Meine Sicht der Dinge
Archive for May, 2009
Litchfield
May 31st
Yesterday I finally (after 8 months I now have been in Australia) went to see the Litchfield National Park. This national park is located 12o km south of Darwin. It was a very funny trip! We started a bit late, so we only had a look at four of the many sights in the park. First of them were the Magnetic Termite Mounds which are built by termites that somehow can feel the magnetic field of the earth. So there are hundreds of termite mounds standing all in the same direction. Looks funny 
Typical for a tourist I had to make a picture of me in front of a gigantic termite mound:
Me in front of a gigantic termite mound
It was quite hot, so after we stood aroung in front of the gigantic termite mound to take all the pictures, we had to go for swim! Buley Rockhole was the place we drove to next. We had the chance to cool down a bit and lay in the small waterfalls to relax.
Relaxing in the water at Buley Rockhole
After this we needed some restrengthening and had lunch. We found a nice place to stay. A bridge over a creek, where we could eat while our feet were dangling in the water.
Lunchtime
Then wedrove to the Florence Falls. This was a really amazing place. First you could have a look at the water fall from a viewing point, and than go the bottom edge of the water fall. I just had to pass the 135 steps. Down was alright, but back up again a bit annoying…
The amazing Florence Falls
Last but not least we drove to the Wangi Falls. Unluckily the water there was closed for swimming because of a salt water crocodile seen the last couple of days swimming in there. But still, the look at the falls was impressive enough:
Wangi Falls
So after this an amazing day at Litchfield Park was over. Now I am very keen on going to Kakadu National Park as well. You can see all the other pictures here.
FL!P
May 26th
Yesterday I finished reading another book. “Fl!p” from Peter Sheahan. Here is what I think about this book:
First of all, I really enjoyed reading the book. The style it is written in is very personal; while reading you can imagine the author sitting next to you in a bar and having a chat about economic possibilites. Sheahan has in my opinion a very fresh style of writing. Maybe this comes from the well known Australian mateship. Besides this the book gives the reader a lot of examples for everything he explains. Here he not uses his experiences as a consultant for companies like Google, BMW or Microsoft, but also personal experiences he made that are usefull to emphasize a relation, e.g. the relation between customers and a business. Of course he doesn’t leave out to refer to all known flipstars (or at least the ones Sheahan thinks they are).
The book consists of 7 chapters. I personally liked the chapters “action creates clarity” and “to get control give it up”. From my personal experience in some companies I can tell that the key aspects of these chapters are still not understood by (too) many people in management positions. The other chapters “fast, good, cheap: pick three – than add something extra” and “business is personal” were not so good. This is just because all the things he describes in here were already described by so many other books, and if there are still people out there who don’t get the message of how to deal with customers, I might even start my own consultancy to teach them the well known business basics. 
Though this book is not filled with completely new aspects, I think it is worth reading. It just makes fun to read it, and when you finished it you get this feeling that you really want to change something!
NT driver licence
May 26th
After a couple of times I’ve been to the MVR (motor vehicle registration) to register my car to my name and to get a NT driver licence, I was finally successful today. With this licence I am even able to drive motor bikes (Btw: The registration of the car for 12 months did cost 700$, plus 600$ to repair the car in advance…)
My new NT driver license
New A/C
May 26th
Today the A/C in my room finally got exchanged. It was broken for a couple of weeks. With the start of the dry season I thought that I don’t need an A/C anymore, but the sun shines directly into my room. So when I come home from work it is like 40 degC in my room. The very old model (build in 1978) has now been replaced with a brand new split system. This means that it the A/C consists out of 2 units, with one being in the room and one being outside. So the newer model is very quiet.
The old aircon
The new one
Bass in the Grass
May 24th
Yesterday I was at BASS IN THE GRASS, a local music festival and the biggest up here in Darwin.
To be honest I was really disappointed with the festival. The bands that played were really boring. I am open to all kinds of music (though I do prefer some good house music), but what they played just didn’t rock the crowd. I think if I were a local, I would have known some bands and enjoyed it more. The acts I liked were: Gabriella Cilmi (she sings “sweet about me“), Jessica Mauboy (I liked her last single “Been Waiting“) and Sneaky Sound System. There were lots of people and way more than at pure sounds in the park, but I still prefer pure sounds. Maybe it’s because they only play one kind of music – not only because that’s the kind of music I like, but also because the atmosphere was constant on a high level. Whereas at bass in the grass the jumping crowd was interrupted by some slow country(?) music.
I took some pictures with my broken camera, and was suprised that most of them looked alright, although you couldn’t see what you where taking pictures of (broken display, remember?). You can find those pictures here.
Shell Eco-Marathon 2009 – proTRon II ruled!
May 12th
Every year Shell hosts the so called Eco-Marathon. In this competition teams from all over the world (though the competition is divided into three separate ones: Europe, Asia, America) come together to a race. The goal of the race is not to be the fastest, but to be the most economic one. So every team builds a car and tries to drive as far as possible with the energy equivalent to 1 liter of unleaded fuel. More information can be found here.
Last year in my last two semesters of my bachelor study I was part of the ProTRon II team and responsible for the internal communication using a CAN bus. We drove to Nogaro last year and participated in the eco marathon. With 2592km on 1 liter of unleaded fuel, we had a very good result last year and finished at 3rd of our class (fuel cells, prototypes) and 5th overall.
The team with proTRon II and aeris
This year the ProTRon II team was able to break through the magic 3000km mark. They finished as best german team with a result of 3178km. This was good enough for a 3rd place in their class and a 4th place in total. The team made a good progress from the 1800km in the first year over 2500km in the second to finally 3100km in the third year. They also built their first UrbanConcept car called Aeris. This did not make it into the finish, but according to the reports, it was way ahead of other teams with development of a roadworthy design.
Congratulations to the ProTRon II team and all its members!
Arafura Games opening ceremony
May 10th
Yesterday I’ve been at the Arafura Games opening ceremony. It was a great show. Just imagine an olympia opening ceremony in small and you have this one. There were some show acts like dancing and running around in funny choreographies with flags, but also performances from Jon Stevens and Christine Anu. The part I liked most was the sky diver landing in the middle of the field with the big Arafura Games flag. Though it was a bit boring to see all the nations walking in – it just takes too long. But to give the evening a good finish there was of course a big fireworks (not like the disappointing one at the mindil beach last week). The pictures I took can be found here.
The new features of the G1 firmware 1.5
May 7th
The first impression I got was the sam when I got the G1 first a couple of months ago. Wooow. Smooooth!! They improved the smoothness of the interface even though I thought this wasn’t possible. But they made it. Also some small changes on the screen appearance. But everything looks just this little bit better than before. As i don’t have the time at the moment to have a closer look at all the features, here is the list you can look up on the android developer page. As far as I had a look until now I have to say: I like the changes!
User Interface Refinements
- System-wide:
- Refinement of all core UI elements
- Animated window transitions (off by default)
- Accelerometer-based application rotations
- UI polish for:
- In-call experience
- Contacts, Call log, and Favorites
- SMS & MMS
- Browser
- Gmail
- Calendar
- Camera & Gallery
- Application management
Performance Improvements
- Faster Camera start-up and image capture
- Much faster acquisition of GPS location (powered by SUPL AGPS)
- Smoother page scrolling in Browser
- Speedier GMail conversation list scrolling
New Features
- On-screen soft keyboard
- Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
- Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
- User dictionary for custom words
- Home screen
- Widgets
- Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search
- Live folders
- Widgets
- Camera & Gallery
- Video recording
- Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
- Bluetooth
- Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
- Auto-pairing
- Improved handsfree experience
- Browser
- Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
- Copy ‘n paste in browser
- Search within a page
- User-selectable text-encoding
- UI changes include:
- Unified Go and Search box
- Tabbed bookmarks/history/most-visited screen
- Contacts
- Shows user picture for Favorites
- Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
- One-touch access to a contact card from call log event
- System
- New Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
- SD card filesystem auto-checking and repair
- SIM Application Toolkit 1.0
- Google applications (not available in the Android 1.5 System Image that is included in the Android SDK)
- View Google Talk friends’ status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and Email applications
- Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
- Upload videos to Youtube
- Upload photos on Picasa
How to update the G1 firmware from 1.0 to 1.5
May 7th
Attention!
This update only seems to work for the developer version of the G1. If you have any other version of the phone than the developer version, please contact your provider for a system update.
Seriously: If you are not sure, that you know that you have the right version of the phone and/or the correct files then DO NOT try to update. Your phone may freeze. I am getting a lot of emails and comments in this post of people who froze their phone. The following description worked fine for me, but it does not mean that it works for everybody else. I also can give NO support to any difficulties that may come up during this update procedure (I neither have time nor the technical expertise to do so).
I was brave enough to upgrade my G1 today from the old firmware version 1.0 to 1.5. The following steps describe how I made the upgrade.
- Go to http://www.htc.com/www/support/android/adp.html and download the radio image (ota-radio-2_22_19_26I.zip) as well as the recovery image (signed-dream_devphone-ota-147201.zip) for the firmware update you want to upgrade to. In this case 1.5
- Rename the “ota-radio-2_22_19_26I.zip” to “update.zip”
- Plug your G1 into your computer and mount as a USB mass storage device using your USB cable
- Copy the “update.zip” onto your SD card in your G1
- Unmount the USB mass storage device and than disconnect the phone
- Shut off the G1
- Start up the G1 by pressing the “home” and the “power on/off” button at the same time (and hold) until a triangle with a “!” appears
- Flip the keyboard and press “ALT” and “l” (lower case “L”)
- A screen appears with a menu
- Press “Alt” and “s” to apply the “update.zip” on the SD card
- If the installation is finished (it tells you when), press the “home” and the “back” button and release them again to reboot the system
- If the system has rebooted, mount the device as USB mass storage device again, by using your USB cable
- Delete the update.zip from your G1 SD card
- Rename the “signed-dream_devphone-ota-147201.zip” to “update.zip” and copy this onto your SD card
- Unmount your USB mass storage device and disconnect the G1 from your computer
- Power off the G1 by pressing the “power on/off” button
- Start up by pressing the “home” and the “power on/off” button at the same time (and hold) until a triangle with a “!” appears
- Flip the keyboard and press “Alt” and “l” (lower case “L”)
- A screen appears with a menu
- Press “Alt” and “s” to apply the “update.zip” on the SD card
- If the installation is finished (it tells you when), press the “home” and the “back” button and release them again to reboot the system
The last initial boot of the 1.5 firmware might take a while. But as soon as you get back to your start screen you are finished. You are now free to delete the “update.zip” from your SD card.
Although I tried this update process with my own phone and it worked perfectly there, I do not guarantee that this procedure works with every G1. So please be aware if you upgrade your phone and always backup your data!
Flights to Japan and Korea
May 5th
Like Arne I am also taking part in the next Steinbeis MBE lectures in Japan and Korea. I booked my flights last week. Although it seems that I am pretty close to Japan as well as to Korea, my flights are kind of a horror trip.
On the 18th of July I fly from Darwin to Singapore. On Sunday the 19th I then fly from Singapore to Tokyo and then to my final destination Fukuoka. After my lectures in Fukuoka I have to fly to Korea. This isn’t a problem, but when it comes to flying back to Darwin I have to attend one more flight. The way back starts in Seoul on the 2nd of August to Fukuoka. From there I fly back to Singapore via Tokyo. And finally on the 3rd of August my last flight takes me from Singapore to Darwin. This ends up with a total flight time of 29 hours and a total travel time of approximately 88 hours (both including return). Here a picture to show how long my trips are:
My stupid flight times
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