Monthly Archives: July 2005

HP Calculators (HP48GX, HP49G)

While swapping the extension memory card batteries in my trusty old HP48GX, I managed to erase the main memory as well as the 512KB card in port 2. 🙁
I had honestly forgotten how slow 9600 baud over a serial port really were. So here’s a list of recommended software if you have at least 2 ram-cards (1 for MetaKernel, the other for more libs):

Don’t forget to use AKEYS from ALG48 and to install the MKAddon.

While doing all this, I checked out Power48, an HP48/9 emulator for PalmOS 5 handhelds. It is very nice and runs very well on my Clie UX-50, although the necessary conversion programs for ROMs are only available for Windows. It’s still not as nice having to tap the buttons on-screen compared to just pressing real, physical buttons; but this may be aggravated by the fact that I am emulating an HP49 (so I wouldn’t have to install all the software which is included in the HP 49G ROM anyway) which has a completely different keyboard layout.
The interesting bit about the HP49 is that the last official ROM update is 1.19-6, a beta version. But Bernard Parisse has published the source-code to the CAS (computer algebra system) that he has written for HP (beware the license: you’re not allowed to redistribute the binary!). And this compiles (most easily using Cygwin) to a ready-to-use ROM release with version number 1.24. 😀

Nochnoy Dozor / Night Watch

Nochnoy Dozor / Night Watch is a Russian film and the first part of a trilogy. It is a modern day fantasy about the age old struggle between good and evil which has come to a stalemate and now both parties try to keep the status quo (a bit like the Cold War) with the Night Watch (good guys watching bad guys) and the Day Watch (bad guys watching good guys) being the overseers of this truce, all the while letting the normal people believe that nothing of the sort of wizards, witches, vampires and shape-shifters exists. The members of the warring factions are called Others and are awaiting the arrival of a prophesied Other that will break the balance for one side or the other.
The director has mainly been doing commercials and music videos, and that is very evident throughout the film. Most of the time this works very well, once in while you feel as if a particular shot did not really have to be in slow-motion or that the camera didn’t have to twirl around the scene 3 times. In that regard it takes plenty of inspiration from Hollywood blockbusters, but is able to stand on its own with a certain grittiness, an odd sense of humour and non-sterile characters, but the blatant Nescafe ads are awful.
The Russian DVD of this has good English subtitles, although certain choices may confuse viewers (i.e. “the Other” = “an Other”, “funnel” = “vortex”).
Better than I expected (and I hoped it would be good). Recommended (as long as you don’t expect an art-house film).

Internet in fast.

A fast connection is really nice:
Safari Download Window

I’ve been playing a bit of “God of War” recently and it feels very epic. Still waiting for my “Killer 7” from Play.com (which is taking 9 days now :().
Have also started dabbling a bit in Cocoa (with Aaron Hillegass‘ book). The current plan for applications is something to convert the escaped international names generated by BOMArchiveHelper to proper unicode, maybe port my wavelet image compression code, and for testing out CoreData an anime fansub collection database / management app. Time permitting, of course… 😉