No more AIM->Jabber gateway for me! Last month, Verizon started allowing the official AIM client for Blackberrys to work on their network. You can get it by going here.

I suspect the reason that they were blocking AIM for so long is that it allows you to send SMS messages for free to any phone number in the US. I think it’s crazy that they have been blocking AIM when blackberry users on their network pay a minimum of about $100/month after taxes for “unlimited” data.

Anyway, I’m glad to no longer have to keep a AIM->Jabber gateway up and running. You might as well get your money’s worth and make up for lost time by adding SMS contacts to your aim buddy list. If you want to send an SMS to 415-123-4567 add a buddy with screenname “+14151234567″ and send an IM. This should work for all US mobile numbers.

Filed under: gadgets | 0 Comments
Tagged: blackberry , sms

We take more than 5 million pictures every month using a pool of 250+ Canon 5D and Canon 1Ds mkII cameras. Recently, Jon was contemplating buying a 5D and wanted to know how long the shutter life was. Hey, we can answer that using real-world numbers!

The Canon 5D is rated for 50K+ shots, but they last much longer, and fail after an average of 150K shots.

The Canon 1Ds mkII is rated for 200K+ shots, but actually lasts for 750K shots before shutter failure!

Someone else might find these numbers useful.

Filed under: archive, gadgets | 1 Comment
Tagged: canon , Canon1Ds , Canon5D , ShutterLife

Perhaps you are the owner of a Treo phone (or really just any Bluetooth phone) and wish to use it as a Bluetooth “modem” with your Linux box with EVDO or EDGE or HSDPA or whatever.

Maybe you have spent hours trying to get the devices to connect, only to see a weird “Bluetooth connection starting…” message on your Treo, but nothing else happens. (Caused by connecting to the OBEX RFCOMM channel, not the DUN RFCOMM channel.)

Or maybe you have spent hours trying to figure out why your Treo complains “ERROR” “ERROR” “ERROR” to your Linux box when you send it an AT command. (Caused by connecting to the headset audio RFCOMM channel, not the DUN RFCOMM channel.)

Or maybe you haven’t yet wasted any moments of your rapidly dwindling life on this crap at all and Just Want Things To Work and Don’t Understand Why They Don’t.

If any of this sounds familar, maybe this script, start-bt-modem, may help.

You will need to save it to your local disk, and edit it to replace the “aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff” with your phone’s Bluetooth address. To find this, go to your Treo’s Bluetooth application, and change the “Visible” dropdown to “Temporary.” Then on your Linux box, run “hcitool -i hci0 scan” - your phone’s Bluetooth address should appear.

You also need to already have paired your phone with your computer before running the script. To do this, I suggest making your computer discoverable and doing the scan from your Treo, rather than the other way around. Probably the easiest way on your Linux box is to use the GUI tools for this. Look for a weird-looking B in a dark blue oval on your menu bar (aka panel). If it isn’t there, you can try running ‘bluetooth-applet’ from a terminal. (This is part of the bluez-gnome 0.8 package on my machine). Right-click on the panel Bluetooth icon, choose “Preferences”, select “Visible and connectable for other devices”, and click “Close.” Then you will need to go to the Bluetooth application on your Treo, click “Setup Devices”, click “Trusted Devices”, click “Add Device”, click on your computer’s name, and click “Okay”. You’ll go through the pairing process - your Treo will display a number - make sure you enter the same number on your Linux box when the dialog box pops up. Then you should be set.

Finally, you will need to run the script as root - for example, ’sudo sh ./start-bt-modem’. If all goes well, you should see some IP addresses appear after about 30 seconds.

I guess if you don’t use Verizon, you might also have to edit that “#777″ that appears at the bottom of the script.

Filed under: code code, gadgets | 0 Comments
Tagged: bluetooth , dun , linux , pppd , treo

We finally got a dishwasher! It took some time and work to get it installed, but fortunately we had a lot of help! A couple weeks ago Ken helped remove the old cabinet and Steve wired a new electric outlet. This weekend Paul helped do all the plumbing and install the new cabinet + dishwasher. But when we finally hooked everything up Sunday evening and tried to test it out, the dishwasher flashed a ‘technical fault’ error code. Blah!

Paul called Miele this morning at about 8:45. They did some tests over the phone and said they would have to send a technician out to look at it. After lunch, I got a call Miele saying that they could send someone by in and hour. At 2pm or so, a Miele technician named Glenn shows up, hooks up some debugging equipment, carefully pulls out the dishwasher, unclogs the circulation pump, puts it back together, and it works! Elapsed time from frustrated customer support call to happy customer: about 6 hours! Yay! I think I got lucky because someone had canceled their appointment so they fit me in right way, but still.. yay! So much better than dealing with AppleCare or Blue DoubleCross.

To top it off, Glenn explained a lot about how the Miele worked (I had no idea), and tweeked the software to increase the fill level and water temperature so we can run it on economy mode and still get super-clean dishes. This is like taking your computer to a Linux hacker who hooks you up with a custom distro to get more reliable network connections. Or like taking your car to a gearhead who reprograms the ECU to give you an extra 50HP. Our dishwasher now runs GlennOS. Awesome.

If you care, the clogged circulation pump (error code F14) was suspected to be caused by water drying in the the machine after testing at the factory in Germany. Apparently German water is very hard, and it hadn’t drained completely before shipping (it arrived at our house still full of water), so it left residue in the circ pump.

Here is Zara inspecting the dishwasher (the cabinet work is not done yet):

Here is Paul, who did a weekend’s worth of install work, and the inside of the dishwasher:

This dishwasher connects to the cold water supply, and heats the water depending on what the selected cycle requires. Connecting to the cold instead of hot water supply adds an extra 10-15 minutes to the roughly 2 hour normal cycle, but increases efficiency.

To add a second line to our cold water supply, we replaced the shut-off valve under the sink with a dual 1/2″ to 2 x 3/8″ shut-off valve made by BrassCraft:

If you have 1/2″ unthreaded copper pipe coming into your house, and you need to attach a 1/2″ threaded fitting, you need one of these 5/8″ compression to 1/2″ pipe thread unions. The 5/8″ fits over the unthreaded 1/2″ copper with a compression fitting, and then you can just screw the shut-off valve onto the other side of the union. The fine folk at Cole Hardware helped us find this elusive adapter, shown here covered in teflon tape.

We hope the dish robot likes its new home in our kitchen! Thanks to Ken, Steve, and Paul from helping get it installed, and thanks to Glenn for Miele for making it work!

Filed under: gadgets, support | 2 Comments
Tagged: dishwasher , how to install a dishwasher , howto , Miele , recommended , shag

This is pretty neat. ThirstyLight is a plant sensor that you stick in the dirt next to your plant and when your plant needs watering, it’ll start to blink!

I have a feeling I wouldn’t notice the blinky light on some of my plants though (because they’re tucked away in a corner)…but if they also made a small beeping noise when they’re thirsty, they would definitely get watered.

Still, it’s a great idea!

Filed under: gadgets | 2 Comments
Tagged: blinkylights , neat , plants , thirstylight

This might save someone some time and hassle. Recently, I needed to print on a friend’s Canon PIXMA iP6700D printer from my Fedora 7 laptop. Turns out that the default drivers used in this setup print blank sheets and useless micro images rather than anything useful.

Looking around for help resulted in some pointers to this Canon FTP site, but it never responded. Digging a little further turned up this useful page, mostly in Japanese, but if (like me) you don’t read Japanese, you can find the files you need by searching the page for the file sizes. The two files that you need for the iP6700D are:

cnijfilter-common-2.60-3.i386.rpm

which you can find by searching the page for “24,410 byte”, and

cnijfilter-ip6600d-2.60-4.i386.rpm

which you can find by searching the page for “2,054,347 byte“.

Download these two files, install them as root with ‘rpm -ivh cnijfilter-common-2.60-3.i386.rpm cnijfilter-ip6600d-2.60-4.i386.rpm’, and you should be able to find the new driver in the GUI printer config tool, system-config-printer.

Incidentally, it looks like the source RPMs are there too. Pretty cool!

Filed under: gadgets | 0 Comments
Tagged: canon , fedora , ip6700d , japanese , printer drivers

I would make my friends send me photos of themselves like this…

alas, I won’t be getting one anytime soon.

pics were by Brad Smith and I got them from his flickr set over here.

Filed under: gadgets | 0 Comments

I can’t tell you how excited I am by this little gizmo! I was really close to buying a megaphone last week so I could build this nutty contraption and attach it to the back of my bike, but I think this iPod speaker might do the trick a lot better.

On the ride down to LA earlier this month, one of the riders (i don’t know her name and have only heard people refer to her as the-megaphone-girl) would take out a megaphone attached to her ipod at the top of every big hill and blast out the theme song from Rocky (or something in that vein) to cheer us on. It made me so happy everytime I saw her!!! Ever since then, I’ve been looking for something to put on my bike so that I can play music out loud on long rides (since it’s unsafe to use headphones or earbuds while riding).

The main drawbacks of this particular speaker though are that it’s sort of pricy ($99) and it sits in my water bottle cage (where I generally put my water bottle). Still, I think I may get it…unless one of you guys knows of a better solution!

Filed under: cycling, gadgets | 0 Comments

I just got this battery operated phone charger for $20 and am pleased to say that (unlike my silly phone) it actually works as advertised. This solves the problem of not having access to any power outlets when I do my bike ride to LA in 3 weeks (since we’ll be camping for a week). The charger is pretty small and light, runs on 4 AA batteries and the connector tip can be exchanged with other types of tips so it can be used to charge different kinds of mobile devices (that way, i can still use it when I finally ditch the phone that I have for something that does work most of the time). I also considered this solar charger but at $99 it was more than I wanted to spend. Still, it looks kind of neat and I might try it if the battery powered one ends up not working.

Filed under: gadgets | 0 Comments

I just got this coffee gizmo called the Aerobie Aeropress. It’s made by the same company that makes those frisbees that always get stuck in trees.

It’s basically a french press with a filter, but unlike a french press, it takes only a few seconds to clean, it uses a paper filter so your coffee isn’t full of silt, and it’s made out of cheap plastic. They recommend using a ton of grounds and only brewing the coffee for ten seconds with not-so-hot water, which underextracts the beans and makes it insanely strong without being bitter. I’ve had two cups and now I think I can see through time!

Filed under: gadgets | 3 Comments
Tagged: coffee

I just ordered this toaster and can’t wait to get it. The plates that come with it aren’t quite as cool as The Holy Toast, but are still pretty cute I think. It comes in 3 different colors (red, white, blue, or black) and you can get it at Target or online at Amazon.

(via OReilly Radar)

UPDATE: Never mind the one i just mentioned above…this one’s even cuter!!!

…and there’s this one too (for those times you want to offer a yummy sandwich to the cute person who lives next door ;-)

Filed under: gadgets | 0 Comments
Tagged: neat

I’m embracing my inner corporate whore and digging my new BlackBerry. I don’t use BlackBerry push email though, and I don’t use POP or IMAP or gmail either. I use mutt, and I love it, but that means I need a ssh client so I can check my mail.

Fortunately for me, there is a great open source ssh client for the BlackBerry (and other J2ME devices) called MidpSSH. Although there are more polished commercial ssh clients available, MidpSSH works great for me, and you definitely want your SSH client to be OSS.

Shag asked what the terminal window size was. stty -a reports the default window size is 40 rows X 80 columns, but the font is really tiny. I prefer using the 5×9px LCD font, which gives a terminal size of 26 rows x 64 columns. It looks much sharper than the sidekick ssh client.

Check out this bit about subpel fonts on J2ME devices:

On MIDP 2 devices there are additional font options provided by Roar Lauritzsen. These fonts exploit the spatial separation of the RGB components within one pixel (similar to Microsoft’s ClearType). They double the horizontal resolution of the font by treating the G component as one pixel, and the R+B components combined as another. Basically they are more readable but still very small.

Filed under: gadgets | 0 Comments
Tagged: opensource , pocket pc

Here is how I chose a new cell phone. I ran all the cell phones through this flow chart, and added up the scores. The BlackBerry 8703e on Verizon came up on top, but only because the 8800 isn’t out for another two weeks. I have a pretty specific set of requirements, so this probably won’t be useful to you, but here it is anyway:

Here are a few things I forgot to add to the chart (the BlackBerry 8703e has none of these):

• Trackball/D-pad
• Camera
• Touchscreen
• Transflective display
  

Filed under: doodles, gadgets | 0 Comments
Tagged: blackberry , flowchart , pocket pc

I just got a Blackberry 8703e. I’ll post more about why I got it later, but here are some first impressions:

• Verizon sucks:
  
  • When you try to download the RIM aim client from http://blackberry.com/aim, you get this warning: Sorry, your wireless service provider does not allow access to AOL Instant Messager for BlackBerry for your device.
  • blackberry maps client works, but Verizon has disabled the internal GPS. Update: Google Maps client is better.
    
• The Google Talk client works. Using these instructions (but a different AIM Jabber Transport), I got the GTalk client to talk to AIM, and it seems to be working great.
• The MidpSSH client worked out of the box.
• The thumb scroll wheel is superlame. I wish this thing had a trackball like the Pearl. The 8800 comes out in a couple weeks and it has a trackball and EVDO RevA.
• The keys are hard and plasticky. I wish they were soft and rubbery like the old sidekick2 keys.
• The web browser is sooo much faster than the sidekick. Two orders of magnitude faster.
• The 8703e has no camera.

Filed under: gadgets | 9 Comments

Peliom’s last post on a tea-making-robot reminded me that I need to write about this electric-hot-water-making-thingy that I got a couple months ago and absolutely LOVE. You’ll find one in almost every household in Japan, China, and most other asian countries. I used to wonder why …i mean, how hard is it to make hot water, right? Compared to a cuisineart or an espresso machine, it’s not particularly glamorous or impressive sounding. But there is something incredibly gratifying about pushing a button and getting hot water instantly. especially since I drink a lot of tea (about 6-8 cups a day!) I also use it to make hot chocolate, oatmeal, basically anything that needs hot water.

Anyways, these things are still hard to find in U.S. stores. I went to a place called Kamei Restaurant Supply on Clement street to find one - it’s $100 there, so if you live in SF, you can get one for less than you’d pay on Amazon…there are also less expensive models but this one is supposedly best and I’ve been really happy with it so far.

Filed under: gadgets, lifehacking | 4 Comments

A few months ago I randomly saw an informercial for Hercules Hooks on a TV somewhere, probably at a bar. It’s a bit like a Molly Bolt that doesn’t require any tools. I love it when this “as-seen-on-tv” schlock is actually useful. So I got a few to see what the deal is. I just noticed you can buy them on amazon instead of the the quaint but lame AsSeenOnTV website.

So the deal is they do work, and I think they work well. It’s got the strength of a Wall Hanger but the wall damage is just slightly more than a thumb tack. The problem is they *only* work on straight-up drywall with at least 3 inches of open space behind it. If you are hanging something and there is a stud behind the drywall, or a solid cement backing is the case for about 50% of my wallspace, you would get better results with scotch tape.

Link to Hercules Hooks on Amazon.com

Filed under: gadgets | 0 Comments
Tagged: crafty

How come I am almost thirty and I have not yet had the occasion to use one of these?

Filed under: gadgets | 3 Comments
Tagged: ninja

I accidentally put myself in a bizarre cell phone situation. I’ve been trying to get a new phone that I like, but between the iPhone announcement and trying to figure out if I should sign up with Cingular, I’ve been thrown off course. My existing phone is about as old school as it gets (except for Mike, who still buys OG Motorola StarTacs from eBay): The LG VX1. I actually like this phone a lot, call quality is great and I know the inside an out. But I want a calendar and stuff. So I went to Amazon and got the BlackBerry Pearl with T-Mobile.

It’s a great phone, I had a good time with it. But then the iPhone announcement came out and I thought maybe getting on the Cingular train early would be a good idea. So I returned the T-Mobile Pearl and got a Cingular Pearl. Still with me? So that was going pretty well until I read the fine print: it was going to cost me $250 to port my existing cell phone number (which I have had for 5 years) over to Cingular. What’s up with that? So then I was thinking maybe I’ll stick with Verizon until the iPhone comes out …. I ordered the LG EnV, it looks like a good and somewhat smart phone.

And it is, in terms of form factor, and the keyboard is pretty cool. But the the software is crap, I could tell that within about 8 seconds. And who wants a phone that is going to annoy them every time the click a button? The LG EnV is terrible, don’t even bother.

On Sunday I decided I would just suck it up and get an SK3 to hold me over until iPhone time. I thought it would be too big but it’s only a bit bigger than the LG EnV. And it has SSH. And it has that little notepad app that sync’s over the web. And it’s got “real web browsing” just like in TWIL’s video. I don’t understand why anyone would even try to surf the ‘net on a freakin’ cell phone but whatever.

So at this point I am carrying three devices, the VX1, the EnV, and the Cingular Pearl, all of which have to be returned except for my good old VX1, and this is the best part … None Of Them Work Right Now! In my infinite wisdom I gave T-Mobile my cell number for number portability, and they did it already, before I even have my SK3!!!! It’s a good thing I have very low expectations about T-Mobile customer experience. My SK3 is in a UPS facility in Oakland right now so hopefully I will get it soon.

I like the fact that you can play these carriers off of each other and see if you really like the tech before you commit to it. In all I’ve played with about $800 worth of gear and 3 separate 2 year cell phone contracts that each would cost over $200 each to break, but they all have a 30 day return period so everything has been free. As my friend Tom says “Sometimes capitalism works” :-) Amazon is the best experience I have ever had with cell phone purchase, I highly recommend it. It is sooooo much better than dealing with retail at a cell phone store, and I think the Amazon website is also way better for web shopping than any of the other carriers’ websites. Sadly the SK3 is not available on Amazon, I had to suck it up and log in to the T-Mobile website. And I actually had to pay money for the Sidekick. What’s up with that ?!?!? :-) Cell phones are essentially free when you buy from Amazon, they give you a $250 instant rebate and a bunch of other kickbacks.

Link to T-Mobile BlackBerry Pearl
Link to Cingular BlackBerry Pearl
Link to Verizon Wireless LG EnV
Link to T-Mobile Sidekick 3

Filed under: all talk, gadgets | 6 Comments

I think this cake would also induce a few tears from peliom :-)

Filed under: food, gadgets | 0 Comments

from the top 10 USB drives of 2007

Filed under: gadgets | 2 Comments

wow, these are awesome.

Readymechs are free, flatpack toys for you to print and build. They are designed to fit on an 8.5″x11″ page and printed with any printer. You’ll need double-sided tape, thick matte paper, and 10-15 minutes for build time.

I want to make them all! although i’ve noticed they are missing a pineapple readymech. how could that be? maybe that’ll be my project this weekend :-)

Filed under: gadgets | 3 Comments
Tagged: crafty , neat , toys

So this just makes my geeky little heart sing. a couple days ago i discovered that i can stream internet radio stations from my cell phone to my car’s stereo! This heralds a pretty big change in my listening habits since my car was the only place left I listened to commercial radio. now I won’t have to listen to commercials anymore. yay! here’s what i’m using to get it working

• a mobile radio app (this one works on pocket pc phones but i’m sure there are similar apps for other kinds of phones. One nice thing about this one though is that I can set it to record programs at specific times (like Q’s radio show) and it’ll save the recording as an mp3 that i can listen to later…sorta like tivo for the radio)
• a 2.5mm / 3.5mm headset adapter
• a cassette/audio player stereo adapter if you don’t have an auxilary jack in your car. If you have an auxilary jack then you don’t need it.

Of course you’ll also need a data plan with your cell phone company (Sprint charges $15/mo for EVDO). Sound quality and reception are surprisingly good. It does tend to drop in certain places (especially along the 280 where my cell reception is spotty) but in general it works pretty well in the city. Aside from $20 for the radio app, there are no extra fees. Given that XM satellite radio costs about $13/ mo, this is a pretty sweet deal!

Filed under: gadgets | 3 Comments
Tagged: apps , pocket pc

Per today’s visit to Physical Therapy I am now the proud owner of a 6×36″ Foam Roller. You may recognize this object, the hated tool of the physical “therapist”, the Room 101 of stretching. A while back I used one to stretch my Iliotibial Band in the interest of less painful cycling. Stretching the IT Band kills … it’s best to do it at home because you are likely to start crying at the gym.

My physical therapist assured me that the four foam roller exercises she is prescribing for me are not painful like the IT Band stretch. She says I have really bad posture and that is leading to this painful Shoulder Impingement, possibly catalyzed by hitting the riverbed when goofing of and diving in the Kings River. I do have horrible posture, no suprise there. Putting my back and shoulders into a supposedly “normal” anatomical position requires a lot of effort and is not a fun resting state. I have a super-stiff neck and upper back too, owing to my hunchback computer lifestyle. Hopefully these exercises will help.

Just like every physical therapist and ergonomics specialist I have ever met, she expressed shock upon learning that I spend 14-16 hours a day in front of a computer.

“Wow, that’s really a lot”

I don’t get it … that level of computer time is an industry standard all across silicon valley. Why isn’t the PT industry in tune with that? I can see now why so many co-workers are triathletes. It’s not just about exercise … training at that level makes you pay attention to your body and keeps you in touch with sports medicine physicians that can be a valuable resource for this type of thing.

Then again there are the chain-smoking, hard-drinking mexican web developers that I work with. I think I’m going to just get a cortisone shot and eat some candy.

Link to AMF Should Impingement page

Filed under: cycling, gadgets, old timers | 3 Comments

OK, so this is not an Apple product but to me it’s a huge breakthrough. I want a mac table bad! I want Mac OS X in my pocket. Computers are too big. For many of my tasks (email, web surfing) an iPod class of device would easily be able to run a stripped down version of Mac OS X. I’m curious to see how much this news resonates in the blogosphere, it would be a good indicator of demand for mac tablet (err… market demand from bloggers anyway).

So this guy was able to install and boot Mac OS X on type of windows tablet PC (x86 I guess). Very tempting. If there is no mac table from Apple at MacWorld (and I don’t think there will be), I will probably sell one of my macbook’s and try to get this working.

Link to the Mac OS X on a tablet story

Filed under: all talk, gadgets, osx | 2 Comments

but apparently they’re ear phones. One of the guys in the office just got these and they’re made from custom molds of his ears by a company called Ultimate Ears. He swears by them and says they’re awesome. Awesomeness, however, does not cheap - at $850 a pair, they’re not something you can easily replace at Best Buy should your puppy accidentally decide they might be tasty.

since they’re molded to his ears, I can’t try them out, so I can’t attest to their awesomeness…but i think they look kind of neat.

Filed under: gadgets | 1 Comment