Archive for the 'tech' Category

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using a web proxy on android

my work­place uses a web proxy for all http web access. i nor­mally use an ssh tunnel to bypass this but when i want to connect to the wire­less network with my android phone this doesn’t work. the solu­tion? i hate to say it but it’s opera mobile. the only android browser i’m aware of that allows the user to edit proxy set­tings via a GUI (well you can maybe do it with firefox’s version but it won’t run on my phone’s ARMv6 pro­cessor so i couldn’t tell you). fire up opera mini and you’ll be greeted with the usual start page…

note that none of opera mobile’s serious tweak­ables can be accessed using the set­tings option in the menu. you have to type opera:config into the address bar and hit go…or enter…or whatever. this’ll bring up a page with a long list of con­fig­ur­ables. scroll down and tap on the ‘Proxy’ option. this will expand to produce some­thing like this…

scroll down in this section and enter the required proxy inform­a­tion (get this from your network admin if you’re not sure of it) in the HTTP Server and HTTPS Server sec­tions. also check the boxes that say ‘Use HTTP’ & ‘Use HTTPS’. now click save at the bottom of the proxy section and you’re done. note that this only enables the opera browser to access the web. your email, twitter and other clients won’t work.

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htc hero running salsasense 4.0

had my htc hero for 20 months or so and it wasn’t exactly cutting edge when i got it. the wee trooper has served me well though. been running cronos on it for the last 6 months but devel­op­ment seems to have stalled on it and i had some per­form­ance issues too (launcher force closing a lot). some clever folk have ripped the rom from the htc salsa and i saw no reason why it shouldn’t work on the hero. sure enough it does. backed up the current cronos install with clock­work recov­ery and on it went (after delet­ing data, cache and dalvik). usual install process…takes quite a while to get to the launcher on first boot (and i’d recom­mend another restart to let things settle down). all func­tions are working as they should…wi-fi, gps, bluetooth etc

very usable. htc sense has come a long way since i last used it. slick user inter­face with very little lag. battery usage may be slightly higher but as my cell’s rather aged it needs a lot of char­ging whatever the phone is running. if you’d like to breath a new lease of life into your phone you could do a lot worse than this. assum­ing your model is compatible…i’m not respons­ible for any bricks you might create. screen­shots below…


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epson perfection 2480 35mm negative scanner linux

been meaning to get a 35mm neg­at­ive scanner for quite some time. couldn’t have been that anxious to use one though as i bought one 10 months ago and didn’t even take it out of the box. got it on ebay for £10. no cables apart from the power supply but still a bit of a bargain i think you’ll agree. last week, however, i did take it out of the box and here’s the setup story. no more low quality scans from the local lab.

well pack­aged, eh?

good recycled padding there…

and the seller is a daily mail reader…no account­ing for taste i guess.

and there she is. condition’s fine. as i said earlier…just the power supply included…luckily i have many bags of cables lying around. one of which had the appro­pri­ate usb lead.

to get to the film scanner one must remove the white back­ground from the lid of the flatbed. this wasn’t instantly obvious to me. little bit of swear­ing was neces­sary before i real­ised this. the scanner head was also a trifle stuck. a good dunt fixed that.

linux drivers. i only bought the epson as i knew they had some linux support. check their site here to locate and down­load the correct file. a sur­pris­ingly wide range of linux distros are sup­por­ted. i’m using fedora 15 64 bit so went with the rpms (iscan-2.10.0–1.c2.i386.rpm & iscan-plugin-gt-f500-1.0.0–1.c2.i386.rpm) although the source is there if you want it. install them in the usual manner…there’s a pdf there too if you’re struggling.

now i don’t ever buy soft­ware but i’d used vuescan on windows years ago and liked it a lot. i figured that i’d got the scanner for a good price and so $39.95 for some cross-platform soft­ware wasn’t too steep (you could just use xsane of course). this has a year of updates…$79.95 for a life­time license.

here’s vuescan doing its stuff. simple and effect­ive. scanned a strip of 35mm ilford hp5 plus first…

and here’s one of the frames…

not that great but that’s the fault of the photographer…not the hard­ware of software.

so. for £40 or there­abouts i’ve got a very capable film scanner, that’ll do prints nicely also, and some power­ful soft­ware. not too shabby i think.

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android tablet — custom rom

just bought a 7 inch android tablet. the place i got it from calls it an MG368 but it’s is actu­ally a MID703.  it’s cer­tainly no ipad (which i’m not unduly upset about as it was 10% of the price) but the specs are as follows…256MB RAM, an 800MHz Via 8650 pro­cessor, 2GB internal storage and a res­ist­ive screen (green LED model). came running android 2.2.  now i like to tinker so the first thing i did was look into getting a custom ROM on there. i plumped for uberoid wm8650 hon­ey­comb­mod v5 from the clever folk at HcH. grab the ROM from here (use 7-zip to extract it if you’re having trouble) or visit the pre­vi­ous link, register, and get it from there (good general advice on the forums too). EDIT — see the bottom of this post for an updated version of the ROM.

now you’ll need a micro sd card (512MB at least) and a #cough# windows pc. format the card with FAT32. extract the con­tents of the archive to the sd card (this’ll give you a folder called ‘Firm­ware­In­stall’ and four other files. run ‘CHANGER.bat’ from the card and a screen with a list of numbered options will appear. for this tablet number 8 is the correct choice (note that this worked for me with this model. i will not be held respons­ible if you end up with a bricked slab) so press 8 and then hit enter. press any key when this is com­plete and eject the card.

insert the card into the tablet (bit fiddly this…i used the tip of a pen to make sure it went in prop­erly) and then switch it on. the install process should start auto­mat­ic­ally and will look some­thing like this

when the process is fin­ished it will prompt you to remove the sd card (again i used the tip of a pen). when you’ve removed it the tablet will auto­mat­ic­ally reboot and after a short wait (it will be quicker with sub­sequent boots) you’ll get to the desktop. *import­ant* make sure you format the sd card using your com­puter again or the install process will start all over again next time you boot up and you won’t be able to halt it.

it feels very respons­ive with no lag and seems to multi-task very well. if i have a com­plaint (and it isn’t any­thing to do with the ROM) it’s the screen. takes a lot of getting used to. i always seem to select some­thing when i’m trying to scroll. however, using the sup­plied stylus makes things easier and i’m sure i’ll get used to it. all in all. a great value tablet and a nicely crafted custom ROM.

EDIT — since i posted this uberoid wm8650 1.3.0 HYBRiD hon­ey­comb­MOD v6 FiNAL has been released. it fea­tures improved battery life and much better 2d graph­ics per­form­ance. more info and down­loads here

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Bear