Technology Archive

My blog-database crashed

All was going well with my blog but there was something I wanted to do. But I managed to crash my database, I rendered it completely useless. A while ago my photoblog crashed and then I decided to schedule the backup in cron, I took a full backup then I monitored the backup-size and saw it grow so I thought it was fine. But it wasn’t. It was generating rubbish and I lost everything. Luckily I managed to de-rubbish some of the data.

Remember backup my friends! :) Now I’ve managed to reconstruct the latest posts but they are empty, I am searching for buffered and cached data on my server and on search engines…

Thanks Google for buffering my pages! Now I’m using that to recreate the content…

The future bus

I love China’s will to invent and explore, here is the new bus soon ready for testing in Beijing.

Link to article on Chinahush.com

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Awesome sollution with Lego

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Norwegian Prime Minister bought iPad

All flights has been canceled in Norway due to the volcano eruption on Iceland and our Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is stuck in New York. Poor guy, but look what he have bought! I wonder if he can bring it back to Norway – according to Israel the iPad is transmitting too high wifi levels.. Ref: Haaretz in Israel

Foto:SMK


Foto:SMK

The iPad is coming to Norway in the end of July, I think it will be a success here. – Update: It hasn’t been made available yet, what is the problem?

Apple approved the Opera browser!

Most people didn’t believe Apple would approve the Opera browser from Norway but last night they did! I was certain it would be, because I don’t think it will be a competitor to the iPhone’s Safari browser. Why? Because webpages are rendered on Opera’s servers and therefore the javascript and ajax functionality won’t be as good as Safari’s. I wish it could be possible to turn off this function, I don’t like that my webtraffic is going through a 3rd party.

I also dislike the zoom function and how it behaves when I tilt my phone to landscape, it doesn’t re-render the page. Oh well, it is exciting but I think they have to do a little more effort to be acknowledged by the iPhone-people. Heres how it looks:

It loads fast, but without javascript I think it is useless.

On html5test.com Opera received a score of 14 of 160 possible:

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Why Apple wins

No matter how proprietary Apple’s systems can be they win. Most people don’t mind that they can run better software on the hardware, like Opera for instance, they just love Apple products. The iPad is warmly written about in Norway and people order American versions with no support for Norwegian letters, video rental or access to full Apple store – but they don’t care. Why is it like that?

Apple create neat stuff, its as simple as that. Even the strongest Apple-hater loves the iPhone and iPad but they won’t admit it. Its like the vegetarians who sneak to McDonald’s for a snack.

And because people who love Apple create fun accessories, like this one for instance:

I can’t believe I fell for an April 1st fool, I found this today and thought it was real. Embarrasing…

I saw this at ThinkGeek, no wonder iPad will be extremely popular.

Here is a guy who setup his iPad in his car, fun!

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Geek Monday – A 22 megapixel display wall

This was amazing, a camera based multi-touch interface. Check out when they look at the gigapixel shot taken by Eirik Helland:

You can read more about it here.

Have you found other geeky posts today? Here you can share the link:

Direct URL to your post:

Geek Monday – Wooden mirror

I thought this was awesome and wanted to share it. Its amazing what people is capable to create:

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Nerd Monday – A secret knock

Did you ever wish your door opened when you knocked the secret signal? This one is awesome – someone made it possible!

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Nerd Monday – Labyrinth Aquarium

I had a small aquarium when I was a kid and I dreamed of a larger one, or an aquarium I could mount into my wall. When I saw this I suddenly got the urge to keep fishes again. Its from Opulent Items, I’ve never seen that site before and its worth a visit. Check this out, these fishes can swim freely between the modules:

The photo is without cables and air supply so I guess it won’t be _this_ tidy but I think it was neat anyway.

Fun with my Lenovo T400 and its accelerometer

I’ve been curious for a while to see how the Lenovo T400 accelerometer would work with different APIs and Windows 7 so I downloaded the nightly Firefox 3.7 today. I was surprised to see it worked! Here is a small video I made while testing it.

[media id=3 width=530 height=460]

Its important to download the latest drivers for the protection system from Lenovo’s update manager. Use the Vista drivers even if you have Windows 7.

Ok.. I’m a nerd.. but I think this was fun.

You can read more about it here : Mozilla Hacks

Nerd Monday – get noticed

Why haven’t I seen this before? Its great! Especially now that more and more people cycle, and in autumn hours its sometimes difficult to spot them.

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Windows 7 and Lenovo T400

I just installed Windows 7 on my (Thinkpad) Lenovo T400, it works like a charm. I struggled a bit with the switchable graphics though, because I dock my laptop and use the xdvi cable. All I got was black screen when I downloaded the drivers from Lenovo.

What I did then was disable the switchable graphics in the BIOS, booted and updated the drivers, I did this via the Lenovo updater. I updated everything and installed the Lenovo software, except the Vista patches. When I tried to install the Vista patches the machine went into blue screen.

After updating all drivers I enabled the switchable graphics again but it didn’t help, no matter what I tried.

But then I right clicked the power symbol, chose “Switchable graphics” and high performance, answered yes and there it was. Now everything works fine.

There is still a problem when I close my laptop while Windows 7 is running, if I do that and open it the screen is black. I found out that I had to press the power button and put it to sleep again, and then wake it up by pressing the power button again, then the screen is ok.

Remember that the System updater still think you run Vista, ignore that and install the updates that arrives for it on your new Windows 7 – but don’t install the ones that say “Windows Vista Update Module”. :)

Update: You can now download version 4 of Lenovo’s update software, it will now recognize your Windows 7 system and be able to update drivers. It worked like a charm.

Update : September 9th a new version of the ATI drivers were released. Check out version 03.00.0741 special designed for Windows 7. It makes Switchable graphics a little easier to use. I had to fiddle a bit with the settings though but your setup will feel more “windows 7 native”.

Update: Now I got the accelerometer to work too, I had to download the latest drivers via Lenovo update software.


Bluetooth and Lenovo Thinkpad


I just have to share this in case someone else hit the same problem as I did. Upgrading to XP worked like a charm and I am glad I did it, the machine is much quicker now as well.

A new problem occured though when I installed Nokia PC Suite to connect it to my cellphone – it did not want to communicate with the phone! I tried anything, handshaking here and there, disabling, rebooting, reinstalling, reactivating but nothing helped. When I chose to add phone in Nokia PC Suite and it asked for the pin, the Thinkpad answered instead thinking it was the phone. The bluetooth stack took over! My phone did not get the chance to answer the handshake request…

I had to laugh when I figured it out, I am always suspicious to branded PCs and brand-software. I found this when I chose add/remove programs :

Thinkpad Bluetooth with Enhanced Data Rate Software. Ewww… Software that enhances stuff is most of the time dangerous and unstable.

I uninstalled this and then everything worked fine!

If you have the same problem, make sure you have the C:\SWTOOLS\DRIVERS\TPBTooth\Win32\drivers, you have to use it later.

Go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and remove “Thinkpad Bluetooth with Enhanced Data Rate Software”, then reboot your machine.

When you log on again it finds new hardware and asks for drivers, choose “have disk” and direct it to C:\SWTOOLS\DRIVERS\TPBTooth\Win32\drivers. Then it install Bluetooth properly and you’re ready to go!

How fun technology can be…

10 lost hours – my Thinkpad

I needed a new machine at work and wanted to try something else than HP this time. Checking out the specs of the Lenovo Thinkpad T400 convinced me to go for it, it looked like an OK machine for my type of work. It came with Vista, it made me hesitate a bit but I was willing to try – I thought hey if all failes I can upgrade to XP, since it came with a free convertion cd.

It all started out well at the office, I connected it to the dock and started to set it up. Installed my software, configured it and started using it. Suddenly when Vista asked for admin rights and the screen started to flicker it crashed. Blue screen of death. How fun. Then it all began.

I rebooted and ran the Lenovo update, no updates.. I checked out their forum and saw that others were having the same problem and that they were working on it so I thought I should give it a chance.

When I came home I set it up on my private wlan, that worked well. I installed my Nokia Communication software to transfer my photos via bluetooth, it started and began transfering the images. But then I lost connection to the wlan.

I right-clicked to repair but it didn’t help. I disabled the wlan then tried again without success. When the bluetooth transfer were complete I used the hardware switch to turn off all radios on the machine, then on again. There was my wlan! My first thought was that the bluetooth interfered with the wlan but I couldn’t believe that – we’re in 2008 right!? I tested, activated bluetooth and there my wlan went offline again.

Ok, so I can’t use bluetooth at the same time. Then I noticed that after each 15th minute I lost contact with the wlan, the blue circle disappeard over the tiny monitors. I waited 5-6 seconds then it came online again. I shut down the PC and went to bed, lets just say that I was disappointed.

The next day at the office I tried using wlan, the same thing happened there. After 15 minutes it lost contact with the wlan, the blue circle disappeard and then after 5-6 seconds it came back.

I checked the settings, disabled the n-protocol, tcp/ip v6 and rebooted. Same problem.

Later I noticed that the Lenovo connection manager had a copy of my wlan settings, it seemed like the connection manager and the native Vista connection manager were quarreling. They both wanted control of the connections! I tried to uninstall the connection manager but then it all became a mess, I lost other things as well and it didn’t want to connect to anything longer.

I ran recovery and set back the time.

Then I deleted the wlan profile in Lenovo Connection manager, it seemed to help a bit but it was still unstable.

The day after I ran the Lenovo update again, it had a bunch of updates. Awesome I thought and started to download and install them. Rebooted and started to test. It seems that they solved the blue screen of death when Vista flickers the screen but the wlan was not fixed. Except… Now I could use bluetooth and wlan at the same time.

Something else is weird too, when I try to burn or copy files it take ages. I was making a backup of my files and noticed that it was down to 1,5MB per second, I tried to copy to several location, same speed everywhere.

Then I decided… bye bye Vista on a Thinkpad T400. Now I have booted with the Windows XP recovery cd, it is still working on something but I don’t know what. Its been 3 hours since I started it.

Why can’t they do anything right?

I checked out more of the Lenovo forum now and found out that I am not alone, several others have the same problems at me.

I will never again choose a PC without checking out the forums. I would never choose the T400 if I saw what was going on.

Links:
Swedish article about this series
Norwegian article about its sister

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