Fully 30% of the window height is administrative debris. There are ten arrow buttons. The window close control is directly above the Edit menu.

Complexity is not your friend. Fitt’s Law is not your enemy.

function mkcd ()
{
    mkdir -p $1 && cd $1
}

function cdrm ()
{
    THIS=`pwd`
    cd ..
    rmdir $THIS
}

mkcd makes a directory, then changes into it.

cdrm changes to the parent directory, then removes the one you were just in.

I also got mt-daapd running on my Debian box. It’s not an official package yet, work but it’s working quite well. iLeech will fill in the other end of the NAS/Notebook music sharing setup I want to make happen. Incidentally, I was going to see about learning a bit about OS X programming to make an app that did the exact thing iLeech does. I may still take a look at that, since iLeech seems a bit sluggish, being a Java app.

I worked from home today, so I could get the old apartment people sorted out. They were giving me some crap runaround, saying that I’d have to pay for a whole month’s rent (> $1000) even though I get the new apartment on the 4th, and won’t be here past – at the absolute latest – the 8th or 9th. I had to shout, but we reached an acceptable compromise.

Something about the iPod Hi-Fi bugs me. I’d rather see something without an iPod connector, but with AirTunes. AirTunes is very cool, and it would be amazing to see it integrated into stuff other than the AirPort Extreme.

Anyone solved this?

You probably already know what the 770 is already. If not, start here. I’ll try to keep this pretty short.

The Good

• The form factor. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it does. It’s a little large to take with you when you go out and about, but it’s doable. It’s smaller than the PSP.
• Industrial design. It’s more utilitarian than the PSP or 5G iPod, but still quite elegant.
• The screen. Again, it lacks the sex appeal of the PSP or 5G iPod. Perhaps this has to do with the pressure sensitivity? Turning up the brightness helps a lot (though I imagine it drains the battery faster). I just don’t think it will ever give someone an “iPod face” – this is what I call the slack-jawed awe I get in response to demoing the 5G iPod’s video playback.
• Opera. The web browser on this thing rocks. It’s vastly better than, say, IE 6.0 on Windows XP. Some people complained that the D-pad selects links instead of scrolling; There is a fix. It’s much more pleasant now. If you tap-and-drag on a non-linked part of a page, you can pan around the page, which is very handy. My only real complaint with the browser is that it’s stylus scrolling breaks the scrolling on Google Maps. Other than that, Google Maps works on the device. I don’t know if there’s any other portable browser that can be said of.
• Hackable. This is the portable equivalent of the Linksys WRT54G/L. It runs Debian. It has DPKG for package management. Apps are Gnome based. The base platform, Maemo, is FOSS. There is nothing not to like here, and there are only going to be more cool things done with it.

The Bad

• Needs more CPU & ram. The updated firmware helps things significantly, but not enough. My biggest complaint is that it has such a great screen, excellent (for a portable) video codec support, and not enough horsepower to decode video larger than 240×144. That’s pitiful on a device with an 800×480 (that’s 15:9, or 1.66:1) screen. The Ice Age 2 trailer that came with the device seemed a bit choppy during playback. Unfortunately, I deleted it before I upgraded the firmware, so I don’t know if that helped.
• Speaking of firmware… installing that update wipes out any data you have on the device. This is particularly frustrating after fighting the handwriting recognition to get email set up.
• Things aren’t as tightly integrated as they should be. Clicking a RSS link in the web browser just displays some crud instead of prompting you to subscribe to the feed in the newsreader. Same goes for clicking Shoutcast links. With no OPML import, this makes managing your RSS subscriptions much harder than it should be.
• The device suspends when you put it in the cover (that is; when the cover is covering the screen as opposed to the back of the tablet.) This just sucks. It means you can’t put the tablet in your pocket and listen to a Shoutcast stream. I’m not thrilled with the cover overall. It has a beveled edge so you can access the D-pad and menu buttons, but it’s not beveled enough, making it hard to press the left button.

Final Thoughts

I’m conflicted. There’s a lot to like about the 770, but there are definitely significant caveats. I don’t know if I’m going to keep it or not. I’m really disappointed with the inability of this device to handle video. If I could drop XviD AVIs onto this and just play them, I could overlook the other issues.

I’m surprised that Nokia decided to base this around X11 (i.e. X Windows). There is (or was) a port of GTK+ to the Linux framebuffer, specifically for embedded devices. The 770 doesn’t need any of the features X11 offers (except, perhaps, video overlay), and it’s a not insignificant drain on resources. I’d be interested to know why they made this decision; it seems like pure blunder to me.

I think the 770 is getting beat up in reviews a bit more than it should. For example, I was able to bookmark sites just fine from within Opera, and I haven’t had too many issues with the handwriting recognition. Realize I have horrible handwriting, and the recognition is usable for me out of the box.

I wasn’t sold on this concept at first, but I’m a believer now. The 770 has a huge amount of potential, particularly with the open nature of Maeemo. I’m holding out hope that someone can get an optimized port of Mplayer or VLC, and that I can stream decent-sized video over HTTP. But this is a first-generation device, and Nokia is forging new territory with the 770. There are sure to be some bumps along the way, but this is a pretty good start.

The command I’m using is:

$ ffmpeg -vcodec xvid -b 300 -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ab 96 -i input_file.avi -s 320x240 -aspect 4:3 ipod_output.mp4

You may want to change:

• -aspect (if your source is 16:9)
• -s (if you want 480×480 video for TV display)
• -b, -qmin, -qmax (if you want higher quality or are encoding higher rez video)

Since I don’t have video sync working, I can’t verify that this works, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t. One-pass encoding is about 2x realtime on my 2.4ghz P4, and file sizes are very reasonable – 70mb for a 20 minute TV episode. Quality is not fantastic, but should be fine for the iPod screen. Some tweaking should locate a sweet spot, with ~1.5 – 2x encoding and better quality.

Edited to add: It works, though I can’t seek in the video – lame. Quality is fine on the iPod screen. If you’re compiling gtkpod from CVS (needed for video syncinc), revert src/file_itunesdb.c to revision 1.65 – the last commit was bad.

Also: Ripping my 14-disc Monty Python DVD set to iPod video now. Will it be done by Monday? Who knows!

It was a pain to install, but it was absolutely worth it.

1. Install the necessary software to run Bluetooth on your machine. For Debian systems, you’ll need the bluez-util package at least.
2. Change the default PIN. This is in /etc/bluetooth/pin.
3. Make sure your phone is set to be visible. Pair the phone with your PC. I start this from the phone; you will be asked for the PIN you changed in the previous step.
4. Determine your phone’s bluetooth address:

   $ hcitool inq

5. Determine the DUN port (replace with your phone’s address):

   $ sdptool browse 11:22:33:44:55:66

6. Edit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf. Add the following entry (replace device & channel with the correct values for your phone):

   rfcomm0
   {
       device 11:22:33:44:55:66;
       channel 1;
       comment 'BT DUN';
   }
   

7. Set up rfcomm0:

   $ rfcomm bind rfcomm0
   $ rfcomm
   

   The second command should show the device, channel, and status.

8. Edit /etc/ppp/options. You need to add:

   privgroup some_group_you_are_a_member_of
   

   You may want to set it to dialout, though there are security implications if you’re on a multi-user machine.

9. Launch KPPP. Click “Configure,” then “Modems,” then “New.”
10. Enter a name. Set “Modem device” to /dev/rfcomm0. Click the “Modem” tab, then the “Modem commands” button.
11. Change the “Dial string” to ATD. Click OK until you’re back at the main config screen. Select the “Accounts” tab, and click the “New” button. Choose Manual Setup.
12. Enter a connection name. Add one phone number; it should be *99#. Select Script-based authentication. Click “Customize pppd Arguments,” and add noauth
13. That’s it for the setup. Go ahead and connect, and if all went well, you’ll be online.

I’ve been using Kate as my main text editor for a fair amount of time now. It’s quick, handles multiple files great, and has excellent syntax highlighting and indentation features. But I just couldn’t get over the lack of built-in CVS support; I became extremely fond of it when I used XEmacs, and I look for it in every editor. Well, I stopped griping and implemented it myself, with Kate’s External Tools feature. Read on for the code.

Rather than dump the single entries, I’m just linking directly to my externaltools config file. This includes some of the default tools, as well as hotkeys to activate them. Enjoy.

Here are some of the interesting nooks and crannies I’ve found.

• The kicker (panel) has some very pretty new eyecandy.
  Large, colorful tooltips, with a slick fade-in effect.
• KMail can now show a graphical representation of spam status if fancy headers are enabled.
  
• Kopete offers enhanced KAddressBook integration, including contact photo display.
  
• Konqueror’s new media:/ ioslave shows realtime media status. It currently can’t distinguish between certain kinds of CDs and DVDs (blank and data), but it handled Video DVD, VCD, SVCD, blank CD, and data CD fine. Hopefully, this will allow for better integration with multimedia apps- click a video DVD, VCD, or SVCD, and it plays in Kaffeine. Click a blank CD or DVD, and a K3b CD/DVD project is opened. Click a data CD or DVD, and have it mounted.
  
• Konqueror has a few new visual tweaks, as well. The “Up” button has been moved to the right side of the forward/back buttons, which should help people migrating from other platforms. It also color-codes the Location bar for SSL-enabled sites.
• Konqueror also adds a new Photobook view mode for viewing photo collections.
• KAddressBook has a RSS URI for your contacts. Hopefully, aKregator will be able to import these, or create an auto-updated Contacts folder from them.

All in all, I’m very impressed. KDE 3.4.0 is a worthy upgrade for any current KDE user. It adds a lot of polish to the KDE experience.