xdeb.org

I just got back from Göteborg (in south west Sweden) where I have been teaching Drupal to the developers and designers of Xelera Communication.

Xelera build and designes webb-sites, e-commerce solution and does Internet marketing. They have become interested in Drupal and wanted me to kick-start them. I had sessions on Theme building, module development, multisite installs and site building with CCK+Views.

I’m really disappointed with some of Apples decisions lately.

Why is Apples iPhone locked to a single carrier? Why is there no real third party apps for it? And what’s up with ringtones, why should I need to pay one more time for a song just to play it when someone calls me?

Bye bye CD player. I enjoyed listening to my Thule CD player a lot and I’m sure the new owner will enjoy it also. My new setup however sounds even better and I have all my music at a touch of a button. Lets call it progress.

I have had a Apple AirPort Express for some time. The interesting function is that it can stream music from iTunes to the stereo, something Apple calls AirTunes.

Connecting it to my amplifier via the analog line out works well but the sound is not Hi-Fi quality. To get that you need to use the optical digital out to a DAC.

After having enough RAM, extending your screen real estate is probably the best productivity enhancement you can do. Apple has supported dual displays on Macs since the late 1980s and nowadays even Windows can do it.

I have used dual displays with some of my older setups but that was some time back. The prices on flat panel displays are very low now so there are really no reason not to get one.

I recently bought a 19” HP LP1965 display that cost me around €250. I picked this modell because it got decent reviews and had a number of features I was looking for.

The first Internet application I ever used was Fetch, a FTP-client for the Mac. This was in the early 1990s, before the web. The IT-staff at the University showed me how to use it for downloading shareware and freeware from Info-Mac and other places.

The first version of Fetch (Wikipedia link) was released 1989. When we are talking about Internet applications that is maybe not ancient but certainly very old.

In 2003 I bought my first digital camera, the then just released Pentax Optio S. It was one of the first fully featured “ultra compact” digital cameras. I can have it my pocket and forget about it until I need to take a picture. I decided to never buy a camera that was any bigger than this.

I have on and off been interested in photography. In a cupboard I still have my trusted Nikon FM but it has been many years since I have used it. It’s heavy, bulky, not digital and I’m lazy.

The paperless office is not here yet but the Fujitsu ScanSnap S500M can be a good step in the right direction. This is the Mac version of the S500 modell, it’s only the colour and the software that are different.

I needed some way to get a lot of pappers in to my computer as PDFs. After researching on the web I desided to get a Fujutsi ScanSnap, that was what other Mac users was recommending. I ordered the latest modell, the S500M, from TECHNIKdirekt.de.

Update 2007-03-19: The Swedish Apple Store sell this scanner even cheaper than TECHNIKdirekt and they include ReadIris Pro 11. Reminder to self, always check the Apple Store first!

The PNG format (Portable Network Graphics) was created to be a replacement for the GIF format. It is patent free open standard with a number of advantages over GIF.

One of the few problems with PNG images is that it’s difficult, not to say impossible, to match colors in CSS and GIF images with does in a PNG image. This is a major headache for web designers and according to information I have found on the web the reason is the PNG gamma correction function.

Read more about PNG and the gamma correction problem on The Sad Story of PNG Gamma “Correction”.

Now on to how to fix the gamma correction problem.

How to get Nokia 6131 work with iSync and connect via GPRS on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Also how to add SSL certificats to Nokia 6131 for POP/IMAP/SMTP over SSL and other neat stuff.

My aging Sony Ericsson T68i was due for a replacement but I was having trouble finding a good replacement.

The T68i has good hardware and was the first phone I tested where Bluetooth worked well. The user interface on the other hand is almost as bad and irritating as the Windows OS is.

After spending some time in Japan I started to like the flip open phones. Big screens that are automatically protected in the pocket and decent size keys. Not to talk about the great featured the Japanese phones have.

The Nokia 6131 was one of the few phones that I found interesting. It uses the relative new Symbian Series 40 3rd Edition OS and have a lot of nice modern features. Nokia also seems to finally deliver phones where Bluetooth works well. The user interface is ok, even nice, Nokia has always been better on that then Ericsson.

From what I could find on the web the Nokia 6131 should be able to work with Mac OS X and it does. Here how I made it work.

For some time I have wanted a wireless router that is easy to travel with, i.e small and yet has all the features I need. When I really needed wireless while traveling I packed a older D-Link access point but I was looking for something I could always have with me.

I started using a D-Link DWL-G730AP but recently changed to a Apple AirPort Express.