Dwight Garner writes of the characters in Tao Lin’s new book Taipei, “Reading about their exploits is like watching lissome cows graze in a field”. But otherwise he seemed to actually like the book and expects further great things from this author.
His review: NY Times Books.
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080424055927442
The crux is that SSH even when connecting w/ -vvv or -vT modes won’t tell you precisely why it’s not connecting for obvious security purposes. This is presuming you’ve double checked all other obvious issues and your public/private key pairs are setup correctly.
In the linked post above Kent Martin writes, the answer is to bind debug to an alternate port on the server side:
/usr/sbin/sshd -d -p 2222
then similarly from the client machine:
ssh -v -p 2222 user@machine_I_am_trying_to_ssh_to
On the server machine terminal you’ll see a more verbose debug log and hopefully it will tell you exactly why your client machine is being rejected.
Finally got around to soldering some 1/4″ TRS jacks onto a pair of XLR cables I had. In case you’re curious what the wiring for XLR (differential) mono cables (not for microphones), the 3 pin XLR breaks down as such:
Pin 1: Ground (⏚) Sleeve, Pin 2: Postive (+) Tip, Pin 3: Negative (-) Ring.
Good information on soldering audio cables of all types here:
http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/remotes-cables-accessories-tweaks/13000-how-solder-illustrated-diy-guide-making-your-own-cables-2.html
The EMU-0404 USB into the AudioSource 5.1a’s sounds a modicum cleaner, definitely driving now at lower levels. Probably not worth the effort but what the hell, I was curious and I had the TRS plugs sitting idle along with some old XLR cables.
XLR (male) to TRS 1/4″ (male) diagram pinout
XLR M-F Pin Out
1/4″ TRS Diagram
…as soon as I sign up for Inst@gram, the week after it’s released on Android, Facebook buys them for $1B.
Was having a devil of a time getting 10.04 LTS Unbuntu (Lucid Lynx) to install via USB flash key. It would boot off the key fine, then during installation step 3, choose your keyboard layout, it would hang, no matter what I selected. A couple of people suggested it was the maker of the USB key, so not having a spare key, I tried the “Alternate” text based installer, which also failed while recognizing disk partitions at 43%. Someone else had this exact problem, which leads me back to this post, and the USB key as culprit:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1556681&page=2
Apparently partition size of the USB key can effect installation, so I’m going to try a 1GB partition and see if that works. Otherwise, most users were able to either install 9.10 Netbook version or 11.10 with no problems, so I’m going to try that next, because as it stands I tried three different USB boot key creators (Pendrivelinux, Unetbootin, and LinuxLive USB) and three different versions of 10.04 LTS, no joy. So hopefully this 1GB partition gets the installation flowing. For the record, the machine is an old Dell Inspiron XPS 15″ 1st generation, Pentium 4 3.4GHz.
Update 30.Jan.2012: I got this working, as of a couple of days ago. I ended up booting from an old 8.04 or 8.10 CD-ROM I’d burned and the did an upgrade over the internet tubes to 10.04 LTS. It works, the Broadcom wireless adapter required a non-open driver but that auto updated as well, which is nice. And, I will say this, that 1920×1600 15″ LCD is massive on this thing. Ubuntu seems to really handle display settings much better than XP did, and Windows 7 would never be able to run on this thing, especially considering the poor performance I’ve seen from Windows 7 on Netbooks, I’d say 10.04 LTS or 9.10 Netbook is a safe bet for older machines.
I’ve never been displeased with the price performance of the Creative/E-MU 0404 USB 2.0 [DAC] MIDI audio interface, but seeing as how I mostly use it for music listening I’m not super reliant on the latest and greatest drivers, it’s worked fine with OS X.
From past experience, I know configuring just about any USB audio interface in Windows XP was a headache, and I am told Vista/Win7 fixes some of the audio path issues. But I don’t run Windows 7. I have 10.6.8 on my systems now, the Mini is the main playback hub. The E-MU drivers for it were old, think Rosetta, possibly PowerPC binaries, as in old, but they worked. And despite being capable, Creative/E-MU has never enabled 24 bit 192KHz playback with the 0404 USB under OS X. I’m sure it’s possible. This is all to say, when I updated to the latest drivers for 32/64 bit Snow Leopard / Lion compatibility I just wanted to make sure it didn’t break anything, if it sounds better, great, so long as it doesn’t break functionality.
Here’s a link to the October 14, 2011 64 bit Lion driver download page: http://support.creative.com/downloads/download.aspx?nDownloadId=12115
I can’t hear any difference but it didn’t seem to break anything. Still no 192KHz up-sampling option.
On a side note, C says it’s not worth it yet to sync all the songs to the cloud, too much lag, in which case I need to upgrade to a 1TB 9.5mm 2.5″ SATA drive in the Mini, as I’m running low on space. I like having most albums at 16bit/44.1KHz lossless audio, and I occasionally buy CD’s and rip it to such. For streaming over the cloud 320kbps .mp3/aac seems to be standard. At $5/mo Spotify doesn’t sound very good, comparatively, $10/mo apparently bumps the streaming quality. At home FLAC/Apple Lossless sounds better, for sure.
I don’t think I have such incredibly abnormal feet, 10.5 EE US (“high volume”, “high arch”, “wide”), but as it turns out sizing mountaineering boots is a giant pain. Period. Perhaps mostly because I don’t live in Colorado or Chamonix, but also because it’s difficult to find all the boots you want to try on in any one place, and except for out West, good custom boot fitters are hard to find.
I spent most of last year regretting not buying a pair of used Scarpa Invernos on sale from Whittaker Mountaineering. I figured size 10 UK boots with an Intuition “Thermofit” style liner would probably have fit fine. I’ll never know. I tried on pair of the Scarpa Omegas and they were far too narrow in the mid-foot. A local EMS had a single pair of 11 US Invernos with the non-thermo (“low altitude” cordura / open cell foam) liner, again they seemed a bit narrow but potentially with molded Intuition liners they would’ve been fine.
I borrowed a pair of older Koflach Degres (10 UK) all winter for ice climbing here in the Mid-Atlantic and for a Lee Vining trip, but the old liners were quite packed-in and they never seemed wide enough, plenty of toe room though. I “vacationed” to a mountaineering shop in Keene Valley, NY and tried on both the La Sportiva Baruntse and Spantiks. I think the size 45.5 EU Spantik was pretty close, but it’s hard to say, apparently thermo-molding the Spantik liner is a bit tricky, whereas the Baruntse’s Palau liner is apparently much easier to mold. Dane Burns on his Cold Thistle blog has many more in-depth reviews (of boots, tools, apparel, climbing lore, etc) and has many more thoughts and years experience than I could hope to ever have on the subject.
The Baruntes were too narrow. I wore the Spantiks for a couple of days around the house before ultimately finding a pair of barely used Koflach Arctis Expes (11 EU) for 1/5th of the price, that felt incredibly good; wide, wooly, and wonderful on my feet. In Alaska above 14k I paired them with the Forty Below K2 Neoprene Overboots and my feet were warm. The boots were definitely too big though, probably almost a whole size and a half. But again, my toes were warm, so it’s probably better to err on that side of things. It was a heavy combo, and didn’t leave a lot of feel for technical climbing.
Which brings me to the present.
What is a good 4 season’ish “all mountain” single boot here? I’ve been checking out the Scarpa Mont Blanc GTX. It does indeed have a wide “high volume” fit. And it doesn’t come in UK (sometimes labeled EU on double plastic boots) sizing, which is nice, as I’ve already established a pretty solid baseline of size 45.5 in most truly European sized mountaineering boots. The tall lacing and narrow heel seems to lock down nicely, which is good. So far I’ve been using the green Superfeet and they don’t feel like they’re reducing volume too much.
I’ve tried on the Scarpa Jorasses Pro GTX (45 EU), which ostensibly is a slightly stiffer lighter “more technical” synthetic boot similar to the Mont Blanc GTX (lineage is the ice climbing Scarpa Freney XT GTX). All I can say is that in size 45 the Jorasses Pro GTX were quite a bit shorter (not narrower) and I could not really tell the difference in stiffness without climbing in them outside, but it is immediately apparent that the Mont Blanc GTX is a warmer boot meant for snowier climes. And I trust in the durability of leather over synthetics in the long term usage of a mountain boot. I realize this isn’t a pure ice climbing Winter boot here, but that wasn’t really what I was in the market for.
So that’s where I’m at right now. Waiting for the ice & snow to come in.
No one is alone here with MagSafe issues. Apple recently announced a MagSafe replacement program (US only) for which I’m quite sure I’m a good candidate (I see some insulating wire); the strain relief on the head of the magnetic adapter simply isn’t up to snuff, which forced a redesign a couple of years ago (along with the requisite California Class Action fire hazard lawsuit). All of this is to say, if you can see wires sticking out of your MagSafe, the strain relief “issue” qualifies under warranty for replacement.
But what about the ‘ole “MagSafe won’t charge battery” issue? Well, as it turns out this could be related to the pins in the magnetic tip, or it could be the “System Management Controller” on your laptop. This is the exact wording of the Apple Support Document for resetting the SMC on a laptop with removable battery:
- Shut down the computer.
- Disconnect the MagSafe power adapter from the computer, if it’s connected.
- Remove the battery.
- Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
- Release the power button.
- Reconnect the battery and MagSafe power adapter.
- Press the power button to turn on the computer.
Ah, but if only it were so simple. I recently watched this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRYIMDQxunI
What Kris tells us, with one critical difference from the official Apple support document, is that after pulling the battery he reconnects the MagSafe, waits five seconds, and then re-installs the battery. I did this tonight with my 1st generation MacBook Pro and it solved the charging issue immediately, which makes me think that this is indeed the correct order. YMMV. Godspeed.
One good reason I’ve found to stick with Android is this:
In case you don’t feel like reading about it, it’s a free (for personal use) end-to-end encrypted VOIP client. There may be other methods out there, including personal Asterix PBXs, but this seems to work with the least fuss. Google Voice may or may not work with it I believe, as native SMS’ing must be working by default on the phone. To test I used my native phone number instead of my GV number, it worked fine over data.
Also for Android, AGP offers OpenPGP compatibility and the K-9 Mail client app then integrates the GPG functionality.
Bingo. Bango.
UPDATE: As of late November 2011 it appears RedPhone has been pulled from the Android Market and the app itself can no longer connect to Whisper Systems’ servers. The application was in Beta, so this could mean there is a full release coming out or perhaps something required that it be pulled from the Android Market. So for right now, I’m unaware of any other end-to-end encrypted VOIP applications for Android.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPiA8-qekRo
C liked this. So did I. Pretty killer. Here’s the full mix streaming/download, with some glitches during the playback presumably to limit reuse (full link: Electronic Battle Weapons Xfm Music: Response: Thom Yorke MoneyBack Mix 2011.09.15).
More Modeselektor,’Art & Cash’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wM0oz5rlHE
On a totally different note, if you use Google Reader it’s never a bad idea to backup your RSS feed to an OPML / XML file, you know, just in case they pull that plug.
As a follow-up, after a couple of months using the LG Optimus V (on Virgin Mobile) I’d say for the cost, it works as well as can be expected. When you stray too far from the highway 3G and 1X data often disappear completely. Sometimes the 3G radio doesn’t refresh (which apparently is a bug in Android 2.2, but this phone certainly exhibits it) so in a spotty 3G location it takes a few minutes to find the data signal. Again, for $25/month this seems acceptable. A higher end smartphone, or an iPhone, cost closer to $90/month. Depends what you need as an end user, but Z & I find it totally acceptable, especially considering the cost savings and Google integration.
The downside of the $25/month plan is only 300 “anytime” cellular minutes (and no free night/weekend minutes). To get around this I’ve registered my Sipgate One phone number with the Nimbuzz app for Android. When I have a quality wifi connection I disable all cellular radios (Airplane Mode). To make an outgoing call I use the Google Voice Callback app, so I must first answer the call in Nimbuzz (Sipgate has free incoming calls like a landline) and then it connects me to whomever I’m calling. I tried using SipDroid and CSIPsimple, but neither worked consistently. For whatever reason, Sipgate and Nimbuzz work better together.
As far as apps that make the small screen on this phone more usable, I really like the Miren Web Browser over the stock Android Browser. For one, you can easily go in and out of full screen mode. Secondly, it’s easy to turn off images over 3G to improve browsing speeds. For a while I searched high and low for a decent RSS reader app to sync to Google Reader, and finally I realized a better browser would really make the difference, and I was right. Miren using Google Reader’s mobile page is quite usable and is much quicker than any of the other stand alone “readers” I tried. Thirdly, the stock Android Browser didn’t support HTML5 audio and video tags correctly, Miren seems to handle these better and is much quicker than Opera Mobile.
While certainly not Siri on the iPhone 4S, Android’s ‘Speech to Text’ functionality works quite well. I’ve taken to using it for sending short SMS’s and for dictating short emails, especially while walking. The touch keyboard isn’t great, especially on a screen this size. Swype is better for some things but I find the predictive standard 2.2 keyboard to be a little bit faster. Again, I think the dictation engine is clearly the “way forward” but right now on this phone, it can be a little sluggish at times.
I think if you’re willing to accept these limitations this phone is a terrific value. I’m pretty sure the Optimus V can be bought outright for ~$100. Virgin’s $25/month plan increased recently to $35/month and for $45/month you get 1200 minutes (with “unlimited SMS & data”). So again, it’s still significantly less expensive (per annum) than any of the other carriers, but you must be willing to accept potentially sub-optimal cellular coverage and a smallish screen on a slightly underpowered phone. But it works. And I have been quite happy to have unlimited calling on Wifi. So there you go.
Note of full disclosure: I bought my LG Optimus V at retail price using my own funds. I have no stake in LG, Sprint Nextel or Virgin Mobile. This is simply a blog post about a phone.
C was here for a few days. Our last project was getting the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ installed. Installation went pretty well. We likely used too much thermal paste, but nonetheless, it reduced my CPU temperatures by about 20 degrees Celsius, so I’d say it works. It can often be found on sale for $25 from Newegg, so really if you have a large enough computer that’s running hot, this seems like a no brainer. I’m not entirely certain the CPU temperature readings were always correct, but I figure it’s better to err on the side of over cooling.
The one trifling problem I’ve had in my “Almost Vanilla” *OS*X*86 install was not achieving a full power off after shutting down. I found many threads related to power & sleep issues, but I finally found the one thread here referencing the specific settings for the BIOS on my Gigabyte G41M-ES2L motherboard. The answer was this:
Power Management Setup:
ACPI Suspend Type: [S3(STR)]
Soft-Off by PWR-BTTN: [Instant-Off]
PME Event Wake Up: [Disabled]
Power On by Ring: [Disabled]
Resume by Alarm: [Disabled]
HPET Support: [Enabled]
HPET Mode: [32-bit Mode]
Power On By Mouse: [Disabled]
Power On By Keyboard: [Disabled]
AC Back Function: [Soft-Off]
Although it turns out HPET Mode: [64-Bit Mode] works just as well. The crux was the three options below Soft-Off by PWR-BTTN, those three all must be disabled. Now when it turns off the case isn’t consuming 90 watts. Which is still a lot for any computer, but I try to only use it as a part time server for media backup. It consumes 5 watts in its “OFF” state but at least now it shuts down fully.
The prices on high quality heat sink fans have come down. I recently converted the old Intel e5200 htpc/server into an “OSX”86 server. It turns out that you can now fill the 4 SATA drive slots with about 12TB of storage now for like $100 (I’m joking, but storage is cheap). Right now it only has a single “green” Seagate 1TB drive, but at least I don’t feel constrained any longer. In theory I could’ve continued running 10.04 Ubuntu and Netatalk, but I figured it was worth trying to get a native AFP server going. Lifehacker had a really easy to follow post and it’s pretty quick now as a 1GigE backup/media server (my original build used “compatible” hardware). Faster than the 4 year old Time Capsule when transferring large files, that’s for sure.
But yeah, Intel’s stock coolers, at least in the LGA 775 chipset models appear to be terrible. The 212+ cooler requires a backplate, so I’ll have to pull the motherboard, but once this thing is installed I should be able to run Handbrake 24 hours a day and hopefully the CPU won’t go above 50C. Currently this thing idles at 57C, as the stock heat sink just doesn’t seem to mount flush.
Cooler Master - 212 Plus Cooler
Bottom heat-pipes, direct contact
I couldn’t agree more. So much promise with WebOS, and yet the race appears to have come down to two runners and they are Google and Apple; HP & MS are not in the race any longer.
The latest updates from the Cupertino camp have included the elimination of the plastic encased MacBook from the notebook lineup and the disappearance of any sort of optical drive from the Mac Mini. And perhaps saddest of all no black anodized MacBook Air. All the newer Macs are now reasonably up to date with mobile Core i3, i5 or i7 processors and “Thunderbolt” ports.
But say again, no DVD drive? What about a Blue-ray Disc drive? Surely iTunes or Amazon isn’t about to start streaming 1080p movies anytime soon. In fact when I recently rented a movie on iTunes to my last generation Mac Mini (late 2009) it forced me to download the entire 1.4GB SD video. Craziness. At least Netflix has HD streaming working well. I think perhaps the Apple TV supports streaming films from iTunes, it’s unclear, though it’s likely a licensing issue.
I mean, I understand where they are going here, people are using discs a lot less. The App Store now allows direct downloading & upgrading of the latest OS (10,7). But I thought the Mac Mini was good for servers & HTPCs? Doesn’t that sometimes require a disc? And why has Apple never been excited about Blu-ray (beyond the awkward hyphenation)? The biggest gripe I have about the Netflix pricing hike is that there simply aren’t nearly as many good films on demand as there are currently on DVD.
I cannot imagine studios are going to kill off the DVD anytime soon. And certainly Blu-ray Disc is the last generation of physical media out there. Anyhow I’m glad I’ve got my not very upgrade friendly 2009 Mini.
Also, today Lifehacker via Low-tech Magazine reposted a short article about the merits of adding layers of insulation to your body instead of overly heating or adding insulation to your dwelling. I can confirm that putting on layers does in fact keep you warmer. I can also confirm that 55 degrees F indoors is not particularly enjoyable and I’d rather have a better insulated dwelling instead of wearing my belay jacket indoors at all hours of the day.
Also, while I appreciate the sentiment of “put on a sweater” or “put on more layers” as the differential between the outdoor and the indoor temperature increases, air leaks become even more noticeable. When it was 8 degrees F outside one night the draft inside our 100 year old home, whether running the gas heat or not, was incredible. Now that the weather has warmed up the indoor temperature is much more stable and the draft is significantly less noticeable.
There are lots of pages online about “sensible“, “latent” and “convective” heat and cooling loads. I found a nice page from Dr. Chan in Hong Kong, he has pages on both cooling and heating calculations.
Indoor Belay Jacket
I felt a strong need to repost this. Thanks goes to Rob Vandermark of Seven Cycles for doing the transcription, the piano composition was done by Michael Marantz, this particular edit was done by Damewse on Youtube, and of course Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot.
We were hunters and foragers.
The frontier was everywhere.
We were bounded only by the earth, and the ocean, and the sky.
The open road still softly calls.
Our little terraqueous globe is the madhouse
of those hundred, thousand, millions of worlds.
We who cannot even put our own planetary home in order,
riven with rivalries and hatreds,
are we to venture out into space?
By the time we’re ready to settle even the nearest other planetary systems
we will have changed.
The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us;
necessity will have changed us.
We’re an adaptable species.
It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri
and the other nearby stars.
It will be a species very like us,
but with more of our strengths, and fewer of our weaknesses:
more confident, far seeing, capable, and prudent.
For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities,
we humans are capable of greatness.
What new wonders undreamt of in our time
will we have wrought in another generation?
And another?
How far will our nomadic species have wandered
by the end of the next century?
And the next millennium?
Our remote descendants safely arrayed on many worlds
through the solar system and beyond,
will be unified,
by their common heritage,
by their regard for their home planet,
and by the knowledge, that whatever other life may be,
the only humans in all the universe come from earth.
They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies.
They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was.
How perilous our infancy.
How humble our beginnings.
How many rivers we had to cross
before we found our way.
- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
So, to give a little back story, the refrigerator in our house is an older GE (freezer above) full sized kitchen unit. It’s seen better days and the compressor is a bit noisy. I keep it set at “1″, however, during the heat of the summer I turned it up to “3″ or “4″, but most of the year “1″ keeps the fridge at 40 F & the freezer at 20 F.
We had a cold snap recently and I unplugged the noisy thing, thinking I could make ice (outdoors at night) to keep the fridge part cold and keep our freezer stuffs outside in a ice chest (but still contained from critters). Sadly (or fortunately) the days aren’t cold enough here in the mid-Atlantic. Partly, I think the fridge isn’t insulated enough to be a good ice box. Also, large blocks of ice are needed (to melt more slowly) and with nighttime lows in the 20′s or high teens, large blocks of water simply wouldn’t freeze through quickly enough. And then, to make matters worse, daytime temperatures caused the inside of the (outdoor) freezer chest to increase above freezing, thawing our frozen goods.
The moral of all this I think is 1) modern refrigerators aren’t actually that well insulated, 2) it needs to be pretty far below freezing at night to make large solid blocks of ice, and 3) it’s entirely possible to make this work if you live in a very cold northern climate but going outside to get frozen goods is annoying.
And then I found this amazing project by Paul – P^2 (via another project of his, a DIY Telecine for 8mm film footage) a hack to his unused freezer chest, which converts his freezer into a refrigerator using a “micro-controller powered temperature controller”, reducing its power consumption by a third (click the image to goto his Flickr write-up of the freezer/fridge controller):
Paul's Freezer Temp. Micro-Controller
And in a similar act of mad genius, Ben Krasnow created an entirely separate refrigeration and tap system for his home-brewed kegs of beer in his house, the entire write-up is here:
Ben's kegs in a separate fridge
I returned the T-Mobile Comet and exchanged it for a cheap candy bar style Nokia prepaid phone. Android 2.2, on the Comet, simply required too much work. Skype was nearly unusable. The Gmail native app from Google had to be updated, and even then the sync functionality with Gmail didn’t work correctly. Let me re-state that: Gmail didn’t work correctly on a Google phone. Thankfully contacts synced fine, but I had to update nearly every app that came with the phone.
So, maybe it’s something to do with Huwaei and the T-Mobile build of Froyo 2.2 or perhaps things simply aren’t as polished across the board. Compared to my experiences with iOS 3.x and 4.x I’d say it’s like night and day. Yes, it’d be nice to have a bulk task manager (other than double clicking ‘home’) in iOS 4.2, but it doesn’t really make a difference, you can run 20 apps “backgrounded”. In Android you absolutely must use a task killer or your phone runs out of memory and turns to molasses. Multitasking in iOS simply works and is more intuitive. Skype works nearly as well as a native phone dialer, Netflix streams terrifically, and the bundled iOS apps are all winners. And with the 4.2 update I can stream audio to the Airport Express directly from the iPod Touch and wirelessly print. At no point using Android did I think to myself, ‘Man this is so much easier/quicker/better than the iPod Touch’, in fact I lamented that for $180, despite being the cheapest Android phone on the market, it just wasn’t very good.
It’s unfortunate, in my limited usage of WebOS I’d say that Palm had a superior product that was poorly marketed, that suffered early quality control issues, and with HP’s purchase, has essentially died a premature death. Compared to Android 2.2 – WebOS 1.x feels significantly more polished – and really should be second to Apple in smart phone market share. When you go to the Verizon store and look at the myriad Android phones (several now bundled with Bing! as default search engine) it becomes clear that the carriers and Google simply don’t care about the user’s experience. While I’m sure the newest Nexus S is a better example of what Android can do, I don’t trust telecommunication companies to make good UID & IxD decisions.
Lately I’ve been using Gmail to take my incoming phone calls over Google Voice (via 3jam). At some point I grew tired of paying a large carrier what I deemed an excessive monthly fee for not very many cellular minutes and I ported my cell line to 3jam. I already had a Google Voice number so I forward my old cell number (via 3jam) to GV. I tend to miss calls, however, when I either forget to leave Skype open or I close my instance of Gmail. Thankfully, there is a solution: Fluid (& Prism) run with the idea of site specific browsers (SSBs) giving web applications a native feel.
The basic concept is that you can create an icon for web applications to run “stand alone”. In my case Gmail (& Google Voice, or Reader) can be launched as “applications” and easily backgrounded. Fluid is easy to use and extensible with scripts, enabling a plethora of possibilities. When using Gmail as a phone it requires both Flash (& Google Talk plugins) in your Internet Plug-Ins directory to be able to make/receive phone calls.
This is not the most ideal solution for VoIP calling. Siemens sells the Gigaset which would allow me to take VoIP/SIP based calls at home over a “normal” handset with out having to have a computer with Gmail open. ATA (analog telephone adapters) allow the use “plain old telephones” to be plugged into your home network, generally the same idea as the Gigaset, though the Gigaset integrates a 1.9GHz wireless transmission system and VoIP router into one package.
The final part of this puzzle to save on monthly usage fees is a prepaid cell phone (depending on your usage). T-Mobile recently released a pleasantly inexpensive Android 2.2 powered handset made by Huawei called the Comet. For about $150 this not terrible Android phone gives PDA functionality and can use Skype/SIP calling over WiFi. The rest of the time minutes are forwarded and used at the standard T-Mobile $0.10/min rate prepaid rate.
Gmail icons for Fluid by EvenWu on Flickr
Bicycles