Hail AdBlock

How-to surf the internet on your Android phone AKA note-to-self on not to waste half your data subscription on garbage ads while using mobile data not your home wi-fi.

1. From Google Play install Firefox and Advanced Task Killer
2. From Firefox install Adblock for Firefox for Android
• Reinstall Adblock addon after updates of Firefox
3. Every now and then kill almost everything using the task killer app (and/or spend time closing tabs all the time)

Please, commercial websites, come here and whine about you not being able to pay your hosting bill because no one accidentally clicks your crap ads. Because I'm ready for some fire...

Today some piece of sh*t ad on a website I'd browsed in the lunch break managed to use almost 150 MB before the next coffee break. For once I had forgotten to reinstall Adblock after a Firefox update and didn't kill all running apps including their sh*te ads. You pathetic uneducated webdesigners can't even make a respectable ad graphic and have them reload at decent intervals. No, you have to toss moutains of irrelevant data at us. Christ did you do those ads in BMP or something? Did you check if it was even possible to read the ad text while they reloaded at ludicrous spped? No respect.

It's not a question of Adblock or no Adblock. It's a question of mobile internet use or no mobile internet use.

PS: Say you can get an adblocker for Chrome or Opera and you prefer those? Fine. Do that.

Eight (8) years later review: my Creative Zen MP3-player

So, I have started studying journalism. One of the first things a journalism student need to acquire is a voice recorder. There's an app for that, surely, but a standalone / dedicated / backup device with good microphone quality and plenty of disk is nice. Lo and behold: The Creative Zen Micro from 2004 in my drawer.

I remember buying it in wonder how it clearly beat Apple's iPod at the time. More disk space, had a microphone, had a FM radio, much cheaper. The only reason to prefer the Apple MP3 player was the design if you happened to prefer that. Which I didn't. Once the Creative headphones were replaced with a pair from Sennheiser, I had a bleeding edge product of the day at about half the price of the corresponding Apple product.

The downside is Creative marketed it exclusively for Microsoft Windows. Still to this day, the official website offers only Windows downloads. The official software is very "corporate", loaded with splash screens, customized windows and "helpful" dialog menus. The unofficial gnomad2 for Linux is much more plain, intuitive and to the point. Unfortunately, it doesn't come as a package, it has to be installed from the command line (install development packages, type configure, make etc.).

I remember dropping the Zen from waist height to concrete surfaces a couple of times. The battery is still working - but I suspect it will begin to decrease in life time per charge. Then again, it has just been in a drawer for a couple of years. The sound quality of the recordings are surprisingly good. Loud, clear and shockingly small WAV files easily edited, if needed, in, for example, Audacity.

This is where I'd add a picture of my eight years old gadget. But really, it looks like it's new. Also, I should add a step-by-step instruction for compiling gnomad2. But to tell the truth I did it by part intuition, part failing memory, meaning I'm sure I got more packages than really needed on my system now and I'm not exactly sure which command got me the thing working in the end.

If only Creative had been making crappier products we would all have had to replace them more often. And then perhaps Creative would still be competing with Apple in 2012? No really, thank you, Creative, for a little gem of quality hardware. Buying the Zen founded a rule of thumb for me: For every new Apple product there's probably a competitor out there with a corresponding product that has a few more features and sells for a lot less.

And hardware shouldn't have to be replaced every other year. Especially not for something silly like irreplaceable batteries and planned obsolescence. The Zen is eight years old but it's still works fine, is still the size of a match box. Replacing it with something half the size of a match box having a color display wouldn't add any value for me, the end user.

Two years later review: my FLIP Mino HD camera

On the 21st of September 2009 I biked to Bella Center in Copenhagen, site of the COP15 climate change conference three months later, to participate in the kick-off event for the TH!NKABOUTIT #2 blogging project. For use in our blogging each participant was given a 4 GB FLIP Mino HD camera with the European Journalism Centre logo on the cover.

The FLIPs come in a little pouch and with custom designed covers.

I never considered myself a video guy. Let alone video-blogger, or "vlogger", of which I still haven't seen a reasonable example. Video tech was also uncharted territory to me and not one I figured worth the learning curve to enter. But the FLIP changed that mostly because it's so easy to use: power on, press the big red "Record" button to start and then stop recording, flip out the USB connector and transfer the MP4-files to any computer. Also, it delivers surprisingly high quality sound and pictures, and it's the size of a mobile phone (smaller than most smartphones).

The 4 GB version lists its recording time to one hour. It's closer to 55 minutes but that's because unnecessary files are taking up space on the new recorder's drive. Fortunately, it connects like any other USB stick so the handful of PDFs and an .exe file (who needs .exe files?) can be quickly moved to your computer for safekeeping or simply deleted. This will bring up recording time to almost an hour again - until next time you upgrade your FLIP software and the unnecessary files will reappear.

So, I began clipping segments of recordings using avidemux in Linux; first example a jumpy walk through a crowded outdoor photo exhibition (not impressive film art). Also in avidemux I started using the xvid codec and for example managed to fit this 51 minutes speech into a just 225 MB file suitable for my free Vimeo account (still not impressive and should have fixed the sound). And I strapped it to my bike to make a recording of my daily trip home from work. I snugged it out to get some rare footage from inside Cairo Airport during the revolution curfew. As a Macbook Pro entered the picture, I must admit ambitions sky rocketed. iMovie was to my editing ambitions what the FLIP was to my recording ambitions - userfriendliness inspiring a new hobby. The FLIP comes with idiot-proof software that will make you instant "MagicMovies" and handle your files easily. Even as I started using more and more advanced features of iMove, I still have thrown in segments of FLIP MagicMovies here and there (the trained eye will notice, for example from 17 seconds to 27 seconds into my first Urban Greening video).

In short, the FLIP cameras were bargains in 2009. Being very small, very easy to use and quite cheap at the same time I have to wonder why they weren't more popular. Now, of course, they face competition from smartphones and more expensive camcorders designed smaller and smaller too. But they are even cheaper now and come with 8 GB. Still something I'd consider buying. And I did consider buying a new FLIP recently - because during recording of my second Urban Greening video it fell from my pocket and unfortunately the display broke. So sad. And the bottom line is: FLIP and the TH!NKABOUTIT project has changed me into a person who wants to film. And even after two years of frequent use I was still very happy with the FLIP Mino HD.

The display is obviously out of order.

I can wholeheartedly recommend you buy a FLIP - if you don't already have a smartphone or DSLR with HD video capabilities, of course. Alternatively, a FLIP would serve great as a second camcorder if your other one is a bit too expensive to strap onto flying objects or operating during intoxication or other risky situations.

My choice for a new (budget) camcorder fell on a Canon Legria HF R16 found on sale. You can probably expect rants about its software and attitude towards Linux and Mac in the near future, a slightly more thought through review in two years. And perhaps more crazy videos made with my old FLIP now strapped onto more and more hazardously placed objects?

A Mac win... in Africa

OK... don't really know if it's a "win" as much as an obvious advantage of the mobility of a laptop and the funny convenience of fool proof iWhatever apps. Long story short: I traveled through Kenya visiting development projects, documenting the trip in text notes, photographs and video alike. The combo of a Flip camera and a Macbook proved... pretty nice.

Me, my 11 inch Macbook and my Flip Mino HD camera (with cheap tripod) in the middle of nowhere, Kenya.

The Flip cameras are affordable, very small and shoots good video. But they don't have a lot of storage on them so you need to empty them via USB quite often. That's where your laptop or notebook enters the picture.

As ranted about the other day I just upgraded to iMovie '11. One of the new features is an "instant trailer" function. Not sure it'll be truly useful - but it is funny. Here is a documentary style trailer of the videos from the trip I put on Vimeo done in close to no time using iMovie '11:

Still wouldn't live without the desktop Linux box, however. It's got affordable terrabytes of storage, ultra compatibility of video formats and just so many advantages as previously blogged about. For example, I'm writing these words from it and would feel heavily disadvantaged doing even such a simple blog post from the Mac. Sorry, Macbook freaks.