So I just beat Indiana Jones for the 360!  1000 Gamerscore.

Fuck yea!

So I was using the HTC official Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM on my Tilt…I went from a cooked Dutty’s ROM thinking it would be less buggy.

Well, it was.  The other problem was it was just too fucking slow.  I got used to the speed of cooked ROMs, so I went back.  Unable to find a newer Dutty cooked ROM that wasn’t recalled for being buggy (at least he’s upfront about it) I went with one of Laurentius26’s Kaiser/Diamond hybrid ROMs.  This thing is fast and stable so far…

I had to disable the large start menu though…irritating as hell, but you can turn it off from the Settings/TouchFLO control panel.  Now to figure out how to make my menu text smaller.  I really think Laurentius26 over at xda-devs must have bad eyesight or something.  Gyah.

On another note, this is starting to look like a good day: everything I’m working on is in subversion, so I don’t need to bend over for sourcesafe at all.  w00t.

So the crashing has been happening again; about once a day.  I think I’ve isolated the problem to Pocket Informant 8.  I’ve removed the software and it works fine now.

I’m using Agenda One to do my stuff now, and my phone seems happier.

Update teh 2nd: I turned the auto update feature for Agenda One to check every day, and lo and behold, my phone had crashed in the middle of the night (but also rebooted on its own, so it’s not so bad) so it looks like it’s not limited to PI8…any app that tries to open the Data connection when the phone is asleep and locked with a simple PIN type password.  So I’m back to looking into this issue.

So I was bored and started working on a Pocket PC theme to replace my boring black HTC default one for my Tilt. Here’s what I put together using ThemeGenCE. Enjoy!

Click the image for full size preview:

Download: Asuka Theme for Windows Mobile

So lately, my phone has been crashing alot.  It was new since I got the Dutty 6.1 cooked ROM from xda-developers.

Short story, don’t use  the 1.64.08.21 radio ROM with Dutty’s 6.1 if you have North America service, it’s a UK radio ROM that probably doesn’t work right here for whatever reason.  Maybe it’s the network, maybe it’s the Tilt.  Who knows.

The latest (most recent) radio ROM I know works is 1.64.06.04.  It’s a World Wide English (WWE) ROM.  Use that one.

Summary:

Tilt + ATT Wireless +  Dutty’s Official 6.1 + 1.64.08.21 = BAD.

Tilt + ATT Wireless +  Dutty’s Official 6.1 + 1.64.06.04 = GOOD.

So I just downloaded and installed this on my laptop. For once, it’s fast enough and featured enough to replace all the ghostscript-based PDF viewers I have on there.

In the past, it has been a hard sucking piece of crap with Motif statically compiled into it (at least judging by the look and feel of the app) but now it appears almost exactly like the Windows and Mac OSX versions of Acrobat Reader. It’s even linked with GTK+ now, so it looks workable for once.

Also, it looks like the PocketPC version has been updated. This doesn’t work any better than the previous versions in the sense that it pixel doubles, but with the right MUI hack, the program is incredibly useful.

At any rate, just thought everyone should know.

Found another glitch with the BC-337. Because the port is always there (not dynamically created like bluetoothe ports are) when the device is plugged in, the WM5 GPS subsystem will actually work!

The WM5 GPS crap is lame though, so I’d recommend disabling it entirely. I wasted 20 mins trying to figure out why nothing was working and it turned out that the WM5 GPS subsys was polling the GPS hardware’s port, so there was no NMEA data for my apps to read :(.

Anyway, after disabling WM5 GPS support via the settings, the BC-337 works wonderfully again.

So I recently bought one of these. Long story short, I love the thing. It has it’s quirks, but they’re easy to work around, especially given the company claims my device isn’t supported.

Here’s my test device and some software I tested:

Axim x51v ROM A06 (Windows Mobile 5/WM5)
Delorme Street Atlas 2005 HandHeld (SA2005HH)
iGuidance
PocketGPSCe
GPS Config Utility that came with the device, whatever that was called

So, GlobalSat claims that while they can make the device work in WM5 on a Dell Axim (as opposed to an iPaq, which they claim works flawlessly and support, */me looks angrily at Dell*), it has problems. I’ll throw them some points for being honest about it, on their website, prominently written so potential buyers can take this into consideration. They’re not kidding. It *does* have problems. Fortunately, they’re easy to get around.

The GPS itself: works like a dream. Time-to-fix times in the specs are overstatements. I usually have a 3-d fix from a warm start in less than 5 seconds when I’m fricken indoors. My old Delorme unit can’t compete with this. The unit even comes with a PCMCIA adapter and an MMCX antenna…gratis. So if you can’t get reception where you are (I haven’t tried it in the middle of downtown yet with all the buildings and RFI) you can run the antenna somewhere better, like the roof of your vehicle. The fact that its free is even better.  The Documentation…well, if you’re reading it you’re either new to computers, or don’t really understand GPS. In either case, it’s probably written for your level. Finding what the hell the “VTG output” checkbox on the ppc app did was a bit of a challenge (I understand VTG string types, I wanted to know why anyone would want to turn them off), spanning a grep of 2 different manuals, but I found it. Didn’t answer my question though. I guess I should say “leave it on unless it doesn’t work, see if turning it off helps in that case” for the VTG issue.
SA2005HH: doesn’t work for shit. This probably isn’t GlobalSat’s or even Microsoft’s fault. SA2005HH polls COM ports incorrectly. Fuck em anyway, as I’m NEVER buying anything from Delorme EVER again!

iGuidance: works great once ya get it running. There’s a gotcha though…if the last app using the port doesn’t close it, it won’t reopen the port. The fix is easy: just suspend the device with iGuidance running and it picks right up! By suspend I mean use the power button on the front, not a reset or anything more spectacular. It takes about 3 secs to reacquaint itself with the CF card, but then it’s back to normal operation.

PocketGPSCe: same story as iGuidance. Suspend, resume, connect will resolve all problems with it.

GlobalSat’s utility: blows bigtime. Only useful for turning WAAS/EGNOS and VTG output on and off. I don’t care though — I bought the thing for the GPS hardware, not the software. There are many tools that can play with WAAS and VTG settings on a GPS. The WM5 version of the software is a bit better, but nothing to write home about.

I was going to test it with TomTom when I got it originally, but I’ve since abandoned TomTom in favor of iGuidance. TomTom’s only advantage over iGuidance is it’s “finger-interface” which at this point I can take or leave. Here’s a tip: put a paperclip over your index finger as if it were a cluster of papers. Instant stylus, no sharp things on your screen, no finger grease.

Bottom line: 9/10. They need to fix their software that they ship with it. Getting in touch with the WM5 team at Microsoft would help too. Also, docs could be a bit more in-depth for those of us technically inclined to read them.

this is the email i just received back from delorme tech support regarding the inability of street atlas 2005 handheld edition to use the windows mobile 5 bluetooth serial ports:

Dear Tom,

Win Mobile 5.0 update for SA2005; I don’t know if they play to or not. We haven’t heard word of an update. You may want to check on our website, but I don’t believe they plan to update the older versions. Sorry.

Thank you

Best Regards, David

DeLorme Technical Support

When replying, please include original text and an unchanged subject line, or our response could be significantly delayed.

Technical Support: (207)-846-8900
Customer Service 1-800-511-2459
Direct Sales 1-800-561-5105
Email: tech@delorme.com
Many answers can be found at our on-line knowledge base at the link below. http://www.delorme.com/support

What the fuck??? So basically, if you want a pda that is actually FAST enough to run the software (i.e., any recent PDA running WM5) you have to shell out another 50 bux or so?

Sorry Delorme, but I am never buying something from you again. You should at least offer people who paid for 2005HH a upgrade to, or at least a hefty discount on 2006.