Chasing Daydreams

One gripe I have with the Nokia E51’s built-in email client is that it doesn’t display HTML. Nor does the GMail mobile client. I’ve heard about the downloadable Nokia Messaging app which is already built-in to newer Nokia handsets but I’ve put off downloading it until now.

To get it, you’ll need to go to the Nokia Messaging website and create an account. You can use your GMail account to jump start account creation. Once you have an account, you provide your phone number, select your phone model, and a download link to the Nokia Messaging app for your phone is sent via SMS. Click the link, download, and install.

There are a few more things that you might have to configure:

1. Go to Tools->Settings->General->E-mail key setting. Set E-mail key to Nokia Messaging email.
2. Go toTools->Settings->General->Personalisation->Standby mode->Active standby plug-ins. Uncheck the Default e-mail notif. and Act. standby mailbox plug-ins.
3. Set Tools->Settings->General->Personalisation->Standby mode->One-touch keys->Messaging key. Set both short press and Long press to “Default setting”

New email will now appear on the standby screen. A short press on the messaging key will get you to the Inbox and a long press take you to Compose screen. And you can view your email in HTML glory!

New hardware, especially new phones, may come and go but the cloud (they should just have called it the matrix) is definitely here to stay. The way to go then is having your data in the cloud. However, setting up and using my Nokia E51 to access the cloud wasn’t so straightforward, so I’m listing down some tips that might help.

Browser – the traditional way of accessing the Internet. The E51’s built-in browser is capable enough but if you want full access to Web 2.0, you’ll need Opera Mobile. Unfortunately, there’s no way to make it the default browser.

Mail – forget about the “e”, traditional mail is dead. I use GMail for my personal mail.You can use the E51’s built-in mail client which can be easily configured for GMail and is quite functional. But it’s sometimes it’s a bit kludgy so you might want to use the the GMail mobile client.

Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks – I try to use the Google address book as my definitive contact list and calendar. To sync the E51 with them, you need to install Nokia Mail for Exchange and set it up with Google Sync. No Tasks syncing unfortunately.

Instant Messaging - Fring allows you to connect to your contacts in Skype®, MSN Messenger®, Google Talk™, ICQ, Yahoo!™, AIM®, etc.

VOIP - Fring allows you to make SIP, Skype®, Google Talk™ calls or even its own fring VOIP service. Less charges by your telco service provider.

Social Networking – other than the browser, you can also directly access Facebook and Twitter via Fring.

Photos - todo

Music - todo

Videos - todo

Games - I have Assassin’s Creed on my E51! It’s just a 2D side-scroller though :P Looks like gaming still has some way to go before phones can go massively multiplayer online games. But you have quite a few choices of mini-games, including some online ones.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have problems and I’ll be glad to help.

Finally got an optical digital audio cable aka TOSLINK cable to connect the PS3 to my budget audio receiver, a Samsung HT-Z320 home theater. Supposedly this should give me 5.1 audio. I plugged in the cable and configured the PS3 sound settings->audio output settings. I selected optical digital as the connector and selected Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1, AAC, PCM 2.0 44.1KHz, and PCM 2.0 48KHz (selected by default, can’t be deselected) output formats.

But for some reason, some movies had no sound. On thing I noticed is that these movies all have AAC audio. I checked the specifications of the HT-Z320 and indeed it doesn’t mention AAC. Just DTS and Dolby Digital. Well, like I said, it’s a budget audio receiver. So I unselected AAC on the PS3 and tried playing the movies again. Voila! I now have audio!

What happened is that since AAC is not checked, the PS3 automatically converted the AAC data to PCM 2.0. And from PCM 2.0, the HT-Z320 can convert it to 5.1 audio via Pro Logic II. Not as good as true AAC 5.1 I’m sure. But certainly less expensive which is fine enough with me.

I had my PS3 and Linkstation on a wired gigabit subnet because I wanted the PS3 to be able to stream HD content from the Linkstation. But I also needed the PS3 to have Internet access and the Linkstation to be accessible by wireless devices.

First, I tried connecting my Huawei D100 router to the switch but it couldn’t find any HSDPA signal. Sun’s signal is still spotty and weak in some areas and finicky elsewhere.  So I guess the D100 has to be in the bedroom where the signal is strongest.

Next, I bought a Tenda W311R+ Wireless-N router and connected it to the gigabit switch. That let wireless devices get either Internet access or Linkstation access depending on whether they’re connected to the D100 or the Tenda. But how do I provide both Internet access and wireless accessibility to all devices? I definitely don’t want to run a wire from the living room to the bedroom.

The answer is Wireless Distribution System (WDS).WDS “is a system that enables the wireless interconnection of access points in an IEEE 802.11 network. It allows a wireless network to be expanded using multiple access points without the need for a wired backbone to link them, as is traditionally required.” Now that’s exactly what I need!

Before we proceed, there are a few key WDS concepts that needs to be understood:

• Access Point – accepts connections from wireless clients, bridges, and repeaters; This is the normal mode of wireless routers and access points (duh!)
• Bridge – connects to an access point or another bridge but does not accept connections from wireless clients.
• Repeater – acts as an access point and a repeater but with a performance penalty.

The D100 can act as either access point or bridge while the Tenda can act as access point, bridge, or repeater.

Since the Tenda is in a central location, I decided it will be the access point.  The house area is small so there’s no need for multiple access points. So I set the D100 to act a a bridge and added the MAC address of the Tenda into it’s peer list. I also want clients to use the D100 as the gateway so I enabled its DHCP server (and disabled that of the Tenda).

It didn’t work. I fiddled around with the settings before I finally  disabled security and set network to 802.11b/g only on both routers. They connected! But, unfortunately, their link is not secure! Not good.

Fortunately, the Tenda has separate security settings for the access point and WDS. I enabled security for the access point. Now, although the WDS connection is not secure, wireless clients connecting to the Tenda still have to authenticate and is secure. Final problem more or less solved and I now have Internet access and wireless accessibility to all network devices.

I previously encountered this error when I was working only within my own development box (laptop actually) and I basically worked around the error. But now, I need my Flex Web Service client separate from my Web Service. when you are in this situation, you need to have a crossdomain.xml file in your host’s root directory:

<cross-domain-policy>
<site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies=”master-only”/>
<allow-access-from domain=”yourdomain”/>
<allow-http-request-headers-from domain=”yourdomain” headers=”*”/>
</cross-domain-policy>

And if the host is a secure/HTTPS server, you just need to add the secure attribute:

<cross-domain-policy>
<site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies=”master-only”/>
<allow-access-from domain=”yourdomain” secure=”false”/>
<allow-http-request-headers-from domain=”yourdomain” headers=”*” secure=”false”/>
</cross-domain-policy>

Building Flex using ant build files is generally straightforward. Unfortunately, this is not so with using custom HTML wrappers. You cannot use the html-wrapper task since this only uses the standard templates in Flex’s html-template folder. If you want to use your own index.template.html in your own html-template folder, you will need to use a workaround:

<macrodef name=”generateHtmlWrapper” description=”Generates HTML Wrapper using custom template”>
<attribute name=”file”/>
<attribute name=”title”/>
<attribute name=”application”/>
<attribute name=”swf”/>
<attribute name=”width”/>
<attribute name=”height”/>
<attribute name=”bgcolor”/>
<attribute name=”version-major”/>
<attribute name=”version-minor”/>
<attribute name=”version-revision”/><attribute name=”template”/> <attribute name=”output”/>

<sequential>
<copy todir=”@{output}/history”>
<fileset dir=”html-template/history”/>
</copy>             
<copy file=”html-template/AC_OETags.js” todir=”@{output}”/>
<copy file=”html-template/playerProductInstall.swf” todir=”@{output}” />
<copy file=”html-template/index.template.html” tofile=”@{output}/@{file}” />

<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${title}” value=”@{title}”/>
<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${swf}” value=”@{swf}”/>
<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${width}” value=”@{width}”/>
<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${height}” value=”@{height}”/>
<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${bgcolor}” value=”@{bgcolor}”/>
<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${application}” value=”@{application}”/>
<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${version_major}” value=”@{version-major}”/>
<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${version_minor}” value=”@{version-minor}”/>
<replace file=”@{output}/@{file}” token=”$${version_revision}” value=”@{version-revision}”/>
</sequential>
</macrodef>

Thanks to Renaun Erickson for the solution!

When you’re working with locales in Flex, you would put in the following code in you ant build file:

<mxmlc>
<locale>it_IT</locale>
<source-path path-element=”locale/it_IT”/>
<include-resource-bundles>formlabels</include-resource-bundles> <source-path path-element=”${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks”/> <output>bin/formlabels_it_IT.swf</output>
</mxmlc>

Then when you get a puzzling error:

[mxmlc] C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks\3.2.0\frameworks\flex-config.xml(75): Error: unable to open ‘locale/it_IT’

But don’t you have that exact directory? Well, apparently Flex is actually looking for the it_IT folder in its locale folder. The solutions is to just create an empty it_IT folder:

<macrodef name=”compileLocale” description=”Compiles the Resource package for the given locale”>
<attribute name=”locale” default=”en_US”/>
<attribute name=”outputdir” default=”bin-debug”/>
<sequential>
<!– Create the Flex Home directory for the language in question. This is necessary to compensate for a bug in pre-3.2 releases of mxmlc. –>
<mkdir dir=”${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks/locale/@{locale}”/>

<!– Invoke MXMLC –> <mxmlc> <locale>@{locale}</locale> <source-path path-element=”locale/{locale}”/> <include-resource-bundles>formlabels</include-resource-bundles> <source-path path-element=”${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks”/> <output>@{outputdir}/formlabels_@{locale}.swf</output>
</mxmlc>
</sequential>
</macrodef>

Thanks to Adobe Cookbooks for the solution!

I finally got my Linkstation back from the shop. Only, it’s now a Linkstation Live. Here’s how it happened: A few months ago my CDR-King HDD enclosure died when it suffered a workplace accident. To replace it, I bought a Buffalo Linkstation Pro. But after a only few months, it conked out (Lesson Learned: Do not store important data in these unreliable drives!).

Fortunately,  it was still under warranty so I asked James to return it to the shop for repairs. After a few weeks, the shop told us it can no longer be repaired and that they’re sourcing a replacement unit. After a few more weeks, they still couldn’t find a replacement unit. After repeated phone calls by James, they eventually decided to replace with the newer Linkstation Live.

Although I lost data and had to endure a long wait for the replacement, I had the consolation of having more features. Aside from being a 1TB gigabit-ethernet network-attached storage device, the Linkstation Live has the additional capability of being an FTP server, web-accessible storage, a media server (DLNA and iTunes), a print server, a Bit Torrent client, and a Time Machine storage. There is only one USB port though. So you have to choose whether it’s for a printer, storage expansion, or UPS monitoring.

Setup and configuration was pretty straightforward. Plug it in to power and the network, power it up, browse to the web-based administration console, and configure to your heart’s contents. You can also use the included NasNavigator that allows you to search for Linkstations, view shares, and access the web management interface. But it’s not really necessary, especially if you’re a techie.

Performance over wireless is very slow especially for copying multiple files. Going 10Mbps or even 100Mbps ethernet is still slow. Clearly, you need to use gigabit ethernet for this drive and its intended use of storing and playing media files. It was only when I got a gigabit switch that HD movies played reasonably well on the PS3. Other than that quibble, it’s pretty good. Especially since I got it for the price of the older Linkstation Pro.

Assassin’s Creed II is the sequel to the love-it-or-hate-it Assassin’s Creed. I myself haven’t played the first game but from what I see one group loved it because of the huge, detailed, and history-based game world and storyline. While the other group hated it because of the dreary repetitive missions and bland cutscenes.

Assassin’s Creed II certainly doesn’t have dreary repetitive missions. Sure there are still endless people to steal from, chests to loot, thieves to kill, but those are just the fillers and are by no means necessary. The main storyline’s missions are compelling, and the side-missions pretty creative. The mission cutscenes were rendered using the game engine and results in a seamless experience between watching and playing. And are  comparable and as entertaining as the better animated movies out there.

The game pits you once more against the Templar enemies, now no longer a fanatical crusader army but a shadowy cabal of politicans, bankers, and priests. How much more evil can you get than those? This time, the setting is in the complex web of political intrigue in renaissance Italy, specifically in the streets, sewers, and canals of Florence, Venice, and even the hallowed halls of the Vatican. All these locations are rendered in intricate detail, made even more awesome since you can climb up the highest points and see the cities in all their grandeur below you.

Gameplay is based on stealth, you’re an assassin after all. This type of gameplay should be familiar to players of the first game or the Metal Gear Solid series. You have quite a lot of specials skills for quietly dispatching enemies: death from above, death from below, death from behind, even from the front if you play it cool. And with your new double wrist blades, you can even dispatch two at a time!

However, a full frontal assault with the pretty big arsenal of weapons and armor available to you works just as well and is quite often the only way. Incidentally, all these weapons and armor change your appearance. And you can even dye your clothes at the shop and wear different capes that you get as rewards. Your appearance carries through into the cutscenes again enforcing the seamless experience.

The game is good for around 20 hours of play which actually gets more enjoyable just as you near the end. So it’s too bad the single-player campaign ends. Worse, there’s no online multiplayer mode so long-term play is nil. Still, it’s quite a good buy even for just the interactive movie entertainment.

Rating: 4/5

I was a gamer not too long ago. I played a whole gamut of games from classic arcade games like Pac-man, Space Invaders to classic PC games like King’s Quest, Karateka, Prince of Persia, to the modern FPS, RPG, and RTS like Doom I/II, Duke Nukem, Quake I/II/III, Unreal, Command and Conquer I/II, Red Alert I/II, Warcraft I/II/III (and DOTA), Diablo I/II, Starcraft, I even played an MMORPG: Ragnarok (yesh!). But I guess work and studies plus an underpowered laptop put all that to rest.

With the series of holidays coming up, I wanted to have something to while away the time during the occasional respites from attending to Jeanne (and to a certain extent Michelle). Aside from watching movies, what’s better than being part of those movies, in an interactive way i.e. games, right?

To be able to play games, one option was assembling a gaming rig. Something that I’m not unfamiliar with. You buy a processor, motherboard, memory, hard disk, video card, monitor, etc. that hopefully works together in a reasonably stable way and then assemble all these into an ultimate gaming machine. Fun in its own way but also time and energy intensive. Been there, done that, ho-hum. Strike that out.

Since Michelle recently convinced me to get an oversized TV, another option is a gaming console. Since I’ve never tried consoles before, it was pretty much decided. There were three console choices: the PlayStation 3 Slim, the Microsoft XBox 360 Elite, and the Nintendo Wii. The XBox is Microsoft so it’s immediately out. Both the Nintendo Wii and PS3 Slim seem to be good and have a large choice of good games. I have a slight preference towards the PS3 because of its better technical specs but the deal clincher is the fact that the PS3 Slim is also a competent Blu-Ray player. So the PS3 Slim it was.

So, during lunch break, I went out and got myself a PS3 Slim from Trekker at ATC as well as a copy of Assassin’s Creed II from Data Blitz. The PS3 came packaged in a typical consumer electronics box: colorful but not much else. Trekker was even nice enough to put the box in a pink and white striped shopping bag like the ones you find in Divisoria :P Needless to say, all these came off soon as I got home.

It’s definitely slim. Much smaller than a typical desktop. Which is good since what I didn’t like about the previous PS3 was it’s size. It was already approaching that of a desktop or even a low-profile tower. But it’s not just space that it uses less of. It also uses less power (100W vs 200W) and less noise, a consequence of less heat and thus need for less fan.It also comes with a 120GB 2.5″ hard disk drive which is user-upgradeable.

In the rear it has an HDMI 1.3a, S/PDIF and standard PlayStation A/V connections  for output to your TV and sound system. There’s also a Gigabit Ethernet port and 802.11g Wi-Fi for connecting to your LAN/WLAN. On the front it has two USB 2.0 ports, a slot-loading Blu-Ray drive, an eject button, and a power button.

It came with only one DualShock 3 controller so if you’re planning on multiplayer fun in the living room, you’ll have to get at least one other controller (P2,250). As a media player,the PS3 can be controlled through your TV remote via HDMI-CEC but controls are pretty limited. If you plan to use the PS3 as a media player a lot, you might want to get the optional Blu-Ray disc remote (P1,200).

Setup and configuration was quick and easy. The manual and the OS was easy-to-use and intuitive. I did encounter a slight problem setting the display resolution. My TV is supposedly capable of 1080p but for some reason it keeps saying that the mode is not supported. It turned out that the culprit was the HDMI capable. I swapped in another one and they display finally came up in 1080p glory. Make sure to get a quality HDMI cable.

After slotting in the Assassin’s Creed II disk and waiting for the short installation routine, I was off playing… an awesome game I might add. Now that’s a good console experience!