Club Admiralty Blog
Vintage Tech - Ericsson R380
Friday, Sep 29 2023, 18:00 Ericsson, R380, smartphone
Vintage Tech: Nokia N-Gage
Friday, Sep 22 2023, 23:00 gaming, mobile, Nokia, smartphone, Telephony![]() |
Original N-Gage |
Here's another one from the "drafts" pile from 2019 that I wanted to do a little write-up about, but...well it got lost in the blogging shuffle 😂. My original intent with this series of looking back at older tech was to talk a bit about the specs and the general reception, but since there are enough blogs, wikis, and YouTubers who already do that, why add to the chorus? So, I decided that I'll just give my two cents on these devices.
Thi particular walk down memory lane is courtesy of Nokia's N-Gage duo. The original N-Gage was a neat idea at the time (2003). The only way you could play portable games at the time were on a PSP or a Nindendo DS (or older portable gaming consoles), but who wants multiple devices in their pockets?! The device ran the Series60 Symbian operating system, which meant that they could also run other PDA-style applications that were available on Nokia S60 phones. The device was really half-baked though. The microphone and speaker were on the side of the device, which made it awkward to use, and in order to play games on cartridge (how they sold them back then, before appstores and quick downloads over wifi/wireless carrier), was to remove the battery and reset the device. 🤦♂️ Having to reboot your phone to change a game is a major failure. The QD (second generation N-Gage), did fix things, but I think that mobile gaming of this sort wasn't ready for prime time. Furthermore, other S60 devices could play the N-Gage games, seeing as their ran the same OS, so all you had to do was get a copy of the SIS file and play it on your N95 or other S60 phone. Cool attempt, but poor execution IMO.
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N-Gage QD |

Gemini PDA - A blast from the past
Friday, Sep 8 2023, 18:00 EPOC, Gemini, PDA, smartphone, TelephonyThe device runs Android, and it has a slot for a SIM so you can be connected, but I think talking on the phone only happens via a headset. The concept is nice, but the biggest drawback is that it doesn't seem like the manufacturer has bothered to update the version of android that's on it. This particular model is stuck on Android 8. A newer device, the Astro Glide, which is reminiscent of the Nokia E7, is listed as "new" on their website, but still runs Android 11. The current version of Android, as of this writing, is Android 13. Overall, I'd say that both the Gemini and the Astro Glide are interesting, but they are held back, in my view, by old versions of android. I know that the Gemini can dual boot, but if you install Linux on it, then you just an eeePC netbook, not a connected PDA.

Moving Mastodon Servers
Tuesday, Aug 15 2023, 17:30 fediverse, mastodon, migration, Social Media, Social Networks, TechnologyWell... I didn't think I'd be migrating from one Mastodon server to another one so soon (I just created the account this past spring!), but here we are! 🙄 I joined this particular server because it seemed like this was where fellow academics were going after they left Twitter (or while they were co-establishing their presence on Mastodon). I should have read the prohibitions a bit more carefully at the time, but I hadn't considered how I'd be using Mastodon. In any case, recently, my account got limited by the server admin because I was using Fedica (formerly tweepsmap) to schedule my posts. Technically speaking, I was also crossposting to Twitter, but the direction was A (Fedica) --> B (Mastodon) + C (Twitter), not B --> C which is how I interpreted the rule🤷♂️. In any case, since my profile would not be seen by folks on that server (and perhaps other parts of the Fediverse - unless they specifically looked for me), I decided to pack my bags and go somewhere else. I did get a note from the server admin after I appealed the limitation - and the appeal was rejected. Here is the message:
"Hi, the point of the "no Twitter crossposters" rule is so that people participate at Scholar, rather than going to another site and sending us stuff as a kind of amplifier and not being a part of the community here
I'll amend the rule to make this clearer, let me know when you've disabled your timed post crossposter or set it to post as Unlisted and I'll un-limit your account"
You know... just because someone uses cross-posting and schedulers for spring doesn't mean that they aren't part of a community. These kinds of activities (posting and engaging) can happen synchronously or asynchronously. They can happen in tandem or parallel to one another. I don't have social media open all day long. When I read my RSS feeds and decide what to share, I'd like to have things drip out, otherwise, I am spamming my timeline. I guess this is a bit too hard to comprehend 🙄. I don't want to be overly harsh on this server admin. They own it, they pay for it, whatever. However, it's a bit disingenuous of the fediverse to decry other social platforms of ideological bias when many parts of the fediverse exist as reactionaries to those biases with opposing bias-forces of their own (yet they don't acknowledge it). How a user wants to engage with the community should be up to them.
And another thing (picture Peter Griffin here 😂) If users forget to add alt-tags on images (which happened from time to time because fedica doesn't have this functionality), users shouldn't be badgered about it. I migrated to another server without many issues, but all of my old posts (about 1800 of them) remain on the old server. For a tool/technology that touts the ability to move from one server to another, this seems like a huge oversight. OK - rant mode off 😂

TV - Hawkey
Sunday, Jul 16 2023, 13:11 Avengers, disney, Entertainment, marvel, superhero, TelevisionIt's weird that I started writing this last summer and I am only now getting to it... let's see how much I remember 😂.
OK, so last summer I watched this series. The premise was quite simple: who's the next Hawkeye not that Hawkeye has "retired" from being a superhero?
This series takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame. It's Christmas Time in New York, and all Clint Barton (Hawkeye) wants to do is to spend the holidays with his family. However, after meeting young archer, Kate Bishop, they both get tangled up in a murder mystery, an underground mob, and a much bigger threat.
Before becoming an Avenger, Clint was much more of a Green Arrow vigilante kind of superhero, and his past life and deeds are now returning to haunt him, and by extension Kate who has found some of his old kit and has decided to become the next "guy with bow" (wow...so much disparagement of a super hero who's not a scientist, rich guy, or god 😂).
I think that this was a one-season-one-off, but it would be fun to get to see more of Hawkeye: The Next Generation ;-)

TV - People of Earth
Saturday, Jul 15 2023, 10:38 aliens, Comedy, Entertainment, Humor, TelevisionHere's another show from my sci-fi catch-up watch. This one was on Hulu, I think, and it's a comedy about alien abductees.

TV - Extant
Friday, Jul 14 2023, 14:32 Entertainment, review, Sci-Fi, TelevisionLast year, at some point, I was going through old science fiction series that I had missed while they were on TV. I thought it would be neat to go back and watch some of them, and to some extent I still am going through and watching them. My Space: 1999 watch has stalled a bit. It's hard some times to watch this level of camp and appreciate it with a 1960's frame of mind when we live in the 2020's...

Apple VisionPro - some thoughts
Thursday, Jul 13 2023, 15:14 announcements, Apple, Technology, VirtualReality, VR, WWDCWow! Almost a month since I started to comment on this and only now do I have some free time to actually finish my comments 😂.
OK, I am an Apple fan. I've gotten a bit more critical over the years, but I still like their products (more or less). I think VisionPro (AVP) is a bit rushed to market. No one is saying the β word, and people are treating this as the product, but I honestly think this is a little half-baked, sort of like the original iPhone. It does have really innovative things. The ability to have multiple windows open in a virtual space is pretty nifty. If I lived alone, maybe the theatrical surround sound would be great, but my television and movie-watching experiences do involve other people. This device is also $3500, which means that it's out of the reach of most folks; and as we know Apple doesn't just target Enterprise consumers - so it's still TBD if this is going to flop as a first-gen product.
The lack of hand controllers is an innovation IMO. I think that controllers could be developed as add-on peripherals, in the same way as we have peripherals for our desktop computing devices, but being able to use a device without peripherals is revolutionary in my view.
So...what's your use case for one of these? While I think that it's geared toward productivity and movies in the Apple pitches, I think gaming is still the killer app for these things.

Assassin's Creed Mirage
Wednesday, Jul 12 2023, 15:06 announcements, Assassins Creed, Entertainment, trailer, ubisoft, video games, VideoGames, XBOXOK, this is one the last blog from my backlog with a games-related theme ;-)
Not gonna lie, at the end of Assassin's Creed Valhalla I was in a "WTF?!?!" mood. I wasn't really sure I wanted to know more about Basim and his ways, but...now that there's a trailer out and we get to see Basim's origin story (and hopefully some kind of redemption arc in the modern day...) I can't wait for this game to come out :-)

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Tuesday, Jul 11 2023, 15:08 announcements, Entertainment, princeOfPersia, trailer, ubisoft, video games, VideoGames, XBOXAnother one from my blog backlog. This one is the trailer for the next Prince of Persia game, subtitled "The Lost Crown". It's been a while since I've played a Prince of Persia game, and this looks interesting. I don't often play platformers, but this looks interesting. Knowing that Assassin's Creed started off as a Prince of Persia game, I really hope to see crossovers from AC to PoP in this game ;-)

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