Workaround for Google Play Books uploading

NOTE: This post was written during the time of Google Play Books version 3.1.23 (30123). In the future, this post may quickly be rendered obsolete and unnecessary, depending on how fast Google decides to fix the problem. In the meantime, if you use the aforementioned version and below, this fix could help you.

I've started taking a liking to Google Play Books and was immediately impressed by the fact that I can upload my own .epub files onto the app, and that .epub file will be available across all of my Android devices where GPB is installed and my Google account is logged in. It even syncs the last page where I stopped on one device, so I could continue there on another, though this feature is still sketchy, as I observed that I had to "move" out of the book by pressing Back or Up so that it could sync.

Anyway, the uploading feature is really nice that it made me use my Kindle less and my Nexus 7 (and Nexus 5) more, because Amazon only syncs books that were bought in the Kindle Store, plus the Amazon reading app for Android is very lacking when compared to Google Play Books.

However, there appears to be a problem with uploading: After uploading, GPB will begin to process the book, displaying "Processing" on top of the book's progress bar. Then it would stay that way, possibly forever. I left mine processing an EPUB of Dante's Inferno for six hours and it still wasn't done.

I tried all sorts of solutions, including rebooting my tablet, which is really unnecessary, but you know what they say about restarting things. Then while GPB was on a Processing loop on my tablet, I checked my phone, and guess what, they were already uploaded from the phone's side. I then came to the conclusion that Google Play Books was already done processing the files a long time ago, and the UI didn't respond with a refresh after the processing.

Therefore, the fix is simple: Wait for a minute or so for the book(s) to process, then tap Menu > Refresh. Google Play Books should query the cloud again and receive the confirmation that the books were already done being processed, and your book(s) should be ready. If that doesn't fix it, just wait a little more before refreshing, or reupload your books.

Hopefully this should help people who are stumped with the uploading books on Google Play Books. It's a great ebook reading (and acquiring) app, especially with its sexy 3D page turn animations and clean UI, if not for the lack of customization for one's reading options. Hopefully this workaround could escalate the problem to Google so that they could fix it sooner as well.

The day I lost root privileges

I have (K)ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin installed on my Fujitsu Lifebook UH75/J (I've discussed about it in one of my previous posts). Needless to say, the experience was nice. It was the first time I ever used KDE as my primary DE for everyday use. I had used KDE on my desktop, but never thought about using it full-time, as I only switched to it whenever Unity felt a little boring.

Anyway, fast forward a couple of weeks, and suddenly I found myself unable to run commands with root privileges (with the `sudo' command). Every command which I prefix with `sudo' gets denied with a message telling me I was not in the sudoers file and that the incident shall be reported (gee, I wonder to whom they actually report these to). Frustrated, I've decided to log in directly as root with `su'. Then I remembered that Ubuntu, for some odd reason, does not allow logging in as root by default.

Instinctively, I turned to searching for solutions online. One solution told me to log in to Recovery Mode, log in as root from there, and then add myself back to the sudoers group. But even if I managed to do that, I still haven't answered one important question. How and why was I removed from the sudoers group in the first place? I don't remember intentionally nor accidentally revoking my own sudo privileges from myself. While trying out the solutions I have found, I thought of the reasons for my disappearing privileges in the background.

Then the realization hit me. I don't recall exactly how, but I remembered how exactly I lost my user privileges when I saw a command telling people how to add themselves into the `sudo' group (the group of users in an Ubuntu system who has sudo privileges). Quickly, I used the `groups' command to check what groups in my notebook I'm part of, then the horror showed up in my face:

aldo : vboxusers

Then I remember it all now. I was trying to get Virtualbox to work on my new ultrabook some time ago, and one of the things I had to do was to get USB devices to work from the host machine to the guest machines. It would involve having me put myself in the special `vboxusers' group, but because I don't really memorize console commands that well unless I have to use them a lot, I used a variant of the `useradd' command, which puts me in the vboxusers group ONLY, instead of appending the vboxusers group to the groups in which I belong to. I forgot that the `gpasswd' command was a much better solution when it comes to adding groups. I'll try to keep this in mind since I'll probably be administrating other people's boxes in the future. Screwups increase exponentially in severity the more users become affected by one's mistake.

Since Ubuntu doesn't allow root logins unless you were to go to recovery mode, I've decided to reboot into recovery mode, however, there was a conflict with the inteldrmfb and Vesa VGA drivers. After more frantic Googling, I removed `nomodeset' temporarily from the launch options of the recovery boot and I was immediately put into recovery mode. I proceeded to login as root, checked out all the available groups in `/etc/group' and `/etc/passwd', then added myself to the sudo group and other groups which I think I should be part of.

After rebooting, I was relieved to find that I now have my sudo privileges back. The world seems strange when you don't have root privileges, doesn't it?

I haven't told you about my Plan B: In case I get tired of fixing my problem, which usually never happens, I would replace Ubuntu with openSUSE since I was itching to try it out, and since I have quite a lot of free time this Philippine summer to reconfigure my system. However, since I have already fixed the problem, I don't feel the need to replace Ubuntu anytime soon. Perhaps I'll just move when another seemingly insurmountable problem arises.

Fujitsu Lifebook UH75/J Review

I have acquired a new Fujitsu Lifebook UH75/J ultrabook computer recently, and depending on how I look at it, I can view the said acquisition as either a blessing or a curse. In essence, the UH75/J is an engineering marvel of mixed emotions, and I shall explain why in further detail as we move on.

*Note: I'm not going to go into the technical specs of the UH75/J in this blog post. You can just Google for them yourself. Also, I'm not going to touch on every aspect of the ultrabook here as well, I'm just going to write about the stuff that I think deserves some attention.

Basics

Essentially, the Lifebook UH75/J is the Japanese counterpart of the Lifebook U772. Both are almost the same in terms of internal specifications, although the U772 comes with more powerful configuration options than mine, or maybe I'm just not aware if the same is available for my UH75/J. Both use variants of new Ivy Bridge mobile processors, a required trend for similar products of its generation touting the "Ultrabook" Intel branding.

My UH75/J comes equipped with an Intel Core i5 3317U, with its four cores usually clocked at around 1.70GHz, which is surprisingly adequate despite ARMv7 processors on mobile phones slowly encroaching towards that clock rate. The memory supplied is the de-facto standard for mid-range computers at the time of this writing, which is 4GBs f DDR3. Sadly, the RAM isn't possible to be upgraded due to the nature of ultrabooks to completely lock down their internals, supposedly to make sure that everything will fit in their tightly slender cases.

The ultrabook is capable of WiFi 802.11 wireless connectivity as well as WiMAX connections, but because of the unavailability(?) of WiMAX connections in the Philippines, I'm not so sure if I would ever benefit from the latter. The ultrabook does not possess a native wired ethernet adapter, probably because it wouldn't fit on the sides of the ultrabook, and in its place is a proprietary port where you could plug in the ethernet dongle provided with the laptop.

The UH75/J comes with a webcam on top of the screen, although I don't really find the need to use it. It also comes with a fingerprint scanner, in case you're too lazy to type your passphrase everytime you need to authenticate with your laptop.

It has Windows 8 preinstalled, though I'm not sure if I would ever use it for work. I'd most likely boot into Windows just to play some games.

Construction

The screen size of the UH75/J is 14" in diameter diagonally, with an aspect ratio of 16:9, with stuff rendered in the screen's native resolution of 1366x768. It is also weighs only a bit more than a pound, and it's just as thin as all the other laptops out there with the "Ultrabook" branding. The bulk of the UH75/J is squeezed into a magnesium alloy shell which presumably keeps the body rigid while maintaining its light weight. That's great, because it would suck if my ultrabook's body suddenly depressed under the weight of my hands, or swayed around like a real book if I was carrying it around with my hand.

One thing that's disappointing about the design was that the notebook's only fan was positioned directly above the spot where one's legs would most likely be holding the laptop up, which degrades the fan's performance while the ultrabook is placed upon one's lap. But that's probably just the sad truth about laptops in general: they don't really perform well on people's laps.

Another major disappointment, and I must say is the worst part of the UH75/J, is its keyboard. No, it's not because the keyboard is in the Japanese layout (you can easily switch keyboard layouts in Windows and Linux), it's just that the keyboard feels so awkward to type on due to the fact that there is very little room for the keys to depress onto once pressed, leaving very little feedback for your fingers to feel whenever you hit a key, unless you type with more than enough force on the keys like I do. I did get familiar with the keyboard after a few days of usage, but it still feels awkward for me sometimes. It's probably just because I'm used to the amazing keyboard that my Thinkpad X60s has.

It comes with a clickpad (a touchpad that does not have any external buttons but rather relies on "zones" around the clickpad that can be programmed as left, right and middle buttons) that isn't too great or isn't too bad, though it is quite troublesome to configure in Linux.

Windows 8

The UH75/J is a Japanese laptop, so obviously Windows 8 came in almost completely translated into Japanese. I'm not really that good in understanding Japanese, though I can read Kana, nevertheless, it didn't take me much effort to install the English language packs into Windows 8 and enable them. However, the system utilities (which I think are just bloatware) pre-installed by Fujitsu are hard-coded into Japanese, but I don't think I'd be using them anyway anytime soon.

Microsoft Office 2010 comes pre-installed by default, although like Windows, everything is rendered in Japanese. A little tweaking will make Office translate the tooltips into English when you hover over something, however, so I don't really mind.

Gaming Capability

I don't think the UH75/J was ever built with gaming in mind, because of its integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics card. However, the GPU appears to be capable of handling most games that doesn't reach the graphics requirements of games like Far Cry 3 and Crysis 3. I've tested games such as Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 and the UH75/J appears to handle them quite well on medium level settings. I've also tested Payday: The Heist on the UH75/J and I'm getting an FPS range on about 21-35 depending on what's going on, on the lowest settings.

Installing Linux

As with every machine and box that I own which isn't primarily used for gaming, I installed Linux on the UH75/J, with Kubuntu (the KDE variant of Ubuntu) as my distro of choice. Additional steps had to be made to make Linux boot on the laptop, however. First, I had to delete the other NTFS partition Fujitsu had allocated for the laptop that it doesn't even use (this could presumably used for user media), then shrank the partition Windows 8 is installed on until it was just about 100GB (should be enough for Windows and a few games, I don't really work on Windows). Then I turned off Secure Boot in th UH75/J's BIOS settings. The BIOS is also conveniently written in Japanese, however, it's trivial to set the language to English. Once Secure Boot is disabled, I was now able to boot into Kubuntu through a USB drive. I created three new partitions in place of the empty, unallocated space: a 30GB ext4 partition for the root install, 8GB for swap, and the rest for my home directories, so that I can easily distro-hop without any problems.

Surprisingly, Kubuntu worked with the laptop without needing extensive configurations to make stuff work. The Intel GPU's was predictably resolved immediately by Ubuntu thanks to Intel's efforts to keep the Linux GPU drivers open-source and regularly maintained. Sound is working perfectly, with both playback and recording crystal clear. The proprietary ethernet dongle that came with the UH75/J also worked without a hitch. Wireless is working very well as well, although I wasn't able to test the WiMAX capabilities of the ultrabook under Linux.

The only major problem that I have with the UH75/J in Linux is probably the 

Getting the fingerprint scanner to work in Linux requires some work, but it's not too hard. All you need is to install fingerprint-gui and then follow the instructions to get it working. Most desktop environments should be able to take advantage of fingerprint-gui in their logons.

I'm thinking of migrating into another distro once I'm tired of Kubuntu, but not because things aren't working very well with Ubuntu, of course. I won't be migrating to something hardcore like Arch Linux or Gentoo yet, until I can finalize that everything can work properly under mostly automated configurations.

Battery life

The UH75/J has good enough battery life on its own, although because the battery is non-replaceable, extensive care of the battery should be considered. I usually just keep it plugged in at home, and then run it off the batteries every once in a while. Hopefully its capacity will retain after a year of usage.

Verdict

The UH75/J is a laptop for people who are looking for a good performing Japanese ultrabook, although people who aren't are better off looking at its international variant, the U772, or just look at other ultrabooks altogether, since most of them outperform the UH75/J in many aspects, most importantly the keyboard. The UH75/J can also be somewhat pricey, though that's the same story for every ultrabook anyway.

Cytus: The "touchier" touch-based rhythm game

During the recent weeks I have been occasionally engrossed in playing Cytus, a rhythm game for the iOS and Android mobile platforms. Most people would probably take a look at the game and just pass it for another one of those catchy touch-based rhythm games that only become popular for a few moments then slowly and painfully die out into inexistence.

Cytus is especially unique due to it being completely designed for capacitative multi-touch screens. I have also played other touch-based rhythm games like osu! (more specifically its Android port, osu!droid) in the past, but osu! appears to be designed specifically for graphics tablets. Additionally, due to its user base consisting of mouse-trotting players, a good handful of songs available for osu! made by the players are optimized in favor of mouse players more than those who play with graphics tablets, or in my case, fingers.

Cytus is also relatively easy to pick up and learn. The gameplay is easy and intuitive. A black bar continually bounces up and down from the top to the bottom of the screen, with each direction of movement corresponding to a measure (though sometimes I think a complete round trip from top to bottom corresponds to a measure, I'll have to take time to study this). A black glow on the sides of the screen repeatedly pulses after every two 1/4 beats. Colored circles (that are colored by group depending on which trip the black line is going to and fro) pop up on the screen, and the player has to hit these circles alongside the music's rhythm. Then there are the sliders, which are a couple of smaller circles connected in a chain. The player has to slide their finger through the slider, hitting all of the smaller circles in the process. Then there's the freezes (or holds), where the player has to keep their finger on a large circle with a bar running underneath, and wait until the black line has finished traversing the entirety of the freeze bar. Because Cytus is specifically written for multi-touch screens, "jumps", where the player has to simultaneously press two or more circles at one time, can be easily implemented.

As of the time of writing, Cytus comes with 26 songs (2 are cleverly hidden, and one of the songs requires the player to like Cytus on Facebook or follow Rayark's Cytus Twitter account), most of them unique and highly enjoyable. A song in Cytus is about a bit longer than an average DDR song (most Cytus songs do not reach two minutes in length). Rayark (the development team of the game) announced that the current roster of songs in the game are currently incomplete, and there are at least a hundred more songs that are about to come out in the future. They created an interesting release plan---every hundred thousandth registered player of the game awards everybody with ten more songs, possibly an entire new chapter; with all the songs presumably unlocked for everybody by the time Cytus gets a million official players.

Notice my use of the word "official" in the last paragraph. Cytus is available for both the iOS and Android mobile platforms, though it is not free (as in both freedom and beer). iOS users are expected to shell out approximately two dollars to get to play the game. Android users can initially pay the game for free, but as they play on the second and third chapters, they must wait out a 30-second and 45-second "cooldown" period (respectively) before the song plays. F2P Android players also have song restarting disabled by default.

F2P players are not included in the release "census", for obvious reasons. Additionally, those who acquired the game illegitimately through black repositories for jailbroken iOS devices and leaked .apk's for Android devices are also (hopefully) not counted for the census.

I bought the game off Google Play (with the same price as the iOS version) because I've decided that taking a mandatory 30/45 second break between each song isn't fun.

I have a couple of gripes with Cytus, especially with the Android port, since that's where I play most of the time anyway. Firstly, the game rendering performance is awfully poor on my Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101. I suspect that the primary reason for the lag is due to Nvidia implementing poorly-written Tegra drivers, where by doing so, they can effectively force game developers to optimize their games for the Tegra devices, rather than for every mobile GPU out there. The game runs smoothly on my HTC Desire HD, though there are some freezes here and there (but that's probably because of activities and apps fighting for CPU time in the background). There are also timing issues present within the Android port of the game, where a rather perfectly timed tap is registered with an annoying delay, turning some of my "Perfect" notes into measly "Good"s. So I can also hypothesize that some blame is to be put on the game developers themselves as well, probably because from my experience most games ported from iOS into Android are almost always badly implemented.

To solve the performance issue on my phone, I resorted to overclocking the CPU up to 1.2-1.4GHz, choosing the Performance CPU scaling governor, and/or closing every background activity and app that I can close. For my Transformer, however, overclocking the CPU doesn't seem to have any effect, nor does closing a couple of background applications. The only viable solutions I can think of are (1) just living with the game with bad lag and timing issues (I did get a couple of Million Masters with the tablet though), (2) Just play the game on my smoother phone (though thumb players will probably be a separate category for "competitions"), or (3) steal an iPad off an unfortunately picked friend who plays the game.

I also do hope that the game will offer its players the ability to import their own songs and use them in the game, though the iOS roots of the game will most likely prevent that from doing so, if the developers decide to make the iOS and Android versions of the game completely similar to each other in respect to features. It's the same thing that keeps "osu! for iOS" an unstable hack job for jailbroken iOS devices.

Debian Kit: Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu[Lucid/Precise] on your Android device

Because my very trusted and loyal IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad X60s has been "deskridden" for quite a while now, so to speak, I now turn to my Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 as my new mobile computer. Here are its basics:

• It runs Android 3.0 Honeycomb when I bought it, but currently it's running on the custom Android Revolution 4.0.3 ICS ROM, though "custom" doesn't seem like the right word here as they [Android Revolution] tries to keep themselves looking stock-like.
• It has a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, clocked at 1GHz a core.
• It has this shiny dock with a shitty keyboard, but still, it sure beats having to use a software on-screen keyboard.
• Did I mention the keyboard also serves as a second battery?

If you want more info on my Transformer, you're better off Googling it yourself and reading about them elsewhere.

The Transformer has been immensely useful for regular productivity tasks. The default browser, strangely named "Browser", and which I assume is based on the FOSS Chromium browser code, works well enough, though I keep Google's own Google Chrome browser with me as well (it's shinier, damn it). Both of them are great enough for casual browsing. For documents, I can easily access my stuff from Dropbox, though actually getting stuff into Dropbox is quite uncertain (though there are some workarounds for this). Polaris Office seems to be sufficient enough for basic document editing, though I'd like to liken it to a word processor built for a Vtech kid's "laptop". So most of the time I'm editing my documents through Google Docs, or not at all, since I hate word processors.

But I'm a student of Computer Science, a Software Engineer, and a hacker at heart, so this wasn't quite enough for me. In essence, the original "productivity suite" my Transformer offered to me at the start appears to be more appealing for children ("regular" Android tablet users might say the same thing to people with iPads, but I digress). So I started searching for solutions to my little problem.

My first attempt to fix the problem are, as ashamed as I am to admit it, using ready-to-use apps from Google Play. I got some text editors here and there, though they all sucked and couldn't hold a candle to Vim. I also grabbed a couple of C and C++ compilers, because sometimes I some code prototyping and I occasionally teach and help a certain list of people how to code. I also installed "Scripting Language for Android", or SL4A for short. SL4A, as far as I can understand, is a collection of interpreters and such for different scripting languages, most notably, Python and Perl; that you can run on your Android device, though it seems that native Android app development using scripting languages is still pretty much uncertain (sorry folks, you'll still have to live with Java).

But I wasn't satisfied with those yet. I preferred working in a command-line interface, so I needed a good terminal emulator. Unfortunately the one that you can easily get from Google Play will most definitely suck if you do not have root permissions on your device (this was before I decided to root the Transformer). Fortunately, there's Terminal IDE, a suite of command line software development tools that run on its own userspace. However, being jailed in its own userspace has some distinct disadvantages, one of these is that fact that everything in Terminal IDE is being jailed in its own userspace.

I tried SSH'ing remotely into my Thinkpad as well, though this effectively turns my Transformer into a dumb terminal, plus the Internet connections of the Philippines are too shitty to effectively maintain a stable remote connection.

Debian Kit

After a lot of lurking around on the web, however, I've discovered Debian Kit for Android. This little solution puts a complete GNU/Linux Debian installation inside your Android device, allowing it to work side by side with the Android OS, rather than, say, completely replacing or dual-booting alongside it.

The idea of a GNU/Linux distribution running inside Android isn't particularly new, however. Numerous people have gone lengths to do the same, though their solutions usually boils down to chroot'ing the distro inside Android. This means the distro will run in its own little "virtual environment" inside Android. The big disadvantage in this approach is that the distro's world is limited to that little environment, which means you'll have difficultly accessing the files on your Android device's SD card, etc.

Debian Kit does this differently. According to its creator, Debian Kit effectively makes Debian/Ubuntu run side-by-side with Android through cleverly-made symlinking and bind-mounting. It will allow you to access the different storage devices present on your Android device, which is extremely important, at least for me.

I won't be writing instructions on how to set up Debian Kit on your Android device here. If I did it would be completely redundant and unnecessary. The creator of Debian Kit has written adequate documentation regarding the installation and my install worked after I did one or two read throughs. Also, he made some screencasts for the people who does not RTFM.

Though, there is one important thing that he forgot to document, and that is manually adjusting Debian/Ubuntu's timezone. On a regular installation procedure of Debian, the installer automatically sets this up for you, but in Debian Kit this isn't present, so your timezone is automatically set at UTC +0. This is fine for you people living somewhere in the UK, but not for everybody else who aren't. This has been a pain in the ass for me for a long time until I finally found a solution through a bit of Googling.

The solution for the borked timezone is the here (courtesy of Geek Ride).

Right now I'm reinstalling Debian Kit on the Transformer because I thought by doing so, I could fix the timezone, but no it didn't, so now I'm about to configure everything again. Thankfully the only thing that's a nuisance to replace is my SSH key, but that should be easy to regenerate and remanage.

Why I think GNOME 3 and GTK+ 3 is subtlety trying to kill off the other DEs

As someone who spends hours toying with the look and feel of his machine's GUI (with only quite a few handful of people appreciating these efforts due to the fact that people today accept the ugly fact that they all look the same), consistency is a very important factor in the overall aesthetics of my work environment. Every window and dialog should look similar to each other in shape, color and form. Begrudgingly, the only operating system/suite of desktop applications that has accomplished the goal of total consistency is Mac OS X. However, I do so believe [from experience] that consistency can also be accomplished in a GNU/Linux environment, provided you have the time and patience to configure your system.

Most applications that use a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on GNU/Linux usually use either GTK+ (GIMP Toolkit, or for those who like extremely long names, the GNU is not Unix Image Manipulator Program ToolKit) or Qt. GTK+ is by far the more popular choice for developers, although Qt has done a bit in terms of catching up (I personally prefer Qt over GTK+, but that's probably because I have not gone knee deep in GTK+ programming yet). GTK+ is primarily used in the GNOME Desktop Environment, while Qt is primarily employed in the K Desktop Environment.

Because of its popularity, other DEs besides GNOME use GTK+ as well. XFCE (my personal choice and longtime favorite) and LXDE use it, as well as many other less popular DEs. Even if you only use a Window Manager (WM) for minimalism, most of the GUI applications you are going to run are probably using GTK+.

With the introduction of GNOME 3, however, the devs at GNOME also introduced a new version of GTK+, GTK+ 3. The third major release of GTK+ includes many new widgets and features that we shouldn't really care about (unless you're a developer developing GUI apps in GTK+), but it also introduced an annoying side-effect: the lack of backwards compatibility.

The explosive popularity of Ubuntu's Unity and the distributions that choose to ship with GNOME3 by default has in turn raised the popularity of GNOME3 and GTK+ 3 in return. Which means more developers are now aiming to target the demographic that uses Unity and GNOME 3 by using the latest version of GTK+. While this is nice for people who use Unity and GNOME 3, it's not really that beneficial for those who use DEs that only use GTK+ 2 by default (e.g. XFCE).

Here comes the problem: When an application uses GTK+ 2, it loads the GTK+ 2 theme that the user chose for their environment and uses the widgets and pretty things from that theme to decorate itself. And when the application uses GTK+ 3, it does the same except this time it loads up GTK+ 3. What happens then, if the application does not find a working theme for the GTK+ version it's running on? It will start to look like this:

Bleh, right? It kinda reminds me of the classic Windows look, when everything was all boxy and threatened to molest your eyes if you stare at it for far too long. What happened here is that gitg (the program above) uses GTK+ 3, but the GTK+ theme I have set on my machine doesn't support GTK+ 3. So gitg had no choice but to fallback to the ugly defaults that are only suitable for the root user.

It appears that the only viable solution for this is to find GTK+ themes that work in both GTK+ 2 and GTK+ 3. Which is a nuisance because there are only a handful of themes right now that support both versions. So when you find a really cool GTK+ theme online (hopefully it's not something that's trying to rip off OS X's look) and you've decided to check it out and install it, some applications are going to look completely out of place when they can't find the appropriate widgets from your theme for their GTK+ version.

But then again, some theme developers are kind enough to support both GTK+ 2 and GTK+ 3 engines to appeal to a wider audience. But only "some", though. So that means the blame partly goes to the theme developers as well, who are too busy trying to rip off the look of OS X and not investing that time to make rip offs of the OS X interface that works on GTK+ 2 and GTK+ 3.

And while we're on the topic of desktop environments, allow me to shamelessly insert a screenshot of my working environment (which is in no way looking like a rip-off of OS X):

My review of the updated Blogger interface

As I've stated in my previous post, I've just come back to writing on my blog again. It feels really good to be typing nonsense again, especially since my ThinkPad has one of the most comfortable keyboards I've ever used.

Anyway as I was writing my previous post, I stumbled upon a small bar with blue text on the top of Blogger's composed page. It said something along the lines of "Try Blogger's new interface". I was intrigued, because recently Google has been redecorating and redesigning the interfaces of many of their web services, starting from Gmail to Youtube and Docs. Being tired of the default Blogger interface (seriously they've been using that for more than 10 years), I was intrigued and decided to give it a try.

---

Consistency

Finally, Blogger looked like a proper Google Web Service rather than something separate from the rest of the services. The interface is highly inspired from Google Docs (which I greatly use and recommend) and Google+ (which I do not really use but highly recommend for other people who do not like Facebook). The sense of minimalism is apparent in the design, as well as intuitiveness. All major functions that you are ever going to need are on top of the area you are editing your post on, but then again, that's the de facto interface design of mostly everything you type text on.

However, added on top of that editor and its buttons is a row of very cleanly-laid and good-looking text and buttons, as well as your Google+ name and picture. However, the prominent "Google bar" that appears on most Google services such as Docs, Calendar and Gmail appears to be missing, but I don't really care since adding it probably makes it look out of place. It might also prove to be quite distracting.

I highly suggest that Google replace the buttons on the main toolbar though -- they appear to have been taken from Blogger's last look. I suggest that they use something similar to Google Docs' monochromatic, minimalistic buttons.

Editing

As a coder one might expect me to prefer editing my post in Blogger's raw HTML editor instead of the WYSIWYG editor Blogger provides. That would have been the case before Blogger updated its interface, as I find the editor to be ugly and boring as hell. However, with the new redesign I'm now more apt to use the WYSIWYG editor instead. It feels so clean, and the minimal design always inspires me. But that doesn't mean I don't need the HTML editor -- I still use it to fine-tune the elements of my post.

While I'm on that topic, the HTML editor appears to be very well designed as well, and it is noticeably wider than the Compose mode (I will now address the WYSIWYG editor as the Compose mode from now on). That's good because HTML tags can take up a lot of space and no one likes too many newlines.

Cons

No interface is complete without its flaws. As such, I will now proceed to list them here in this section.

No option to easily change formatting styles in Compose Mode

Someone who is experienced in word processors would prefer using "Formatting Styles" to format their bodies of text rather than just manually editing them. This is important for consistency, and it can also save you a lot of time.

However, on Blogger's Compose mode, there does not appear to be a menu or a button in the main toolbar that allows me to quickly switch formatting styles. This is disappointing because I have to go to the HTML editor and wrap my headers into appropriate header tags in order to turn them into headers. And yes, I know it will work as well if I wrap them in tags inside Compose mode, but it would look pretty much out of place with the rest of the interpreted text.

No indication of whether your post has been (automatically) saved

Google Docs has this neat little feature on the autosave that tells me whenever the document I'm working on has been automatically synced and saved to Google's servers. I really like that feature because I am paranoid that my files might not have been saved and that the next unfortunate crash of my browser would be the end of my work.

Blogger does not have that feature. The system automatically saves your work everytime you stop typing for a while, but it does not have that persistent indication that your work has been saved. While you are not typing to ponder some thoughts, Blogger automatically saves your work, and the Save button on top of the main toolbar briefly turns into a "Saving..." button that indicates that your work is being saved. While that is quite comforting, sometimes I'd like to know that Blogger has already saved my work some time ago while I stopped typing to ponder my thoughts, as I usually do so for extended periods of time and I usually leave myself in a state of short term memory loss afterwards.

My suggestion? Put something that tells me when the last edit I made was saved somewhere. I'm not saying the Save button should be removed entirely (as shown in Google Docs), because I think for this matter, it is still necessary.

---

I think that's all I have to say about the new updated Blogger interface for now. It's pretty, intuitive, and most importantly, minimal. There's just a couple of stuff that they should try to fix here and there. I'm quite too tired of further scrutinizing the interface and adding more feedback, because at the time I'm writing this it's already really late. But I do expect improvements to happen in the future, somehow.

The 3 best and worst websites I have visited this 2011

With computers being one of my areas of expertise, it comes to no surprise that I'm an avid user of the Internet. I've been on the Internet since 2004 and from my experience, the standards in website UI design have changed dramatically over the years. There are some who took the aspects of design further, leading to beautiful websites that are also easy to navigate. However, there are also websites who disregard UI design, which impacted the overall usefulness of their websites.

Here are the 3 best websites I have visited this year, along with their bad counterparts.

1. Good: Newsmap.jp

URL: http://newsmap.jp

Don't let the URL fool you, the site is not in any way written in Japanese. Newsmap is a small website that grabs news from various news feeds around the web and displays them in a neat, color-coded grid boxes. These boxes are arranged according to importance and popularity using size. So essentially, the most breaking and controversial news are displayed in large text, while the not-really-that-popular ones are in smaller text. You can untick categories in order to hide them and give more space to other categories. Finally, news feeds can also be arranged according to country and region, although support for all countries and regions are still incomplete (unlike Google News).

Bad: Inquirer.net

URL: http://inquirer.net

Inquirer.net is the web site of the Philippine newspaper "Philippine Daily Inquirer". Like most other Philippine websites, it has lagged behind in terms of UI standards. For example, it uses an awful lot of tables for its layout, resulting in too many columns and rows displayed on the homepage. It makes navigation difficult, despite multiple navigation bars in the top and bottom of the site's home page. However, they are successful in their efforts to put the most breaking news on the front, where they are easy to spot. Additionally, they use a pleasant and well-balanced color scheme that is easy for the eyes. They need some work on the layout, though.

2. Good: Reddit

URL: http://reddit.com

Reddit is a place where people share links and rate them by giving upvotes and downvotes (similar to Youtube's like/dislike system), and give comments to content posted on the site. One good feature of the site is giving the users the ability to create sub-reddits, which are similar to subcategories. There are subreddits for different kinds of topics, like gaming, worldnews, etc.

Bad: Digg

URL: http://digg.com

Digg is a competitor to Reddit, since Digg also allows its users to share, rate and comment links. However, content on Digg has been recently monopolized by large media outlets, leading to most of its users leaving and finding more "open" link sharing sites (a large number of them migrated to Reddit). Digg had a good design before the "Diggpocalypse", however, after that everything became too blue and it was a lot harder to navigate than before.

3. Good: Imgur

URL: http://imgur.com

imgur is an image hosting site. The description probably ends there, but what I like about imgur is its very minimalistic approach to hosting its users' images. You just have to select your images, upload them either individually or as an album, and when it's done, you will be given links of all kinds. And those links are free from URLs to imgur, unlike other image hosting sites like Imageshack...

Bad: Imageshack

Imageshack is another image hosting site. It is reliable, however, the interface of the whole site is very, very messy, with advertisements everywhere and such. Also, the interface is not very intuitive, and new users can get lost trying to navigate its screens. Worst of all, Imageshack adds URLs to the links it gives to you for your images. For example, its pre-generated BBCode for forums has a link to Imageshack ("Uploaded with Imageshack.us"), and if you remove that part, the BBCode and the image will not work.

(My) best and worst Android app of June 2011

So now I find myself writing a post about my best and worst Android applications, at least just for the past month of June 2011, anyway. I don't usually do these, because a post describing the best, worst and/or both of [something here] usually calls in the fanboys. And nobody wants that.

WARNING: Opinions follow.

The Android Market is known for being a complete mess with tens of thousands of incomplete and/or useless applications created by hundreds of incompetent developers. However, just like with every big pile of crap, there's always something valuable to be found underneath (or on the top of) the Android App Market. There are also numerous good apps in the Android Market and some of them actually prove that Android is better at certain things where iOS isn't. But I'm not here to spark a war against the iOS fans, I'm here to criticize two Android Apps.

The Best App: Lookout Mobile Security

The one thing that sucks about an app market that isn't regulated by a team of Nazis led by a guy in a black turtleneck sweater is that most people aren't responsible with freedom. Apple prunes the bad apps from the good, while Google doesn't care that much unless the application is a duplicate or malicious app. Therefore, there will come the inevitable time when you accidentally download a fake, duplicate copy of some paid app that turns out to be malware that steals everything valuable within your phone (and no, it's not the photos of yourself).

There are many applications on the Android Market that offer malware protection and "app scanning" (comparing your installed apps to a list of known malicious apps), but I think the best choice for this is Lookout Mobile Security. Lookout Security scans every new application that you download from the app market, compare it with their list of known malicious applications, and give you the signal on whether the app you downloaded is malicious or not. Not only that, Lookout Security scans all the apps installed prior to your installation of Lookout, and you can set it to regularly scan your apps every once in a while in case one of them are late bloomers.

You might notice that Lookout Security is a "suite". That means it's a bunch of services grouped together into one program. Not only does Lookout Security check your apps, it also offers a phone-tracking service. Using your phone's GPS and phone network, you can easily find your phone through Lookout's website. Some phone manufacturers provide their own phone-tracking software into some of their devices (I'm looking at you, HTC), but those services require the GPS to be on. If you happen to have lost your phone without its GPS turned on, Lookout can remotely turn on your phone's GPS so that it could track it. If that fails, Lookout will try to find your phone using Wi-Fi connections and nearby cell towers, which is inaccurate by a lot of meters, but reliable. Want to lock access or even wipe the valuable data off your phone (you shouldn't trouble yourself over your pictures)? Lookout can do that for you.

Lookout Mobile Security also offers backup and restore of your phone's data. While all free features are good enough for basic security, you might want to purchase premium, which you can buy for $29.99/year or $2.99 a month. Luckily, all users are able to try out the Premium for free for two weeks.

The Worst App: Vaulty

Vaulty is a small application whose primary purpose is to hide questionable content from your phone's main gallery. At least, that's how I used it. But sadly, it did not do its job well.

First of all, Vaulty works to hide photos and videos from your phone's gallery, where all of your multimedia content is displayed in full glory. It works like this: Pick a couple of photos and/or videos that you would like to hide, and Vaulty will put them in itself, all while removing those photos and/or videos from the gallery and moving them to Vaulty's app folder in your phone memory/SD card. To top all of that, access to the Vaulty...vault is restricted by a password of your choosing.

Seems good enough right? But why is it my worst app for June?

First, moving your files to Vaulty is a tedious process. You can either (1) Do it directly from Vaulty, but Vaulty does not have an option to choose multiple files, so if you got more than 20 files to hide it's gonna take a while. Or (2) You can "send" it to Vaulty by using the Share function in the gallery, which is faster, by the way.

However, once your files are hidden, it's really difficult to navigate through them inside the Vaulty vault. For example, if I hide a manga that's sorted and organized in its own folder in the gallery, and is arranged according to ascending file names, they will most likely be separated if I put them alongside another manga. They will be helplessly jumbled especially if every separate page has a filename like [pagenum].jpg. You put folders in Vaulty, Vaulty lets you see them spread out and cluttered. What shame.

Finally, Vaulty is not really that secure - Vaulty puts your "hidden" files in its folder, which is located in /sdcard/DCIM/vaulty. That means anyone can access your hidden files if they use a file browser like Astro.

A paid version of Vaulty is available, although the only feature it has over the free version is that Vaulty Premium is disguised as a Stocks App. That wouldn't be worth the money especially if you're hanging out with nosy stockbrokers.

What's a better solution for hiding your content from nosy people? Delete them and don't put them on your phone in the first place. However, if you really need to put these on your phone, but just want to hide them from the Gallery, the Gallery has an option to Show/Hide albums from view. This is great especially if you've arranged your questionable photos and videos into separate folders. They are still visible using a file browser though, but at least you're protected from nosy people who aren't that competent with Android phones.

Best Game App: Gun Bros

Gun Bros (pronounced as either Gun Brothers or Gun Brows) is a third-person survival shooter that pits the player against endless waves of monsters. You control one of either of the two Gun brothers, Percy and Francis Gun, the two superhuman members of F.R.A.G.G.E.D. (Freakishly Rugged Advanced Genetics Galatic Enforcement Division), and fight the T.O.O.L. (Tyrannical Oppressors Of Life).

Gun Bros is mainly survival. You are pitted against endless waves of opponents that get stronger and more numerous until your lose by either dying or quitting. As the player increases his level, new weapons and armor are unlocked, giving the player an edge over stronger opponents.

The best part about Gun Bros is its wittiness and humor regarding the age-old genre of shooter games. It has smooth, responsive controls, and every playthrough is bound to be challenging. And what's more, it's free.

Worst Game App: Attack of the Fanboys

Attack of the Fanboys is a survival third person shooter like Gun Bros, the only difference is that instead of being a superhuman fighting evil robots and aliens, you play a superhuman fighting evil fanboy zombies.

While the concept of the game is great, the game appears to be bleak, with its uninspiring level and enemy design. The controls were not very responsive. However, the game did succeed in introducing strategy to the survival shooter genre by adding a limit on ammo - something that Gun Bros did not bother doing.

My story of owning a Kindle 3

I am a man who enjoys great works of literature. Reading is one of my prized pastimes, and I regularly keep track of my reading progress like I keep track of my exercise activities. My favorite reading material are works of fiction, however, I also enjoy reading non-fiction works like articles, opinions, etc., so long as they are relevant to my interests. I am fond of my ability to stay engrossed and lost in reading for extended periods of time. The average human attention span has reached an all-time low for the past few decades that reading an entire novel from beginning to end sounds like running a hundred miles while on crutches. If you have reached this far, congratulations. Most people wouldn't even get past the first sentence. But I digress.

To fuel my need of literature, I carry books along with me. I typically read them during hours where the time is better spent doing something other than just staring blankly into the distance, like while on the bus. It is uncommon for me to find time to read books full-time, as my time is divided more unevenly than the Philippine social system.

Books suck for a couple of reasons though. First, they take up space. I already think that my HTC Desire HD consumes too much space due to its 4.3" screen, despite it being almost as thin as a copy of Newsweek. An average pocket paperback weighs just about the same as my phone, though they are much thicker and larger.

Friends once asked me, "Why don't you get yourself a tablet?" "Sure," I replied. "Which one?" "The iPad." they would reply, and I would later contemplate why my dear friends would recommend such shitty contraptions. Knowing myself, I would probably root for an Android tablet, like a Samsung Galaxy Tab, but I couldn't afford such.

To hell with tablets. They're overrated expensive toys for little boys and girls. Besides, no one really uses tablets to read books anyway (unless comic books and manga count). Most people use their tablet computers to just play Angry Birds. I have no intention to spend more than half a thousand dollars just to play some game involving flightless, suicidal birds and architecturally-talented green pigs. If I owned a tablet, I would only read books and manga on them. So why wouldn't I just get a device whose primary purpose is to view works of literature?

So I lurked around the Internet (probably in a three-piece pinstripe suit, black, shiny loafers and a monocle), and I discovered e-readers. What makes e-readers completely different from tablets is the screen. Tablet computers use touch LCD screens, while e-readers use e-ink screens. E-ink screens are different from LCD screens because they use "electronic paper" that manipulate ink (real ink) to display text in different shades of gray. E-ink screens are superior to LCDs when it comes to contrast and reading in direct sunlight. Text is really much clearer on e-ink screens when compared to LCDs. However, since e-ink screens do not have backlights, it is impossible to read in the dark without an external light source. Additionally, since e-ink screens manipulate ink, it takes a while for them to refresh, which makes them incapable of displaying animation.

I've researched many different e-readers when I stumbled upon the BeBook line of e-readers. They were inexpensive and seemingly reliable (with a touch interface to boot). I have also perused the Sony line of e-readers, which were touch-capable but a lot more expensive. However, I immediately understood that choosing a not-very-well-known brand of e-readers would merit a small library of books. It's much like choosing an iPhone over an Android or a Windows Mobile phone because they have more (albeit shittier) apps.

I went to Amazon and examined the Kindle 3. There were two versions of the Kindle - one has both Wifi and 3G connectivity, and the other only has the former. I did not need a 3G connection - Wifi will have to do. For $139, it was a pretty sweet deal. I only had to add forty dollars for shipping and customs. It was scheduled to arrive a week after I ordered, but it came four days later, which was a great bonus.

The Kindle 3 was indeed an amazing device to read electronic books on. The screen itself was very crisp, and handled itself in bright sunlight. The device was lightweight and somehow pocketable, if your pocket can carry pocket paperbacks. I bought a jacket for it, which was not really a jacket built for the Kindle 3 but for the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It fitted snugly since the Kindle was about as large as the Galaxy Tab.

It was happy moments for two weeks after that. I brought my Kindle everywhere, and nobody really gave shit about it because it looked like a small, leather notebook when I carried it by hand. I've finished reading George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita", and a couple of other classics with my Kindle.

All of those moments came to an end, however, in an unfortunate Sunday. I was sitting in a grassy meadow, with the Kindle in my pants pocket. When I fished it out to continue reading James Patterson's "Tick Tock", I was surprised to find the top of my screen "cracked", with a tear running diagonally from the top left corner to the middle right side of the screen. I thought it was just temporary so I began to repeatedly refresh the screen by using the "Alt-G" key combination. It was futile. The e-ink screen was cracked from the inside. The Kindle was broken.

My first instinct was to contact Amazon's Customer Service and kindly ask for a replacement device. I first contacted them through e-mail, but they replied that they could not process replacements through e-mail and I have to call their international phone line. Now, I've heard horror stories about customer service representatives on the phone, so I've decided to stall for at least three days before calling up Amazon. I read some comments of people on the Web about Amazon's customer service when it comes to Kindles. They say that the customer service was excellent, and they will agree to send me a replacement device with no questions asked, provided that I return the broken Kindle in return. I took their word for it and I gave it a try, and soon I was sent a replacement Kindle (which would arrive in about four to five days of course).

The Kindle has not yet arrived today, however, I am anxiously anticipating its arrival. Once it arrives, I'll send the broken Kindle back to Amazon. Hopefully I'll only have to do this once, though some people claim they are on their third or even fourth Kindle replacement.

Overall, the Kindle is a great inexpensive way to view electronic books. However, if you want something that can take a bit more wear and tear, I'd suggest something like the Sony Reader or the Bebook. Or just stick to reading real books.

HTC Desire HD Review

I have recently acquired a kickass HTC Desire HD, for reasons I won't divulge here, but let's just say that I've decided to dump iOS and give Android a try. Particularly because anything bearing the Apple logo (with the exception of my IBM Thinkpad X60s, I sarcastically stuck an Apple logo on its front) means it can be used by kids and will only be used by kids, or old people. Also, they can cost a whole semester's tuition or two. Since I do not fit in either demographic, and is not the kind who wastes money on shiny crap, I've decided to give Android a try with the HTC Desire HD.

The phone set me back Php26,700 (roughly US$ 603). It wasn't part of any postpaid plan, just bought it open line (meaning it's not stuck to any network), and set it for prepaid. When compared to the rest of the world, the system is pretty different in the Philippines, prepaid network services are available here in this country, which means you don't have to be prisoner to a network provider, and SIM cards are easily bought and used anonymously.

This review won't be that comprehensive. I won't go and discuss the insides of the phone, its technical specifications that much. I'll usually only review the essentials, and I've categorized them into categories courtesy of myself.

Performance

Speed is of the essence.

The HTC Desire HD is the fastest phone I've ever handled, thanks to its Qualcomm MSM 8255 1Ghz Scorpion processor. By the time I'm writing this review, 1Ghz smartphone processors are apparently the norm, and the world is currently bracing itself for the hour when dual core phones are distributed on the market. Also, the Desire HD's 768MB of memory allows me to multitask to my heart's content, although it poses some disadvantages (see below). Finally, Android 2.2 (Froyo) is faster and snappier here than its predecessor and the iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G. Comparing the iPhone 3G's performance to the Desire HD would be like comparing the performance of a bicycle with broken gears with a 1996 Dodge Viper GTS.

Concerning storage capacity, the Desire HD carries a disappointing amount of internal space - just about a gigabyte, but you can add in a microSD card with a size up to 32GB, which is probably more than adequate.

Score: 9/10

Market

While the Apple App Store itself is pretty huge and filled with millions of useless apps like flashlights, compatibility machines and Tap Tap Revenge, the Android Market is pretty much the same, albeit smaller, and does not include Tap Tap Revenge. Unlike the App Store though, the Android Market is a complete mess. While some apps on the iPhone are completely free on the Android (one example is Angry Birds), some weren't, a striking example is Remember the Milk, which is pretty disappoint since me and my friends use RTM to organize ourselves. I think the reason for this is that most developers who write for the iPhone first must have rewritten the app for the Android as an afterthought. Consequently, this led to generally bad ported apps.

Also, since Android phones have a lot of performance differences with each other, particularly with screen size, processor speed, memory and whatnot, some apps are optimized for slow phones, others for fast phones such as the Desire HD. Not like I'm complaining, because [1] My phone is fast, and [2] There were a lot of game apps in the App Store which ran horrendously slow on my iPhone 3G.

Score: 6.5/10

Syncing

Since Android phones don't usually come with magical and painfully slow software like iTunes, the Desire HD can be quite a bitch to sync, especially when your music collection is in question. Android phones, however, are associated with your Google account, which means your contacts, calendar, etc. are all synced with your Google account. Winamp is currently touting its ability to sync to Android phones, however, my Winamp doesn't really store any local media in its library, it only imported itself from iTunes. Fortunately, there are plenty of third-party syncing applications available on the Web, some are even able to integrate itself with iTunes (if slow media players are your forte), and there is a chance that your phone's manufacturer bundled your phone with their own syncing tools, that usually suck like shit (according to my experience with such software).

Score: 7/10

Battery Life

As with all smartphones (especially Androids), the Desire HD's battery life is a lot shorter than the lifespan of a domestic house fly, especially if the phone is running on 3G signals all the time. While the solution for this is simple (don't use 3G, goddamnit), the Desire HD, along with other phones not created by Apple give you the ability to change your phone's battery without taking it to some shiny, white shop to be replaced. However, the phone's powerful processor and continuous multitasking, together with its huge 4.3" screen can drain the battery quickly. Some apps even quietly but quickly drain your battery in the background because some of them go on recursive loops trying to refresh itself (even when there is no Internet connection), so there.

Score: 6/10

Media

One of the key selling points of the Desire HD is its oversized 4.3" SuperLCD screen, so no wonder HTC decided to add "HD" to this phone's name, right? I find it great to watch videos of all sorts on the Desire HD, even Youtube videos (provided that I don't get the read the comments). Also, its 480x800 (218 ppi) makes reading e-books and manga very comfortable. Sound quality is excellent too, with its built-in Dolby Mobile surround system and SRS effects, which can be greatly improved more if you have the proper sound output gear (such as good noise-cancelling headphones or a true 5.1 surround sound system).

Score: 9/10

Uniqueness

While the Desire HD follows the design guidelines of Android phones (huge screen, four navigation buttons below), it does stand out from the rest with its non-physical navigation keys and its "totally-not-ripped-off-from-the-iPhone" appearance. The backside of the phone is in matte, unlike most other phones who imitate the iPhone's glossy finish.

The Desire HD is also highly customizable on the inside. You can use live wallpapers (something my iPhone did not have), have several home screens, and other customizable features common to Android phones. While customizing your Android is a little on par with customizing an iPhone, Androids are easier to customize than iPhones since you don't have to jailbreak your phone to have a totally different look. Unless flashing a new ROM is your thing.

Score: 8/10

Misc

There's one thing Google overlooked in Android. There's NO fucking proxy configuration support for wireless networks. Sure, my Desire HD is fast, not too shiny, but it's unable to connect to proxy servers. This sucks, because I spend the majority of my time in DLSU, where our wireless network there is protected by a proxy server. The only option to have proxy configurations is by gaining root (super user) access to the phone, or installing a new ROM (particularly Cyanogenmod), both of which will instantly void my phone's 1 year warranty. I don't really need warranty that much, since I can pretty much fix problems myself, but I think I'll wait a good two weeks first and see if the phone has any defects before I decide to fiddle with it.

Waiting for Gingerbread (Android 2.3) to be supported by HTC would be useless since apparently, from what I've heard from some comments, Google continues to flip the bird at corporate users by ignoring the requests (no, demands is a better term) for proxy support.

Score: 0/10

Verdict

The Desire HD is overall a great phone for media enthusiasts and those who thinks performance-wise in the phone while also being conscious about his budget, since it costs less than an iPhone 3G (at least in my country). It's also a great way to stay away from those kids who got those iPhones that all look alike, without sacrificing your dignity.

Overall: 8/10

The Great Reinstallation of '10

A few days ago I have successfully finished the rigorous task of repartitioning my drives and reinstalling everything. Now this might seem like an easy job for some of you, but here are the objectives I have to meet during reinstallation:

1. All important data are to be backed up and restored as is. This is not entirely difficult, but it is one of the objectives with grave importance. Most of my important documents are stored in my external HDD, Network Attached Storage (NAS) and my offsite Winamp is known for its shitty way of backing up your files. I've decided to just backup its database (as well as with iTunes for my iPhone), and just restore the files in the same location and partition as it was before so that they could easily find it.

2. I will have to equally distribute my partitions. As planned, my Windows and Linux partitions will get 40GB and 30GB of space respectively. A central storage drive formatted as NTFS (the Windows NT filesystem) will be shared by both operating systems. I'll explain more of this later.

3. Instead of Ubuntu, I'm installing Arch Linux as my Linux distro. This reason is primarily because Ubuntu is becoming less of the "Linux for human beings" as it was advertised and more of the "Linux for Mac Users". It's filled with bloatware, and horribly now very easy to use. Unlike Ubuntu, which practically works right out of the box, Arch Linux is light, but reliable and, ultimately customizable. It will be harder to set up, but more rewarding in the end.

As a matter of fact, you can use this post as some sort of a guide if you're planning to dual-boot Windows 7 and Arch Linux on a single hard disk drive. To avoid repetition, I'll post my laptop's specifications here.

IBM Thinkpad x60s
Age: 5(?) years
Intel Core Duo L2400 x86 (32-bit) @ 1.66Ghz
2.25GB of RAM
250GB Seagate 5400RPM HDD

(NOTE: If you have multiple hard disk drives, this will not cover your needs. However, I heard that multi-booting using multiple HDDs is easier than just using one HDD.)

(NOTE: I will not be covering how I backed up my data, as that wouldn't be too hard to do.)

Phase one: Setting up partitions

The first step would be repartitioning the hard disk. Take note that you will not be able to do this in the Windows 7 DVD, as it is really only limited to creating NTFS partitions of its own. To do this, you will need the GParted live CD, or you could use an Ubuntu Live CD, as they have GParted inside.

(NOTE: I have first attempted to repartition my drives on the Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Live CD, but GParted crashed shortly after the process and I could not get back to GParted just to check if everything was alright. I ended up using the Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Live CD instead.)

After booting from the Ubuntu Live CD, I went to System->Administration->GParted. There, the filesystem table of my hard disk drive is shown. I deleted all the partitions, and then repartitioned them as:

/dev/sda (This is my HDD)
-> /dev/sda1 40GB NTFS (Windows 7)
-> /dev/sda4 30GB Extended (Arch)
-> /dev/sda5 10GB ext4 / (root)
-> /dev/sda6 2GB linux-swap (swap for Arch)
-> /dev/sda7 (the rest of /dev/sda4) ext4 /home
-> /dev/sda3 ~180GB NTFS (storage)

(NOTE: /dev/sda2 is used by Windows 7 as another partition, probably used for system restore. It is always 100MB in size, and takes up a partition in your HDD. There are, however, workarounds in removing this partition, if you plan on triple-booting.)

After successfully partitioning my hard disk drives, I prepared my Windows 7 Home Premium DVD (this is genuine, by the way, set me back Php5,500) to reinstall Windows.

Phase two: Installing Windows 7

I actually thought of installing Windows XP instead of Windows 7, as I enjoy XP better with its flexibility and being easily customizable (not to mention being completely compatible with LiteStep). But since that would mean tossing away five thousand pesos, I've decided to just continue with Windows 7. At least it's shinier.

Installing Windows 7 is a pretty straightforward process. It's particularly idiot-proof, so it's not really difficult. You can try to format your NTFS drives again here in Windows 7 (as it does the job better, I think), but take care not to touch the Linux extended partition. It will appear to Windows as blank and unpartitioned, but do not touch them or you will have to repeat phase one again.

After installation, I checked if my storage drive was present. It appeared in Windows as D:\, so I went ahead and created folders that would be shared by Windows and Arch (Photos, Music, Videos, Downloads, Games, etc.) and set the Windows Libraries to the location of the custom folders. Then I rebooted and inserted the Arch Linux Installation CD.

Phase three: Installing Arch Linux

The installation of Arch Linux is really different from Ubuntu's. In Ubuntu, you just input some information about yourself (location for UTC time, keyboard layout, etc.), and just let the setup do everything else for you. In Arch Linux, there is a semblance of a GUI setup present, but it's more of a list of everything you need to do before you copy the base files of the OS. Since describing everything I did during the installation would take too long, I suggest you consult the Arch Linux Wiki's Beginner Guide and the Official Arch Linux Install guide to get started. I won't be discussing how to use the Arch Linux installer, I'll be discussiing what I did after installing.

(NOTE: If you are just starting out with Linux, don't choose Arch as your first distro. It's difficult, and it's build primarily for Linux users who wants to know what's going on inside a Linux system. Ubuntu is primarily a good choice for those who are just starting out in Linux.)

After installing, I was transported back to the basic CLI terminal. I logged in as root (as there are no user accounts yet), and created a user account for myself. Using pacman (Arch Linux's PACkage MANager), I installed sudo (super use do, gives temporary root privileges for a command), the alsa mixer (for sounds) and the X Window Manager (xorg). As I want my Arch Linux setup to be minimal and un-shiny as possible, I've opted to install LXDE as my desktop environment, which turned out to be quite a pain to setup, so I removed it and installed the more familiar XFCE DE instead.

Right after installing my desktop environment of choice and starting X (using startx), I was greeted with the empty XFCE desktop. The extra packages that come with XFCE4 was not present, so I installed them using pacman. I also installed and configured ntfs-3g, which provides stable NTFS reading and writing, so now Arch can mount, read, and write to and from the two NTFS partitions in my hard disk.

Setting up my wireless network connection was the hard part. Although I was spared of having to find the drivers for my wireless device since the Arch repositories have them, managing the device itself was a pain. So far the method I used was through the CLI network management tool, netcfg. I added various network profiles like home (connecting to my home Wlan), home-eth0 (for connecting to my home ethernet), and others, which will make connecting to networks with profiles easily by just typing "sudo netcfg " to a terminal. Of course, this sucks if I am travelling and have to find a network to connect to, because I will have to manually scan and add a profile for that new network. But it works, and that's what matters.

Phase four: Restoring backups

This is pretty easy. I just move my backups back to the storage drive. I installed whatever is necessary to Windows and have successfully synergized it with Arch. Now they are pretty much working with each other, although I must admit Windows is a bitch. Currently I am in the never-ending process of customizing my desktops to get my dosages of desktop deviance (and shininess).

Result of no-protection XP challenge

When I installed Windows XP on a virtual machine on my laptop some time ago, it wasn't just because I want to experience nostalgia from using old OS'es, it's also to challenge my resilience on security and protection.

How does this challenge work? It's easy. I will never install any anti-malware software on my computer for some weeks or so. Additionally, since my copy of Windows is not genuine at all, it won't receive important security updates from Microsoft, so that's another layer of protection removed. Then I would do whatever I always do online. Trolling, researching, reading the news, maybe even download some pr0ns for...safekeeping. So there. I'll go out in the wild without anything watching your back for a few weeks, then I'd download Trend Micro House Call to scan for malware that came through.

Why did I use XP? Because with all the Windows versions I've used, XP was the most vulnerable, wherein I had way too many run ins with malware in the past. I believe XP is the most vulnerable operating system out there when it comes to malware. It's like a Thai prostitute - ugly and full of viruses. The only advantage XP has over its successors is that it uses way less resources than Vista and 7. So there.

Of course, I took every security precaution available. To safeguard myself against keylogging, I used LastPass to encrypt my logins and on-screen keyboards while inputting usernames and passwords. I even used Tor so that those tracking websites won't be able to remotely view my geolocation.

Results

House Call just finished scanning my computer for malware, and it found something. Great thing is, it's alone, and it's just some regular adware that I probably got from browsing pornographic websites (you know those popups of Adultfriendfinder and other sites? They give you that). The file detected was cmdow.exe, and its corresponding threat was, according to Trend Micro, ADWARE .0737EEDD. According to the data in the link, this spyware does nothing but take my browsing history and send it somewhere for marketing purposes. Well they're in for a big surprise then.

Also, cmdow.exe, according to further Googling, is not originally a fatal binary file, but a tool designed to modify commandline windows, such as not allowing the user to close the window (because some users freak out at the sight of an ugly DOS-prompt and close it immediately, hampering some installation procedures in the process). However, in this case, I don't recall having to use this, and I don't really need it, so I just removed it.

I also managed to install and run Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware (an excellent software, I might add), which managed to snag a trojan executable and a dangerous registry value. Also, it detected three potentially dangerous security settings, which was the Windows Security Center being turned off, but I intentionally set it that way for this challenge.

After a quick system reboot, I decided to run a scan again, just to be safe. I won't be posting any more details and its results, because that would be a waste of time.

Conclusion

• It is possible to be malware-free without some sort of security software


• Windows XP is very vulnerable to attacks


• Virtual machines are probably the best way to protect yourself against malware, by using a fake OS as a shield

Nostalgia is a pain in the ass

After successfully installing Windows XP on a virtual machine, I was immediately amazed at my recently-earned power of installing multiple operating systems on my notebook without having to buy another system or use multi-booting. I’ve decided to amp up my virtual machine craze and install one of Windows’ infamous builds: Windows 98.

Apparently I have downloaded not only an image of Windows 98 SE but also Windows 95. I don’t plan to install Win95 right now since I’d like to try out the operating system I’m more familiar with. The first build of Windows (and first operating system) I’ve ever touched was Windows 95, and that was like twelve years ago. But I’ve been with Windows 98 for a long time, before I made the jump to XP in 2002.

I used VirtualBox for virtualization, because I love open-source applications and I dislike the corporate feel of VMWare. The virtual machine for Windows 98 isn’t really that taxing for my laptop. I think Firefox would grab more system resources than Windows 98 inside a virtual machine. I just needed 64MB of RAM, which is really a lot for Windows 98, and a 4GB virtual hard drive. I took the specifications off my old Compaq notebook which is retired and resting in my closet. It ran Windows 98, and was one of the most powerful notebooks during its time. A Pentium II 366Mhz, 128MB of RAM, 4GB of HDD, what more could you want in 1998?

Installation

Windows 98 takes longer to install than Windows XP, because 98 has all that 16-bit crap that happens to slow down its processes on my virtual machine. I laughed at the fact that the boot setup installer mentioned that a HDD larger than 512MB is considered “huge”. I should probably go back in time and show them a 32GB SD card.

The installation process of Windows 98 was flawed and boring. Sure, it only has 8-bit colors during installation, and while I’m installing a new OS I don’t really need Aero effects. I think Windows 98 should have just used a text-based installer, because it does its job of looking pretty very badly. Also, the processes are not streamlined to a “set it and go outside” layout, unlike its older successors. After one hour of waiting, you are expected to input some information, wait for another twenty minutes, input more information, etc.

It even took ten minutes to set up “Plug-and-Play”, one of Microsoft’s failed attempts to monopolize by “supporting” numerous devices through easy installation. It was developed before the days of USB, wherein buying a mouse will most likely include a floppy disk inside for drivers.

Trying it out

After a few more setting changes by Windows 98, I was greeted by the familiar 16-bit interface, the gritty colors, the 640x480 resolution. The interface was very slow, probably slower than the average Filipino’s computer riddled with all sorts of crap. This was due to the fact that Windows 98 and its predecessors schedules (or prioritizes) its tasks poorly.

So, despite Virtualbox having the ability to run Windows 98, it does work, but it’s so slow it’s not really that useful. I can’t even connect to the Internet because this “MSN Internet Access” program thinks I’m some guy stuck in the late 90’s by trying to convince me that I’m using a dial-up modem to connect to the Internet.

Conclusion

While currently Windows 98 on my system is highly uncomfortable and slow, it works. Maybe the basics, but at least it boots up despite crashing and BSOD’ing itself a couple of minutes later. I’m yet to try out Windows 95 though, and maybe installing a couple of other operating systems such as Arch Linux and Chrome OS.

Virtualed XP

Recently I have successfully finished the task of virtualizing Windows XP under my Windows 7 OS in my Thinkpad X60s. Since I'm fond of installing XP stuff for the sake of nostalgia (after a failed attempt to make Ubuntu look like XP), I knew adding Windows XP to my boot configuration would be unnecessary, so I turned to virtual machines.

What are virtual machines?

Virtual machines are non-physical computers running instructions inside a host computer, similar to a real, physical machine. In layman terms, it's like Inception: a computer within a computer. This is very useful for testing compatibility issues, like testing if your Windows 7 program could work on earlier versions of Windows without using another computer or installing the OS on a separate partition. You can go as many virtual computers as you like, so long as your hardware capabilities can permit. You can have like a computer within a computer within a computer within a computer, and so on.

Disadvantages of virtual machines

Virtual machines will always grab a chunk of the host OS's resources. This means your host OS (the real computer) should have some spare resources to give to the guest OS. Processing power isn't really that much of a requirement, unless you're installing a modern operating system like Vista, 7, or OSX. But memory is a must, and for virtual PCs, 2GBs of RAM or more is recommended.

Also, it can't run as fast as a real operating system can. But it can do whatever a real OS could do.

Cool stuff about virtual machines

One of the most important traits a virtual machine possesses, is that, it is not directly linked to your host OS. It only runs inside the host OS, but it rarely directly communicates or shares files with the host OS unless you set it to. This means that whatever happens in your virtual machine stays in your virtual machine. This is great, because if your guest OS catches a virus, it stays there and it will never infect the host OS unless the guest has privileges to write to a shared folder on the host OS.

You can use the guest OS as a sandbox, go to sites you never dare to visit lest your computer gets messed up, and see what happens. If the guest OS gets nuked by malware and whatnot, don't panic. You can always just remove it and install another one, provided you don't have much sensitive data on your guest OS.

On a side note, virtual machines could be excellent for trolling, as it adds an extra layer of anonymity and protection. Combine that with a good relaying service, some proxies, and good privacy ethics, and you're good to go as a faceless person on the Internet, e.g. a complete Anon. Just don't troll too much, ok?

What you'll need for a virtual machine

- Some spare RAM (256MB+ recommended)
- At least 8GB of HDD space
- A (hopefully genuine and legal) copy of your preferred guest OS
- Time

I used some Windows XP disc I found lurking in my disc archives, it was marked as "Service Pack 3" for the lulz, as I recall I have bought it sometime around 2006. Now remember that the SP3 for Windows XP didn't come until recently in 2009 or so. But this copy was good - uxtheme.dll was already patched, so it had custom themes of its own, it included a basic suite of Microsoft Office 2003, and 2005 versions of Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox and Winrar. At least there aren't any bloatware.

What not to do in the vicinity of a computer: Eating

You probably must have heard this quite a million times. You have heard in it television, you have read it one of your computers manuals (you did, right?), and maybe countless other people on the Internet have told you so. Maybe you stopped eating after hearing them, or maybe you just let your inner glutton out and just gorged away in front of your keyboard.

And what would happen next? Most likely you’ll attract the nearest ant horde, or maybe even have roaches gnawing under your keyboard. Hell, there are even stories of worms and even baby mice found in all sorts of places in a computer.

And guess what? This happened to me, quite a number of numerous times. Thankfully, the enemy are just some regular fire ants.

These guys, although they appear much smaller. 

First wave: Desktop keyboard

So I’ve been shitty in keeping my keyboard from being shitty. I became fond of eating all forms of breads and pastries in front of my desktop, usually while playing GTAIV or Left 4 Dead. The bread crumbs, which naturally fall down from the bread, also naturally attracts the local ant empire who illegally set base in my house long ago.

They immediately formed ranks and began scavenging my keyboard, making typing a thing for nightmares to come since every time you hit a key, there’s a high chance that a squad of ants will rush out from under that key and try to climb up your arm.

Thankfully the ants are no match for an air compressor. You don’t really have to kill them with fire, just a little blowing of wind would sort them out.

Second wave: Power supply

This was the costliest but least annoying of the ant attacks. Supposedly, a couple of ants made the weirdest and most retarded mistake of thinking that the best place to get their ant grub is the insides of my power supply. Of all places, my fucking PSU. So one night while I was probably sleeping or challenging sleep, they decided to raid my computer (which was on at the time) and committed mass suicide on my PSU.

The next morning I was surprised to see that my computer has mysteriously turned off, and believing ghosts are just pussies who believe in afterlife rather than zombification, I did what a good computer user would do. Turn the computer on again.

But it did not budge. I tried to turn it on again, but then again it didn’t. I checked the power lines for any loose or removed sockets, then traced the wires back to my power supply, where I noticed one little ant coming out of the PSU like a wounded soldier from Vietnam. I ignored him, but a few seconds later one of his comrades followed, and then another, and soon after you’ll discover a group of ants emerging from the PSU, battered and wounded, enough to inspire someone to create a Call of Duty game featuring ants.

I took the PSU out of the case and examined it. I lit up the inside and was slightly appalled at what I saw – a mass grave of dead ants, some dismembered, some clinging on the PSU cooling fans. Not that I’m appalled from what I’ve seen, as I enjoy witnessing corpses of all kinds, especially when they come in bunches, but I’m disgusted because I have to shell out a hundred and fifty dollars again to get the same exact PSU unit again.

Third Wave: My laptop, fuck

As much as I love or hate ants, I don’t really mind them running around in my house. I mean, they’re part of this weird thing environmentalists (read: hippies) call an ecosystem right? They’re just little fools whose main purpose is to clean up the little bits of food and help bacteria in eating off rotting carcasses. However, they appear to have looked for food in the wrong place.

Returning home after my finals, I received news that the ants have assaulted my laptop and is now making a forward hive inside. And I don’t mean that they’re just hiding underneath its keyboard or anything. I meant that they were inside, gnawing on the motherboard, riding the heatsink, etc.

My first idea was to blow the shit out of the ants using explosives TNT nuclear bombs compressed air, however it didn’t do much since I can’t blow much of the inside of my laptop with it being tightly closed. I tried the belief that ants hate heat, so I tried to keep my computer on for three days and two nights, but to no avail. They just get out of the laptop while it’s hot, then come back in when it begins to cool.

I opened up the laptop to peer at its internal organs and see that it’s currently infected with ant shit. Seeing that I don’t want to intentionally fry the components with vacuum or air static, I sent it to a nearby laptop technician, who accepted to clean up my system despite him insisting me to get an insect exterminator instead.

Currently I do not have my laptop with me, and I’m afraid it will stay that way for three or five days or maybe even a whole week if the technician decides to just procrastinate and wank off. Fortunately I won’t be needing my laptop at the moment, because I needed some time with my desktop, the whole week’s my semestral break and I don’t really need it that much.

Lesson

So, lesson learned. Don’t eat nowhere near your computer. If you are feeling the urge to gobble something up, make sure you stay out within a six foot radius from your computer. I’m sure you enjoy sitting outside, eating a pasty and drinking a cappuccino, while watching people get kicked in the nuts on Failblog, but don’t do it, for your computer’s sake. Otherwise, the situation with pests invading your computer could escalate to this:

Oh shit.

Cherry Mobile Q5i: A review

I forgot to tell everybody about my new phone, the Cherry Mobile Q5i. I just bought it a week and a half ago and forgot to write a review for it because I lost track of time and I was having too much fun (aka procrastinating). Read long and find out why I prefer to call this phone the “poor man’s smartphone”.

The Phone

Overview

The Cherry Mobile Q5i is a Philippine phone with Filipinos in mind, but apparently has borrowed ideas from the big mobile phone players in the world. To keep up with today’s trends, it is equipped with a smooth physical QWERTY keyboard, similar to those of a Blackberry’s. It comes in four colors: Solid yellow w/black back, solid red w/black back, black w/blue back and trim (this is what I got) and black w/white back and trim.

Model

The Q5i is part of the Q series, which is, a bunch of phones who share a common trait – QWERTY keyboards. The Q5i is not really one of the newest and state of the art releases in its family, but it is one of the most reliable. Its successors include the Trident (triple SIM capability), and various other Q series phones.

Features

The phone itself is very feature packed. Here are some of them:

• Dual SIM capabilities. Every local phone has to have this, since most Filipinos are part of at least two cellular networks.
• Mobile Web Browsing. The Q5i handles true websites very poorly, because it can only use a GPRS connection and it has a very basic browser built mainly for mobile websites. However, it does its job pretty well.
• Touchpad control. The phone uses a touchpad instead of buttons to navigate through the interface. Touchpads are similar to those used in iPods other than the iPod touch.
• Java support. Not all local phones are capable of basic Java programs, but the Q5i is different. There are three Java applications installed by default – a mobile browser, a Yahoo! Messenger app, a MSN Messenger app, plus a couple of games.
• Improved audio. The Wolfson audio chipset used in the Q5i is similar to those found in the previous generation of iPods. It allows for clearer audio and support for a 3.5mm audio jack, instead of some proprietary jack.
• Dual MicroSD slots. The phone has two slots for MicroSD flash memory cards. Currently I’m using two 2GB MicroSD cards, however, I have no idea if the phone supports MicroSDHC (MSD High Capacity) cards (4GB and higher).
• Other features such as FM radio, a 2MP camera, a video camera, video playback support, image viewing, and no TV (whew).

Interface

The interface is speedier and prettier than my previous Cherry Mobile D15. It has simple transitions that makes you feel that the phone isn’t slowing down on you. Also, the colors are smooth and easy to the eyes.

Portability

The phone is wider than my previous D15, due to the fact that it possesses a QWERTY keybaord, but the Q5i is very lightweight for its size. It fits in most pockets, and can be easily fished out if needed.

Its battery capacity is quite high, a natural trait for local phones. The battery stays alive for at least five days with constant audio playback using headphones. I’m guessing it should last a week if its just on standby and you’re using it just for texting and calling.

Durability

The phone’s exterior is very durable, as, contrary to popular belief, it can resist falls and shock without much permanent damage. The pins and sockets of the phone however, are susceptible to damage under pressure, I’ll explain more of that later.

My phone (no, I meant the Q5i I have, not the other Pinoy phone brand)

My Q5i has been in my possession and care for about one and a half weeks, and so far the only problem I had with it is that the 3.5mm jack socket got busted, and all the time the phone thinks that a headset is connected to my phone.

This problem is not a nuisance. It has very huge implications on the phone’s capablities. Since it thinks that there is a headset attached to the phone even though there wasn’t, it will always rely on its imaginary headset to transmit audio from the handset whenever you make or receive calls, which sucks, since you won’t hear the other person on the line unless you have earphones connected and using the loudspeaker is just too awkward in public.

How I fixed the problem

I would have sent my phone to a Cherry Mobile technician, but the place is too far away and I’m too lazy to go there. So, I sent it to the numerous cellphone repair “technicians” (read: people who think they can fix things because they can handle opening up stuff and soldering shit) who refuses to touch my phone because all they touch are Nokias, Sony-Ericssons, Motorolas, etc. Thankfully there’s a guy who managed to man up and tried to fix my problem, but to no avail. So we simply just cut off the connection between the port and the system board of the phone. Sometimes amputation of a certain part is just the only way to cure another.

So my Q5i has lost its main feature that’s very rare among China and local phones. I guess I’m going back to my shitty iPod.

Conclusion

Pros

• Dual SIM capability
• QWERTYY keyboard
• You can attach any standard pair of head/ear phones to it
• Mobile web browsing
• Facebook capabilities

Cons

• Ports can break if you’re not careful
• Touchpad can be a pain in the ass to use for maneuvering the interface
• QWERTY keyboard has a slightly steep learning curve for those who are not familiar with them.

Overall, the Q5i is a great phone, hands down. For Php3,499.00 (US$79.00), you can get a sweet QWERTY phone that can fit any lifestyle. Just please don’t mess up its audio port, as it’s quite fragile.