Author: RipperDoc

To decide which mobile phone I want is a real hassle (I want 3G, WLAN, GPS and PDA-functions, all in one), but when I started searching for a camera, I instantly found what I was looking for. Behold, Ricoh Caplio R3:

It has 7.1X optical zoom, 5 megapixel and it’s very portable (ca 160g including battery). Read more at Ricoh.

The camera is newly released and I have not yet found a price for it nor a review (other than those “reviews” that only read aloud from the product brochure). The only downside would be a lack of manual configuration – it only offers a set of “scenes”. If you know more than me about this camera, or can offer a decent alternative, don’t hesitate to comment.

I can’t ever see myself in a life without games! May it be logically challenging games (board games), humorous games (most games), simulations (i.e. computer games, roleplaying games), games where you act or re-enact or just games where you meet new and nice people, I will forever be true to it.

One of my biggest concern of getting abroad was actually not playing games (especially roleplaying games). How would I cope with not game mastering each week, with not constantly having a plot to develop, with not meeting all the gaming friends. To my great luck, I can now report that also Hong Kong can be a home for games – and thus is my mental sanity for the year secured!

It was when I and my german friend Patrick walked through the atrium, passing all the temporary booths that the different student associations used for promotion, that we by chance stopped at the gaming society. Me and Patrick had already realized that we both enjoyed games, so we quickly took the step and joined the society. This I haven’t regretted once since then. Four hours of gaming each tuesday as well as a lot of very friendly and enthusiastic chinese gamers to socialize with.

So far I’m content with just trying out the gaming associations’s big assortment of board games, but sooner or later I must try to gather a session of roleplaying. Even though this could be a complete disaster, with big language problems, different expectations and completely different styles of gaming, it would certainly be worth the try. The dream would be to “discover” a couple of guys or gals down here that see roleplaying in the same way as me – as story telling rather than a game.

I’m not there yet, but I will certainly keep you posted. This can only get better.

I will keep this short, partly because I really should be sleeping by now, and partly because I shouldn’t let myself write a novel or two about the things that agitate me (which otherwise easily can happen ).

So, what’s the problem? The latest days I’ve surfed around a lot in an effort to find smart and neat plugins for this blog. What I want is the following things:

• An easy interface to add images and thumbnails to my post . The images are stored at my Flickr account. I would rather not copy long URL:s, write my own image HTML-tags and manually resize images.
• Show the location for each post – that is where I was when I wrote it. It should be a non-intrusive link or icon that when clicked shows a map of the location.
• Show the current weather of my last know location as well as local time.
• Show two times for each post – the time it was written in my local time, and that same time in the readers local time (okey, not a very useful feature, but anyways).
• A simple filtering possibility for the reader, so a reader can filter the blog according to categories or language. Should be as simpe as possible, and should also remember the choice through a simple cookie.

Sounds simple? Well, for me it’s not. Although extensive searching I haven’t found anything that could do one or more of the things I listed. And on top of that, to really know what other plugins are doing you often have to go through tiresome install processes and some lines of PHP-coding to get it to work.

If you, dear reader, could find anything that would fit my wishes, don’t hesitate to comment here and save me a lot of anguish. Or, if you would write the software for me I would be even more happier 😀 And yes, I know I can write it myself. I have planned to do so. But my motivation for programming is as always low and I rather not re-invent the wheel – or even parts of it.

Acutally, if someone with more l33t Google skillz (or PHP skillz) than me could solve this, I will honor this hero on this site (yeah, great honor) and buy him or her a beer some day.

(Sidenote. When I manage to get a decent image plugin I’ll start posting images here. Until then you can browse my collection so far at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ripperdoc .)

Next to Japan and Taiwan, Hong Kong i THE epicenter of new technology. And that is one big reason why I really love Hong Kong already, technology-crazed as I am. Yesterday I made my first – but certainly not last – visit to the markets of the Mong Kok district. And you bet I was amazed! When you get up from the MTR (the Hong Kong underground rail system) you will find yourself visually attacked by hundreds and hundreds of signs and billboards calling for your attention.

Then you start walking through the streets, along with seemingly one millon others. On every street you will find a dozen or so of tech shops selling mainly mobile phones, PDA:s and MP3-players. Glittering counters with so many models of phones, etc. that at least I get dizzy. And that is also the problem of shopping here – how can I decide what I want and compare different models? The english of the salesmen (and -women) mainly incorporates geeky abbreviations (MMS, WiFi, 3G) but not much more, and the prices are rarely shown. This makes it very hard for me to shop – I want hard specs and clear prices to be able to compare. The best way would either be to learn chinese (or get a shopping guide), alternatively to decide for one model in advance and then just compare prices.

The main attraction of Mong Kok is the three story computer center. It’s crammed with narrow booths with computer peripherals hanging both in front, beside and over you. They sell stuff you normally only would find in suspicious online shops, and they sell it cheap and in great variety. For example you can find a plethora of wireless notebok mice, FM-radio transmitters for Mp3-players, ultra-thin keyboards, external hard-disk drives, USB-fans, mobile cases or specialized cables. They also sell laptops and LCD TV:s that would cause unbearable desire for any given techno-geek. One of the most interesting parts of the center is the illegal software store that sells pirated software and games. You browse through the software cases in a small room and write their numbers on a small note. Then you give your note to a guy in a counter and pay for it. In return you get a receipt containing a pickup-time and location. Ours where twenty minutes later, and when we went to the specified location a guy with a handsfree showed up, looking like a mafia guy, and gave us a hidden package of CD:s and DVD:s in exchange for our receipt. Very interesting concept of separating the buying of illegal goods from the delivery.

Anyway, my biggest problem now is that my mobile phone, an old Ericsson T65, died on me as soon as I tried to change SIM-cards. So I need a new phone. On top of that, I really need a camera – at the moment I’m relying on Claes camera. As I’ve mentioned, it isn’t a very easy task to buy these things – I want the best specs for the best price. I haven’t even begun looking for a camera (even though an Exilim looks really nice). So far I have found a couple of really cool mobile phones though:

Sharp SX833
Motorola MPx
Motorola M1000
O2 Xda Exec