Another one messing up my file system

So Voda today gave me 50GB of cloud space. Very kind of them, it’s free, so this tells you something about the Data Centers they must be building somewhere – or maybe they are suing OPH (other people’s hardware) who knows.

The idea of a free, away 50GB drive is a nice one, except it’s adding to my already complex File System, which is possibly the only part of my personal IT that I have no full control over: the automatic uploads and replicas are creating loops of pictures bouncing back and forth – if I dare say, mainly with my iPad.

This is because Apple (and Google, to a lesser extent) are spellbound at the idea of fixing something that’s not broken – in their ideal world apps and their data are leibniz-ian monads, but that’s not the way it works, dumbkopfs! I want to know where are my data, where I backed them up to – your automatic crap never works the way it’s supposed to, and anyway I do not trust ANY of you, especially companies that are trying so hard to piss me off despite the money I keep throwing at them.

In that sense the Vodafone Cloud is so dumb that it’s inoffensive – nothing is automatic, nothing will happen in the background except a yet to be understood “phone back up” feature: if you save something to the Cloud (in itself an awkward operation given you have no File System access) that’s where you will find it.

I like the 50GB, but I know I won’t use this much – shame!

Simple solutions

My son travels a lot by train and has retained an insane passion for videogames, so I gave him a PSVita for Xmas. Upon unboxing it and starting one of the free games, it crashed with error C12828-1; unlike his dad he’s a great tinkerer with all things “real” and “physical”: you can ask him to fix the garage door, but has zero patience with electronics.

So the PSVita comes back to me to see if I can get it to work.

Them boards opinate that C12828-1 error could be related to a database corruption when attempting to write a status to the memory card (which we don’t have, but why the hell do they sell the console WITHOUT it if it’s mandatory?) which in turn could be originated by a faulty network connection: when the PSV tries to synch with the PS Network, the faulty connection returns a bogus error message which then screws the database and crashes the whole system.

So, in this order (and multiple times):

1. buy a memory card
2. format: NO JOY
3. hard reset the PSV
4. uninstall game
5. re-download it
6. re-install: NO JOY
7. restart it in Safe mode
8. format the memory card
9. restart in Safe mode
10. rebuild the database
11. restart in Safe mode
12. reinstall the OS
13. restart in Safe mode
14. shut off and on: NO JOY
15. disable the DHCP function and configure the PSV to a fixed IP address
16. open my wireless router admin panel
17. create a DMZ for the IP address of the PSV
18. restart the wireless network
19. repeat #7 to #14: NO JOY
20. buy another game (Assassin’s Creed III)
21. start from hard card
22. repeat #7 to 14: NO JOY

At which point I run out of options, and I do what my wife suggested five minutes after my son reported the problem: return it to the store, get another one, works like a charm.

Women will rule the world!

CES news

The big thing seems to be 4k television – for those of you who live in a cave, 4k TV is the next reason why you should throw away your 3D HDTV, in exchange for one that has roughly sixteen times as many pixels.

But is this good enough?

Turns out it isn’t – some bloke actually calculated the resolution of the human eye (full paper here): the condensed version is that the human eye has a resolution of about 24,000 by 24,000 pixels.

This is an interesting answer to my friend Roberto @connessoviaggia: “…oh, I thought you said *twenty*four-k!”"

IPhone 5 – an ISOC viewpoint

Here at last.

Of course, I won’t buy it, and I just realized there are multiple reasons.

1. although I am dazzled as the next guy by the 3D maps, they are a living room show-off toy; when I really need directions I need them fast, clear and reliable. Google wins hands down, the decision of booting them off is suicidal, very “old IBM” or “old Microsoft”-like;
2. the battery life of the iPhone 5 sucks just like every other smartphone’s  (BTW, THAT would be the only thing to make me reconsider, ever!) but with an iPhone I cannot carry a spare;
3. I do not want to be completely assimilated in the RDF beamed by Apple. I need to be as conversant with Android as I am with iOS/OS X
4. my pre-owned Samsung Galaxy SII = EUR 199; iPhone 5 = EUR 729 (all the way up to 949 !!)

Point #4 is also my answer to all the people carping about how outrageously expensive the iPhone 5 is: you DON’T HAVE to buy it, did you know that?

Expired!

As someone may know, I have owned a decent number of iPods, some of which are still lying more or less forgotten in drawers. Needing to turn one into a digital recorder I purchased the excellent Tascam iM2 stereo mic only to find – shame on me for not reading the fine print with enough attention – that it only works with iOS 4.3 onwards while I don’t go past 4.2.1. Dang!

Guess this is another job for the still in the pipeline iPad 3.

3D VoD?! not really !

Today was a heavy news day: Berlusconi may be indicted for underage prostitution, Steve Jobs taking a medical leave of absence and then the world’s first 3D VoD service is being launched in this country.

Having seen these three items in this sequence the last almost escaped me, and then I thought, wait a minute.

This is the country where only half of houselholds have access to broadband (and my house is NOT among the lucky half) and you’re telling me someone chose HERE to test one of the most bandwidth intensive applications? WTF??

But reading beyond the headline clarifies everything:

[...] Unlike true VoD services where the files are stored on a remote server and streamed in real-time to the user, 3VOD stores the files locally on a set top box.
When the film is complete on the hard disk, it appears in the user’s electronic programme guide for viewing. As the film is being served from the hard disk there are no issues of latency, buffering or quality concerns. [...]

So let me get this straight: they’ll pump the movies they want to my system and they’ll call this Video on Demand because I can pick which movie to watch among their 50 titles or so?

Should’ve called that IVoD, VoD italian-style…

To the a$$holes of #Vodafail

Just landed in London, trying to check in at the airport, but iPad won’t work because I am over my roaming data traffic limit.

I complained last week about non receiving any hint about this beign the problem (instead of some oher malfunctioning), but I cannot say this is the case any longer: as soon as I switch data roaming on, my home carrier, Vodafone, informs me that I have splurged a little too much, but that I can always opt to splurge even more by visiting some 100-char long address (I thought we had those newfangled thingies called *ahem* links, but obviously this state-of-th-vart info has not reached them, yet).

The dialog box, lest they entertain anything remotely resembling a conversation with me, only bears an “OK” button, which I dutifully press to acknowledge receipt of message.

From that moment on, some braindead programmer decided I need to see resend the same message every second or so, engaging with my finger in a sort of videogame: to regain control of my device, I must press “OK” and then immediaely switch off the browser, go to Settings and switch off the data roaming option. All along while being bombarded by more messages which I cannot ignore because they pile up and prevent me from accessing anything else.

As this simple operation is performed on a train, it takes me the full ride from Heathrow to Paddington, meaning I cannot take advantage of the train free wifi to check my mail.

So here is some free advice for whoever is monitoring this at #Vodafail:

1. If you want to sell me more traffic, propose so in a dialog box where I can answer “Yes” or “No”
2. If it is “Yes”, take me directly to the page where I buy traffic
3. If it is “No”, leave me alone in peace with my offline device.

#Moo!

Short love story

Installed Seeismic, tried it out for 24 hours and immediately dumped it.

I had fallen for its “stream” thing, but I should have checked better: the stream is only made of Twitter and Facebook updates – no way to add RSS feeds from anything else. All of this on the back of the Adobe AIR librairies to get a glorified version of Tweetie that sucks up 5 times the resources.

I understand cycles and memory are cheap nowadays, but no thanks !

Un-kindle

See? Hate to say this, but I told you.

Vo(mit)fone

Good job, Camillo!

Translations for non-italian speakers:

• “Someone might like to send MMS… easily”
• “Someone might like to send files via Bluetooth… easily”
• “Someone might like to do cut&paste… easily”

• “But all… would like to do these things without losing their shirt !”

The title? watch the video to the very end…