Ubuntu Edge ... Final Hours

While I posted about Ubuntu Edge before, It's at the final hours (17) of the campaign and with only 12.25mil and just under 20mil to go, it doesn't look very likely this crowd-funding campaign will reach its goal.

At the discounted price of $695/phone, that is now 46k units instead of 40k units, which is a decent manufacturing run, although I'm not sure on the exact numbers in the economical analysis of these things.

Spec-wise, and functionality-wise it trumps anything in that price-range, Xperia Z or HTC One. Unfortunately, probably due to inadequate advertisement/social media-ring and just not enough people ready to upgrade/commit (a lot of the early adopters may have already bought something this year like the previously mentioned phones), the campaign won't be breaking crowd-funding records like Star Citizen's record breaking crowd-funding dollars.

Still, 12mil is pretty respectable, it was 11mil yesterday and comes close to the 14.6 mil that Star Citizen had when I posted about Ubuntu Edge before (see previous blog post link). Right now Star Citizen has a whopping 15.7mil and growing everyday. Hangar module comes out 24th August at GamesCon, so can't wait to see the news and test it.
I hope they release something like an OpenGL version soon because apparently it'll be DirectX11 and my GT330m doesn't have that support T_T. Also, recent look at ATI's open source driver support leans me towards getting an ATI graphics next time. These nvidia binary blobs sometimes screw up and took me an hour to get my 319 driver working with Linux 3.8 and jockey -_-.



P.S. So for Systems Engineering Analysis (ENGN2226) I get to look at nanosats woot.

Ubuntu Edge - Wow Canonical!

This is one high-end early adopter phone. And the internets are talking about it.
They want to smash Star Citizen's current USD$14.6 million record in crowd-funding by raising $32m, which roughly translates to 40,000 units.
As they say on their indiegogo page, they want to do this like a Formula 1 thing, (so prototypes or betas on a testing ground if you will) instead of the million unit scale of normal consumer phones.

They're also trying to get into the market like Google - not technical mobile phone makers but 'advisors'. I just hope they don't force Ubuntu Unity on people =/ (which they won't because they haven't turned evil right?)

2012 SciFi realities and Future Tech + Virgin Galactic

http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/01/03/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2012/


That chimera - bloody biologists are making FMA stuff a reality! I also lol'd at the accidents on self-driving cars ...

Also, Oculus Rift (revealed 2012) is a giant leap for NerveGear (SAO).

And congratulations to the folks at Virgin Galactic for the first powered SpaceShipTwo flight breaking mach 1, add that to the list of official responses =P.

Star Citizen - RSI, from the makers of Freelancer etc.

from the makers of Freelancer ... THIS. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen

• A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.
• Single Player – Offline or Online(Drop in / Drop out co-op play)
• Persistent Universe (hosted by US)
• Mod-able multiplayer (hosted by YOU)
• No Subscriptions
• No Pay to Win

Only thing missing from it is shiny MMORPGFPS gameplay on the planetary surface found in the likes of Precursors (which gameplay-wise was amazing =D).
What makes me so excited: MMO persistent universe, FPS elements, Ship combat which is like Freelancer and not MOBA-style (sorry DoTA2, D3, Torchlight, just not so into click click click =P).
Shameless plug for my favourite game of all time (Tribes 1) remade into an arcade style FPS: less gameplay complexity, and weird speed gain when skiing but nevertheless FUN.


BOARDING SHIP MECHANIC explained
Multiplayer and Single player instancing explained.
Because, FIREFLY for inspiration. =) - would love that job xD
Support Linux at the poll for stretch goals (click thru to RSI website for the poll), give CryEngine3 the incentive to go to the quickest growing gaming platform right now with Source, Steam, Unity supporting =) Linux. Speaking of Linux, Humble Bundle for Android 4 finishes in 6 days!


Final-week's (3 days left to pledge!) pitch:


FINAL WEEK PUSH from Roberts Space Industries on Vimeo.

So a few points of our next major stretch goal (from boarding ship mechanic post and RSI star citizen website):
$4.0 million Level Additions

• Melee & Heavy Weapons
• Zero-gravity Simulation
• Suit HUD Options
• Increased Customization
• Outside-the-ship combat (magnetic boots on a hull; think Moonraker)
• Pro MOD TOOLS FREE to players!
• Persistent Universe (forever instead of 30 months), 50 star systems
• More Squardron 42 campaign gameplay
• Increased community updates

- According to RSI website, we need $250k left till $4mil. Also, back on Kickstarter, your pledge will go towards stretch goals of BOTH kickstarter and the overall stretch goals at RSI.  
SO PLEDGE ON KICKSTARTER NOW =D.


I've always wanted to do Precursors MMO'd with friends. This is the closest thing I have ever seen. No amount of procedural universe generation, even if done by big industry pros would sway me. Just damn good gameplay with friends =).
That said, I've had my eye on Infinity Universe for years, because dang-it, its got great gameplay and scale, just without the FPS element >=| and definitely will be happily playing when it comes out.

News post #11?

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/
Woot, u go, hacker children!!
Personally, I think humans are naturally hackers and makers, curious about things, tinkering with them, and wanting to make/create things. This bit of news kind of supports my thought =P
Also, good to see OLPC is doing stuff, their $100 XO-1 is pretty neat too, I've seen it in action before at ASSC, one of the guys from Lunar Numbat brought it along =)
Speaking of which, haven't heard much news from LN and White Label Space, but Canberra UAV had a pretty good year, and they presented at CLUG too! =D

Yep, lots of group dropping there =P Don't forget the hackerspaces I follow: MHV and HackJamHK@Dimsumlabs(-their FB page is pretty well updated) =D
Being a Melbourne boy, it's kinda sad I dont' follow these guys (CCHS) nearly as much (due to me not being around Melbourne -my fav city- as much as the other two places these days! ><") though some of them are LN and they've had some pretty cool projects. Their computer-in-car is especially cool =P and is part of the inspiration for Project Sheila (now much easier with mobile computing and Li batteries =D) which first requires a car and license (lol) xD Anyone get the project name reference? (Hint, my AI will be called Sheila).

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In other cool news:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/october/carbon-solar-cell-103112.html
First whole carbon solar cell including electrodes (apparently some researchers as engadget points out, has made the energy transducer part before)
Pretty cool.

Initial thoughts on JellyTime R7 (CM)

Check my previous post for more regarding ROMs and Android for the HTC Desire HD. 

Just notes to myself mainly; thoughts on JT R7 (CM) by randomblame from having upgraded from IceColdSandwich 8.4 by LordClockaN

TL;DR - it's REALLY smooth that's for sure. phone feels a lot less lagy. (and more stable than ICS =o)
battery life is pretty much a little bit worse probably by 5-10% but i just came from AOKP and these are pretty early releases, will switch to AOKP soon.
Pretty much everything works fine atm, but video camera .

defs feels like a 4.1 instead of 5.0

Video recorder broken (even though changelog says 720p OK) -gallery stopped (vid cam illusion works 480p), stock camera app greatly improved, touch focus.
recording audio unbroken. No mic mute problem when speaker turned on in call. 
Screen on when turned off with light bands - saw this once, fixed by turning screen on then off. 
 
Updating Google Play apps not jaggered-frozen/slow anymore, the Play Store app is generally faster/smoother.
A lot less lagyness, not near as frequent force close messages (prob occured when nand recovered back into ICS8.4).

Toggles work flawlessly, however CM has no powersaver option. Must manually turn off stuff before turning off screen.
Battery life is a bit worse, 3-7mA idle vs. ~10(-80)mA. Battery overall probably lasts 2 hours less, although music with screen off is still ~75mA. Probably a combination of no power saver in CM and project butter pumping my CPU to the higher freqs more often.

CM does indeed have less options than AOKP and lockscreen gestures doesn't work/no option for them, only 5-slider lockscreen. Custom Apps/Shortcuts don't work atm, I think this was in the changelog. 
Apollo music app - lockscreen no artist, widget - only white, has black theme. Luckily still uses DSP Manager. Change to google Music - the one that comes with AOKP. 
Switch to AOKP ASAP.

Revert Exec Assist. lockscreen to non-ad. Possible future android app dev project - lockscreen/widget.
FB app running faster, could be FB devs or FB-JB compatibility. 

USB storage connection with computer breaks regularly, or could be this new cable I'm using, will test with original cable soon. 

Android ROMs on the HTC Desire HD & Flashing Checklist

Most of your DHD ROMs can be found right here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=765

Glossary/Links:
CM - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/
AOKP - http://aokp.co/index.php/about
AOSP - http://source.android.com/ (Hurray for FOSS!!)
ROM, Flashing, radios, etc. - Google and xda site search are your friends. (i.e. RTFriendlyM)

Here's a list of the ROMs I've used previously:

- Stock 2.3 Gingerbread with Sense. Yuk. (My opinion of manufacturer Android distributions/overlays - being launcher, widgets, lockscreen - is that they love to make them hard to use and ugly.
- Android Revolution HD (by mike), pretty good Android 2.3 ROM
- Virtuous Quattro, didn't really like it

Current ROM: 
- Ice Cold Sandwich by LorD ClockaN
It's been great, got it before the Camera even took photos without cutting off bits. Then came the 480p video recording mod and my phone was complete =) I mainly upgraded to Android 4.0 ICS because I wanted to be able to access my university's wpa2 wifi network. When I tried moving back to ARHD or any 2.3 ROM I just didn't like all the missing features.
It's more or less stable (with the odd reboot, which could be triggered by certain app versions misbehaving), with great battery life (lasts the day) and AOKP's power saver works well to achieve that. Camera's still no where near as good as the Sense camera (only thing good about sense) but it does come pretty close to the AOSP one.
From the AOKP ROM Control, I use an octo-lockscreen, toggles, custom auto backlight levels, custom clock battery and signal icons/text colours etc. =D
Nova launcher is my preferred launcher, especially now that it has backup and restore function. Good for regular ROM flashing, speaking of which, I'll have a little checklist at the end of the guide that I use to make sure I don't brick my device (check those checksum hashes of the ROM/radios people).
Apparently BFS kernel and smartassV2 CPU scheduler (default is ondemand) yield freeze/boot-free results and better CPU respectively.

ROM I'm thinking of using:
JellyTime, since it's basically the only ROM based on AOKP which you can find updated regularly on the xda forums. ATM I'm thinking of using the CM based build just because it seems to be updated a bit more and possibly more polished. (It's AOKP's fault for being a bit slow on the ball for JellyBean.) I am however, an AOKP fan as it just seems to have all the settings I want so I'll be moving to AOKP soon.
Here's the links on xda:
AOKP-based JellyTime by randomblame
CM10-based JellyTime by randomblame

 

 My ROM flashing checklist (useful if you flash constantly and need to remember stuff so as not to screw up or brick your device).

Pre-Flashing Checklist
SMS log      - SMS BackUp Restore
Call log     - Call log BU&R
Whatsapp etc.- Backup Convos In-App & Account with Titanium Backup
Home Screen  - Nova Settings/Layout Backup
Apps         - Titanium Backup (data),
             - Astro (APK for Easy Installer),
             - APK Batch INstaller [PC]
ROM settings - AOKP Backup settings
(Rebackup Data for SMS/Call/Home Apps)

Nandbackup  !!
--------------------------------------------
Flashing:

Boot Recovery (Nandbackup reminder)
Full wipe (incl. Wipe cache + dalvik cache)
Install/Flash ROM
Flash Gapps if needed

Boot into ROM

(Flash kernel - BFS if needed)
--------------------------------------------
Post-flash:

Reinstall: Easy Installer/Astro/Titanium Backup
Restore all apps (Easy Installer/APK Batch Installer[PC])
Restore all app-data (Titanium Backup/APK Batch Installer[PC])
Restore SMS
Restore Call log
Restore Whatsapp, Viber, Line etc.
Restore Home Screen

Redo ROM settings. - AOKP Backup/Restore




Optional custom DPI:
Restore DPI - 210/220
Flash market/ install GPlay apk (Phonesky, Google Services Framework)
Clear Market Data
Redo DPI method