At first I was able to ignore it, after all, it does nothing I can’t do on my laptop already.

But the reviews keep coming in, people can’t seem to get enough of it, and the more I look the more I consider it to be not that expensive anyway.

I think I have finally given in, after much looking around, review-reading, and “OMG it does this” moments I’ve decided that the 16 GB 3G model would be best for me, I’m not overly bothered about the storage as I don’t want to shove a whole ton of media on this thing, and would much rather have the flexibility of 3G mobile broadband and GPS built in.

Theres just one thing stopping me, well, 529 of them to be honest, but hey, hopefully I’ll be able to get rid of some unused stuff on eBay, and I henceforth declare the iPad fund: Open.

So, any readers of this purchased, considered purchasing, or had any experience of one of these “magical” devices?

I’ve been considering getting one of those 3G USB dongles for a while now, even on Pay-as-you-go tariffs the prices are now cheap enough that it isn’t really an issue of cost, more the lack of signal in places where I would want to use it. I have a unlimited data on my phone so figured why not use that? After a bit of googling it seemed the only way on an Android phone was to “root” it, my initial idea was to maybe SSH tunnel data through the device, the bonus being that it would work over WiFi too, but didn’t get very far with that as it seemed too much hassle to potential brick my phone. Then eventually I found a pretty cool looking app called proxoid. No rooting required, just a little terminal knowledge.

On OS X just install the app from the link above, enable USB Debugging on your phone,download the Android SDK , and in the “tools” folder run:
./adb forward tcp:8080 tcp:8080

And you should be setup, now just launch Firefox (or other browser) and set the HTTP proxy to localhost port 8080.

One change that I did have to make  was to set the User-Agent filter to remove within proxoid, I’m presuming Vodafone was picking this up and blocking connections.

For full instructions check out proxoid’s site here: http://code.google.com/p/proxoid/wiki/installation

So far I’ve only been able to use this over a GPRS connection, so sub dial-up speeds, but even that was surprisingly quick and I look forward to trying it out over 3G.

As for terms and conditions? Well, I suspected there would be an issue but after a bit of research it seems that they are ok with it so long as you don’t use it excessively (see here and here).

Obviously I’ve found this out just as Android 2.2 has been released (with tethering support built in). But from what I can see its very unlikely that my “old” HTC Magic will get that update any time soon, if at all!

I’ll be the first person to admit that I’m not usually overly vocal about my opinions, especially those regarding political matters (hey, I’ve even had to make a new category for it, all shiny, new, and empty). But with the announcement of the imminent election it’s hard not to get involved! Being just 19 it also means this is my first opportunity to get involved, vote, and then if all goes wrong have the right to complain about the government!

Something that I have noticed is that students (and there’s a lot of them here) seem to be concentrating their views around tuition fees. Yes it is quite a major issues which the 3 major parties seem to have different views on, but at the same time its a small part of the bigger picture. A change in policy now is going to stick with us almost certainly for the rest of our lives.

To begin with there’s the (students favourite) Liberal Democrat’s approach of scrapping fee’s altogether. Sounds like a great idea, but what we must realise is that this money comes from somewhere, in this case it will be taxes that students will end up paying anyway. Now there’s no feasible way to work out the numbers on this, but my reckoning that this will be in the form of tax increases (assuming no cuts are made elsewhere), this means that both people who have taken advantage of the education will pay, alongside those who it has had no direct benefit to. Assuming university entry continues to rise this is going to be putting a much larger strain on the economy in the long term. Of course it will advantage some, but by the reasoning that university graduates generally end up with higher incomes than their non-graduate equivalents they will no doubt be on higher tax bands, and over their lifetime pay an equivalent value which is more than the fee’s were for them individually in the first place.

Then there’s Labour, with a 50% university target. Now it doesn’t take an expert to figure out that less than 50% of jobs in the country require graduate level knowledge, this simply seems to devalue the “prestige” of a degree that can make you stand out to employees. The way I see it an investment in your own life, 3 years and around £30K later you come out more qualified (on paper) than your peers that chose a different route. Something which the 50% figure would abolish, or at least deteriorate. Then there is the system in which university is funded, as with many of their other policies an income based system which determines how well you can afford to live the university life based on your parents incomes. For a start I would love to see the effects if the government were to take this approach of being an individual able to vote, make your own decisions in life, be an individual for all intents and purposes, but suddenly you are then linked back to how well your parents have (or haven’t) done in life. Essentially basing your future on your parents past.

The approach seems to be skewed towards given students who have parents on extreme low/high incomes an advantage, giving them all or close to nothing (respectively). The trouble is those in the middle, the “average” of the country, not getting enough to live entirely off student loans & grants, seemingly expected to scrounge off of their parents to make up the difference. Those from lower-income families are able to receive a total of £6403 per year, excluding tuition fees, of which £2906 which is a non-replayable grant, from experience I would quite confidently say this is enough to live a very comfortable student lifestyle, at £533.58 per month an income I’m sure even some families would be delighted to see! Contrasting to this is those from higher-income families, available to whom is a loan of £3564, which seems barely even enough to cover the costs of accommodation, let alone such basic luxuries as “food”, but this is deemed OK as these peoples parents are “able” to pay up the rest. The trouble is the middle ground, these are the people who may get enough to just about cover basic living costs, but barely nothing else, which to me since a Labour government is supposed to support an average working family emits totally the wrong message?

Finally, there’s the Conservatives, have I kept the best till last? Well, maybe, that’s what democracy is all about after all! It is being said that they will increase tuition fees, but if this is complimented by a decrease in funding from the government then technically we would be paying the same anyway, merely the funding would be received from different sources. A key point which they have made, and interests me is the following:

Introduce an early repayment bonus on student loans which are repaid ahead of schedule.

At the moment student loans can be essentially treated as free money, having an interest rate which tracks the rate of inflation means that the amount that is paid back never technically increases, this leads to people avoiding the repayments by paying back the minimum amount, hence causing strain on an already trembling economy. The emphasis here is that this is voluntary, those who are lucky and go straight into good employment out of university would be able to help the country as the whole by providing them back the funds that they were loaned sooner than expected, and rewarded for this (unlike the current system). It is important that this isn’t a compulsory, as there are often genuine reasons why people are unable to pay back their loans. Overall I see this as the most rounded approach which should (in theory) benefit everyone the most

Too many students look past views other than what could benefit them right now, i.e. no tuition fees without considering that this potential change will be with them and affecting them together. It’s also a very key point that the Lib Dem’s plans for example will not even benefit current students (other than those in their final year) as it is a plan which will only be brought in over 6 years, as ever a change that is promised but over a long time-scale.

I don’t think university should be seen as a free ride for a few years, or an easy way of delaying the inevitable of a job in the “real world”, to me it is an opportunity to improve your quality of life in the long run, to hopefully get a better job, and to do what you want to do in life. By reducing or scrapping fees altogether only fuels the views of those who see students as time wasters who are sponging off the “real” workers.

So, that is that, someone out there must read this so please let me know if you think I’m talking a load of crap, or this is the most sense you’ve heard in a long time!

Oh, and bonus points for guessing where my cross will be going on May 6^th!

It looks fancy, has a large multi-touch screen, but as much as I try I can’t see this as a hugely practical device. For starters I can’t get over the fact that it just looks like Apple have taken the iPod Touch and stretched the design a little.

I’m probably being picky here, but the fact that there are huge gaps between the icons seems like a waste of screen space to me, admittedly enlarging them would make it look childish, and putting more icons there would make it crowded, but this is Apple we’re talking about, surely they could come up with a better solution!?

Still, watching the demo videos, this thing looks amazing. Obviously these ideal scenarios have been picked to sell it, and to an extent I can see their use, but for me none stand out as a unique selling point. I have computer for web browsing, widescreen monitor for films. Yes these may be seperate devices, but devices which all do their job well, making it harder to justify a few hundred £’s on a device which can almost do them all.

But then you look further, the Calendar app for example looks perfectly suited to such a device, as does the Address book, at times when graphics try to emulate real life objects it can look very tacky, but they seem to have pulled it off here.

But then, everyone is saying you don’t see how good it is until you actually feel and use it. So, keep me away from the Apple Store!

I finally gave in and purchased a new phone, coming to the conclusion that I would be forever waiting for the iPhone and paying a lot more money for not a great deal more in terms of features. Nexus one would have been nice, but with a £360 price tag or wait until Vodafone gets it and hope the plans are cheap, that was never a definite options.

So, looking through my options on Vodafones upgrade site I could have a free (albeit old) blackberry, HTC Tattoo, and verious other non-smart phones. At £60 the Magic seemed a pretty good deal, so I went with it and was about to hit order to be told that it could only be delivered to my home address, which isn’t ideal as I am currently at uni in Lancaster, so went to ring up to see if the address could be changed and ended up getting the phone for just £30, due to them knocking 300 minutes from my allowance, which I don’t use anyway.

It arrived on Friday, quite impressive considering I had only ordered the day before. I couldn’t get over how small this thing was, making my Nokie E63 look like the brick that it truly is, it has a far sleeker design and feels like it has a far superior build quality (I never thought I would say that about a Nokia).

Due to the awful reception in my room, at first I thought I’d received a broken unit, even to the extent that I was about to return it, but a quick walk around campus brought up excellent 3G reception and all the features working in an instant. The Android OS really does shine when you have a solid internet connection, with Google services being synced instantaneously, and new mail being pushed directly towards you, it is what I imagine Exchange would be like in a business environment.

This is a new toy for me, so obviously I’m playing with it and wearing the battery down at a constant rate! But I can honestly say that I’m not dissapointed or regretting the fact that I didn’t hold out for an iPhone, it is the best phone I have had by a long way.

Just one niggle, why is it not possible to enter a proxy server for WLAN connections? Making it useless for use on the univesrities network, and I can’t get 3rd party apps to work either. Ahh well, so long as I have 3G all is good.

The “Super-phone” is here, or so it seems. And I want it, almost.

For a while now I have been looking for my next phone, with my previous contract with 3 expiring in May 09 I decided to switch to a sim-only plan to keep me going until I found something that I needed. For many years Apple have won me over with the iPhone, but unfortunately it is one device from the company that just seems too expensive, at almost double my current monthly cost with no extra benefits other than a fancy phone. So my iPhone “dreams” shall remain just that.

Enter Google. I’ve always liked the idea of the Android platform with seamless integration into Google’s services, it seems perfect as I have Google Apps setup for my Email, Calendar, Contacts, and any other services they are willing to throw my way. The trouble is the hardware has always seemed all over the place to me, with so many models to choose from it gets a bit confusing, by November I had narrowed my choices down to the HTC Magic on a £30/month contract with Vodafone. So I went through the signup process looking forward to the prospect of a nice new toy to play with, but it just wasn’t meant to be. It seems as I am a student with no reliable income I failed their credit checks, looking back I suppose it was likely to happen, I just wasn’t expecting it.

I expected that to be the end of that, although the following day I got a call from someone at Vodafone explaining the situation, and offering me sim only deal £10 cheaper, but with same allowances (just no phone). Initially I dismissed this but he then went on to offer me the phone for free in 3 months time, so I’m willing to wait for that.

But, fast-forward just 1.5 months and I’m back to square one. iPhone is available on Vodafone with (for my purposes & uses) a much better priced contract. It’s awfully tempting, although I would want to wait until June for the next generation of the device.

And this brings me onto the Nexus One, I could have one for around £400 within just a few days. Much cheaper than the 3GS, but still quite expensive for an item which I will basically get bored of in 12 months time and start searching out for a replacement. I do think that this is an interesting route for Google to go down, offering a flagship device which essentially markets the true potential of the Android OS, for a lot cheaper than many competing products. And I want it, all those high numbers thrown around in the spec sheets are screaming out, but I can’t help but think I would regret not going for the iPhone, the one that I have always wanted yet managed to resist.

It would be nice to hear some opinions of these devices from real users, rather than just the usual marketing babble, please post in the comments if you have any experience you wish to share!

Your IP (Internet Protocol) address to your computer is like what your address is to your home, somethingly which allows you to be uniquely identified so packets (or, erm, packages for the home address anthology) get sent to the correct destination. Really usefuly and ensures what is sent to you comes to you, arguably in a more reliable way than certain postal services. The difference between these is that in most cases, i.e. Unless you specifically opt to upgrade, your IP changes each and every time you reconnect to the internet, this problem doesn’t affect most people as the average computer user probably doesn’t know what an “IP” is, nor do they need to.

But there are the odd few, say, those who wish to run a web/ftp/ssh/any other server from home. It is all well and good telling everyone to look at your brilliant new site at 90.80.70.60, but then boom. Your router freezes due to all the traffic and you have to restart, 5 minutes later everything is up and running again but this time your brilliant new site has a brilliant new address of 90.80.70.40, uh-oh, now you have heaps of disgruntled visitors lost in the maze of the web, bit of a pain isn’t it? Don’t think Google would be where it is today id it’s address changed every 5 minutes.

This is where Dynamic DNS providers, such as DynDNS come in. They allow you to setup a domain which points to your IP, and automagically updates when it changes, pretty useful. The only problem is that unless you cough up some cash you are limited to a subdomain of one of their 78 domains, still useful, but we can do better. Now, you could take the seemingly easy option of handing some money over to them for the privilege of using their name servers to direct your IP, or you can do a small modification to the DNS records of your current domain for almost identical effect. For the purpose of this I’m going to assume you have already got your free sub-domain setup with DynDNS, and just want your domain pointing to it.

Here’s how in 4 simple steps:

1. Login to your Hosting/Domain/DNS Control panel (i.e. the place where you manage your domain).
2. You need to go to a page named Manage DNS, or Custom DNS, or something similar, from here you’ll get a list of records related to the domain in question.
3. You need to either add or edit a record, the new record should be of the type CNAME, and the value/content should be “yourdyndnsaddress.dyndns.org.” (replace as appropriate). Ensure that you keep the dot (.) at the end, otherwise stuff might not work as it should.
4. Thats it, you may have to wait a while for the updates to propagate, but you should soon be able to access your dynamically changing home IP address from a nice custom URL, and best of all you won’t ever need to update it again!

Now, for the drawback. Because of the type of DNS Record I wouldn’t recommend this on a traffic-heavy site, since to get to your site your computer has to do 2 DNS lookups, rather than one (first to see where your domain points to, then second to see which IP your DynDNS account is linked to). After-all, if you’re running a traffic-heavy site from your own server on a Dynamic IP, maybe it’s time to invest in a Static IP? For most people wanting to do this it won’t be a problem though, and this small drawback is negligible considering for most people it isn’t worth spending a great deal just for a domain which you feel looks better.

So, uses for this? Well, anything that requires for you to know your home IP really, here are some examples:

• Running your own web server, with freelance work I often develop sites on my MacBook, and then provide clients with the relevant links to see the project, having a constantly-changing IP can be a pain as links often change, leading to those ghastly “Server Not Found” errors, using DynDNS gets rid of this problem, but then going one step further and using a custom domain makes everything look more professional.
• VNC, lets you control your computer remotely without having to use any 3rd party software, having your own domain makes remembering the address even simpler.

As mentioned before, there are a lot more, you could even use this principle to create your own web host, simply repeating the steps for all the domains you want hosting (And configuring your web server appropriately).

Can you think of any more uses, or any potential problems with this? Let me know.

So, I decided that charging my iPod via Laptop’s USB port was beginning to be a pain, and the firewire charger from my iPod mini just needed replacing. For a start it had the old “clips” on the dock connector to stop it from coming unplugged. The result of these “troubles” is quite simple really, a brand new replacement

Naturally, this came in a nice appley box. Admittedly £20 for a charger is a bit on the steep side, but I had an Argos voucher which needed using, bringing the price to around a tenner. Much more reasonable. To my surprise I found that it came with a brand new USB cable, a nice little bonus which will make a handy spare, but I suppose it is justified given the price.

One of the most amazing things about these chargers is the size, compared to my MacBook charger it’s tiny, compared to my old iPod charger it’s tiny, simply brilliant!

Unfortunately, yet another post about the weather. Once it get’s back to normal maybe more productive stuff will start appearing here.

Like the rest of the UK, got quite a bit of snow here today. Unfortunately though, not quite enough for a “Snow Day”. Got up this morning and tuned in to the good old Radio Joke hoping so much for my college (or, in fact, any of 2 schools, just to significantly increase the probability) to be called out, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Now I’m hoping for the same great weather tomorrow. Just looking out of the window seemed pretty promising. At least an inch over everywhere, and my car has turned a rather lovely shade of white in about an hour.