Extra-Life: please support me, and maybe get a prize
For those of you not familiar with Extra Life, it is a gaming marathon to support Children Miracle Network Hospitals®. They are having their marathon this year on Saturday November 2nd to Sunday November 3rd, and I will be participating to support Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island. During this marathon I will be giving away a pair of Turtle Beach PX3′s to one lucky supporter, and I also plan to live stream the whole event. Anybody who supports me (minus family) is eligible to win the headset, just make sure to include your name and email address in the message to fundraiser, and check off to display it only to the fundraiser. If you would like to donate feel free to go to my Extra Life profile here, or if you have any questions before donating, please feel free to contact me.
Pebble First Impressions
After waiting for countless months to get the pebble smart watch which I backed on kickstarter, I was extremely excited to set it up and start receiving notifications. For those of you which are not familiar with pebble, it is a watch which connects to your phone using Bluetooth in order to send notifications to keep you in the loop while your phone is still in your pocket. Although this doesn’t seem like a necessary innovation, it has been a surprise to me how useful it actually is. Below is my review of this smart watch: Read more
PAX East Roundup
Although I did not do a writeup yesterday on day two, it was not because I did not attend, it was because I had low battery on my phone, and by the time I got home it was already 1:30am and I did not wish to stay up later. So I will be squishing all of day 2 and 3 into one, and doing my best not to forget anything. Read more
Pebble Hacking [beginning]
With the pebble beginning to ship out people have already begun to tinker with their new gadgets. I however am not lucky enough to have received mine yet, however that has not stopped me from trying to help others tinker. After seeing dsemaya on the pebble forums post about his work on trying to learn how the underlying OS works (with his tumblr), it got me in the mood to do a bit of digging. Now although what I’m posting is completely separate from his, I just wanted to give him some credit because he got me in the mood to start this at 11:00 at night. My work after the break
Nexus 7 Repurpose: Part 1 Lock Screen Bypass
I should not be trusted with a tablet, because within 2 weeks of getting my tablet back from Asus for repair I cracked the digitizer. This means that the screen will not accept any inputs, which leaves me with 3 working buttons, volume up, volume down, and power. However I decided that I will take this opportunity to re-purpose the device to make me feel less like a failure (and because I don’t have the money to repair it). My plan is to use the nexus 7 to display current stats about my computer, at first it will only display volume, temp, maybe memory usage and stuff like that, however I will try and expand that to include stuff like Steam integration (maybe constantly showing the scoreboard for Counter Strike on a certain screen). Today I got over the first hurdle, bypassing the lock screen. Read more
Ingress Day 1
Today I got my invite to participate in Ingress. For those of you living under a rock and have not heard of Ingress, it is a game currently in closed beta being developed by Google. It is a location-based game which uses your GPS to determine where you are and you can interact with the virtual world around you. I am loving it so far, it has some nice cut scenes, and is very responsive. I have not done an analysis of how much data it uses yet, however I plan on doing that within the next few days. One of my favorite Easter Eggs, and the only one I have found (though I’m not sure it is intentional) is Ada, which I believe is a tip of the hat to Ada Lovelace, who is credited with being the first computer programmer. Below are a few screenshots of the game from my experience. Overall I can’t wait to play some more tomorrow while I’m around campus where I imagine there are some portals to hack. Read more
First post from my new nexus 7
Well yesterday I ended up convincing myself to purchase a nexus 7 after playing with one at work. I have to say that Asus made a good product with the nexus 7 tablet. It has a great display, great battery life, and being my first nexus as well as my first tablet as well. I decided to root it and install aokp plus the 4.2 gapps on top of it, which was a good choice. The swiping keyboard which shows what I’m typing as I type makes it easier for me to express my ideas quickly. I will admit it feels a little heavy, however this is not an issue for me. Overall I am loving my nexus 7 and can’t wait to play with it more.
HTC One X gets android 4.0.4 from AT&T
Today I ended up switching from sprint to at&t, which inevitably meant I was getting a new phone, and after much contemplation, I decided to stick with HTC and get an HTC One X. However this is not about my phone choice. This is to mention that AT&T has begun rolling out an update to all the One X devices for Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.4, which I ended up also getting today as well (as seen in the screenshot below) from an OTA update (so not one of the unofficial ones floating around). The One X is now one step closer to the jellybean update which could come as early as September according to HTC which is good news for people who like new sweets. Read more
How To: Build a Custom Toolchain Using Crosstool-ng
This was originally posted at dodgejcr.com, however with the site going down and because of how useful I found it, I felt I should repost it as well as walk you through some of the problems I had creating my toolchain. Please note that this is setup around building a toolchain for the HTC Evo Shift which is on the ARMv7 processor. If you wanted to build a toolchain for something else you would change a few small things, however the underlying process would be the same. Read more