Just a few days after the launch of the games the first interesting news appears.
The first reviews of the games has appeared. It sounds like some of the games is quite OK. But it is pretty simple games. Playing Doom on the Linux firmware seems the most advanced game by far.
We could hope that new independent games will appear soon, since the reverse engineering of the Ipod games has started. In time it is the hope that this will make it possible for people to write their own Ipod games. This could spawn a new community.
Apple latest announcement included games for the Ipod.
When Apple Tuesday announced the New Ipod models, the biggest surprise to me was that Apple will be selling Games through the Itunes Music Store. The games include classics like Tetris, Pac-Man and Texas-hold-em.
Most Geeks know that it has been possible to play games on the Ipod for some time. All that is needed is an alternative firmware like Linux or Rockbox, and then it is possible to play Doom or use the Gameboy emulator to play Gameboy classics.
Synchronizing the Ipod calendar is very simple, it only require, that you place your ical-file in the Calendar folder on the Ipod. Syncing with Google Calendar only requires that you download your private calendar file. If access your Google Calendar, and navigate to [settings]-[Calendar]-["calendar name"], then you just have to right click on the “ical” logo by the private address, and select to save it to the Calendar folder on the Ipod.
Even though this is pretty simple, it could be fun to make it even simpler, having a script on the ipod for one-click updates. Personally I would download the ical file with wget, this i by default installed in most Unix/Linux system, and is available for windows by downloding the unixutils from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/, and extracting the wget file (around 200kb.). Afterwards all you need to do is place the wget file and a windows bat file in the root of the ipod.
Example of update-ipod-calendar.bat (just swap the http address for Google Calendar address). cd Calendar
..\wget http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/example_of_address/basic.ics
It should be even easier to compose a unix shell-scripts which accomplishes the same. And within minutes, and by just adding three small files, my Ipod can synchronize with Google calendar on both Windows and Unix systems, without installing anything on the machine.
After I’ve gotten an Ipod Video I have the possibility of taking video with me when I go, but often this is hindered by the video only being available as a stream. Using Linux there is an easy 2-step way around this. The only requirements are that mplayer and ffmpeg is installed. Even though I have not tried it on anything but wmv’s, but I guess it is a very robust method (depending on the number of codecs’s installed). Step 1: grabbing the video
Grab the video from the source: I’ve found mplayer’s command line does this very well.
Step 2: Convert the file to an Ipod-friendly format
I read somewhere (and I can’t find it again) that mencoder was not appropriate because of some technicality concerning their header. One should therefore use ffmpeg when converting to the Ipod.
I find this commandl ine to work okay as long as the source is not in widescreen format (16:9), if it is the aspect will be wrong. Then you might want to try out this one.
I found the last piece of command line at this here, which is a great source for further information on video to the Ipod.
Now the video should be ready for the Ipod, just sync it to the Ipod with your favourite tool for that.
On problem which often occurs is that the mms address is hard to get knowledge of. This can many times be retrieved by right clicking in a playback of stream, in firefox with the mplayer-plugin installed, and select “copy url”. A more complicated way is using ethereal network analyzer.
Even though this is a guide for Linux I would think that Windows this would work in Windows with cygwin and ffmpeg and mplayer installed.
One last question is about the legality in this - but that must be depending on the publisher on the stream and so on.
When travelling digital copies of important documents can come in handy
When going on my last travel, I realized have many documents I had to bring and how vulnerable I was to losing these documents, this being passport, plain-tickets, hotel-vouchers, insurance and so on. In order to accommodate this vulnerability I scanned the most important documents saved them to PDF a brought them with on a USB-storage. This storage was kept separate from the documents in order to reduce the risk of losing both, and it was encrypted so that the sensible information keept on it would not be accessible to others in case it was stolen.
Scanning the documents
In order to get a digital copy you need access to a scanner (surprise!). Watch out that you don’t scan the documents in to good quality (I use 300dpi, 256 Gray tones). After scanning the documents I would save them in PDF-format since in PDF since it is very versatile while still keeping the print-out an exact black & white copy.
If your scanner software does not support export to PDF this can be accomplished by installing pdf995, which appears as a printer in windows, but in fact saves your print out as a PDF. In other words it should be possible to get an exact copy in most internet cafés Storing the documents
In order to keep the documents accessible one can either keep them on a USB device or online.
If you decide to keep the documents on a USB device they will be safer if encrypted. Travelling-forever has made a small guide on how to encrypt part og a USB device The USB device be either external an hard drive, a small flash USB stick or an mp3 player like Apples Ipod (it can likely be a burned cd-rom too - but I have not checked to se how truecrypt reacts to not being able to write).
The other way to go is to keep the documents at an online service you trust (and save the encryption). I one has not access to a ftp server this could be accomplished by signing up at Box.net, sending all the documents to the Gmail account or any other online way where you trust the documents are safe while still being accessible.
On my recent 3 weeks vacation I bought an Ipod Camera Connector and used it with my Sony DSC-P150. After coming home I read elsewhere that this combination does not work stable - I had it working stable with a small change of settings and will explain how to do it the hope that other can make it work to.
How to make it work
DSC-P150 is uses the “normal” usb-mode by default, for some weird reason this is unstable with the Camera connector, but if the camera is set to use “PTP” instead it all seems to work stable.
PTP USB mode is activated by setting the wheel to setup, and select “Setup 2″ and “USB Connect”.
The real world test
When I used the connector at first, in the default “Normal” user mode, it was unstable and crashed the Ipod with out getting all of the pictures, and I had no success in several tries. With the “PTP” USB mode I have transferred all the contents of an almost filled 512 mb stick 6 times without any problems at all. If any other have problems I would like to know.
The Camera connector however still suffer from the vulnerability others have pointed out, that it could be faster and is heavy on the battery, but it is a nice solution to a common problem.
