also one of the shortest. It was the talk given by Shai Agassi, the onetime next CEO at SAP! In this presentation he explains how he is going to get Israel off oil in 10 years. What is most impressive about this plan is that it is completely reproducible for other countries!

Don’t believe me? See it for yourself below:


Link: sevenload.com

2007 was Earth’s 2nd warmest year

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 18/1/2008
in climate change
. 8 Comments

According to NASA, 2007 was tied with 1998 as the second-warmest year in a century.

global climate change

According to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

The article goes on to say:

The greatest warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, and neighboring high latitude regions. Global warming has a larger affect in polar areas, as the loss of snow and ice leads to more open water, which absorbs more sunlight and warmth. Snow and ice reflect sunlight; when they disappear, so too does their ability to deflect warming rays. The large Arctic warm anomaly of 2007 is consistent with observations of record low geographic extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2007.

“As we predicted last year, 2007 was warmer than 2006, continuing the strong warming trend of the past 30 years that has been confidently attributed to the effect of increasing human-made greenhouse gases,” said James Hansen, director of NASA GIS

The data in the graph above are pretty conclusive. The planet’s climate is changing. Now what are we going to do about it?

Updating the firmware on a Nokia N95

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 18/1/2008
in Nokia and mobile
. 0 Comments

According to Nokia, the latest version of firmware (the phone’s operating system) for the N95 is 20.0.015. This was released in November 2007. According to AllAboutSymbian, this was a significant update which included:

demand paging (!), so 30MB plus free RAM after booting, faster operation, N-Gage game store previews and portal stub, new camera software, integrated Search, new Welcome apps and more

You can check your firmware version by entering *#0000# on your phone and you can update using the Nokia Software Updater .

However, sometimes even if you do have the most recent firmware, the software updater can’t update the phone. This is usually because there is a version of the firmware on your phone specifically for your mobile operator. This typically has some aspect of the phone’s functionality disabled (i.e. the SIP stack).

To get around this you can download an application called Nemesis Service Suite (NSS). This is an application which allows you to change the product code of the firmware version on your phone.

Nemesis Service Suite

I found the following list of product codes for generic (non-mobile operator altered) firmware on Nokia-N95.net along with more detailed instructions on changing the product code:
0534841 EURO1 - Sand
0534842 FRANCE
0534843 ALPS
0534844 EURO2
0534845 TURKEY
0534847 SCANDINAVIA
0534848 BALTIAN
0534849 RUSSIAN
0534850 UKRAINE
0534851 CIS, Bulgaria
0534852 EURO3
0534853 BALKANS
0534854 GREECE, CYPROS
0534857 ISRAEL
0536058 BELARUS/MOLDOVA
0534833 SINGAPORE

0536062 EURO1 - Plum
0536063 FRANCE
0536064 ALPS
0536065 EURO2
0536066 TURKEY
0536068 SCANDINAVIA
0536069 BALTIAN
0536070 RUSSIAN
0536071 UKRAINE
0536072 CIS, Bulgaria
0536073 BELARUS/MOLDOVA
0536074 EURO3
0536075 BALKANS
0536076 GREECE, CYPROS
0536079 ISRAEL

Once youhave edited the firmware’s product code, you can now run the Nokia Software Updater once more and this time it will update the firmware on your phone.

Be aware with all these hacks that there is always the possibility of bricking your phone and always back up all your info before updating your phone.

Is the iPod Touch the ultimate Internet tablet?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 18/1/2008
in Gadgets, Nokia, apple, hardware and iPod
. 17 Comments

I recorded a video on Seesmic yesterday on why I think the iPod Touch is a spectacular Internet Tablet. It has an amazing screen, great UI, and tiny form factor.

Seesmic now includes the ability to embed videos you record there, so rather than go over it again I thought I’d embed the video here. The quality of Seesmic videos is poor, sorry about that!

A lot of the functionality I’m referring to in the iPod Touch is new and was announced at MacWorld 2008 earlier this week.

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