I have now been using OpenStreetMap for a few months. Yes there are some features that Google has on their maps that is not on OSM. But what makes OSM so much better is that you can update the maps yourself, which is very addictive, OSM is also updated right away on the online map. I have already uploaded a few corrections from some errors I have found here in London. It is rather nice to see them live and on your GPS a few days later.
Where I’m still waiting for Google to update an error I spotted. Yes there is the so called “copyright errors” but this one is not just one road it is many roads in the same area.
Garmin has made so that the Dakota 20 (and others) are able use these free maps on these units. Yes OpenStreetMap is not fully up to date and is not covering the whole world yet. Some areas are in more details than others, but since people like me (and you) are out there every week, the maps are updated all the time with more and more roads, track, POI etc.
I have tried out a few different maps …

Yeah I’m getting a wee bit lazy and therefore only put my LEGO news in one post now and again, so here is Massive LEGO update number II.
For you Facebook addicts here is a LEGO version of it, Facebook literally in lego.
Over on theoatmeal.com they have made a graph about their memory of LEGO. As much as I agree with it I still have to disagree with it, if you are a real LEGO fan you will have LEGO harden feet. A bit like walking on hot coal you get used to it and never feel that you are stepping on a piece of LEGO. If you are an elite you will be able to tell what size LEGO you are stepping on.
My biggest memory of LEGO is after a long break away from LEGO. The rush down memory lane which was brought back by the sound and the feeling from me running my fingers through the LEGO.
With background as a graphical, mechanical designer etc I have played plenty with various plotters and printers over the years. But this one is probably the coolest I have seen – LEGO printer for mac
If you haven’t heard about TED (Technology, Entertainment, …

A few weeks ago I got a Garmin Dakota 20 GPS mainly for us to use when touring. Don’t get me wrong I do love the old paper maps, could spend hours looking at them.

My old Sony *) laptop got retired last week since it was way to noisy and was doing my head in, so after a lot of looking around I got a Dell **). The Sony is a great laptop and still work just fine, nice an fast for what I need. The 4-5 trips to the doctor’s a few years ago took its told on the fan and how hot it runs the closest thing to describe it is a hair dryer just on normal use.
It was a bit hard waiting for the delivery of my new toy, we are getting so used to getting online purchase the next day or at least 48 hours later. But Dell had to my new toy build in China, since I wanted something that wasn’t directly of the peg. And then there was the annoyance of the online tracking tool, what every Dell told the shipping company, the shipping company didn’t understand. So I couldn’t track my toy as it made its way to me. Though after some searching I found out that if you modified the tracking code a little you could get it to work. Why Dell aren’t working on on …

I know which love the most but I have always have had a soft spot for the rubic cube. Now what a better mix than this a Lego robot controlled by a Nokia phone which solves a rubic cube.

I have only once managed to solve the 3x3x3 rubik cube let alone a 4x4x4. So this a wee bit of cheating getting the phone to solve but it quite cool to watch.

… well at least make it so that your users can cross link to each others right away.
Google have just launched their own thing called buzz.google.com, some say it is the twitter/facebook killer, we will see. I do like the fact that it is integrated into my gmail, though I’m still waiting for it on the desktop but my iPhone can buzz already. I also like that I can “tag” my Buzz to a location and add pictures and from what I understand there is no 140 characters limit like on twitter. It is only users of gmail that get the best out of Buzz even if you mark the Buzz public and google picks it up on the map/latitude and live search.
So I still have to cross post onto facebook and twitter to make sure that all my friends will get to read what I have Buzzed. That is why I like wordpress since I can with a plugin get wordpress to post on twitter and facebook for me. But for some reason it is not a official feature or official plugin that does it, I have to test out a few to find one that works with …

I have four issues with ubuntu, wireless, dual monitor, network and DVD. The DVD worked from start (6.04) but somehow stopped working after version 7.10. Wireless just works strait away in the newer versions. And it gets easier to set up my laptop to run with my 19″ screen attached to it. And for the life of me I can never get samba to work so that I can see my other PC running ubuntu, but only NFS will.
Ubuntu 9.04 : Update it without any problems but the boot time was getting annoying, since it was over 1m45s. I know what my laptop could do faster, since when I ran a heavy tweaked Windows XP, I got the boot up down to around 35s. I read that ext4 was a faster file system than ext3. So I tried to convert (or what ever it is called) it but after few failed attempts, I had to format the drive to ext4. And got my boot time down to around a minute, still not anything near what I had with XP. And even with reading various blogs on how to speed up ubuntu it never got any faster.
Ubuntu 9.10 : They …

I do love using Ubuntu and have done so since 6.04. It has clearly become better and easier to set up and play with over the years. Though the only thing I still fight with is the Nvidia graphic card and being able to share my files over the network. The Nvidia issue is not an issue on my set up any more, since 9.10 found my external monitor and didn’t complain as it used to, so I would call that solved :)
Though the network share is still an issue, for the life of me I can’t get my two machines to see each other. I got a PC with my music, backup and other files which I would like to access from my laptop.
Both machines are set up just as Ubuntu come off the install CD. And now and again I would like the network to be seen from a laptop running XP. What I found out that there are a few ways of doing network share on the Ubuntu.
Samba : by the look and sound of it should be the easiest to set up and run. But I never got it to share the way I wanted. Either …

It is getting closer.
And I couldn’t wait so a couple weeks back I updated my other PC and it all fell over, yes yes I know don’t touch an Alpha if you don’t know what you are doing.
But today there might be some hope since I’m right now updating and it is downloading the new NVIDIA kernel as I type this.

… lets you share your files with others.
Sync your files, share your work with others or work remotely, all with your Ubuntu (9.04) computers.
I have just signed up for the 2Gb free option, there is 10Gb which you have to pay for and it works great.
https://ubuntuone.com/