Sunday, September 2. 2012
My new Samsung Galaxy Y Duos
As you know sometimes the entries in this blog are just for me (this is the best place to keep some things I do not want to forget), this one is one of those. Some months ago I bought a Samsung Y Duos (GT-S6102) in order to avoid carrying two mobile phones (company and personal one) always in my pocket (I lost my company device twice last year but, luckily, I also found it again). This samsung model is a dual SIM device with android 2.3, not very powerful but also not very expensive. I realized past month that there are already custom roms and kernels for that device. During my vacation I have been playing with them and, cos I am not a fan of these things, I am going to put here a bunch of links of how to perform typical Android tasks in that specific device.
CWM and Unroot
ClockworkMod Recovery (CWM) is a popular custom recovery for Android phones done by Koushik Dutta (Koush). It allows you to perform several advanced recovery, restoration, installation and maintenance operations on your Android device. Besides it is one of the most common ways used to gain root access, back up device data, install custom ROMs, kernels, themes, mods and so on.
An unrooted Android device consists in installing the su binary inside the system in order to make that some applications can run with root privileges.
The interesting links about those issues for my device are the following:
TechnoDUOS 1.5
TechnoDUOS is a custom rom and kernel for the dual SIM device introduced by a XDA developer forum member Millan.SIS (now there is another custom rom called Xperia-Duos). That rom is supposed to be better tweaked for my phone model.
Again some nice links:
DroidWall Modules
The DroidWall is just an Android Firewall based on iptables. In order to install it a rooted device (obviously the firewall needs root access) and some modules in the kernel are needed. The BDSky kelnel (TechnoDUOS kernel) does not have those modules but it supports init.d startup. So I added the DroidWall modules following this link (it is curious that this was my first intention, what a hell for such a tiny thing):
At least it is done, I have a rooted Galaxy Y Duos with a tweaked MOD and init.d kernel which loads the required modules to have the DroidWall application configured. It seems to work! I do not trust in Android (and even less in Android applications), so a firewall seems to be a good choice, I am also considering restricting some of them.
Cheerio!
Saturday, January 28. 2012
Moving Forward to OpenJDK
If you do not know, Oracle removed the DLJ license from its closed-source JDK implementation some months ago (Java7 was born without the license and Java6 removed it in U29). The Operating System Distributor License for Java (DLJ) was a Sun initiative to facilitate the distribution of the JDK/JRE with operating systems based on OpenSolaris or Linux, in general that license let the distros to repackage, distribute and use the JDK.
The reasons why Oracle removed that license were controversial. Some people thought that Oracle was definitely pushing forward the OpenJDK adoption and others saw dark maneuvers in this change. For one reason or another the truth is Debian (and all the rest of linux distributions) is starting the transition from sun-java6-* to openjdk-6-* packages. In my humble opinion OpenJDK is a very good virtual machine and both implementations, OpenJDK and Oracle closed-source JDK, have a lot in common (Joe Darcy talked about this issue last summer in the OSCON convention). As you already know the only big difference for end-users and developers is the Java Web Plugin, I wrote before an entry about this particular issue, commenting the story and the problems of OpenJDK related to the web-plugin implementation.
I am on vacation right now and I was requested to encrypt my working laptop long time ago (because of security reasons and company procedures), so today I have re-installed my box. Now dual boot linux/windows is not allowed and, in general, the recommended linux setup was so different to the one I had that I have preferred to wipe it out. Actually this is the first time I have an only debian installation. As a collateral effect I have decided to move forward with java (I think it is the correct time cos I have been finishing all my current projects), openjdk-6-jdk (with icedtea plugin of course) is now my default java implementation. I also think that it is a quite early to start with openjdk-7-jdk, I will wait till U2 or U4 arrive to wheezy.
I hope I do not need to install Oracle JDK back again, I really hate installing tar bundles in my Debian boxes.
OpenJDK is here to stay!
Sunday, December 11. 2011
Zuma's Revenge!
This week I was on vacation. I was on the mood of doing nothing, so I decided to play some PC game. I had very good references of the Zuma Blitz that people play in Facebook. Besides I had played before Plants vs Zombies of the same company (PopCap games). This one was fantastic. So finally I decided to play Zuma's Revenge! (PC version of the Facebook one).
It has been horrible, sometimes I forget how obsessive I am. I quickly got the last level (level 60), just in one game but I died in that stage. The problem is that, when you die, you do not start in the same stage but five levels before (and with only two lifes!). Maybe I am too clumsy, but it was absolutely impossible for me. I played long hours and the best I did was reaching level 60, I did not even fight against the final boss. I realized I had a problem when I dreamt with the damned balls. So today I had only one mission, finishing the game at all cost (I mean, of course, cheating). Finally I got a cheat to slow down the balls (I would have preferred infinite lifes but I just needed to fool myself). Finally I beat the final boss.
So now it is over. The situation makes me not to trust anymore on PopCap games, I want smooth games, never like this one in which you have to be the fucking hawkeye to reach the final.
You are advised!PS: Of course both games (Zuma and Plants vs Zombies) work in Linux under wine.
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