As you might have noticed I haven’t blogged anything lately. This mostly due to the fact that I am in the middle of moving into a new place – and my girlfriend moving in as well… So it’s a bit hectic with lots of things to do. And as an optional side-note, I am evaluating a lot of things I used to do, but which I am not doing right now.
I should be able to post a few updates somewhere this week so – no worries!
More on later…
For the last couple of days I have been running around with a program called BandSwitch installed, which disconnects idle mobile internet connections (according to your settings) Doing so can seriously prolong the battery-life on your HD2. So far, I havent’ seen or found any negative side-effects and it does seem to prolong to do what it advertises.
The URL to get it is: http://www.commmgrpro.com/jsp/main_frame.jsf
However, the program is not free – it comes with a 14 day trial.
The user-interface may seem chaotic at first, but it’s a mater of starting it (once) and then hitting “Auto” and you are set.
Most of you have already heard or met the concept of being minimalist in one way, shape or form. Apart from the added advantages that it takes less time to clean, helps you enjoy life more, reduces (visual) stress it also has one major advantage…
Moving is so much easier when you enjoy a minimalist life-style :-)
In the not-so-far future I should be moving to a new apartment, and that means packing up my stuff – and of course unpacking it. Since I do not own tons and tons of unwanted, unneeded and otherwise pointless materials it should be a jiffy. It should actually all fit into a small van (yes, I really own that little – and enjoy it) Now I’m aware that moving is not an annual (or even bi-annual) event – but it just underlines once more that living with only what you need, use and like – is a lot more sustainable.
Think about it; off all the stuff that you own and have around you – how much of it do you actually use or like? How much are you just keeping around ‘just in case’? Of course, certain items are a good idea to keep around for eventualities – but do you really need to keep a 3rd TV-set around just in case for example? Be critical, question whether or not you will actually use it in the next month or 6 months – or year (if it is seasonal related material) If the answer is no, then store it away for that period (month, 6 months or year) and if indeed you haven’t used in that time – get rid of it (give it away, donate or sell it :) )
There is a saying that goes along the lines of;
Do you own your stuff, or does your stuff own you?
In case you want to read up on this ‘minimalist lifestyle’ try visiting the following people’s blogs;
http://www.zenhabits.net
http://www.becomingminimalist.com/
Start with these 2, or just one of them. Read their blogs (subscribe to their RSS-feeds to automate it a bit) and implement the advise you want to implement. Because being and living minimalist is not following a regime, it’s about being and living with that (or without) what you need and love – without the junk you don’t need.
On the HD2 you will find running Opera Mobile 9.7 (even with the latest ROM) Now if you wish to update this to a higher version here is what to do;
- Go to http://m.opera.com.
- Select the Opera 10 for Windows Mobile Touch version.
- Download (to SD-card or main memory should make no difference) via a WiFi connection (or other high-speed connection, since the download is quite big)
- Install to main memory
- Enjoy Opera 10 Mobile.
This version comes with Opera Turbo, which can make a huge difference in terms of browsing speed on all types of connections, and can save a lot in terms of bandwidth usage. That is especially handy for those of you who are on capped mobile internet-connections. Plus, I like the interface just a tad bit more.
Note; you can also download the installation for your mobile via your PC/laptop by going to http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/versions.
Of course, don’t forget to set it as your default browser.
PS: You might see the icon twice in your Start-menu. However, I haven’t seen or found any bugs or problems with that yet.
One of the things that I kept bumping into is the exceedingly slow response-times of my website. At times it took over 2 seconds to display a page, which quite frankly is unacceptable.
The past few days I have been fiddling with the plugins of the site; installing and uninstalling them. One of the things that has gone out the window, as you can see is Bing search. I have also dropped the Tag Cloud, WordPress statistics (which only were shown to me) and the Twitter plugin. The graphical theme of the site has also had a bit of an overhauling, as I dropped some of the images – and optimized the CSS-file.
I have also disabled the smileys, disabled (most of) the comments (which allowed me to disable quite a few other items as well) and have implemented another plugin that caches the pages. Having done this has now dropped the average response time of the site from 1.7 seconds to the 0.7 seconds. Keep in mind that this is measured on a global scale. For those interested I use PingDom.com (which I highly recommend – even their free account!) to keep tabs on the response- and up-time.
Another thing I also noticed is the increase of traffic coming from Google on one of my posts here regarding the HTC HD2 and how to sync it with Google (for Google Mail, contacts etc.) I guess I stroke a chord there with people. I’ll try to focus a bit more on those kind of posts ;-)