Tag Archives: irishblogs

Living with CyanogenMod 7 for Samsung Galaxy S

Posted on by
5

My phone, a Samsung Galaxy S, has been running CyanogenMod 7 for the past week or so. The first week was a bit rocky. The phone ignored vibration settings at first and would vibrate when ringing, and when I hung up. In one call I couldn’t hear the caller at all! It also ignored my ringtone setting and used the first mp3 on the phone (not so bad, it was a Fun Lovin’ Criminals track!)

Anyway, I practically had to upgrade. I was running an earlier version of the Voodoo rom which unfortunately didn’t behave. Wifi kept turning itself off and I used my allowance of 3G bandwidth a couple of times. I did try to update Voodoo but screwed up and had to do a factory reset. Thankfully I had a backup done with Titanium Backup! After restoring my apps I decided to take the plunge to CM7. Why? Gingerbread!

CyanogenMod is an aftermarket firmware for a number of cell phones based on the open-source Android operating system. It offers features not found in the official Android based firmwares of vendors of these cell phones.

Initially I installed the 7.1.0 RC1 but there were problems as I mentioned above. There are nightly builds however and they’re supposed to be fairly easy to install. I screwed that up too but eventually got everything working! I’m now running nightly #67 and things have been fairly smooth.

CyanogenMod 7 is a very good mod. My phone is flying along and while it does offer advantages over the stock kernel (updated more often plus other features) you do miss out on the excellent Samsung Camera app, and battery life is slightly worse. The FM radio doesn’t work either but I haven’t bothered to investigate that as I rarely use it.

Flashing a new rom isn’t for the unadventurous. If the idea of rebooting into recovery mode, possibly changing radio drivers and knowing you might run into a world of pain scares you, don’t do it! Gingerbread, the latest Android firmware for phones, is making its way to the SGS and if you haven’t got it yet run KIES and you may find it waiting for you. The advantage of using CM7 is that they can move to the very latest Gingerbread (2.3.5 at the time of writing, my phone company only offers 2.3.3). Nightly build #70 introduced that version of the OS. You might want to keep an eye on this thread on the XDA forums too. There are problems with the nightlies but of course most of those who have no problem won’t be posting there so you’re bound to see a concentration of negativity. #67 works fine for me. YMMV!

How fast is my Samsung Galaxy S now? I ran Quadrant Standard three times, with progressively better scores.

  1. 1612
  2. 1977
  3. 2015
For comparison, the original Samsung Galaxy S had a score of 750. I would be very interested to hear how the stock Samsung Galaxy S with the Samsung Gingerbread firmware compares.

It’s still not quite as fast as the Galaxy S with the venerable “One Click Lag Fix” I benchmarked a while back. That used EXT2 however, a filesystem lacking journaling features important to maintaining data in the event of a system crash or problem.

Would I recommend CyanogenMod 7? If you’re a techie and can live without the Samsung Camera App then yes. Go for it. If you’re an Open Source fan who hates proprietary software you should definitely go for it. You even have to install Google Apps separately because they are proprietary software!

If you just use your phone to take photos, check Twitter and make phone calls, then don’t go near CyanogenMod 7 (or any firmware TBH!) just yet.

Tabbed SSH Sessions in Putty

Posted on by
9

If you’re a Windows user who uses Putty to ssh to your server you may be annoyed by the fact that you must have a separate window for each ssh session. I know I am, as tabbing through windows to find the right browser window is made just a little bit harder by flipping through those black screens.

Anyway, I went searching. There are ways to fix this. Unfortunately only one worked for me.

  1. Putty Connection Manager – is a nice interface that imported my Putty sessions automatically. Unfortunately double clicking on them launched the session but, apart from a new tab showing, the terminal window itself remained grey.
  2. Superputty – is very similar to Putty Connection Manager but didn’t work either. It doesn’t import Putty sessions automatically, it had to be done manually through a menu. Even though I didn’t have any sessions it warned that imported sessions might overwrite Superputty sessions. When I double clicked on a session it loaded Putty in a new window.
  3. WinTabber is a general purpose tabbing app that makes it easy to tab any sort of windows. However, during the install it offers to install Putty so they know their market! You can use CTRL and the number keys to switch quickly between tabs, just like I’m used to on other operating systems. This worked fine, but the free version has a limit of 4 tabs. Don’t worry, the registered version only costs $5 so it’s not going to break the bank.

In Mac OS X and Linux the terminals I use support tabs so I’ve always thought it odd there wasn’t an ssh client bundled with Windows. How do you handle ssh sessions in Windows?

Cookies for Comments 0.5.4

Posted on by
4

Cookies for Comments is a WordPress plugin that can be used alongside Akismet to significantly reduce or even kill completely comment spam.

Version 0.5.4 adds a rejections page in case human visitors trip over the cookie check. You can modify the message shown to visitors and it’s obviously only useful if you don’t use the cookie check in your .htaccess file.

It happens sometimes, usually when the visitor has cookies turned off, but very occasionally for some other reason. (That I don’t know of yet)

This plugin isn’t a replacement for Akismet as it is easily bypassed. Thankfully 99% of spam bots don’t bother checking so this plugin works quite well!

My Favourite Android Apps

Posted on by
4

I’ve used a Samsung Galaxy S since August last year and in that time I’ve downloaded and played with lots of apps and games. Here are a few of my favourites.

  1. Tweetdeck
  2. Dolphin Browser HD
  3. Kindle and FBReader
  4. Amazon Appstore and Android Market
  5. Reddit is Fun
  6. GO Contacts/Dialer/Launcher EX/SMS Pro
  7. CardioTrainer
  8. WordPress
  9. aCar
  10. Juice Defender
And some games
  1. Galaxy Domination (not on the market any more, now here!)
  2. Cut the Rope
  3. Guns ‘n’ Glory

Besides those, there are so many apps on my phone now that it’s ridiculous. I recently started using the Google+ app, and the Amazon Appstore gives away a free paid app every day so that’s my first port of call shortly after 8am every morning. There’s also getjar.com who have a free ad-supported version of Cut the Rope, as well as many other apps and games.

I used to play a lot more games, I’d dive into Galaxy Domination any chance I’d get but now I’d rather read a book in the Kindle app or FBReader, or check out the latest Reddit posts on “Reddit is Fun”.

If you have a phone with a fairly big screen (the Galaxy S has a 4 inch screen) then reading on them is a rare pleasure. No more fiddling with bookmarks or holding the spine of a thick volume open. Go on, head over to Amazon now and pick up a cheap ebook. You might just like it!

You might wonder how much has this all cost me? I’ve bought quite a few books on the Kindle store (I still think it’s wonderful that I can visit Amazon from my phone and buy a book), but I’ve only bought 2 apps. Those would be aCar (purchased through the author’s website) and just last night I bought Juice Defender Plus. As I mentioned in a previous post on battery saving tips that app shuts off the various radios in your phone when not in use, switching them on momentarily for syncing on a regular basis. The free version turns off the 3G connection when the screen is locked, but not wifi. The paid for version  does that and it’s well worth it. Battery life sky rockets after using this app!

Police Brutality in Barcelona

Posted on by
5

If you’ve been watching the news you probably missed the bit about the protests in Spain recently. I certainly haven’t heard anything about them on Irish radio stations and among those I follow on Twitter only Allan Cavanagh seems to be talking about it. Spanish TV stations aren’t talking about it either apparently:

Meanwhile, Barcelona TV has a cooking show; TV1 is covering an actress with depression; TV3 (Catalan) discussing bass guitars. #acampadabcn

He linked to a very distressing video showing Police brutality against unarmed protesters in Barcelona. Unfortunately (or thankfully depending on how sensitive you are to violence) I can’t embed it here.

I remember years ago a Spanish friend warning me that the Police there weren’t to be messed with, and she was only referring to traffic police.

THIS IS BARCELONA. THIS IS IN SPAIN WHERE YOU WENT ON HOLIDAY. WHAT THE HELL?

Howto: Build a contact form with a Polldaddy survey

Posted on by
7

I just added a contact form to the about page here using a Polldaddy survey. While it’s not as straight forward as installing a plugin to do the job, I think it’s worth doing because it touches on all aspects of Polldaddy survey creation. After you’ve created this contact form on your own blog you’ll know how to create a Polldaddy survey, a custom style sheet and how to change the language in the form too. It’s very flexible.

Here’s how I did it.

  1. Login to Polldaddy and on the dashboard create a new survey for your contact form.
  2. Give your form a descriptive name and select the custom stylesheet. You’ll have to create a new one. I use the WordPress 2010 theme so I based my stylesheet on the Plain White theme. Changes are minor, mainly to accommodate width and font size. Grab the css file here and copy it into your style.
  3. Now on to the questions. I created a simple Name, Email and Comment form.
  4. You need to tell the survey where to send responses. After saving, go to Reports->Data and scroll down to the Email Notifications where you can fill in your details. You can also subscribe to an rss feed or send responses to a HTTP URL.

  5. To embed the form in your website use the embed popup and choose “Website Inline”. The iframe code should be copied into the new page that will hold your contact form.

  6. You’ll have a form that looks like this.

  7. You’re not finished yet though. Submit the form and you’ll see the message, “Survey Completed”. That’s not exactly appropriate for a contact form is it? Go to the languages page and create a new Survey Pack. You can change just about every bit of text displayed in the form here. After you’ve saved the language pack go back to the edit survey page and select the correct language pack:
  8. The one final job to do is to adjust the iframe size. I made each field of the form mandatory but that raises errors when you submit an empty form. Those errors make the form longer than the default and the iframe is too small to hold it. I bumped the height to 900 pixels and no more ugly scrollbars! There’s more empty whitespace below the form but my contact form is at the end of the page so I don’t mind.

You could also use the Javascript embed method, but that loads the survey form in a css popup window. I prefer the iframe method.

As you can see, Polldaddy surveys are incredibly flexible and offer a lot of customization options. I work on Polldaddy code every day so of course I’ll say this but I’d have no hesitation in recommending the service to anyone needing polls, surveys, quizzes or ratings. Create a free account and give it a spin!

Moriarty Tribunal in Text

Posted on by
6

The Moriarty Tribunal cost the Irish tax payer more than 100 million Euro and all we got was a 2,400 page protected PDF.

If you view the report’s PDF files you won’t be able to quote from it by selecting and copying text. You’ll have to manually type out anything you want to extract because the files are protected.

Value for money eh? Anyway, I ran the pdf files through the tool “pdftotext” and came up with m1.txt and m2.txt.
Use the original PDF files to read the report but for your convenience these text files will be much easier to quote from.

Please don’t link directly to them, mirror them on your own site if you write about them!

Here’s a Wordle tag cloud of the findings created by Jamie Lawrence.

Amazon Appstore opens in North America

Posted on by
Reply

The Amazon Appstore for Android opened today and apparently Apple are already suing them for confusing consumers with a name similar to their App Store.

I wouldn’t really know because after downloading the Appstore app (beautifully simple procedure: click a link in an email/text to a .apk file) and logging into Amazon it refused to let me download the exclusive Angry Birds Rio game.

The Amazon Appstore for Android is not yet available in your region

Good thing I’m sick of Angry Birds, but it’d be nice if it worked over here too!