SoutHACKton: Arduino Meet
September 10th, 2009 by cminion 2 comments »This event was organised by Andy of SteamShift and Benjie. It was kindly hosted at the Steamshift HQ Eastliegh
SoutHACKton aims to bring together liked minded people who are fascinated in taking things apart and learning how they work. Then of course exploiting their dismantled object for a completely different purpose.
This was the first event I had attended and I had no idea what to expect. It happened on the afternoon of Saturday the 29th of August.
Informal Arduino 101
The event was focused on arduinos. There was an opportunity for an informal 101 as well as lots of projects people were working on.
Hacking Lou Lou the Furby to become a notification device
There were a huge variety of projects from Furby hacking, robots that followed lines drawn on paper, zigbee interaction and my own power metering work (more to follow when/if it gets finished). All the projects were based around arduinos some by people who had been doing this for and some like me who had only started recently.
It was a great event that really showed off the talent around the Solent area.
My only comment, how did the time go so fast?
The next event is a Hack Day, on the 4th of October. Click here for details.
For more information about SoutHACKton please visit http://www.southackton.org.uk/
Barcamp Brighton 4 Day 1
September 6th, 2009 by cminion 1 comment »
Bar Camp Brighton 4
Arriving at my second barcamp though I knew the format I was a little unsure about how it would all pan out.
During the introduce we each had to say a secret, these varied from “I have a pointy head” to “Last night I was caught stealing some fluffy grass from a garden”. My secret was “I was paid to call my self Earl for the day during TweetCamp”. A different way to lighten the mood and start the day.
The first session I attended was Tom M talking about the philosophy behind URIs. This took place in the Ninja Turtles Sewer. An interesting look at the philosophy of having perminint links to data online.
The second session in Honk Kong Fooey’s Filing Cabinet on Blogging Tips and Tricks. Miss Geeky (http://www.missgeeky.com) giving an interesting outlook on how she drives her blog. Two posts a day is but one example. Also the opportunities that have arisen through blogging are pretty amazing. Blogs are usually just for a small niche but to be popular blog about everything.
Lunch consisted of sarnies, various odd combinations including Turkey with Avocado and Ham with Egg.
After lunch there was an introduce to Android and the application development. IT gave a veyr braod over view of android and a basic hello world During this session I attempted to flash the latest google code drop on. This bricked my phone.
I spent the following session un bricking my phone.
After the coffee break it was my time to talk about Android. I started a discussion if Android was really open source. This continued into the android interface on a HTC Hero Android Source veruss traditional, and why Google is really not all that different from Apple in the terms of Phone OS Owner.
/Dev/Fort
What we did on holiday, a discuss a dev-fort. An interest take on barcamps. The idea of 5-20 people attending a camp in a fort with NO internet access. A brave thought for many people. More information can be foundhere http://devfort.com/
The final session before dinner covered hacking tweetie to work with groups. This appears to be by hacking tweetie binary in hex editor changing the urls used to request the twitter updates from a local server. The local server modifies the calls being sent to twitter and caches the tweets. Then tweets are sent to tweetie as required.
This pretty much sums up the talks I attended during the day. The evening continued with 152 pizzas to feed us and a hell of a lot of beer available. I crashed out quite early, possibly the first
Snow Leopard, well not jsut yet
August 29th, 2009 by cminion No comments »Looking at the feature list for apples latest OS update i finally decided to wait and see first. My brother just got a family license so he will be using. However since i have a first gen MacBook im unsure if it is going to be worth it. The speed increase would be nice but there are mix reports if it will work with my Mac. When its been out a few months maybe I will go and buy one of the cheapest (not including free ones) OS upgrades available.
How to get the Windows MBR working from a linux live cd
August 27th, 2009 by cminion No comments »I spent a good hour trying to find something like this so I thought I should re post the link.
This uses a tool called ms-sys and all you need to do is boot into a linux live cd and install it (see link below) and then
ms-sys -m /dev/sda
Replace sda with the hard disk you want the boot record to be on.
and you are done
http://ms-sys.sourceforge.net/
Taken from
http://penguininside.blogspot.com/2009/06/fixing-windows-mbr-from-linux.html
Rolling your own Android rom for HTC Magic (SAPPHIRE)
August 11th, 2009 by cminion 8 comments »I followed this guide here
A very good guide to the basic steps for creating a Dream Rom. However as I don’t have a dream there wasn’t a lot i could do after it was built.
Also as the Sapphire config files were not provided so i couldn’t roll my own. So I have attempted to hand crank the config files or find them on my phone.
here are some basic steps to take after you have checked out the source following this guide
1) Copy vendor/htc/dream-open to vendor/htc/sapphire
2) you can delete the files with trout in the name
3) untar the following config files in to the vendor/htc/sapphire
4) Continue with the steps in the guide until you get up to the lunch command. Replace it with
lunch htc_sapp-eng
You should then be able to build the code. I am not saying that these config files are perfect but they should at least get people started.
if there are any mistake or anything missed please let me know.
Donut Compile for the HTC Magic
July 31st, 2009 by cminion 2 comments »I have managed to get Donut compiled and booting on my HTC magic. It still has a logn way to go before even I would consider moving to it as an everyday platform.
There is visible WPA-Enterprise, VPN, Gestures feautres integrated but I have not tested them. Also it runs much much faster then cupcake
For anyone interested in trying this you can download the images from here http://cminion.com/Android/donut/.
You must use the fastboot method for installation and please make sure you back up first because i have had problems with the recovery image.. Use at your OWN risk.
HTC Magic and DONUT
July 30th, 2009 by cminion 2 comments »Right I have been trying uncessfully to build DONUT (the lastest branch of android) for my HTC magic. I successfully got it compiled for the HTC Dream but as I dont own one I cant test it. I will keep persevering.
Twitter your FreeCycling
July 30th, 2009 by cminion 1 comment »Why dont more people use twitter as a free cycle portal?
Generally if you add hash tags suchs as #townname and of course #freecycle you will find people in your local area, some of which may be interested. I had a dishwasher I no longer wanted, working perfectly well. I twittered about and within 5mins it had gone, but I’ve had so far 4 requests for more information from people I dont know.
The problem with freecycle is there is no central repository and too many people use it. People generally only read the emails that get sent soon after they have put something on freecycle themselves. (I may be wrong but this is how I deal with the hundreds of emails being received ).
Well there is my two cents,
For more information on freecycle please read here: http://www.uk.freecycle.org
N97 – HTC Magic – TouchPro2 – Which One to get
July 3rd, 2009 by cminion 2 comments »My mobile died, now I’m trying to plan what to get.
Model – Bad – Good
HTC Magic – No physical keyboard, small internal memory – Android, Cheap, Widgets
TouchPro2 – Windows Mobile, Small Internal Memory, expensive – Keyboard, may support android one day
N97 – Expensive, S60 – Keyboard, large internal storage, Widgets
