This won’t work every time, but from my own experiences it has worked each time.  I’ve never personally filled a laptop with liquid or sunk a mobile phone (either I’m just more careful or really lucky), but I know a number of people that have done this.  So here is the advice I’ve given in all the cases an d it’s managed to work.  You must follow the advice closely and NOT try and rush the process!!!  I can’t say that enough, DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Here it goes.

The most important thing to be done when water or other liquid comes in contact with your tech toys, REMOVE ALL POWER SOURCES!!!  Forget what you were doing on the laptop DO NOT try and save your work, you’ll only increase the risk of damage.  Unplug the power cord and remove the battery (or just the battery if it’s a phone, unless you’re unlucky enough to own an iPhone, you can thank Steve Jobs for the inability to pull the battery out).  The killer of wet devices is power, plain and simple.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Next, for laptops, once you’ve removed all the power sources take out anything else that can be removed, such as the CD/DVD drives if they can be taken out.  Get the laptop turned up on it’s end towards which ever side has the cooling vents on it and give the laptop a gentle shake downwards to get the liquid to come out of vents.   Don’t shake to too hard as you don’t want to damage the hard drive by the excess force.  Water will generally move quite easily assuming your location is under the normal laws of gravity.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Get a small screw driver and take all the covers off the bottom of the machine, normally there are a couple, they usually cover the RAM DIMMS, hard drive, and other bits.  Getting these off will help to get some circulation through the machine and may even help to allow any trapped liquid to escape from the machine.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

You’ll need to get the machine warm, I suggest using an airing closet or if you haven’t got one then somewhere else that’s quite warm.  This shouldn’t exceed about 40-45C to you’ll risk more damage from the heat.  If you haven’t got that then get a fan and place the fan so it’s blowing into the keyboard and/or the open panels on the bottom.  If you’ve only got the one fan then alternate it blowing on each side.  All the time your laptop should try to remain on it’s end so water can run out of the machine, it can’t run out of the machine if it’s flat on it’s base, well not easily.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

In case you somehow managed to miss my warnings DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!! you should read my posting again. 

You should NOT attempt to reapply power or insert the battery for at least 12 hours.  After the 12 hours examine the machine as best you can for any signs of moisture, shake the machine gently again to see if there’s any more liquid coming out, if nothing then turn the machine around and turn it over to try and shake lose any liquid that’s still lurking inside.  If your not 100% sure if the liquid has been completely removed then return it to the drying process in front of the fan or in the airing closet for another 6-8 hours and check it again.

Only once you are 100% sure all of the liquid has been removed should you risk applying power to the device again.  Start with the battery first then mains power.  If the liquid was anything other then water it’s possible keys on the keyboard may be sticky.  This too can generally be fixed by removing the keyboard from the laptop and washing it in a bit of water (I know it sounds strange, but as it’s been removed from the device the risk of further damage is quite low.

I hope you find this helpful.   If you’ve had experiences of this and were able to salvage your equipment either by the method I’ve outlined or by some other method please feel free to post some comments about it.  I’d like to hear some other ways people have managed to save their gear after coming in contact with some liquid.

After checking in we needed to get ourselves over to the kilt shop to get our kilt fitting for the Ceilidh on Saturday night, which was a blast. We didn’t get up and do any dancing however, it really was a couples thing. But was great fun to watch the dancing. Before heading to the party we had a long walk around Perth collecting Geocaches along with the other 1000 or so people attending Mega Scotland 2010… What must the residents of the town have been thinking of all this.

Dinner was quite exciting, it started off by the piping in  of the Haggis followed by the Ode To The Haggis with a slight variation to bring into it a bit about Geocaching. The ‘show’ before dinner was served lasted about 10 mins, very entertaining to say the least.

Gord and I both opted for the Haggis. It was over heard that the Haggis was by all accounts was top quality.  it was Gords’ first time ever having Haggis, I had had it before however I think it was canned so that’s not real Haggis   We both loved it, it was spicier then we’d expected, not hot spicy but just pepper type spicy.

After the Ceilidh it was back to the camp site for more much needed sleep.

Sunday, Aug 1st, we didn’t really know what to do, the weather took a turn for the worse on Sunday after a couple of nice days. We headed to Edinburgh to have a walk about. The weather really went to hell about after 90 mins of us getting there. We’d stopped for Pizza in a nice but hot little Restaurant… Outside were 100′s of people attending the big buskers festival that was going on.

After lunch we’d started to wander the streets to see what we could find.. This is when the contents of the Firth of Fourth stated to drop on the city. We took refuge in a Whiskey shop and even managed a sample of something that Gord bought to take home for a friend. I bought a couple little pocket sized bottles, just enough to fill the nice little MacKenzie key ring flask that I picked up   We had managed to find one geocache in town before heading back to the car and returning to the camp site to attend the ‘Yorkshire Day Away’ Geocache Event being held just about outside of our tent.

Monday, Aug 2, we had to return to Perth to return the kilts. It was an exceptionally lazy day due to the typical Scottish weather. Before leaving the camp site for the day we had attended yet another Geocache Event, ‘Bun and Brew to recover from the post Mega blues’.  nearly everyone from the camp site was there along with the Scottish weather, no one invited that though. 

We decided that since the showers at the camp site were sub par and long queues at time, that we would go swimming instead. We’d gone to the Leisure Centre next to the Mega Scotland venue. We were attracted to it because of the water slides that took you outside of the building, no we didn’t get on them haha.

Finished with the swim it was off to the kilt shop to drop everything off followed by a nice slow drive back to the camp site by the slow country roads. We’d managed to bag another 6 or 7 caches before returning to the site including Gords 500th cache!!!

After a bbq dinner of burgers and having had a chat with another cacher in the camp about a cache that he could find, we all decided to go and blitz the area looking for it. Nothing at all. Even a local dog walking muggle gave us a suggestion of where it should be, but nothing was found. After around an our we had to give up the search out of frustration and failing light, it was after all after 10pm by now.

Tuesday, Aug 3rd. It was time to back up and say good bye to Scotland and lead back south of the boarder again. Stopping for a breakfast just outside of Edinburgh we found a local cache near by. Next stop was the boarder for some photos and a rest and, yup you guessed it, another cache on the boarder.  From there it was on to Hexham. We’d found a tourist info place to get a list of camp sites. Gord liked the sounds of one place, Hadrian’s Wall Camping and Caravan Park.

We opted for using the small tent, we got it set up then went for dinner at a local pub. Excellent food it was too. We went for a small walk along a segment of Hadrian’s Wall. We did about a mile of the wall I suppose. We had to share the path with a lot of cows, that was a bit exciting as some of them weren’t interested in sharing the path and wouldn’t move out of the way.

That brings us to now… It’s time for bed.

Wednesday, Aug 4.  Well, it was and uneventful night in the small tent. There was just a touch of rain during the night was short lived so no bother at all. We were packed up and out of 950 so not bad going really  

We struck off for the ruins at Vindolanda and managed to get the just in time for one of the guided tours of the site. It must really have been impressive in it day. There were apparently some 500 soldiers and 1500 or so civilians in the area of the fort. There are many photos which I’ll get uploaded at some point..

The admission to this site also provides us access to the Roman Army Museum, which will be next on our tour before heading back to Cambridge.

We’d made it back to Cottenham just shortly after 7pm, sat for a few mins then got the car all cleaned out and got the tents out and hung up to dry out.

That’s the end of what was a most excellent adventure to Scotland for my largest Geocaching evening, well OK fine, my FIRST Geocaching event, hopefully not my last either.

Click on the photos to see the full size original photos

What they shipped me was in the box to the right, I’ve used a pen for size reference.  I was quite impressed with the size of the box to say the least.
	Inside the box were two bags, one with the charger/torch in it and the other has all the various bits to fit a multitude of mobile phones.
There is an extension cable that allows you to plug the adapters for the phones into the charger, which is nice, it suggests that perhaps in the future they could simply offer new tips to fit other devices (and not only mobile phones?)  The back page of the manual identifies the tips and the phones they fit.
	You can see how truly small the charger device is in this photo.  I don’t have the biggest hands around it’s fair to say, but I can nearly conceal it in my hand.

Continue reading for my review

First impressions: Firstly, looking at the product in the box and out of the box I’m most impressed with the size of the device, however, at the same time it also made me wonder how well suited for the job it would be.  I was surprised at how well it fit my hand and I was able to operate it.  As simple as it may seem to just pick it up and turn a handle, that’s not always the case.  With some crank devices I’ve tried I found I was bashing my knuckles or scraping fingers because of how the mechanism worked.  This device does work quite well for me, someone with massive hands might find it harder to use due to the small size.  Weight wise, it’s lighter then my Nokia N97 by a fair bit, the phone is 150g, this device is around 70g?

Practical usage: I had no problems winding it; holding it did get a bit tiresome due to the small size, fingers were cramping up a bit after 2-3 min of cranking it.  I had my 6 year old crank it for 1 minute.  She did alright but kept wrapping her fingers around the small case and kept bashing her fingers on the crank, not surprising really; ever try to tell a 6 year old anything these days?    The one page manual that comes with the device doesn’t give any indication about how long you should crank to get what approximate amount of usage from the light.  One minute of erratic cranking by my 6 year old kept the light on for about 5 min.  One minute of the suggested speed of about 120rpm gave just over 30 min of usable light.

Using it to charge a phone would be a very tiring prospect that’s for sure, there are much better Nokia N97 Chargers available that’s for sure.  I had a lot of problems actually charging my Nokia N97   There seems to be a connection issue somewhere in all of the connections between the crank charger and the plug to the phone.  In all there is a plug in the crank body to the 20-25cm extension cable, plus the connector needed for my phone to the cable and then finally into the phone.  Whilst cranking the handle at the suggested rate of 120RPM my phone was constantly flapping between charging, not charging and eventually would just give up and stop taking a charge or perhaps it wasn’t getting any voltage out of the cable and connectors.  The type of plug/socket used on the crank body is not the best choice for an object that’s going to be moving around as much as it is when you’re cranking.  There are more stable and secure connectors that could have been selected, but perhaps the ones used were due to cost rather then reliability.

Conclusion: Would I carry this device with me out camping or around in my gadget backpack?  Yes for sure.  As a windup torch it’s aces, as a phone charger it might well work when the chips are down and you need a few more minutes of talk time or just to keep it topped up, but it’s not without the need of some fiddling.

The manual is quite simple, just a single sheet doubled sided, let’s face it, there’s not much to know to use this.  Crank the handle, turn it on or plug in phone and crank the handle

Devices that require power

• Dell E6500 Latitude (with 9 and 6 cell batteries)
• Nokia N97 (read my other blog postings for my opinion on this device)
• Zoom 4506-N 3G Travel Router
• Microsoft wireless travel mouse
• Jabber BT3030 headset
• Power adapter for laptop (travel adapter for use with mains, car and air plane (I’ve never been fortunate enough to travel in the right class where I can use it on a plane )

Devices that use power but leech off other sources

• Vodafone K3820 3G/HSDPA modem
• 500GB portable USB drive
• Numerous Flash drives of various capacities, some have bootable OSes on them some just for data

Misc items that I carry that don’t need any power themselves

• A number of 8cm CD’s and DVD’s with bootable OSes on them (all Re-Writable for reuse, and for those machines that can’t boot of USB, WTF?)
• A couple of sets of head phones (in case of loss or damage)
• Various cables to connect devices for data transfer or charging, most use the same USB cables so it keeps these to a minimum

All in all it’s a fair bit of gear slung on my shoulder.   The double batteries for the laptop are really just to make sure I can go for hours and hours..  One question I’m sure many are asking themselves – Is all that gear really necessary?   Of course the answer is NO, BUT it’s just become the norm for so many years now, not just with me but so many people.   I can do just nicely with only my phone in most cases.  I managed quite nicely last year to post very long blog postings while out camping.  However, it wasn’t as convenient as it would have been had I had my laptop with me.  I should put my normal “battle load” into my backpack and weight it.  I’m sure it’s the best part of 8KG, might be a  bit more.

The only reason I decided to write this blog posting now was because while I sit in the Starbucks here in Newmarket Road in Cambridge I pulled out my travel mouse to find the battery was flat in it.  That got me thinking about what else I have in my bag that might need a change of batteries.  Thankfully that’s really the only device that can’t be recharged (however that’s a bad thing too really).  By that I mean I can’t plug the mouse in to charge the battery, it’s just a single AA battery.  That in itself is a good thing really, I can get replacements anywhere for it, that however can’t be said for any of the other power hungry devices I carry.  They all have bespoke batteries, so they require having some sort of charger/power adapter (be it wall wart, USB cable or some such).

So, What do you carry with you on a day to day basis?   What do you wish you could carry with you but choose to leave at home for some reason?

The keyboard and mouse is actually attached to the Ubuntu machine, in other words that’s the “server”.  The XP and Windows 7 machines are “clients”.  One thing to consider with Synergy is that it’s not secure.  It does send everything you type in plain text over the network.  This can be avoided by tunnelling the connection over something like SSH.  Perhaps I’ll cover that later.  Synergy2 isn’t new, it’s been around a very long time.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel or try to take any limelight from those that have already posted great articles on how to set it up, the best information can be found from the Synergy2 website itself.

What I’m posting about is really how to fix a problem that I’m sure others might have encountered.  Right.. so the problem is this.  As I’ve said, the server is on Ubuntu.  Naturally the “Windows key” on Ubuntu has no natural meaning to the OS, it’s just another key and not mapped to anything out of the box.  The problem I’ve had is that while using Synergy the “Windows Key” didn’t work on the Ubuntu machine even though I’d remapped it to do things, such as Win + T to open a new xterm, Win + R to open the Run Command Dialog (basically making it operate a bit like Windows).   the fix for this was a change in the $HOME/.synergy.ini file on the Ubuntu machine.  The weird thing was that when move the mouse to the XP machine the Windows key did what it should, however on the Windows 7 it wouldn’t work.

Right, so what was the fix?  Here is my .synergy.ini file

section: screens
burma:
scotland:
  meta = super
rambler:
  meta = super
end

section: links
burma:
left = scotland
right = rambler
scotland:
right = burma
left = rambler
rambler:
left = burma
right = scotland
end

section: options
screenSaverSync = true
end

The important lines above are the “meta = super”.  Under Ubuntu the Windows Key is called “meta”.  This tells Synergy when the focus is on the windows machines to map the “meta” key to the “super” key, or in other words the Windows key.  Once that was changed and synergys was restarted all was good again.

I’m posting this for anyone else that might have a problem with the windows key not working under synergy with Linux/Ubuntu/Unix machines and windows machines, but also as a reminder to myself should I forget how I fixed it   I’d been through this exercise about 4 years ago but having rebuilt that machine I couldn’t for the life of me recall how I fixed it .. well, now that I’ve blogged about it I’ll at least have one good place to go and find the answer again  

I bought my NokiaN97 back in June.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I, like everyone else that ever ordered one of these devices, was excited like I’d never been about a phone.  The prospect of what was promised by Vodafone and Nokia was overwhelming the senses.  However, I very quickly found myself, like pretty much everyone else that has ever ordered this device, sad and disappointed to entirely new levels.

Where do I start .. well the device came shipped with the then current firmware level of 10.x .. right out of the box it was acting odd.. dropped calls, low phone signals levels where there should full signals, etc, etc.  The worst at the time was making and taking calls… you might be lucky and get a call in and you might be lucky to not have the device crash and reboot during or immediately after a call.  This was frustrating to say the least.

While the start of my relationship with my new N97 was rocky it was manageable .  Plus the promise of the much talked about V11 firmware and how it would fix a lot of problems, that and that alone kept me hopeful that we could make things work (me and the N97).  Firmware V11 came and went, sure, some problems were resolved, but entirely new problems were introduced.  Once again, we were on the rocks with our relationship.  I managed, somehow, to tolerate the device.  It wasn’t crashing randomly any more, which I suppose is a positive thing.  However, one of the new problems that came with V11 was a memory leak that slowly filled up my C:.  The first time it happened I received an “out of memory” error and the phone crashed and rebooted.  Upon reboot I was confused at first since the C: had about 18meg free.  I then noticed it would slowly fill as days went on and crash again.

Until now, I’ve not even touched on the other long laundry list of known issues with this device, including the much loathed Nokia N97 Self Harming issue where it scratches and destroys it’s own camera lense.  Mine has been no exception to this issue, the lense is nicely scratched and gashed, thankfully not directly over the camera’s optics so the camera is still very usable.  Others, however, have not been so lucky.

So, back to the story.. we last off with the tails of whoa over V11 firmware.  Well, it was many months before Nokia finally released the even more anticipated V12 firmware. It was even longer for UK contract phone owners since the UK carriers either refused to push it out to us or they blamed Nokia for the delay.  I don’t know where the problem really was or who was really to blame, suffice to say it sucked big time.   Finally, V12 was released and the world cheered, until they installed it and noticed yet more problems were introduced, for some it was more problems then fixes.  Some of my issues were fixed but my memory leak got worse.  I could now only run my phone for 2 days before the C: would fill and the phone would crash or I had to reboot it.

Well, here I am now in Nov.  After waiting for V20 to come out and then deciding not to wait until sometime next year I changed the product code on my phone by following the instructions on THIS PAGE.  That worked a treat I was then able to upgrade to V20.  That did not go well at all I have to say.  The process of loading the firmware was fine, however after the initial reboot there were loads of performance issues and lots of crashes.  After much Googling I’d come to conclusion that I needed to do a hard reset and rebuild my phone from scratch   That was the first time I had to a full rebuild.  Somewhat painful .. loads of apps to find and install, activation codes to find etc.  More annoyingly was I had to rebuild all my menus again for all the apps.  Very time consuming.  Fine, I accepted that, the phone is crap, the OS is crap and Nokia is crap, just one of the little joys of having bleeding edge hardware and Beta software.

Well, last night the phone acted up and needed a reboot.  This wasn’t the memory leak, that seemed to be mostly cured going to V20, I forgot to mention that above.  I pushed the power button, turned off the phone.  It did as it was suppose to.  Power it back on.. it sits at the white Nokia screen for about 2-3 mins.  This is NOT normal.  60-90 seconds boot time is normal for my phone.  I pull the battery, try again.  Leave it for 10 mins or so this time.  Still, no boot.  Bugger me.  I pull the battery, sim card and microSD card out.  Wait a few mins, replace the sim and battery and power on.  Nothing, just the White Screen of Death.  I tried all the “fixes” that others posted about, nothing at all.  I was again forced to hard reset and rebuild my phone.

This was the last time I ever hard reset my phone for no valid reason.  The next time the phone does this, I will hard reset it clear and format the internal mass storage and sell it on EBay for whatever I’m lucky enough to get for it.  That will be it.  I will also not be organizing my icons again or doing much else in the way of customizing my phone because of the hassles and time it takes, all to have it destroyed because Nokia can’t get it’s act together.

I would love to return the phone to Nokia for a full refund not to mention refunds for the software I’ve purchased for the device that will, on the next total lock up will become of no use to me since I won’t be using the device.

I am one very unhappy customer of Nokia at this point, the only good thing is knowing I’m no the only one.  There are 1000′s and 1000′s of people that have bought this phone and posted about their deep disappointment with the device and Nokia in general.  I hope, like me, they will all vote with their feet and refuse to by any more Nokia and Symbian based phones!  I think my next phone will be an Android of some sort.  It can’t be any worse.  No, don’t even think of trying to talk into an Apple i-CAN’T DO WHAT I LIKE ON MY PHONE-Phone.

If you are thinking of buying a Nokia N97 I would strongly encourage you to spend 2 hours at least Googling about the device and issues people are having.  Don’t take my rantings on here for it, see what everyone else is saying about the device.  If you have any sense you’ll see it’s not a good investment, and a very costly one at that.

Thankfully, Yuki’s dad is here staying with us and he was looking after the kids.. Yuki and I managed to sleep in until nearly 9am, which was nice.  In fact, we managed to sleep in until nearly 10am Friday and Saturday.   I can’t even begin to recall sleeping in that late when vast amounts of alcohol was the direct cause of it.  So can’t really complain much.

Anyhow, the day started with breakfast as usual.. then we sent the kids up stairs with their lao ye (grandfather in Chinese, it’s more specific then that, but trust me, you don’t want me to open that can of worms here and now ).  Yuki and I took to hiding all the stuff for the kids.. candy, chocolate eggs, bunny’s, all sorts of rubbish haha.  Then it was time to unleash the kids..

First, here is a quick tour of the hiding places of all the candy

Here’s a video of the “hunt” under way .. I love Emma’s comment at one point “I’ve got so many…”

Here are a few pics…

You can see all the pics and videos taken today by CLICKING HERE.

Enjoy the pics and videos.  I hope to do more blogging in the future.. I’ve been pretty slack at getting out updates, but life has been full of upheavals that… well… frankly made blogging a chore. 

Besides, I’m booked to attend WordCamp UK in July.  It’s the second year for the event and the first year I’m going … it’s a weekend full of meeting other bloggers, some who do it for a living but most because they enjoy it (I assume anyhow).   With enjoy luck this event will encourage me to blog more, or even just give me loads of ideas to make my blogging better (which frankly wouldn’t take much, I know I suck at blogging).

Well, that’s all well and good, but how do I connect things to it?  I wanted some easy way to connect multiple things to the battery without having to have a number of wires getting attached to the battery.

So, not wanting to spend ARM+LEG and either our first or second born to buy something already made, and it wouldn’t include the cig plugs either.

So, I made this:

Read on if you’d like to see the other pics .. or, you can just go and look at them in my Flickr Gallery

Well you made it here then

Ok, well looking at the picture above what you have is:

- 4 way cigarette plugs

- 4 sets of Anderson Powerpoles

- 4 Fuse holders (15A for cig plug and 20A for Powerpoles)

- 2 Inline fuse holders (40A fuses)

- 2 Quick release battery terminal clamps

These are the fuses holders up close and the Anderson Powerpole block.  This block is arranged in 2 groups of 4′s.  The reason for this is so that the 2 groups back wards from each other.  This means that there can be no mistakes in plugging into them the wrong way.  Each group of 4 makes a single circuit and fused by a 20A fuse.  There is the top group and the bottom group, also marked on the fuses.  The Powerpoles used are all rated at 45AMPs each.  It’s over kill but by risk it.

The 4 way cigarette plugs are connected through a 15 amp fuse, also marked on the front.

Looking inside the box.  On the left side top and bottom are the 30AMP bus blocks I’ve used to distribute the incoming power feed (both the negative and positive are fused with 40AMP fuses).

This is a close up of the Powerpole blocks.  You can see how each pair are ganged together.  It wasn’t too hard, but where the double wires were attached to I had to shave off some of the insulation on both wires to allow them to get closer together and prevent too much strain.  Each and every connector was first crimped then soldered to ensure both a good connection and also security of the connections.

Close up of the fuse connections isn’t very exciting.  Each connection here is also soldered and then taped to ensure the “hot” connections aren’t open to something falling in or on them.

Each and every wire going into or connecting the bus blocks has been soldered to ensure the wires won’t break or wear with movement.  it also means the screws holding them in will have a more secure fit

Just another shot of the front again

Not having any luck at all on the net finding the information I needed to build a cable, I’ve finally broken down and paid £26.00 (including shipping) to buy one.  I’ve wanted a DC cable mostly so that I could a) go camping without the need to have a tent pitch that was powered (extra cost), and b) be able to power my CPAP should we have a prolonged power outage at home (fairly low risk of this, but a risk none the less).

Click on the image below to see the full sized one.  This is a page from the manual that came with my cable.

Basically, should someone have posted something like:

To make your own Respironics Shielded DC Cord, Part number 1001956, you will need the following:

• 1 x 2.1mm (5.5mm outside) X 15mm Coaxial DC plug
  Such as: Maplin’s Part number HH61R (www.maplin.co.uk)
• 2-3m of suitable wire for a max of 7amp DC (depending on your CPAP model)
• 2-4 Clip on Ferrite suppressors, such as Maplin’s part N89AB
• 1 x 12VDC cigarette plug, suitable for upto 7amp DC

The construction of a DIY Respironics CPAP DC Cable, model number 1001956 is quite simple.  Wire up the cigarette plug to the DC plug that will go to the CPAP, be sure to wire the tip of the cigarette plug (Positive 12V, I suggest a multi-meter to confirm this in your car or battery pack you intend to use) to the centre connector of the 2.1mm DC plug.  Wire the negative to the other remaining connections. 

At both ends of the cable, as close as possible to each of the plugs, leave not much more then 3-4cm of cable “exposed” put a couple of the clip on ferrite RF suppressors.  These are quite important as they will ensure the dc is free of RF (Radio Frequency) or Electromagnetic noise.  These, should they get into the machine, could cause damage.  You can likely get away without them, but frankly for the extra £5 it will cost for these it’s worth saving your £500+ CPAP.

That’s all there is to it.  I really hope people find this useful, for some reason there has been a black hole of info about these cables, and I’m not sure why.

**DISCLAIMER** This information has been provided purely for theoretical and personal information.  I will not, nor can not, be held responsible if you are not competent enough to build this simple cable and end up damaging or destroying your CPAP.  I’m pretty sure in the wonderful lawsuit happy world we  live in it’s also most likely a violation of your warranty to attach a home made DC cable to your CPAP machine.  You have been warned, don’t come crying to me if you blow something up, also, don’t ask me to make one for you.  These are beyond simple to make.

I didn’t really like much of what I found, or found it wasn’t really what I wanted to do with it .. so I decided to use some of that info and came up with something of my own.

The short story is this. When someone calls my Canadian number, my US Toll-Free number any number that ultimately rings the group of phones in the house, I will now get a direct message in Twitter from a special account I setup for this purpose, which also sends a SMS to my phone (device notifications in twitter).

Read more by clicking below… Be warned! Thar be scripts and technical stuff in them thar parts

Ok, so lets see what’s under the bonnet of this beast now.

First, you’ll need an AGI script. Look, here’s one I prepared earlier – twitter.agi

#!/bin/bash
# Background the curl process incase twitter doesn't respond. It will hang the dialplan.
curl -u username:PASSWORD -d text="$1" \
-d user="recipient" \
http://twitter.com/direct_messages/new.xml &

Put the script in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin. Don’t forget to chmod +x the script as well.

Pretty simple eh? The only things you’ll have to change in the script are

• username = your twitter login name
• PASSWORD = your twitter password
• recipient = Who will get your direct message

Ok, and to make it work in Asterisk I put this in the extensions.conf file for the exten that I wanted to monitor:

[home_phone]
exten => s,1,NoOp("This is my home phone context")
exten => s,n,Set(_DIDNUM="PUT YOUR DID NUM HERE")
exten => s,n,LookupCIDName
exten => s,n,AGI(twitter.agi|PBX: ${CALLERID(all)} just called on ${EXTEN})

I’ve only shown the first bits of this context, after this is your normal context such as DIAL or whatever else you might now. I actually build in a few seconds of delay to allow the text message a chance to get to my phone before the phone rings. A sort of early warning system

The only thing here you need to change really is the value of _DIDNUM (notice the underscore in front of the var name, this isn’t strictly needed, but if you wish to use that variable else where in the context or exten it’s a good idea. Obviously you can change the message after the “pipe” in the AGI line to customize the message you are sent.

The one thing I have left to work out is what asterisk variable to use to actually get the DID number used to call into the PBX with. If I can get that that would make this so much easier and more flexible. If you know what that is please drop me a comment.

Well, that’s really about it. It’s not rocket science by any means, heck, it’s nothing at all but it works.

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Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Haha ok, well, the posting worked.  I noticed that because the server is on UTC and my phone is on BST the posting actually was “scheduled” for posting 1 hour after I actually hit the submit button.  There might be an option in moBlog for that, I’ll have to have a look.   Otherwise this is slick, I can post blog entries from my phone, including being able to attach images to postings.

This is the HTC Kaiser. I won’t rehash everything that’s already been posted by the folks at http://wiki.xda-developers.com. Check that site out, it’s an incredible resources for SmartPhones/PDA’s and the like.

Basically in a nutshell this is the phone:

Specs and Tech Info

• Qualcomm MSM 7200, 400MHz
• Windows Mobile 6 Professional
• ROM: 256MB (accessible 145.24MB), RAM: 128MB
• Dimension: 112mm (L) X 59mm (W) X 19mm (T)
• Weight: 190g with battery
• Display: 2.8″, 240 X 320 QVGA TFT-LCD display with adjustable angle and backlight
• Network: Tri-band HSDPA/UMTS (850, 1900, 2100 MHz), Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Device Control: Finger scrolling and panning, 5-way navigation control, 3-way Jog Wheel
• Keyboard: Slide-out lit QWERTY keyboard
• Keyboard Layout Pictures
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi 802.11b/g, HTC ExtUSB
• GPS: Built-in GPS and connector for external antennas, A-GPS supported
• Camera: 3MP CMOS colour camera with auto focus on the back, front VGA CMOS colour camera (for video calls. No front Camera on AT&T Tilt.)
• Audio: Built-in mono microphone and speaker
• Audio Output: Proprietary jack
• Battery: 1350mAh rechargeable Li-polymer battery, shape: KAIS160 (35H00088-00M)
• Expansion Slot: MicroSD(SD2.0 compatible, MicroSDHC compatible up to 8gb tested)
• AC Adapter: 100-250V AC, 5V and 1A DC

MyMobileR is one of the most essential apps for WM6 devices. This app installs both on the phone and the PC. Once the phone is connected to the PC I can get a window up that allows me to completely control the phone from my PC. I can use the PC keyboard and mouse to navigate and enter messages and what not. I’d have to say it has it’s place in the top 10 to top 20 apps for people with this sort of phone/PDA. Oh, and it’s completely FREE!! Incredible.

My opinion of the device is high, but as with all of these all-in-one devices the battery is what really lets it down. This is not a reflection of the choice of battery installed in the device, it’s very high spec and power, but the unit just consumes so much power it’s unreal. I have a battery monitor installed that will report the current draw on the battery. With the camera on, gps on, wifi on (and connected) and bluetooth on (and connected) I’ve seen it drawing 2100mA, this was briefly reported but still, that’s an insane amount of power for a “phone” to pull. Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) is very nice indeed. Things have really changed since my last WM based PDA which was running 2003SE or something.

The OS generally runs pretty fast, depending on what I have open and running in the background, but I can’t complain. I did have the Blackberry Connect software installed to try it out with my work Blackberry server.. this worked well but it really put a beating on the CPU and battery of the device. I ended up removing that and now getting emails via the Microsoft Push-Email service through the webaccess portal of Exchange. This, while not getting emails to be instantly is a lot better on the memory and battery life of the phone.

The availability of software for this device is off the charts. There’s so much of it out there, much of which is free or at least cheap and justifiable for the cost. This was one of the big reasons I had t get rid of the Blackberry I had. It was good, but getting software wasn’t as easy and what was available was a lot more expensive.  I expect because of the licensing and certification that I think software on the BB has to go through.

All in all, a very good phone and would recommend it anyone that likes to tinker. I can’t say I’d suggest a technophobe get it, there’s just way too much t break and get setup. Now, just have to look at replacing WM6 with Linux on it

]]> http://www.uk-experience.com/2008/05/20/my-new-phone/feed/ 2 http://www.uk-experience.com/2008/05/15/clifford-stoll/ http://www.uk-experience.com/2008/05/15/clifford-stoll/#comments Thu, 15 May 2008 12:16:16 +0000 rob http://www.uk-experience.com/2008/05/15/clifford-stoll/ Pure genius ..

About this Talk

Clifford Stoll captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides — and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he’s a scientist: “Once I do something, I want to do something else.”

About Clifford Stoll

Astronomer Clifford Stoll helped to capture a notorious KGB hacker back in the infancy of the Internet. His agile mind continues to lead him down new paths — from education and techno-skepticism… Read full bio »

Check this site out..

A lot of the people I follow and those following me are ham radio folks.  It’s a slick and instant way to send updates to your followers and friends.   For example, if you were sitting on the radio and calling CQ you might send a tweet¹ to say what frequency you’re on.  Another use might be if you are out working specific squares or counties or whatever you could let folks know which one you are in and what freq you are on.

A lot of audio and video podcasters use twitter as well, they send out tweets to let listeners know if they are on live and a URL where to find them, or just to let their fans know when new podcasts are up on their sites.

It’s also just another form of CB really, you can message with friends around the world while out and about or just at home.

Access to twitter is pretty wide open.. you can use SMS text messages, the main website – http://twitter.com, the mobile website http://m.twitter.com or a host of applications for mobile phones, PC, PDA’s, etc, etc.  It’s just crazy how popular this service is.

Check it out and add me to your friends

¹ – a tweet is what a twitter posting is called

This is a link to an Amazon S3 hosted image..

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This is the image embedded