Tom Medley » General News

APN Settings for Android O2 UK

Tom — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:40:03 +0000

I recently set up my phone to O2, and had trouble finding the correct settings. They are as follows:

Name: o2
APN: mobile.o2.co.uk
Username: vertigo
Password: password
MMSC: http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk:8002
MMS: proxy 193.113.200.195
MMS: port 8080 MCC 234 MNC 10

StegDroid wins 2nd prize at SBSeg

Tom — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:27:50 +0000

At the SBSeg conference, StegDroid won honours as the second best paper in the undergraduate track.

Dual Monitor Full Screen Fix for OSX Lion

Tom — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:11:37 +0000

I’ve found a way around the useless full screen implementation in OSX, thanks to Geet Duggal. Here’s a refined version of the procedure, where I’ll have Xcode full screen on one monitor, and terminal and Chrome open on my secondary monitor:

Arrange the application windows you want to have on your second screen as you would like them. You will not be able to rearrange them once they are there.
Completely quit the applications you wish to use on your second monitor, e.g. terminal, Chrome.
Full screen your app (Xcode)
Using the trackpad, swipe with three fingers a little bit, so that just the edge of the next space is visible (but it won’t switch when you let go)
Keeping your fingers on the trackpad, hit cmd + space to open Spotlight and type in the name of the program you wish to launch on the second monitor (terminal)
Hit enter to launch the program, wait for the window to display, then you can take your fingers off the trackpad.
Repeat steps 4-6 for any other apps you wish to launch!

This solution is far from perfect, but it works reliably so it’s a usable workaround until Apple actually fix this.

Essential Tech for Travel

Tom — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:33:04 +0000

Having just spent over a month travelling, and having done a similar stint three years ago, two pieces of technology have changed the experience quite fundamentally. Frankly, if you’re planning a long trip anywhere, these two tools are indispensible:

Kindle 3G

Reading books is cool, not having to lug them around with you is nice too, but that pales compared to the Kindle 3G’s killer feature: Completely free internet access almost anywhere in the world. Granted, the browser is slow, but for travelling being able to access the internet anywhere is amazing. You can read Wikipedia articles (which are treated very nicely by the Kindle’s built-in Instapaper-like Article Mode) for historical sites while you’re there. You can access the wealth of eating & drinking recommendations (and not just the one’s in the guide book!) , and you can keep in touch with emails. You never need to worry about having wifi, or finding an internet cafe, you just turn it on and it works.

Google Maps (Android)

Why Android specifically? Offline maps. This launched while I was in Istanbul, and it was a Godsend. Suddenly, I could always whip out my phone, and see in an instant where I was, as GPS works without internet access. No more getting lost, no more worrying about keeping track of where I was and how to get back. The maps it downloads work at all zoom levels, and include points of interest, bars and cafes (just the points on the map, not the actual Places pages for them). You can download maps anywhere, so you can get a map for the city you’re going to next, and not have to worry about how to get to the hostel.

VX Nano Button Behaving Strangely – Fixed

Tom — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:16:28 +0000

Over the past few days the left button on my Logitech VX Nano had been playing up (it’s over 3 years old and has had daily use). This was especially noticeable when dragging, or holding down the button. Instead of staying down it would flicker between down and up quickly. Pressing hard worked to solve the problem but it was getting to be a pain. Before heading to Amazon to buy another, I thought I’d have a go at resurrecting it. I didn’t want to take it to bits, to do so I’d have had to remove the low-friction pads from the bottom, and they’d never go back on quite as well afterwards. Instead, I took a long-haired paintbrush with stiff (hog’s hair) bristles and had a good poke around under the button. This seems to have fixed the problem!

Photo Featured in TCS

Tom — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 13:14:07 +0000

The Cambridge Student featured a recent photo as photo of the week, it’s of King’s Frontage reflected in the window of Nomads:

Macro on the Cheap

Tom — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:18:47 +0000

Macro Lenses are expensive, prohibitively so for me. I bought an Opteka Macro Lens from Amazon, which is a tenth of the price, and just screws onto the end of the standard kit lens, with excellent results. The depth of field is tiny, but with a bit of tweaking you can get excellent results. An album of my first try with it is on my Picasa.

Group Project Presentation

Tom — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:53:48 +0000

Bokeh Fun

Tom — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:54:05 +0000

Homemade bokeh filter

I made a homemade bokeh filter for my camera. As it’s just using the kit lens, the size of the design is very small, and this limits you to taking photos at full zoom, and you can’t get all the nice effects you get with a proper filter and a lens with a really large aperture, but it’s still pretty good fun! See all the photos on my Picasa page.

wavr – Google Wave Integration with WordPress

Tom — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:31:20 +0000

Trying out wavr. If you don’t have Google Wave, this won’t work, sorry.

Update: Upgraded wavr to v 0.25 and it broke…