20091226

Ainoha close up


Really close up! De tres tres pres!

Sunset In Montlhery


Just another evening, facing West...

20091225

20091216

Lunch stop on the way home...


Temperature outside : -6 degrees C...

20091204

En allant chercher Clementine


Petite pause, Prius III in the snow!

20091201

Fixing a Nokia XM 5800 which has lost the calendar display on the home page

Several users of the Nokia XpressMusic 5800 have had the problem where, on the home screen of the phone, suddenly, for no apparent reason, the calendar doesn't show up anymore... and furthermore, it's not even listed in the list of available home screen apps in the configuration of the phone.

This bug is due to a corrupted system file : c:\private\10202BE9\persists\10275102.cre

Unfortunately, as this is a system file, it's not possible to delete it as a normal user. You need to circumvent Symbian OS's file system protection.

This isn't hard.

But this means DOES require that you hack your phone.

First, you need to generate a CERT and a KEY for your phone (based on the IMEI) using the site here : http://www.s60certkey.com/ . This process is simple... but it takes about 24H to get the certs. Be patient.

Then, with this key, and the tool(SignTool2.2) provided on that same site, you will have to sign the phone hacking application called HelloOX2 which you can get from here : http://helloox2.com/ (you can get a signed version there, but you have to pay for it).

Run HelloOX2 and follow the instructions. Then run the newly installed ROMPatcher (installed by HelloOX2). Select all and set to automatic. Reboot your phone.

Now you can install one of the various filesystem viewers around (Y-Browser - http://www.drjukka.com/YBrowser.html - is available for free and is quite good, but I've just discovered Swiss Manager Pro from - http://cellphonesoft.com/ - which for a small price is fantastic).

With those tools, you can easily navigate to c:\private\10202BE9\persists\ and delete the file 10275102.cre... after which you reboot your phone (simple turn off then on) and you are set.

Of course, if Nokia would just go ahead and FIX the damn bug by writing a small app that deleted that file on reboot (I haven't seen negative effects of having deleted it myself)... this hacking wouldn't be required. This has been reported by many users on the forums, as well as directly to Nokia support. Since OS version 10.x of the XM 5800. We've had updates to 20.x, 30.x and now 31.0.101... still not fixed. What are they waiting for?

Gilles.

20091117

20091111

University of Latvia, in Riga


Just gave a speech on business models for FLOSS...

20091108

Chapi Chapo


Toujours le meme succes!

20091105

IKEA Madness


Where does that darn leftover screw go?

20091102

ObStarTourShot


Just about to get fastpass ticketa!

20091101

TRS-80... Well...


I got the monitor mostly tuned... Enough to see that the output is not good...

He's dead, Jim...

RIP TRS-80. We had some great times together!

My old TRS-80...


Has powered on... But monitor is dead... Can't make out if the display is gibberish... Or actual BASIC prompt... :( Keys seem to type on the screen, thow!

20091019

Pourquoi les femmes ont la peau seche...

Bon... ca fait plusieurs fois que dans des centres commerciaux, je me fais aborder par des vendeuses de produits de beaute... qui commencent toujours par la meme chose :

Elles : Estce que vous avez les mains seches ?
Moi : Non.
Elles : Jamais ?
Moi : Non.

Bon... jamais, pas vraiment, mais ca m'arrive, disons une fois par an. Idem pour la peau du visage. Alors que ma blonde a moi, Nicole, elle, ce n'est pas la meme histoire.

J'ai reflechi a la situation... et voici la conclusion temporaire a laquelle j'en suis arrive :

Si les hommes n'ont pas la peau seche, c'est qu'ils ne se mettent JAMAIS de produits de beaute dessus. Serieusement. Vous voyez les efforts colossaux que font les Nivea for Men et autre Loreal pour essayer de convaincre nous les hommes d'utiliser leurs produits? En fait, tant qu'on ne les utilise pas... on n'en a jamais besoin. Je suis sur que du jour ou on commence a se tartiner le visage de creme au Q10 ou je ne sais quoi, ca y est, on aura la peau seche des qu'on oublie le miraculeux onguent.

Alors que mesdames, vous etes tartinees depuis tellement longtemps que vous avez deja oublie quand ca a commence... et des que vous oubliez votre pomade preferee, vous etes deschees comme le sahel en ete.

Moi je dis que des le depart, incitez vos filles a NE PAS se tartiner la peau du dernier Loreal-je-ne-sais-quoi et elles auront une peau belle... NATURELLEMENT et TOUT LE TEMPS. :)

Bon... je peux avoir tort... mais c'est mon interpretation du moment.

20090920

20090918

20090901

No more ShoZu for me?

Hello!

Some of you may have noticed that my previous mobile posts were done with ShoZu... but not anymore. What has happened? Well, ShoZu went from making their application free-to-download to pay-per-download.

Not only did they do this without much warning ahead... but also, previous users weren't told either.

What happened to me is that I updated my phone's firmware and lost all the apps (thanks to Nokia for that - E71 loses all memory on upgrade, at least the 5800 XpressMusic retains its brains!). When I tried to download it again, I couldn't find a direct download link on ShoZu's web site. Rather, it pointed to Ovi Store which says it's not available in my country. I an lucky to work in an international company, so I used the corporate VPN and told Ovi Store for a moment that I was logging in from USA and UK. That worked... but I discovered that you now have to pay for the application. Application that I *ALREADY AM A USER OF*.

Of course, I've immediately stopped using it, stopped recommending it to my friends, and, in fact, suggest everybody move to Pixelpipe. This is a really cool application. It can post media to all the sites I used to post to via ShoZu, but it integrates directly in the Nokia Ovi Share application. I don't need ShoZu's geo-tagging as Nokia Location Tagger does that on the E71... and on my XpressMusic 5800 with the latest v30.XX firmware, the camera directly geotags the application.

I just miss posting to Twitter, Facebook and a few more. But that I've solved with things like aka-aki (a cool social networking application), Tweets60 (you guess what it does) and Nokia's own Facebook shortcut directly in my 5800 XpressMusic. I will also try Snaptu and Pocket Life which look like cool, free, alternatives!

Through a very bad tactical move (I'm not sure I see a properly defined strategy there) ShoZu has lost several customers thus, and gained negative comments everywhere I see. Pity.

20090807

Obviously the concrete weights hold!


Let's see for how long!

Swinging kids


Yep! They love it!

The figs...


... about to be eaten. Note the almost omnipresent Pixel... I mean Mouky!

The fig tree in the garden


You might notice some almost ripe figs...

20090806

Ready to swing!


Just waiting for the kids to get back home.. :)

20090803

Swing structure in place...


Concrete is drying... 72 hours and the kids can swing safely!

Concrete to stabilize the kids' swing


A dad's got to do what a dad's got to do...

20090726

20090716

Mona Lisa In Coffee Cups


Creative advertizing in Sydney!

Posted by ShoZu

Sydney Opera


ObShot from Sydney

Posted by ShoZu

Sydney Harbour has an AMP stack?


Or is jet lag affecting my perception?

Posted by ShoZu

20090715

End of a rainy day in Adelaide


Good thing we were in meetings all day... :(

Posted by ShoZu

20090709

This squid is still moving


But it was delicious! Sushi can't get any fresher than that! :)

Posted by ShoZu