Earlier today, RIM released Blackberry Desktop Software for Mac (10.5.5+ required). It lets you sync your iTunes music with your Blackberry, sync your contacts and appointments with “popular Mac applications,” add/remove apps, and transfer data between your Mac and BB.
This 26 meg app is nice, but RIM needs to get going on a Mac port of their SDK. Sad considering most of it is just Java, with EXE wrappers. Fortunately there’s Openberry and other workarounds.

Why the hell would you want your links where humans don’t notice them? Because machines do notice them, and your purpose is to have as many sites link back to you as possible. This artificially raises the rank of a site in the search engines. Whether this method actually helps or not is questionable. It helps, especially if done on a big level, but the point of this post isn’t to discuss SEO. It’s to raise awareness of this what I’m noticing to be an increasingly common tactic.

This idea isn’t new. Adding URLs to a 1×1 pixel transparent gif for tracking purposes is old and common, but this is now being used to build backlinks.

You can make this impossible by disabling UBB/HTML in your blog comments. Other methods include adding a border around smilies which are clickable.

I probably discovered this out of frustration, but for the past few months (or years) I thought it was something we all knew until I saw one of my friend’s enter the captcha value. I never actually stopped to think about why a captcha would be “optional” – it’s ridiculous, and I’m probably overlooking an obvious point to this.

Enter the correct name/pass and hit login

Seemingly random captcha

* I’m not sure why, but some people are saying that they cannot login without entering the captcha. I’ve tried on Swiftweasel and Firefox 3.x/Opera 9.x and 10/Konqueror/Chrome on Linux, and on Safari on the Mac, and have never needed to enter the captcha.

Also worth mentioning, a lot of forms you get when you try to download something are optional. For example, if you try to download Mimer SQL, it gives you this form: http://developer.mimer.com/downloads/downloads_licens.tml?id=528 but you can just scroll down and hit the download button without putting any info in.

Copy Files Securely Between Two Machines

I used to always forget the syntax for this, until I realized that the syntax is exactly like the standard cp command. In fact, you can copy files like you normally would using scp, on your local machine. The following are equivalent:

$ cp file file.orig
$ scp file file.orig

Where they differ is, scp lets you copy files over a network, through SSH. Here’s an example:

$ scp contents.txt silver@ssh.domain.com:/tmp

This will copy local file contents.txt to /tmp on the remote machine ssh.domain.com, as user silver. Here are some more examples:

$ scp draft.pdf ssh.domain.com:

(copy draft.pdf to my home dir on remote machine. username is implied to be the same locally and remotely.)

$ scp swine.jpg rex@ssh.domain.com

(read: This will copy swine.jpg to local machine as a file named rex@ssh.domain.com. To make it go remote, append a : to the address, like above)

scp supports, among other things, compression (-C) and recursive copying of directories (-r).

$ scp -rC code/ ssh.domain.com:/archive/code_02032009

Trying to copy to a directory you don’t have permission to (/usr etc) will fail.

Don’t Get Lost Jumping To and Fro Between Directories

You can use cd - to jump to the previous (NOT parent) dir. For example:

kiwi@localhost: ~ $ cd /usr/local/share
kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $ cd -
/home/kiwi
kiwi@localhost: ~ $ cd -
/usr/local/share
kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $

Another way is using pushd/popd – A Last In First Out (LIFO) stack of dirs.

kiwi@localhost: ~ $ pushd /usr/local/share/
/usr/local/share ~

pushd is like cd but keeps note of the current dir before cd’ing into a new one. The stack of dirs is listed every time you invoke pushd (the “/usr/local/share ~” output you see above.)

kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $ pushd /
/ /usr/local/share ~

Stack is ordered left to right, latest push first. If we pop the first dir off:

kiwi@localhost: / $ popd
/usr/local/share /tmp ~
kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $

We’re back in the share dir. We can keep popping until there’s nothing left (throws an error):

kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $ popd
/tmp ~
kiwi@localhost: /tmp $ pushd /lib
/lib /tmp ~
kiwi@localhost: /lib $ popd
/tmp ~
kiwi@localhost: /tmp $ popd
~
kiwi@localhost: ~ $ popd
bash: popd: directory stack empty

Working with Long Lines

No need for more Bash shortcut cheat sheets, but here are some useful ones to help you work with long lines.

You can jump to the start & end of a line using CTRL+a & CTRL+e respectively. Example (* is the cursor):

kiwi@localhost: ~ $ echo al the ducks are swimming in the w*

and you want to fix the first word. You can hop to the beginning of the line with CTRL+a:

kiwi@localhost: ~ $ *echo al the ducks are swimming in the w

and now you can jump to the end of the misspelled word “al” using CTRL+Right twice to correct it:

kiwi@localhost: ~ $ echo all*the ducks are swimming in the w

Now ctrl+e to jump to the end of line:

kiwi@localhost: ~ $ echo all the ducks are swimming in the w*

Instead of backspacing every character, use ALT+Backspace to backspace entire words. You can also delete all or part of a line using CTRL+u combo. It deletes everything before the cursor. Likewise, CTRL+k wipes out everything after the cursor. I’ve developed a habit of using CTRL+e CTRL+k to delete lines.

Bash has a lot of ALT commands that let you move and manipulate words. ALT+l and ALT+u will make a word in front of the cursor lowercase or uppercase, for example. A neat one I don’t think I ever used is ALT+\ It pulls everything after the cursor left to the first non-whitespace character. Here’s an example, * is the cursor:

BEFORE:

$ my     spacebar is    *sticky

AFTER (ALT+\):

$ my     spacebar issticky

Avoid Retyping Commands & Arguments

ESC + . is very useful. Escape followed by a period will output the argument you sent to your last Bash command. Command calls themselves are outputted if they were invoked without any arguments (popd, ls, etc).

Example, unzipping a file and moving the archive to /tmp:

$ unzip archive-with-a-long-ambiguous-name-03092009-5960-1.2.5.zip
$ mv archive-with-a-long-ambiguous-name-03092009-5960-1.2.5.zip /tmp

In the mv command, the archive name was outputted by pressing ESC+. (full command being mv (ESC+.) /tmp) There was no need to type the long archive name twice.

The argument is taken from your bash history. You can keep invoking ESC+. to cycle back through all your recent command arguments. (history -c to clear)

Try not to forget this; You’ll naturally find plenty of uses for it.

Another way to avoid re-typing commands is CTRL+R. It will initiate a search of your command history. Begin typing, and watch Bash try to complete your command from previous ones you entered.

Command Getting Too Big? Send it to your Editor

Sometimes you begin writing what you think will be a simple command, only to realize that it has grown too complex for the command line, and you wish you were in your text editor.

First make sure your default editor is set. This is either in $EDITOR (export EDITOR=/usr/local/bin/vim) or elsewhere depending on the distro.

Use “fc” to open the last executed command in your editor:

ls -paul --sort=size
... ls output ...
fc

Now the ls line will be open in your editor. But what if you hadn’t executed the command yet? No problem. You’re sending off an email, but quickly realize that the command line isn’t ideal for everything:

echo -e "Dear Santa, \n\n\tIt has become evident that your fat ass is contributing to Global Warming, primarily due to the large quantity of coal you distribute annually. We hereby

No matter where you are on the line, hit CTRL+x, CTRL+e to invoke your editor, which now contains what you were typing on the cmd line.

I always find myself wanting to finish a command in vim, but unwilling to type the first few lines over, especially when I’m trying to write a for loop or any ugly multiline Bash code.

IMPORTANT: Whatever you type in your editor is executed automatically after you quit the editor.

Multiple Commands on a Single Line

There are a number of ways to piece together commands (||, pipes, etc), depending on your need, but sometimes, you just commands executed consecutively. You can use ; or &&.

semicolon (;) vs AND (&&): The semicolon will run through each command consecutively, whereas && is a little smarter, and will not continue if a command does not end successfully (return 0 – you can check the return value of the last app ran with echo $?).

&& is generally safer. i.e., ./configure && make (&& sudo make install)

AND

$ cp bogus && echo "** copied"
cp: missing destination file operand after `bogus'
Try `cp --help' for more information.

SEMICOLON;

cp bogus; echo "** copied... or did I? tun tun tunnn!"
cp: missing destination file operand after `bogus'
Try `cp --help' for more information.
** copied... or did I? tun tun tunnn!

Convert between DOS and UNIX ASCII files

Sometimes you get a text file that has weird ^M characters in it. These are due to a difference in how Unix and Windows systems end lines. You can convert between these formats using unix2dos or todos and dos2unix or fromdos.

$ mkdir /tmp/rcfl
$ cd /tmp/rcfl
$ echo -e "Justa Lonely\nASCII File" > out
$ file out
out: ASCII text
$ todos out
$ file out
out: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
$ vim out # notice [dos] flag in status bar, quit :q!
$ fromdos out
$ file out
out: ASCII text

Background Processes

Have a little more control over your apps.

Stop Right Thurr
When a program is running in the foreground, you no longer have access to the command line. An example is ‘tail -f’ or ‘ruby script/server’

You can have a running process pause for a sec with CTRL+z.
Do your dirty work and then bring the app back to the foreground with fg.
To list the processes you have paused, use jobs

$ tail -f useful.log
00:00:50 User did something that was log-worthy
00:00:56 User did something that was log-worthy
00:00:57 User did something that was log-worthy

# (press CTRL+z)
[1]+  Stopped                 tail -f useful.log

$ echo "look ma, I can type"
look ma, I can type

$ fg
tail -f useful.log

# (press CTRL+z)
[1]+  Stopped                 tail -f useful.log

$ tail -f blah.tmp

# (press CTRL+z)
[2]+  Stopped                 tail -f blah.tmp

$ jobs
[1]-  Stopped                 tail -f useful.log
[2]+  Stopped                 tail -f blah.tmp
$ fg 1
(process [2] continues)

In the Background

You can have a process start in the background by appending to it a &.
and bring this to the foreground using fg [#].
As before, jobs will list background processes, but with status Running instead of Stopped.

Programs running in the background will still output to stdout, which means they’ll make the shell ugly. So if you plan on using them, think about redirecting the output.

Bash Redirection

Some things are mentioned on nearly every ‘bash tips’ page — like redirecting output. Here are the basics. We’re concerned with 2 I/O streams: STDOUT and STDERR. STDOUT has a value of 1, and it is the screen. If a program writes to stdout, that text is shown in the console. Errors are sent through a different stream, stderr, which has a value of 2. Value 0 is stdin, used for user input. The technical details aren’t important. Just remember that 1 is screen and 2 is error.

There’s a number of ways to redirect output:

$ echo "asdfasdf" 1> /tmp/asdf.txt # overwrite existing file
$ echo "asdfasdf" > /tmp/asdf.txt # (same, 1 is default, optional)
$
$ echo "32452345" >> /tmp/asdf.txt # append to end of existing file*
$ echo "wash the dishes" > /dev/null # just ignore output
$ echo "wash the dishes" 2> /dev/null # just ignore errors
$
$ more 1> /dev/null # error still shown
$ more 2> /dev/null # nothing shown
$ more &> /dev/null # nothing shown
$
$ more 2>| /dev/null # silence errors
$ more >| /tmp/more.txt # save output to file
$
$ more 1> /tmp/more.txt 2>&1 # redirect stdout to file and redirect stderr to stdout (same file)
$ more 2> /tmp/more.txt 1>&2 # have stdout follow stderr to file

To redirect output to a file & screen, use tee

$ echo "dont forget the milk" | tee /tmp/toforget.txt

More a more extensive guide on redirection, see Bash IO Redirection or some of the External Links below.

Art of teh Alias

I use a lot of aliases. Here are a few:

# I use these a lot. Can also have aptupdate, aptremove etc...
alias aptinstall='sudo apt-get install'
alias aptsearch='apt-cache search'
alias suvim='sudo vim'

# Aliasing command names. To use original commands, you'd need to specify absolute path.
alias a2restart='sudo apache2ctl restart'
alias gem='sudo gem'
alias checkinstall='sudo checkinstall'

# I used these to workaround the infamous FF memory leak (ugly)
# alias swapoff='sudo swapoff'
# alias swapon='sudo swapon'

# Going places. This + ssh keypair
alias macbookshell='ssh 192.168.1.17'
alias workshell='ssh meh@ssh.domain.com'

# Pretty output. (--group-directories-first might not work on your system).
alias lsf='ls -hAlF --group-directories-first --color=always --time-style=+" %m/%d/%y %I:%M %p "'

# List only directories
alias lsd='ls -d */'

# I'm a measly human!
alias free="free -m"

# 'gimme x' is equivalent to 'sudo chown me.me x'
# alias gimme="ME6=`whoami` && sudo \"chown $ME6.$ME6\""

# Usage: nullminate bloated-file.log
alias nullminate="cat /dev/null > "

# Search contents of an entire dir. Usage: scan "PESKY_VARIABLE ?=" project-123/
alias scan="grep -Rin --color"

These should go in a ~/.bash_aliases file and invoked from within your user conf (.bashrc?)

External links (related):

• Working more productively with bash 2.x/3.x
• Getting Started with BASH
• Bash Tips & Tricks
• 10 Tips for Writing Efficient Bash Scripts
• Best Tips & Trips for Bash
• Bash Shell Shortcuts
• Bashish
• Writing Robust Shell Scripts

Photo by ailatan (flickr)

I knew HTML and learned ActionScript (actually ActionScript wasn’t out yet. Flash only had basic scripting support) , and around 1999 I wanted to learn Javascript. I ended up getting a book on Java, thinking it was Javascript. It didn’t take more than a day to figure out they’re completely different languages, but for some reason, I kept the book anyway. $30 was a lot of money at the time. I could of bought a used Playstation game, or saved it towards what would become the greatest console of all time, released 9/9/99. But – the book will be useful eventually, I told myself, and with that, on my bookshelf it went.

Today I walked by my bookshelf and there it was: Teach Yourself Java. The last time I opened this book was the day after I bought it, sometime in 1999. Even if I keep it, if I’d like to learn Java now, I would buy a new book anyway.

A lot of us keep books. Seeing our library physically grow feels good, even if we haven’t read most of the books in it, because we will eventually, right? Keeping reference books is one thing (though I never use mine, what with cheat and all) but most books should be traded or given away. Technical books especially, not only because they’re expensive, but because unlike novels and most other types of books, they become obsolete. But unless you seriously plan on re-reading them, even books that are cheap and timeless should be traded or given away.

Who doesn’t love a book fair? or going through a big box of books in a garage sale? If we all horde books, who would keep this circle going? So what can you do with your old books instead?

You can borrow books from the library instead of buying them. Not only does not pack ratting books save space, but the deadline of having to give it back provides an incentive to begin reading them ASAP. If I’m shopping online I tend to buy dozens of books at a time, become overwhelmed when they get here, and then not start a single one. Interestingly, the last 2-3 books I’ve read (and the one I’m reading now) have all been from the library, even though I have ~20 unread books I purchased months ago.

You can still keep track of what you’ve read by using services/apps like LivingSocial or Shelfari – or something simpler like your Amazon account or just an Excel or text file.

What Can You Do With Old Books?

One interesting thing people do is to just leave the book in a public place for somebody else to come and pick up. Unfortunately, while it sounds interesting, this isn’t recommended. Books left on the bus, train, a taxi or park bench might get trashed or destroyed more likely than they are to land in an interested prospect’s hands.

• Books can be given to your local library, or perhaps a college or used book stores.
• Sell them online (Craigslist) or at your (neighbor’s) garage sale.
• Join a site like BookCrossing.com or ReadItSwapIt.co.uk where people swap books they’ve read. Also see Green Metropolis

Interesting post: Desert Island Bookshelf | SocialBookshelf

They are not in any specific order.

Glass or Plexiglas

Anything Expo markers can write on may be used as a board surface. This means a piece of glass, or acrylic glass (Plexiglas), placed over a bright white surface it (i.e., a wall or table). Glass actually works pretty well in terms of eligibility and clean up, but it’s heavy, has sharp edges and cannot be drilled into (easily). It’s also not cheap.

Plexiglas works well, but I heard some dry erase Expo markers have problems coming off. Research this before trying Plexiglas. Never use Acetone to clean Plexiglas (or any plastic).

Plexiglas might be a hassle to cut. Sawing at a high speed, be it power or manual, might cause the edge to melt and stick back together between each cut. It’s usually cut underwater ( don’t try putting a power saw in your bathtub).

What I did was use a regular hack saw, and had my friend shoot the area I was sawing with a water gun to cool it between each cut. A water gun.

Both glass and plexiglass have the advantage of letting you make overlays (assuming they are translucent). You can put anything behind this board, as opposed to having an all white surface. Some examples I’ve seen are adding templates like a blank calendar or checklist behind the glass.

If you put some work into it, this can be a nice, cheap setup.

Chalkboard or Chalkpaper

Chalkboards are cheaper than whiteboards, and even cheaper if you go the DIY route and make one using chalk paper. Chalk paper is basically a rough surface you can buy in rolls, which can be written on using standard chalk. Which means.. hopscotch in the office!

Chalkboards have great contrast, and chalk is dirt cheap compared to dry/wet erase markers (unless you steal those from your local college). The problem, and it’s a big one, is chalk dust. Chalk dust in a small room or office make this route unacceptable for most people. There is “anti-dust” / dust-free chalk, but dust can still be a problem if you don’t have good ventilation.

Paper Whiteboard, or Just Paper

Paper. Big paper. There exists huge books of pages that you hang up on the wall, meant to act as a huge Post-It book. I’ve seen these sold at Michael’s. An alternative is to just hang up a big sketch book, but that might get expensive. Paper has plenty of advantages…

You can write on a page using a pen, pencil, markers, crayons, blood etc. It’s flexible and mobile; You can detach papers for storage or to just generally move around, tear in two, etc. Clean up is as easy as curling up a huge piece of paper and shooting a basket.

The cons? Erasing is a nuisance (and only possible if you use a pencil or erasable pen), and the entire thing is meant to be disposable, making this a a recurring expense. This might mean you will end up squeezing as much content on each page as you can to save money.

I’ve seen “paper whiteboards” at IKEA – but with a short stand, designed for children. You get far less cool points hanging up paper than you would having a real (looking) whiteboard in your house.

DIY Digital / Touch Whiteboard

Expensive from scratch, but you might be able to use what you have around the house to hack up a nice digital whiteboard; One great example is the Wiimote Whiteboard:

If you can find tileboard, I suggest using that instead. It’s cheap and it works well. You can probably cover an entire wall for $20. These alternative methods are OK, and in some cases might even be great, but they’re no match for a ‘real’ whiteboard, or one made of tileboard.

* Post-It Wall pic by RainBowCookee

The games are usually an ISO file, along with a little DVD (.dvd) file that tells the burner to use a layer break value of 1913760. This file is not necessary in Linux (or Windows) as we will be telling the app to use that break value explicitly.

I will go into detail on how to setup what you need. If you’re impatient, you might wanna skip the setup and jump straight to the quick recap.

Extract the ISO

cd /games/360/GameX
rar  x kfc-gamex.part01.rar

If you don’t have rar (“winrar”) installed, lookie:

The program 'unrar' can be found in the following packages:
 * unrar-free
 * unrar
Try: sudo apt-get install <selected package>

you can also DL it from rarlabs.com.

Now we need to see if the game is stealth/valid. This is done using an app that runs natively on Linux (and OS X) called abgx360.

Install abgx360

Download the tar.gz files from http://abgx360.net/download.html. The TUI is nice. Don’t bother getting the GUI for abgx360.

tar -zxvf abgx360-1.0.0.tar.gz
cd abgx360-1.0.0/
./configure && make
sudo checkinstall -D

(You may use ‘make install’ but this is not recommended on Debian/Ubuntu. checkinstall keeps your shit organized.)

If ./configure fails with an error about wx-config/wxWidgets, make sure wxWidgets is installed..

apt-cache search wxgtk2

and make sure wx-config is in your PATH. On Ubuntu Intrepid, it wasn’t. Find it and make a symlink to something in your path.. i.e.,

locate wx-config # (finds it in /etc/alternatives/wx-config)
sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/wx-config /usr/bin/wx-config

Rerun ./configure/make/checkinstall

If you downloaded the local database (abgx360-data) from the site above, install it now; Just extract and move the .abgx360/ dir into your ~/

Checking ISO CRC/SS – Is the game stealth?

abgx360 -af3 kfc-gamex.iso

the af3 flag will automagically fix/patch the ISO should it encounter any problems.
What abgx360 will do is check the ISO’s CRC against an online (or offline, ~/.abgx360/) database. It might begin by updating its database. If this is a problem (no net connection), pass it -localonly

When that’s done…

Burning the ISO Using growisofs

Making sure the dual layer DVD is in your drive, run the following command:

# growisofs -use-the-force-luke=dao -use-the-force-luke=break:1913760  -dvd-compat -speed=4 -Z /dev/burner=kfc-gamex.iso

I commented it out so you don’t execute it trying to paste it. Let’s look closer at this command…

The break:1913760 is the layer break, which you’ll find in the .dvd file. If for whatever reason you can’t check the .dvd file, just use this value.

Set your speed to something low. Some say 2.5x but I have no problems burning at 4X (my max is 8X). You don’t need to know the lowest speed your burner can go. Just set it to 2-4 and you’ll be fine.

Set /dev/burner to your own device. It’s probably /dev/scd0, /dev/scd1, or may already have a symlink like /dev/dvd6 /dev/dvd etc..

Try grepping dmesg to find your device. i.e.,

dmesg | grep "LITE"

This might give you some information but probably nothing too helpful:

sudo dvdrecord -scanbus

To see if you have the right device, try ejecting it.

eject /dev/dvd6

Set the kfc-gamex.iso to whatever the name/path of your ISO is (case sensitive of course).

Now I usually begin with a dry run. By passing -dry-run to growisofs, it will proceed as normal but quit before writing anything to disk. Actually, it kind of just spits out a command and dies. Awful design! i.e.,

$ growisofs -dry-run -use-the-force-luke=dao -use-the-force-luke=break:1913760  -dvd-compat -speed=4 -Z /dev/burner=kfc-gamex.iso
Executing 'builtin_dd if=kfc-bh5.iso of=/dev/dvd6 obs=32k seek=0'
$

So the above is good. Now remove the -dry-run flag to proceed with the actual burn.

growisofs -use-the-force-luke=dao -use-the-force-luke=break:1913760  -dvd-compat -speed=4 -Z /dev/burner=kfc-gamex.iso

Find something to do, or just stare at the screen. After about 20 minutes (at 4X), you’ll see the burn end successfully with output like this:

 7798128640/7835492352 (99.5%) @3.8x, remaining 0:06 RBU 100.0% UBU  99.8%
 7815495680/7835492352 (99.7%) @3.8x, remaining 0:03 RBU  59.7% UBU  99.8%
 7832862720/7835492352 (100.0%) @3.8x, remaining 0:00 RBU   7.9% UBU  99.8%
builtin_dd: 3825936*2KB out @ average 3.9x1352KBps
/dev/burner: flushing cache
/dev/burner: closing track
/dev/burner: closing disc

You’re done!

Quick Recap

Assuming you installed all the dependencies above, here’s a quick recap of what needs to be done to burn a game.
It really takes about 1 minute to begin the process. Write a shell script if you like.

cd GameX_REGION_FREE_XBOX360_KFC/
rar x kfc-gamex.part01.rar # Extract game ISO 
abgx360 -af3 kfc-gamex.iso # Checks if rip is valid/stealth/ss patched
growisofs -use-the-force-luke=dao -use-the-force-luke=break:1913760  -dvd-compat -speed=4 -Z /dev/burner=kfc-gamex.iso
eject /dev/burner # When burn is done, eject & play.

Hard choice, but comes down to two points. Do you really need 3G? and are you willing to switch carriers or do you want to stick with your current one?

The Blackberry Curve 8900

Build / Form Factor

It might not be noticeable in the pics, but the 8900 has a much better build than the Bold. The  device is physically smaller and more comfortable to carry with one hand (the Bold must feel like a classic Gameboy to people with small hands), letting you type with one hand comfortably.

The trackball is solid and much more accurate than the Bold’s, which feels flimsy and feels worn out after a few days. If you have a bold and hold it up to your ear and keep tapping the trackball without actually pressing it down, you’ll notice it makes a sound kind of like the sound your keyboard makes when you tap it without actually pressing it down. This isn’t much of a problem and not something I notice in practice, but it does feel cheap. The 8900s also feels perfect at the default sensitivity (70).

The keyboard buttons are raised higher than the bold and are physically separated. The keys aren’t as slippery and it’s much harder to mistype. They also feel ‘heavier’ and nicer to push overall. Having the numbers in red on the 8900 (all white on the Bold) is also a nice touch, but while I prefer the 8900’s keyboard, I have absolutely no problems with the Bold’s after getting used to it.

RIM definitely took issues present in the Bold into account when designing the 8900. The right convenience button (camera by default) on the 8900 must be pressed down harder and held down longer before the camera application is invoked. This gets rid of the annoying “could not start camera” error or pitch black pictures of your pocket that occur when the camera shortcut key is pressed down accidently on the Bold.

This might just be me, but on the Bold, my index finger tends to naturally get in the way of the camera when I’m taking pics. I need to be aware of it and intentionally keep it out of the way. This doesn’t happen on the 8900. Speaking of cameras…

Camera

The camera on the 8900 has 3.2 megapixels (compared to the Bold’s 2 MP) and autofocus. It doesn’t sound like a big improvement, but it’s huge when you see pictures side by side. Pictures taken on the 9000 look grainy, like a traditional camera phone pic, and the color temperature is off even with the white balance set to auto.

If you don’t use your phone for snapping pics, apps like Flickr for Blackberry and the Facebook Blackberry app, might change that habit. You’d be glad you chose the 8900 vs the 9000 anytime you’re stuck without your SLR and need to capture a moment.

Screen

The screen on the 8900 is slightly smaller than the Bold. It also has a longer ratio compared to the Bold’s wide screen. It’s hard to say which is better, but using bothdevices,  I prefer looking at the 8900, especially when reading. The resolution is higher (480×360 vs 480×320) and the screen color temperature is richer. Text is sharper on the 8900, and colors look more natural than on the 9000. Overall, both screens are amazing, and some may opt for a slightly larger screen than a smaller one at a higher resolution.

Battery

The battery on the 8900 lasts a few hours longer than the Bold, but it may last significantly more depending on how you use your BB. I like having a lot of apps open and I use the blackberry a lot, for IRC, browsing, email, AIM, etc. The Bold’s 3G antenna (which cannot be turned off)  saps a lot of power, as does its slightly faster processor.

Battery Cover

The 8900 doesn’t have the leather plate on the back (though eventually we might see 3rd party battery covers featuring this). The chrome battery cover on the 8900 looks good and feels sturdy, and many people prefer this to the leather. I personally prefer the leather battery cover on the 9000. It has a more CEO-of-a-fortune-500-company vibe to it.

Other

The 8900 comes with 256 megs of RAM compared to the 9000. This might result in better performance in some apps against the Bold’s 128 megs of RAM and faster processor.

Both are small as hell for storing media and you’ll wanna upgrade ASAP.

Never buy the memory card from the phone retailer. Tmobile here charges $40 for a 2 gig micro SD card. AT&T charges $25. My bro got his from Radioshack for$8 (probably with a friend’s discount).

The Blackberry Bold 9000

Carriers

First and most important in your decision on which BB to get: carriers. Here in New York, the 8900 is only available at T-Mobile (and soon Verizon), and the Bold is only available with AT&T. YMMV here, but AT&T has significantly better coverage and a higher voice quality. As a consumer, AT&T just feels more mature and better to do business with. It’ s the small things like offering insurance for $2 cheaper and giving you twice as long to opt-in for it as T-Mobile (30 days vs 14 days), more competent tech support and less time on hold, etc.

A big reason I migrated over from T-Mobile was because T-Mobile’s website sucks. I avoided T-Mobile’s site so often I missed payments. The site reminds me of GoDaddy. Promos and prominent colors (pink?!) all over the place competing for my attention.

In T-Mobile’s defence, their prices are usually much cheaper than AT&T. Also, T-Mobile has excellent coverage, be it as good as AT&T or not, and the 8900 supports UMA.

In regard to carriers, you might want to go with a carrier that has a lot of authorized branches in your area. This can make service/repair/upgrades less of a hassle later on.

Processor

The bold has a faster processor. This might be something to consider if you use your BB like you use your laptop (having lots of stuff open), though having twice as much RAM (8900 has 256, bold 128) would be better in some cases, I didn’t notice much of a difference in performance in practice.

I did notice AIM and MSN crash (raised exceptions) a few times when there were too many things open on the 8900. “Too many things” included far more than you would practically have open in a real life setting. We’re talking a few games, the browser, a video etc open simultanously. I can’t confirm that this is what caused AIM or MSN to halt for a bit and then crash, but it’s just a pattern I’m beginning to notice. It doesn’t always happen and will probably be addressed in the next OS patch/release. I’m going to migrate away from the official AIM client and into BeeJive when I find a torrent $20.

3G support

3G support is great, but it’s something I noticed I can live without because I usually do most of my major web browsing when I’m close to wifi anyway. The only time I really wish I had 3G when I’m on the Curve is when I’m using Google Maps. It takes a little longer to load, but this con doesn’t outweigh the other pros the 8900 offers. If you plan on tethering Internet to your laptop, 3G should definitely be something to look into.

Also note that the 3G antenna cannot be turned off. This means a much lower battery life than the 8900. Not much of a problem if you have a car charger though, and you’ll use the blackberry much less over time compared to when you first bought it, so don’t be shocked if you notice 1/2 the battery is drained after  2 hours of continous usage.

Other

The 9000 looks leet. I don’t know what’s so attractive about the 9000, but it’s probably just the fact that it doesn’t look like the older Blackberrys. The 8900 looks nice, but it grew on me;  Not something I found particularly eye catching at first. The 8900 being numerically less than 9000, and the fact that the 8900 has a smaller form factor, sort of make the 8900 seem like a watered down Bold, or a step backwards, but it really isn’t. From what I noticed, this is the #1 reason people choose the Bold over the Curve, only using  ’carrier’ or ‘3G support’ as logical reasons for justification on their choice/purchase after the fact.

The Bold came with a slick leather bolt holster, and the 8900 came with a little girly pouch. The pouch is actually pretty nice; It fits snuggly and does a good job of protecting the phone when I’m carrying it around directly in my pocket. Only problem is it’s one more step taking it out of the pouch. It’s also harder to show off than having it visible on your RIM belt holster. Fortunately, the holster made by Speck is pretty good.

Both devices are great. If you can’t make up your mind, pick names out of a hat, or go strictly by carriers and the plans each carrier has.

For programming, and the way I use my desktop (gnome+compiz), having multiple screens is much more productive than one big screen because I hate minimizing and dragging windows. If I’m coding in rails for example, I can have my editor maximized in one screen, and a reference window or a `tail -f file.log` maximized in the other screen. With a big monitor I would need to manually resize each window or depend on my window managers cascade feature, which requires some manual resizing as well.

For coding or writing, a killer setup would be having two or three widescreen displays setup vertically side-by-side. I noticed I only look at 3/4th of the screen real estate when I’m coding, and when I hack or write, I generally prefer having one long narrow window (off topic, but I always exceed 80 chars per line). Widescreen wasn’t made for coding anyway.

When it comes to (photo) editing, whether you’re using 1 or 2 monitors, widescreen is a must. Many people complain that Gimp doesn’t support MDI (Multiple Document Interface: Having multiple windows in a container, like Photoshop or AOL), but I noticed that Photoshop on Mac doesn’t have MDI either, and I finally began Learning to Love the Gimp Interface. I can edit a picture full screen in one monitor, while I have my entire toolset open on another screen. I can also do all my editing in one screen and have tutorials or references on another display.

Taskbars on each screen are also separated, so that apps open in one desktop don’t show up on the taskbar of another desktop (tweakable). This simplifies the taskbar and makes it quicker to find what you have minimized. No more 256 pixel thick taskbars.

I used to think having a split/gap between screens was annoying, but it naturally segregates the workspace. I can banish windows I don’t care about to ‘the other’ screen and focus without distractions on my main desktop. It’s sorta like the ADHD plugin for compiz. I can also switch my attention to make which ever monitor I want to be my “main display.” This brings us to another huge advantage a multi-monitor setup has over a huge single display.

You can physically move each screen around independently, which is great when you’re working in teams (i.e., you wanna demo something) or you just have people over. Just last night I had a basketball game on my 2nd display tilted so my bro can watch (neither of us have cable) while I did my thing in ‘my own’ desktop.

With Devilspie, you can probably configure yourself a pretty nice setup for a big monitor, but if you don’t plan on doing much hacking, dual screens are naturally more productive in OS X and Linux. I noticed Windows XP has problems with dual screen, i.e., the taskbar doesn’t go across both monitors, and the cursor moves off screen and “breaks” into other desktops while you’re in a game. Very annoying, but Vista or Windows 7 might not exhibit these problems, and there are workarounds in XP.

I finally found the culprit. RescueTime’s (unofficial) Linux client keeps a log of every single window that has gotten focus, EVER. I figured this would be cleared when the notifications were sent out, but apparently it wasn’t. My failed/ dir is nearly empty, so I know the notifications are getting sent out. The file is named ~/.rescuetime/tmp/notifier.debuglog

It might be that the client only clears the log when the app is closed? That sucks, because I don’t shutdown or reboot (or log out of X for that matter). Aside from the handful of kernel-update reboots (yeah yeah I could just init level down to preserve my uptime), I literally haven’t kept my PC off since 2006.

I don’t mind the disk space, but how the hell are you opening, seeking and writing to a 22gig+ file literally every single time focus is switched? I swear to the Gods I was one CC digit away from ordering a Mac.

RescueTime is a great service/app, but I’ll keep the client off until this is fixed or they release an official client. No offense to the guys working on the Linux client (<3), especially considering it’s probably their pet project, and I’ve had no other problems with it thus far. Hell, maybe the debug log could of easily been turned off.

I’m using version 90 (newest release as of 11/16). This may have already been fixed in trunk. I’ll check/submit a bug report… eventually.

https://launchpad.net/rescuetime-linux-uploader