My Tech Life

Now that I am overwhelmed by gadgets I need to make it certain that my PIM data are synchronised. As I have explained before this is difficult because they don’t talk to each other very well. Especially Fomalhaut (that is, the Sony Ericsson phone). It will only synchronise to a Windows machine, or a SyncML server.

Altair (the Linux laptop), speaks SyncML too, but again it would only talk to a SyncML server. It is said somewhere there is a SyncML opensync plugin that will carry the message back and forth between Evolution software and phones that support SyncML. Unfortunately Fedora packagers don’t bother to include it in their repositories.

Because both devices will talk to a SyncML server the solution is obvious: synchronise both to the SyncML server. It happens that I already have a free SyncML server account at ScheduleWorld, so I decided to utilise the account which otherwise remained unused.

But it doesn’t go as smoothly as I hope. The synchronisation is flaky. I use SyncEvolution on the Altair, and built-in SyncML client on the Fomalhaut. SyncEvolution will sometimes freeze, and Fomalhaut often bugs out with “Connection Error” message.

It seems that connection to Scheduleworld servers (or the servers themselves) is not quite reliable. Meanwhile, it seems the best place to save PIM data is still the Palm PDA. Not only it synchronise rather well with the Altair, Sirius is happy to exchange data with the iBook G4 (Procyon).

Now, have I told you that the Mac doesn’t speak SyncML?

Right now in addition to the Compal laptop which runs Fedora 8 (Altair) and a Palm Tungsten E2 (Sirius), I have just acquired two new gadgets : a Sony Ericsson m600i (christened Fomalhaut) and an iBook G4 (christened Procyon). Well, not so new, because those two are second-hand.

The Sony Ericsson phone is meant to replace my old, creaking, battered, dumb Samsung phone. I was glad at first, because the price was reasonable and it had several nice features like full web browser and music player. It also support IDLE feature of IMAP protocol, and that means pushmail. I set it up to work with my Gmail account and now I have a pushmail solution without owning a Blackberry

The phone also has quite good PIM capability to replace my trusty Tungsten E2, but it cannot synchronise data with my Linux laptop. And as I found out later, not with Macs either.

I bought the iBook G4 mainly for testing MacOS X applications. It runs MacOS X 10.4 Tiger, which I have already updated to 10.4.11. I find it rather slow, and it dampens my enthusiasm a little. I plan to upgrade the memory to 768 MB, or perhaps even 1,3 GB, but that can wait. The Mac is not meant to be the main workhorse anyway.

I think Friendster is still the most frequented social networking site in Indonesia, but lately  Facebook has gained traction. Fast.

It is easy to see why Facebook is much more popular overseas. As one user puts it “Facebook is the ultimate time-waster”. To me the main attraction is applications, which practically nonexistent until lately on Friendster.

Not all new Indonesian Facebook users impressed with it, however. Some feel swamped by app invitations, and others wonder what is Facebook all about, and what makes it so great.

It is interesting also to compare my networks in both sites. My friend list in Facebook is still short compared to Friendster, which is understandable because I am still new to the former.

However, I also notice there is little intersection between the two lists. My Friendster friend list contains friends from college and school, but very few business acquaintances and work colleagues.  The latter group is well represented in my Facebook friend list.Only one former schoolmate listed as Facebook buddy, while lately I get stream of old acquaintances from school in Friendster.

It seems Friendster is for networking with old friends, and Facebook will be for new ones.

Astronomy has been my favorite subject since I was able to read. My father had a Time-Life series book titled “Alam Semesta” (The Universe), and I read it everyday. I dreamt of being an astronomer. But when I was getting older my elders told me pursuing an astronomy career would not be exactly promising, especially in Indonesia where the profession of scientist is not generally valued.

Somehow I felt like the Little Prince whose dreams were dashed by grown-ups. I cheated a little by attending Physics Department (a closely related subject), but by then I found myself not really interested in astronomy anymore. Perhaps I had already been grown old.

It doesn’t mean my interest has been completely waned. Now and then I find something that interest me. For example a few years ago I visited Observatorium Bosscha in Lembang, Bandung, and sometimes I write reviews of planetarium softwares. I will be reviewing Stellarium next.

Computers are meant to help us to be more productive. Yeah, right. Still it is a good reason for me to try out new ways (read: software) which claimed to make me more organised, efficient and perhaps intelligent.

One favourite of those app was Google Calendar. I quite like it, especially calendar sharing feature. Unfortunately I do not have anyone to share schedule with (sob, sob). I tried to badger my girlfriend to try it out and share our schedules, but it seemed she didn’t get it. In the end I gave it up.

Still, from time to time I meet blog entries which praise the usefulness of those online calendars, and sometimes I will be intrigued and try again. Today is one of these times.

I found that now Google Calendar has the weather forecast capability. Great. I promptly activate the feature. Now I can plan ahead according to the weather. Yay! Or not. It seems that it is going to be raining in Jakarta for a few days–something I think I already know. It has been so for weeks now. I hope it would be helpful, though.

Anyway, my calendar app of choice is still Evolution (at least for now), and I tried to find something that will duplicate the weather calendar functionality. It turns out there is a site that offers online weather calendar to subscribe to, in a format that will be understood by Evolution. The site is Weather Underground. I quickly locate a calendar for Jakarta, and paste the URL to Evolution. It promptly crashed. But when I restarted Evolution it correctly subscribe the calendar and showed the forecasts. I am quite pleased. I also add Indonesian Holiday Calendar.

Now I am going fully electronic with calendars and do not need the old-fashioned desk calendar anymore. It is nice to have though.