Rockbox on the SanDisk Sansa Clip v1

2010-05-19 2 min read Electronics Anonymous Marco

I’ve been fascinated by the RockBox project for a while now. It is an alternative firmware (i.e. OS lite) for music players with a bunch of extra features. It is being ported to a range of different devices and it is becoming the Linux of sorts of MP3 players. (Soon to be replaced by actual Linux, one presumes…)

The first device for which I had a RockBox port was an old iPod, the ones we would call “classic” these days. I loved it, since it have me the freedom to play games, read OGG Vorbis files, and play with the interface – all things that the original iPod stubbornly refused to do. The installation process was painful, but it was worth it. It was a tinkerer’s dream.

R.I.P. Kindle

2010-05-19 2 min read Electronics Anonymous Marco

The disturbing trend of electronic gadgets dying earlier in their life span continues. My Kindle gave up yesterday. I turned it on, and the e-ink display was broken, showing me weird streaks on the top right portion. It looks like blunt force, but the reader was not exposed to any force.

Well, I was kinda happy with my Kindle – loving the wireless connectivity, long battery life, and clarity of the display. I didn’t like a great many things, either – the lack of display formats (no native PDF?), the one-shop-only policy, the DRM (including remote deletion), the lack of apps, and the unusually unfortunate hardware choices (no touchscreen, terrible keyboard).

Developing for Maemo - Fremantle VirtualBox Image

2010-04-22 3 min read Electronics Anonymous Marco

So I’ve been playing around with the Fremantle VirtualBox image that Maemo.org provides on their web site. The idea is great: you get the image, run it in a virtualization environment, and you don’t have to set up anything.

Great idea, poor implementation. First of all, the image doesn’t come pre-loaded with instructions. I would have expected a big icon to show on the desktop after launch, telling me what to do next. Instead, there were icons for the VM native software, as well as for the development environment.

The Suicide of the Kindle

2010-04-20 5 min read Electronics Anonymous Marco

Who remembers the time when Amazon deleted a bunch of books from Kindles? It was the dark ages of e-ink, Amazon was the undisputed master of ebooks, its marketplace was teeming with “publishers” that sold books in the public domain. One of those publishers offered a book whose copyrights had not expired. Understandable, given the absurd length of copyright extensions.

In any case, what Amazon did next was completely horrifying to any book lover. They used the Whispernet connection with which the Kindle communicates to the “mothership” and instructed Kindles with this particular copy of the book to delete them. There you are, reading your purchased copy of Orwell’s 1984, and then on the next morning, it’s gone.

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