Geek Drivel

So, having learned that the iPod Touch probably could replace my slowly-dying Palm TX, I’ve picked one up a few days ago. The box said that it required Windows or Mac OS X, which is an irritation but not a problem; I have this system set up to dual-boot between Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP, as well as having a VMware virtual Windows XP box under Linux.

I pulled it out, carefully unwrapped it, and turned it on. It showed a screen that seemed to be saying it had to be plugged into my computer, so I did so. Then, reading the quick-start manual, I saw that I had to load iTunes. Grumbling, I downloaded and installed it.

iTunes says that my brand-spankin’-new iPod Touch has an old version of the OS, and would I like to upgrade to 2.0 for an additional $10? Grumbling further (but not really surprised — I’d read up on it before I bought it), I agreed, paid my ten bucks, and downloaded the update. iTunes wiped the old OS, put the Touch into recovery mode, and then… said that there was an error.

It seems that you can do nearly everything with the Touch via Windows XP running in a VMware virtual machine, but upgrading the OS requires Windows to be running on the bare metal.

After taking care of that little problem (via dual-boot), I settled down to moving my data.

My contact list isn’t all that large — about 100 people — and it had ten years worth of accumulated cruft and outdated information, so I decided to move that manually, updating each one as I did. That took a while, but had no major surprises. I decided to sync it with my GMail account as well, so I’d have an online backup; no problems there either.

The 120+ e-books that I’ve purchased for my Palm over the years were all bought from eReader.com. The eReader program was available in the iTunes Application store (for free, of course), so I loaded it up. I dredged up the password for eReader.com, entered it, and was pleased to discover that my e-books were all there, waiting to be downloaded for the iPod. I downloaded one old favorite and tried to unlock it. Tried being the operative word… somehow, even after entering the proper unlocking information, it wouldn’t work. I had to sign onto the site via a web browser and update my information, then re-download the book, before it would work. It should work for all of them now though.

The To-Do List was… interesting. The iPod Touch doesn’t have one built in, so I checked out their Application Store. There were three free to-do list applications that I downloaded and tested. The first two (I don’t remember their names) were too simple to be useful for me; neither one could handle more than a single list, for instance. The third one was Dobot Todos, and it didn’t take long to realize that I had a winner. Unfortunately the Apple store is two revisions behind, and is dragging its collective feet about updates… I’m sure they’ll correct that eventually, but I wish they’d do it more quickly.

Next up: my calendar information. This is the single most-used function of my Palm TX, and I really really didn’t want to have to re-enter all of the data for it by hand. But from everything I could see, the only direct way to get my information moved over (without a Mac computer to go through) was to go through Microsoft Outlook.

Yuck.

But I did have a long-since-retired copy of Office XP (with Outlook 2002) around here somewhere, so I started excavating my CD-ROM collection and finally found it. It installed with no problem, and with a little setup, it synced to the iPod easily — the only trouble was that two of my contacts somehow got duplicates. I carefully deleted the duplicate entries, re-synced, and made sure the originals were still in both places (they were) and wouldn’t re-duplicate themselves on later syncs (they didn’t), then I was ready for my Palm data.

Unfortunately, my Palm doesn’t seem to want to retire, and it and the rest of my electronics fought me all the way.

First I had to dig out the CD that it originally came with (which meant another excavation), then RE-install the Palm Desktop software (for some reason, the installation I already had on that machine wasn’t good enough for it), then tell that to sync to Outlook instead (carefully telling it to overwrite the Palm’s contact information with the desktop’s). Then the virtual machine wouldn’t make a wired connection with the Palm, no matter what I tried — I never did figure that one out. Then the network connection couldn’t find my XP virtual machine (VMware’s bridged network connection was hooked to a different network card than the one that I’m currently using). I finally got everything set up properly though, and the Palm reluctantly turned over its information to Outlook, which then sent it on to the iPod. A few manual tweaks (because the iPod doesn’t seem to like the “zero minutes ahead” alarm setting), and all seems well now.

My next project is getting a few audio-books (that I purchased from Audible.com) onto it. That shouldn’t be a problem… I hope. Then, once WinPwn comes out with an update for the 2.0.1 firmware, I’ll jailbreak the iPod so I can load my music onto it from Linux. Then the configuration stage should be complete.

Well, I did it. I’m writing this entry on my new (and newly-updated) iPod Touch.

I have to say, I really like the interface. I’m still trying to figure out how to import all of my data to it, other than the music, but I’ll get it eventually.

(This post is mostly a test.)

Hm…

GoddessJ and I were with some friends at a mall yesterday, and we decided to stop by the Apple store. I wanted to see the iPod Touch in action; I was considering replacing my aging Palm TX with one, and at all the other stores that carry them around here, they’re never charged and running.

I was very favorably impressed. The touch screen on it is ridiculously good, and the software seems very well thought out. But I also discovered a fatal flaw: there’s no external speaker on it at all, so it can’t duplicate the most often-used function of my Palm, which is sounding an alarm to notify me of upcoming appointments.

It also tops out at 32GB (at least 10GB too small for my entire music collection), still doesn’t have cut-and-paste capability, and Apple is keeping a stranglehold on the applications the company allows to run on it. So I’m sorry to say that I won’t be buying one. Maybe the next generation will remedy these lacks. If so, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat.

UPDATE: As described in the comments, it seems that the Touch does have a working external speaker, at least for notifications of events and such. Rumor has it that there’s a hardware refresh on the way, but I’ll probably be picking one up today anyway. One of the less expensive models, so I won’t feel so bad about replacing it with an updated version in a year or two.

I’m usually an all-out pro-technology guy, but I agree with this completely: no e-voting until it’s provably (and checkably!) secure against fraud. There are too many people who would see the ends (the election of their chosen candidates) as justifying the means (tampering with the voting system) — you’ve got to make it as hard to do as possible, and I have yet to hear of an e-voting system that’s secure against even a determined amateur.

Quite interesting…

I’m very security- and privacy-conscious, so it came as something of a shock to read (on LifeHacker) about a kind of cookie file that I didn’t know existed. I picked up the Objection extension and took a look… there were files from all sorts of places, going back years.

I am not happy about this, and I’ll be checking whenever I let a site use Flash from now on.

Although interesting (to me) in and of itself, I’m mentioning this article because of this bit from the last paragraph:

In other developments, spammers have abandoned the use of image-based spam, file attachment spam and other such frippery by going back to basics. Nine in ten spam messages now contain little more beyond a few simple words and a URL.

I’d call that a major win for the anti-spam effort.

I’d wondered at the lack of spam recently, but I figured that SpamBayes/ThunderBayes was just doing an exceptionally good job. Which it is (when I saw the above, I checked… out of 308 spam messages in the past couple weeks, I’d only had to look at forty of them, and SpamBayes was unsure of only seventeen of those), but getting only about 22 spams a day is pretty freakin’ amazing too, considering that I’ve had these e-mail addresses for five and seven years now. (I’m not counting the GMail account or the account at the company that bought our Project Badger, since both of them have their own very effective spam-filtering stuff.) After only three years with my previous e-mail account, I was being inundated with a couple hundred spam messages a day.

Lovely. Okay developers, time to get moving — add public-key code-signing stuff, so that your programs can tell whether they’re getting a legitimate update or not. Don’t know how, and don’t have time to learn? Try the GnuPG Made Easy (GPGME) library.

I’m happy to say that Ubuntu Linux isn’t affected by this, because it already utilizes code signing for all of its updates. I’m not sure whether Windows does as well, but if it didn’t, I suspect it would be the first thing in the title’s list.

GoddessJ and I attended a friend’s wedding over the weekend, for our friends B and L. It was… interesting.

It was held in a very small town. There was only one chain hotel anywhere near, and it was booked solid before the wedding date was even set because there was some other kind of gathering going on in the town at the same time. The wedding guests were forced into the smaller privately-owned hotels. Ours was named the “Save Inn.”

The seventies-era all-metal sign in front advertised “color TVs, telephones, air conditioning, and electric heat.” I can’t vouch for the heat, but it definitely had air conditioning, which rattled almost loudly enough to drown out the all-night-long drunken party that a group of twenty-somethings held in the parking lot directly outside, the first night. (I had to ask the front desk to ask them to turn down the pounding bass music from a car stereo around midnight.) Internet access, high-speed or otherwise, was not an option.

The rooms were decorated in early cinderblock, and even included two unadvertised bonuses: an ancient (and empty) mini-fridge that stank of stale beer, and a pair of houseflies to give it the perfect touch of home. On the plus side, the room was clean, the flies were the only creatures we had to share it with, and the bathtub was deep enough to have a really relaxing soak, so I don’t really have much to complain about. It was very good to get home yesterday though.

The wedding went well, and the reception was tolerable even to me. I managed to get the first dance with the bride (after groom and the bride’s father had their traditional dances with her, that is). Not that I had much competition, the two of us constituted half of the people on the dance floor for that number. The community center they’d rented for the reception included a sign inside the door that had an… interesting… use of quotation marks:

“NO” Alcoholic Beverages Beyond This Point

GoddessJ suggested that it was deliberate, that the first word was in quotation marks as a kind of written form of a wink and a nudge, because everyone was ignoring the sign anyway.

I don’t know how widespread the practice is, but at most weddings I’ve attended around here, there’s a tradition that when the guests tap silverware against their glasses, the couple has to interrupt what they’re doing and kiss. At our wedding, GoddessJ and I had trouble eating our dinner because of the constant demands for this. L and B had an interesting solution though… they brought out a hula-hoop, and said that anyone who wanted them to kiss would have to get up and hula first. A few people (including me) did so, but most wouldn’t embarrass themselves, so they got to eat their dinners in relative peace.

GoddessJ was a bridesmaid (brides-matron?), so we heard a lot of interesting stories about the guests. The annoying childhood friend of the bride, who had to be carefully placed at a table where she didn’t know anyone so she wouldn’t make an ass of herself (she managed to anyway)… the group that refused to sit with so many people that the couple just put them at a table by themselves (which they then complained about)… the one cousin who had said she would show up alone, but then decided to bring her new boyfriend and couldn’t be bothered to ask the couple about it first… the cousin’s histrionic mother, who called up the groom’s mother at 4AM that night demanding that she come and pick them up from their hotel, for reasons still unknown to us… I’m sure there are other stories that will come out as well, once we hear from the happy couple again.

All in all, I can think of worse ways to spend a weekend.