Category Archives: Wordpress

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Commercial Android Apps

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What is it with commercial apps for Android that just don’t work?!

First off you’ve got Plex whose developers just say “its a Cyanogenmod7 problem, get them to fix it”, and now Nessus for Android logs in but doesn’t actually do anything – no scans or reports are displayed!

I also found that the version of iGo 8.4.2 for Android that I was using has what I can only assume is a broken skin, as the co-ordinate input method is just not there. Downloaded the unofficial MotoGIS 2.4 skin and it works a treat!

I also upgraded the blog to WordPress version 3.1.3

Mobile WordPress

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I am posting this from my Android phone!

Well I was, until I found that the screenshots are all upside down thanks to ZTE building the screen that way!

The Android Gallery app only edits the EXIF data on JPEG’s to rotate them, it doesn’t actually rotate the image. So I uninstalled ShootMe and stuck to using ddms from the SDK via the PC, at least that seems to rotate the images properly.

More screenshots: Homescreen and Apps.

Adblock Plus

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The last few days I’ve been using my Kindle 3G for internet access and was shocked at just how many adverts you have on websites these days.

As I use Adblock+ with the Element Hiding Helper for Firefox 4, along with the EasyList and Fanboy filters, I hardly ever see adverts, in fact I thought graphical ads were dead by now lol!

It’s Dad’s 65th birthday today as well as the royal wedding.

I’ve upgraded the blog to WordPress 3.1.2

I also found out that my Android phone is actually a Gen1 OLED device – as it wouldn’t boot with ClockworkMod Recovery 3.0.2.7, so to move to Cyanogenmod 7.0.2 I’d have to upgrade the radio to Gen2 using either the TPT upgrader, or more likely I’d just go with this build of 7.0.2 Nightly 57 with the radio upgrade and GoogleApps built-in. I’ll probably wait for 7.0.3 now, although I doubt that will be Android 2.3.4 yet, although the Nfc part of the Nexus-S 2.3.4 source has been pulled in (and breaks the build!)

The OLED screen has a better viewing angle, better colours and better battery life, so it was quite a find. It seems most UK Orange San Francisco’s are Gen1 as they come with Android 2.1, but most are TFT these days.

Update: I’ve also recompiled my JtR RPM’s as John the Ripper 1.7.7 has been released, now rather annoyingly with separate and incompatible jumbo-1, omp-des-4 and omp-des-7 patches! Announcement.

Weekend Saga

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It’s been a funny weekend.

I woke up Saturday to find that my server had been terminated, and after some support tickets with my web host (sent to my backup email address!) it seems they had a “problem” and had accidentally deleted everyone’s virtual servers! So they issues me with two new empty servers, which I then had to restore from backups, thankfully I rsync’ed the previous evening. They’d also allocated new IP addresses so I had to update some zone files and get reverse-DNS sorted, luckily I had set my DNS TTL to 15sec, so they instantly propagated. 8 hours later I had both servers back up and working as if nothing had happened, and that day’s emails started coming in.

Next I realised I’d left my mobile SIM card in England, so phoned my carrier and found they would courier me a replacement, so then the search began for someone who would be available to take a signed-for delivery at Sunday lunchtime and mail it to me. Well that never happened for one reason or another (mainly the inability to get anyone to answer their phones on the weekend!) but luckily PP mentioned that I had a free SIM with my recently-purchased Orange San Francisco, so I managed to convince Orange to activate it for me and send me a new PIN, with the promise of topping it up with £50 worth of credit, they also gave me my free £10 topup from the Argos deal. So once again I have a UK mobile phone number with enough credit for a good few calls at 38p/minute including roaming charges!

Mum’s got addicted to Wii Sports tennis, so we were up until 2am playing mixed doubles. I’m now a pro with a score of over 1200 and have played computer players with 1900 scores.

After having a play with Mum’s Kindle3, I’ve decided to get one for myself, not least to take advantage of free 3G internet usage. I tried to read Stephen Fry’s autobiography, The Fry Chronicles using FBReader and Kobo Desktop on my netbook the other night, and it was just too bright, and like on my Android phone it had too much glare in the sun during the day, so not really successful. Of course if I go on holiday anywhere now I’m going to need a rucksack to carry my netbook, Kindle and smartphone alone!

I’ve upgraded the blog to WordPress 3.1.1

Android Apps

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Amazon now have their own Android Appstore to compete with Google’s Android Market. They give away a free (normally paid-for) app every day. I missed SwiftKey the other day, now its just fecking Angry Birds or some crap.

For some reason its amazon.com (USA) only, but it seems to work via email/wifi for amazon.co.uk (UK) accounts, just not via SMS/3g I guess. A lot of the free content seems to be duplicates of what’s already on Android Market though.

There was some worries about the DRM scheme that Amazon uses, it seemed that their copy-protection relied on the user being online when using the app, but its since been clarified that it only needs to be online for download/first use and occasionally it may sync (call home) like Android Market does.

I also made my first Android Market purchase of LauncherPro Plus, well its not quite on the Market yet, so I still had to use PayPal, but you get the point. It was only £1.92 or something thanks to the worthless $$$ ;-)

Its an alternative launcher app – basically changes the functionality of the icons at the bottom of the screen. Instead of being just web browser and phone, you now also have contacts and messaging; but more importantly each icon now has a swipe gesture – so when you swipe the app icon, it pops up a list of your most used apps; the browser icon brings up your favourites list; the messaging icon brings up your unread SMS and so on.

Also the icons themselves are used as notifications, e.g. the phone icon will show the number of missed calls, the messaging icon shows the number of unread SMS etc.

Useful for me with fat fingers is that pressing the home button when already on the home screen will open your notifications list so you don’t have to struggle to drag the tiny notification bar down from the top left of the screen.

There’s also some LP+ specific widgets like “People” which is like a shortcut to your favourite contacts with photo’s and buttons for map location, email, contact info, SMS, phone and even Google Talk if you’re in the USA.

I found a few useful plugins for Calibre:

I must try Kindle Collections plugin with Mum’s Kindle3 as its a right royal PITA to create/allocate collections on the Kindle itself. The goodreads.com plugins seem to be able to fetch metadata/covers for some books that Amazon can’t.

I’ve also added a couple of new categories to the blog – Ebooks and Android, I’m considering removing the Xbox category and just making it a tag as most of the posts are actually about XBMC (now Plex).

Update: it seems even with an amazon.com account, it still doesn’t allow you to download apps outside the USA.