Nokia E71 , shiny …

At last my contract has come up for renewal and I’ve acquired a nice
shiny Nokia E71. Immediate impressions, feels solid and well built.
Keys for my fingers are just manageable any smaller and it would be no
good. The phone seems to work well, I’ve taken a few shots with the
camera. Pictures are OK, truthfully I don’t think it’s  that good but great to have in such a
small package. Fired up my normal Gmail app , had a few issues with
changing case? An informed colleague recommend Nokia Messaging to me as a
probable superior messaging suite that uses your phones contacts. It
can be downloaded with this link:
http://email.nokia.com/account/home.action

But take care it doesn’t cost you additonal money on your contract.
I’ll probably stick with the Gmail application for today. Bought myself
a screen protector on ebay. Dropped the first one straight on to the
carpet but the second whent on with a hitch!

Also installed the free scientific calculator, courtesy of Nokia
http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/enhanced-calculator-s60
This never worked for me on the E61i but seems to be fine on the E71

A bit annoying that the dedicated contacts key has shifted sides (from
my earlier E61i) but no doubt I’ll quickly get used to it. Nice having
an FM radio, really missed that when I moved to the smart phones from
my Walkman phones. Shame it needs an adaptor though if you wish to use
it with existing headphones. Still the supplied Nokia set sounded just
fine to me.

Overall an impressive package. I’m afraid I’ll have to hang on to my
digital cameras for a bit longer though! Highly recommended never the
less.

Nokia E71

 

Outsourcing Destinations – Good article

Take a look at:

http://www.evertiq.com/news/14305

Part 1 of a 2 part article on outsourcing and risks associated with different parts of the world. This is good site if you’re interesting in manufacturing or related issues today.

 

Windows 7 RC – Surprisingly Agile

Just installed Windows 7 RC available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Surprisingly it seems quite ‘nippy’ on a relatively modest PC. I’ve installed it on my ‘benchtop’ machine using a spare 20G hard drive in order to keep separate from my working XP install. It’s only a 2GHz Athlon with a 1G of RAM. Doesn’t seem particularly sluggish by any means. Only have the base installation running without any other applications apart from Firefox and an antivirus program. Still all very impressive and will have to spend a bit more time using it. Be aware that the RC will expire in March of next year.

 

35mm Film Scanner Frenzy

I’ve recently assisted a colleague by resurrecting a relatively ancient film scanner. Specifically an Epson Filmscan 200 film scanner. The last published drivers were for Windows 95/98 and my colleague only had an old ISA SCSI card. I obtain an Adaptec 21960N PCI card and a 50HD way to Centronics cable off Ebay for the grand sum of £20. We then added the well regarded program Vuescan http://www.hamrick.com/ .  It’s running under XP , (XP provided a default driver) and results to my eyes appear surprisingly good in spite of the modest 1200dpi native scanning capability.  (Although in truth my colleague has a problem, the first scanned negative is always at the wrong resolution?)

Enthused by this process I’ve obtained a Canon Lide500F scanner. Not as elegant as the Epson but a little more up tod date. Simply plug in  to USB and run the supplied toolbox software. I’m using PaintShop Pro 4.15SE to save acquire and save the images.   Results are again surprisingly good. Well good enough me to revisit some of my negatives that hold sentimental value. It’s much slower than the epson as each frame has to be scanned individually. (The Espon can automatically scan 6 slides or negatives by itself). Sample image from my Canon below. Happy Scanning !

 

Kingston University reveals it’s Electric Bike for the TTXGP

I was privileged to attend the presentation of the University’s entry into the TTXGP.  This is a 100 mph electric bike. Perhaps not in itself unique but this has been carried out by a number of students during their final year project with limited resources. For more details see the following links:

http://www.ttxgp.com/

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2009/04/24/45967/kingston-university-builds-102mph-electric-bike.htm

I’ve added a few of my own images below:

DC Motor

The Bike

Battery Pack

The Team

 

Fujifilm A805 – Close up and Exposed!

A friends misfortune turns into my good fortune.  Allow me to explain. I’ve marvelled at the ingenuity of modern digital cameras, and as an engineer have been curious to see the insides of a modern camera. Well my friend recently had some bad luck and broke one of his compact cameras -  my chance to take a peek inside. Interesting to see how modular the design is in it’s construction.  At a level much simpler than I might have imagined. Still I’m no doubt looking at a fairly mature design, the result of many camera design iterations. A single double sided printed circuit board with fine pitch surface mount components. Note the small motors that control the lens assembly. Please see the attached images (Taken with my Canon G9) :

 

Psion on the Gadget Show 30/3/09

Wall of fame up against the Blackberry.  Sadly Psion didn’t win! But then in usual Gadget show fashion it’s  competitions are purely for fun.  Still great TV, even showed my old boss Colly Myers.

Watch the video here:

http://fwd.five.tv/videos/wall-of-fame-blackberry-vs-psion

 

Patents and Inventions – Talk to the British Library

I’m currently working on  an invention in the mains trailing extension space. I’ve had some useful advice including a free patent search carried out by the IP centre at the British Library. (Be aware that the re-searcher’s time is free but access to the Derwent database is chargeable. There are also constraints on qualification for free searching , so best to check first with the IP centre.)  http://www.bl.uk/bipc/ for more details.

 

A new MIMO router , with built in statistics – Buffalo WHR-HP-G54

I’ve just bought myself another router , as I’ve had some problems with my Zyxel ‘locking up’ after heavy wireless traffic.  This unit apppears to have better wifi performance than the P-336M.  Signal strength is up from about 50% to 70%+ on my Pure –  Evoke Flow which is furthest from the router.

Bought on ebay as new old stock I suppose, but interesting has come with an alternative operating system by a company called dd-wrt i.e. the original Buffalo image has been replashed.  See http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php It’s extremely comprehensive and includes lots of statistics including total WAN traffic. Very useful when Virgin have got very aggressive ‘bandwidth throttling’ in place.  See http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Other potentially useful tabs include QOS.

 

Spotify – Listen to music on the Web

Sign up at https://www.spotify.com/ Fascinating and free if you’re happy with the commercial breaks. Perhaps there’s a limit too for the free service. Still brilliant for checking out material before buying if nothing else. There’s a radio mode too Just brilliant …