Skype for Symbian officially released about a month ago. Had time to test it only now.Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Skype for Symbian
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Movie 2010.03.06 - Blind Date
One of the stranger movies I've seen. Story of a couple who lost their daughter in a car accident. They go through the grieving process by playing a series of charades - they organize blind dates set in a dingy dusty bar, taking on different characters each time, hoping this will get them to open up and starting talking about the tragic event.In the end, things didn't work out. The woman had a pill overdose, and the guy shot himself.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Movie 2010.02.28 - The Blind Side
First Sandra Bullock movie I liked in general. Didn't like the monologue with the fake Southern drawl at the start of the movie, but when she loses it eventually, the movie's pretty good.True story of how Leigh Ann Tuohy and her well-to-do family took in a disadvantaged black kid by the name of Michael "Big Mike" Oher and eventually adopted him. They help him with his academics and realize his natural talent in football. He was so good, all the college football coaches came knocking on their door. 
He went on to play for Ole Miss, his parents' alma mater, and was later drafted by the Baltimore Ravens.
He went on to play for Ole Miss, his parents' alma mater, and was later drafted by the Baltimore Ravens.Story's pretty straightforward. To make things interesting, there was a bit of drama where Leigh Ann pulled up beside a wet and cold Big Mike and offered him a place to stay; some suspense when Big Mike went to town with little S.J. in his brand new SUV and wrecked it; and a little controversy when Big Mike was investigated over his choice of Ole Miss over LSU and Tennessee.
Nybble Issue No. 217
N Y B B L E M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2010.02.28 Issue No. 217
Recently came back from a training course in Munich. Learned a few new things apart from the NS and NG.
I'm sure these have been around for a long time, but this is the first time I've seen a radio clock. Not a clock that plays radio, but a clock that syncs the time via radio with an atomic clock somewhere out there. Pretty impressive, huh? The only reason we noticed that radio clock in our training room is because around noon, it fast forwards itself to 3pm. Gives new meaning to the saying "time flies when you're having fun."
Over lunch, a colleague from India was telling us how the trains would be packed to the rafters. Most of the commuters don't pay the fare, and it's very difficult for the conductor to check because it's too crowded. Anyway, to battle this problem, they would simply put offenders on a special coach, and ship them out to a remote station far, far away. That'll teach them to evade fares. Another German colleague mentioned that they do the same thing to the homeless loitering about in the Englishgarten before the start of the Octoberfest. Takes them about a week of so before they manage to come back.
Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Bavarians about it. Thanks.
_________SILICON-AIR BATTERIES_________
Lithium batteries, while lighter and longer-lasting than then their nickel-cadmium and lead-acid predecessors, are not easily recycled and are prone to problems when they encounter high humidity and heat conditions. A recent announcement from the Technion-Israel Institute may rather quickly make the lithium-ion battery a thing of the past.
A joint research project led by three scientists in three continents — Yair Ein-Eli of Technion, Digby Macdonald of Penn State University, and Rika Hagiwara of Kyoto University — has yielded a working prototype of the battery which dispenses with the typical heavy, metal-based cathode structure and replaces it with something much lighter ... air. The anode is inexpensive, totally nontoxic and biodegradable — oxidized silicon. The current prototype is not rechargeable but can last for thousands of hours. A rechargeable consumer battery may be available within five years. Car batteries could be as little as 10 years away, and these batteries will not have any of the disposal issues of batteries past.
And cars are just the beginning. A lightweight and inexpensive energy storage system with high energy capacity could be a perfect companion for intermittent fuel stocks like solar and wind, making renewable energy easy to store and distribute.
_________3D BLU-RAY_________
Nvidia will support the new 3D Blu-Ray standardd through its 3D Vision technology. New films will use bitrates of around 60Mbits/second – twice that of a standard movie. Despite this increase in bandwidth, HDMI 1.3, which was released in 2006 and last updated in August 2008, should have sufficient bandwidth to ensure smooth playback. New files will be encoded using the MVC-AVC format, which is based on the AVC format currently used by Blu-ray movies.
3D Blu-ray movies will need screens with refresh rates of 120Hz, double the current standard of 60Hz, and 2x speed Blu-ray drives. As with all of Nvidia's 3D products, shutter glasses will be required to view films.
According to Ben Berraondo, Nvidia PR manager for the UK and Northern Europe, Sony’s PlayStation 3 might be the only current player that could “possibly” run 3D Blu-ray content “with a firmware upgrade” thanks to its discrete Nvidia GPU, which is based on the GeForce 7800 architecture.
_________PLASTIC MEMORY________
The plastic memory was made by a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo led by electrical engineering professor Takao Someya. The key to making the plastic memory device work is a hybrid insulating layer made of a polymer and a metal oxide. This layer electrically isolates the metal gate in which charges are stored. An applied voltage causes the metal gates to accumulate charge--charged and uncharged gates represents binary 1s and 0s, as in silicon flash. The better the insulator works, the longer the data can be stored before the electrons leak away and the data degrades.
Someya's group starts by placing metal transistor gates on top of a plastic substrate. Then a thin layer of aluminum oxide is deposited on top and the plastic film is submerged in a solution containing an insulating polymer. The polymer finally self-assembles on the surface of the aluminum oxide. The plastic devices can endure 1,000 writing and reading cycles. In contrast, silicon flash can be written to about 100,000 times.
To demonstrate the memory, Someya's group integrated a 676-memory-cell device with a rubber pressure sensor. The flexible sensor-memory device, which is less than 700 micrometers thick, can record pressure patterns and retain them for up to a day. Someya believes the performance of plastic flash can be improved further.
_________SINGLE-ATOM TRANSISTORS_________
Researchers from Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), University of New South Wales (Australia), and University of Melbourne (Australia) have succeeded in building a working transistor, whose active region composes only of a single phosphorus atom in silicon.
The working principles of the device are based on sequential tunneling of single electrons between the phosphorus atom and the source and drain leads of the transistor. The tunneling can be suppressed or allowed by controlling the voltage on a nearby metal electrode with a width of a few tens of nanometers.
The rapid development of computers has been mainly based on the reduction of the size of transistors. At one point, the even tighter inexpensive packing of transistors would require them to shrink down to the atomic length scales. In the recently developed transistor, all the electric current passes through the same single atom. Problems arising when the size of a transistor is shrunk towards the ultimate limit are due to the emergence of so-called quantum mechanical effects. On one hand, these phenomena are expected to challenge the usual transistor operation. On the other hand, they allow classically irrational behavior which can, in principle, be harnessed for conceptually more efficient computing, quantum computing. The driving force behind the measurements reported now is the idea to utilize the spin degree of freedom of an electron of the phosphorus donor as a quantum bit, a qubit. The researchers were able to observe in their experiments spin up and down states for a single phosphorus donor for the first time. This is a crucial step towards the control of these states, that is, the realization of a qubit.
_________FIRST 3D BIOPRINTER_________
There are many other institutions trying to achieve the same goal. There are differences in the way each company creates a scaffold for cells so that they hold together during printing. There are also differences in the way that cells are clustered together for printing. Essentially, however, no single approach to bioprinting has enough obvious advantages to make it a clear leader in the field. So we have something like the organ version of an arms race. Each company is struggling to produce viable tissues (typically blood vessels) and fine tune their machines as quickly as possible to be the first to see wide-scale adoption of their bioprinters as assistants in current human organ transplants.
Organovo’s commercial version of the 3D bioprinter comes with some nice bells and whistles. There is a design software package that would allow tissue engineers to simulate their constructions before they are printed. Two different heads on the printer allow for the scaffold (or support matrix, or hydrogel) to be applied separately from the living cells. Those cells can even be printed with micron precision thanks to a laser guidance system on the device.
Yet as fancy as the printer may be, the real test for Organovo isn’t the machine, but what the machine produces. The blood vessels (and other tissues) that the 3D printer creates will have to be shown to function in living specimens over long periods of time, and be accepted and integrated into the host. That level of testing is still a long ways off for humans.
_________DATA CENTRE HEAT RECYCLING_________
Helsinki public energy company Helsingin Energia is planning to recycle heat from a new data center to help generate energy and deliver hot water for the Finnish capital city.
Accoring to Juha Sipilä, project manager at Helsingin Energia, the recycled heat from the data center, being built by IT and telecom services company Academica, could add about 1 percent to the total energy generated by Helsingin Energia's system in the summer. The data center is located in an old bomb shelter and is connected to Helsingin Energia's district heating system, which works by pumping boiling water through a system of pipes to households in Helsinki. The data center gets cold water from Helsingin Energia's system, runs it through the servers and equipment and cools them down. The resulting warmer water flows to a pump that heats the water and sends it into the district heating system. The pump also cools the water and sends it back to the data center. The ability of the heat pump to both heat and cool water is what makes it special.
The data center is supposed to go live at the end of January, and will at first measure 500 square meters. What Acedemica gets from this is cheap cooling power -- five times cheaper than what it would pay for traditional electricity.
According to Päivänen, if all the data centers in Finland were to use the technology they could power a mid-size Finnish city.
_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
LiveUSB Creator
Linux Live USB Creator
Math Magic
Cleverbot.com
Full ZX-81 Chess in 1K
_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Is there really any health benefit to using an air cleaner that emits negative ions?
_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.
~ Albert Einstein
_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What made all the hatters so mad?
More than 100 years ago, the felt hat makers of England used mercury to stabilize wool. Most of them eventually became poisoned by the fumes, as demonstrated by the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Breathing mercury's fumes over a long period of time will cause erethism, a disorder characterized by nervousness, irritability, and strange personality changes.
Source: Arcamax Trivia
_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
An Irishman, an Englishman, and a Frenchman walked into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"
That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.
Movie 2010.02.28 - Religulous
I've watched this movie twice. And it's only now when I'm writing this blog that I noticed that the title of this movie is not Religious, as I originally thought. It's actually Religulous - a mashup of religious and ridiculous. Nice one, that.In this movie-documentary, comedian Bill Maher takes on the world's religions, points out their illogical inconsistencies, and behooves us to keep an open mind, instead of putting our fates in the hands of religious leaders, who are humans, just like ourselves.
My only beef with the movie is that Bill tends to favour his side in the debate. He asks provocative questions and follows them up with sarcastic one-liners. Some of the quips can be very funny though. He interviews these people on the fringe, so it's hard for him not to come out winning: the ex-Jew who runs a Christian gift shop who believes in the story of Jonah and the Whale, I mean, Big Fish literally; a visit to the Creationism Museum in Kentucky, where humans exist alongside dinosaurs; Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, the founder and leader of Growing in Grace, who claims he is the second coming of Christ; Israeli inventors who create contraptions to go around the no-work-on-Sabbath rule; musicals at the Holy Land Amusement Park in Florida starring Jesus Christ; etc.
Best part is Bill Maher's finale monologue: "The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end. The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn't learn a lot about it. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. 
Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says, "I'm willing, Lord! I'll do whatever you want me to do!" Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas. And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don't. How can I be so sure? Because I don't know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not. The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that's what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong. This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. 
And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers. If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let's remember what the real problem was that we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. That's it. Grow up or die."
Friday, February 19, 2010
Movie 2010.02.19 - Valentine's Day
Another rom-com done in the tradition of Love Actually and He's Just Not into You. (From the producers of Pretty Woman - what could go wrong?!) The prescribed formula is to get as many big-name stars as you can, put in as many storylines as possible, make sure each character is related to another character, at the end of the movie, tie all loose ends in one feel-good knot.In this movie, we've got Ashton Kutcher playing lovestruck Reed, who's the owner of a flower shop. He proposes to career girl Morley (Jessica Alba) who just woke up and accepts.
Meanwhile, Reed's best friend Julia, played by Jennifer Garner, is planning to pay her recently-divorced doctor-boyfriend a surprise visit in San Francisco. Little does she know that he's still (happily) married with two kids. Reed discovers this fact when Dr. Copeland (Patrick Dempsey) comes into the shop to buy flowers for his wife and his "friend". Meanwhile, Julia's friend Kara (Jessica Biel) is busy planning her annual anti-Valentine's Day party at an Indian restaurant. She's also the publicist for Sean Jackson (Eric Dane), 
so she spends the day with his agent Paula (Queen Latifah), setting up a media conference for Sean, where he announced that he's actually gay.
Back to Reed, he goes to the school where Julia works to warn her about Dr. Copeland, but she's too busy with the kids. Reed goes back home to leave a special package for Morley, only to find her there packing her things. Not good. He rushes to the airport to stop Julia from flying, only to be berated for trying to spoil things for her. Julia goes to the hospital and find out the hard truth for herself. She then goes to the restaurant where Dr. Copeland and his wife Pamela is having Valentine's dinner and calls him out. She flies back to L.A., starts flirting with the depressed Reed, and they kiss on the bridge.
Wait, rewind. Julia flies back to L.A., then attend's Kara's party to blow off some steam. There, more of their girlfriends show up to report on how they were cheated by their boyfriends, etc. etc. Sport reporter Kelvin (Jamie Foxx), who covered the earlier press conference, shows up at the party as her date and wows the crowd with his singing prowess and his piano skills. Later, Kara goes to the TV station to return the favour.
More sideshows. Businessman Holden (Bradley Cooper) and Army Captain Kate (Julia Roberts) were on a plane to LA. They talk a lot, but neither tells the other about their love life. Turns out Holden is the lover of Sean, while Kate is the mom of Edison, who has a crush on his teacher Julia, who suggests he give his Valentine gift to his classmate. Meanwhile, Edison's babysitter Grace (Emma Roberts) was planning to have s3x with her boyfriend Alex (Carter Jenkins) for the first time. While Alex was in Grace's room making "preparations", her Mom walks in, so that's the end of it.Another one for you. Edison's grandfather Edgar (Hector Elizondo) discovers that his wife Estelle (Shirley MacLaine) had an affair long, long time ago. He huffs and puffs off to a film screening at the local cemetery. Estelle stumbles through the audience calling for him (in the middle of the movie). After the initial boos and hisses, the audience warms up to the couple's story, and gives them some warm applause while they kiss and make up. This inspires mailroom worker Jason to apologize to his one-night stand partner/colleague Liz, whom he discovered to be a part-time phone-sex operator, while working as an assistant to Paula.
Confused yet?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Pennytel Problems
On a whim, I signed up with this VoIP provider called Pennytel. There's no contract or anything. All you need to do is sign up online and register for a free account with them. Create a wallet and top it up with some funds, either via BPay or credit card. BPay takes three days to clear; credit cards even longer.So I've created my account, I've topped up my wallet, I've configured the modem/router to talk properly with Pennytel's SIP gateway. I make my first VoIP call and it cuts out at 32 seconds. A couple more calls, and they all terminate at the 32-second mark. I'm sure it's a router config, though I can't seem to find the setting. A check on Whirlpool tells me that I'm not the only one suffering from this. Most of the guys were able to fix this issue by either:
- changing the RTP port to 5100
- increasing the "incoming no answer" to 3600s
- disabling the firewall, or
- changing the re-invite expiry
With no other options left (aside from buying a new ADSL2+ wireless modem/router with built-in VoIP and firewall), I decided to flash my firmware. Now, the Open Networks 824RLW only goes up to as high as the Open 5.53 firmware. If I wanted something newer and better, I have to reflash my box to Billion's 5.54b firmware. And I did so at great risk to my box, but in the end, it's still 32-second VoIP calls.
Bummer.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Day Out with AW
So, last week I sent a postcard to my Bavarian friend to let her know that I'm in the country. She's quite mobile, so I sent the postcard to her parent's place to make sure she receives it the next time she visits home. As luck would have it, her sister was home, intercepted the postcard and told her about it. Given that Karlsruhe is not that far, 
she's spending the weekend in Munich to catch up with her friend and me.Seven years later after Suomenlinna, we meet again at the hotel lobby. After a long breakfast at Vi Vadi Cucina Italiana catching up, we take the train to Odeonsplatz and headed for the Munich Residenz. 
Given our limited time, we decided to explore only the Residenz Museum and skip the Treasury. As I paid for our breakfast, AW insisted on paying for the museum entrance fees.
Given our limited time, we decided to explore only the Residenz Museum and skip the Treasury. As I paid for our breakfast, AW insisted on paying for the museum entrance fees.The Residenz Museum is one big museum. Could easily take a day to explore if you use the audio guide for all the rooms. 
Inside are mainly apartments, ceremonial rooms, and courtyards of the Wittelsbach rulers. A big portion of the palace was destroyed during WWII, so some of the rooms have to be reconstructed. Most memorable for me is the Hall of Antiquities, the Reliquaries Room, and the Ancestral Gallery. 
The Hall of Antiquities (Antiquarium) was used to house the antique collection of Albert V, which later became a banquet hall. The Reliquaries Room a.k.a. Reliquienkammer. Inside this vault of a room are more than 60 reliquaries, 
containers specifically crafted to house relics, typically bones of saints and objects associated with them. One of the reliquaries on display is said to contain the severed head of St. John the Baptist. The same claim is made by many other religious parties. The Ancestral Gallery (Ahnengallerie) is a very long corridor where the portraits of the notable members of the Wittelsbach dynasty are set into gilden carved paneling.
Inside are mainly apartments, ceremonial rooms, and courtyards of the Wittelsbach rulers. A big portion of the palace was destroyed during WWII, so some of the rooms have to be reconstructed. Most memorable for me is the Hall of Antiquities, the Reliquaries Room, and the Ancestral Gallery. 
The Hall of Antiquities (Antiquarium) was used to house the antique collection of Albert V, which later became a banquet hall. The Reliquaries Room a.k.a. Reliquienkammer. Inside this vault of a room are more than 60 reliquaries, 
containers specifically crafted to house relics, typically bones of saints and objects associated with them. One of the reliquaries on display is said to contain the severed head of St. John the Baptist. The same claim is made by many other religious parties. The Ancestral Gallery (Ahnengallerie) is a very long corridor where the portraits of the notable members of the Wittelsbach dynasty are set into gilden carved paneling.
By the time we finished the self-guided tour, it's way past lunchtime already and starting to rain. I was surprised to find out my friend is actually vegetarian. Took the train to Sendlinger Tor for lunch at the popular Prinz Myshkin (Hackenstraße 2, 80331 München). I would've liked to take pictures of its high-ceilinged interiors, but didn't anymore. Another long lunch where we made sure our vegetarian food is properly digested. On our way back to the station, we passed by a small church with a striking facade in the Baroque style. It's called the Asamkirche (Asam Church), after the two brothers who designed the church; officially known as St.-Johann-Nepomuk-Kirche (Church of St. Johann Nepomuk). Cosmas Damian Asam and Egid Quirin Asam, 
who lives next door, intended for the church to be their own private place of worship. The church hierarchy didn't like the idea, and demanded it to be opened to the public. Unfortunately, the church is closed at this time, but we managed to get in and peek through the gates. The church may only be twelve rows of pews long, but the interior is chockfull of statues, sculptures, ornaments, and frescoes. The high altar is surrounded by four twisted columns with a wax figure of the church's namesake within a glass sarcophagus.
It's now 4pm, and we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Deustches Museum, said to be the world's largest science museum. The bad news is the museum closes at 5pm. The good news is, entrance is free after 4pm. With half an hour to spare, we jumped straight to the exhibits on new technologies. With 55,000 sq. m. and 28,000 objects covering around 50 fields of science and technology, we've merely scratched the tip of the iceberg. By 5pm, all of the parents and their kids came streaming out of the island museum. So this is how German families spend their weekends.Back at Hauptbahnhof, we killed more time by having a long coffee break at Starbucks, until it was time for AW to take her train back to Karlsruhe. Auf wiedersehen, my Bavarian friend.
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