I love the X10 Mini Pro. I’ve had it for a few weeks now and am still marvelling at how light and compact it is and that I once again have an FM radio with me at all times.  However I am struggling to adjust to the customisations that Sony Ericsson have made to to Android.  For example:

• Right now, as I type, there’s an annoying blue bar occupying the bottom sixth of my screen. On the left-hand side it tells me, in no more than three letters, what language I’m currently set to.  On the right-hand side it tells me what mode the keyboard is in (letters vs. numbers, upper, lower or title case) and provides an option to hide the bar.  It’s information I’d rather do without, in return for a larger usable screen area. So I hide it, only to discover that it reappears with the very next key press…  I’ve had a rummage through the phone’s settings and haven’t yet found an option that enables me to hide it for good.  If you know of one, please let me know.
• The default calendar widget has less functionality than the default one on my G1 – and that was just enough to make it useful!
• The default email client assumes that my email account name is the same as my email address (which it isn’t).
• Although I’ve disabled the on-screen keyboard (it has a hardware one) it still pops up if when the cursor is placed in a form field and I haven’t yet opened the keyboard. I understand that some people might want this sometimes but, personally, I’d like “off” to mean “off”.  This could be solved using  finer grained preference settings.

However, every cloud has a silver lining:

• Luckily there’s a fantastic email app called K-9 Mail that does everything I need and more, so that’s my email problem solved.
• And as I’ve yet to find a decent calendar widget so I’m thinking of taking a stab at creating one myself.

• http://www.mysite.com
• http://www.mysite.com/mobile

Most pages on each version have a matching partner on the other but, importantly, this isn’t the case for all pages.

Although you have a version optimised for mobile devices, you can’t be sure that they’ll always land on it when they visit your site so you want to:

• detect mobile devices when they land on your site
• automatically redirect them to the mobile version if they’ve landed on the default version but only if a mobile version of that page actually exists.

Ideally, in order to avoid swapping a perfectly good page for a 404 error you want to make the check before initiating the redirection.  You don’t have access to the Apache config files but you can use .htaccess files.

I’ve been puzzling over this conundrum for a while, trying to find a solution that has as little impact on the rest of the system, aside from doing what it’s very specifically required to do, and doesn’t open up a cross-site scripting vulnerability.  Last night, I think I cracked it and as I found very little on this myself when scouring the web, I’ll share it here.  Hopefully if you spot any problems with it or – even better – ways to improve upon it, you’ll let me know.

This code goes in an .htaccess file in the root of http://www.mysite.com/. Further up the file, a check has already been made to determine whether or not the user agent is a mobile device and if it is, the value of an environment variable called $IS_MOBILE has been set to “true”. The ErrorDocument for 404 errors has also been set.


# Activate the RewriteEngine
RewriteEngine on

# Set the base to root
RewriteBase /

# Check whether it's a mobile device
RewriteCond %{ENV:IS_MOBILE} ^true$ [NC]

# Check that the URL isn't already going to the mobile version
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/mobile/ [NC]

# Capture the part of the URL that follows after the base, prepend it with "/mobile/" and
# assign the new string to an environment variable called $MOBILE_TARGET_URL;
# Also assign the un-prepended captured value to an environment variable called
# $MOBILE_ORIGINAL_URL; Chain this rule to the next one.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [E=MOBILE_TARGET_URL:/mobile/$1,E=MOBILE_ORIGINAL_URL:$1,C]

# Concatenate the $DOCUMENT_ROOT and $MOBILE_TARGET_URL together
# and check whether that maps to either a directory or a file
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{ENV:MOBILE_TARGET_URL} -d [OR]
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{ENV:MOBILE_TARGET_URL} -f

# If it does, redirect to the user to the mobile version
RewriteRule ^.*$ %{ENV:MOBILE_TARGET_URL} [R,L]


1. Check that libxine1-ffmpeg is installed
2. Check that phonon-backend-xine is installed
3. Check that phonon-backend-gstreamer isn’t installed
4. Configure phonon (Amarok > Settings > Configure Amaraok > Playback > Configure Phonon) so that the uppermost option for each “Device Preference” category actually works.  Use the test button to check each option if you’re not sure.

That should get the audio working.  Now to figure out why it doesn’t seem to be scrobbling…

* They have promised to put them back in but it doesn’t look as though it’s going to be any time soon.

Ingredients

• 3 oz gram flour
• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 4 tbps water
• 4 oz grated onion
• 4 oz grated potato
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 5 tbsp oil
• Kitchen roll

Method

1. Mix together the dry ingredients
2. Add the water to the dry ingredients and mix to a smooth batter
3. Stir the grated onion and potato into the batter
4. Stir in the sliced onion
5. Heat the oil
6. Gently drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot oil
7. Flip each bhajji over when the bottom side becomes golden brown
8. Once both sides of the bhajji are brown, remove it from the oil and place it on kitchen roll to soak off some of the oil

Result

Approximately 8 onion bhajjis (depending on how large you make them).

Although there’s no option that allows you to block all retweets from all people you follow in one fell swoop (yet), you can block all retweets from each person individually.

So, if, for example, you’re following me (@sheilaellen) on twitter and wish to stop receiving all the messages that I retweet:

1. Go to my twitter page: http://twitter.com/sheilaellen
2. Find the retweet icon
3. Click on it.

Before:

Retweets On

After:

Retweets Off

This should mean that you will now only receive messages from me that have been written by my own fair hand (or, possibly, a spammer who’s p0wned my account).

Repeat for each other compulsive retweeter that you follow.

My thanks go to Chris for writing it up so clearly.

As per usual, I received an email almost immediately, confirming that I had placed the order. It also informed me that the order would be split into two deliveries but that both were still due for delivery on my nominated date. Although we had practically zero snow on the ground in our corner of Central London, the media and my colleagues assured me that the rest of the country was covered with the stuff so I wasn’t too surprised when, come Saturday, just the one package arrived, containing a single item. Disappointing but I was sure that the rest would eventually arrive, once the snow cleared up.

Four days later and still nothing (except more snow). And then two emails pop innocently into my inbox:

We are sorry let you know that the following item/s you ordered are no longer available.

…

Unfortunately, due to an exceptionally high number of orders placed at the same time, some popular items have sold out and we do apologise for any disappointment and inconvenience this has caused.

The out of stock items have been removed from your order and you have not been charged for them. All remaining available items can be viewed in your online account.

And yet I’ve just been on the site and ALL BUT ONE of these items is still available to order and listed as in stock in my size – in fact, for many of them the site goes so far as to reassure me that they have MORE THAN 10 of them.

It would seem that even though we’re supposedly in a recession, Marks & Spencer can afford to turn down business on a whim with barely an apology for wasting my time. Hardly the actions of a company that values their customers.

UPDATE: Re-reading this post, I realise that I left out a crucial piece of information – the items being cancelled were all 15 of the outstanding items.  Although M&S were very apologetic – they even sent me a bunch of flowers! – when I called Customer Services to arrange for the order to be resubmited, I was initially told that I would need to provide the size and colour information for each item (miraculously that data became available when I refused).  During a second call (which was made in response to my tweets) there was initially no record of the previous call and re-submitted order, which almost lead to a duplicate re-submission… So, although 1 blog post, several tweets and 3 phone calls (1 from me, 2 from M&S) later, my order finally arrived (13 days after I had first placed it), overall the experience was still a major #FAIL.

Bites is very simple recipe manager, in interface and functionality; beautifully quick and easy to use. What makes it special, though, for me, is its integration with OI Shopping List: at the press of a button in Bites, I can add all of the ingredients I need to my shopping list.

If I already have an ingredient, I can tick it off before I copy it across and only the ingredients I really need will be added. If, like me, you have more than one list set up in OI Shopping List, the process allows you to specify which one, exactly, the ingredients should be added to. Also, to help you remember why it’s essential that you buy black treacle this week, the name of the recipe it’s required for (fruit cake) is appended to each ingredient name in the Shopping List.

The only feature that I miss, from both apps, is the option to specify the name of an ingredient/item and the quantity required separately. I’ve requested this from both app makers and have my fingers crossed that it’ll be added in the New Year.

Christmas planning is going so much more smoothly with the help of these two apps (and RTM), though. Only a zillion things left to do..!

There are some apps that I could delete but I’m reluctant to do so because I like them and might forget what they’re called should I acquire a more powerful android device and wish to reinstall them.  There are others that I rarely use but do exactly what I need them to do on those rare occasions that I do need them.  Until now, I’ve been managing to hang on to the aforementioned apps by deleting apps that I’ve installed either because they looked as though they’d do what I needed but didn’t or simply because they looked shiny in the store but quickly dulled with use.  However, with Christmas looming, last night I thought I’d try installing the RTM android app – and it’s a whopper (~3.75MB).  I’m determined to give it a proper trial but this means that finally I’m going to have to get ruthless with the other apps.

As I shall probably wish/need to reinstall some of them at a later date, if not on this phone then another, here’s a rollcall of the victims of this cull:

The RTM app had better be good…