February 29, 2008 at 21:37 · Filed under life
Things are moving on sooooo quickly.. I cannot believe it is already March tomorrow. In case you were wondering, Harriet is growing bigger by the minute (see pics below). I wish I had the discipline to take a photo of her daily so you could see the difference. Perhaps with our second… :s
Harriet and I have also been taking birth preparation classes given by a local ex-pat midwife who is passionate about the entire thing. She has made it very real and personal for us and for this we are extremely grateful. We are about half way through, with tonight’s class on breathing, birth positions and pain relief. In other news, we just picked up our stroller (pram for you Brits) from the store today. We ordered it a few weeks ago, and got an extremely good deal, saving ourselves about 400 Swissies compared with a Swiss store we visited. As per my previous post, we got the Bébé Confort’s High Trek. We have also been keen to get my clothing out of the baby room. Unfortunately, our room’s walls are slanted, and so we decided to custom build a closet to hang my clothing. I am happy to say, it’s finished!!
…
Harriet relaxes after coming home early from work.
Half way through…about.
The closet is put together thanks to Bosch.
Harriet assesses my new closet space.
A semi-circular jig thanks to Bosch.
Thanks Dad! Your design made it possible!
Unpacking the new Mercedes.
Taking her for a spin.
Harriet relaxing on a day off…
A very hungry mom-to-be devours a ridiculously large homemade pizza.
Harriet modelling a pregnancy outfit.
Dave and I having fun with the new Philips screen and my Sanyo HD1000.
February 24, 2008 at 16:53 · Filed under life
For all the dads-to-be out there. Many of you may feel that fatherhood is intimidating and perhaps even a bit boring. I went through a period of time where I felt these feelings… I am happy to say that they are now gone. One of the keys to getting excited about parenthood was to get involved in kitting the house out for everything baby. Please bare with me.
A lot of us guys love cars or at least looking at them or buying them. For most, buying any car at any time really isn’t an option. Luckily prams (strollers) aren’t as expensive as cars. So guys, pimp your stroller!
I spend a lot of time researching strollers, things to look out for, different makes, purposes etc… and finally, we purchased the Mercedes ML 63 AMG of strollers, the Bébé Confort’s High Trek. Granted, it doesn’t have the acceleration of the ML 63, but as far as strollers go, it’s feel presence and options are just as jaw-dropping as the ML.
Specs available at:
The second manly must have is a FUll HD video camera. Why full HD? Because I want it. (notice a lot of this post is written tongue in cheek) What a GREAT excuse to buy a new video camera!!! We (I) opted for the Sanyo HD1000, the mother of all ultra light fully HD camcorders. Ill add more details soon. for now, just know that it fits in the palm of your hand and shoots the clearest videos you’ve ever gotten your hands on. I LOVE it.
February 1, 2008 at 14:09 · Filed under life
I started seriously considering a blackberry last summer, and had the opportunity to own one in September of 2007. A late adopter, maybe, but up until now, I wasn’t satisfied with BB 3rd party apps list. Now that I have it (an 8700g) I LOVE it. Unfortunately, Sunrise (my current mobile provider) doesn’t have a BIS option. Only Swisscom and Orange currently do.
Still, I was interested in accessing my emails using Sunrise’s 7cts/20KB mobile data tariff. Still comes to CHF3.50 per MB but that’s OK I guess. I found out that Sunrise’s APN, username and password are all “internet”. Then I downloaded Opera Mini for bb. From there, I was up and running on the internet. Opera mini compresses data amazingly for very cost efficient browsing, plus the browser itself is MILES ahead of the IE browser on Windows Mobile 5 & 6 i had used.
I was keen to check out some of the Google products available for bb for a while now, so I tried to figure out a way to get a copy. Specifically, Gmail, Google maps and Google docs, the ones I use most frequently. Normally, you’d browse on your mobile browser to: http://www.gmail.com/app and http://google.com/gmm and download the apps OTA (over the air), that is, if you have a BIS contract with your mobile provider. As of today, Google Docs is only available to browse, not edit, so you can access this directly through your browser at http://docs.google.com/m.
Seeing as I don’t have BIS, I tried to find another solution to get the Gmail and Google Maps apps onto my computer, via the Desktop Manager.
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide direct download links to the files you need to install the apps.
Briefly, you need a .alx file which is the type of file the Desktop Manager reads to install the application, as well as one or more .cod files which contain the actual application. Over the Air (OTA) users just download a .jar file which installs automatically. Inside the .jar file are the references to the .cod files that are needed. Thanks to this post, this post and this post, I learned this and also learned how to trick the Google sites into giving me the .jar files, which normally require a bb browser to access. Soon, I had all I needed to install the apps.
Here is a step-by-step:
HOW TO INSTALL GMAIL APP AND GOOGLE MAPS APP FROM THE DESKTOP MANAGER
Overview:
1. Install User Agent Switcher for Firefox
2. Download the app .jad file
3. Find the .cod file names
4. Create the .alx file
5. Install the app!
1. Install User Agent Switcher for Firefox
This is an add-on which tricks websites into thinking your accessing their site with a specific browser eg blackberry browser etc…
a) Download it from here
b) Install it
c) Open it up in Firefox by clicking Tools>User Switcher Agent> Options>Options
d) Click User Agents, then click Add button
i/ In Description field, type in BlackBerry 8700g (replace 8700g with your BB model)
ii/ In User Agent field, type BlackBerry8700-4.2.1 (replace 8700 with your BB model)
iii/ In App Name field, type BlackBerry
e) Click OK, OK, OK.
f) Restart Firefox
g) Choose Tools>User Switcher Agent> and then choose the Blackberry profile you just created from the list.
h) Restart Firefox again
2. Download the app .jad file
a) Browse to either the Gmail app or the Google Maps download page using Firefox. (ill use Gmail for this example)
b) Choose your language (eg English) and then click the download link. (If you use my link, you might have an out of date version so I recommend you go through the steps yourself)
3. Find the .cod file names
a) Open the .jad file in Wordpad
b) Find the list of .cod files needed to install the Gmail app.
For this release, the files are:
gm_42_L1.cod
gm_42_L1-1.cod
gm_42_L1-2.cod
gm_42_L1-3.cod
The .cod files are located in the same directory as the jad file, so for this release, you’d point your browser to:
http://www.gmail.com/app/v1.5.1.1090/L1/
and then add on the .cod file name.
in this example: http://www.gmail.com/app/v1.5.1.1090/L1/gm_42_L1.cod
c) Download all four of the files, and put them together with the .jad file in their own folder. (You could call it Gmail app)
4. Create the .alx file
The .alx file is what the BlackBerry manager reads to install the app. It lists the app name, version, and all the .cod files needed.
a) Create a blank text document and paste the following into it:
<loader version="1.0"><application id="Gmail">
<name>Google Mail</name>
<description>mobile gmail app</description>
<version>1.5.1</version>
<vendor>Google</vendor>
<copyright>Copyright (c) 2007 Google</copyright>
<fileset java="1.0">
<files>
gm_42_L1-3.cod
gm_42_L1-2.cod
gm_42_L1-1.cod
gm_42_L1.cod
</files>
</fileset>
</application>
</loader>
Notice that the four files have been references inside the “files” tag, without any path, as everything is in the same folder. This is a general format for an alx file. You can use the exact same template for the Google maps .alx file, just changing the information.
b) Save the file as (for example) Gmail.alx
5. Install the app!
a) Open BlackBerry Desktop Manager
b) Choose Application Loader from the main links
c) When Wizard opens, click next
d) Click Add button on top right of screen
e) Browse to the .alx file you created and choose Open (The program will by checked)
f) Press Next to commence software installation on your BlackBerry
Now unplug your bb from the Desktop Manager and try your app out and it should work great!
—
The same process applies for the Google Maps app.
**UPDATE: (1/2/2008)**
Since about 21h30 this evening, it looks like Google has already updated it’s software package! When you point Firefox to the Google Maps page with your “BlackBerry browser”, it now sends you to:
http://google.com/gmm/gmm.jad?make=Generic&model=Advanced%20MIDP2&ver=v2.0.2
When you download the new .jad file and open it, there is no indication of the .cod files you need. Fortunately, it’s the same path as in past versions.
In the case of 2.0.1, the path to the jad file is still relative to the path of the .cod files for version 2.0.2.
.cod files
GoogleMaps.cod
GoogleMaps-1.cod
GoogleMaps-2.cod
GoogleMaps-3.cod
Anyhow, you can download the version 2.0.2 .cod files here, here, here, and here.
For those of you like me who are impatient or just slackers, a copy of my Google Maps app and Gmail app file (zipped) are available here and here.
—
Finally, because data CAN quickly get out of hand, I downloaded this little AMAZING freeware app called Mini Moni which is a traffic monitor (records how much data you use every day). It can save the logs and can even set a beep when you pass a certain limit. This is vital for me; I love it!
Any comments, feel free to post! Again, many thanks to the contributions in this post, this post and this post. Thanks also to this post for the plug-in allowing me to post code in WP!
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