A while back I ordered a Blaze Handheld Megadrive and after playing the built in games, most of which are utter rubbish, I thought it'd be much more interesting if there were other games for it. I'm not sure it can be done, but grabbing a screwdriver I went off to find out what's inside this tiny thing.

The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet has a very useful undocumented feature where it can operate as both a USB peripheral and as a USB host. In peripheral mode it will function as a USB mass-storage device when plugged into a PC so that files can be copied onto the device. In USB host mode it is possible to plug various USB devices into the tablet and have them work.

I've used the host mode to connect my Garmin eTrex GPS to my N810. With this setup I am able to download the tracklog and waypoint data from my GPS using a Maemo-compiled version of GPSBabel and store it in my Nokia tablet. This document explains what I did.

Being your average techie, I use a multitude of computers depending on what I want to do, or where I am. I've got a dual monitor PC in my office, a Mac laptop, a Windows laptop and a Nokia Internet Tablet. At work I have a vast number of Windows PCs that I use (being an IT teacher means you have many many computers at your disposal). Due to the large number of computers, and their different operating systems it's important I can access my information on all of them. The current buzz word for this is "living in the cloud".

To make things a bit simpler, and to give me a virtual "home" on the Internet I have a Linux server running GNU Screen. Inside that runs Irssi, the IRC client.

This setup means I can secure shell into my machine from anywhere and chat to people without having to sign in or install chat clients on every computer I want to use.

The drawback is that I get no status notifications, if someone sends me a message or tries talking to me, and I'm not looking at the SSH window at that moment, I miss out. And that's where Twitter comes in...

The GEM Desktop is a GUI, mostly remembered from the Atari ST which used it as its default user interface. GEM bears a not accidental resemblance to the Macintosh desktop, with icons and a menubar at the top. Before Windows 3 became popular on DOS PCs, GEM was one of the many alternate DOS GUIs that were available. Whereas other DOS GUIs such as Norton Commander focused on presenting DOS concepts such as file copying and directory manipulation in a more friendly way, GEM went a bit further with fully windows applications that ran on the GEM desktop.

Inspired by a post on the Internet Tablet Talk forums, showing Windows 3.11 running in DOSBOX, I thought I'd have a go with something. I used to own an Atari ST and so GEM seemed a nice thing to try.

Making it work was very simple...

Since keeping my serial terminal next to the server it controls seemed a bit pointless (the server also having a local keyboard and screen) I thought about ways of extending the serial cable so the terminal could go into another room.

I had a few choices:

I have a WYSE 160 text terminal that displays serial data fed into either of its two serial ports. There is also a parallel port, presumably for connecting to printers allowing people to print to a printer on their desk, rather than one connected directly to the server. This mini book explains how I made it work with my Linux server, and what I can use it for.

The original XBox is a fantastic device. It contains an acceptably specified CPU, some RAM, a hard disk, ethernet and TV output. It is also dirt cheap, and thanks to the invention of modchips, able to be turned into a useful media centre.
I now own two XBoxes, both chipped and running XBox Media Center, with video being loaded off my Linux server. Chipping an XBox is a very easy thing to do, well documented on the Internet. What isn't documented is when it fails.