Disabling smiley icons in Conversations (PR1.2)

If you're one of those old-school geeks who simply can't stand these quasi-cool, graphical equivalents of good old, ascii-based smileys (aka emoticons like ":-)" or ";)"), this tip is going to make your day. Conversations app which manages all sorts of text and IM messages in your N900 is using graphical smileys by default, yet the new and shiny PR1.2 release brings much anticipated ability to hack those weird icons and bring some old ascii love back to N900 near you.

Saving N900 battery power with simple shell script

It's not a secret that Nokia N900 is a real power sucker and needs quite frequent contact with battery charger, especially when all those fancy always-online features are enabled and in constant use. I keep my N900 in such mode nearly all the time myself, yet there are times (overnight, while at work, hospital etc.) where I'd like to sacrifice being online 24/7 in order to spare battery an extra breath. Offline mode is not an option, as I'd like to preserve ability to actually make voice calls and send text messages. You know, old-school.

PUSH your imagination to the limit

Last night I came back from PUSHN900 event in London. Once I've received an invitation few days ago, frankly I didn't exactly know what to expect, so I went there with pretty much clear mind about this. However, what I've seen there was absolutely amazing and I was stunned by the ideas that people in teams from around the world have put up together.

Fixing VMware Player crash upon start in Fedora 12

When your VMware Player crashes unexpectedly upon start (ie. UI opens up for 1-2 seconds then disappears), fear not. Magix fix is (as root):

cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib
mv libcurl.so.4 libcurl.so.4.old

That's it, really. :)

Credits:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1444574#1444574

Playing divx/xvid movies with subtitles on N900

We all know N900's outstanding multimedia capabilities, right? Built-in media player can chew full-blown divx movies without hesitation. However, it doesn't support subtitles useful to foreign-language-impaired people. Fear not, solution is there.

Sorry Sir, you can't port your number out, "honest"!

Someday last October I made the decision to get N900 on contract, however I also wanted to keep my current mobile number that I've had with T-Mobile for several years. The trick was that an online retailer where I pre-ordered the device didn't offer upgrades on T-Mobile - only new contracts. For some weird and wonderful reason, T-Mobile also isn't able to cancel existing connection, free of fixed-term contract and migrate my number to the new 18-month contract. Anyhow, there is a workaround - get a new T-Mobile contract with new number, port my current number out to different network's prepaid service and once that's done (ie. within 2-3 working days), port it back from there to that new T-Mobile contract I've got with N900. Simples.

Konfiguracja usługi IPFON w Nokii N900

Jedną z istotniejszych zalet Nokii N900 jest zintegrowany klient VoIP, umożliwiający na wykonywanie i odbieranie połączeń typu VoIP w sposób transparentny dla użytkownika. Oczywiście natychmiast zacząłem kombinować jak zintegrować go z moim kontem IPFON, którego używam z powodzeniem od niemal 3 lat.

Oto krótka instrukcja konfiguracji zintegrowanego klienta VoIP/SIP w Nokii N900 / Maemo 5 pod kątem działania w ramach usługi IPFON.

Polski układ klawiatury dla Nokii N900

Jak podmienić plik zawierający zmodyfikowaną mapę klawiatury sprzętowej, umożliwiający wprowadzanie polskich znaków w Nokii N900 za pomocą kombinacji Fn+Ctrl->litera.

Polish hardware keyboard layout for Nokia N900

Although Nokia N900 has support for Polish UI and input language out-of-the-box, every Polish user of this device would most definitely agree that typing anything that involves specific Polish characters like żażółć gęślą jaźń is a huge pain. For those who don't know - every national char has to be entered via little on-screen virtual keypad that appears after pressing Fn+Ctrl keyboard combination.

Nokia N900 has landed and is ready to depart

After over a month of waiting I have finally received my very own, much anticipated Nokia N900. Yay! But... well, it quickly turned out that initial impression wasn't too much to "yay" about, as my N900 unit is apparently affected with random reboots issue. Despite quite positive contribution of Nokia engineers to Maemo Bugzilla entry regarding this issue, the exact cause wasn't determined (yet) and the most likely explanation is simply a piece of faulty hardware within the unit I have. Having no software-based solution to this yet and knowing there are lots of happy random reboot-less users of N900 out there, I'm planning to arrange a warranty replacement for my N900 next week, so hopefully new unit will work properly.