A client just lent me a new Mac Mini with OS/X Lion to play with. I think it’s interesting to compare it with regular PCs running Linux.

Hardware

The Mac Mini is tiny. It’s volume can be compared to that of a laptop. The entire outside apart from the base is made from aluminium which helps dissipate heat, it’s not as effective as copper but a lot better than plastic. The ports on the system are sound input/output, 4*USB, Ethernet, Firewire, Thunderbolt (replacement for Firewire), SDXC, and HDMI. It ships with a HDMI to DVI-D adapter which is convenient if you have an older monitor (or if you have a recent monitor but no HDMI cable as I do).

To open the case you unscrew the bottom, this is much like opening a watch. Also like opening a watch it’s not particularly easy to screw it back on tightly, I will probably return the Mac Mini without managing to completely screw the base in.

The hardware is very stylish and intricately designed, what we expect from Apple. It’s also quiet. In every way it’s a much better system than the workstation I’m using to write this blog post. The difference of course is that this workstation was free and the Mac Mini cost just over $1000 including the RAM upgrade. A Mac Mini could be a decent Linux workstation and if I see one about to be recycled I’ll be sure to grab it!

Installation

The Mac OS comes pre-installed so I didn’t get to do a full installation. When I first booted it up it asked me if I wanted to migrate the configuration from an existing server, I don’t know how well this works as I don’t have a second Mac system but the concept is a good one. Maybe having full support for such a migration process would be a good release goal for a Linux distribution.

After determining that the installation is a fresh one I was asked for a mac.com email address or other form of registration. I skipped this step as I don’t have such an email address, but it could be useful. Red Hat has “Kickstart” to allow configuration of an OS install based on a file from a server (via NFS or HTTP). Debian supports “preseeding” to take OS configuration options from a file at install time [1] and the same option can be used for later stages of OS autoconfiguration.

One thing that would be really useful is to allow the user to enter a URL for configuration data for an individual account or for all accounts, so someone with an account on one workstation could upload the configuration (which would be either encrypted or sanitised to not have secret data) and then download it when first logging in to a new system. I can easily take a tar archive of my home directory to a new system, but people like my parents don’t have the skill to do that.

One of the final stages of system configuration was to identify the keyboard. The system asked me to press the key to the right of the left shift key and then the key to the left of the right shift key and then offered me three choices of keyboard. That was an interesting way of reducing the list of possible keyboards offered to the user and thus preventing the user from selecting one that is grossly incorrect.

Cloud Storage

When first logging in I was asked for an iCloud [2] login. iCloud doesn’t seem like a service that should be trusted, it’s based in the US and has been designed to facilitate access by government agencies. Ubuntu One [3] is a similar service that is run by a more reputable organisation, but the data is still stored by Amazon (a US corporation) which seems like a security risk. Ubuntu One isn’t in Debian (which is strange as Ubuntu is based on Debian) so it was too much effort for me to determine whether it encrypts data in a way that protects the users against US surveillance.

The cost of Ubuntu One storage is $4 per month with music streaming. A better option is to use a self-hosted OwnCloud installation for a private or semi-private cloud [4]. A cheap server from someone like Hetzner (E49 per month for 3TB of RAID-1 storage) [5] is a good option for OwnCloud hosting. A cheap Hetzner server is about $US64 per month (at current conversion rates) which is equivalent to about 16 users of Ubuntu One for music streaming. So if 20 people shared a Hetzner server they could save money when compared to Ubuntu One while also getting a lot more storage. I’ve got about 300G of unused disk space on the Hetzner server that hosts my blog and when the system is migrated to a newer Hetzner server with 3TB disks it will have 2.5TB of unused space, I could store a lot of cloud data in that!

The main features of iCloud and Ubuntu One seem to be distribution of random data files (anything you wish), streaming music to various playing systems, and copying pictures from phones as soon as they are taken. These are all great features but it’s a pity that they don’t appear to support distributed document storage. Apple Pages apparently allows documents to be immediately saved to the cloud. I’d like to be able to save a file with Libre Office at home and then access it from my netbook using the cloud, of course that would require encryption for secret files but that’s not so hard to do. One advantage with such distributed storage is that when combined with offline-IMAP for email it would almost entirely remove the need for backups of the desktop systems I maintain for my relatives. I could have all their pictures and documents go to the cloud and all their email stay on the server so if their desktop PC dies I could just give them a new PC and get it all back from the cloud! OwnCloud supports replication, so if I got two servers I would be covered against a server failure. But I think that for a small server with less than a dozen users it’s probably better to just take some down-time when things go wrong and do regular backups to an array of cheap SATA disks.

App Store

Apple has an “App Store” in the OS. The use of such a store on a desktop OS is a new thing for me. It’s basically the same as the Android Market (Google Play) but on the desktop. I think that there is a real scope for an organisation such as Canonical to provide such a market service for Linux. I think that there is a lot of potential for apps to be sold for less than $10 to a reasonable number of Linux users. A small payment would be inconvenient for the seller if they have to interact with the customer in any way and also inconvenient for the buyer if they are entering all their credit card details into a web site for the sale. But for repeat sales with one company being an intermediary it would be convenient for everyone. A market program for a desktop Linux system could provide a friendly interface to selecting free apps from repositories (for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or other distributions) and also have the same interface used for selecting paid applications.

Conclusion

This isn’t much of a review of Apple OS/X or the Mac Mini. Thinking about ways of implementing the best features of Lion on Linux is a lot more interesting. I admire Apple in the same way that I admire sharks, they are really good at what they do but they don’t care about my best interests any more than a hungry shark cares about me.

Update

I got the currency conversion wrong in the first version of this article. It seems that to save money via a shared Hetzner server instead of Ubuntu One about 20 users would be needed instead of 10. But that’s still not too many and would still give a lot more storage. It would be a little more difficult to arrange though, probably anyone who is seriously into computers knows 10 people who would want to share such a service (including people like their parents who want things to just work and don’t understand what’s happening). But getting 20 people would be more difficult.

• [1] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed
• [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icloud
• [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_One
• [4] https://owncloud.com/
• [5] http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-ex

Acoustiblok is an interesting product for blocking sound, it works by dissipating sound energy through friction within the sound barrier materiel [1]. They sell it in varieties that are designed for use within walls and for use as fences. As it isn’t solid it won’t reflect sound so it can be used to line the walls to stop sound being reflected back at you. It’s design is based on NASA research.

The web site claims that a 3mm sheet of Acoustiblok gives a greater noise reduction than 12 inches (30.7cm) of poured concrete. I am a little dubious about that claim as I’ve read a report of someone using three layers of Acoustiblok to make a quiet room for recording music (and to be used as a play-room for an Autistic child). I find it difficult to imagine someone needing a meter of concrete to stop any sort of noise that they might encounter in a residential area so the fact that someone needed three layers of Acoustiblok is an indication that it might not be quite as good as they claim (although there is the possibility that Acoustiblok was badly installed). I wonder whether the claims about concrete concern particular frequencies. The technical specifications and product comparisons page [2] shows that Acoustiblok is least effective at 130Hz where it only reduces noise by 12dB and that it’s effectiveness increases to 38dB at 5KHz. So perhaps a concrete wall to stop low frequencies and Acoustiblok to stop high frequencies would be the best solution.

The Australian distributor for Acoustiblok is based in Brisbane [3].

The same company also sells Thermablok [4] which is the first aerogel based insulation that I’ve seen being advertised for commercial sale. I guess that it must be rather expensive as they are mostly advertising it for use as thin strips to cover stud faces (steel studs conduct heat well and can cause a lot of heat loss). A note in their FAQ says that it’s available in rolls for insulating entire walls or floors. The FAQ also indicates that they sell samples suitable for science classes. They are also apparently looking for retailers, it would be nice if someone wanted to sell this in Australia.

• [1] http://www.acoustiblok.com/
• [2] http://www.acoustiblok.com/products.php
• [3] http://acoustiblokau.com.au/
• [4] http://www.thermablok.com/

I’ve just played with the official Android app [1] for the Royal Carribean cruise line [2]. The cruise line is apparently great (I’ve never been on one of their ships but the reviews are good) but the Android app isn’t.

Net Access

The most obvious and significant problem with this app is that it’s entirely useless without net access. All data of note comes from the Internet which means that the program is useless in any location where Internet access is unavailable (or unreasonably expensive). They wrote an app about cruising that can’t be used on a cruise ship! Did they even think about what they were doing?

The correct thing to do when writing such an application is to have all basic data about all ships included in the app. This means that when they change the deck plan of a ship they need to release a new version of the app and have people download it. Having done a lot of software development I understand that forcing software updates (even updates to included data files) involves some effort and expense. But when they spend $20,000,000 to update a ship (which is about the minimum that is spent for a major ship in dry-dock according to TV documentaries I’ve watched) it seems quite reasonable to budget $10,000 to release new software. Also one benefit of updating the software is that it can promote the changes, after spending tens of millions of dollars improving a ship they probably want to promote that to customers and pushing a new app update with adverts for the improved ship seems like a good way of doing that.

There is some data that can’t reasonably be included in the app due to size constraints with photos of ships being the most notable example. The solution to this is to provide an option for the user to cache the data that interests them. For example if I was meeting some people to discuss the possibility of a group cruise on a RCL ship then I could download all the pictures of that ship on my home Wifi network and then have them all available with no delay or 3G costs.

Also the app seems to hang if net access is temporarily interrupted. As phones are expected to have unreliable net access this is also a significant flaw.

Maps

The maps of the ships are comprised of a series of pictures which each show one deck. In addition to being downloaded (not cached or included in the app) they aren’t scalable (they should be SVG or at least allow zooming the high resolution pictures) and they don’t allow a 3D view. The paper maps used to promote cruises (including RCI cruises) and which are given to all passengers on Princess cruises (I’m not sure about other lines) show a side cutaway view of the ship which is handy for working out which things are near where you are. It seems that an ideal cruise ship mapping program would have some sort of 3D component, maybe X3D.

My experience is that a two night cruise isn’t long enough to become familiar with one of the smaller cruise ships. Using a map is essential and a smart phone is a good way of managing such a map as typical 2D paper maps just aren’t good enough for such a large and complex structure.

Photos

One of the significant things that is wrong with the app is a lack of care in displaying the photos of ships. They display three pictures of the Allure of the Seas (one of the two newest, biggest, and most luxurious ships in their fleet), but one of those three photos is actually of the Oasis of the Seas. The fact that the two ships are almost identical is no excuse, there is a principle at stake! Also only having three pictures is pretty poor, there is no way that less than 50 pictures could do justice to such a big ship!

A Google search for the words cruise and photos turns up many sites with pictures of cruise ships and it’s not particularly difficult to find pictures of any particular ship. Photographs by customers are often of high quality as some of the better DSLR cameras are in the same price range as some of the cheaper tickets for cruise ships. Probably the best thing that RCI could do is to run a contest and allow their customers to enter photos and vote towards the winning entries. That would get them photos that aren’t as sterile as the official photos and which include the things that are of most interest to customers.

Finally in terms of caching, pictures are the most easily cached source of data and as phones get higher resolution they keep getting bigger. The storage space for a modern phone is equivalent to the entire 3G download quota for about a year on an affordable Australian 3G plan. When dealing with photos downloaded from the net the default should be to cache everything.

Navigation

Navigating a smart-phone app is a lot more difficult than navigating the same data on a desktop system (which would be in a web browser). Users can compensate for some deficiencies with web site organisation by using a large monitor and having several web browser windows with multiple tabs. But with a phone it should be possible to switch between things quickly.

The main menu has a “View Our Ships” option (which allows viewing deck plans and pictures) and a “View Our Staterooms” option which offers a list of ships and then describes the state rooms available for each one. This means that you can’t see all the information about a ship in one place and even worse you can’t easily compare ships. As it seems likely that people will want to use this app for selecting a cruise it should be possible to select a few ships that are of interest and then quickly flip between them. For example the Rhapsody of the Seas and the Voyager of the Seas are cruising in my part of the world so it would be nice if I could tell the app to compare those ships and then allow me to view a page about one ship and then flick to the equivalent page about the other ship.

Another notable problem is that the ships are listed in alphabetical order. The sensible thing to do is to list them by class going from biggest to smallest.

Lessons to be Learned

These problems aren’t specific to the RCI app, many other Android apps have the same flaws. For example the Google Play market app doesn’t cache the icons of the installed apps so every time I want to see a list of installed apps it goes slow and wastes some of my bandwidth. Doing something wrong in the same way as Google isn’t necessarily a great mistake, although using the Google Play market on a cruise ship is probably very uncommon.

Probably the biggest problem is a lack of testing. They should have sent the developers on a cruise as a live test. Every cruise ship has a sales desk for booking future cruises so it wouldn’t be difficult to have a dozen Android phones at the sales desk to see how real customers who really want to book a cruise find it. I presume that even if net access was available then such a test would fail dismally. If a 3D display of a ship combined with all the data management capabilities of a modern smart phone (which is a lot more powerful than the desktop systems I used prior to 2000) can’t at least be a useful supplement to a stack of paper brochures then it’s probably a failure.

I think that the RCI app is an example of how to make an Android app which doesn’t fall into the more common failings (such as being a quick and dirty port from iOS) but yet still isn’t useful to customers. I recommend that people who develop apps which have an objective of imparting information to users try it out as an example of what not to do. Try a few basic tasks like comparing the three biggest classes of RCI ships in terms of features, after failing to do that with the app you can then use Wikipedia to get the result. But don’t use the Wikipedia client apps, use a tabbed browser such as Opera Mini.

• [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.royalcaribbean.rccl
• [2] http://www.royalcaribbean.com.au/

Every year my parents buy a book of vouchers for various businesses in Victoria. It’s one of those deals where businesses (mostly restaurants) pay for advertising space to have their tear-off vouchers in the book (which typically allow a discount of between $5 and $30) and the customers buy the book for something like $40 (I’m not really sure as I don’t pay). Every year I take my pick of the vouchers that don’t suit my parents, the Nando’s chain of chicken and chips restaurants that specialises in Peri-Peri spicy sauce [1] is one that doesn’t suit my parents (they prefer the traditional English-Australian food).

The Nando’s vouchers say “Enjoy one complimentary 1/4 flame-grilled peri-peri chicken item when another 1/4 flame-grilled peri-peri chicken item is purchased” with no explanation of exactly what an “item” is. Every Nando’s store that I’ve been to in the past has interpreted “item” as chicken and chips, usually they include the drink that comes with the “quarter chicken meal” in the “item” that is free. I can do without a second soda as it’s really cheap from the supermarket and I’m not going to drink two at one meal anyway so I’m not bothered when someone interprets the voucher as not involving a free drink. But the lack of chips is annoying.

At the Nando’s store on Swanston St between La Trobe St and Little Lonsdale St they interpret “item” as being just the 1/4 chicken. I think that most people would regard this as an unusual interpretation. If the intent was to only offer 1/4 chicken then the voucher could have stated that a free 1/4 chicken was offered and removed all doubt. The fact that the voucher says a free “1/4 flame-grilled peri-peri chicken item” instead of offering a free “Quarter Chicken” (which is the description for chicken on it’s own on the Nandos menus) seems to be a reasonable indication that more than just the free chicken is offered.

I won’t be attending the Nandos store on Swanston St again and recommend that others avoid it too. Failing to offer the full value on the voucher is annoying, it decreases the value for money (which is a problem given how expensive Nandos is), and it makes me wonder what other cost-saving measures might be used at that store. I’ve got a stack of vouchers (many of which will expire before being used) and the Melbourne CBD has many places to eat.

• [1] http://www.nandos.com.au/

Airtasker.com is a new company that is dedicated to outsourcing small jobs [1]. It’s still in a “beta” phase and has no way of making money – the worker is paid directly by the employer and there’s no facility for either of them to pay Airtasker, I would really like to know what the business model will be before considering whether to use it. It also doesn’t seem to operate outside of Sydney which seems quite strange, how hard can it be to have separate Google maps instances for each city in Australia?

The jobs that are advertised seem to be mostly household repair tasks and from the member list it appears that some people who already run small service businesses are trying to use Airtasker to get more work. There are also a lot of delivery tasks such as buying something from a shop and delivering it and driving a car from Melbourne to Sydney (good for someone who wants a subsidised interstate holiday). But there are some unusual tasks such as pretending to be someone’s girlfriend to make his mother stop nagging him.

It will be interesting to see whether this takes off. One thing that I might use it for is delivering computer equipment in the CBD. Some of my clients have no good parking near their office so I end up carrying computer gear from a tram stop or an inconvenient parking spot to their office. I’d rather have someone paid to do at least half the work in carrying the gear and the rates that are being discussed on Airtasker are well within the range that my clients would be happy to pay.

• [1] https://www.airtasker.com/

A few weeks ago I went on my first cruise, from Sydney to Melbourne on the Dawn Princess. VacationsToGo.com (a discount cruise/resort web site) has a review of the Dawn Princess [1], they give it 4 stars out of a possible 6. The 6 star ships seem to have discount rates in excess of $500 per day per person, much more than I would pay.

The per-person rate is based on two people sharing a cabin, it seems that most cabins can be configured as a double bed or twin singles. If there is only one person in a cabin then they pay almost double the normal rate. It seems that most cruise ships have some support for cabins with more than two people (at a discount rate), but the cabins which support that apparently sell out early and don’t seem to be available when booking a cheap last-minute deal over the Internet. So if you want a cheap cruise then you need to have an even number of people in your party.

The cruise I took was two nights and cost $238 per person, it was advertised at something like $220 but then there are extra fees when you book (which seems to be the standard practice).

The Value of Cruises

To book a hotel room that is reasonably comfortable (4 star) in Melbourne or Sydney you need to spend more than $100 per night for a two person room if using Wotif.com. The list price of a 4 star hotel room for two people in a central city area can be well over $300 per night. So the cost for a cruise is in the range of city hotel prices.

The Main Dining Room (MDR) has a quality of food and service that compares well with city restaurants. The food and service in the Dawn Princess MDR wasn’t quite as good as Walter’s Wine Bar (one of my favorite restaurants). But Walter’s costs about $90 for a four course meal. The Dawn Princess MDR has a standard 5 course meal (with a small number of options for each course) and for no extra charge you can order extra serves. When you make it a 7 course meal the value increases. I really doubt that I could find any restaurant in Melbourne or Sydney that would serve a comparable meal for $119.

You could consider a cruise to be either paying for accommodation and getting everything else for free or to be paying for fine dining in the evening and getting everything else for free. Getting both for the price of one (along with entertainment etc) is a great deal!

I can recommend a cruise as a good holiday which is rather cheap if you do it right. That is if you want to spend lots of time swimming and eating quality food.

How Cruise Companies Make Money

There are economies of scale in running a restaurant, so having the MDR packed every night makes it a much more economic operation than a typical restaurant which has quiet nights. But the expenses in providing the services (which involves a crew that is usually almost half the number of passengers) are considerable. Paying $119 per night might cover half the wages of an average crew member but not much more.

The casino is one way that the cruise companies make money. I can understand that someone taking a luxury vacation might feel inclined to play blackjack or something else that seems sophisticated. But playing poker machines on a cruise ship is rather sad – not that I’m complaining, I’m happy for other people to subsidise my holidays!

Alcohol is rather expensive on board. Some cruise companies allow each passenger to take one bottle of wine and some passengers try to smuggle liquor on board. On the forums some passengers report that they budget to spend $1000 per week on alcohol! If I wanted a holiday that involved drinking that much I’d book a hotel at the beach, mix up a thermos full of a good cocktail in my hotel room, and then take my own deck-chair to the beach.

It seems that the cruise companies specialise in extracting extra money from passengers (I don’t think that my experience with the Dawn Princess is unusual in any way). Possibly the people who pay $1000 per night or more for a cruise don’t get the nickel-and-dime treatment, but for affordable cruises I think it’s standard. You have to be in the habit of asking the price whenever something is offered and be aware of social pressure to spend money.

When I boarded the Dawn Princess there was a queue, which I joined as everyone did. It turned out that the queue was to get a lanyard for holding the key-card (which opens the cabin door and is used for payment). After giving me the lanyard they then told me that it cost $7.95 – so I gave it back. Next time I’ll take a lanyard from some computer conference and use it to hold the key-card, it’s handy to have a lanyard but I don’t want to pay $7.95.

Finally some things are free at some times but not at others, fruit juice is free at the breakfast buffet but expensive at the lunch buffet. Coffee at the MDR is expensive but it was being served for free at a cafe on deck.

How to have a Cheap Cruise

VacationsToGo.com is the best discount cruise site I’ve found so far [2]. Unfortunately they don’t support searching on price, average daily price, or on a customised number of days (I can search for 7 days but not 7 or less). For one of the cheaper vessels it seems that anything less than $120 per night is a good deal and there are occasional deals as low as $70 per night.

Princess cruises allows each passenger to bring one bottle of wine on board. If you drink that in your cabin (to avoid corkage fees) then that can save some money on drinks. RumRunnerFlasks.com sells plastic vessels for smuggling liquor on board cruise ships [3]. I wouldn’t use one myself but many travelers recommend them highly.

Chocolate and other snack foods are quite expensive on board and there are no restrictions on bringing your own, so the cheap options are to bring your own snack food or to snack from the buffet (which is usually open 24*7). Non-alcoholic drinks can be expensive but you can bring your own and use the fridge in your cabin to store it, but you have to bring cans or pressurised bottles so it doesn’t look like you are smuggling liquor on board.

Generally try not to pay for anything on board, there’s enough free stuff if you make good choices.

Princess offers free on-board credit (money for buying various stuff on-board) for any cruise that you book while on a cruise. The OBC starts at $25 per person and goes as high as $150 per person depending on how expensive the cruise is. Generally booking cruises while on-board is a bad idea as you can’t do Internet searches. But as Princess apparently doesn’t allow people outside the US to book through a travel agent and as they only require a refundable deposit that is not specific to any particular cruise there seems no down-side. In retrospect I should have given them a $200 on the off chance that I’ll book another cruise with them some time in the next four years.

Princess provide a book of discount vouchers in every cabin, mostly this is a guide to what is most profitable for them – and thus what you should avoid if you want a cheap holiday. But there are some things that could be useful such as a free thermos cup with any cup of coffee – if you buy coffee then you might as well get the free cup. Also they have some free contests that might be worth entering.

Entertainment

It’s standard practice to have theatrical shows on board, some sort of musical is standard and common options include a magic show and comedy (it really depends on which cruise you take). On the Dawn Princess the second seating for dinner started at 8PM (the time apparently varies depending on the cruise schedule) which was the same time as the first show of the evening. I get the impression that this sort of schedule is common so if you want to see two shows in one night then you need to have the early seating for dinner. The cruise that I took lasted two nights and had two shows (a singing/dancing show and a magic show), so it was possible to have the late seating for dinner and still see all the main entertainment – unless you wanted to see one show twice.

From reading the CruiseCritic.com forum [4] I get the impression that the first seating for dinner is the most popular. On some cruises it’s easy to switch from first to second seating but not always possible to switch from second to first. Therefore the best strategy seems to be to book the first seating.

Things to do Before Booking a Cruise

Read the CruiseCritic.com forum for information about almost everything.

Compare prices for a wide variety of cruises to get a feel for what the best deals are. While $100 per night is a great deal for the type of cruise that interests me and is in my region it may not be a good match for the cruises that interest you.

Read overview summaries of cruise lines that operate in your area. Some cruise lines cater for particular age groups and interests and are thus unappealing to some people – EG anyone who doesn’t have children probably won’t be interested in Disney cruises.

Read reviews of the ships, there is usually a great variation between different ships run by one line. One factor is when the ships have been upgraded with recently developed luxury features.

Determine what things need to be booked in advance. Some entertainment options on board support a limited number of people and get booked out early. For example if you want to use the VR golf simulator on the Dawn Princess you should probably check in early and make a reservation as soon as you are on board. The forums are good for determining what needs to be booked early.

Also see my post about booking a cruise and some general discussion of cruise related things [5].

• [1] http://www.vacationstogo.com/cruise_ship/Dawn_Princess.cfm
• [2] http://www.vacationstogo.com/
• [3] http://www.rumrunnerflasks.com/
• [4] http://boards.cruisecritic.com/
• [5] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/11/17/cruises/

Cocolo Overview

I recently wrote about buying a fridge for storing chocolate [1].

Jason Lewis (the co-founder of Organic Trader [2]) read that post and sent me some free samples of Cocolo chocolate [3] (Cocolo is an Organic Trader product that is made in Switzerland).

It’s interesting to note that Cocolo seem very focussed on a net presence [3], their URL is printed on the back of the packet in an equal size font to the main label on the front (although the front label is in upper case). The main web page has a prominent link to their Twitter page which appears to be updated a couple of times a month.

Cocolo makes only organic fair-trade chocolate. Every pack lists the percentage of ingredients that are Fairtrade (presumably milk and some other ingredients are sourced locally in Switzerland and Fairtrade doesn’t apply to them). Their chocolate packages have the URL www.fairtrade.com.au printed on them and their web site links to an international Fairtrade organisation. The packages also list the organic and Fairtrade certification details and state that they are GMO free. The final geek data on the package is advise to store the chocolate at a temperature between 16C and 18C (I have now set my fridge thermostat to 17C). The above picture shows the front of a pack of Dark Orange chocolate and the back of a pack of Milk chocolate.

Reviews

One thing that is different about Cocolo is that they use only unrefined evaporated organic cane sugar juice to sweeten their chocolate. This gives it a hint of molasses in the flavor. Children who like white sugar with brown coloring might not appreciate this, but I think that the use of natural cane sugar juice will be appreciated by most people who appreciate products with complex and subtle flavors.

The Milk chocolate contains a minimum of 32% cocoa solids, this compares to the EU standard of a minimum of 25% for milk chocolate and the UK standard of a minimum of 20% for “Family Milk Chocolate”. The EU standard for dark chocolate specifies a minimum of 35% cocoa solids, so it seems that Cocolo milk chocolate is almost as strong as dark chocolate. If you are used to eating dark and bittersweet chocolate then the Cocolo milk chocolate is obviously not that strong, but it is also significantly more concentrated than most milk chocolate that is on the market. The high chocolate content combined with the evaporated cane sugar extract gives a much stronger flavor than any of the milk chocolates that I have eaten in recent times.

The Dark Mint Crisp chocolate has a minimum of 61% cocoa mass. The mint crisp is in very small pieces that give a good texture to the chocolate with a faint crunch when you bite it. It has a good balance of mint and chocolate flavors.

The Dark Orange chocolate contains 58% cocoa solids and has a subtle orange flavor.

The white chocolate tastes quite different from most white chocolate. While most white chocolate is marketed to children the Cocolo white chocolate will probably appeal more to adults than children. This is one of the few white chocolates that I’ve wanted to eat since the age of about 14.

They also have many other flavors, most common types of chocolate (such as with almonds or hazelnuts) are available.

I highly recommend Cocolo products!

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2010/02/28/chocolate-fridge/
• [2] http://organictrader.com.au/
• [3] http://cocolo.com.au/

Thanks to some advice from Philipp Kern I have now got my Galaxy S running CyanogenMod 7.1.0 which is based on Android 2.3.7 [1]. CyanogenMod has lots of configuration options that seem to be lacking in the stock releases and also supports some advanced features such as OpenVPN and a command-line. I can’t properly compare CyanogenMod to the stock Android as I’ve only used versions 2.1 and 2.2 of the stock Android. Presumably some of the things that I like about CyanogenMod are in the stock Android 2.3.7 release.

The process of updating a phone is difficult and has some risk. Fortunately Samsung provided “Download mode” in the BIOS to allow recovery. If you mess up the process of updating a Galaxy S and you can get Download mode by holding down volume-down, home, and then power buttons then you can almost certainly recover (so don’t panic).

The CyanogenMod people don’t provide any documentation on upgrading from Android 2.2 (which is what Optus is still shipping AFAIK). So you will probably have some difficulty when upgrading a Galaxy S that you get in Australia (it seems that Optus is the only company shipping them in volume).

As an aside if you want to buy a Gel Case for a Galaxy S in Australia then visit an Optus store. It seems that Optus is the only phone store that hasn’t run out their Galaxy S accessories in favor of the Galaxy S2.

I have previously written about the Galaxy S and Three Networking [2]. Now that I have the Galaxy S as my primary phone on the Virgin network all my data corruption problems are solved, the problem is entirely related to Three. With CyanogenMod there is an option to be able to toggle the LED “Flash” as a torch from the drop-down menu, this makes the lack of such a LED on the Galaxy S even more of an annoyance.

I have also discovered that the Galaxy S apparently doesn’t have a status LED! This makes it the only phone that I’ve ever owned that has no clear way of informing me when the battery is charged! It’s also really useful to have a flashing LED to indicate low battery when running a full screen app, and to have a flashing LED to indicate that email has been received.

Someone should design a phone with multiple LEDs to indicate different things. I’d like to have one LED to indicate charging status and another to indicate whether there is unread email or SMS. Whatever the cost of including a LED during manufacture it would have to be almost nothing compared to the ~$500 sale price of a phone. Wikipedia says “The Samsung Galaxy S features a PowerVR graphics processor, yielding 20 million triangles per second, making it the fastest graphics processing unit in any smartphone at the time of release. Also, upon release, the Galaxy S was both the first Android phone to be certified for DivX HD, and at 9.9 mm was the thinnest smartphone available”. I don’t care about any of that, I want a phone with decent battery life, a LED “Flash”, and a status LED.

The main benefit I get from the Galaxy S over the Xperia X10 is the greater storage. The Xperia X10 has a total of 1G of storage and only 465M of that is available for application install. My Galaxy S has 16G of internal storage of which 1.8G is available for phone apps and 13G is available for pictures and other mass storage. Having 1.8G for phone apps and internal phone storage used by such apps (which includes the offline IMAP cache) is a massive benefit, enough to outweigh the lack of a staus LED and a Flash LED.

What I Really Want

I’d rather have a Samsung Galaxy Note. The Note has a LED flash, a 5.3″ screen with 1280*800 resolution which is much better for running as a SSH client and also good for web browsing. I’m not inclined to spend money on a phone now, so I’ll probably use the Galaxy S until Virgin offers me a new phone or someone just gives me a new phone (I can always hope). One of the many nice features in the Galaxy Note is a built in stylus. When using my current phones for web browsing I sometimes find it difficult to have a touch registered to the desired part of the screen, this is a real problem with the Opera web browser which requires a long press to open a URL in a new tab.

• [1] http://www.cyanogenmod.com/
• [2] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/11/21/galaxy-xperia-android-network/

Galaxy S Review

I’ve just been given an indefinite loan of a Samsung Galaxy S which is more useful than the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 that I own.

I think that the main benefit is that it runs Android 2.2 instead of Android 2.1 on the Xperia. 2.2 is what gives it USB tethering support without extra software (something I haven’t tested yet but will use a lot if it works correctly) and Wifi AP support. Both phones are about the same size, the Galaxy S has slightly more RAM (reported as 304M vs 280M – which doesn’t really matter) and a lot more main storage (1.87G vs 465M usable after the OS is loaded).

The main down-sides of the Galaxy S is that it lacks a “flash“. I’m not aware of any phone camera having a proper flash, but the limited LED flash is useful for taking pictures at times and there are a variety of programs that can turn it on for use as a torch.

Also I wonder whether the Samsung people actually test their phones in real use or whether they just build them to spec. When you read the specs it sounds nice to have a phone that’s only 9.9mm thick (apart from the bulge at the bottom), but that makes it really difficult to hold. The Xperia X10 is 13mm thick and isn’t as slick so you are much less likely to drop it. I sometimes wonder whether phone companies are designing their products to be broken so that they can sell replacements.

Three Networking Sucks

My parents use 3G broadband from Three as their only connection to the Internet, this is fast enough for viewing Youtube on occasion and generally works well for them. However whenever I try to transfer any data to their system which has integrity checks it turns out to be corrupted. About every megabyte of data transferred has a corrupt packet that has a matching checksum – presumably it’s a bug in Three’s network. Because Three are desperate for customers they have given me a free 6 month subscription to a data SIM [1]. I’ve been using that SIM with my Galaxy S and found the same data corruption problem – and I’ve reproduced it in many places around Melbourne so this isn’t just one unreliable cell tower, it’s something broken in the core of the Three network.

The obvious solution to this is to use a VPN so the corrupt packets will be dropped. So I set up a PPTP VPN only to discover that it seems impossible to make the default route be via the VPN, there has been a bug report about this since 2009 – the iPhone allows configuring whether Internet traffic should go via the VPN, it can’t be that hard [2].

There is an option to use a proxy for web access, but when I tried that on Android 2.1 it only worked for the system web browser not for things like the Android Market. But there is no option for configuring a proxy for use when the VPN is active, so it doesn’t seem likely that I could run a proxy on the VPN network and direct all traffic to it.

Due to corruption on the Three network and the inability to get a VPN working correctly it seems that I can’t use the Three SIM.

Android isn’t Really Free Software

While Android implementations generally stick to the GPL and other free software licenses that are involved they seem to be a poor example of providing freedom to users.

My Xperia X10 is running Android 2.1 because Sony-Ericsson has locked the boot loader so I can’t install a newer kernel. They don’t care enough to release a new version – this is stupid of them because it means that I am much less likely to recommend their products. If Sony-Ericsson releases a newer Android release then it will be a total OS reinstall, unlike the way I can upgrade a Debian system an application at a time.

I can’t install new packages that replace system packages, so the Email and SMS programs that I’ve installed sit along side the ones that came with the system. Periodically the unwanted SMS and Email programs show up.

I can’t make my Android phones perform basic networking tasks that I’ve done on Linux systems since the early 90’s. Hiding the complexity from the newbies is OK, but they need to make the full capabilities of the system available to experts.

It seems to me that Android effectively gives the majority of users no more freedom than the iPhone does. Even for the small minority of us who are technically capable of rooting phones and installing CyanogenMod etc it’s often limited by technical measures and the amount of time required.

Update: Philipp Kern pointed out that his Galaxy S has a front facing camera. I have checked my phone and discovered that it has one too. When I published this post I criticised the Galaxy S for not having a front facing camera for video-calls based on a misunderstanding of the Wikipedia page (which says that SOME models lack it) and not testing it. Thanks for the correction Philipp and sorry for publishing wrong data.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/06/04/leaving-three/
• [2] http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4205