Simplifying IT, Amplifying Knowledge

Xperia T

I received the Xperia T in exchange for some old compact cameras. It's a more powerful and better-equipped version of the Xperia J that I got last year.

This phone was released one month before the Xperia J, but comes with much better harware.



Sony Xperia T

The 4.55-inch screen has a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The phone has 16 GB of ROM and 1.5 GB of RAM, and the Android operating system has been upgraded to the latest version, Android 4.3. It also has a decent 13MP main camera and, to my surprise, NFC.



The system runs smoothly. Some of the menus, pop-ups and bars are not standard Android, but have been updated to match the premium Sony design. The audio reproduction is very good. The speakers are quite good, but you can hear an even better sound when you connect high-quality phones to the jack connector. The built-in Walkman app supports the FLAC format, which is also a nice feature.

Unlike the J version, the telephone has more than enough space for apps and sounds, so I would possibly put some high-definition audio on the memory just to see what the sound quality is like later.

This ...

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DNS issues

I was looking for an article on this blog and wanted to see how well Google indexes me, so I tried to find it by searching for it on Google. I found out that, for some reason, Google indexes me with the www subdomain. However, I am not promoting my website as www.jan-skoda.cz, but just as jan-skoda.cz.

It doesn't really matter why Google does that, but I found out that I had some DNS records set up incorrectly, as all requests to all subdomains work as they should, but requests to the www subdomain end in error. I spent some time tinkering with the DNS settings and was finally able to fix the issue, so now the old-school URL lovers can enjoy the www subdomain.

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Galaxy S4 mini

I got a Galaxy S4 Mini today. From today's perspective, the phone is just average. There's nothing to catch your attention or anything unusual about it. So I don't have much to write about it.

However, back in its day, it was at the peak of mobile technology.

Galaxy S4 Mini

It is quite compact and fits nicely in the hand. It also comes with a Super AMOLED display. However, the display is not really great and is possibly the phone's weakest feature.

The other parameters are quite good, though, and the phone has 1.5 GB of RAM, which was more than enough at the time. Inside, it has a Snapdragon 400 chipset with a dual-core 1.7 GHz Krait 300 CPU and an Adreno 305 GPU. So there was nothing this phone couldn't do.

The camera shots aren't anything to look at, but then again, neither was anything else back in those times. It had an 8MB LED flash and was capable of running 1080p video at 30fps, which is quite impressive for such an old phone.

So, my piece needed some care and attention. It came with a back plate featuring hydrographics. However, after all these years, there were cracks in the ...

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Dev diary - Rival Run

After some time, i managed to make reincarnation of another game that was lost when Flash died. This time i remembered the Platform Racing 2 game. So, i created a Rival Run. The game keeps the concepts, and tries to build on them.

Currently i have finished the base game, the character editor, bonuses that are being given to winner in some races, and all the synchronisation.

Rival Run game

And honestly, it was hard work. The first working concept was done in day or two, but until then, i has rewritten the game four times. Because i have met the limits of the approach three times. The problem was the the physics, and the limits of calculating it on backend, frontend, or both. So it required rewrites again and again, but finally i have working game. I am going to enhance it, but now, everything seems to be working and not really glitchy. Now i would wait for the opinions and reports from players, and after fixing all issues i am going to add new functions. Until that, i would finish and release the Android wersion, and then keep updating both.

You can try the web version here already:

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Nexus 7

My colleague gave me a very nice piece of hardware. It's a Nexus 7, made by ASUS. It is the first Nexus tablet to be made by Google. It comes with Android 5.1.1 and 32 GB of ROM.

Nexus 7 Nexus 7

I got the non-3G version, which doesn't bother me, and it's in very good condition. It looks almost brand new. The only thing I am thinking about is the back. It has a rubberised back and is quite sticky, as it has nano-something for phones to rest in the car. I'm not sure if this is intentional or just the result of the material degrading over time. Currently, I think it is intentional, as the back is completely rubberised and nothing seems scratched or damaged. So it's possibly not a bug, just a feature.

The strange thing is that the Wi-Fi is buggy somehow. When I scan for networks, it can only detect about 20% of the networks that I can see on any other device in the same area. Even to those that are found, I am not really able to connect. This is quite problematic because the initial setup phase requires a WiFi connection, ...

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Nokia 3410

I have the Nokia 3410, the successor to the well-known 3310. The two phones are almost identical. There are only a few differences, such as a different layout for the navigation keys, and some kind of Java support, so you can theoretically install Java apps on the internal 180k memory. But, honestly, I cannot imagine that it is really possible.

The only practical update that users were able to recognise was the increased internal memory for contacts, which could hold 200 entries. However, SMS messages were still only stored on the SIM card.

Nokia 3410

The reason this is interesting to me is that the 3410 that I already have in my collection has a broken sound. Now I can swap it for this perfectly functioning piece!

Also, while everyone is talking about the legendary Snake game, I personally prefer Space Impact. I just spent almost an hour playing it!

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Nokia 3109c

It's a very nice mobile phone. That's one of the ones I wanted back then — it was so cool!

Nokia 3109c

It has a 128x160 screen, the same size as my first colour phone. I really like it. However, it only has 9MB of internal memory, with only around 3MB available to the user. Fortunately, however, it also comes with a MicroSD card slot, which was quite rare back in 2007 when it was released.

Fortunately, I had a 128MB microSD card on my desk, so I immediately downloaded lots of games onto it and put it in the phone (which was quite tricky because of the weird slot). I was looking forward to playing it! Unfortunately, after inserting the card into the phone, I was just presented with a list of unrecognised files. I realised that this Nokia is one of those that needs .jad files too. A So I started my virtual machine with Windows, opened JAD Maker and created .jad files for all the .jar files. I tried again, but it didn't work. Around 90% of the games worked. I now have around 50 working games, and I still have 110 MB free, so I can ...

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EVOLVEO Encrypt 1

I received a couple of gift packages this week. I will write about all the interesting things later, as there are a lot of them, but today I installed one of the 128 GB SSD drives I received on Tuesday and the Evolveo Encrypt Box I received yesterday.

EVOLVEO Encrypt 1

Fortunately, I found a manual on how to set it up; without it, I would have been unable to get it working. However, it was quite easy with the manual.

The 'Encrypt' box offers encrypted storage. I just plugged in the drive and started the setup sequence on the box, setting up a PIN for the drive in the process. This PIN is then used as a key for the hardware AES 256-bit encryption. The great thing about this box is that everything is done directly on the device. After entering the correct PIN, it connects to the PC or other device like a normal HDD, so it basically works with everything. Even the file system can be whatever you want, as the encryption is done 'on the fly'.

It is a really interesting piece of hardware. Now I just need to find some really important and secret data ...

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Nokia 5000D

When i saw this phone in the recently arived box, i was really looking forward to try it out.But it was because i thought it is another phone. The 5310 XpressMusic to be exact.

Nokia 5000D

released a year after the XpressMusic but is inferior in every way. Although it shares the same display resolution, it has a lower colour depth and is smaller. It also has an older version of the operating system/firmware, lower memory and a worse camera.

It is not capable of holding more than ten games, so I have installed the most interesting pieces from the pack on the Nokia 515 that I previously introduced. However, it will probably not hold my attention for very long.

To be honest, this phone is a bit disappointing.

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Nokia 515

I hadn't even finished going through the previous box of phones when I received a new one from another generous donor. There are lots of interesting, very old phones, but what caught my eye is this Nokia 515.

Nokia 515 Nokia 515

Although it is a classic key phone, it has a fairly nice display. It has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels, which is impressive for such a small screen.

So, it can run most of these legendary old Java games, and they look even fancier here without losing any of their playability.

For example, I was quite surprised by Gravity Defied, which looks great on that 'big' screen. I have also installed some other classics. However, to be honest, not all of those classic old games have a variant for 'that big' resolution, so some of them are unplayable or only run on part of the screen. But a lot of them still work.

There is more than enough memory available for installing games. With around 200 MB of available space, it can hold hundreds of games.

So, goodbye to long winter evenings. I'm going to dig out some old Java games.

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