Archive for the ‘IT’ Category
Good evening!
So earlier this week I had a revelation of sorts. I had one of those “on top of my student loan, this month I’ve gotten 3 paychecks at once”-moments (somehow most of my jobs suck at giving me money at the appropriate time). So after saving a good chunk of it (I save money now!), i decided that there is no way I am spending all of this on food and beer. So I bought myself an early Christmas-present. Behold, my brand spanking new used Nintendo 3DS!
Well, it's not a picture I took but it looks just like this! Even with the super-awesome Super Mario-cover!
So. After a few days of playing Super Mario 3D-land on my new toy, I have this to say about the 3DS.
The 3D-technology is a turd. I never use it, because frankly it is no good. I don’t use it, sure there are some puzzles where it is helpful but mostly it just gives you a headache/is an annoyance. Still, having a handheld gaming device is frigging awesome. Despite it being designed for hands I suspect are smaller than my giant monkey viking-hands. It feels a bit unnatural to use because the buttons are so damn close!
Alright. So, for the review.
The game I bought was Super Mario 3D-land.
This one!
I haven’t finished it yet, but here is a short review anyways. Because I want to share my opinions about things with the internet!
It’s fun. Well, It’s Super Mario. How can that red-hatted little bastard not be entertaining? Despite Nintendo beating the same dead horse over and over again because the twitching of the rotting corpse still provides sufficient entertainment to be worth money, they are doing it brilliantly. This game takes shit back to the classics.
The first video-game I ever played was Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo. I was quite young, but that damn red-hatted plumber chasing some Burgeois chick for reasons my young mind could not understand nor analyze with Marxist theories captured my little heart. With 3DS, they are doing it 2D-style, but in 3D! What? Well, all the levels are set up just like it was back when the game was 2D. Except there is a little room to walk up and down in, not just forward or backward. And you select levels old-school running on a track-style. And Princess Peach is not in this castle. Woo!
So it is a success. Now back to reading about administrational computers and law.
Toodles
So the Ice Cream Sandwich source code was released a while ago now, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting a port for my Desire Z, or Vision, or G2, or whatchamacall it around the world. By eagerly I of course mean I’ve been constantly refreshing the relevant threads on xda-developers, looking at gibberish git commits, and hex editing keyboardfiles in order to try and help out in any way I can, but still the fickle wench eludes me! I shall now proceed to pull all my hair out of my scalp.
So, why do I so desperately crave this sammich thing? Well, today I’m starting a new tradition: lists: by Bjørn Snoen. Props to any and all who gets the reference.
Why my phone needs a sandwich: a list by Bjørn Snoen
- I’m a flash addict. It’s a real medical condition, usually contracted by visiting the xda forums, and once you start flashing, you just can’t stop. The thrill of flashing a new rom, hoping it won’t fail, and that it won’t seriously harm your device, is amazing. Possibly even more exhilarating than crack, but experts disagree. Sadly, or fortunately, few experts exist, as few flash junkies are crack heads, so it’s more like crack experts disagreeing with flash experts.
- Remember when Honeycomb came out, and android tablets started getting awesome? It’s like that, but for phones. The UI changes are fantastic, from the subtle tweak of scroll bars, to the less subtle tweak done to the graphics of on/off switches, to the radical, and much anticipated, implementation of hardware acceleration in the launcher. Yeah, it’s friggin epic. At least it looks like it on the devices that, you know, have it.
- Tron. That’s right, motherfucking Tron. This entire release looks like something from Tron: Legacy! I know the previous point was kind of about the UI, but this element deserves a point of it’s own. It’s all shades of blue, teal, and black, it has glowy neon edges where it seems appropriate, and it’s matte where it needs to be. This is one geeked out ice cream sandwich, and I love me some geekery. It’s a powerful kind of love. A little inappropriate, actually.
- Okay, don’t get mad now, I lied. There isn’t anything else in specific that I’m looking forward to, however from reading about it I’m sure there are a bunch of kick-ass elements I won’t be expecting.
So today a supposedly “working” port of ICS was posted on the forums, so naturally I downloaded it immediately. Sadly, I’d just ordered pizza, and I had to put off flashing it until it arrived so that the delivery boy could reach me… and he was delayed! Agony! But the hour finally arrived when I could flash this magic ROM, and taste this sandwich for myself! And nothing works.
Well, some things worked, but I couldn’t use the ROM, nope, not at all. The software keyboard wasn’t reachable, because the ROM suffered from the same bug as all other ICS efforts for the old Z, it thinks the hardware keyboard is always out, so the software keyboard never pops up. You’d think that was no problem, the Z has a hardware keyboard, so just use that! Except for the fact that it isn’t working! Only a precious few of the symbol keys work at all, even if they do input the wrong symbol. Sadly this is nowhere near sufficient for inputting my passwords anywhere. And trust me, I tried vnc, I even tried a hacky jnlp script, none of it worked, input is fucked up beyond repair in this ROM. If this is a working ROM, I’d hate to see the broken one.
So I restored my backup after butting my head against this ROM for about an hour. Always remember to backup your data kids! At least I’m getting one good thing out of all of this: I’m getting very motivated to learn about kernel and Android hacking, so in a while you might see some ROMs with BRBcoffee branding popping up on a device near you! Or maybe not, but you never know!
And now for something completely different
With the birth of a new tradition, I’ve decided to change an old one. The song of the blog must die… Yes, I know you’ve loved it very much, but from the ashes shall arise a new and better tradition! Introducing the album of the blog! I know, it’s totally rad. I don’t even know why I didn’t go with album of the blog to begin with, I always paid more attention to albums as entities than songs anyway, and it’s not like I write an entire blogpost while only listening to a single song, I may be productive, but I’m not a robot. Actually… no, Robo-admin will be another post, I don’t need this post turning into a flying circus! Now, without further ado, or bad html, I give you the album!
The album of the blog: A Momentary Lapse of Reason, by Pink Floyd
Insincerely yours
Admin
Hello, you beautiful bastard!
Thought you were rid of me, didntcha? Well, ha! Wrong! Also I am a wizard. All the data I had backed up was stored on my netbook, whose charger went to hades a while ago, so the outlook was, shall we say, grim. However, you know us techies, we don’t let a little thing like dead hardware stop us, so I cracked that thing open (thank you, Samsung, you certainly made it a challenge), got the harddisk out and wired it up to my macbook. Now, there’s some kind of connectivity issue to the screen on my macbook, so I haven’t been using it at all for months now, but apparently not doing shit will do wonders for that kind of thing, so now it works some of the time, if I don’t touch it at all, which makes it a bit difficult to use it.
Anyway, I got that working, patched up the sql data, wrestled with a restrictive hosting service, finally got my files extracted, did some more database patching to get all the options right, damn script provided by the host only updated half the records, so I was a bit puzzled when it was apparently unable to write anything to disk. It was trying to write to the old host, not the one we moved to last time and then disappeared without warning, no, that would make sense. It was trying to write to the host we used before that one, go figure. Oh, and it looks like all of y’alls magnificent comments have gone missing.
All in all, I’m pretty pleased with tonight’s activities. It feels so good to be back! I think it’s time to give an old tradition another go, don’t you? I’m a bit nervous, to be honest, this one had better be good. So… I think I’m gonna do two of em this time, both by the same band.
Song of the blog: It’s Not Over, Secondhand Serenade
Other song of the blog: Half Alive, SecondhandSerenade
How you like them apples?
Admin
That’s how easy it is!
Right click – queue song. And it plays after the current song. It is a remarkable feature which has been made popular by, among other things, Spotify. Even Rhythmbox, the awesome linux music player, has it. Comeon, Apple!!
That is my entire message for today, as I am swamped with exams and stuff.
Also, when i googled “queue function”, this picture came as a result:
Asian guy in weird pose wants a queue function!!
Vegard
Now with 100% more keyboard! I went and bought myself an HTC Desire Z when my Hero mysteriously disappeared last weekend, and it arrived in the mail yesterday! So naturally, it has already been rooted and has had its ROM replaced with a custom one from Team Villain <3
At the present I am heading up to campus after brainwashing recruiting more communists at St. Olav high school in Stavanger. For being such a blue school, they were quite open to our stuff! Fun!
Shiet, didn’t charge my phone last night, only 2% battery left! See ya!
Your lovely admin
Bjørn