In part 1 I explained what finally made me replace my iPhone with a Nokia Lumia device. This little write-up describes the basic functionality of communicating with contacts, including managing contacts, instant messaging and e-mail.
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Author: Robert Lohr
Software Developer, Technology Enthusiast, Sports Enthusiast, Metalhead
Switching From iOS to Windows Phone (Pt. 1)
As I have already mentioned in a previous post (8th paragraph), the Windows Phone platform had me hooked since day one. There was something to it that made it more interesting than iOS or Android. However, at that time the competition had been more mature – not only the OS but also the devices – and therefore I chose a Samsung (from now on called Copyshop) Galaxy S2 as my first smartphone. Android seemed the best fit back then (around 3 years ago), simply because of all the possibilities this platform offered on a technical level (I’m a programmer, that’s how I think). As it turned out, I basically used none of those things I found so interesting (like widgets) but rather tried to get a vanilla Android experience without the Copyshop bloatware – not to mention regular software updates.
WorkTracker, a Little Open Source Tool
Up until my last post I was working on a little tool that helps me track the time of all (or just one) the different tasks at work. Since the work intensity went down it opened up time (yay!) for some personal stuff. We’re required to record our everyday labor and sometimes it became quite complicated to calculate how much time was spent on a single task, especially when the day didn’t start at 08:00 o’clock but some randome time earlier and ended at some random time.
Introducing: WorkTrackerRead More »
The Bumpy Road to PC 5.1 Surround Sound
When building the PC for gaming on the TV one thing I had in mind was leveraging the already existing 5.1 sound system. After the move from the TV screen back to a desktop monitor I thought my headphones would suffice for the time spent playing games. At first that assumption turned out to be true, however, not only did I use the headphones for gaming but also when watching TV shows. In the evening, after work, I wanted to enjoy the audio but had no interest in disturbing my neighbors. After a while this led to the headphones becoming quite uncomfortable for all those hours wearing them, especially during the weekend gaming session when having them on the head for several hours.
So, what does a tech-nerd do about that? Buy himself a dedicated sound system for the PC, he does!
Mysterious Case of iPod Shuffle Always Shuffling
Just recently I experienced something odd. My good old iPod Shuffle seemed to ignore the “play in order” setting on the device and instead elected to do as the name implies and shuffle the songs.
What preceded that sudden change of behavior was a failed attempt to sync with iTunes that actually turned into restoring the firmware of the device. For whatever reason, iTunes detected a problem and its only solution was to wipe the iPod. So I did that and afterwards I had that shuffling play-in-order mode.
What actually happened is that with the restore of the firmware the default sorting of tracks on the device changed to be by their track-id. That means it sounded random to me but was in order for the Pod-thing. To solve my problem I opened the “What’s on my iPod” screen and clicked on the “Name” column to sort by artist name.
I “saved” this setting by syncing and then I was done.
Thoughts about SteamOS and Steam Machine
Valve just recently anounced its plans about a SteamOS based gaming machine and its own controller. As I’ve been through this experience of a gaming computer in the living room this year, I thought I might add my two cents on that.
The idea itself is compelling, sitting on the couch and gaming on the big screen is very appealing. Especially, considering that this is where the powerful sound system is connected to. This had been one of the driving forces behind my decision to try it out.
Review – Iced Earth (Dystopia)
Iced Earth – Dystopia
Released 2011
(Power / Thrash Metal)
Iced Earth is a band with a lot of history: Founded as Purgatory in 1984 and then renamed to Iced Earth, 11 albums (excluding the Live albums) and six different vocalists (counting Matt Barlow twice). Dystopia is the debut of the sixth named Stu Block after Matt Barlow unfortunately retired a second time. How does the Canadian fare following the footsteps of his predecessor and the legacy he left behind? The other question is: how’s the music now, after the two Something wicked-storyline concept albums Framing armageddon and The crucible of man, which, in their own right, have been good, but different and somehow like a musical, figuratively.
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Grails i18n in Regular Classes
The Grails web development framework is a very powerful tool for quickly creating web applications ranging from simple to enterprise ready. For that, it probably provides everything a developer ever needs. And if it’s not delivered by Grails itself there are many useful plugins and tons of existing Java libraries (including the JDK, of course, the underlying SpringSource Framework and the GDK).
However, there is one thing I have stumbled across several times now and a quick search on the internet shows that I’m not alone with this problem: how can I use the internationalization features from a regular Java or Groovy class?Read More »
Project HTPC: Experiences
At the beginning of this year I set out to build myself a HTPC to satisfy my newly emerged want for games and also serve as media playback machine, i.e. Blu Ray, DVD and everything I have on iTunes. Accompanying the PC (yes, it was a PC not a Mac) was a Samsung 40″ TV. Following are my – then anounced and long-in-the-waiting – experiences using this combo for gaming and watching movies – and even reading comics.
Review – Dimmu Borgir (In sorte diaboli)
Dimmu Borgir – In sorte diaboli
Released 2007
(Melodic Black Metal)
This band from Norway has established itself as one of the pillars of the blackened Metal scene over the course of the past 15 years, starting with their third release “Enthrone darkness triumphant”. However, they are not entirely without controversy because of their commercial success. To some this may seem untrve. But, and this is much to their credit, not all artists stick to one way of doing music but instead evolve their style. The first two albums “For all tid” and “Stormblast” had norwegian lyrics and as of “Enthrone darkness triumphant” it has been english lyrics ever since. They also considerably increased the overall speed of the music.
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Modern Experiences at a Concert
This is a response to a post on Daily Exhaust which itself is inspired by an image from the D11 Conference.
I’ve been to festivals for the past five years and every time I’ve taken lots of photos and even some videos. Especially last year, equipped with the iPhone, I was able to create 1080p video. I have to admit that shooting photos or recording videos takes away part of the experience but, for me at least, it has a big value in retrospect. From all those data I created videos for each of the last three visits to the festival and added some music to it. If available I also chose music of the band that is on the respective photo. Those videos are like a documentary on the whole festival, from getting there, setting up the tent, wandering around, seeing funny things and the actual concerts. I love watching them from time to time and think back at the great time I had. Just last year my sister recorded a “I died for you” from Iced Earth and I used the music from the Alive in Athens live album in the video and it matches so perfectly you could almost think it being the sound of the video (until you realize it’s not Matt Barlow on the stage). Still, a great memory!
I think, as also mentioned in the linked article, that you should be wary of how much you see through your camera and how much you experience by really watching. For me it’s about being there and living it, but also use all that photos and videos as vivid memory to build up a pleasent anticipation for the next gig.
And frankly, who would not want to remember that? (I picked the more catchy ones ;-] )
Java I/O Performance Iterating Directories
A while ago at work we were confronted with the task of creating a directory listing in a Grails application. We’ve tried a couple of approaches, one the Groovy way and one the Java way. Both delivered only a poor performance. A short search brought forth a Stackoverflow thread addressing the issue of slow Java i/o performance with only one real solution: switch from Java 6 to 7. That’s no option at work but out of personal interest I gave it a try at home.Read More »
From Primitive to Styled Object
I haven’t done much drawing the last week as I was more busy reading the second book of The First Law. However, I still managed to produce some images.
The main goal was to see how the main three primitives, sphere, cube and cylinder are the base of basically every object one can imagine.
First Attempts at Drawing
One of the reasons I bought an iPad was to read digital comics. Now, a year later I not only like reading them but appreciate the art of drawing so much that I started drawing myself. To be absolutely clear, other than art classes at school – which were of no interest to me and are long gone now – I have no experience whatsoever. So I started searching on the internet for resources on how to start. I found something on the iBook Store which in turn led me to a series of Youtube videos by Stan Lee and John Buscema on how to draw comics – The Marvel Way! These videos are so unbelievably old, they’re talking about pausing the tape in order to draw what was just discussed and shown! So I did as I was told and here are the results.
Project HTPC
Motivation
Not long ago I became quite frustrated with the gaming capabilities of my iMac. It’s not that I didn’t know about the expected performance of the hardware since I bought the cheapest version by design. At that time I did not use the PC I had for what it was built for, which finally led to me selling it. However, recently I felt the urge to play some games other than Diablo 3. For one the iMac just couldn’t deliver the performance to enjoy the visuals of modern games as they were designed to be. Secondly what really frustrated me and this is also the main reason why I never really played anything other than Diablo 3 on the iMac, was the poor cooling management of that machine. I have to crank up the coolers manually (using iStat Menus 3) in order to prevent overheating. Otherwise it’ll just get very hot and reboot eventually. As one can imagine this technique only works reliably on OS X.
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The Gameslinger 