Nokia N900, DD-WRT, Viewsonic VOT132, SSh, and RealVNC. = Mobile Bliss

In lieu of my N900 report, I wanted to first geek out about what I’ve recently accomplished. Since I was a kid I’ve wanted a computer in my pocket. Once I could use anywhere. With the birth of the OQO 01, this dream had been answered. It was a beautiful device, perfectly sculpted. While others complained of it’s processor lag, while forgetting about the marvel they held in their hands, I thoroughly enjoyed the machine. When the 02 came out I got one. I was eagerly looking forward to the 2+, which had 2 gigs of ram, and the new atom based 1.6ghz processor. Unfortunately some quality control problems in their 02 line, followed by some bad marketing moved killed the company. It was truly a sad day for me. After a while I began to hear about a new open source linux based platform called Maemo (5 to be exact), which was to be released on the new Nokia N900. Long story short, the phone is amazing. Nokia has scored a home run, several times with this phone. It’s open architecture allows you to tweak the phone how you want. I added new buttons to the UI, changed the boot video, editing my applications menu, location, and icons. I’ve got it running dosbox, a snes, gameboy, and nes emulators. I use it to work on code when I have some downtime. But the most amazing thing I do with the N900 is connect to a VNC server through a ssh tunnel.

This enables me to have the full power a computer anywhere in the world, provided I have a cell or wifi connection. The setup I currently have, consists of the VNC server computer on a Linksys router running the latest build of dd-wrt. I use wol magic packets to wake the computer remotely whenever I need it. I do this by ssh’ing into the router shell, with a tcp forward that allows me to also access the routers GUI. From either the shell or GUI I can trigger the magic packet be sent. Then I can create a ssh tunnel with the VNC computer. Ever the shell is connected, I then am able to connect to the VNC server as a localhost, which is the only

connection the server is configured to accept. From there I only need to log into the windows machine. Once in, I have full access and control of the computer. As you can see I have mail and visual studio 05 up and running. In this way I’m able to tweak, work on, and compile my current projects. If the lag is too much I can work on the file locally using a code editor on the n900, and then upload them to the VNC server for inclusion into the project. I even use the VNC connection to change skills and chat in Eve while at work. When I’m finished I put the computer to sleep, and close all the connections. Seriously amazing stuff to me. All made possible by the N900. Although I just got an email from RealVNC stating they’ve officially released their vnc viewer for the iphone and itouch. For those curious I’m using RealVNC personnel edition. I have nothing but the best of things to say about the software and their staff. I would totally recommend you buy their software. My only future hope is that they develop their VNC viewer for the N900 Maemo 5 platform. I would buy that as soon as it was released.