Monthly Archives: January 2003

Interesting thread on ILUG about the Esat BT Young Scientist of the Year. Apparently the browser plays DVDs, is a media player, browses the net 400% faster over a 56kbps telephone line, and it was patented only last Thursday. hmm. Software patented in Europe? Doesn’t it cost quite a bit to patent an invention? Anyway, there we go again, an Irish person wins something and the rest of us beat on him for it.. ’tis always the way!

Two from ENN:

• ElectricNews.net:News:Ireland set for flat-rate Net by June
• Ireland remains the most global nation – Or probably most “American”. This was one of the reasons argued for the continued usage of Shannon as a stop-over for American troops going to Kuwait/Saudi Arabia/fighting the war on terror. We argue, and American companies pull out. Bye Bye Dell, Intel, pharmacuticals.. Oh yeah, Ireland is neutral, of course it is.

Damn, Komplett have the Tekram IR-210B IR adaptor but Gnokii doesn’t work with that one.

free download games for mobile nokia 7650 phone – also has instructions for installing .sis files.

More free games for the 7650, including a version of Go!

Gameboy Emulator for the Nokia 7650 – I wonder how fast it is though. hmm.

Looks like the problems I thought were due to my modem are happening to others too. It’s a Surf No Limits problem. Obviously Esat want all SNL users to leave and subscribe to something that actually makes money..

My Nokia 6210 started acting up on New Year’s Eve. It would crash or turn itself off without warning. When I tried to enter the pin number the phone would only accept one or two digits. It was time to upgrade.
I wanted to stay with Nokia, so I had two choices, go for a Nokia 3510 (fairly cheap) or buy a 7650, the top of the range camera phone.
As it turns out, I was offered the 3510 for EUR4.50 and the 7650 for EUR9 and EUR20.83 each month for a year. I’m a Vodafone bill payer so I got EUR40 off the 7650.
I bought the Nokia 7650.
I’ve had it for a day, what do I think?

• The camera is terrible, but then if I want to take good photographs I’ll use my digital camera.
• The keyboard is a bit small for my hands, and the keys themselves don’t stick out enough for my liking.
• The keyboard is way too small for action games. Puzzle games should be fine. Snake and a picture shuffle game are the only ones that were included on my phone.
• Ringtones and sound are good, it plays midi files so I’ll have to go look for some of my favourite c64 tunes online!
• GPRS is nice, but expensive, Vodafone will charge 2c per K after March.
• Screen and GUI are fine. The GUI took some getting used to, and it’s fiddly in places (try setting the alarm: Navigate down to Extras->Clock->Set Alarm) There are shortcuts so I’ll have to read up on that.

I want to find out how to code applications for the phone now. Must go googling.

Nokia 7650 downloads:

• Lots of free games
• Nokia 7650 Doom (includes screenshots)
• Google Search for Nokia Games
• J*va On The Brain has some applets that may work on the 7650, plus source.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – sci-fi book available for download!

A Survey of Common Design Patterns – glanced at it but I’ll read it tomorrow.. This article provides a summary of the “23 common design patterns”.
What’s a pattern? I never heard of these until a few weeks ago. They’re simply a description of how to solve common problems when programming. So, although I wasn’t taught patterns during my time at college, I used the techniques described to solve programming problems, and still do. Jeremy has had much the same experience I think, although he’s looked at the subject in more depth it seems.