This device meets all my requirements as it is small, can receive the GPS signal even from inside a bag and lasts long on one battery-load.

Now I have my own GPS enabled phone, one of my hobbies has taken a new direction. I love the game of geocaching and for that I always had to rely on my mothers Garmin eTrex device. Now I have my own GPSr I can go out whenever I like. Since I’ve bought my phone and GPS receiver I have already found 113 caches.

Geocaching and PDA’s

On both the forums of geocaching.com and their dutch counterpart geocaching.nl you will find furious discussions about whether or not PDA’s are suitable for caching-purposes. I think they are suitable since I can find lots of caches with one. The only disadvantage I have with a PDA instead of a outdoor GPS device like an eTrex is that my phone isn’t capable of withstanding very wet conditions…. but hey… I don’t want to go out caching when it is that wet….

Software

Out of the box, a phone and a GPS receiver isn’t enough to go out searching for caches. One needs software which points to the correct location. Road navigation software like TomTom can bring you to a good parking spot near a cache, but is not suitable for off road navigation. As soon as you leave the tarmac, you’ll need software that shows you a compass with an arrow pointing to your waypoints.

I have tried some and wanted to write about them here. If I missed out some or if I take conclusions based on nonsense please write me a comment and I will look in to it.

RichesseGPS

RichesseGPS is the first program I have used successfully for geocaching.
It is a program with very little coverage on the internet. I feel that is very weird, because it’s such a nice little application that meets all the minimum requirements.

It can import .loc files which means you do not need to manually enter all the coordinates. The geocaching website offers this functionality to all with a basic account i.e. you do not have to be a premium member. For those that are premium member this software can also import the .gpx files. Richesse however ignores all extra data in the .gpx file so you could just as well use the .loc files instead.

To sum it up:

The program is free of charge and can be downloaded from: http://pda.jasnapaka.com/richessegps/

More software reviews will follow as soon as I find some time for it.

I have found a new phone and have bought it two weeks ago. Although I wanted a phone with built in GPS functionality I have chosen the HTC Touch. The reason for this is that it is really compact while its size doesn’t compromise the screen-size. I still have to find a suitable GPS receiver for it but I am looking. Perhaps I will even blog about it soon (if I can find some spare time).

My goal is having a nice GPS receiver which is small, has a long battery-life, can do its work from the inside of a pocket or bag and communicates through BlueTooth. It would be a plus if the receiver logs its position.

To make use of the GPS receiver and my phone for Geocaching purposes I need some applications which are Windows Mobile 6 professional compatible and give me the tools I need. The minimum is:

1. Has a compass which points to the cache location (as the crow flies)
2. Tells me the distance to the cache
3. Enables me to enter the data I get from Geocaching.com (manual as I am not a premium user (yet))
4. Enables me to log my visits and finds.

If the app can also draw a map (Garmin mapsource style) and draw my position and track-log, it would be the perfect geocache app for PocketPC. If you know any, please let me know by writing a comment.

My file-server is getting old and needs replacing. It is making too much noise because it gets too hot. I decided to buy new hardware and assemble a new server making use of silent hardware.

For this reason I chose a fan-less motherboard and silent Hard-disk. Unfortunately it takes a while for all the parts to arrive. Today the case for the new server arrived. Below are some pictures.

My too old phone
height (with antenna): 13.2 cm
width: 4.6 cm
thickness: 2.5 cm

I thought a simple Google search would come up with lots of models, but unfortunately it appears my requirements are not that widely spread yet. Most of the GPS enabled devices are just that; GPS devices. There are PDA’s with GPS functionality ofcourse, but I would prefer a smart-phone with integrated GPS antenna.

These are the devices I came up with (more will follow, suggestions are welcome)

MIO A701

From what I found this is a device with lots of pros but unfortunately there are also some serious cons.

It appears that this device takes about 50 seconds from the moment you turn it on until it can be used. Starting the GPS software takes another 30 seconds… The biggest pro is that it’s much cheaper than the only alternative device I found this far.

Nokia N95

This phone has it all. It has phone functionality, it has Music player functionality, it has GPS functionality and it has a humongous price…

The most impressive feature is it’s camera. I already have a Canon A95 Camera so I don’t care about the camera quality but it is impressive that this phone has the same amount of Mega-Pixels as my A95!

Eten x500

I found some more GPS enabled phones. This is the Eten x500.

The most interesting feature in my opinion is it’s small size. Most of the above mentioned phones have a >2cm thickness which can make them a bit less usable as a phone (although my C35 is 2.5 cm thick). This phone however can be considered thin with its 1.5 cm.

It’s also just a bit wider than my old C35 which makes this a good candidate as a replacement for my old and dying phone. But there are more Eten devices so lets look at another smart-phone from this company.

Eten M700

This is the M700 model. Similar in size compared to the other model from Eten, this one comes equipped with a QWERTY keyboard which slides from underneath the display.

The M700 is nothing more than a X500 with a QWERTY keyboard since all the other specifications are equal to those of the X500.

This Eten is a very complete device against a reasonable price, but I have found one more device so let’s continue this GPS Phone overview. The next device is more PDA than phone.

HTC P3300

HTC is the brand-name which came to my attention first, when I started my investigation.

I’ve had never heard before of this company until I wanted to have a GPS enabled smart-phone. It’s actually the same device as the T-Mobile MDA Compact III.

One feature that stands out is the jog-dial which makes it possible to quickly navigate the screen without using the stylus.

Perhaps this device is too much of a PDA for me. But I think I will need to see the devices I’ve mentioned in real life first to make a decision. The only problem is; Where to find a shop that have them. Until now I’ve only seen them on Internet-shops…

I have just played for a few days and already I have the best computer money can buy in the game. How I did this? Well I had to trace some money in one of the missions and I found out the target had enough off the digital green stuff to buy all the hardware and software there is to buy in the game-world. I hacked his account, made an account for myself at the same bank and by careful log-deleting transferred the money unnoticed into my own account.

Yesterday however, I noticed that there is about 100K missing. I think someone stole some money from me as well. I have no proof as all the logs seem to be gone as well…

See my blog post about hacking games for more about the subject.

In Uplink you play an Uplink-agent whose objectives are hacking into networks of competitors, banks and so forth. If you’re good at it, you get incredibly rich and have a very fast computer and lots of tools which enable you to break into the biggest mainframes, doing even more mischief and acquiring even more wealth. If you’re sloppy and forget to wipe logs, you’ll get busted and loose everything.

Hacking games
When I played Enter The Matrix a few years ago, I found the hacking feature the most entertaining part of the game. Unfortunately a google-search for hacking games didn’t come up with relevant results back then. I did that search again and I’ve compiled the below list of hacking games.

Name: Uplink
Website: http://www.introversion.co.uk/uplink

Name: HackTheGame
Website: http://www.chaozz.nl/hackthegame/

Name: Street Hacker
Website: http://www.streethacker.com

Name: Hacker2012
Website: http://www.hacker2012.com

Name: Digital Overlay
Website: http://terminalzero.com

Name: Mindlink
Website: http://www.hacker2004.com/mindlinkoriginal.html

Name: Hacker 2003 (Mindlink 2.0)
Website: http://www.hacker2004.com/hacker2003.html

Name: Hacker 2004
Website: http://www.hacker2004.com

Name: Hacker 2005 The Broken Link
Website: http://www.hacker2005.com

Name: PortSign
Website: http://terminalzero.com

Name: Dark Signs
Website: http://www.darksigns.com

Name: Digital Hazard
Website: http://www.exosyphen.com

Name: BS Hacker
Website: http://www.exosyphen.com

Name: Galactic Hacker
Website: http://www.geocities.com/natsogames

Name: Slave Hack (webbased hacking simulator)
Website: http://www.slavehack.com

The most annoying thing to me was the implementation of the unordered and ordered lists in the different templates. It seems that if it is correctly displayed with Firefox, it isn’t with Internet Explorer and the other way around…

The following list will mention all templates and my annoyances with them:

Kubrick 1.5:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

As it is the default template I had high expectations. Those expectations are met, though unordered list items are displayed as >> in FF while displayed as a bullet in IE. A bit clumsy if you ask me. Mostly because I think lists are a much used feature and displaying them as >> makes it harder to read and harder to recognize it as a list.

Almost Spring 1.1:
View a v1.0 testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This template has a nice design. It displays lists correctly in FF and IE. However in IE, currently still the most used browser, the menu which should be displayed on the right side of the screen is displayed after the content. In FF the menu is displayed correctly. The 1.0 version which can be viewed with the testrun link doesn’t have this ‘bug’ though.

Ambiru 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

Another nice and clean design. This time however the theme designer chose not to display bullets on unordered lists. At least it does so consistently in FF and IE. But because of the lack of bullets this theme is not the theme of choice for me. One cool thing of this theme is that you can edit the way the image header looks. You can even upload your own graphic through the WordPress presentation panel.

Andreas 04 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

A very appealing theme, but as the previously mentioned themes have shown there is always something to nag about. This theme shows bullets on unordered lists and does so in both browsers that I use for testing. This theme however has some very disturbing borders around every image…. even smileys are victimized by those ugly borders.

Andreas 09 1.5:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This was almost a winner for me. Clean non obtrusive and the all important lists are displayed correctly in my two browser apps. But I’ve found something annoying nevertheless. For some reason this theme displays only the first paragraph to the right of a left-aligned picture. The rest of the paragraphs are displayed below the picture. This behaviour is on IE only. FF does it correctly. It doesn’t matter for me since FF is my primary browser. But most of the visitors will be using IE. Another positive fact about this theme is that you can change the main color used in the theme to suit your needs.

Banana Smoothie 1.0:
View a v1.5 testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This theme is not a very usable theme, because of many things. Firstly, the banana thing is too much for me. It is nicely done though, but it’s perhaps only suitable for holiday weblogs… Secondly, it is hideous when used in IE. I think the transparency used is not supported in IE, hence the grey background on the paragraphs. But it isn’t perfect on FF either. Why strikethroughs on the links in the menu? Nope, this one is definitely a “NoNo” for me.

Benevolence 1.0:
There is no testrun available…

This theme looks nice, but it fails my lists requirement. No bullets at all. At least it is consistent throughout the two browsers again. The rest of the theme is clean and non-obtrusive. You can even change the header image. But no bullets will mean that I won’t the one using it…. Next!

Blix 0.9.1:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This theme is usable, looks nice and has no missing bullets… It also has the ability to change the header image. The only thing that is a bit off is the top menu bar which isn’t displayed correctly on FF. The “green bar” should fill the entire width of the screen but it doesn’t do so on FF. Also it lists subpages as well in the top menu which can be a bit too much.

Connections 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

Again a nice theme. And again the header image can be changed. Bullets are there on FF and IE, although unordered list use an icon which is everything but a bullet… The thing that annoyes me about this theme is the menu on the right side, although this can be edited through the WordPress presentation panel.
Contempt 1.0:
There is no testrun available…

Brilliant! Super! Wow, this one looks just like I want it, even the header can be altered…. but…. Nope sorry. Why does it show the letter ‘o’ on FF as bullet for unordered lists? I don’t get it. Cross-browser compatible CSS design is probably harder than one would imagine… Hmm on further inspection it appears that the author explicitely wanted an letter ‘o’ to appear on FF. It states in the CSS file that IE doesn’t support this, which will be the reason IE shows the good old bullet…

Dusk 1.1:
There is no testrun available…

This theme isn’t very appealing to me. A bit to dark. It does show the bullets correctly on FF and IE. The theme also requires me to redo my imagery. So this one is error-free, but not usable for me.

Emire 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

Actually this theme has the same problem as Dusk 1.1. It is to dark which makes me have to redo my imagery. Too bad you can’t change this through the WordPress presentation panel. This one however suits me better than Dusk 1.1, because it lacks the tribal-like details which makes it more professional. It actually looks a bit like the theme on www.steampowered.com.

Fauna Beta 1:
There is no testrun available…

As with Kubrick, this theme shows a nice bullet (actually a square) on IE but >> on FF. Not for me this one… The overall look and feel of this theme is good only a bit to bare for me. The left menu for instance is a bit inconsistent. On some pages it’s there, on others it is completely lacking.

Fleur De Lys:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

Fleur De Lys is a nice theme but as with Dusk it has a graphic in it that draws to much attention in my opinion. This graphic represents a “fleur de lys” and it is also used as the bullet icon in unordered lists. At least it is consistent throughout the two different browsers again.

Flower Power 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This is a theme which is simply not suitable for many purposes, including my blog. It is very small. And with todays big screens it is a bit silly to have a webpage which only uses the first few hundred pixels of the screen width. At least is doesn’t have the unordered list bullet problem.

Fresh Bananas:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

A very cool blueish theme, but is has the unordered list annoyance which inspired this post. At least it is consistent again throughout FF and IE. This time the designer has chosen to display a letter ‘o’ again instead of a bullet. To bad, this could have been a nice theme for my blog…

Girl In Green 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

The Girl In Green is one of those themes that’s not interesting to me. As with Dusk and Fleur De Lys there is a graphic wich draws to much attention, being the girl of course. Also it doesn’t show bullets on unordered lists.

Green Marinee 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This is a great theme, but it is not perfect… There are borders around all images, including smilies, as with Andreas04. Also lists have no bullets but the textual ‘>>’. This time however the list ‘bullet’ has a different color as the text wich makes it stand out better. But I prefer bullet icons.

Hemingway 0.1 Alpha:
View a 1.0 reloaded testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This is a theme which can be altered through the WordPress presentation panel. I wish more template designer would enable users to change things this way. This theme isn’t even finished. It’s allready this complete in it’s alpha state. The only bad thing is that it doesn’t display list bullets at all. Too bad, this could’ve been the theme for me.

Jentri 1.0:
View a v1.01 testrun on themes.wordpress.net

A great theme. Bullets are shown in both of the browser I use to test and it is a clean non obtrusive theme. Too bad it only has the sidebar widget panel and no further tweaking mode. This is the first theme that doesn’t have annoyances. This might be it, but first let’s take a look and the themes still ahead.

Light 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This theme is correctly displaying bullets, and it is a nice non-obtrusive theme. However it has borders surrarounding all images, including smilies which is a let-down to me. Too bad themes aren’t customizable for those little details.

Neat 0.01:
View a testrun on the designers homepage

Why is it that the themes with beta-like version numbers seem to be the most complete? This one has a WordPress panel for altering the header image and it is correctly displaying bullets on IE and FF. The only thing I don’t like about this theme is the little flower graphic, used for horizontal lines in the sidebar. But, you can’t have it all can you?

Ocadia 1.1:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

It is showing bullets on unordered lists correctly, but that about it. It has the same problem Almost Spring has. The sidebar is shown underneath the content on IE. FF displayes it correctly. I’ll have to look into it to know why this happens, but it means this theme is not for me.

Pool 1.0.7:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This is a nice theme but it has many flaws. The pages of the blog are displayed in a tab, which have an overlap if there are subpages. This is far from pretty. Also this theme doesn’t show bullets but the letter ‘o’ again… Too bad. It would’ve been a super theme if it didn’t have those annoyances.

Quentin 0.9:
There is no testrun available…

A nice theme. A bit too classical to use for a blog which concerns technical things in my opinion… At least it shows bullets consistently on FF and IE. Other than it is a bit too classical this theme doesn’t have annoyances.

Regulus 2.1.3:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

This is almost a perfect theme. The only flaw I could find is the space around images. In the WordPress editor you can set a white-space around the images. This theme however ignores those settings and uses no white-space around images at all. It does this in IE and FF. One very positive feature is that you can tweak many settings through the WordPress presentation panel.

Rubric 1.0:
There is no testrun available…

This theme is clean, non obtrusive but not perfect… The main problem I have with this theme is the way it handles left aligned pictures. It causes articles to start before the last article stops… It means that pictures from the last article are displayed on the left while the next article text is displayed right of that picture.

Sapphire 1.0:
View a testrun on themes.wordpress.net

Sapphire is a theme with a professional “apple” feel, as the designer describes. It is not without flaws however. Bullets are not shown for unordered lists again… This time only in FF. IE shows bullets correctly.

The rest of the templates are not usable in my opinion. At least not for my purposes. So I will go with … [ drumroll ] … Regulus.

It wasn’t for the 3D versions though until I really started to like the game. In 1997 I already speculated how cool a 3D version of the game would be, but I had to wait until 2001 when the first 3D Grand Theft Auto was released.

The genre is so addictive because it has a very open ended game style. You aren’t forced through small hallways to come to the end of yet another level such as seen in many first person shooters. It is actually a third person shooter, but I don’t really care about the difference.

In the games you get to play in one big level which comes in the form of a busy city. Once you’ve settled in, you are free to do what you want to do. Earn some money as a taxi driver? Just steal a taxi/cab and collect some passengers. To get further in the game, you can search for some people that will offer you jobs. Most often, those jobs have a criminal nature but since this is a virtual city, who cares right?

Liberty City
DMA Design – 2001

Liberty City is where the main character lives and does his daily things until he gets double-crossed and caught by the police. When you manage to escape from custody, the game starts with you teaming up with a man called 8-ball. He tells you about Luigi and he is the first person you get to visit to get jobs from.

The game has many missions which follow a storyline. Along the way you can find lots of sub-quests which offer some nice distractions and are not necessary for completing the story.

The sub-quests:

• Collect cars for import/export garage
• Collect police-force vehicles (ship in harbour)
• Drive passengers around as taxi driver
• Bring wounded people to hospital as ambulance driver
• Extinguish burning cars as fire fighter
• Find and kill criminals as police officer
• Find 100 hidden packages hidden throughout the entire city
• Earn money by doing unique stunts scattered through the city
• Earn money by doing rampages
• Complete missions with remote controlled vehicles
• Compete in checkpoint races
• Do some missions for people who call you on the cities phone booths

Vice City
Rockstar North – 2002

In Vice City you are Tommy Vercetti. The game starts with a drug deal gone wrong and the game’s main story evolves around getting your money back. Among the new vehicles in this game are many different helicopters and motorcycles.

The new features:

• Drive motorcycles
• Fly helicopters
• Fly in a fully winged water-plane dodo.

The sub-quests (including all available in liberty city):

• Buy property
• Change your clothing
• Buy assets that make you earn money
• Deliver pizza’s to earn money
• Rob stores

San Andreas
Rockstar North – 2004

San Andreas is the newest game in the GTA series, available for PS2 since October 2004. The game became available to other platforms 6 months later. San Andreas is not a city as in the previous two 3D versions of the game. It is a state complete with three major cities, each the size of Vice City. The country site between those cities is littered with all kinds of interesting locations to go to, such as a big mountain which showcases the bigger view distance the game engine can render. The game world is 4 to 6 times bigger as Vice City and it is estimated that 150 hours of game-play are necessary to beat the game.

The new features:

• Break into houses
• Climb over fences
• Do 4 person drive-by’s
• Change your clothing (necessary to walk through certain neighbourhoods now)
• Buy food to prevent you from getting weak
• Ride bicycles
• Fly a fully winged dodo, as well as other planes and jets
• Drive 18-wheelers complete with detachable trailers
• SWIM!!! finally!
• Customize cars

The sub-quests (including all from the previous games):

• Rob houses to make money
• Work at a hotel, parking customers cars
• Drive the 18-wheelers with precious cargo to predefined targets
• Be a pimp (similar to taxi missions)
• Keep your girlfriends satisfied to earn special gifts
• Play in casino’s or betting shops
• New things to collect. Horse shoes, clam-shells

Splinter Cell can’t actually be categorized as a first person shooter, but I will do that anyway. The player sees the game world over the shoulder of Sam Fisher, the main character in this game.

The thing that makes this game stand out is the fact that the game evolves around getting through levels unnoticed. It is a true stealth game. Actually I think this game defines the stealth genre. This game started a tradition of real-time shadows which have to be used to stay unnoticed.

The best platform to run this game on is in my opinion the XBOX console, because of the many controls that have to be analog to be intuitive. Since the XBOX 360 Controller can also be used on PC’s the latest games in the series can be played with the same level of intuitiveness on PC, however part 1 and 2 don’t support this controller on PC (yet).

I’ll be looking forward to the next part in the series in which Sam Fisher goes undercover to be a Double Agent.