The short story:

• Got android phone
• Paid for some applications
• Installed some
• Upgraded OS (via vendor-supported upgrade process)
• FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU
  • Marketplace upgrades stopped working – can’t get updates on shit I paid Google to let me download.
  • Available support is limited to e-mail from Google that repeats the useless hints in their FAQ.
    Which don’t work.
• Followed the “Do a factory reset” suggestion. Now I got a default install and still no ability to install apps ( except from ADB )
• Also, after a factory reset, I only get a prompt to reinstall the paid apps on the device. What about the free ones, I had 40 of those. Do I have to go look em up again? Pathetic.
• No further support from Google.

I am so returning this junk when I get back. Android? Not again for a few years. Google managed to screw my OS experience as badly as that other software company that cannot write OS … The one known in Japan as Mai-kuro-sofuto.

In Sofia, feelings were a bit more subdued, and resulted in a small demonstration against the second Bulgarian nuclear plant project.

I agree that there needs to be a LOT more information on the project available to the public, before the project’s merits and risks can be considered seriously. I also believe (a post is coming on the issue), that Bulgaria cannot effectively manage a risky project like Belene if there is no significant shift in public and government approach towards the execution of such a project.

But I am kind of disappointed of the low level of discourse — both the proponents and the opposition have picked sides, and instead of having an argument-based dialog aiming to resolve the issues, scream at each other. Still, maybe there is hope — some of the participants in this demonstration were telling the people present to  go get education on the topic. This is a commendable advice. I hope the people follow it, and make up their own minds.

But, again, it is a difficult job, as there is very little in terms of actual, hard information on the actual project.

Some pictures:

While I’ll be the last person to downplay the seriousness of the accident, and the criminal lack of response by both Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government lead by Mr. Kan, who is  “very strong in the nuclear matters”, please, please remember that there are sill 450,000 people out there in the cold, without roof, food, medicine, clean water. A large number of them are within 150 or 200km of the Fukushima plant. Many are disabled and getting sicker.

Consider what you can do to help. They can’t go indoors, as they have no homes. They have little access to medicine. And while the ordinary Japanese seem to be doing what they can, the response of the government has, so far, been less than underwhelming. Please help them.

I have never seen people crowd in the huge station hall. To my huge surprise there was also a thick, long line outside the station as well.

I hope the service recovers sooner, and people don’t need to wait for hours to board a train in the coming days.

1. Locus, the map tool. For looking at, saving, using maps. Awesome, although it isn’t free anymore. Totally worth the small fee.
2. FBReader, the reader. For reading fb2 and epub e-books.  Awesome.
3. Sketchbook mobile (or the free Sketchbook express). The sketchbook. For sketching. Awesome.
4. RSS Demon, for reading RSS feeds. The paid version is nearly awesome.
5. CamScanner, for scanning stuff into PDF ebooks. The free version is very good, the licensed one is almost awesome, it just needs to make selection of “enhance” mode easier on a page by page basis.
6. Barcode scanner – a killer app in Japan. Mostly useless in Europe, because nobody here uses 2D barcodes. But people type REALLY FAST
7. The stock camera app, hacked not to make noises. The 2.3.3 version is a bit improved, but the panorama feature still sucks.
8. HDR Camera+ – for pretty HDR pictures. Better than what I used to use – the HDR Pro Camera – faster, better alignment, three images.
9. The hardware sensors and a stylus.
10. ezPDFReader – freehand PDF annotations on the phone.

Missing features:

I hope for more sensors in the coming device versions – humidity, pressure, pH, infrared camera, built-in turbolasers, proton torpedo guns, tractor beam generators, a shield and a cloaking device would be the useful minimum. This will turn the tricoder into a really useful app.

The rest of the useful apps list is below.

My app list, because I did not find a satisfactory one on the Internets. In alphabetical order.

1. 3dSteroidPro – simple application to make “stereo pictures” on the phone. The kind of “stereo” you cross your eyes to see. So-so.
2. Abacus – an Asian abacus, just like a calculator but weirder. Totally optional.
3. AdFree – requires rooted phone, removes ads (adds add hosts to /etc/hosts). Must have.
4. Aedict – Japanese dictionary, edict based. Must have.
5. AlcoDroid – measure your alcohol intake . Read the disclaimers.
6. AndRoad! – OSM map and navigation application. Neat, add-free and opensource. Very nice.
7. Android Assistant – great application management tool. Must have.
8. AngryGPS – in Gingerbread. Add an “activity” shortcut, or dial *#*#3214789650#*#* to access.
9. Astro file manager and its bluetooth and smb access modules. Works well, but the icons aren’t my favorite. Good, but seems dead upstream.
10. AstroTools. The only useful astronomy package on Android so far. Must have (for me).
11. AutoCAD WS. Display 2D autocad files on android. Neat.
12. Air Horn Free. Pleasingly annoying to other people. 8/10. I wish my speakers could make more noise.
13. Bloomberg – read the bloomberg free news. Okay.
14. Bubble. Turns the phone into a bubble (нивелир), really useful when installing shelves. 8/10.
15. Bulgarian Keyboard 2. Works fine, but doesn’t integrate well with Japanese input. 7/10. Replaced with Multilingual keyboard, see below for details.
16. Connect bot. SSH. 10/10.
17. Cool Reader. I ended up using FBReader, but this is also great, except for that pesky organization of libraries. 9/10.
18. ConvertPad – converting between various units. Okay, 5/10.
19. DrumSession – funny drums app. Audible delay is a bit of a nuisance though.
20. ElectroDroid. Excellent aid for the electronics nerd. 10/10.
21. Expense Manager
22. Facebook. Well, for facebook. 5/10.
23. FBReader. My book reader, for fb2 and epub books. 11/10.
24. Google sky map. Kinda useless sky map app. 5/10.
25. GPS Test (free). Good for testing the unusability of the built-in GPS.  9/10.
26. Grapher – graphs functions. Very neat, 8/10.
27. GuitarTuner and gStrings free – to tune your musical instruments.
28. IMDB, because I am too lazy to bookmark. 6/10.
29. imo – instant messaging client. 7/10.
30. LED Scroller 3 – when I want to signal the person across the table in a dark room, nothing does the job better. 8/10.
31. Locus Pro + addons. THE BEST mapping application. 10/10.
32. LookOut, malware protection. ?/10.
33. Memo – for memos. MomentDiary – for memos + picture. Still looking for a good app.
34. MultiLing Keyboard – excellent keyboard replacement
35. mVideoPlayer – videoplayer with bookmarks.
36. Opera Mobile – the browser. 10/10, much better than the built-in browser in 2.2, but the browser in 2.2.1 is getting a bit closer.
37. Overlook Fing – an excellent network explorer/port scanner.
38. Paint Joy Pro – nice drawing app. Can make a movie of the drawing too. 10/10.
39. Periodic Droid – all you need to know about them chemical elements. 10/10.
40. Photoshop Express. Yet to test out this properly.
41. Picasa Tool – for uploading stuff to Picasa. 8/10. Speaking of Picasa, account creation and synchronization failed at first, but started working miraculously after two weeks of bitching to Android Market Support about unrelated issues.
42. Polar finder. Find the Polar star – useful for telescope mount alignment. 8/10.
43. ProHDR Camera – good.
44. QuickPic – Gallery replacement. Neat, but has some bugs. 7/10.
45. RingDroid – ringtone creator. Free, ad-free, opensource and good. Must have.
46. RssDemon +License – for reading RSS feeds. Very useful, except for feed items ordering. 8/10.
47. RealCalc – a good choice for a scientific calculator. 8/10.
48. RoadSMS – look at the ground when you type walking. Samsung app, 4/10.
49. Satellite AR. Where is the ISS? What satellites are overhead? Interesting.
50. SBM – Sketchbook Mobile from autodesk. 11/10, see above
51. Screen Filter – manage screen brightness, the biggest power drain on the phone. 6/10.
52. Shuffle – tasklist app.
53. Seesmic – twitter and facebook client. Better than the “official” apps in some ways, and comes in one piece. 6/10.
54. Simple Kitchen Timer – finally something that can set a timer at over 99 minutes. 10/10.
55. Skype. 10/10.
56. SmartTools – compass, level, sound meter, etc. Must have.
57. Smart Training. Recording tracks, calculating distances, etc. Useful, but clunky. 6/10.
58. Superuser – granting you the r00t.
59. Terminal emulator – android shell app. 8/10. Now with SU
60. Theodolite – well, a theodolite which also takes pictures. 7/10.
61. ThinkFree Office – built in. Useful (for reading PDF files, mostly), creating an online account is not needed.
62. TitaniumBackup – an alternative to the Astro file manager’s backup function. Can backup pre-installed applications, settings, etc. Requires r00t. 8/10.
63. Tricorder – the Startrek app. Useless, but neat and makes funny noises. 6/10.
64. tTorrent – neat bittorrent client. For those rare occasions …
65. Unzip – for unzipping.
66. VoiceSearch – I am impressed. No Bulgarian, but Japanese, Chinese, English and Russian work surprisingly well. 8/10.
67. VidTrim – trim videos on the phone. Very useful.
68. Wifi analyzer + the free library for connection management – very useful. 8/10.
69. WordPress – much better than the web UI on the phone. 9/10.
70. XDA + license – support the teams that r00t your phone and provide alternative ROMs.
71. witiz weather premium. okay weather widget.
72. xda premium – the xda forums interface. must have, support the hackers.
73. xPiano – to annoy people more than the Air Horn
74. WordPress.

Still looking for:

A good stylus.

Overall impression: recent smartphones are about on par with my old Dell Axim, except for the much better hardware, the more useless bells and whistles that the “apps” have, and the shorter battery life under prolonged screen use.

We’ll see how the 3700 mAh battery I just ordered fares. Update: too bad I left Japan before it was delivered

what worked for me (for the atmega328-based ardweeny kit)

1. compile, insmod, copy to /lib/modules and depmod for ftdi_sio

2. install the cross-compiler (avr-gcc and avr-libs) from 9.0.4 distro

3. install openjdk from 9.0.4 distro

4. force install newest avrdude from sid, ignore complains about some readline library missing

5. install rxtx, remove/rename the x86 lib/libSerial.so in arduino dist. directory

6. remove avrdude for x86 from hardware/tools directory and link the system avrdude

7. update system avrdude config to include atmega328 section from the arduino file

this configuration also works with the cli dev. setup as described here:

http://mjo.tc/atelier/2009/02/arduino-cli.html

It was kind of faraway, so no biking this time, we took the train instead. This was a “professional” flea market, which means the places are paid, and the people who sell stuff are making their living doing this. However, being “professional” means it is seriously not fun, because everyone seems to sell the same things and no one bargains about the price.

Anyways, some pics follow over the map:

I’m going to a real flea market tomorrow.

Alternative view of the gallery

[Slideshow]

Click on the pictures for details and zoom.

My heart goes out to the victims of the typhoon and their families. I wish everyone affected good luck rebuilding their lives.

• xorg.conf.stamina
• xorg.conf.speed
• /proc/config.gz (for gentoo-sources 2.6.24-r9), as I gave up on ubuntu

Not working:

• Thumbnail reader (sony uses proprietary key in the hardware)
• Felica card
• Adjusting monitor brightness
• Hard disk active protection

Have issues:

• Camera quality is way inferior to the quality available with the windows software
• iwl3945 fails randomly
• on ubuntu kernels, there is bug 177895, which makes cpu drain power fast. with gentoo-sources everything is normal.

Everything else works fine.

I had to switch notebooks because of the regular stinkpad hardware failure. With one motherboard, one LCD panel, one hard disk controller, two power adapters and a hard drive replaced in less than two years, I can only wish Lenovo good-bye and good luck. The stinkpads are not what they used to be.

Unfortunately, I did not have much time to look or shop around, so I ended up with the first machine that looked like it will do what I need, and was available in the shop at the moment. As it happens, it is a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ55B. Some years ago I had upgrade problems Sony hardware and decided to stay away from them for a while. I was surprised to find out this notebook uses pretty standard components. Seems Sony have learned a lesson or two.

Update: Added a picture of the notebook running some random Linux distro with a cool desktop background picture of the M101 galaxy, stolen shamelessly from the awesome NASA apod site.

Allright, now back to the notebook.

Things I don’t like:

• Heavy (2 kg with battery). The adapter is heavy too.
• Useless battery life (only 3.5 hours in low-performance mode)
• Has some built-in hardware I don’t need (interface to Felica, an e-payment system in Japan).
• Only has 2 USB ports and no DVI or HDMI.
• The motion eye built-in camera (which I remember fondly from the first “subnote” I had back in the 20th century, a Sony PCG-1) doesn’t rotate.
• Glossy monitor (so I can see my face on the camera, and then again reflected in the monitor).
• Uselessly sensitive touch pad.
• The DVD drive can’t be removed. Actually, I found that having a DVD is most welcome when travelling abroad and taking pictures.
• Bluetooth and wireless lan are turned on/off with the same switch (sometimes I use bt _instead of_ wi-fi).
• Microsoft tax, in the form of office personal 2007, which I totally don’t need, and Vista Home Premium, for which I can still find a use or two. [update] I removed the windows partition to free some disk space.
• Duplicate hardware, most obvious being
  • the separate holes for Sony’s memory stick and SD media (and the SD media slot supports the stick too);
  • the two video adapters – Intel x3100 (for low power consumption) and Nvidia 8400M. Actually, I got used to the dual adapter.

Things that are okay:

• 3GB RAM upgrade included in the price; more RAM never hurts.
• Has bluetooth, which, until recently was rare on Japanese notebooks.
• Sony finally supports media other than the useless memory stick.
• The high-performance (to me, anyway) video. I hope Duke Nukem Forever plays fine. [update: it does, I used the eduke32 clone]
  • Actually, some useful software — the Stellarium planetarium software and Celestia — look very good with the Nvidia video card.
• 160GB disk
• Integrated web camera.
• The touchpad driver for X has a ton of useful options, including sensitivity tuning
• Every interface I need at the moment.
• Actually, the monitor isn’t bad at all
• The sony-laptop kernel modules allows for various hardware items to be switched off independently of each other. That includes the BT, wifi and the DVD drive.

Misc.

• Haven’t really tested the battery yet, but I’d expect the performance will be far off the 5.5 hours on the specs. I hope I’m wrong. Update: I wasn’t
• I don’t like the ton of stickers on the notebook. All these “Vista ready”, “Intel outside” and what not — stick them on the box, please.
• The chrome-plated logo on the back of the monitor is way too shiny.
• I really wanted a notebook with OLED backlight, unfortunately such was not available in stock. Biccamera is too careful about overstocking.

The Windows ™ Vista ™ Home Premium ™ ™ ‘xperience

Windows booted normally, and worked more or less okay on the first try. Didn’t experience any of the horror Vista stories I’ve read about. The Aero interface performed equally well on both adapters, but I was underwhelmed. It isn’t a big deal, beryl was much scarier visually a full year and a half ago, and it ran on a i915 chipset, too.

I had a note attached, which asked me to perform a Sony Update ASAP. I tried, and it failed multiple times. So I’m giving up on the Sony update service for now.

Installing Linux

What is working:

I didn’t have time to install Gentoo this time around, so I went with Ubuntu instead. Back to Gentoo now. Networking, bluetooth, video, audio (still with a glitch, see below) and the rest of the standard hardware (usb, firewire, dvd, flash storage ports) were discovered by the installer properly. That even included the Sony special keys.

I had to do one simple tweak to get the dual video working — basically I wrote a small 3-line shell script to detect the active adapter (by greping lspci) and switch the X gl libraries (symlinking the correct libraries) via eselect.

The motion eye camera turned out to be Ricoh web camera. A driver is available, and I almost have it working, using the development version and just following the build instructions on the website verbatim. Playback seems to work with the v4l2 interface only; the old v4l interface produces garbage output or errors.

Update: the linux uvc video driver (official in 2.6.26) supports the camera better, and compiles all the time, unlike the r5u870. So, use that instead.

What is not working yet:

I have yet to setup the thumbprint reader. Also, to my huge annoyance, inserting a headphone plug does not do anything useful. I can’t hear sound in the headphones, and the speakers keep on working. Headphone fix: newest alsa + add the model=vaio option to the snd-hda-intel module.

Backlight control fix:

• For the nvidia, nvidia-settings
• For the intel video – xrandr with the  –set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native|legacy option