I bought a budget Android tablet a little while back that turned out to be really rather good. However, there were issues with the initial firmware.
Ployer relased a firmware update in November 2012 which addressed these issues. Here's the translated change log.
However, the updated firmware comes pre-loaded with a selection of Chinese apps and defaults to a Chinese language.
ObjectivesI decided to have a go a making my own custom firmware for the Ployer Momo 8 IPS with the following goals.
I think I've been fairly successful. My firmware includes Android 4.1.2 features and even some Android 4.2 features. Until someone succesfully ports cyanogenmod to the Ployer Momo 8 IPS or Ployer release a 4.2.x update then my firmware is the most complete "Google Experience" you'll find for the device.
ChangesBelow are the changes I made to the official Ployer Momo 8 IPS firmware.
13.080.1958You'll need RKBatchTool for the RockChip USB drivers and also to flash the firmware. I've modified RKBatchTool to default to English language and removed old logs and transient data to reduce the size of the download. You'll also need the firmware itself.
Unzip both archives when they are downloaded.
How to Flash Recommended Wipe `/data/` and `/cache` from the ClockWorkMod Recovery when installing my firmware for the first time.This will effectively factory reset your tablet to factory defaults and wipe your installed apps, app data and preferences. If you have rooted your tablet your might want to consider making a backup with Titanium Backup * root. If you have not rooted your tablet then you could use Carbon - App Sync and Backup.
The first boot may take a little longer than usual. You will be presented with the Welcome wizard where you can configure language and locale, etc. You can optionally enter your Google Apps or Gmail account credentials and doing so will prompt for which Wifi network to associate with.
RKBatchTool VideoI've also made a video showing how to flash the firmware. Frankly, the hardest part is getting the Rockchip drivers installed.
ClockWorkMod RecoveryBooting to recovery can be achieved using the pre-install Quick Boot app.
The Ployer Momo 8 IPS only has one hardware button (power) so CWM is controlled with gestures.
The Power button also acts as select, which I find to be the most reliable way to select an action.
FeedbackYour feedback is welcome, please use the comments are below.
ReferencesI bought a budget Android tablet a little while back that turned out to be really rather good. However, there were issues with the initial firmware.
Ployer relased a firmware update in November 2012 which addressed these issues. Here's the translated change log.
> 1. System, audio and video decoding, browser, Flash player, 3G module, boot > animation module BUG repair. > 2. Update NandFlash, Mali, Wifi module drivers, while addressing some CTS > tests BUG and the stability of the system as a whole has been further > enhanced. > 3. Optimize Flash stability, improve the efficiency of the implementation of > the DDR. > 4. Default input method Sogou input method. > 5. Update Google Pinyin input method.However, the updated firmware comes pre-loaded with a selection of Chinese apps and defaults to a Chinese language.
ObjectivesI decided to have a go a making my own custom firmware for the Ployer Momo 8 IPS with the following goals.
I think I've been fairly successful. My firmware includes Android 4.1.2 features and even some Android 4.2 features. Until someone succesfully ports cyanogenmod to the Ployer Momo 8 IPS or Ployer release a 4.2.x update then my firmware is the most complete "Google Experience" you'll find for the device.
ChangesBelow are the changes I made to the official Ployer Momo 8 IPS firmware.
13.080.1958You'll need RKBatchTool for the RockChip USB drivers and also to flash the firmware. I've modified RKBatchTool to default to English language and removed old logs and transient data to reduce the size of the download. You'll also need the firmware itself.
Unzip both archives when they are downloaded.
How to Flash NOTE! I recommend wiping `/data/` and `/cache` from the ClockWorkMod Recovery when installing my firmware for the first time.This will effectively factory reset your tablet to factory defaults and wipe your installed apps, app data and preferences. If you have rooted your tablet your might want to consider making a backup with Titanium Backup * root. If you have not rooted your tablet then you could use Carbon - App Sync and Backup.
The first boot may take a little longer than usual. You will be presented with the Welcome wizard where you can configure language and locale, etc. You can optionally enter your Google Apps or Gmail account credentials and doing so will prompt for which Wifi network to associate with.
RKBatchTool VideoI've also made a video showing how to flash the firmware. Frankly, the hardest part is getting the Rockchip drivers installed.
ClockWorkMod RecoveryBooting to recovery can be achieved using the pre-install Quick Boot app.
The Ployer Momo 8 IPS only has one hardware button (power) so CWM is controlled with gestures.
The Power button also acts as select, which I find to be the most reliable way to select an action.
FeedbackYour feedback is welcome, please use the comments are below.
ReferencesI actually quite like the WP8 user experience. Innovative and different. Not bad for a first attempt.
What’s that? 8th what? Oh well, um…
Most niggles with Nokia Lumia 920 are really niggles with WP8. Most niggles with WP8 are really niggles with Windows NT. Lipstick on a pig.
This Clevo laptop is a new machine and like a lot of new machines, not all of its hardware has drivers in the current stable release of debian.
Happily, there is a driver for its rtl8723ae wireless networking device in the later 3.8 Linux kernel versions. So it’s just a case of installing the package called “kernel-package” and following the instructions in it, to make a new linux-image package with the latest drivers in it.
One small thing which tripped me up is that you usually need to write “make-kpkg –rootcmd fakeroot –initrd kernel-image” now. I forgot the “–initrd” option at first.
I recently switched ISPs at home and now have unlimited high speed broadband.
Finally I can participate in torrenting Linux .ISO images. I always download the latest distros using BitTorrent and can now contribute to the community by seeding the distros I've downloaded.
I have a small (in size and resources) Debian 6.0 headless server at home that I wanted to turn into a torrent box. I'm a big fan of Transmission since it can be managed from the shell, web and Android phone/tablet. Sadly, the Transmission packages in the official Debain squeeze repositories are quite old, 2.03 at the time of writing, and there are no Transmission packages in Debian Backports.
However after flexing my google-fu I found a 3rd party Debian Squeeze repository that includes fairly current (2.73 at the time of writing) Transmission packages specifically for headless use. Yah!
Install Transmission DaemonFirst become root.
sudo -s -HAdd the repository key.
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key 92B84A1EAdd the repository.
echo "deb http://apt.balocco.name squeeze main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/balocco.listUpdate the package list.
apt-get updateInstall Transmission.
apt-get install transmission-cli transmission-daemon transmission-webinterface Basic ConfigurationThe Transmission settings can be found in /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json.
Information If `transmission-daemon` is running when you make changes to `settings.json` the changes you make will be discarded the next time `transmission-daemon` is started.Therefore either stop transmission-daemon before you make any changes or you can make the daemon reload settings.json by sending it the SIGHUP signal.
Connect from anywhereIf you want to be able to connect to Transmission from anywhere on the Internet stop transmission-daemon, make the following changes to settings.json and then start transmission-daemon.
"rpc-password": "YourPlainTextPassword", "rpc-username": "YourUsername", "rpc-whitelist-enabled": false,The rpc-username field will need adding but you can edit the existing entry for rpc-password. Enter the rpc-password as a plain text string, Transmission will automatically convert the password to a hash the next time it is started.
Connect via a browserYou should now be able to access the Transmission web interface via http://yourhost.example.org:9091. If you didn't change the username and password (you really should) the defaults are:
I have an Android phone and an Android tablet. I use Remote Transmission on my Android devices to manage my torrent box.
Connect via the shellIf, like me, you spend the majority of you time at the shell. Then transmission-remote-cli is probably for you. All my workstation run Arch Linux so I install transmission-remote-cli as follows.
sudo pacman -S transmission-remote-cliSee the GitHub project page for tramission-remote-cli for instructions on how to connect to a remote Transmission daemon.
Block ListRegardless of how you intend to use Transmission you should enable a block list, this can be done via settings.json and the web interface. The following block list seems to be recommended.
http://list.iblocklist.com/?list=bt_level2&fileformat=p2p&archiveformat=gzThat covers the basics for getting Transmission running on headless Debian 6.0 and how to connect to it from just about anywhere and on any device. I recommend reading the Trasmission Wiki as Transmission is capable of so much more than I have covered in this blog post.
Happy torrenting.
ReferencesI wrote a small patch (intro, patch) which adds a Secure Shell (ssh) block device to qemu. With this patch you could access a remote disk image or device by doing:
qemu -drive file=ssh://host/path/to/file,if=virtio,cache=noneQEMU ssh’es into “host” and opens /path/to/file. For the initial version of this patch you will need to set up ssh-agent access to the remote server.
The motivation behind this patch is to allow libguestfs to access remote disks using ssh the same way we already do with NBD. Secure Shell is ubiquitous, so for the majority of users libguestfs-over-qemu/ssh would let them use disks remotely with zero configuration.
Today, I received a spammy email from an unknown golf club. There was no obvious unsubscribe link or instructions, so I blindly replied with :
Hi, Please remove 'xxxxxx' from your mailing list; we've no interest in golf… Thanks, David
They replied with :
REMOVED OK
But it was actually :
<FONT color=#0000ff size=4 face=”Comic Sans MS”>REMOVED OK</FONT>
i.e.
So I had to reply with :
<div style=”text-align: center;”><u style=”font-size: 144px; color: rgb(245, 236, 0); font-family: ‘Comic Sans MS’; “><b>Thank you!1!!</b></u></div>
I fear the intricacies of my reply were lost on them.
So @kevinc2003 and @kevinlynch have both left @Adobe since I joined. A guy could get paranoid! Was it something I said?
Hi,
The first ever CentOS Dojo, a one day training and socalising day dedicated to CentOS and how people use it, will be held at Antwerp, Belgium on the 8th of Apr.
You can see the great speaker lineup on the events page at : http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Dojo/Antwerp2013 - we have tried to cover all the major conversation areas around CentOS these days. Ranging from provisioning, management, app deployments, system and virtualisation tuning, virtual infrastructure and more.
Its going to be a great day, register up, and see you all there. And remember, there is an exclusive CentOS Dojo Tshirt for everyone who attends ( plus, there might be more goddies too ).
Jump directly to the registration page : http://centosdojoantwerp2013.eventbrite.com/
- KB
The Shard sdrv.ms/147go5h
The problem with Apple: if you’re going to have a locked-in ecosystem, you’d better make sure your apps work properly. iTunes is a disaster.
By “Other”, iTunes means “stuff I lost track of, even though my only job is to sync with the iPad”. iTunes, you suck. img.ly/txnt
The one stand-out feature so far of #nokialumia920 has to be Here maps. here.com
Growing admiration for mapping innovation.
So, I’ve had a Nexus 4 for a while now … here’s some findings :
Our community is at the heart of how we build Ubuntu. Recently there were some concerns expressed about some aspects of our community and I have been working with various community members and internally at Canonical to resolve some of these issues to make things smoother.
I just wanted to summarize some updates:
I want to get as much feedback on these steps moving forward as well as other ideas and areas in which we can focus. You can always grab me on IRC on freenode (my nick is jono) and I hang out in #ubuntu-community-team. Also feel free to drop me an email and join my regular Q+A session every week. Unfortunately, this week’s Q+A session is canceled as I need to be at an event, but I will be back in the regular slot next week on Wednesday at 7pm UTC on Ubuntu On Air.
There’s something rather swish happened to my wedding photography website. It has a brand new design which I’m really happy with.
So, why the new design? I wanted more space to show off my photographs which is, after all, what it’s all about. Fewer words, more pictures. All the images are now a much larger resolution and I’m pleased with how much better they look. Each image on the home page now links straight to the blog post for that wedding.
I had to produce larger versions of all the images on the site, as I had been rather too efficient when originally uploading them and made images that were too small for the new theme. It was enlightening going back over old images and re-processing them for the new page layouts. I hope you’ll agree that they look even better than before.
The new design is also much more responsive than the old one, so there’s a much better experience browsing the site from mobile devices. The old design worked well enough, but web designers can now do much more for sites viewed on mobile devices. In the last twelve months mobile traffic to my site has increased by over 10%, so I wanted to be sure those users had a great experience.
The old design
The site runs WordPress, the open source blogging and content management system. One of the nice things about WordPress is that, for the most part, it separates content from presentation. It’s nowhere near as much work to switch to a new design than back in the good old days of hand-crafted HTML. It’s still not exactly easy, as things like widgets and custom menus need changing when you move theme.
Anyway, I hope you like the new design!
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