Podcasting

Finally I decided to find out about podcasting, browsed a little and found a couple of interesting podcasts. I decided to be a "listener" for the moment, but who knows...

Now I would have to finally get an iPod?, hmmm, probably not. I only have a 15" minute walk to work, so I do not really need an mp3 player, but they are so cool!!!.

I'm considering a new PDA with mp3 capabilities, I can probably justify the money on it easily :-)

But now Apple is talking about launching a new iPod with video capabilities around september and this is so much cool!!!!

ok, I will try to think with a "cool" mind and decide wich is better for me; and iPod, a flash player or a new PDA.

Detective work @ work

Sometime ago, many people left jobs here at the company I work for; this was a "voluntary retirement" and since many were IT guys, many knowledge left the company with them too. Suddenly all the work from a co-worker and good friend of mine who left the company became my responsibility.

He was (is!!) a very intelligent guy, we called him "bobby" (he´s called Hector), but his programs and scripts are

Siemens A53 GSM mobile phone

Well, finally I got a new cell phone. My previous one was an old trusty Motorola Startac 7867w. A really good phone I must say.

But it was time to move on an enter the GSM era (???). I must say that I'm no mobile phone fan and I do only like to be in touch when I need, nothing more. No digital camera (I´m happy with my Sony DSC-P93), no mp3, no fancy colors, just a phone for ocassional use (I want a phone, not a swiss army knife).

Looking for a cheap phone I took a deal from CTI (local mobile phone operator) for a simple Siemens A53 phone. It seemed as a nice phone *before* my purchase.

I really did not make any research at all, I just bought the cheap phone because it looks nice, assuming that every modern phone will be a decent one, right?, wrong!!

First it turned out that the A53 is a stripped down A56. It does not have the vibration feature (the motor was removed), you cannot upload ringtones as easily as with other phones, the keyboard is hard to read, the backlight is light years behind my old Startac, the volume level cannot be changed for SMS reception, the manual is really bad and more.

So, in my opinion this phone is not a wise choice. I cannot understand why Siemens made such mistakes with it, but I will surely will not recommend the A53 to anyone.

Apple going Intel? - UPDATE: YES.

Well, this is sounding on every corner of the Internet, there is a supposed Apple swicth from PowerPC to Intel processors. I don´t know if this is true or not, but comming from Apple, it can be. They successfully swiched from the Motorola 68000 family to PowerPC, (although they loosed many clients), so why not again?.

Perhaps it's only a commercial tactic to get more attention from IBM, but who knows?. Apparently Apple is having many problems with PowerPC processors in laptops.

UPDATE: Now it´s official, Steve Jobs announced it officialy. Read about it.

Cherokee Web Server

Today I meet Cherokee, a web server promising to be really fast. It supports on-the-fly configuration by reading files or strings, TLS/SSL (via GNUTLS or OpenSSL), virtual hosts, authentication, PHP and more.

Browsing the benchmarks it seems to be really fast.

I think I will try it on Sparky (Apache was too much for it). I will keep you informed about my progress.

Good Old Times

Today I was shocked. Browsing my file systems I have found an old Fred Fish disk collection. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you have probably never used an Amiga. If you have no idea of what an Amiga is, go and check here.

Anyway, the Fred Fish disk collection is probably one of the biggest public domain software collection for the Amiga computer. I remember ordering some disks directly from Fred and spending endless hours with the software on them.

Browsing them I found the Moria game on disk #194. It's a single player dungeon simulation. Moria was originally created by Robert Alan Koeneke for a VAX 780 (a supermini computer) and later ported to the Amiga.

I was not hooked to Moria or dungeon games, but I was really hooked to the Amiga. Now in 2005, I cannot believe we are now 18 years ahead of 1987 when I got my first Amiga. I remember many names from those days (in no particular order), Steve Tibbett, Rob Peck, R.J. Mical, Andy Finkel, Allen Hastings, Dave Haynie, Jay Miner, Eric Schwartz and many more. Congratulations to all of them for making the Amiga computer and supporting it.

Windows XP Starter Edition uncompatibility with P4 and Athlon?

It´s been sometime from my last post, mainly because I´m too busy, but also because I do not found really nothing interesting (to myself!) to coment on until today,

I really cannot beleive this. Microsoft has made Windows XP Starter Edition uncompatible with Intel's P4 and AMD's Athlon chips. It will only run on Intel's Celeron chips, AMD's Duron or Geode chips. On bootup it specifically checks the result of the CPUID instruction and fails to continue if a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor is detected

Why?, simply because Windows XP Starter Edition is for emerging markets.and targets beginner users, so it´s cheaper than other versions of Win XP. In other words, if you buy a P4 or Athlon you will have to pay more for your legal Windows XP, you cannot use a "low end" XP.

Let me make my own reading. Apparently you cannot be a beginner if you have money to buy a P4 or Athlon; money seems to "magically" transform you into an "advanced" user?.

Well, this gives me another reason to continue using Linux.