Proving the Obviously Untrue

I had a PS1 and have a PS2. I've put off buying a PS3 for a while because they were so dear, the graphics seemed to be at the expense of game play, and because I missed the boat on backwards compatibility on the first model. Today I phoned a friend to ask about backwards compatibility and he told me it was all just software now. Ok, that's not going to get any better, so I finally went out and bought a PS3. The big display box features prominent billing for the new dual shock controllers. You won't notice, unless you turn the box round after you get handed one, that it says it no longer has any backwards compatibility with the PS2, not even software but rather absurdly, there is PS1 support. I think Sony have finally lost their minds, they seem to be on a campaign to progressively punish customers who weren't early adopters. Whatever saving they made for this compromise probably wasn't worth it, and if I'd read this before I purchased that might well have been the clinching point. Yes, I have a PS2, but I just took it out of place to make room for this beast. Now I need to find a home for both.

Next I began trying to set up a media server on my main Debian box, imladris. I first tried gmediaserver, but found that I could see all the files but the PS3 said "unsupported data" for all of them, then I tried mediatomb, and had the same problem, even after tweaking the config.xml file to add PS3 compatibility, and using the command line tool to import files. I finally found that by surfing to http://localhost:49152/ and adding the directory from that interface that it worked. Phew. This was a big reason for buying the PS3.

So I sat down to play Ratchett & Clank and was immediately told I hadn't enough disk space. Absurd. I have 60+ Gb free and need 419 Mb. I find there's a known bug that means I need to download a big file to get this to work. Doing that now.

First experience is a lot less positive than I hoped after such a long wait.

Edit

Another odd little thing, it took a very long time for 1+ Mb to download last night. Google suggests all sorts of things that make the wireless connection slow, but here's the thing, I'm using a wired connection, since my wifi doesn't quite reach the corner the PS3 is in. Odd.

Posted by Colin Turner

We went to Alcudia on a family holiday this year, and spent a lot of the time around the pool watching Aimee enjoy her swimming. One day, we decided we would take a boat trip from the ones at the harbour. There was only one that appealed - which was essentially a glass bottom boat. We took it because we thought Aimee would enjoy seeing the fish, and it was relatively short. It was around €42 for the three of us. Not a huge amount, but not that cheap for a two hour trip.

The boat was a catamaran, and both sides of each hull had rather short windows in them. There wasn't a lot of space considering the number of people on board. We had a quick look downstairs, and there wasn't anything to see. We spent around 30 minutes picking people up from other piers along the coast and then headed off. Periodically we would check downstairs; nothing to see. Never mind, plenty of time yet. We went out around the coast for quite some time, travelling at a fair lick so there again, was nothing to see. Finally we stopped briefly (a minute or two at a time in a few coves). I saw one fish, and the seaweed on the bottom. Aimee, who you will recall was the reason for the trip saw no fish at all. The whole journey was just viewing a blue rectangle. The only life visible most of the time were people in the other hull also looking for something. Well that was it. and back to port.

Now Karen and I have been on a submarine, and I think "submarine vision" was kind of pushing it, so Karen went to complain at the desk. The girl explained the manager was not available, and another man in the booth laughingly said "you didn't pay for the fish". Uh, but we did, and I think from the poster, it's clear we did. I'm a diver, and have spent many hours on boats, I'm not that excited about them to pay for a two hour round trip.

The next day Karen got the hotel reception to call the manager, one "Toni Capllonch Alenyar". He wouldn't speak to her at all, referring conversation through his receptionist. After lots of nonsense including putting the phone down on us (causing our angry receptionist to phone him straight back), he eventually relayed through his receptionist "If you want fish, go the Caribbean". Another hang up, after which they no longer answered the phone.

So we saw more fish at the beach than we did on the "Submarine Vision" trip, and given the reply, it looks a bit like a deliberate deception, but hey, take his advice, I've been to the Caribbean, and they know how to do trips to see fish. For that matter I'd avoid his other trips too, maybe they aren't quite as they are advertised either. I've at least had the pleasure of depriving them of some more business.

Posted by Colin Turner

Just before we went on our family holiday, I went with Karen to look at new phones for me and for her. Karen liked the look of the phone, but wanted it in a specific colour and was prepared to wait to order that. I decided I liked the look of the Nokia N95. The iPhone is not an attractive prospect for me, apparently it's a poor phone, a poor camera and there even seem to be issues with its sound. So no amount of astounding user interface makes up for that. The Samsung Omnia, coming out soon, looks really interesting but it runs Windows CE, and that's a big minus for me. I'm very interested in the OpenMoko FreeRunner neo which can, among other things run my favourite operating system Debian, after the great work done at debconf. Apparently it's not however a useful and reliable phone, which is definitely a minus too. Maybe next generation, and I can't hack everything at once.

The Nokia N95 runs Symbian which is a plus. I was warned that the battery life was poor and given the choice between the conventional model with an 8 Gb card, and the N95 8Gb which has the memory totally internalised. The former also has a shutter cover for the lens, which was discarded in the latter to allow a larger battery. I wanted the cover. I got the handset from Phones4u and it's an O2 handset, who I have my contract with. It took a while to put the order though, so they gave me £50 for waiting. So, seriously, I got the free upgrade, the memory card, a screen protector and £50 in my hand. The bundled accessories are good, a USB cable (like the much criticised N800 it doesn't seem to do charging) a car charger, a tiny regular charger (same as the N800 actually) and the usual ear phones, with a small control panel on a cable for the sound.

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Posted by Colin Turner