Resurrecting an old blog

Update

Since I last wrote on this blog I have been promoted and moved jobs. I am now trying to think of ways to use this blog.

Since my current role is in Product Management, I was thinking of doing something in that realm.

Product Management and Agile Practices with Lean Principles applied maybe...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmcvarnock

Palm Pre - export Contacts to a HTC Wildfire S

Well, since webOS now seems dead :-( and I have been given a new phone by the office I had to bite the bullet and export my contacts from one to the other.

I found this link very useful.


http://www.precentral.net/export-all-your-contacts

I followed the above steps, imported into Gmail via the Contacts->Import button. Gmail also provides a very useful utility to merge duplicate contacts.

I then sync'd gmail with the new HTC and voila...contacts all there.

Palm Pre Battery Life

After months of disappointment in the battery life of my Palm Pre (a few hours in some extreme cases) I have finally figured out why the battery was draining so quickly.

I turned off my 3G connection at home and lo and behold, the phone now stays charged for a couple of days now. It seems my poor connection at home (I live in semi-rural Northern Ireland) was causing the constant drain. However even in Belfast city (which has blackspots when it comes to 3G) the battery was draining away quite quickly.

So happily it does not look like a Palm issue - more a network connectivity issue.

I also found the following:-

"Unlike with some older rechargeable batteries, charging your battery often does not reduce battery performance over time. In fact, it's good for your battery to keep it charged rather than letting it become drained before recharging. Whenever possible, plug your device in to a charger or charge it from a computer via the USB cable. Note that charging your device from a computer may take up to twice as long as using the charger. Having both a Touchstone charging dock and a car charger makes it convenient to charge your device any time."

I was starting to wonder if leaving my battery on charge overnight had caused the problem.

I found the above here:-

http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/na/pre/p100eww/sprint/solutions/article/17233_en.html

Hope this helps some people. I may now even consider staying with Palm at contract renewal time!

Ubuntu 11.04 Upgrade - Natty Narwhal

Upgraded from 10.04 on both my laptop and desktop.

First thing to note was that the laptop upgrade went very smoothly.
Desktop upgrade broke the hard drive (was not being detected). So I had to do an install from a Live CD and that resolved the issue - whatever it was.

Secondly, the new look and feel of this Ubuntu release marks a big change from previous releases (I have been using Ubuntu since release 8.04). I am not sure I like it but its not enough to prevent me from sticking with what has proved to be a very good OS.

Computer Upgraded - Attempt the Second

Well, I had to remove the 320GB hard drive.

Reason: the motherboard only accepts IDE/PATA connections. The HD was a SATA interface type. So I was using a PCI adaptor to link the two. Turns out, the adaptor was not a good fit - it kept losing connection with the motherboard.

So I have replaced the HD with an IDE/PATA 40GB HD - complimented with a 120GB external hard drive.

Which should be plenty for my purposes.

Computer Upgraded

After battling with a disk suffering from corrupted sectors for a month now I have bitten the bullet and upgraded my old (8years+) machine.

120Gb Hitachi Deskstar up to 320GB (unknown).

512Mb Corsair ddr pc 3200 to 2Gb memory.

Ubuntu to be installed later.

Now 100% Ubuntu only at home

Migrated from Fedora Core to Ubuntu. The reasoning is simple. The upgrade on my desktop for Fedora was proving problematic - the /boot partition is only 200Mb but apparently 500Mb is required. I would either have had to use a hard-wired connection to download FC14 or resize the partition.

Option a) is out during to wiring restrictions and Option b) was out simply because I couldn't be bothered. I have the latest Ubuntu (meerkat) on my laptop and any install or upgrade with it has always been very simple. Hence the decision.

Result: Happy. Ubuntu working very well on my (very) old desktop.