My beloved N810 died last Tuesday. Well, not died died, but the screen stopped working. The topmost plastic layer is fine, but the LCD is probably cracked underneath. This probably happened while I was in an Apple store watching a friend of mine buy an iPhone. Coincidence?

I ordered a new one from Amazon that evening, and it arrived on Thursday. It had the oldest possible OS2008 version (and an incorrectly-formatted internal flash card), so I had to reflash it, and then install the OS feature updates one at a time, with forced a reboot in between. Untimely breakage of extras-devel didn't help either, and neither did the broken maemo-mapper package in extras. (Both are fixed now.)

Almost all of my data was on the miniSD card (including a week-old backup). To get the rest I had to blindly get the old N810 online and open a browser page (measuring distances from the corner of the screen) to get past the hotel wireless nag screen, and then guess its IP address, so that I could ssh in.

It thought maybe I could use arping on its MAC address to get the IP, but had no luck there. It didn't respond to broadcast pings either. Finally I had to ping every IP in my subnet individually and then grep for the MAC address in my kernel's ARP cache. Oh, how I wish Maemo came with avahi-daemon preinstalled! ssh mg-n810.local would have been so much simpler!

I'll try to get the old one repaired.

Update: thp describes how to get avahi-daemon on the tablet.

Update 2: the old N810 is repaired (screen replacement cost me 510 LTL, which is ~200 USD, at the local Nokia service center). It now serves as an Internet Radio station at home.

One recurring theme that I noticed during the Maemo Summit was people apologising for not being developers. A running joke during some of the talks on the first day was people describing themselves as disabled because they were not, themselves, developers.

That's just wrong. Users should not be ashamed for being users!

I'm a developer, but I often want to be just a user. I want software to just work. I wish there was no need for bug trackers. I wish users did not need to know about source packages or patches. I want to hack because I want to, not because I need to.

Until that becomes reality (if ever), I prefer the ability to make use of my developer experience to make things better. Hence my enthusiasm for open source, bug trackers, source packages and patches.

One recurring theme that I noticed during the Maemo Summit was people apologising for not being developers. A running joke during some of the talks on the first day was people describing themselves as disabled because they were not, themselves, developers.

That's just wrong. Users should not be ashamed for being users!

I'm a developer, but I often want to be just a user. I want software to just work. I wish there was no need for bug trackers. I wish users did not need to know about source packages or patches. I want to hack because I want to, not because I need to.

Until that becomes reality (if ever), I prefer the ability to make use of my developer experience to make things better. Hence my enthusiasm for open source, bug trackers, source packages and patches.

Nokia kindly sponsored my trip to Maemo Summit in Berlin.

Unexpectedly was asked to give my LinuxTag presentation during the lightning talks. It did not go very well. Note to self: advance preparation helps, at least if you know you're going to present something.

Met PyPy folks (Maciej and Holger). Had a mutual "what on Earth are you doing here?" reaction. Learned a new quirk in the Python language (try: ... finally: does not set sys.exc_info()).

Impressed by one guy (sorry, but I'm really bad with names) giving a presentation from the N810, with OpenOffice.org Impress in a Debian chroot, over a SIS USB2VGA dongle. Apparently he created the whole setup in half an hour before the actual talk.

No free wireless at the hotel. Paid wifi options include 25 EUR for 24 hours or 30 EUR for 30 days. Can I have just the 29 days for the 5 EUR? No.

The WiFi at c-base was fast and almost flawless. Missed half of the talks while checking my email and blogs. I'm addicted to the Internet. :(

Still able to get up before 6 AM. The US trip has done wonders with my daily schedule.

Nokia kindly sponsored my trip to Maemo Summit in Berlin.

Unexpectedly was asked to give my LinuxTag presentation during the lightning talks. It did not go very well. Note to self: advance preparation helps, at least if you know you're going to present something.

Met PyPy folks (Maciej and Holger). Had a mutual "what on Earth are you doing here?" reaction. Learned a new quirk in the Python language (try: ... finally: does not set sys.exc_info()).

Impressed by one guy (sorry, but I'm really bad with names) giving a presentation from the N810, with OpenOffice.org Impress in a Debian chroot, over a SIS USB2VGA dongle. Apparently he created the whole setup in half an hour before the actual talk.

No free wireless at the hotel. Paid wifi options include 25 EUR for 24 hours or 30 EUR for 30 days. Can I have just the 29 days for the 5 EUR? No.

The WiFi at c-base was fast and almost flawless. Missed half of the talks while checking my email and blogs. I'm addicted to the Internet. :(

Still able to get up before 6 AM. The US trip has done wonders with my daily schedule.

I unexpectedly acquired an Asus EeePC 900 last weekend. Lovely piece of hardware.

I unexpectedly acquired an Asus EeePC 900 last weekend. Lovely piece of hardware.

I used Windows at work until January 2002, when I changed jobs and went to Linux full-time. I barely remember what life was back then. Driver CDs you had to install before plugging in new hardware, shareware apps that you had to pay for and couldn't see how they worked, web pages full of blinking advertisements. Magic voodoo rituals you had to do to fix your IS when it broke down, that you had to do by rote without full understanding of how it all fit together.

I used Windows at work until January 2002, when I changed jobs and went to Linux full-time. I barely remember what life was back then. Driver CDs you had to install before plugging in new hardware, shareware apps that you had to pay for and couldn't see how they worked, web pages full of blinking advertisements. Magic voodoo rituals you had to do to fix your IS when it broke down, that you had to do by rote without full understanding of how it all fit together.

The last day. Saw a bunch of interesting talks about freedesktop.org, Ekiga, GNOME and Ubuntu. Jono Bacon's talk was very interesting. I think if Nokia is interested in building a healthy developer community, they would do well to talk to Jono about it.

Got a USB gender-bender from Kees Jongenburger -- now I can plug in USB devices to my N810, provided that they don't require too much power (extra software required: usbcontrol from Maemo Extras). I owe you one Kees!

Discovered that the GNOME booth does in fact have T-shirts for sale, they're just not out on display like in other booths. Sadly, since I discovered that during the last hour of the last day of the conference, only extra large T-shirts were left. Spent my last 10 EUR in cash on the T-shirt anyway. ;-)

Met MaryBeth Panagos from OpenMediaNow, learned about interesting happenings with Gnash, open media codecs and Ubuntu Mobile. Raised my hopes for a brighter future. Showed off my N810 and expressed my hopes for Gnash replacing the closed Adobe Flash player on it. It won't happen any time soon -- everyone wants it now!, but there are few developers actually working on it.

Went to a very geeky cafe/computer club c-base for the Ubuntu BBQ. Almost didn't find the place, but one of the LinuxTag guys happened to be going back at just the right moment to show me the path hidden behind the bushes.

Feeling content now. Well, missing free (or at least paid, but working -- boo, Swisscom, boo!) WiFi at the hotel, but other than that I've had a wonderful time.