Category Archives: SouthanUK General

Where most posts live. Contains general news that I cant otherwise categorise.

HTC Desire – First thoughts

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Well there we have it, my new phone is in fact the HTC Desire.

htc-desire

This nifty little device is one of the most powerful phones on the market and runs the up and coming Android OS [2.1]. It carries a speedy 1Ghz Snapdragon processor allowing for smooth and crisp navigation in the operating system, and for fast programs. Also, it has a 3.7′ OLED display, creating vibrant and colour rich pictures. Also featured on the device is a 5 Megapixel camera that takes rather good photos for a mobile phone.

Some specs for your viewing pleasure:

  • Screen    3.7-inch 480×800 AMOLED touchscreen
  • Camera    5 Megapixel autofocus with LED flash
  • Operating system    Android 2.1
  • Input    Dual-touch with HTC Sense interface
  • CPU    Qualcomm QSD 8250 (Snapdragon), 1 Ghz
  • Memory    512 MB flash, 576 MB RAM

A very powerful phone if I do say so myself. The Application Store (Market) included on all Android devices contains plenty of apps to entice and waste your time. The form factor of the device is very elegant and streamlined. Some may think its a bulky and heavy phone however, the Desire doesn’t feel heavy in the hand compared to my old Nokia N95 8GB but its weight makes it feel solid. Speaking of solid, the build quality of the phone is tip top, although the way the back panel clicks in and out of place makes it feel a bit like it could break.

 

Overall I’m very impressed with my phone and will continue to test it out.

New features – Facebook like and Disqus

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What’s all this you say? Well Southanuk today has some new features that should make your stay much more inviting and interactive.

 

Facebook’s new “Like” button

fblike

As announced by Facebook at the recent F8 conference in the USA, the new like button can be easily added to web pages and adds instant integration with the ever popular social networking site.

 

 

 

I found it very easy to integrate indeed as per so:

  • Add an instance of Facebook’s Javascript SDK to your website’s source code. Ensure you have an application ID from Facebook also or the button will not work.
  • Generate your like button here and click “Get Code” and select the XFBML version and copy the code.
  • Then simply add the button code where you want in your site’s source code and you’re done!
    • [Wordpress blogs] instead of putting in a URL, add the following into your loop:
<fb:like href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" layout="standard" show_faces="false" width="xxx" action="like" font="segoe ui" colorscheme="light" />

 

As you can see, very easy indeed.

 

Disqus Comment Plugin

disqus

Finally, the latest addition to the site is the very versatile, Disqus commenting system.

 

I felt that my old plugin I used was too bulky and was rather unessacary for just simple commenting. People don’t want to have an account for every site they visit, so allowing them to use their current Facebook, Twitter or OpenID accounts means less time registering. You don’t even need one of those accounts as posts can still be done via Guest with no account whatsoever.  Try it out next time you fancy having a little comment.

 

Stay tuned for more updates via following me on Twitter @fatjoe151

Dancing bees

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Good day fair people! This is mostly a rant post so feel free to skip it, moan at it, print it off and use it as kindling, you know.

<rant>

I spent the good part of an hour listening to a man rant on about how bees like to dance in the direction in which the food was found. Not putting the man’s work down or anything but please, I know about that and have done since I was a little kid. Also, an hour of rambling about the dances they do… or don’t do for that fact, takes it out of you. I feel I wasted the best part of an hour that I won’t get back anytime soon. With the foreboding exams coming up I could have used this time to prepare my notes, study or do anything apart from learning about bees. And the best part is, there’s another lecture next week too(!)

</rant>

That’s all in the way of ranting at this precise moment.

Other things shall be left to another post for another time. Good luck to all revising for exam and whatnot. Boo to irrelevant lectures.

Phone woes

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Due to the terrible build quality of the N95, the time to replace my phone draws close.


N97_main

The all evil, N97


Previously, I said I was getting the all new Nokia N97. However, after reading reviews and whatnot, it becomes apparent that its terrible. Underpowered for the operating system its running [Seriously, Nokia should drop Symbian, its old and buggy], causes the phone to slowdown and lock up at points. Gizmodo reviewed the phone and seems to share my sentiments in the terrible OS that is Symbian.


Still being rather loyal to Nokia after 10 years, I have come to expect quality phones from them. This was not the case with the Nokia N95 8GB that I bought less than 2 years ago.


Being a relatively light user of the mobile and treating it nicely, you would expect the phone to last at least a good 4 years or more. Currently my N95 has lost all its metallic surrounds on the buttons, chipped off metallic paint around the camera surround and has severe problems with the sliders. I can accept that the metallic paint would chip off over time, I found this with my Nokia 6680, but slider problems? From day 1? I know you’re thinking “Why didn’t you send it back?” but at the time I didn’t really notice the dodgy slider. However, after spending many hours trawling though various Nokia forums both unofficial and official, I noticed that this was a common thing with all the N95 8GBs.


Various other things bug the hell out of me; including the fact that it can take a good 10 seconds to open the text message application on the phone, frequent lockups/crashes with the YouTube app, crappy web browser and others.


Nokia-N900

Nokia N900 showing all


The next phone I hope to get will be the ever lovely Nokia N900.

“Nokia again?” I hear you ask. Well its Nokia again for a few reasons.

  1. I still trust that I will be getting a good phone
  2. Maemo 5 is the operating system of choice. A Debian based system, so essentially this is a pocket computer/phone.
  3. Touch screen, gotta love ’em.
  4. Windows Mobile just doesn’t cut it for me at the moment, although 7 series looks good.

So there are my reasons, I know a few of you [Mark 😛 ] love your WinMo/Android phones but I’m a Nokia man at heart [although I was nearly seduced by Samsung with their Omnia HD]


I’ve now got to find  Â£449 to buy it :/

Under the weather

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Not feeling the best so I thought I’d thrash out a blog post.

 

Just been resting for the good part of 3 days now, I think its just a cold so hopefully I’ll be back at full strength in good time. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to:

 

  • Watched a very good anime, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. About a group of 3; brother, sister and some girl they meet along the way. A Wikipedia quote to make things more clear:

Tokyo_Magnitude_8.0_title

After a massive earthquake in Tokyo, siblings Mirai and YÅ«ki, who were visiting a robot exhibition in Odaiba at the beginning of their summer vacation, struggle to reach their parents in their house in Setagaya assisted by a female motorcycle courier named Mari, who is striving to reach her own daughter and mother in Sanjengaya. – Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 [Wikipedia]

 

  • Carrying on with my University course. Second semester is getting very interesting now. Becoming very involved, a cold doesn’t help when you’re trying to revise this stuff.

That’s all really, just gonna take it easy for the time being. Maybe even write a less whiney blog post too.

Windows 7, on my Laptop

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Good news everyone! I have Windows 7 on my Lappy.

 

You may remember I wrote earlier that I received Windows 7 the day before it came out, thanks to Amazon’s fancy delivery department. The only thing putting me off actually installing the OS was that I lacked an external HDD. So for Christmas, that’s just what I purchased.

 

The HDD in question:

seagateHDD

Seagate Expansions 1TB External Desktop USB 2.0 Hard Drive

 

Quite the HDD indeed. With Backup and whatnot done on the old Vista installation, Windows 7 was duely loaded onto a freshly formatted hard drive.

 

I must say, the 15 minute install was very impressive. I did have a few problems however:

  • Native drivers didn’t recognise my wireless network, fixed by installing Dell’s drivers
  • Touchpad was a bit erratic at times, fixed by installing necessary drivers
  • McAfee refuses to install on it, my fault however, I seem to have used it on too many computers 😛

Other than that, the install was pretty painless.

 

Final thoughts: Windows 7 is indeed quite the improvement on the bloated monster that was Vista. Improvements in power management means I was able to squeeze another 30 minutes out of the battery, which is very surprising due to the battery coming up for 2 years in age. The only thing that is irking me slightly is the taskbar. The taskbar, when it gets full, groups by application, which can be a pain to navigate. I know this can be turned off but the option “Never Combine” just doesn’t cut the mustard. Also the time taken for Aero Peek to work is, by default, a tad too long. A simple registry change fixes this and makes the operating system, graphically, a bit more snappy. All in all, a great operating system indeed.

NEWS

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SO! I have news!

After about a month (*counts* 22nd August till now) of waiting, I finally have a fully fledged Student account with HSBC, and my card arrived today 😀 sooo now I have to activate it and start buying all you lovlies lovely things!

And I am very pleased that Joe’s and my timetables correspond so now we can see each other woohoo! Today has been a very happy day for me lol.

That’s all for now people, stay fab and get shakey ^_^