What I’m doing right now: March 2011

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

It’s hard to believe that March is almost over! Scary – means I only have one more full month of ‘freedom’ before I step into the ‘parent’ zone! Hopefully I’ll still get to do all of the things that I love, ie writing, blogging, photography, playing with gadgets, etc, but all of a sudden I’ll have another life to take care of! Thankfully my other half is equally responsible, making the idea less daunting! I’m scared, yet excited, apprehensive, yet hopeful. Interesting times ahead!

Alas, it seems I’ve hit another dry spell with regards to photography. I blame my increasingly pregnant state – it’s hard to take good photos when I’m at home almost all of the time and am looking at the same scenery constantly! I suppose I could get inventive with still lifes and abstracts, but my motivation to think outside the square is really non-existent at the moment. This means my 365-days photo project has well and truly flopped. Ah well, I can always start it up again when the baby is born – will have an endless stream of baby photos to take then! m But I’m managing to take a few photos here and there, like at the Usher concert yesterday.

I’ve been going hard with the tablets this month. Ironic given that I hardly leave the house and tablets are best used out of the house (for me anyway – at home, I’d rather use my 27-inch iMac unless I’m sitting in front of the TV or lying in bed), but I’m having fun nevertheless. I traded an old phone on Gumtree for a Dell Streak 5, and I was quite infatuated with it until I found the Facebook bug that doesn’t let me sign-in to Facebook from third party apps like Tweetdeck. Major no-no for me, so I ended up switching back to the Samsung Galaxy S as my main phone. My TEGA v2 tablet also got an upgrade to Android 2.2.1! I had to upgrade the Wi-Fi card in it myself to get the Wi-Fi working in Android, and I can honestly say that it’s the first time that I’ve ever upgraded something myself on a computer before! Go me! I’ll definitely start using the TEGA v2 once I get more mobile – while it’s not the lightest tablet I have, the fact that it dual boots with Windows 7 makes it the best for writing on the go. I still haven’t had a chance to play with a Honeycomb Android tablet yet, but I’m expecting to get a review unit of the Samsung Galaxy 10.1v next week!

Further tablet news: I bought myself an iPad 2! Yes, I am an i-sheep, hear me baaaa! Took me four hours altogether, but I was able to walk out with the iPad that I wanted: a white 64GB 3G. God bless my partner for coming to visit me in line and bringing a chair – that and a good book on my Kindle made the wait almost pleasant – I was actually annoyed whenever the line moved up and I had to put my book down and move my chair! No, I probably didn’t need the 3G version, given that I have a Wi-Fi network at home and Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities on my iPhone and Galaxy S, and no, I probably didn’t need the 64GB version either, given that I barely passed 10GB on my 64GB iPad 1. But you know me – I need to have the best, and couldn’t stand the idea of friends having a better iPad than me Plus, using Wi-Fi hotspot functions on a phone really sucks up the batteries, and I also get GPS functionality with the 3G. Also, knowing me, I’d probably end up using all of the storage if I knew I didn’t have much to use, just to spite myself!

At the moment, I’ve just finished reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and I’ve started in on the sequel called The Wise Man’s Fear. Fantastic books if you’re into fantasy – lots of magic, demons, etc. The first book reminds me of Harry Potter as a lot of it involves the protagnist’s years at ‘The University’, only so much better than the HP series!

I’ve been going hard-core on tweaking devices this month as well. I loaded Windows Phone 7 and Android to my HD2, tried and failed to load a custom ROM onto my Samsung Galaxy Tab (my first failure – wah!), added a few cool plug-ins to my iPhone 4 (before I ultimately updated it to the latest 4.3.1 firmware so I could get the personal hotspot feature), and played around with a few different ROMs on the Samsung Galaxy S. Loading custom ROMs to Android phones is never an easy process, but so rewarding if you’re actually able to pull it off! My Galaxy S is now running like a dream, making me the urge to upgrade to a new dual-core Android phone less. Less, but not non-existent I would still love to try a Motorola Atrix 4G and Samsung Galaxy S II when they come out!

I’ve made one new addition to my ‘barbie dream home’ tech setup in the living room. I now have an Iomega NAS box setup in the living room that’s permanently connected to my wireless router, and I’m now saving all of my movies to that box rather than my iMac. This drive shows up instantly on my Xbox 360, saving me from having to copy the movie to a USB drive from my iMac and then transfer that to my Xbox 360′s USB port. I even figured out a way to download movies to my Samsung Galaxy S, then transfer them to the Iomega NAS so I can bypass my iMac altogether when I’m feeling too lazy to sit in front of the computer. Sweet!

I finally did the big sale on Gumtree and got rid of most of my old gadgets that I wasn’t using. I was able to kill two birds with one stone by making money that I sorely needed at the time to pay outstanding bills, as well as free up some space to store all the baby stuff – all of those boxes were taking up a helluva lot of room! Dealing with all of the schizoids on Gumtree was a big effort though, and ultimately, a good learning experience. I’ll definitely know for next time how to phrase my ads properly to avoid (most of) the non-serious buyers.

Canon PowerShot SX30IS: the ultimate concert/music festival camera

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

I’m the first to admit it: I have more cameras than I really need. The Canon PowerShot SX30 IS was something of an impulse purchase, as I used it at a Canon overnight media event and was able to get a really good price on it. Obviously, image quality is lacking compared to my interchangeable lens cameras (Sony NEX-5 and Samsung NX10) and my Canon 5D MK II, but one area that it beats all of these cameras is its built-in zoom. The PowerShot SX30IS has a fixed zoom lens that goes all the way up to 840mm (or 35x zoom), and it’s a godsend at music festivals and concerts, particularly at the stricter venues that don’t allow cameras with detachable lenses.

I brought the SX30IS along to the Usher concert tonight at Acer Arena, and it turned out to be the perfect camera for the situation. The security guard at the door asked me whether it had a detachable lens (in which case I would’ve had to check it into the cloak room), but I showed him that it didn’t, and I was able to bring it into the venue. Sweet! I’m not surprised he asked – the SX30IS is the same size as an entry-level digital SLR, but if I had brought the latter, even the kit 18-55mm lens would’ve been longer on the camera than the SX30IS’s built-in lens. HP were nice enough to invite me to the concert in their corporate box suite, which was super-comfortable and fully catered – however, the corporate suites are also very far back from the stage. Not a problem with my SX30IS, however, and I was able to get some decent stills and video. Keeping the camera steady when it was fully zoomed out was the biggest challenge, so my keeper ratio was lower than usual, but I was pleased to get even a couple of shots that I liked.

Usher with his shirt off - rowr!

Loving the Michael Jackson-style outfit!

Updating gadget software: one of the curses of being on the bleeding edge

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

I finally got the iPhone and iPad updates working. No idea why it wouldn’t work on my iMac, but switching to a Windows PC did the trick. Of course, I had to re-download the massive update files for each (I think they were around 650MB and 615MB respectively), so lucky I have an unlimited broadband Internet account! I was also pleased to discover that it didn’t wipe either device clean, so all of my apps and data stayed intact after the update. I now have personal hotspot capability on my iPhone!

Personal hotspot!

I’ve also updated the custom ROM on my Samsung Galaxy S, which I’ve been using lately as my primary phone. There was an annoying bug with Darky’s Extreme Edition 9.4 where the earpiece wouldn’t work during calls (they could hear me, but I could hear the caller), and thankfully this has been fixed in 9.5. Updating to the newer version couldn’t have been easier – I just downloaded the DarkyRom configurator in Android Market and flashed the new update ZIP file from there. I’m not sure whether I’m getting better battery life yet – I’ve noticed that Darky’s ROM eats up more battery than the 2.2.1 JPU ROM I was using before – but apparently 9.5 improves on this somewhat. Time will tell!

My awesome Android homescreen: using the Xperia Arc launcher and beautiful widgets for the clock and weather

An Apple a day…

Posted on March 26, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

One day in, and I’m still loving the iPad 2 to bits. Ah, that new gadget feeling! I haven’t had as much ‘bonding time’ with it as I would like, however, as I had an all-day ‘having a baby class’ at the hospital yesterday, and then wound down for the night with a good book on my Kindle (The Name of the Wind: The Kingkiller, by Patrick Rothfuss).

Today’s also going to be busy, as I’m having my baby shower today and a bunch of people are coming over. However my good friend Saman is coming over and I’m sure he’ll bring his new iPad 2, so we can have a nice little geek out session! He has an interesting iPad 2 buying story: he lined up at 1pm at the George St Sydney Apple flagship store and was 350th in line, and found out just before 5pm that the model he wanted (black 64GB Wi-Fi) wasn’t available anymore. So then he went to Dick Smith and got one there, and then got accessories from JB Hi-Fi.

I’m tried to update both my iPad and iPhone 4 to the latest 4.3.1 software this morning. Yes, this would mean that I’ll lose all of the cool jailbreak tweaks on my iPhone 4 that I was so pleased with before, but I’m tired of the bugs: there’s a weird one that displays a white line at the top of the screen in most applications (maybe related to the Notified Pro app I’m running?), and also my camera appears to have stopped working – I tried to take a photo yesterday for the first time in ages, and the camera app kept on crashing before it took the photo. Alas, I keep on getting this stupid error message:

Guess there are too many people trying to update their i-devices? I’ll try again later.

I haz iPad 2!

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

I actually went to pre-order the iPad 2 at 1am this morning, but was put off by the 2-3 week waiting period before it would be shipped. Nah, I wanted one today!

So I breezed through all of the work that I had to do today, and started lining up at 3pm at the Bondi Junction Apple Store, sales of the iPad 2 started at 5pm, and I had my white 64GB iPad 2 in my hand and out the door by 7pm. I bought the pink Smart Cover, HDMI adapter, and a prepaid Telstra microSIM.

I like how Apple employees went through the line at around 4pm and gave out tickets corresponding to the iPad models that everyone wanted, so they were able to tell us early on which models would be sold out before we made it into the store. The white iPads seemed to be selling like hotcakes: the 16GB and 32GB 3G ones were allocated to people in the queue before me – lucky I wanted the 64GB one

Having a chair and a good book was also invaluable for alleviating achy feet and boredom, and I made sure my bladder was good and empty before I started lining up! The Apple employees gave out bottles of water to people in line, but I didn’t drink any until after I had my iPad in hand

Now I’m going through and customising my new toy, finding good apps to install and some nice wallpapers to personalise it with. A good way to spend a Friday night, I think

Buying the iPad 2, crushing on Android and mulling over finances

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

Roll out the red carpet: the iPad 2 goes on sale tomorrow at 5pm! I’m annoyed that Apple didn’t just start selling it at 9am, but I suppose either way, there’s going to be hundreds – if not thousands – of people queuing up. Urgh! Like this guy, who’s been at the main Apple store in Sydney since yesterday afternoon. And he already has an iPad 2! I think he’s just lining up so he can get interviewed by the media.

I’m 89% sure I’m going to get an iPad 2 tomorrow, but jeebers – I’m 8 months pregnant, and I really can’t stand in line for hours on end! I’m thinking about just pre-ordering one tomorrow morning at 1am in case Apple starts shipping them that day (why else open up pre-orders at such an absurdly early time?), and then swinging by the Bondi Junction store at 2pm and seeing what the line is like. I’ve persuaded my partner to come and meet me after he finishes work at 3 so he can help me stand in line (ie, stand in my place while I literally piss bolt for the toilets!).

The silly thing is, I don’t even really want an iPad 2 that much. I’ll get one anyway, because I’m a gadget junkie and need my fix (and can’t stand the idea that friends would have one when I didn’t), but I’m so stuck on the Android operating system that I don’t think I could do nearly as much on the iPad. Yes, it has a gazillion more tablet-specific apps than Android, but I need my customised homescreens with shortcuts and widgets, and the awesome Android notification system that alerts me whenever something needs my attention, and all of the cool tweaks and apps that aren’t possible with iOS because the operating system is locked down so tightly. Of course, things will be different once iOS 5 is released, and I’m really hoping that it comes in a couple of months to coincide with the iPhone 5 launch.

To give you an example of why I’m so into Android, I was able to download a movie through EasyNews using the EZ Usenet app on my Galaxy S while I was lying in bed. I then transferred that file over Wi-Fi to my Iomega network-attached hard drive using ES File Explorer (once I’ve configured it to see the network share on my Galaxy S), and I’m planning to watch it during dinner tonight through my Xbox 360, which plays files directly from the Iomega box. I didn’t have to touch my iMac the entire time! Cool, huh? Pretty sure the scenario I just described isn’t possible on an iPad – not without jailbreaking it, anyway. I could’ve done better than that, even, and skipped the Iomega NAS altogether by streaming the movie directly to the Xbox 360 over DLNA from my Galaxy S (the Galaxy S comes with a native DLNA client)! However, I wanted to permanently move the movie to the Iomega box anyway to free up space on my Galaxy S’s memory card, hence the need for that middle step. Eat that, Airplay!

The Android Honeycomb-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v is due out here in Australia in mid April, and I’m seriously considering getting that one too. It doesn’t have a microSD slot like the regular Galaxy Tab 10.1, but given that I’ve used less than 10GB on my 64GB iPad in the year that I’ve had it, I think I’d be fine with that – plus, I can stream most of my multimedia and store stuff in the cloud anyway. I know I’d be so much more productive using an Android tablet than an iOS tablet, the same way I can do so much more on my Android smartphone compared to the iPhone. Vodafone has a great deal whereby you can purchase it upfront for $259 and then pay it off for $39 each month over 12 months, which includes 1.5GB of data – perfect for my current budget, especially since it ends up being $2 cheaper than the outright price of $729. Well, would you look at that, I think I just convinced myself to buy it! I’ll also be selling my old iPad, so the overall cost of buying the two tablets shouldn’t be too bad, especially since I can offset most if not all of it by writing articles about them.

Back to the Samsung Galaxy S

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

Well that was short-lived! Looks like I’m going back to using the Samsung Galaxy S as my everyday phone! All because I had to ‘condition’ the Mugen battery for the Dell Streak that I bought off eBay. The instructions said that I have to charge it for 8-12 hours, run it down to the last drops off juice, then repeat the process 4-5 times. This meant that I couldn’t bring the phone with me to the city today (had to go to the HTC HD7 launch at the Telstra Experience Centre) as I had just put it on charge, so I swapped over to my Samsung Galaxy S for the day.

Now that I’ve started using the Galaxy S, however, I’m not sure I want to go back to using the Dell Streak again! The Galaxy S is positively flying with the latest custom ROM that I’ve installed on it, which is a really nice change from the early days I had this phone when it ran like a dog! I don’t have any problems getting Facebook to authenticate in Tweetdeck like I do on the Dell Streak, the Super AMOLED screen is gorgeous, and I’ve just picked up a new bright yellow rubber case for it that makes it look like a Ferrari! BRRROOOOOMM!

My Samsung Galaxy S in its sporty new case

I’ve also started using a new launcher: a modified version of the Sony Ericsson Arc launcher that’s running really smoothly on my Galaxy S. It lets you configure folders on the homescreen for particular categories of apps, and uses an iPhone-style app drawer for the main app screen. I’m totally digging it!

The life and times of a pseudo geek celebrity

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

Gratuitous shot of me with Mr Big! (me on the left)

How funny is this: twice in the past week, I’ve been “recognised” as a tech writer/blogger in my wheeling and dealings on Gumtree and eBay. The first time was for when I was selling my Nintendo DS Lite on Gumtree – the buyer said he recognised my name from articles I had written for APC magazine. Ha – goes to show that at least one person in the country reads that stuff

But the second time was even more random: I bought some Dell Streak accessories on eBay (the official car kit and an extended Mugen battery), and since the seller happened to live in Coogee, which is seriously just a hop, skip and a jump from where I live, I offered to pick the goods up in person. When I got there, the seller surprised me by saying “By the way, I have you to blame for me buying a HTC Advantage years ago!” What?! Turns out he recognised my name from when I used to blog for Gear Diary! So, so random, my world shrank to the size of a peanut at that exact moment!

Reminds me of another time – at least five years ago now, although my concept of time is pretty bad. I went to a Pocket PC Evangelist event in Los Angeles hosted by Dale Coffing (old-time Pocket PC geeks will recognise that name!), and he was nice enough to specifically say hello to me from the podium, hehe. At which point the (cute!) guy next to me wearing surgical scrubs introduced himself and said that he was a regular reader of my blog! Haha, it was probably the most famous I’ve ever felt – and will ever feel – in my life

Tweaking the Samsung Galaxy S and TEGA v2

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

I’m having one of “those” days where I just can’t stop tinkering with my gadgets.

I started off with my Samsung Galaxy S. I’m not sure where the idea to start fiddling around with it came from, but there it was, so I obliged the ‘gadget monkey’ on my back by paying a visit to xda-developers and see what the latest ROMs were for it. I quickly discovered that Darky’s Extreme Edition was the one all the cool kids were trying out, so I downloaded all the necessary files for the latest version 10 Beta 3 and starting flashing in ODIN. Nearly bricked my device on the third and final step where I had to flash the ROM using Speedmod Recovery – I had transferred the Darky ROM to a microSD card, but the Recovery kernel just flat out refused to see the card. I tried running my Galaxy S as it was, but it refused to boot – just kept on vibrating away at me at the Samsung logo screen. Uh-oh!

It never is as straightforward as just following the posted instructions – indeed, it wouldn’t be as fun without the danger element involved. Finally I figured out how to mount the Galaxy S as a USB drive in Speedmod Recovery, and I was able to copy across the Darky ROM to the Galaxy’s internal SD card. From there, it was just a matter of flashing it using the Update mechanism, and huzzah! I haz Gingerbread on my Galaxy S – and it runs extremely fast, too!

But enough with the Galaxy S – my next challenge was the TEGA v2. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had successfully updated it to Froyo, however I didn’t have Wi-Fi working as my version of the tablet had an outdated Wi-Fi card in it. Hugo to the rescue! He sent me a new Wi-Fi card to fit into the TEGA, and it was surprisingly easy to install! Of course, I had to get my partner to help me with unscrewing the back case and removing the relevant components – he’s much better with the hands-on stuff than me But once it was in, the Wi-Fi started working beautifully, and I was able to sign in to my Google account and get all my data syncing down. I had a brief scare when the touchscreen stopped registering my input, until I discovered on the TEGA v2 forum that pressing and holding on the Back button for 10 seconds re-calibrates the touchscreen. SUCCESS!

The innards of the TEGA v2

I still don’t have a fix for 3G yet – Hugo posted a solution on the forums, but it’s all gobbledegook for me, way too technical and beyond my expertise! But hopefully someone comes up a step-by-step for dummies on how to get this working! The other thing I’ve noticed is that there’s only a limited number of apps available in Android Market: no Facebook, no Twitter, no Tweetdeck, no Beautiful Widgets, and those are just the ones that I’ve looked up. I’ve tried emailing myself the APKs and installing them from there, but that only worked for updating the Facebook that was already built into the ROM. I’ve also ticked the ‘Allow installation of non-Market applications’ option in Settings, but it didn’t make a difference.

Still, I’ve made a lot of progress today towards turning the TEGA v2 into the ultimate tablet. Tomorrow’s another day! One cool thing that I’ve discovered is that the TEGA v2 recognises wireless adapters for keyboards and mice even when in Android (I’m using a Logitech desktop combo, but I’m sure it would work with other brands too.), as well as connected flash drives! So I can have a full keyboard and mouse setup in both Android and Windows 7 and transfer files on and off at will without having to do application acrobatics with email, Dropbox, etc, making it near-perfect for using as a mobile workstation!

TEGA v2/2.1 updated to Android 2.2.1

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

I received a nice surprise on Friday afternoon. The Froyo build for my TEGA v2 tablet was finally available for download as part of Tegatech’s public Beta program – something I’d been waiting for ever since I first received the tablet!

A quick crash course on the TEGA v2: it’s a 10.1-inch tablet that dual-boots Windows 7 Home Premium and Android. Initially, it was shipping with Android 1.6, and it’s the same hardware as the Viewsonic ViewPad 10, with a 1024 x 600 resolution capacitive display, 3G and 802.11n Wi-Fi, 1.6GHz Intel Atom N455 processor, 2GB of RAM, two USB ports, a microSD slot, a 32GB SSD and a mini-VGA port.

The dual-booting functionality with Windows takes it out of the league of a simple ‘play’ tool and turns it into something you could use as your everyday computer. Boot into Windows when you want to do “serious” work with Microsoft Word, Excel, and other Windows apps, complete with two working USB ports that you can use for an external keyboard, mouse, flash and external hard drives, etc, and then swap over to Android when you want to have some fun and need a simple instant-on tablet with lots of cool apps and games.

Upgrading my TEGA v2 was a cinch. The Beta is being distributed as an ISO, but I didn’t even need an external DVD drive to run it – I just followed the dual-boot manual at the bottom of this page and used it for turning a microSD card into a bootable USB drive. I just needed to go and get myself a USB keyboard to enter the boot prompts (the touchscreen isn’t recognised until you get to the operating system layer) – all of the ones that I had in the house are wireless! One of the bugs that the Tegatech team made us aware of up-front was that earlier versions of the TEGA (ie v2 rather than v2.1) wouldn’t be able to connect to Wi-Fi, and needed an updated Wi-Fi card to use this functionality. Hugo (the principal of Tegatech), being the absolute champ that he is, promised to courier a new Wi-Fi card over to me on Monday so I could upgrade the card myself.

In the mean time, turns out that 3G doesn’t work either. I tried a few different SIM cards on different networks, but I couldn’t get the 3G data working. It’s not a huge deal for me, given that I’d probably just use the Wi-Fi at home to connect, and the Wi-Fi hotspot feature on one of my phones to get Internet access out of the house, but of course I’ll need to get my Wi-Fi working first! Still, first impressions of Android 2.2.1 on the TEGA are very positive! It’s still early days yet, and as part of the Beta program, it’s understood that there will be bugs here and there, but nevertheless I’m pretty excited about being able to run Froyo on this tablet – I have a feeling I’ll be using it a lot more often once I get the Wi-Fi card upgraded! iPad 2, eat your heart out!

Gadget Monkeys

Living the digital lifestyle … and loving every second!

Monthly Archives: March 2011