Kolbu

After upgrading to Dolphin 6.0004, Ray 3.1 and Orca there are multiple problems you can experience.

First one is that whenever you enter the forums, you get a popup box saying:

main div is not defined
please name main content container

This is due to bad caching in the application, and you have to remove a few cache files from the server to fix it. From your web server document root, these files are in orca/cachejs/ and groups/orca/cachejs/. Delete all the files that have a file name that looks like junk, i.e. something like e3d43deace3edbc…

Second problem is that they messed up the Ray part of the upgrade so that all widget licenses are invalidated and can’t be reinstated. To fix this you have to download and apply a hotfix. Download the hotfix here. You get a zip file, unzip in document root and it will overwrite a handful of files. After this you have to input all your Ray widget licenses again, but this time it should work.

There are undoubtedly more, but those were the ones I experienced. Note that this is not an endorsement of this product at all, rather the opposite. It’s a complete mess with a non-existing support organisation and a web presence that boggles the mind. It’s spread across half a dozen web sites and I can’t find a single thing there.

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If you’re hit by the dreaded

java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: 

after downloading and running the latest GMail mobile application, then try downloading it again and this time answering No to the question about whether to keep old data or not. Fixed the problem for me on my (t)rusty old SE K750i, may do for you as well. The newer v1.1.1 is significantly better than the old v1.0.0 so it’s well worth trying to get it to work.

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Sorry about the downtime in the past couple of days. Life in the ADSL+ world isn’t all roses and the Thomson/Alcatel Speedtouch ST585 modem needs quite a bit of configuration to behave after a factory reset. Unfortunately I had missed out a few entries, so that what you got instead of the normal service was the web pages on the actual modem. All fixed now I hope. 

Picture below is what the University of Maryland IT department had to deal with after being hit by a tornado. Glad my problems weren’t as severe…

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So it arrived. Hong Kong to Norway in little under 72 hours, not too bad except that half of that time was spent on the last 20 kilometers according to the DHL tracking website. I’ll start a review page which I’ll fill with the highlights today and update as I get more mileage out of the player. You’ll find the link in the menu on the right.

As you can see, they didn’t spend a lot on the packaging…  

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There is currently quite a frenzy around the new Networked Media Tank from PopcornHour. The first batch was sold out in so short a time that the NMT/PopcornHour community forum flowed over with angry posts. Apparently PopcornHour had been playing it safe and only ordered about 50 units or so in the first batch, not really enough for the thousand or so eager wouldbe customers. So for the next batch it was not a repeat of the "hit refresh at the right time"-shopping experience the initial release had been. Instead they sent out invitations to the people having registered on the site on a first register first dibs basis. I luckily registered quite early (number 200ish) and got my invitation about a week ago. Today they billed my Google Checkout account, which should mean that they’re shipping. So if all goes well, I should have a unit in hand in a week or two and provide you with a review of the unit. Head over to http://www.popcornhour.com or http://www.networkedmediatank.com if you want to see what the commotion is about.

Update: It’s now reached DHL shipping facilities Germany, so should be on my doorstep in a day or two!

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There is a changing of the guards happening in the standalone media player world. The current batch of players like the Mvix MX-760HD, the TViX HD-M5000, the Mediagate MD 350 HD etc are rapidly becoming obsolete because of a new chip from Sigma Designs. The old players are based around the EM8621, the new ones are based around the SMP8635. There are newish players out which use the EM8623, but find a player with the new chip instead as they’re just being released and you don’t want to end up with yesteryears technology. They have support for H.264/MPEG4, and quite a few HD-formats like Xvid-HD, Divx-HD, and WMV9-HD. Audio support includes Ogg and Flac. In addition to this, the devices will come with a browser and audio/video streaming from the Internet, bittorrent client and even RSS feed support. All highly desirable functions you simply can’t get on the current crop of players. See for example http://www.popcornhour.com/.

No idea how they are as a company nor if their product will live up to expectations, but the technical specifications certainly look impressive. Especially considering the US price of $179. Most likely much more expensive here in europe of course. The tech specs are a bit loose on whether or not the device will support 1080p video or not, possibly just as 720p in and upscaling to 1080p out. Time will tell, as they’ve promised to start taking orders at the end of next week. Note that the image above may or may not be the final look of the thing, as I’ve seen several alternatives. This image is straight from the actual site though, so it might be the final design. Too bad it now looks like a cheap external hard drive enclosure, but for that price you can’t expect too much.

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Your average unix system admin doesn’t earn a lot of money. Those who do would most likely be getting one of these. No idea what ROOT Automobile is or does, but you can’t argue with a ride like that. Hit the picture for the source article with additional photos and some specs.

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First time for me. And I only asked for the main page, didn’t even perform a query. You gotta wonder if this error page was the first thing they designed though, as it has a definite last century feel to it.

If you want to look at the source, here it is. 

And, impressively enough, Google Adsense caved on me just a day or two after. What is the world coming to…

And you can find the source for that  beauty here.

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Note that I have a whole set of useful information about the Mvix collected under the Mvix-link on the Pages menu to the right. 

My new toy is a Mvix MX-760HD Media Player. Like the Apple TV and so many other similar devices out these days, it simply lets your media collection talk to your TV in the easiest manner possible. It groks both wired and wireless, and from unpacking to viewing something from my server on my TV took all of 10 minutes. And that includes the time spent actually reading the manual to figure out how to get it to talk DVI out. Your mileage may vary depending on infrastructure and skill though, but it does seem like one of the better items in this regard.

 The good parts are plentiful. The documentation and the web site is a bit divided on whether or not it will read and display 1080p HD or just 1080i. I have only tried 720p because that is the native resolution of my TV but I will nvestigate further. It claims to understand most known formats out there, both video and audio. It even knows OGG, most likely due to the device being Linux-based.

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I was recently reminded about an excellent Fantasy/SciFi book called Keeping It Real, by Justina Robson that I read last year. It’s worth bringing up now as the paperback is due out on the US in 3 three days. If you haven’t read it, put it on your short list. Cover shot below, hit it to purchase at Amazon or memorize the image so you know what to look for if you’re the bookstore kind of person. The UK cover is similar, but with a greenish background. The plot is the usual girl meets boy. But the girl in question is a cyborg secret agent and the boy is an elf rock star and they must do a bit of dimension hopping to solve their problems. But it really is much better than it sounds, honest. As an added bonus, it’s the first of in a new series called Quantum Gravity and the second book called Selling Out is due this spring. So if you like it as much as I did, you don’t have to wait long for the next installment.

For a strange tie in with the series, check out the website of the elf’s rock band. The No Shows. They’ve even released a song you can listen to, with a little help from a more earthly band, Cynic Guru. Much in the same manner Mucky Pup helped Deathtöngue/Billy and the Boingers a couple of decades ago.

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