Wednesday January 27
 
14:40
 
Lenovo one key recovery – how to fix it

Before I bought my Acer netbook, I bought a Lenovo netbook.

Right from the beginning, I got disk error. I decided wipe the C drive and install Windows 7 over the Japanese OS. It worked OK, but the initial disk errors bothered me, so I decided to restore the laptop to original state and return it. And there I hit a problem. Windows 7 had repartitioned the disk and one key recovery (OKR) no longer worked.

Eventually after a day of investigating, I did finally manage to get OKR to work again, restore the netbook to original state, and return it for a refund. So that time isn’t wasted, I’m going to post what I found out about OKR – because after searching around, I know lots of people are having issues with it.

Switched off, the OKR button is supposed to boot you to recovery mode to restore the hard drive. But if anything alters the partition information of the HDD, it stops working – instead it boot you into Windows.

The reason for this is that the recovery partition is special – it has a #12 partition ID, which is a Compay Configuration/Diagnostics Partition (details here). Most partitioning software doesn’t know about this partition ID and when you change partition information, such as by adjusting partition sizes or creating a new partition, that ID gets reset to something the partitioning software knows about. That stops the OKR key working.

To restore the ID, you need gparted on a USB key or on CD. Search Google and you can get it easily enough. Method:

1. Boot into gparted.
2. Identify the disk identifier for the recovery partition – eg /dev/sda4
3. Open up the gparted console
4. Type fdisk /dev/sda (ie. take the number off the identifier)
5. Type m for help if you want
6. Type p to print the partition table – check you get the same number as above
7. Type t, then 4 for the partition number (replace with the number of your partition)
8. If you want, type L to list codes
9. The code you want is 12, enter 12 and then type w to write
10. Do not use the GUI from this point – if you do, it will remove the code 12
11. Exit gparted and try the OKR button. It should work.

An alternative is to set the boot flag on the recovery partition. The lenovo will then boot using the recovery partition.

Tuesday January 12
 
15:01
 
Record video on the iPhone 3G

Finally an app which allows videos to be recorded on the iPhone 3G. Low res quality at 10fps, high res quality at about 2-3fps – not the best, but better than not having the functionality at all.

Competing with iVideoCamera is ShowTime, also $1. Apparently the high res quality is a bit better than iVideoCamera but it lacks the low res option and some say it’s buggy. Hopefully iVideoCamera will improve the framerate for the high res option in the next release.

Thursday January 7
 
13:56
 
A special message from me to you

If you have an iPhone you can read this with BeeTagg Pro (which is free). You can generate your own QR code (with URLs, phone number, or whatever text you want) here.

Wednesday January 6
 
17:17
 
Redownloading paid apps on Apple’s AppStore

For a company that is usually good at interfaces, the way the AppStore handles redownloading paid apps makes me squirm.

Take this app. I paid for it in the past and deleted it from my phone:

I can download this for free, but to do that, I have to click the price, then click BUY, then enter my AppStore password. Only then do I get a popup saying the app is a free download. I shouldn’t have to commit to buying it before finding out I can download it free.

Here’s a case where this is relevant. I “purchased” Ping when it was free, then during a New Year clean of my iPhone, I deleted it. But today I wanted to try it out again, so I went to the AppStore. Now there are two versions of Ping – Ping Lite and Ping. Ping now costs money. Do I have to pay for it even though I’ve “purchased” it before? Maybe the developer renamed the old Ping to Ping Lite and release a new paid version called Ping - do I have to download Ping Lite instead?

In the end I took the plunge and after “buying”, I was told the download is free. Not nice at all.

In fact, there’s no clear indication on the AppStore of which apps you have purchased. I have only found one way to confirm - attempt to write a review. The AppStore will only let you write reviews on apps you own.

Very poor design Apple. Don’t make people commit to buying apps they can download free.

Don’t bother downloading Blocked – it’s crap. I used it for the screenshot above because with the exception of Ping, it’s the only other paid app that I’ve deleted – and I’d already reinstalled Ping before writing this.

Thursday December 24
 
22:11
 
All I want for Christmas…

It is true that Santa is real. Unfortunately, his real name is “Visa” and you have to pay for him.

This Christmas I’m bringing my tiny Tokyo flat one step closer to a techno-home with two purchases.

First, the ultimate lazy man’s hoover:

Yip, a robot hoover. You can see it on You Tube here and read about it here. This is the ultimate “When in Japan” purchase, it has to be said. The thing is, it only cost the same price as a normal “do it yourself” hoover – and let’s face it, who would do it themselves if they could get someone else to do it for them?

Second, a lazy man’s coffee maker:

I have very little cost justification for this. My current espresso maker is well past its prime, but even then I could get a new one for 20,000 yen instead of 60,000 yen.

But this one grinds the beans for me. It’s not female with a short skirt but it’s the closest thing I’m going to get to a Starbucks girl in my flat every morning making me a fresh coffee.