Geek Cluster on Friday 29th Sept 2011
So is this happening then?
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quixoticquisling
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adam
Profound thought
Um…
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quixoticquisling
Hi everyone, this was a post by Adam. Just showing him WordPress with P2. It’s good isn’t it?
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dorkomatic (Howard)
WordPress or Adam’s profound thought? Either way, I’m going with YES.
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adam
Just browsing…
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quixoticquisling
test of a comment
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quixoticquisling
‘Best’ Android phone?
OK I’ve been saying this for a while but I’m looking to get a smartphone in the next month or so.
What’s the ‘best’ Android phone at the moment?
I’m considering the HTC Desire HD:
- runs Android
- big screen
- rootable
- it’s also been out for a while. I’d rather have something tried and tested, that works, than be an early adopter.
The only major quibble seems to be short battery life. Another option would be HTC Sensation.
A friend suggested a Google phone ‘as you get pure Android and don’t have to worry about all the extra HTC Sense nonsense’. On reflection I’m not 100% sure what that means in practice when I have it in my hand.
I’d consider any other suggestions. Anything but Apple and Windows phones!
What do you think?
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Ben
As far as software on the phone, if your going to root it then it’s not an issue you just put any custom ROM you like on the phone and won’t have to worry about any manufacture custom interfaces, though with Sense 3 HTC have made some very good improvements and it is the best and most polished manufacturer skin.
I think HTC are some if the nicest built phones personally, though if you compare say a Samsung Galaxy and a Desire S (basically equivalent phones) the Samsung just feels plasticy. Battery life is going to be an issue on most phones now, though some big improvements have been made in optimisation over the last 12 months to improve this. The HTC Desire HD is a nice phone though dated now, it also has dreadful battery life. If your going to be like me and using your phone for web browsing, twitter etc. throughout the day then you’d be charging it by around 1600/1700 from full in the morning (it’s mostly down to the screen they used). As far as choice of phones at the moment, it really depends on the screen your after compared to battery life. There are several good contenders in the 3.7 inch and 4.5 inch category, though as you mentioned the Desire HD I’ll focus on the larger 4.5inch screens:
The two main contenders are the HTC Sensation and the Samsung Galaxy SII, both have good 4.5 inch screens, on comparison the Samsung is the superior screen. Both have dual core 1.2GHz processors, near enough identical too. Both are manufacturer skinned. Most importantly you can root both of them, for tried an tested the GSII has been out longer and has a good development community already, the sensation less so. The other point I’d make is from experience of two friends one has the Sensation and one has the GSII the Samsung has the better battery life. For overall use and functionality though they are essentially the same phone, the GSII is a good bit thinner, though in actuality it’s really not something you’d notice.
As you know I’m a big fan of HTC and would go for an HTC most of the time, but from using my friends GSII I could be persuaded to move to the Samsung.
As far as older more tried and tested phones, then your looking at phones like the HTC Desire, HTC Desire S, Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Desire Z, HTC Incredible S (you see a theme forming here, they do make some of the best and most widely supported phones by the development community). There are Motorola phones that are very nice but they really locked down all there phones so most of them can not be rooted in the EU variant, only the US version which are useless in the UK.
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quixoticquisling
Great answer, thanks Ben.
It’s a bit bonkers that HTC Desire HD is seen as dated considering it only came out in September 2010, not even a whole year ago!
Just noticed that Sense is open source, which satisfies the mini-RMS in me.
I think HTC Sensation is my current favourite judging by specs and available info. I just have to try one now…
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dorkomatic
July Geekcluster
On Friday 15th July 2011, we returned to our HQ at the Otley for some Geeky fun. Again, Geoff, Elizabeth, Steve and I attended and discussed a wide variety of subjects including:
Flash/PHP/jQuery/HTML5 and similar technologies
The Prisoner – the 1960s television series
Pi vs Tau
and Steve brought his new jailbroken Ipad2 along which he demonstrated running Spectaculator – a ZX Spectrum emulator – the games ran remarkably well on a touch-screen considering they weren’t designed for such technology.
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dorkomatic
Towel Day Geekcluster a review We held our…
Towel-Day Geekcluster – a review
We held our May Geekcluster event at Chapter Arts Centre in Canton, Cardiff – to coincide with Geekday and “Towel-Day”
Steve, Geoff, Elizabeth and I (Howard) were in attendance. We brought towels of course, but Steve also brought his laptop and demonstrated his new Minecraft server:
Towel-day Minecraft Fun!
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quixoticquisling
Dorkbot Cardiff 19th May 2011
The dorkbot global network is made of groups of people “doing strange things with electricity”. There are more than 100 groups worldwide, who meet at various intervals and present work in progress, experiments, hacks and other unexpected uses of technology. Members of dorkbot groups include artists, engineers, designers, musicians, hackers, curious types, no robots yet.
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quixoticquisling
Should public libraries become hacker spaces?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/03/11/0225227/Should-Public-Libraries-Become-Hacker-Spaces
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dorkomatic (Howard)
My instant reaction was YES! – because we want hacker-spaces, we want skills-interchange, we want space to experiment and build. BUT while Hacker-spaces are definitely a good thing; I wonder if we’d need separate quiet-study/coding & software areas and (potentially) noisier hardware-hacking areas.
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dorkomatic
February at the Otley
Here’s a quck review of our meeting on Thursday 24th February 2011:
Our first meeting for a while, we met shortly after 8pm at the Otley. There were 8 of us: Dr Chris Tubbs, Steve @IrregularShed, Elizabeth @RealityMinus3, Geoff @Foomandoonian, Paul @Wooltech, Faith @FaithAdelaide, Pete @Nermal and me – Howard @Dorkomatic.
We had a good “Show & Tell” – starting with Steve’s amazing Star-Wars Sound-effects book a large book with electronic sound-effects built into the side – I had no idea such things existed! I brought along a couple of Christmas presents I’d received – two O’Reilly books: “Cooking for Geeks” and the “Geek Atlas” (a tourist guide to our lovely planet aimed at geeky types.)
Faith demonstrated the electronic dice which she’d built. I had a conventional 20-sided dice (thus sparking a little side-conversation with Paul about gaming & RPGs.)
Steve also showed us his amazing Texas-Instruments Open-Source Microprocessor Watch – which is comes with it’s own toolkit and source-code. I responded with another bit of analogue old-tech – I’d brought my little pocket slide-rule – spawning a conversation about logarithms (Elizabeth explained excellently)
I also brought along my Melodica (a mouth-blown keyboard free-reed instrument) – yet more old-tech.
We also discussed
- Electric-vans
- Morris-dancing (yes, really)
- Pete & Faith’s automated chickens
- Vaccines, hypodermic-needles & giving blood
- Teletypes & old computing-technologies (PDP-11 etc)
- Bad-ass ruby-powered lasers
- NASA & the last flight of the Discovery Shuttle
- Printing technologies from letterpress & golfballs on through duplicating machines etc.
I’m sure I’ve missed some important threads; but it was great to get together again and we must do it again soon.
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dorkomatic
November?
Is anyone up for a meeting in Cardiff sometime in November? At Chapter?
How about a Monday? – I know Carey (@handybitesize) suggested that he could come along if it was on a Monday.
So, how abou the 8th? Or the 22nd? (I can’t do the 15th since I’m away on a course.)
Discuss.
quixoticquisling, and 
dorkomatic (Howard) are discussing. 
Ben are discussing. 
dorkomatic (Howard) 2:36 PM on 29 September 2011 Permalink
Indeed it is! At the Otley, in Treforest.
quixoticquisling 11:19 PM on 29 September 2011 Permalink
See you there then then.
dorkomatic (Howard) 9:33 AM on 3 October 2011 Permalink
We had an adventurous journey there – Elizabeth, Geoff and I were stranded on the A470 for an hour and a half due to a faulty coil in E’s car. But we managed to amuse ourselves – even if we were discussing the Otto Cycle (ie: the Infernal combustion engine)
Eventually arriving at the Otley we found Steve, Chris and Carl playing with Steve’s iPad and a nifty looking 1970s(?) Kodak camera. Chris had also brought along a charity-shop find – a board game I remember from my own space-cadet childhood – Waddington’s “Blast Off” (c.1969) – I rememebr it fonly as a game that filled my head with dreams of space-travel despite the game actually being rather long, drawn out and dull (for my parents and brother at least.)
We also discussed the Welsh-language and the place of social-engineering to reinforce language-based culture (honest) and Chris regaled us with tales of lasers – and specifically the awesome HELEN laser at Aldermaston – once the most powerful laser in Europe.
quixoticquisling 1:30 PM on 3 October 2011 Permalink
I hope you weren’t too stressed out by the car.
This was among my favourite Geek Clusters!