Andrew Ferrier

I just acquired a new Vodafone Mobile Broadband modem to replace an aging ExpressCard version I had that wasn’t working too well. It came in the form of a Vodafone-branded Huawei K4505 USB stick. It didn’t work completely out-of-the-box with Ubuntu 10.04, at first appearing unrecognisable. After some hunting, I discovered that these sticks initially present themselves as USB Mass Storage to allow you to install the Windows drivers. You have to give a few magic incantations on Linux to make them switch into modem mode:

sudo aptitude install usb-modeswitch
sudo usb_modeswitch -v 0x12d1 -p 0x1521 -M \
 55534243123456780000000000000011060000000000000000000000000000

Once the modeswitch command is executed, the USB stick will present itself as a modem and you can use the standard Ubuntu NetworkManager mechanisms to define your service provider and set up the connection. The stick should remember its state, and so you should only ever need the above utility (and command) once.

I recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my Thinkpad T61 and set about disabling the touchpad, which I always find irritating. There seemed to be lots of guides to this, including this one, but none of them seemed to work for me. Eventually I figured some fairly simple steps which did work:

1. Install two packages if they aren’t already installed (gpointing-device-settings is the more modern version of gsynaptics and will uninstall it if it’s installed):

   sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics gpointing-device-settings

2. Start gpointing-device-settings from the command line and select “Touchpad off”, as shown here:
3. Exit the tool and reboot.

I recently bought a veryPC AT20 as a more powerful replacement for an aging Debian-hacked NSLU2 that I had serving up files, doing backups, and other such tasks. I thought I’d do a quick review in case it’s of value to anyone considering a machine from veryPC (at the time of writing, it seems to be no longer for sale, although the veryPC AT10 looks similar).

I particularly wanted something more meaty than my NSLU2 so I could do full-disk encryption, fully-encrypted offsite backups, so it seemed ideal. The variation I ordered has:

• Dual-Core Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 330 (1.6GHz)
• 1GB RAM
• 1TB Western Digital “GreenPower” Hard Drive
• Intel 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics
• Onboard audio, 6 USB 2.0 ports, a serial port, a parallel port
• Integrated 100MB Ethernet
• RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI Wireless Card
• DVD-RW drive

(total approximately £370)

Very PC seem fairly reputable, and their customer service was adequate, if not outstanding (they didn’t keep me up-to-date on my order until I emailed them, at which point they interrupted me by calling, they didn’t always respond to sales enquiry emails, and were coy about their returns policy). Nevertheless, they do offer a 3-year warranty as standard, which shows confidence in their products.

Nevertheless, the PC arrived fairly promptly (~5 days), and appears to be robustly built: whilst compact, the case is very solid and feels strong. The whole machine exudes a feeling of high build quality, and is mostly constructed from metal rather than cheap plastic. Here’s what it looks like from the outside:

The machine came shipped with Ubuntu (Desktop) pre-installed, although I rapidly reinstalled it with the Ubuntu Server (a wise decision anyway, since VeryPC forgot to include information on the default username and password!). As such, every piece of hardware works well with the exception of the wi-fi card, which, using the default driver, suffered from frequent drop-outs (a problem I’ve had before with the RaLink cards under Linux). Replacing the standard driver with a ndiswrapper verison (more information here and here) resolved this. Channels 12 and 13 also don’t seem to work correctly with this driver, so the wi-fi network has to run on another channel.

The main disappointment was the noise generated by the machine. To be fair, VeryPC described it as ‘ultra quiet’, and with other noisy items on (e.g. a modern laptop with the fan spinning), you won’t hear it. However, in an otherwise silent room, you definitely will – and you don’t have to get close to it either. I haven’t done any formal tests, but if you want a completely silent machine, this is not the one for you. If you can tolerate a small amount of fan noise in very quiet environments, it should be OK.

Another minor point: the machine has an external power supply brick (like a laptop). VeryPC didn’t make this clear, but you should factor it in if you’re considering buying one.

Otherwise, though, I’m fairly satisfied. It does what it says on the tin, I’ve had no reliability problems whatsoever (save for the wi-fi card issues mentioned above), and the machine is running 24h a day and doing a solid job. So kudos to veryPC for putting together a good bit of kit.

I suddenly realised that I expect Amazon (and indeed many other websites) to correct my misspellings in the same way as Google:

Did you mean: lost in translation ?

But it doesn’t.

They should fix this.

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been using Dopplr and TripIt a lot recently as I’ve been travelling more. Although TripIt is far more featureful, I know more people on Dopplr and so keeping it up-to-date is useful as it increases the chance of serendipitous coincidences. They are competitors, but I like them both.

So far it’s been a pain to enter information into Dopplr manually, but they announced today that it can now watch iCal calendars and create trips accordingly. I’ve added my iCal feed from TripIt and it seems to work well so far. They are minor niggles. For example, it gets confused if you have multiple destinations in your trip as TripIt doesn’t really allow for this concept. Also, not all trips involve advance booking, so I don’t bother adding them to TripIt – they’ll need to be entered into Dopplr manually. Nevertheless, it should cut down on the amount of data entry.

I went to the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC at the weekend. The show itself was a little disappointing, obviously oriented more around trade sales than the end-consumer, and was marred a little by poor organisation from the NEC resulting in large queues, a car-park merry-go-round, and so on. But nevertheless, there were some interesting stalls – Canon and Nikon having the largest and most impressive, with some substantial Canon L-series lenses on display.

I availed myself of the special show pricing (and suffered the robust crowds) to buy a Canon 400D body, plus the lens I’ve been trying to get hold of – the Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS. The lens is cheap, but allegedly better optically than its poor non-image-stabilised cousin that is shipped by default with many Canon bodies. At some point, I’ll invest in something better.

I had a (35mm) SLR some time ago, but sold it when I started using my digital compact more. I’ve been missing the flexibility of an SLR, though, and the appeal of higher ISO (the heroin of digital photography?) was too much. I’ll give it its first proper crack at the whip at the weekend, no doubt.

As I’ve starting travelling a lot recently, I’ve been making reasonably heavy use of both Dopplr and the less well-known TripIt. The idea behind Dopplr is simple: tell it which cities you’re travelling to and it will share that information with your other Dopplr contacts, notifying you when you’re in the same place. You can also syndicate your travel plans – I have mine published on Facebook and available as a feed via Google Calendar.

TripIt, although it has similar facilities for maintaining a list of travelling contacts, originates from a slightly different and more ambitious idea. Essentially, you email TripIt confirmation emails for hotels, airlines, car rental, etc. – and it parses them and automatically organises them into trips with information-rich itineraries, including weather, maps, city guides, etc. You can print those out, but (more usefully) you can again syndicate them into tools such as Google Calendar via iCal. This way, I end up with details about all my flights, hotels, and so on in my calendar automatically.

TripIt’s not perfect – I’ve found a few bugs – and TripIt doesn’t support every single travel agent (for example, it doesn’t support the one we use within IBM – at least not directly). But the TripIt team are very responsive to feedback – I notified them about a Hertz reservation email this afternoon that wasn’t recognised. They’ve already fixed the bug and the information has appeared in my TripIt account. I’m not sure how they plan to monetise their service (although that’s still not clear with Dopplr either), but I am likely to stay a regular user for the foreseeable future.

(Honourable mention for another useful travel website goes to Kayak, which has the most flexible and useful flight search interface I’ve found).

I’m surprised at the poor state of online contact management, given how mature the online e-mail market is. I’ve just spent a frustrating and mostly wasted morning with Plaxo, trying to see if it could fulfil my relatively simple needs (online contact management, syncing with something desktop-based, ideally Thunderbird, and syncing with my mobile phone as a nice to have). After struggling with the over-engineered Plaxo interface, a wobbly Thunderbird sync extension that loses critical bits of data, and a de-duper that misses obvious duplicates, I gave up. The latter service requires signing up to a free trial, which I’ve now cancelled.

At some point I’ll give Yahoo Address Book a go – initial investigations look good, it does away with the unnecessary social networking guff (I’m already signed up to Facebook and LinkedIn, thanks, Plaxo – try focusing a little harder on your core business), and is much speedier. Unfortunately, the Yahoo effort seems to be a bit basic – mainly a lack of sync points – but at least that does remove some of the potential for damage.

Does anyone know of any other solutions? I was willing to pay for Plaxo, and I can’t be the only one. I think there’s an unmet need here.

NatWest have recently introduced a one-time pad device on their on-line banking system, which I’ve just got my hands on. As someone who travels a lot, it’s going to be an inconvenience to carry around, so I phoned up NatWest to see if I could have it disabled. The chap I spoke to implied it was being introduced by all UK banks in one form or another and wasn’t going to be optional. Does anyone know if this is true? I wonder if they have really thought through the implications for their customers. Online banking is often of the most use when you are away from home, and carrying a physical device seems like a very stone-age method of providing security. Why can’t I choose not to have it?

David Hill wrote recently on a Lenovo Blog about the design qualities that make Thinkpads great. Whilst some of these are shared by other laptop manufacturers, I have to say I largely agree – even if mine is supplied ‘free’ for use on company business. After dropping it again the other day (yes, I’m clumsy, sorry boss), it took a huge chunk out of my wooden floor. But after the battery had been popped back in, it spun back up and back to life. Truly amazing.

I would buy one myself.