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  • Upgrading my Samsung Note II (N7100) to Android 4.4 “KitKat”

    Posted on by micha Comment

    A friend posted to let me know that Android 4.4 “KitKat” had just been released for the N7100.

    Install:

    So I backed up all of my data on the phone (using a combination of Titanium Backup, SMS Backup+, and LifeSaver), and downloaded and flashed the firmware the new firmware using Odin.

    Lo and behold, a (very slow) reboot later, pretty much everything worked.  All my apps and settings are still there, which is nice.

    Tweaks:

    * Reinstall a custom recovery (TWRP)

    * Re-rooted

    * Deleted startup sound (/system/media/audio/ui/PowerOn.ogg)

    Issues:

    ADWLauncherEx is quite laggy; so perhaps it needs updating for the latest Android. For now I’m using the updated TouchWiz (the Samsung launcher), but it’s still limited to a ridiculous 4×4 icons per screen.  Ridiculous, at least, on the Note 2 which has a very nice large display; might make more sense on a smaller phone. Should be configurable though.

    Impressions:

    None yet, really.  Will need to use it for a few days to see whether there’s any real differences..  So far most of the advertised differences aren’t visible, such as the camera button on lock screen, nor does it feel significantly faster than before.


    Android Technology Uncategorized 📎and tagged

  • svn+ssh on the Windows command-line

    Posted on by micha Comment

    To use svn+ssh:// style svn URLs on the Windows command-line, ensure the %SVN_SSH% environment variable is properly set:

    • It must contain the fully-qualified path to the SSH client (typically plink.exe from the PuTTY suite)
    • The path must be written using forward-slashes instead of the Windows-standard backslash.

    setx SVN_SSH "C:/Program Files (x86)/PuTTY/plink.exe"

    Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10598069/svnssh-and-sourceforge


    Windows 📎and tagged

  • Windows – UK International Keyboard

    Posted on by micha Comment

    Windows has an officially supported international keyboard layout for the US with AltGr-initiated dead keys for composing characters. Unfortunately there is no equivalent for the UK; the UK international keyboard layout is completely unusable for programmers as it turns a lot of commonly-used keys into dead keys.

    But there is a decent international layout for the UK available from here:
    http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~johns/kbukint.html


    Windows 📎and tagged

  • Offline Travel Apps?!?

    Posted on by micha Comment

    Ok, time for another rant.

    On the plane over I wanted to set up our itinerary on my phone.

    On my PalmPilot I used an application called WorldMate. Awesome little thing. Had a small database of the most common airports and whatnot included as well as a few useful utilities and pieces of info such as clothes-size conversions etc.  Absolutely brilliant.

    So before I left I installed that on my Android phone, as well as TripCase which seemed to be similar.

    Well guess what. Both of these apps require internet access for just about everything. Most importantly, to create and edit a trip.  What bollocks – just when you are least likely to have internet access (ie, while travelling abroad), apps which manage your trip require it.

    While it is very nice to have these apps pre-populate input fields using online data, this  should always be optional and the user should always be able to edit things offline.

    So a huge thumbs-down from me for both WorldMate and TripCase on Android.


    Android Micha's Daily Rant Travel 📎and tagged

  • luksClose fails, device busy

    Posted on by micha Comment

    Ok, so I recently put my backup system back into my server only to find an issue with my mount/unmount scripts.

    Namely: on unmount, luksClose fails with the device showing as busy. Which is funny because nothing should have been accessing it.

    There’s plenty of posts/bugs/etc online of people having the same issue, but either no solutions are posted, or the solutions didn’t apply in my case.  Well, I finally tracked it down: noflushd.

    noflushd is a daemon which spins down idle disks.  It probably wasn’t running on my old server which is why I didn’t have any problems before.

    Long story short, shutting down noflushd finally let me close my encrypted backup disk and shut it down. Yayy.


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • EyeToy camera (for PS2) under Windows 7

    Posted on by micha Comment

    Somehow I ended up with several EyeToy cameras for the PS2, one of which I use for my Desktop PC as a webcam. Works a treat under Linux, so I decided to try and get it working under Windows 7 64-bit as well.

    There’s an archive containing drivers and a small test program here.  The driver has to be installed manually using the Device Manager (it’s not signed), but seems to work. YMMV.


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Saitek X45 Flightstick

    Posted on by micha Comment

    Years and years ago I bought a Saitek X45 Flightstick, primarily for playing “X – Beyond the Frontier”. This was all good and fine under Windows 98. Didn’t work properly under Windows XP – the throttle never worked in the game.

    Anyway, the time has come for me to setup a Windows gaming PC again, and I pulled out the joystick and dusted it off. Plugged it in and wonder of wonders, after installed “jstest-gtk” it just worked. No setup, no configuration, no calibration. Mind, this is under Linux Mint 14….

    So reboot into my brand spanking new Windows 7 install, and while the Device Manager detects it, Windows itself doesn’t. So, head over to the Saitek site and download the relevant drivers (link).  Now I don’t know who’s to blame (Windows or Saitek), but basically the driver installer just sits there on a blank page waiting for the joystick to be plugged in (even though it is). Replugging doesn’t help either.

    Finally I manually extract the files (yes, 7zip can extract files from (most) EXE archives) and use the Device Manager to manually install the driver. This works, and Windows sees the joystick.

    Even the Mad Catz (Saitek) Profile Editor now sees the joystick and all appears to be well in the world..

    Unfortunately the latest version of X-BtF (2.2) still doesn’t fix the throttle control 🙁


    Computers 📎and tagged