Jeffrey Vanneste

I just bought an Ipod Mini for my girlfriend. In the process of looking for useful tools I found a neat perl script that copies all unread feeds to your Ipod. Being that I've never ran any perl scripts on my windows PC before this is what you need to do to get the bloglines script to work.

1) The bloglines perl script. Get it here. Doesn't matter where you put this. You will need to edit it to contain your bloglines user ID, password and the drive your Ipod is mounted to.

2) Active State perl. This will allow you to run perl scripts on your Windows computer. Get it here

3) WebService-Bloglines module for perl. This needs to be extracted into your active state perl lib directory. If you installed Active State Perl into C:\perl it would create c:\perl\lib\WebService\Bloglines

4) XML-Rss module for perl. Just download the source from here and save the .pm file in your C:\perl\lib\XML folder.

That's it. You should now be able to double-click the bloglines perl script and it will sync feeds to your Ipod's notes folder.

I finally got myself a LCD monitor for work. Yes, you read that right. I bought it myself for work. Previously I was using my 19" Samsung 900NF CRT for at work which has served me well for many years. 2 years ago I bought myself a 19" Samsung 191T LCD which I was intending to bring to work but after using it at home for a few days I couldn't part with it.
NCIX (the best place to buy computer stuff in Canada) had a sale on the Benq FP931 for $550CAD. I paid $1200CAD for my Samsung LCD so I figured this was a great deal. The Benq isn't quite as nice as my Samsung LCD. The quality of the text seems crisper on the Samsung and the Benq seems to look darker in the corners when you look at the center of the screen. All in all though this was a great purchase and I finally get to look at LCD's all the time.

So I've been looking at replacing my current cell phone (an Audiovox 9100). I'm currently using Sasktel Mobility as my service provider mainly because my Dad works for Sasktel and it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
The main provider choice to choose from in Saskatoon are Sasktel Mobility, Rogers, Telus, and FIDO. Just a quick glance at the coverage they all provide and you can tell the only 2 serious choices can be either Sasktel or Rogers. Here is the Sasktel Coverage Map and the Rogers Coverage Map. Sasktel wins the coverage hands down. If your only going to use the cell in the major cities in Saskatchewan (and never leave) then the decision will be tougher. If you travel around Saskatchewan (lakes, relatives) then this decision will probably be a bit harder.

Rogers uses GSM phones while Sasktel uses CDMA phones. So what the hell does this mean to me? Well, from what I've determined most other places in the world use GSM. More places using GSM phones mean more phone options. More options and better prices. The phone I like now is the Sony Ericsson T637. It's really small, suppose to have great sound quality, built in camera (which I'll probably never use) and great little screen. This phone is GSM though so it won't work on the Sasktel network. If you look at the Sasktel support phones there really isn't all that much to choose from. I kind of like the way the Nokia 6225 looks but it's bigger and heavier than the Sony Ericsson T637.
Anyways, the next thing to look at is the different plans they offer. If I was just looking at keeping a single phone on the plan then Sasktel's unlimited evenings and weekends and 50 daytime minute plan looks pretty good but Sasktel doesn't have any unlimited evenings and weekends plans that you can add multiple phones on! Instead of going into detail here about all the plans I suggest you look at the Compare Cellular website as they have a nice tool to compare Rogers, Sasktel, FIDO and Telus all side by side.

Useful links that I found for cell phones in Saskatchewan:

• Sasktel Mobility (for finding the plans, coverage and some phones supported by Sasktel)
  
• Jump.ca (a reseller of Sasktel cell phones, you can find all the phones for Sasktel plus all the plans here)
  
• Rogers (all the plans and phones are listed here)
  
• Compare Cellular (a great place to compare the cell phone plans in Saskatchewan)
  
• Howard Forums (a great place to read everything you wanted to know about cell phones)
  
• Phone Scoop (for comparing phones to each other and user reviews)