[Quickies] Why can’t I move (certain) applications to the SD card?
Following up on the previous "quickies" format, I decided to answer a question that goes unanswered through a quick Google search. This quickie has to do with the Android OS platform.
Question: Why can't I move certain applications to the SD card?
Answer: The "move to SD card" feature of Android MUST be explicitly enabled by the developers of each application. This is the reason why for some apps, the "move to SD card" button is greyed out.
Hope that helps anyone who's ever asked Google this question!
[Quickies] Galaxy S2 MIUI 1.12.30 Camera Force Closes
I've tagged this post as a "quickie" as I just want to share the solution to a problem I've been having with my recently bought Galaxy S2. This solution was found indirectly and from my extensive search through the Internet, I haven't found anyone describing either this problem or the solution to it.
Problem: When using the MIUI 1.12.30 ROM on the Samsung Galaxy S2, the camera will freeze and eventually force close while attempting to record video.
Solution: The solution to this problem is so simple that "it hurts". If you're running MIUI, your kernel will most certainly have the ClockworkMod (CWM) flashed onto it. You will have to go into CWM (i.e. Shutdown phone then power it up with the combo Volume Up + Power + Home), then into the "advanced" menu and choose the "fix permissions" option.
After you've done this, reboot the phone et voilà! It's really that easy!
I've found this solution through having a similar problem in CyanogenMod. In their forums they explain how to fix it for CM7.1 so I decided to give it a try on MIUI. Turns out the problem is the same.
Hope this saved you some time!
WSO2 PHP’s WSF Library (or whatever the damn it is called…) and Turmeric SOA
The title of this post is verbose enough about the feelings I have regarding the naming of this library. It's as if WSO2 took a page from Microsoft's book regarding names. What's next? A Home Edition? Maybe throw in Professional, Business and Ultimate versions too for good measure.
Don't take me wrong, I have no special feelings towards names themselves, it's just how difficult it makes to search for people working on the same things and facing the same problems. What do I Google for? WSO2? WSF? PHP? Any combination of these? It's only made worse by these guys developing frameworks in several platforms, which means I end up finding completely unrelated results from a different implementation, in a different technology.
But, naming rants aside, I thought it would be a good idea to share my experience with getting this library up and running on PHP. I came across this library when converting Apache Stonehenge's web application to use Turmeric's instances of Stonehenge's web services, and it gave me quite some headaches. For this reason, and so that other people in the future don't have to go through the same painful experiences, I decided to write this blog post. Keep reading if I got your attention...
Black and white icons for Caffeine
This is gonna be a quick and short post about a tool I use on my Mac called "Caffeine". This tool essentially allows me, at the click of a button, to disable the display's dim and eventual turn off function. It's useful when you're reading something and you won't be touching the keyboard or the mouse, but you'd still like the screen to be on. It's useful also when I'm playing along a guitar tab and I can't afford to stop playing just to get the screen back on.
Anyway, this tool places an icon on the status bar. The only problem is that this icon is in color and it just stands out in my status bar like a sore thumb. SO! I created a new icon set. You can get it by clicking here. Scroll down to have a look at the icons before you download it.
All you have to do is copy them to /Applications/Caffeine.app/Contents/Resources/ et voilà! I've included two more icons (not shown here) for the right click behavior.
Icons:
This is what it looks like in action:
and
On Turmeric SOA, open-source and the Apache Software Foundation
It's been a while since I posted something on this blog, partly due to my laziness, but also due to a chronic lack of time and patience to come home after an intellectually intense day of work and still have the peace of mind to gather my thoughts and put them in words. Today was, luckily, one of those days. Not because it was a particularly easy day at work (reengineering someone else's code with little to non-existing documentation is never an easy job) but perhaps the intense gym session loosed my brains just enough for organized and coherent thought to just happen. In any case, I digress.
This post has three main themes. I will be talking about a platform for SOA applications called Turmeric (funny name, I know. I'm using for SOA the same I use in my lentil soup), open-source in general and finally, the Apache Software Foundation and some recent events I've been involved in.
Idea for Google/Bing
I just had this idea that could truly revolutionize search engines. Let's start with the motivation:
What do we usually rely on search engines for? Answer-finding, correct? We are part of a generation that mindlessly presses CTRL + T to open a new tab in our browser of choice, points it to www.google.com and types away whatever question we need an answer for. Then comes the tedious process of sorting through all the results in hopes of truly finding the answer to what we're looking for. Typically, in a good day, we will find a link that contains the answer to our question, use the answer and ditch the browser tab. Does this sound like something you do more than once a day? Well, then read on.
What if we could make this process better? Oftentimes, I'll require the answer to my question more than once and most of the times I just can't be bothered with bookmarking the page. Even because, most of the times, I forget that I bookmarked something and I end up going to Google to search for something I already have an answer for, buried within my bookmarks. So there's clearly a problem here. I'm wasting time more than once to find answers for the same information and - drawing on my recently developed and work-in-progress Dutch skills - dat kan niet.
Adobe Starts Including Spyware With Acrobat Reader
We all know the folks at Adobe are some really nice people and that Steve Jobs was just being a bastard by not allowing Flash on the iPhone. But as it turns out, whilst Apple is too restrictive as to what it allows on their AppStore and their iDevices, Adobe on the other hand is too permissive and they might have just crossed a line.
How To Seal a Bag Airtight With a Plastic Bottle
You're just about to learn a technique known for many centuries by Buddhist priests, passed on from generation to generation, but always kept in secret within their ranks. This technique teaches you how to seal a bag, in a airtight manner, with nothing but a.... plastic bottle!
Yes, my description was dramatically exaggerated. This is just one of those cool DIY things that most people don't think about, but hopefully, after reading this article, you'll remember it next time you need to seal a bag.
Read on if I got your attention.
Free Storage With Dropbox (Free Online Backups)
If you need a way to store your files in a manner that they are always accessible everywhere, then Dropbox is for you. In case you haven't yet heard about this service, then know that Dropbox offers you 2Gb for free to store whichever files you like. The guys at Dropbox also have a software that integrates nicely with Windows and Mac OS and you can even access the files from your iPhone or Android powered phone.
You might think that 2Gb are rather meager and you are right, that's nothing these days. This is why Dropbox has an awesome referral program that will allow you to go up to 10Gb just by referring friends! That's right, 10Gb for free just by referring Dropbox to a few friends.
Read on to find out more!
Android Rooting For Dummies (What is Rooting?)
One of the things I had a hard trouble finding an answer for after I got my first Android phone was: what is all this deal with rooting? I read a lot of articles on how to root my phone but I just couldn't see what benefits I would get from it. I had had an iPhone and I knew the benefits I could get from jailbreaking, but I just didn't know what I could get from rooting.
Well, rooting is in its definition a way to obtain root access to your phone. Does this still not tell you much? Good, then read on.