T. Longren

New Flickr Still Sucks on Android

Tyler — Tue, 21 May 2013 01:37:14 +0000

I wrote a post a couple months ago asking Flickr why they can't add automatic photo upload to their Android app. Today, Yahoo made a lot of updates to Flickr, along with their purchase of Tumblr, but that's a whole other story. The new Flickr Android app interface is definitely better than it was. But it's still missing the one key feature that it needs, and that's automatic photo uploading. Dropbox does it, Google+ does it, there's even third party apps to do this with Flickr, even though none seem to work any longer. I managed to kind of sync my phone photos to Flickr. It involves using Ifttt, copying my photos to a specific public Dropbox folder, and telling Ifttt to send all photos in that folder to Flickr. Not the best solution but it's all I've got for now. Yahoo, please, please add automatic photo uploading in the next version of your Android app. I'm literally begging you. Flickr is supposed to be the place that ALL my photos end up, but that can't be until you implement automatic photo uploading. I've been a Pro member for at least 7 years. The least you can do is hook me up with a much needed feature. :)

Moving To FlipHost

Tyler — Sat, 18 May 2013 08:08:47 +0000

This site now sits on a server at FlipHost. I got a Storage250 server from them and added some RAM, and here we are. It's really a pretty nice setup. Pretty much everything I've setup I've done according to guides from Linode. Most of the guides in the Linode Library should apply at least somewhat to FlipHost. This site was previously on Dreamhost, but there's been a LOT of downtime there recently, a whole lot. Yah, I just linked to 6 posts from dreamhoststatus.com that were posted from May 12 through May 17. Crazy. FlipHost wooed me on twitter and so far I'm really, really glad that they did. I've already canceled the one VPS that I had at Dreamhost. May keep the shared account around for some other sites, but may end up moving absolutely everything to FlipHost. I haven't really decided yet.

How-To: Install/Update Custom Recovery on Nexus 4 (Mako)

Tyler — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 21:30:11 +0000

I use TWRP (Team-Win Recovery Project) as a custom recovery. It's easy to use and, as the name suggests, has a nice touch interface. TWRP supports a bunch of devices, including the Nexus 4 (Mako). Here's the full description straight from the TWRP site:

Team Win Recovery Project 2.4, or twrp2 for short, is a custom recovery built with ease of use and customization in mind. We started from the ground up by taking AOSP recovery and loading it with the standard recovery options, then added a lot of our own features. It’s a fully touch driven user interface – no more volume rocker or power buttons to mash. The GUI is also fully XML driven and completely theme-able. You can change just about every aspect of the look and feel.

Installing TWRP on your Google Nexus 4 is pretty simple. The TWRP site has good instructions, but I always forget how to update when a new version is released. And checking the actual TWRP site was something I didn't think of doing, because I thought I had installed TWRP through a separate tool (which I did). So, the suggested method for installing TWRP to your Google Nexus 4 (and the method I use) is really straight forward. You'll need root.

Install GooManager from the Play Store and open it up (grant it root permissions).
Select the menu and then tap "Install OpenRecoveryScript", then tap "Yes".
Make sure the filename says "mako" in it somewhere, this ensures you'll get the Nexus 4 recovery.
Tap "Yes" again.
That's it, TWRP will be downloaded and installed automatically.

Below are some TWRP2 screenshots, taken straight from the TWRP website. If you're interested in contributing to TWRP, you can check out their project on Github. [gallery link="file" columns="3" ids="3481,3482,3483,3477"]

Why No Auto Camera Upload, Flickr?

Tyler — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 23:32:49 +0000

I've been a pro Flickr member for many years (since 2004 actually). Every photo I've taken since probably 2002 or so is on Flickr. Flickr released a decent Android app a while back, but it's lacking one major feature, auto uploading photos. Dropbox does it, Google+ does it, even the Facebook app does it. Yet Flickr, a fucking photo website, does not have this feature in their Android app. Not only that, but there's not even a bulk upload option. Only way to upload an image to Flickr through the official Flickr app is to upload photos one by one. And uploading one by one isn't gonna happen when I snap 20+ photos every day on my LGE Nexus 4. There's a fair number of apps in the Google Play Store that do automatic photo uploads, but it's really painful for me to use a separate app for something that should be included in the official Flickr app. I just can't fathom why they would not add this feature. I understand this feature not being there right off the bat, but it's been over a year since the official Flickr app for Android was released. I've used a couple of the third-party Flickr apps that have auto upload functionality. Many of them are clunky and none (that I've seen) adhere to the Android style guidelines. I did just install Flicker (sic) Uploader Free, as I have never used it before. However, I have a little bit of an issue with an app that doesn't even get the name of the service it supports correct. Maybe spelling Flickr as "Flicker" was intentional, I dunno. Bottom line is there's no great solution for automatically uploading photos taken on your Android device to Flickr. Here's to hoping Flickr steps up and adds this functionality at some point, even if it doesn't come until a year from now.

MySQL Workbench on Debian Squeeze 6.0.6

Tyler — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 02:35:01 +0000

I spent about an hour compiling MySQL Workbench from source earlier today. After about 20 newly satisfied dependencies and an hour of actual building, I fired it up and discovered I wasn't able to connect to any MySQL server through an SSH tunnel, which I have to be able to do. I was able to find a deb package, mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.39-1ubu1004-i386.deb, that seems to work quite well on Debian Squeeze 6.0.6. The package was mentioned in this forum post at debian.net. The package itself was the MySQL-provided deb for Ubuntu 10.04. After I installed that deb, MySQL Workbench was able to connect to a MySQL server through an SSH tunnel. I must, must remember this for future Debian Squeeze installs.

Cyanogenmod 9 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with Full HWA on Motorola Devices

Tyler — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 16:42:45 +0000

Hardware Acceleration on some aging Motorola devices has been a long time coming. My Motorola Defy is one of those aging devices. Last week, Quarx2k and Epsylon3, our wonderful Defy developers, released builds for the Defy and Defy+ with full HWA support. However, this wouldn't have been possible without the work of Kabaldan, who discovered a method that could bring full HWA to any locked down Motorola device, such as my Defy and the Motorola Milestone. Not sure what HWA is? It's short for Hardware Acceleration. Here's HWA as explained by the folks at XDA:

Hardware acceleration for Android is (in the most basic of terms) the use of the GPU to aid in the drawing operations done by a given application or view. Aside from allowing the CPU and GPU to work simultaneously, this also allows the drawing operations to be done on much more specialized and efficient hardware for the task. This results in a better overall user experience.

Quarx2k released his first full HWA build on July 6. There's since been another build for both Defy and Defy+. You can find all builds by Quarx2k here. The best part of having HWA for me, is having a fully functioning Chrome in Android now. Something I've been waiting to have on my Defy for quite some time.

How-To: Watch H.264 Encoded MP4 Videos on Xbox 360

Tyler — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:40:13 +0000

I use some software called ushare to stream video from my pc to my Xbox 360. I won't go into the details on how to set that up, it's pretty straight forward. Chances are good that your linux distribution already has a package for ushare built. If you find yourself with a video encoded in H.264/x264 (it'll probably have a .mp4 file extension) you will be frustrated to find out that the Xbox 360 won't play it. There is an incredibly easy workaround to this. Just change the .mp4 filename extension to .avi. [ad] Not sure exactly why this works, but I have a feeling it's simply due to the .mp4 filename extension. The Xbox 360 must assume it doesn't know how to play mp4 files, without actually checking to see what codec the video file needs. But that's total speculation on my part.

Motorola Defy Camera is Working on Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0)

Tyler — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:50:13 +0000

Quarx released a new build for Defy and Defy+ yesterday. I am now running on his Defy+ build because camera in it works with regular Motorola Defy's with a red camera lens. Now that everyone has a partially working camera, all Defy/Defy+ users should be quite happy. If you've got a Red lens Defy, and want to run Ice Cream Sandwich and have a working camera, follow the steps below. First, you'll need some files.

[ad] Once you have those files, follow the steps below.

Clear data/factory reset.
Flash CM9 kernel.
Flash Defy+ ICS zip.
Flash Gapps.
Flash battery charge fix.
Wipe cache.
Wipe dalvik cache.
Done, reboot.

Some things to keep in mind:

No Hardware Acceleration (HWA).
Video playback is extremely slow (unusable really), probably due to no HWA yet.
Chrome Beta doesn't work, also due to no HWA.

[gallery]

Dropbox: Get 5GB of Extra Storage for Free

Tyler — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:58:43 +0000

I've been using Dropbox for a very long time. I would totally replace Dropbox with Minus if Minus supported adding a "local" folder to your system like Dropbox does. Unfortunately Minus does not offer that yet, but I hear they're working on it. Dropbox has released new beta versions of the Dropbox client. This beta client adds a new feature for auto-uploading photos and videos from your phone to Dropbox. For every 500MB you upload through this auto-upload feature, Dropbox will give you an additional 500MB of storage, for up to 5GB of additional storage. I had a few GB worth of photos and videos on my phone to upload, so getting that extra 5GB was really easy for me. If you don't have enough photos or videos to upload, just grab some online and put them into your phone's picture/video folder. When I started, I had 2.5GB of free storage, I now have 7.5GB. If you have yet to get a Dropbox account, you can get one here. You can find the beta Android client at this post on the Dropbox forum. You can also get this 5GB of additional storage with the beta Windows client. You can download the beta Windows client from this post on the Dropbox forum. There's builds for OS X and Linux as well, but the auto upload feature only works in Windows currently.

How-To: Use Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) On Linux

Tyler — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:01:14 +0000

This will help you get Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) running on Linux. A lot of the how-to's out there for this are outdated and aren't entirely relevant any longer. I recently installed Linux Mint 12 so I could run Gnome 3 easily, but this should apply to most Debian based distributions (ie: Ubuntu and Mint, and Debian, obviously). I know for a fact this will work with Linux Mint 12 and Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). First, you'll need to install mono-gmcs, mono-mcs, monodevelop, and liblog4net-cil-dev. You can install them like so: [crayon-519b134135841/] Running that will install all the packages you need to compile LOIC with Mono. Those 4 packages have other dependencies, so you'll actually end up installing many more packages, but it'll be done automatically. After you've got that installed, download the Low Orbit Ion Cannon from Github. You can download it in .zip or .tar.gz format, whichever you're most comfortable with. Extract the folder to your desktop or wherever you like. Open a terminal and go into the folder you extracted from the .zip or .tar.gz. For me, this folder is called NewEraCracker-LOIC-c847036. The string at the end may be different for you, depending on if the source has been updated since I wrote this. Once you're in the folder (for me it's /home/tyler/Desktop/NewEraCracker-LOIC-c847036), type the following: [crayon-519b134135888/] That will compile LOIC, the executable will be in bin/Debug. After compiling is done, launch LOIC like so: [crayon-519b1341358c5/] That's it, have fun! And don't get in trouble.

Unlocked Bootloader for Motorola Defy

Tyler — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:59:47 +0000

No, the Motorola Defy bootloader hasn't been unlocked (yet). Rumor has it that a few individuals do have Defy's with unlocked bootloaders though. Why is having an unlocked bootloader important you ask? Have a look at this article from AddictiveTips for a good summary of what a bootloader is, and why they are often locked. The OP in a thread on XDA that I came across earlier today claimed to have found a method to unlock the Motorola Defy bootloader. The OP said he would be posting a video with proof of the bootloader unlock, which I don't think ever came. I checked the thread again later and was disappointed to see that it had been removed from XDA. So, it was likely someone taking Defy owners for a ride, getting our hopes up without actually having a method to unlock. This doesn't mean it won't happen. Epsylon3 is believed to be working on this, and if anyone can do this, it's him. He recently managed to brick his original Defy, but received enough donations so that he could buy a new one. So, it sounds like he will continue working on the bootloader unlock. There's two threads on XDA that you should follow if you're interested in keeping up with the status of unlocking the Motorola Defy bootloader. 1. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1443678 2. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1169557 Or, you could subscribe here (on the right) to keep up to date. If anything new develops on the Defy bootloader unlock front, I'll be sure to post.

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4) Themes for Cyanogenmod

Tyler — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:40:20 +0000

My post about making Cyanogenmod look like Ice Cream Sandwich has been pretty popular. There are a lot of folks out there wanting to make their Cyanogenmod 7 phone look like it's running Ice Cream Sandwich, and for good reason. The Ice Cream Sandwich style is very nice to look at. Sonny Sekhon, the author of the original Ice Cream Sandwich theme for Cyanogenmod's theme chooser, has released a number of other Ice Cream Sandwich based themes, in colors other than blue! [ad] Sonny has added Ice Cream Sandwich themes in the following colors: green, red, purple, gingerbread color, orange, dark blue, cyan and pink. All of those are free and can be installed right from the Android Market. Sonny has a donate version available as well, if you like his work and would like to support him, buying that theme would probably make him a very happy dude. If you're looking for Ice Cream Sandwich themes for ADW or other launchers, you'll definitely want to have a look at this post. That post contains a lot more than just Ice Cream Sandwich Cyanogenmod themes. You can have a quick look at each of the new Ice Cream Sandwich theme colors in the gallery below (after the break). If I missed a theme from another developer, leave a comment and I'll add it to this post. [gallery link="file"]

Cyanogenmod 9 Is Really, Really Here

Tyler — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:56:30 +0000

Well lookie here! Epsylon3 has released the first Cyanogenmod 9 nightly build for the Motorola Defy. There's still a pretty hefty list of things that are broken, but it's way smaller than it was last week. Download links for the Cyanognemod 9 (CM9) nightlies can be found at http://tanguy.forumdoandroid.com/. That site contains links to various downloads. If you want to run Cyanogenmod 9, you'll want this link http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/. [ad] As expected, some things are still broken:

Fix orientation sensor
Fix Google maps
Fix 3D
Fix camera (will be hard)

Don't think I'm quite ready to try this out yet. I'll give it a shot on my Defy once the orientation sensor is working properly. Might wait for the camera to be 100% functional too, I use my phone camera often for taking pictures and video of my daughter. Here are some screenshots: [gallery link="file"] You can find a video after the break.

HTML5Press 2.2

Tyler — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:45:22 +0000

HTML5Press 2.2 is available for download. You can grab it from the HTML5Press page. A detailed list of changes can be found at Github. Probably the most notable change in 2.2 is the addition of a "follow me" button to the Twitter widget, which you can see in the featured image attached to this post. It's enabled by default, but can be turned off from the widget options. Hashtags in the Twitter widget are now clickable, just like links and @names. I committed this change to the original Simple Twitter Widget, created by Matthias Siegel. I also fixed an issue where small fonts were being applied to any label element, even when label wasn't being used in a form. This made the title for the new "subscribe widget" from JetPack 1.2 be really small. So those of you using that widget should see an improvement. Other notable changes:

Field for Custom CSS on HTML5Press options page
More accurate fuzzy timestamps
More accurate fuzzy timestamps in comments
Use get_template_directory_uri() instead of get_stylesheet_directory_url()
Allow use of "All Categories" for the featured post slider.

You can see all the changes at Github. You can download version 2.2 from the HTML5Press page. Report any issues in the comments on the HTML5Press page or open up an issue at Github.

First Cyanogenmod 9 Test Builds

Tyler — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:50:35 +0000

A thread at the XDA Developers forum has been discussing progress on Cyanogenmod 9 (CM9) for the Motorola Defy. The first post includes a video of a Motorola Bravo running Cyanogenmod 9 with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). The Motorola Bravo is running Cyanogenmod 9 for the Defy, but it seems to work. You can see the video here at the end of this post. In the most recent post in the thread, josuearisty provides a link to http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/. There you'll find two builds of Cyanogenmod 9 for the Motorola Defy. UPDATE 11/29/2011: Epsylon3 has updated his original thread, his first post now links to http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/ as well. There's also a new nightly, 111129. I'm not even going to install it, it probably has a lot of the issues the ROM from Epsylon3 has. It's still encouraging to see nightly CM9 builds for the Defy popping up though. [ad] I was a little worried about Cyanongemod 9 even being released for the Defy, but the Defy is one of the most popular devices for the Cyanogenmod team, according to the Cyanogenmod stats site anyway. According to the Cyanogenmod stats site, there's nearly 50,000 Defy's running Cyanogenmod. The Motorola Defy is the umts_jordan device. If you've got a Motorola Defy and are really, really anxious to run Ice Cream Sandwich, you now have two options. The AOSP ROM from Epsylon3, or a Cyanogenmod 9 nightly from http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/. I'll be holding off on Ice Cream Sandwich for at least another month, probably more. I need to have a very stable phone, and can't afford to run bleeding edge software on it. If you've tried Ice Cream Sandwich in AOSP or Cyanongemod form, let me know, I'd love to hear what you think of it. You can see the video of Cyanogenmod 9 on the Defy after the break!

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) Keyboard

Tyler — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 04:06:53 +0000

Meant to post about this a bit sooner, lots of folks have written about it already, like Tony at OMG!Droid. Originally, this Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard was available as an apk from mediafire or some other file sharing site. Now though, the Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard is available in the Android Market. Looks pretty nifty, but not nifty enough for me to ditch SwiftkeyX. On a somewhat related note, I'm disappointed SwiftkeyX hasn't been updated with an Ice Cream Sandwich theme. Some features, from the Android Market page:

Multitouch keyboard
User dictionary, built-in dictionary
Configurable auto correction
Redesigned and optimized keyboard layout and style
Speech to text (select languages only)
Custom vibration intensity (haptic feedback)
Long press "Enter" key to bring up smiley alternatives (Only on Im mode, for example in Gtalk)
Long press on "/" key in URL mode to bring up domains

[ad] This was built by AstronautMillionaire and is in a beta status, but seems to work fine for most folks. This is in no way an official, Google build of the Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard, but it's the best choice most of us have now. Not too many phones have Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs available yet. Defy has an Ice Cream Sandwich ROM, but it needs quite a bit of work before I'll try it out. If you're looking to make your device look as close to Ice Cream Sandwich as possible, you'll be interested in this post I made a few weeks ago, its titled Make Cyanogenmod 7.1 Look Like Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (Kinda). A video of the Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard in action is available after the break, as well as some photos. [gallery link="file"]

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) on Motorola Defy

Tyler — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Epsylon3 has managed to boot Ice Cream Sandwich on the Motorola Defy. As you can imagine, lots of things still don't work, like 3G and the orientation sensor. Epsylon3 also released the first test ROM for Motorola Defy phones. The download link has been shutdown due to "copyright abuse". The test ROM was made available at http://defy-cm7.tk//ics-test0/. I doubt it will come back online, so keep an eye on the original thread at XDA for a new download link. Things that work in the test ROM:

Startup, bootmenu and recovery
Touchscreen and keypad (multitouch too)
Usb
New Network (netfilter) kernel modules (quota2, and fake qtaguid)
wifi

Things that need work:

Fix egl configuration : Cause the force close on many apps including default launcher, settings and gapps setup wizard
Fix colors (almost fixed)
Fix sound
Fix phone / 3G
Fix orientation sensor
Fix egl hw acceleration for omap3 (can be hard) : gralloc.omap3.so
Fix camera (will be hard)

UPDATE 11/29/2011: See this post for links to some Cyanogenmod 9 test builds for the Defy.

Cyanogenmod 9 Incoming: Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) Source Code is Available

Tyler — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:41:51 +0000

The source code for Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is now available. You can find instructions for downloading the source at the Android Open Source Project site. Steve Kondik, the original creator of Cyanogenmod, tweeted the following last night: [blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/cyanogen/status/136313427248431104"] Sounds like we'll start seeing the first Cyanogenmod 9 builds in the next couple months! Exciting news for everyone who has been abandoned by their handset manufacturer. I highly doubt my Motorola Defy will ever see an official upgrade, even to Gingerbread. Ice Cream Sandwich should run quite well on the Defy's hardware. This is exciting news for everyone in the Android community really, not just those who've been abandoned. The more choices you have the better, and Cyanogenmod is available for a multitude of devices. Can't wait until the nightly builds start popping up, it's gonna be a fun next couple of months! If I had to guess, I'd say we'll see an alpha or the first nightly builds of Cyanogenmod 9 within a month, or a little more. Hopefully by Christmas (and this is just me wishing) we'll have something! Steve also mentioned on Twitter that work will progress on Cyanogenmod 7.2 until it's ready to be released, while simultaneously working on Cyanogenmod 9. [blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/cyanogen/status/136324771578261504"] If you'd like to get the Ice Cream Sandwich look now and not wait until Cyanogenmod 9 is out, have a look at my post Make Cyanogenmod 7.1 Look Like Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (Kinda).

WePay: A Great PayPal Alternative

Tyler — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:49:42 +0000

I recently started using WePay as an alternative to PayPal. WePay has a lot going for them right now. There's a lot of people looking for alternatives to PayPal, and WePay is a perfect alternative. I've used PayPal for a very long time and have generally been very happy with it. Lately though, I've been having some issues related to people in other countries not being able to use PayPal anymore. Setting up recurring payments is a little more difficult than it should be too. [ad] WePay is a great alternative to PayPal. It's really easy to setup, setup can be done in less than a minute. One really nice feature of WePay is how they verify your bank account (if you choose to add one). Everyone knows that PayPal makes two micro-deposits to your bank account in order to verify it's your account. WePay does that too, but it's a last resort. To verify your account with WePay, you can either login to your bank account via the WePay website, or you can send a picture of your photo ID and check to WePay. Both are much faster than the micro-deposit route. WePay also lets you create multiple "accounts". So, you could have one account for beer money, another account for rent, and so on. Pretty handy. So, if you're looking for an alternative to PayPal, I suggest you give WePay a shot. Sign Up For WePay

HTML5 Time Element is No More

Tyler — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:23:51 +0000

Ian Hickson decided it’d be a good idea to do away with the HTML5 time element and replace it with the more generic data element. Bad idea in my opinion, but OK.

A couple days after that decision was made, the W3C added the time element back to HTML5.
[ad]
Webmonkey explains some issues with how the time element is currently outlined:

While Hickson’s move to toss time out was probably premature, there are nevertheless some problems with . The element offers the ability to add semantic meaning to pages by marking up dates and other time data, but not all use cases have been covered and some gray areas still exist. For example, the code <time>2:30</time> could refer to a time of day or perhaps the length of a movie. Both are theoretically valid uses and figuring out the details and the various potential use cases, is exactly what the HTML WG wants more time to do.

I’m just glad to have the time element back. HTML5Press uses the time element in a number of places, pretty much every place a time or date is shown. I was not looking forward to going through and replacing time with data. Looks like I won’t have to now!

Make Cyanogenmod 7.1 Look Like Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (Kinda)

Tyler — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 23:39:39 +0000

Yesterday we saw the debut of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Google also released the SDK for Ice Cream Sandwich, which contains some neat graphical goodies developers can start using to create Ice Cream Sandwich themes for ADW, Cyanogenmod, or whatever else really. DameonAndMeagan at the XDA Developers forum has created a modification for Cyanogenmod 7.1 that will make the ring screen lock resemble the one found in Ice Cream Sandwich. There's a few colors you can choose from, they're all attached to this thread for download. [ad] To go along with that, sonnysekhon, also at the XDA Developers forum, has created an initial Ice Cream Sandwich theme for the Cyanogenmod theme chooser. The theme has lots of bugs as you might expect, and a lot of missing graphics, but it does work. sonnysekhon has only had a day or so to put this together, so I expect he will be making improvements rather quickly. UPDATE: This Ice Cream Sandwich theme is now available on the Android Market. sonnysekhon has also included an "extras" zip file that contains wallpapers from Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as icons. Both downloads (the extras and the CM7 theme) can be found attached to his thread. A new font, Roboto, is the default in Ice Cream Sandwich. Android Police has details on how to set it as your font on your current (rooted) Android phone. They recommended using the Font Changer application, however I used Font Installer and was able to get it installed without any problems. Kovdev has an Ice Cream Sandwich theme for ADW Launcher, Launcher Pro and Go Launcher EX available that's pretty nice. I'm not using it in the screenshots attached to this post, but you can find some in the Android Market. In the screenshots below I'm using the Ice Cream Sandwich CM7 theme and the Ice Cream Sandwich ring lock mod. The ADW theme is ADW Faenza and the wallpaper is from Ice Cream Sandwich. I'll keep this post updated as more Ice Cream Sandwich theme items are released. UPDATE 10/23/2011: sonnysekhon released alpha 3 of his Ice Cream Sandwich Theme Chooser theme for Cyanogenmod. I sent him a message a few days ago asking what his future plans were for the theme. He says that he plans to have the Ice Cream Sandwich theme released to the Android Market within a week. So it'll be much easier to install and update that theme once he gets it on the Market. UPDATE 10/24/2011: AChep has released an Ice Cream Sandwich Cyanogenmod theme. He's even got a version with a transparent status bar, which is a feature I've come to like a lot lately. I couldn't get it to work on my Defy though, probably because it's for MDPI devices only. Also new is an Ice Cream Sandwich themed keyboard by proxuser. Not something I'll probably use as I'm pretty loyal to SwiftKey X. Can't see myself ever using another keyboard for Android. UPDATE 10/27/2011: DameonAndMeagan has another mod to make your Gingerbread device sound like Ice Cream Sandwich. It has Ice Cream Sandwich sounds for lock, unlock, camera shutter, and others. It comes in a flashable zip to install via custom recovery. You can find it at this thread on the XDA Developers Forum. [gallery link="file"]

Cyanogenmod 7.1 on Motorola Defy

Tyler — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:53:14 +0000

Cyanogenmod 7.1 was released this past Monday. This release is especially exciting for me, 7.1 brings official support to my Motorola Defy! Motorola Defy+ isn't yet officially supported by Cyanogenmod, but I believe folks are working on it. Lots of new devices are supported by Cyanogenmod 7.1. Other than the Motorola Defy, some other supported devices are the Motorola Droid 2, Motorola Droid X, Motorola Cliq / Cliq XT, Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy S2, and many others. There's also a number of devices in beta, those include Pyramid, Doubleshot, Shooter, HP Touchpad and Optimus 3D. A list of all the newly supported devices can be found at the end of this post. [ad] I flashed 7.1 to my Defy last night. Prior to Cyanogenmod 7.1 stable, I was running a nightly from a couple weeks back. The nightly build was extremely stable and I didn't have any issues other than the proximity sensor not always working correctly. With the 7.1 update the proximity sensor seems to be fixed. The screen turns on when I move my phone away from my head. If you've got a Motorola Defy, I really suggest you give Cyanogenmod 7.1 a try. It's very much worth it, and getting it onto your phone is a lot easier than it may seem at first. The benefits are too many to list. I'm just amazed at how much smoother my Defy runs than it does on stock T-Mobile/Motorola Froyo. Animations and screen transitions are incredibly smooth and fluid. You can find screenshots of my Defy running CM7.1 in the gallery below. I'm using the JAMT White Gradient CM7 theme by ClassicalGas, and the ADW theme is Android Honeycomb by Creative Themez. Newly Supported Devices:

HTC Desire S
HTC Incredible S
HTC Incredible 2
LG Optimus 2X and T-Mobile G2x
Motorola Backflip (Motus)
Motorola Cliq / Cliq XT
Motorola Defy
Motorola Droid 2
Motorola Droid X
Samsung Captivate
Samsung Fascinate
Samsung Mesmerize
Samsung Showcase
Samsung Vibrant
Samsung Galaxy S
Samsung Galaxy S2 (multiple carriers)
Sony Ericsson Xperia X8
Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini
Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro
Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc
ZTE V9

[gallery link="file" columns="3"]

HTML5Press 2.1

Tyler — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:17:43 +0000

HTML5Press 2.1 is available for download from the HTML5Press page. You can see a detailed list of all the changes between 2.0 and 2.1 on Github. There were three major additions to HTML5Press 2.1, including fuzzy timestamps, a built-in Twitter widget, and support for WordPress custom backgrounds. Gregory C left a comment a few days ago that made me decide to add support for WordPress custom backgrounds. It was a simple enough thing to add, not sure why I didn't add support for custom backgrounds earlier. [ad] The featured photo for this post is just a screenshot of the Twitter widget options. That widget may look familiar to you. It's nothing but a slightly modified version of Simple Twitter Widget by Matthias Siegal. I made some modifications to his plugin to include the HTML5 time element and to also make use of timeago for fuzzy timestamps. Fuzzy timestamps are global in HTML5Press. Dates/times on posts, pages, comments, and the twitter widget will all be shown as fuzzy timestamps instead of the actual date/time. Mousing over the fuzzy timestamp will reveal the true date/time. Some other, more minor changes and fixes:

Fix the Allerta font, it was pulling the wrong font from Google
Include the lightbox effect on gallery images and include them as a set
Remove HTML5Press options from Appearance menu and give it it's own menu.

You can download HTML5Press 2.1 from the HTML5Press page or from Github. If you notice anything broken or have any other problems, please start an issue at Github.

MyColorscreen

Tyler — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:45:55 +0000

I got invited to MyColorscreen.com a few days ago. I've been visiting the site for a few weeks now. Mostly just to find some nice wallpapers for my Motorola Defy. I got around to posting my first screen today. If anyone is interested in an invite, just let me know in the comments on this post and I'll send one your way. It's a pretty fun site to browse, the amount of customization some people put into their phones is amazing. [ad]

VLC Media Player for Android on Motorola Defy and Defy+

Tyler — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:53:03 +0000

Austen Dicken has been working on VLC Media Player for Android devices. He stresses that it's not stable and is still in the pre-alpha stages. I installed it the other day and haven't noticed any real problems with it. There's two builds of VLC for Android available for download on Austen's site. There's a NEON version and a NONEON version. The NEON build is for devices that have processors that support NEON floating-point extensions. [ad] If you've got a Motorola Defy or Motorola Defy+, you'll want the NEON build. The processors in both phones are similar and both support NEON floating-point extensions. If you don't have one of those devices, it's easy to find out what build you need. Just open /proc/cpuinfo on your phone and look for NEON in the Features line. If NEON is listed there, you want the NEON build. If NEON isn't listed, get the NONEON build. You may need to root your phone before you can access /proc/. I use Root Explorer for browsing my root filesystem. The contents of your /proc/cpuinfo file will look similar to this: [crayon-519b13413a333/]

HTML5Press: Fuzzy Timestamps with Timeago

Tyler — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:58:17 +0000

I've added an option to HTML5Press to enable fuzzy timestamps for posts and pages. Fuzzy timestamps display how long ago an item was published, instead of showing the date and time it was published. For example, this post about Minus was published on 9/19/2011. Fuzzy timestamps would cause that to be displayed as "3 days ago" instead of showing the actual date. Come tomorrow, that post will show that it was published "4 days ago". You can still see the actual date by mousing over the fuzzy timestamp. [poll id="8"] I implemented this with the timeago jQuery plugin. This feature will be available once HTML5Press 2.1 is released, which will probably be sometime before October. If you'd like to take it for a test drive now, you can download HTML5Press 2.1-rc1 from Github.

Minus: An Alternative to Dropbox

Tyler — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:20:32 +0000

Minus is a file sharing and file storage service similar to Dropbox. I've been using Minus for a few weeks now and absolutely love it. One major difference between Minus and Dropbox is that Minus gives you 10GB of storage space from the start. With Dropbox, you only get 2GB. The Android client for Minus is really clean and easy to navigate. They also have a client for iOS devices such as the Apple iPhone. There's no client for Windows Phone 7 devices yet, but the site says it will be coming soon. You can see a screenshot of the Android app in the gallery at the end of this post. [ad] Minus also has clients available for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Linux. As some of you may know, I quit using Ubuntu a while ago and switched to Debian. I've been emailing back and forth with the Minus developers about getting the Ubuntu client to work on Debian. On Debian, Minus opens fine, but after logging in, it just dies. The developer (Mason) said he had that problem with an older version of Ubuntu (10.04) as well, so it sounds like he might have an idea on how to fix it. Currently, Minus dies with this message on Debian: [crayon-519b13413a9c6/] I suggest giving Minus a try, even if you're totally happy with Dropbox. It's free, so you've got nothing to lose. And if you need more space than Dropbox gives for free, you absolutely MUST give Minus a shot. Update: Immediately after making this post, I noticed a new version (1.7) of the Ubuntu client was available. So far, this new version seems to work well on Debian. I haven't had any problems with it at all. Thank you Minus development team! [poll id="6"] [gallery link="file"]

WordPress Tip: Remove a Category from the WordPress RSS Feed

Tyler — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:20:07 +0000

I recently setup The Events Calendar WordPress plugin on a few sites for work. The events are added as posts, so they show up in the WordPress RSS feed.

We didn’t want events showing in the RSS feed, this is the code I ended up with:

// Keep events out of RSS
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category_from_feed');
function exclude_category_from_feed($query) {
	if ($query->is_feed) {
		$query->set('cat','-'.get_cat_ID( 'Events' ));
	}
	return $query;
}

Adding that bit of code to the functions.php file for your theme will prevent posts in the “Events” category from appearing in your RSS feed. You can obviously change “Events” to whatever category you want to exclude.
[ad]
It can be extended too, not just limited to keeping a category out of the RSS feed. For example, to keep a category off the home page or archive pages, you can change this:

if ($query->is_feed) {

To this:

if ($query->is_archive || $query->is_home) {

That’s it! Hope you find it useful.

HTML5Press 2.0

Tyler — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:44:30 +0000

HTML5Press 2.0 is available for download. Changes from 1.9 to 2.0 include:

40+ Google Web Font choices
Built-in Lightbox effect using Slimbox2
Smaller post titles to accommodate long post titles
New styles for next/prev page links
Show page numbers at the top of post index/archive pages

You can find a full list of changes at GitHub. HTML5Press 2.0 can be downloaded from the official HTML5Press page. Please report any issues at the Github issue tracker or in the comments on the HTML5Press page.

Custom WordPress Download Post Type

Tyler — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:26:56 +0000

Saw this post from my friend Jesper earlier today about creating a custom "Download" post type in WordPress. It's an excellent tutorial/how-to. Check it out.