Einstein for Everyone

Have you ever been curious about Einstein's Theories of Relativity?

Written by John D. Norton as a web book, you can find here some simplifications of his concepts of advanced physics, for the common people.

Even still it can be mind blowing :p

Cellphone Network problems

Today I got scared while going to work in seeing that i had no network on the phone.
My girlfriend's phone had no problems (she has the same network) and after reboot (engineer solution) it remained the same.

So when testing for solutions is that I got me worried. I tried Automatic network search, and after 2 minutes of processing, the phone began a restart loop...

So I tried to change SIM card with my girlfriend. In her phone, all fine.
In mine all the same...

But I found that without a SIM card, my phone had no problems...

I went home to back up my contacts and because i left there my USB cable. Upon arrival, I noticed that my phone already had network and everything worked fine. :0

Upon returning to work, I lost network again. So that was the problem, since my girlfriend's phone always worked?

Well, here's the secret:
I only needed to change the Network Mode of 'GSM / WCDMA Automatic' to 'GSM only'.

I assume that my carrier has a problem with the 3G in the area of my job from now on, as at home it works well on 3G and GSM works fine at my job.

I hope to help someone with this ...

RIP to the laptop

Recently my laptop died of accute graphicus boardatis burnum.

After 2 and a half years (just after the end of the warranty - thank you Mr. Murphy!) my ASUS A7Sv stopped working.
For some time I could observe that it could get extremely hot, and the fan was always at full speed.
My suspicions fell on the graphics board, so I dig up a little.

Seems like lots of people have been complaining of burned NVIDIA 8600m (my graphics board). Apparently it is a chipset error extending to some models (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1028703/nvidia-g84-g86-bad).

Now I have a very big brick (17" Wide to show how big), just because of a single component. How i miss a good desktop board swapping...

As a temporary solution I'm using another laptop that is missing a monitor (I still don't know how my brother managed to break it!), connected by VGA to my old (old, old, old) 14" CRT with very dark images (it can make eyes hurt...).

Now what to do for a new machine?
A new top-of-the-line laptop that might suffer the same fate (as another reference to Mr. Murphy)?
A notebook that can barely run any of the software I use?
A desktop that I can't carry around (yes, I have a lot spare time away from home where i could use a computer)?

When to come a laptop with swappable graphics board?


P.S.:
After toying with my ASUS (I tried to evaluate the possibility of swapping graphics board), I lost the use of the monitor (it's filled with stripes of several colors, but it's better than the black screen I had before), but i can use an external monitor.
I don't know much about electronics, but it seemed like the board had two cores for graphics. Maybe that other core is responsible for the output to the external monitor...

Didn't try for much time, but maybe I could end up having two 'half' laptops.
First it's better to buy a cooling pad.

Hello World

E assim me apresento ao mundo.

Sou um engenheiro informático (colheita de '84) saído do ISEP (2002 a 2007), que vive no Porto, e que tem como hobbies fazer aplicações para Android (para o meu HTC Desire), aprender sobre electrónica com o Arduino (e alguns toques no Picaxe), vegetar em frente a um bom Anime/Filme/Série e claro, conviver com os amigos.

Pretendo usar este blog para mostrar os meus interesses e o que vou aprendendo para que possa ser usado por quem precise, e para que quem partilhe os meus entusiasmos também me possa ajudar a evoluir.