Posts by Jocke Selin

Typical old-thinking.

Robotic vacuuming (or sweeping as some insist) is a paradigm shift. If you expect a robot to work exactly as a normal vacuuming machine, then you're in for a surprise; They're not the same.

Nobody in their sane mind would, today, compare washing your clothes by hand and washing them in a washing machine. Comparing automatic cleaning to manual cleaning is just as doomed.

Snap out of it!

The Roombas are fantastic, once you've adjusted to them, and trust me, you've already adjusted to a vacuum (migrating from a broom), so you can do this adjustment too. Just go on!

Get rid of those hideous frilly carpets, get furniture that Roomba can get under, tidy up your cables (you should have done this anyway as cables trap dust). Then, before you let Roomba lose in your house, you pick up a few things lying on the floor, like kids toys, shoes etc - this is something that most people do anyway before running a normal vacuum cleaner around the house. (It's usually referred to as "tidying" - if you expect a £150 - £250 robot to do this for you, you need to adjust your concept of money vs. functionality).

Then, give Roomba about a month to really clean your house. By this time you'll notice that there's less dust on your telly, there's lest dust in Roomba once finished and everything is much better.

Blatant plug:

http://jocke.selincite.com/gadgets/irobot-roomba

My tip to the reviewer is to adjust to Roomba a bit more, and give it a good month or two of use. Run it every other day or so.

iPhone is NOT 2.5G

Aaargh... Once again, the lousy EDGE has been touted as 2.5G technology, it's not... poor consumers who are thinking they're getting 2.5G after reading about this.

A brief list of 'G:s'

1G - Analogue mobile phones such as NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony??)

2G - GSM - Digital mobile phone technology with 9600kbps data (not packet based)

2.5 - GPRS - Packet based rather than time based; you pay per data you've downloaded, not per time you've spent online. (Note that 2.5G isn't officially defined, but Wikipedia actually includes EDGE - wrongly IMO - in this, but that's a pub-discussion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5G)

3G - UMTS - Enables video calling (whoever does that)

3.5G - HSDPA - The real goodies in the foreseeable future.

4G - etc...

EDGE is "nothing more" (not wishing to belittle mobile engineers!) than "a few 9600 GSM modems put in parallell). I had EDGE on my 9210 Communicator back in 2002... When GPRS wasn't available. I remember ditching my 9210 for a T68i which had both Bluetooth and GPRS (shock horror!) so I could connect it to my laptop via Bluetooth.

... And there's no f**king way Jobsie is going to get me take a step 5 years backwards in technology. Not a chance.

For anoraks (bigger ones than me!) Look at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSDPA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Data_Rates_for_GSM_Evolution

My last PCW encounter.

Right, so after years of Linux use I decided to switch to the darkest side; Mac... All well, until I really started to get annoyed at my WiFi dropping out constantly. So I thought, I'll just waltz down to a large store and pick a Wireless Access Point up, and connect it to my existing LAN. I wanted to go to a store, so I could easily return it if my quirky Mac didn't connect properly...

I walked in to Oxford PCW... went to the WiFi/Network section, stared at a few boxes for 10 minutes, and to my luck there were two already opened boxes, but without prices. I smelled a bargain... But nobody came to my 'rescue'. So after a while of not being served I went to this 'speakers podium' that was erected in the midst of an isle and there were two middle aged women gossiping there. Finally, I got to ask if I could have some help with an access point. The rest of the discussion went something along the lines of:

Me: Could I have some help with the access points over there..?

PCW: Who's your ISP?

Me: erhm... ISP? I just would like to get some help with an AP!?

PCW: Yes, but who's your ISP?

PCW: Is it BT, Orange,... etc

Me: Eclipse, but...

PCW: OK, so you have got a normal ADSL line...

Me: LOOK, I have a network, I have an ADSL modem, it's all working except my stupid Mac won't connect to the WLAN...

PCW: Oh, we don't sell anything for the Mac

Me: (thinking: but you sell the freakin' Macs too!?) Look, I don't want a specific Mac thing, I just want a standard 802.11g network access point.

PCW: Yes, but we don't sell anything for the Mac.

Me: I don't need it specifically for the Mac, I just want a standard AP.

PCW: No, you need an Airport and we don't sell anything for the Mac, because Apple has told us that you'll need an Airport.

Me: hrmpht, so you're not selling me one..?!

PCW: No

I walked out, feeling very very insulted - I guess that's what I get for abandoning Linux and going corporate. :P Argos down the road had one for £40... just what I wanted. :)

A tip for our chum Stevo Jobbie

Stevo,

Next time you're going to be so smug to drop the price by that much, take a step back, and re-think.

Instead of dropping $200, you could have conserved your smugness and dropped it $100. This would have been "reasonable", the sheep wouldn't have gotten upset, but the "second batch of sheep" would still have thought that $100 is a lot of money off. And you would have come across as a "generous" person that's "trying to lower the prices".

Then, another 68 days later you could have lobbed another $100 off, and again, you could have received more kudos. End result, to the "sheep" would have been the same result, BUT, you would have had these benefits;

- Another bunch of people buy the iPhone, but at $100 higher price than now, let's say 500,000 sheep, that's $50 mill in your pocket - Kerr-ching!

- You wouldn't have had to come out with this silly "excuse"

- You wouldn't have had to print the "excuse money" of $100 worth of Apple Gadgets (gladly you're probably only having to shell out about $50 for the real value). Still you're "throwing away" about $50 mill (see above about making an extra $50 mill).

Net result, you're out of a cool $100mill... give or take a few...

Now, how about some commission for me?! Stevo!?!? STEEVO?!?! COME BACK! I DIDN'T MEAN TO BE MEAN! SORRY, I LIKE YOUR TURTLE NECK TOP!!!

:-D :-D

I used to have a Palm

A long long time in a land far far away I had a Palm Perosonal PDA, I absolutely loved it. Ran on batteries for months (yes, months!), was instant on (or never off), absolutely fantastic. Then I swung it across the floor and bought a Psion Revo. And I absolutely loved the Revo. It wasn't as good as the Palm in certain departments, but it was very good, except for the battery (both life and quality). The keyboard rocked (when it didn't break). I could even touch-type on it. I wrote several lengthy 'articles' on it. It fitted perfectly onto that little shelf in the back of train seats. Wonderful. Then it got stolen, and I went for an IPAQ...

... Since then my PDA life has never been the same. Clunky, battery muching, slow pieces of hardware down to my latest P990i... Not to mention my short affair with the O2 XDA which didn't even manage a days charge. Many days I failed to ring home to say what train I was because the battery that was full in the morning now had died a horrible death.

Palm and Psion were the only ones who knew what it was all about.

Come on Palm; you can do it. Fix us a nice pocket gadget, and bring back the Foooleo so I don't have to waste my 2h battery life on my laptop for occasional email replies and web-browsings.

Rubbish on so many levels

The petitions are utter rubbish - I signed this one, and the answer was totally deflating. Same as with any of the petitions I've signed. Rubbish. 10 Downing Street is just like any other political instance; avoids doing anything or answering questions.

Same goes for Unlimited. If you advertise "Unlimited" it should be "Unlimited" as defined in the English language - look it up in a dictionary and the service should be in compliance to that. If it's not, it should be illegal. It doesn't matter if there's a small print or not, it's what's advertised that's the key point.

I'd also like to put up a petition to stop using the word 'Free' in advertising. If something is 'Free' it should either be free in the sense that it has not been captured (bird), or 'Free' as in not having to pay anything. So a 'Free' mobile phone means that; I don't have to sign up to _anything_, nor pay anything etc. It's free, just as if I found it on the street and it would be legally mine. Again, the definition in an English dictionary should be stronger than some legal mumbo-jumbo fine-print.

... rubbish, being keyword... :(