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Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Hey all!
Preface So I finally decided to get the Nokia N900 a month ago, after following any news and updates since it was announced, through all the release delays, through all the initial bug reports, through all the whining about phone functionality, through all the pleas for PR1.2, and through all the progress made by the awesome community up to the point Bluetooth and USB input (+ host mode) was coming close to being implemented, thus (imho) after hooking it to a real monitor making the device a real computer - there I was in the shop doing, what I've been thinking of doing since the release in December. My decision to buy this phone after such a long time since release mainly came from the fact that the Maemo/N900 community has been and remains very vivid and their support far outclasses anything any large corporation could or would be willing to offer. The reason I didn't want to wait for "the next great device" was that this is and likely will be the only handset officially running on a Debian derivative, and since I'm running Ubuntu on my workstations interaction and code reuse is very seemless, no need to reinvent, repackage, relearn the same things... Since I got it last month it has been a blast, every day I had some free time I could find out new stuff and do some tinkering thanks to this device and its community. The main two resources being this forum and the maemo wiki, which really makes it easy for any newbie to really get into it. So here it is: my Nokia N900 adventure so far. Tinkering around with it has been at least just as fun as playing a computer game so that's the style I'll write it down here, in the hopes people reading this can find one or more tidbits they could use themselves to improve their user experience. |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
"N900" is the hero of this adventure, it comes with these attributes when unboxed (incl. 16G SD): Strength - Hardware capabilities (detailed hardware specs can be found here: http://natisbad.org/N900/n900-commen...are-specs.html ) ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz +1 PowerVR SGX530, TWL4030 Audio +1 256 MB RAM +1 32 GB eMMC +1 16 GB SD +1 Intelligence - Features and abilities to process and utilize information (Software) MicroB +2 Terminal +1 Phone, Contacts +1 App Manager, File Manager +1 Mediaplayer, Photo Viewer etc. +1 Hardware keyboard +1 Endurance - Battery life BL5J 3.7V 1320mAh, ~4 days stand-by, 1-2 days normal/heavy use +4 (Ability to change empty battery for full one +4) Perception - Connectivity, Sensors to gather external cues/input 5MP cam, front cam +2 WLAN, Bluetooth +2 AV connector +1 Accelerometer +1 FM Receiver, FM Transmitter +2 IR Transmitter +1 GPS +1 Phone modem, GPRS/3G +1 Charisma - Look&Feel 3.5" 800x480 267ppi resistive touchscreen +2 Thickness/Weight -1 UI Input/Desktop +2 UI Transitions +1 Accessories +1 So the initial tally for the N900 is: ST 5 IN 7 EN 4 (8) PE 11 CH 4 And here come the quests (roughly chronological): |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Tutorial quest: First things first (repositories, root, sudo)
After making sure N900 has PR1.2 the first thing to do is adding the *real* repositories ( http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras ) and gaining root access ( http://wiki.maemo.org/Root_access ). This quest has you browsing through the maemo wiki and enables access to the maemo repositories which will give you access to all the apps (including source code) made by the community. Rewards: The Ankh of sudo, +2 IN |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
SSH
The same page also explains the installation of OpenSSH ( http://wiki.maemo.org/Root_access#OpenSSH ). Enables direct access to your device through WIFI; to access and copy files around I use "ssh" and "scp" on Linux, "Putty" and "WinSCP" on Windows. Rewards: Gloves of SSH, +2 PE |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Customize your desktop
Most people will complete this mission initially probably by accident ;) - It can be redone anytime though any CH/IN gains from previous tries will be lost (you can only wear one cap). Reward: Fancy cap of desktop beauty, +0..1 CH, +0..2 IN |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Additional Battery
As mentioned above in the inital stats battery capacity can be doubled by getting an additional battery, though N900 needs to be put to sleep before changing them. Fortunately N900's little cousin 5800 for which I've already bought a spare battery uses the very same BL5J battery. Now the way I do it is using a dedicated battery charger (one at home, one at work), as soon as a battery goes empty I place it in the charger. When fully charged it goes into the front pocket of the phone's pouch (battery contacts to the bottom). If the battery empties on the road I replace it with the fully charged one and place the empty one *contacts up* into the pouch. That way when I get to the charger I know whether or not the battery needs charging (in case I don't remember). This method also proved useful for my other devices and means in practice I have no "down time". Reward: Ankh of endurance (i.e. battery), EN +4 |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
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Customize hardware keyboard
I added some functionality to the keyboard config at /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/rx-51 Added Sym+Shift modifier (the last one in the row) for these keys: , -> ; = ~ (asciitilde) f -> F - [ (bracketleft) g -> G _ ] (bracketright) h -> H ( { (braceleft) j -> J ) } (braceright) . -> : ? ° (asciicircum) space -> @ Tab | (bar) new config takes effect when you run: setxkbmap With this you can type "°" by pressing "Sym+Shift+." or the tab key with "Sym+Space" ("@" is changed to "Shift+Space"). No more need for virtual keyboard for bash or python. Note that one does not need to keep holding down either "Sym" or "Shift" to input a combo. Reward: Amulet of keyboard bashing, +0.5 ST, +1 IN |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Ad blocking
There are several apporaches to defeating ads ( e.g. http://wiki.maemo.org/Ad_blocking ). I usually default to blocking ad domains through adding them to: /etc/hosts You can find a good ad-blocking hosts file here: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm To block certain sites (webpages/images/flash) from appearing on any of your applications you simply add: 0.0.0.0 facebook.com For instance this would block everything that originates from facebook.com. Reward: Shield of Hosts, ST +2 when fighting evil HTML and Javascript wraiths (blocks evil attacks and increases agility) |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Easy Debian
Add "Easy Debian" and marvel at the amount of additional apps (and source code) available for your device. E.g. among others I installed: lynx, tuxguitar, subversion, mpg123, sweep (audio editor). Also enables access to OpenOffice, full-fledged Firefox (a bit slow though)... I had a problem with locales settings that I resolved by entering: dpkg-reconfigure locales Reward: Easy Debian companion, Companion's IN can be increased by installing packages augmenting IN of the hero |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
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Transitions Speedup
This quest was a godsend! I was quite annoyed at the sluggishness of my hero with seemingly no way to increase his agility (-> overclocking quest not very succcessful) until I found the file to tweak the transitions: /usr/share/themes/default/transitions.ini Some people tweak it to gain an additional CH +1 bonus (sometimes sacrificing -1 ST due to lower agility). I chose the other path and removed any transition delays by setting corresponding values to "1". The device feels REALLY fast now, even with only 600 MHz. Reward: Armor of Fabulousness, CH +1, ST -0..1 or: Armor of Agility, ST +2, CH -1 |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Overclocking
This quest bring you to the shrine of the God of Overclocking: You may pray to him as well as the Muses of Voltage there and see what blessings in form of agility he may bestow upon you. The sacrifice is lower endurance though. Unfortunately my hero received nothing, runs unstable even at 750 MHz, though N900 has not prayed to the Voltage Muses yet.. Might revisit later, but I'm quite ok with my hero's current ST 7. Reward: OC God's blessings, ST +1..3, -1..2 EN |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
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The Thumbnailer Daemon
The most annoying process popping up at the most inopportune times for me is thumbnailerd. To defeat this daemon you should have a look at: /home/user/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg I set it to work only when on battery (i.e. recharging through the night) and disabled watching; I also changed which folders to index. [Watches] EnableWatching=false [Indexing] BatteryIndex=true BatteryIndexInitial=true This daemon is actually not evil, as it helps you with things, but it just has the habit of popping up when you least need it. Reward: Thumbnailer daemon only pops up when N900 is resting at the campfire, thus not causing a ST -4 penalty e.g. when in the midst of fighting HTML and Javascript wraiths. There are actually a couple of other daemons as mentioned here: http://forums.internettablettalk.com...ad.php?t=58935 - but none of them have really annoyed me to actually get the "Club of Dedaemonizing" from that thread, which kills of all daemons with one swift stroke (they will respawn later though with no hard feelings ;)). To manually spawn the thumbnailer daemon (e.g. after emptying thumbnail cache by deleting *.db from ~/.cache/tracker/): tracker-processes -r /usr/lib/tracker/trackerd & |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
These are the "quests" I could remember so far. Hope they're useful (or at least mildly enjoyable ;)) to someone.
Any feedback welcome. |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Amusing and helpful - very nice, sir, I love it.
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Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Thanks, appreciate it.
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Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Backup menu
sudo apt-get install backupmenu I haven't had to do a restore yet, but Backupmenu's approach to backing up your N900 seems to be the best method. It can backup your root filesystem because it launches before N900 boots (simply keep the keyboard open when booting). It also backs up the eMMC partition. Should your N900 ever require a reflash a simple restore should get it to exactly the state you backed it up in. Thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58633 I usually have it back up to the SD card and then copy the images over to my workstation. SD Card content needs to be backed up through other means. One could simply scp /media/mmc1 contents to remote system or (probably faster) place the SD card into the other computer and copy over the contents. Make sure you have enough space on your SD card for the backup: both images (root+eMMC) together take up around 2.3 GB. They can later be compressed e.g. using 7-zip. My current backup compresses to about 1.2 GB. Reward: Unlocks ability to save and respawn |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Great idea nephridium... ;)
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Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Very impressive, Hope to see for more
thank you krc:) |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Conky
sudo apt-get install conky As with other Linux distros you can summon Conky to give you detailed stats of the system (memory, cpu load, the four most strenuous running apps etc.). Kind of like a self-awareness quest for our hero. Reward: Amulet of Insight, IN +.5 |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
This is an awesome idea lol. Love it.
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Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Nephridium, your thread made me smile, which is quite rare in this community nowadays. :)
Thank you for caring to write these down! :) |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Nephridium, great posts! brings back old nerdy memories of RPG from the late 80's and early 90's. Nice work!
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Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Nokia Maps
Even though the Nokia Maps UI isn't very slick it does deliver in terms of functionality and being able to view maps offline. This one requires Nokia's Ovi software ( http://europe.nokia.com/support/down...okia-ovi-suite ) on your desktop, which lets you select which maps (countries/states) to download and push onto you N900. Reward: world map |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Mappero
apt-get install mappero The guy at http://www.mardy.it/mappero actually made a maps app that runs much smoother than Nokia's official one. It lets you choose between Open streetmaps, and google maps as sources. It also lets you download map tiles by inputting coordinates for offline use. Reward: world maps |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Terminal bashing in 16 colors
For those who like a bit more color in their terminals this one should be useful. Check http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40418 for a version of ls that shows different colors for directories/files etc.. ls.color runs on the standard busybox shell environment, but I prefer to use bash which can be obtained through: sudo apt-get install bash Being somewhat thumb-lazy I'm using the following terminal commands to call ls.color: l = simple color files list ll = detailed color list, newest files at bottom lll = detailed color list sorted by extensions To get these commands I added the following lines into /etc/bash.bashrc : alias l='/bin/ls.color' alias ll='/bin/ls.color -lrt' alias lll='/bin/ls.color -alX --group-directories-first ' To also have the "~/folder/ $" prompt in color you can add this line: PS1="\e[1;33m\w \e[1;32m\$\e[m " This will show the folder in yellow and the "$" in green. More info on the somewhat cryptic "PS1" syntax here: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-sh...linux-or-unix/ Now to invoke bash with all its colorly glory simply type "bash". Or if you're as lazy as I am just create a file called /usr/bin/b with this line and make it executable: /bin/bash This way you just need to type "b" :) With the colored prompt it's easy to see whether bash is already running or just busybox's ksh. Reward: Upgrades "terminal" minigame from monochrome to EGA mode! CH +1, ST +.5 when in terminal mode |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Wonderful post, thank you.
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Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
great to see that there are new members with fresh potential to make things better.
so welcome in our maemo world and thanks for sharing your work!!! |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
I am reading T.M.O since Nov.09 and I say this here is the best thread I ever found. Full of fun, humor and valuable info. Every N900 newbie should be pointed here.
I hope it will be continued... |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Video recording Stuttering, ISO with Manual exposure setting doesn't work
Have been Cursed during the battle with theDroid and iPhoney4 boss: Disasterous of Cameraus, ST -5, CH - 4, INT - 2, AGI -1 |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
i love ur thread nephridium
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Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Thanks, you guys. I still have a couple of more "quests" I can think of, just need to double-check them and write em down here.
Btw, no need for this to be a single player thread, anyone may add quests if they like. To distinguish the quests from normal posts like this one I've written them the following way: * text body in "Century Gothic" italic font * heading in the same font size 4 bold * code in standard "Courier New" And of course, do let me know if you see any mistakes, omissions etc. |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
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Through checking the posts here I know some quests have a likelihood of cursing N900, so I've stayed away from them till they look safe to play (i.e. nicely packaged up / less bug reports). If all fails there might be no other way but to restart the game from the beginning.. |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Ok even though the last RPG I really played fully thru at release was FFVII, (which btw I emulated for geekier friends to marvel at) this thread has me lol'ing, Once I added ChronoTrigger to my DocSnes and showed the same fanboys they were almost hooked, now if I show them this thread, some converts maybe in order. Excellent thread, amazing creativity, and wonderful enthusiasm for a newbie. Must I remind anyone this is what makes Maemo/MeeGo so freaking great?
ps- A lil jealous you earned more thanks so quickly than I have in such a short time, but credit is due, where credit is due! |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Great idea - a fun way of documenting useful tips & tricks,
Thanks |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
LOL EPIC THREAD IS EPIC!
What lvl is your hero now?? Dare i say over 9000??? Aside from that it's kinda hard to track what stats represents what lol... btw, the transition tweak is AWESOME, i strongly suggest everyone to use this. One of the best tweaks i've ever done to the N900, it's so much faster now!! With overclocking enabled, it's INSANELY fast, i love it! Props to you once again :) And as for the indexing tweak, is there anything else that can be done to further enhance it?? I don't know if you know this already but there's this app called "tracker-cfg" from App Manager, it can do everything you've mentioned easily with toggle boxes (tick-options) and a few other ones in there as well, along with throttles (which i dunno what that's for, maybe to adjust the refresh rates?). Maybe u can play around with that and see what can be enabled/disabled?? |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
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At any rate, I have a new alternative sound editor on my laptop now. |
Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Very good thread, I actually used a post from one of the quests yesterday which I found from searching (the one about allowing thumbnailer daemon to run while the phone is resting by the campfire), and now it makes a lot more sense than yesterday!
Your RPG system reminds me some of the SPECIAL system (Strength-Perception-Endurance-Charisma-Intelligence-Agility-Luck) in Fallout 1-2, was it intentional? |
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Re: Nokia N900 - an adventure RPG
Here is one:
FMTX weapon. Unlocked to use 76.0MHZ to 107.9MHz without any restriction. This dagger will allow the user to piece through any country Radio frequency :), best to use against boss (the Evil Iphoney). The dagger can be thrown through the air while the helder can change it piecefullness. Dagger of Freedom Frequency: Str + 3, AG + 1, INT + 1, LUK + 5, HP + 20 |
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u sure have small eyes........here: Quote:
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