bzr status schwuk
Well it’s been a while I wrote here (if you ignore the Twitter spam :)) - in fact July was the last time I blogged in earnest - and a few things have changed, so I thought I’d talk about some of them.
First of all I’ve moved to the Distro QA team here at Canonical. This means that I’m now working directly on Ubuntu, and my work will be much more visible - both in the distribution and here on this blog. I’m working with a great team here within Canonical - Henrik, Leann, Brian, Steve, Ara, Pedro, and Marc - and the wider Ubuntu QA community, as well as the rest of the Distro team and of course the whole Ubuntu community. At the moment I’m focused on hardware testing, and you’ll be seeing a lot more attention given to testing in Ubuntu over the next few releases.
Apart from working I attended the “last” LugRadio Live - see you all again next year! - and had a great holiday in the South of France. I also spent a long weekend in the woods in Wales at the Bushcraft UK Bushmoot where I got the chance to meet Mors Kochanski who is an amazing, inspiring and above all friendly guy. The ‘moot itself was well worth the trip, just like LugRadio Live is, but meeting him made it absolutely worthwhile.
Last November I pondered moving to 64-bit. Last week after a few stability and performance problems (entirely self-inflicted) I decided to bite the bullet, wipe Vista from my hard drive forever (it came with the laptop, and I left it around “just in case” but it never really got used) and perform a fresh install. This was my first “real” install (if you ignore my testing work) since I first put Feisty on the laptop when I got it, and the install experience is really nice these days. Since I had the opportunity I decided to go with 64-bit, and I’m pleased to say that I’ve had zero problems with it. Flash is commonly criticised as being difficult under 64-bit, but it installed via the package in Synaptic and has worked since. If anything Firefox + Flash has been more reliable than it was under 32-bit.
In August I succumbed and got myself an iPhone 3G, even though I’m months away from the end of my current contract with my N95. So far I have been seriously impressed with it - browsing is excellent, and it is by far the best e-mail experience I’ve had on any mobile device to date. Oh, and it’s a decent phone too! 
I’ve not really encountered any of the performance/stability problems many others have complained about, except when I had it configured to sync OTA with Google via NeuvaSync when it would occasionally get a bit sluggish. That was with the 2.0.2 firmware, and I’ve not re-enabled OTA syncing since upgrading to 2.1 yesterday. This is my first iPod as well - the only other current iPod in the house belongs to Schwuklet #1, although Schwuklet #2 has put an order in with Santa Claus for a 4th generation Nano. The iPhone has increased my podcast consumption as well, which can only be a good thing.
That’s it for now, but I’m sure I’ll think of more things to post soon.
Nokia N800 or Apple iPhone?
Earlier this week I was in New York City (it’s a helluva town), and as well as the usual tourist attractions I stopped by the Apple store in Soho so I could play with the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Both devices are very slick – Safari and WiFi access are excellent – but I see little point in getting a Touch when the iPhone is just around the corner in the UK. Even better, the iPhone is exclusive to my current mobile provider.
However, I have a slight dilemma. I like Apple products, and I really want an iPhone when my contract is up for renewal. The problem is that I don’t like the direction Apple is going with shutting out direct access to their devices, nor can I properly sync my Evolution calendar and contacts to the device if I get one. Thirdly, I already have a phone that is pretty good (as a phone).
So I started focusing about what I really like about the iPhone, and apart from the whole shiny Apple experience it boils down to two things: Browser and WiFi. This got me thinking again about the Nokia N800, which also has the added bonuses of being a) open, b) hackable and c) supports VoIP.
What I really want to know from N800 owners is two things:
Answers on a postcard please.
look good
