And Then it is Winter

I received the following little prose on life, emailed to me from my wife tonight.....whom recently lost her father, and thereby me a father-in-law. A man of great stature, honesty, love, fairness and realistically we all saw as still full of life. It just all makes you stop and pause for a minute :(

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Nothing more has to be said.

I FIRST STARTED READING THIS EMAIL & WAS READING FAST UNTIL I REACHED THE THIRD SENTENCE. I STOPPED AND STARTED OVER, READING SLOWER AND THINKING ABOUT EVERY WORD. THIS EMAIL IS VERY THOUGHT PROVOKING. MAKES YOU STOP AND THINK. READ SLOWLY!

AND THEN IT IS WINTER

You know. . . time has a way of moving quickly and catching you unaware of the passing years. It seems just yesterday that I was young, just married and embarking on my new life with my mate. Yet in a way, it seems like eons ago, and I wonder where all the years went. I know that I lived them all. I have glimpses of how it was back then and of all my hopes and dreams.

But, here it is... the winter of my life and it catches me by surprise...How did I get here so fast? Where did the years go and where did my youth go? I remember well seeing older people through the years and thinking that those older people were years away from me and that winter was so far off that I could not fathom it or imagine fully what it would be like.

But, here it is...my friends are retired and getting grey...they move slower and I see an older person now. Some are in better and some worse shape than me...but, I see the great change...Not like the ones that I remember who were young and vibrant...but, like me, their age is beginning to show and we are now those older folks that we used to see and never thought we'd be. Each day now, I find that just getting a shower is a real target for the day! And taking a nap is not a treat anymore... it's mandatory! Cause if I don't of my own free will... I just fall asleep where I sit!

And so...now I enter into this new season of my life unprepared for all the aches and pains and the loss of strength and ability to go and do things that I wish I had done but never did!! But, at least I know, that though the winter has come, and I'm not sure how long it will last...this I know, that when it's over on this earth...it's over. A new adventure will begin!

Yes, I have regrets. There are things I wish I hadn't done...things I should have done, but indeed, there are many things I'm happy to have done. It's all in a lifetime.

So, if you're not in your winter yet...let me remind you, that it will be here faster than you think. So, what ever you would like to accomplish in your life, please do it quickly! Don't put things off too long!! Life goes by quickly. So, do what you can today, as you can never be sure whether this is your winter or not! You have no promise that you will see all the seasons of your life...so, live for today and say all the things that you want your loved ones to remember...and hope that they appreciate and love you for all the things that you have done for them in all the years past!!


"Life" is a gift to you. The way you live your life is your gift to those who come after. Make it a fantastic one.

LIVE IT WELL! ENJOY TODAY! DO SOMETHING FUN! BE HAPPY ! HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Remember "It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."

LIVE HAPPY IN 2013!

LASTLY, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:

TODAY IS THE OLDEST YOU'VE EVER BEEN, YET THE YOUNGEST YOU'LL EVER BE. SO - ENJOY THIS DAY WHILE IT LASTS.

~Your kids are becoming you......but your grandchildren are perfect!

~Going out is good.. Coming home is better!

~You forget names.... But it's OK because other people forgot they even knew you!!!

~You realize you're never going to be really good at anything.... especially golf.

~The things you used to care to do, you no longer care to do, but you really do care that you don't care to do them anymore.

~You sleep better on a lounge chair with the TV blaring than in bed. It's called "pre-sleep".

~You miss the days when everything worked with just an "ON" and "OFF" switch..

~You tend to use more 4 letter words ... "what?"..."when?"... ???

~Now that you can afford expensive jewelry, it's not safe to wear it anywhere.

~You notice everything they sell in stores is "sleeveless"?!!!

~What used to be freckles are now liver spots.

~Everybody whispers.

~You have 3 sizes of clothes in your closet.... 2 of which you will never wear again.

~~~But Old is good in some things: Old Songs, Old movies, and best of all, OLD FRIENDS!!

Stay well, "OLD FRIEND!"

Send this on to other "Old Friends!" and let them laugh in AGREEMENT!!!

It's Not What You Gather, But What You Scatter That Tells What Kind Of Life You Have Lived.


AND THEN IT IS WINTER

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I am not sure who sent this to her or who wrote it, but the realism, love and humour all strike a chord with us at the moment....enjoy life, it is all you have!

My quick time with the HTC One XL

I had a quick play with an HTC One XL today and came away a little confused at what HTC have done with the core navigation and contact management in Android. In my opinion I do not think they have added anything to the user interface or experience and in most instances have made it less intuitive and added steps to what is in the vanilla Android experience pretty clear and simple.....a couple of examples.....

The first is the recent apps interface. The HTC has a dedicated "Recent apps" software button, as do all recent Android devices, but it then displays the apps in a horizontal full length preview and only shows you one app in the center of the screen at any one time. This means that you have to actually scroll/swipe if you want to switch to anything other than the last app you were using and that you have no idea how far along the list you will have to go until you actually land on the app that you were after. You may as well go to the home screen and re-open the app directly. Kinda broken.

The next is the contacts interface. Upon opening the list you are not presented with a list which has the default android "quick view" (my way of describing the ability to click on any contact image for an overview of their information and ways in which you may like to interact with them), instead you just have a long list of contacts where you need to fully open up their contact card to see what you "know" about them. Not a big deal but still a small step back from the simple and intuitive access in vanilla Android.

The other part of the contacts which took me second to adjust to was the way in which you control which contacts you actually see. By clicking on the "People" label at the top, you have to wait a second for some weird reason while it loads your contact sources, and then you can open/expand each of them to select which "groups" you would like to see. The only reason I raise this is that I see this as more of a settings option than a primary interface option, so it did take me a while to find. Again, not a big deal, but a creep away from them beings "settings" and back into user land display.  This may also be considered a nice easy way to access this display control feature, but seriously now, how often to you change that "setting"?

My last gripe is, again possibly minor, but in my opinion another break in the user experience, where I continually found the "menu" (the three little dots for the context sensitive options/menu/settings access) to be at the top of the screen, whereas the default Android system applications place this at the bottom to the right of the main navigation software buttons. Just means that you have to shift your hand/finger to the top of the screen, a little harder than tapping the bottom right when operating with one hand or two for that matter.

I guess my point in all of this is that Google has spent countless hours in research, statistical analysis and user interface and experience design to come up with and be where they are now with Android core. Now it just seems to me that with all that in mind, you would need a very, very, very, very good reason to make a change to that and if you did you would want to make damn sure that is actually improved every aspect of the UI you were touching.

I say NO to all manufacturer skins. I have yet to see one that actually improves on the entire system. Sure if you want to replace the camera app with something smarter (although with 4.2.1 that will be a hard task) or a better dialer (again, getting harder and harder) or any other app for that matter, consider what you are undertaking and consider why...cause I am not sold on any of them yet and have seen and used quite a few.

The other big point is that these "skins" delay handsets from receiving recent releases from the Android project and add to the argument of fragmentation of Android. Nexus and Google Experience Devices (GED) all the way!

/end rant

Installing Cyanogen 5.0.4 onto my Nexus One

Here is my account on how I installed the latest Cyanogen ROM with the Google apps installed over the top. Anything you do to your phone as a result of following any of these instructions is completely your own responsibility, not mine!
After 2 months of owning a Nexus One  I decided it was time to try something other than the stock HTC/Google Android 2.1 that it was shipped with. I OEM unlocked and rooted my phone not long after it arrived. I just could not do without some of the conveniences I was used to like wifi tethering and speed!
A few things to note here before I get started on the detail. I did all of these things from a Linux installation and I had already OEM unlocked my phone and gained root access before. At the time of upgrade I was running Amon_RA recovery image and the MoDaCo version of the first OTA update.
To complete all of this, OEM unlock, install the Amon_RA recovery and subsequently install a custom ROM you will need to first grab the Android SDK which includes the "adb" command and a few others. You will also need to grab the "fastboot" command as well.
You can find good instructions on how to OEM unlock here and then installing the Amon_RA recovery image here.
Once you have performed both these operations the flashing of Cyanogen's ROM is a breeze.
I pretty much followed the instructions on the Cyanogen wiki page for install. Before you begin you will need to download the Cyanogen ROM and the Google AddOn ROM and copy them to the root directory (top level) of your Nexus One SD card. Once downloaded, the easiest way to get them there is via the Nexus USB connecting cable and drag'n'drop them there.
Disclaimer: Completing this install process will wipe your phone. This means you will lose all installed applications and settings, so I would suggest you find a good backup utility and back up anything that matters to you.
You will not lose anything from the SD card, so all your photos, videos, music and anything you have stored on there will be there when you are finished. I use "My Backup Pro" (the paid version) to back up all SMS messages, phone calls, home screen shortcuts and system settings. You can go without a backup and just install everything from scratch again, the choice is yours.

Flashing the Cyanogen ROM

The rest of the process is all done from your phone. So here goes.....

1. Boot into Fastboot mode on your phone.
   1. Power off.
   2. Hold down the trackball and press the power button at the same time. Do not let go of the trackball until you see the bootloader screen
2. Using the Vol/Up/Down button navigate down to the "Bootloader" option and press the Power Button on your phone to select.
3. You will see the Amon recovery bootloader now.
4. Navigate down to the "Backup/Restore" menu and take a nandroid backup. I cannot stress this strongly enough. Just do it - it could save your bacon!
5. Next step is to "Wipe" the phone. This is a must do step...weird things will happen if you do not do this. This is where all apps and settings get erased! This is the one and only warning!
6. Now select the "Flash zip from sdcard" menu option.
   1. Navigate to the Cyanogen ROM which you copied there previously and select it by pressing the trackball.  Confirm with a second trackball click.
7. Once this is complete navigate back to the "Flash zip from sdcard".
   1. This time select the Google Add on ROM with the trackball. Confirm with a second trackball click.
8. When this is finished, select the "Reboot system now" option.

All done! You will be presented with the original sign in steps to your Nexus One (you wiped it remember). Complete the process and be Wowed by the speed and extras features!
One cool option to enable is under the "Settings -> Sound and Display -> Display settings then find and select the "180 degree orientation". Spin your phone the full 360 and watch all the apps rotate with you!
Let me know what you think and if I have missed anything too :-)

Random thought on the Google Chrome OS

I just had a random thought on Google's Chrome OS announcement, in particular the paragraph on the simple architecture which they are planning on using:
"The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel"

Now if that is the case, where the hell is the Linux Chrome browser launch! I mean they are planning on releasing a full blown Linux based OS running the Chrome browser and we have yet to see an easy to install version of the browser for Linux based distros?

If I am wrong and there is a way to get Chrome working on a Linux distro (preferreably a 64bit version, as this is the way of the future right?) then please let me know where I can get my hands on it.

UPDATE:
Might have to take some of that back... I have just found and installed Chromium for Linux via this Fedora repo - http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/
Also thanks to @jdub for the link to the Ubuntu PPA launchpad site for the Ubuntu nightly builds - https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa
So now I am running Chromium on Linux under Fedora at the moment and will be installing it later tonight/tomorrow under Jaunty too :-)

Fast playback in Kino on a Pulseaudio system

I have only just found out that the default Fedora 11 install of Kino (when I say "default", it comes from the RPM Fusion repo) has a big problem with audo and hence the playback speed of DV files.

Everything is fine until you hit the platy button. There is no sound and the video plays back at around 10x. I found that the problem is, if Kino has an issue with the audio output device and cannot connect properly then it will try and auto determine the audio sample rate and up the speed of playback to match.

The solution is simple (although not obvious until you find it), you just run Kino through the "padsp" command. This emulates the old /dev/dsp sound device used in ALSA sound systems for the application which it invokes. So running Kino from the command line like this:

padsp kino &

works a treat. Under preferences you can leave the audio device enabled and listed as /dev/dsp and the problem is solved.

As usual with Linux there are a miriade of ways to automated this for launching in the future. You could add this as an alias to your ~/.bashrc file or create a script which launches the command and place it in your ~/bin/ directory. You can come up with your own ways, but I thought the simple way was to just add an alias to my ~/.bashrc file.

alias kino=`padsp kino`

You will have to log out and back in again for this to take effect before you run it.

I hope this helps anyone else out there who is banging their head trying to solve this problem.

Mobile email and which way do you go?

I am looking at the alternatives to running an enterprise BlackBerry server for about 15 staff. A relatively small group when I think about it and wonder how others deal with "enterprise" mobile email solutions. It is important that the mobile email solution is reliable and easy to use, but I would like to move forward and *open* the communications platform.
By open I mean that the solution needs to be able to lend itself to mulitple client scenarios. Staff need the same access on the desktop in the office, mobile device when in transit/meetings and just generally on the Internet with access to a web browser (mothers, brothers, sisters houses) when needed and available. Using an open standards and open source solution would be a real benefit and bonus as well!
So to this end it would be great if you could provide a quick pick answer to this question via this poll

Australian Optus HTC Dream update to Cupcake

This is my account of how I got the official US version as released via OTA updates to T-Moble HTC Dream handsets installed on my Optus HTC Dream. Most of the credit goes to the XDA Developer site and I will reference those pages below. ( The XDA developer site is currently down for me??, so I will update those when I can get access again)

I performed all of this process from a Linux system. If you do not have a Linux machine to do this from then I have seen many people do the same thing from Windows and Mac machines, but my instructions will be farily Linux specific. You can download and use almost any of the modern Linux distros in live preview mode to perform the same steps and use the same commands that I have here.

The whole process takes about 20 mins if you just run straight through ;-)

Disclaimer : I take no responsibility for any damage you may inflict on your device or anything else in close proximity while performing the update.

There are a few files you will need on hand before you get started. I have made the ones I used available here, using the file names I used on the process. There are links to the originals as well if you feel safer getting them from there.

• US HTC Dream RC29 ROM image - also from here - unzip/extract this file and copy as is to the SD card
  
• US HTC Dream CRB43 Cupcake 1.5 ROM - also from here - this file will be renamed to update.zip in the copy process
  
• Your goldcard image file you will need to get from here when shown below.

OK then, in brief here are the steps I performed to get Cupcake installed

• Back up all the files on the SD card - cause you may want to keep some of your music and photos etc. for later restore, I know I did!
• Format the SD as a FAT32 filesystem - this will erase everything on it!
• Find the CID number from the SD card
• Reverse and zero  this CID 
• Visit the goldcard website and submite the altered CID - you will receive an email with the image file attached
• Write the image file to the boot sector of the SD card
• Copy the RC29 image to the root of the SD card
• Power off the phone
• Power on pressing the Camera and Power buttons together
• Press home to continue with the update
• Once installed and rebooted, copy the US Cupcake image to the root of the SD card
• Power off the phone
• Power on pressing the Home and Power buttons together
• Slide open the keyboard and press the ALT + L to view the logging process
• Press the ALT + S to start the update.
• Two reboots later you will be presented with your new Cupcake'ed HTC Dream
• Enjoy!

Now to the detail....
1. Connection and backup
Plug the phone into your PC. Mount the device and just copy all the files from the SD into a directory on your PC. The first ROM update will erase all your installed applications from the phone (you have been warned - this is the first warning) and the next step involves formatting (erasing) all content from the SD card - hence this backup.

2. Formatting the SD card

This is the second warning - THIS STEP WILL ERASE ALL CONTENT ON YOUR SD CARD!!!!

On my system the SD card was mounted at the /dev/sdb1 mount point. Your mount point may differ. You can use the "mount" command to find out the correct mount point for this step.

mount | grep -i vfat
/dev/sdb1 on /media/C1B4-7B87 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=devkit,uid=603,gid=603,shortname=lower,dmask=0077,utf8=1,flush)

This will show you all mounted filesystems of type "vfat". You may have more than one on your system, but it should be listed as mount "on /media/Cxxx-xxxx" or something similar.
You will need to unmount this drive, but not disconnect the device. To ensure that when you unmount the device but leave it accessible by the operating system it is best done from the command line

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

You should now still be able to access the device to be able to change the format of the partition and format the device.

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
p  (this prints the existing partition table)
t   (this selects the change partition id command)
b  (this sets the only and therefore selected partition to type VFAT32)
w  (this writes out the changes to the partition table and exits the program)

This will change the system id of the only partition on the SD card. Now you will need to format this partition as a FAT32 filesystem

sudo mkfs.vfat -F /dev/sdb1

Now as a test, unplug the phone USB cable and re-attach. You should be presented with a freshly formatted external drive. There may already be some files on the drive, but they will be as a result of installed applications which automatically create these as needed.

3. Finding and submitting the CID number
You will need a terminal emulator to get this information. The basic, free and easy to use terminal emulator I used was "Terminal Emulator" from "helloandroid.com". You may use any that you wish, they all function essentially the same and prove fine for the following use. You are after a 32 character string, which needs to be reversed and have the final reversed versions first 2 characters replaced with zeros. Here is an example:

03534453553031458331aca6f70091a6 -> when reversed becomes....
a69100f7a6ac31834531305553445303 -> take each 2digits as a pair and copy them all over in reverse
009100f7a6ac31834531305553445303 -> just alter the first 2 digits to zero

To obtain your own CID from the SD card in your G1 you will need to start up the Terminal app and 1st find the directory containing the file. This is slightly different for each of us. So execute the following commands to find and export yours.

cd /sys/class/mmc_host/
ls -> this will show a directory listing and there will be a directory labelled mmc1:xxxx
cd mmc1:xxxx -> as listed in the above command output
cat cid > /sdcard/mycid.txt -> outputs the CID to the root of your SD card.

Now you will need to submit the reversed and zeroed content of the this file (as demonstrated above) to the GoldImage creation website. Save the attached file which is sent to you from this submission.

4. Writing the images to the SD card
Copy the first image to the root of the SD card. I used the US RC29 image for this step. My guess is that you can also use the EU RC7 image, but as I was aiming towards having the US CRB43 as the final I went with the US here. You can download the file I used from my web site here, or the original where I downloaded it from here.
Once you have this file extract the contents to the root of the SD card. Leaving the name unchanged. The name I had was "DREAIMG.nbh".
Now comes the more difficult part. You will again need to unmount the SD connected drive, but leave the device accessible and write out the goldimage file which you have saved to your PC and called "goldimage.cid" (in my instance). So in line with the above instructions, open a terminal on your PC and enter the following commands:

umount /dev/sdb1 -> remember that your mount point may be listed differently
dd -if=~/download/goldcardimage.cd -of=/dev/sdb -> writes the file attached to the goldimage email to the boot sector of your G1

Now you can disconnect the G1 from the PC and are ready to perform the first ROM flash and changes!

5. Flashing and update - phase 1

FINAL WARNING - This will erase all applications (which you can re-install from the Android Market place) and all other phone settings.

Now you can power off the phone. To start the phone hold down together the Camera button and Power button to boot the phone. After a few seconds you should be presented with a screen saying something like "Press home key to update phone" (not sure on the wording, but.....)

You will need to wait while the phone updates and and reboots. You will then be looking at an early release of Android.

To log into your flashed device you will need to add an APN to the phone. For Optus I used the following (only changed settings are listed):

APN : yesInternet
Username : *
Password : *
MCC : 505
MNC : 02
APN type : default

6. Installing Cupcake
You will need to get the latest Cupcake build from the official site here or I have the one used located here from my site.

Once your phone is back up and running. Connect the USB cable and mount the SD card to your PC again. This time you need to copy over the latest version of the Cupcake ROM to the root of the SD card. Really importantly you need to ensure that the file name is correct. It needs to be listed as "update.zip". Here is the command I executed to ensure that I got this right.

cp ~/Download/android/signed-kila-ota-148830.de6a94ca.zip /media/C1B4-7B87/update.zip

Once that is complete, unmount the device from your PC and you are ready for the final install step.

Power off the phone and this time boot by holding down the Home + Power keys. You should boot to a screen with an exclamation mark in a triangle over a ROM. Open the keyboard and press ALT+L to enter the log view mode. Then (following the onscreen instructions) press the ALT+S to run the update.

When this completes, there will be 2 reboots to flash the firmware for radio and system and you will be up and running with Cupcake, as released OTA by T-Mobile in the US.

I am really looking into flashing my phone with a JF release and will apparently need to "root" the device to do this, so stay tuned for a possible further update.

Let me know if you have success or otherwise and of course if there are any bleeding errors in this post.