Posts tagged "tech"

About a month of using a Mac has finally convinced me of one thing: the iMac is Good. It has impressed me through and through, right from the display quality and build down to the aesthetics. And if you’re wondering if Apple has managed to convert yet another PC user, the answer is a strong no. There are just too many nuances about using OSX that I could not bear with.

Anyhow, we have another desktop, this time a minimal Win7 setup, along with my recent favorite skin for foobar2000, Metro.

Desktop Screenshot: August 2012

The setup is simple, featuring Rainmeter as usual, but also having some additional tricks.

Tools and Skins used:

Work VII
Rainmeter 2.4
Metro

To install Work VII theme:

  1. Get and run Universal Theme Patcher if you don’t have it already!
  2. Patch the system files (this step is necessary to use shell customizations, which almost all themes rely on)
  3. Copy theme files to WindowsResourcesThemes
  4. Open the .theme/.themepack file to install theme
  5. Done!

Feel free to reach me if you run across any issues while setting things up!

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I’ve been using ParanoidAndroid 1.92, a Jelly Bean ROM, as a daily driver on my I9100 for the past week, thanks to CM10 team, and D4rKn3sSyS over at XDA. There have been *almost* no issues so far. I’ve had some people asking how JB is different from ICS, and so I thought it’s time I post about my experience so far.

Android JellyBean Screenshot 1 Android JellyBean Screenshot 2 Android JellyBean Screenshot 3

Given that it is still an experimental build, there might be more improvements in the pipeline, and if that happens, I’ll take the time out to post a second review (or update this one). So anyway, let’s move on to the first impressions.

The performance has been amazing even without the Project Butter implementation! It feels a lot faster than ICS. It has some flashy screen transitions, but on the whole, keeps the ICS look and feel which, in my books, is a win.

Google Now is a whole new ball-game. Now does not even require you to ask for things… All relevant information is all displayed as a stack of cards. In fact, Now is smart enough to know that I don’t need to know about the traffic on my way to work on the weekends.

Google Search now uses Google’s Knowledge Graph implementation. Add Voice Search to that, and we have a winner. With the instantaneous responses, it leaves even Siri biting the dust. Voice Search has a better, faster way of presenting information compared to Siri, though it does lack the functionality to add and edit calendar events and such (one of the new things coming in iOS6’s Siri.)

The revamped Notification Tray is out-of-this-world! We all know it provides the ability to display larger notifications, but there is no way you can imagine the impact of this small enhancement till you see it in action. Entire texts and emails can be read, screenshots and images can be previewed, calls made and ended, directly from the notification.

Offline Dictation is simply brilliant! You could easily type out entire emails using it, but to be on the safe side, it does require proofreading.

The Homescreen has been one of the key features of Android’s UI, and it’s great to see that even such a tried and tested system has got some major usability upgrades. Icons simply move out of the way (if possible), instead of giving the “not enough space” toast, making is infinitely faster to rearrange or customize the layout.

The Camera has seen some interface change as well. Now we can simply swipe left to get into the gallery. Pinch to zoom out of the picture on the screen, and you get into a quasi-film-strip view. Swipe all the way to the right, and you get back to the camera. The camera also shows focus state, so you know what’s going on while shooting photographs.

Things are not rosy all-around though. In my first two days with JB, I charged my phone 4 times—that’s a 12 hour life on an average—and I used to get at least twice that with ICS. After letting the ROM “settle” I have noticed better standby times, but as soon as the screen is on, the charge nosedives; in short, battery life disappoints. Given the functionality and performance, and keeping in mind that it’s only an experimental preview, I must say battery shouldn’t be your top priority. What are extended cells for, anyway! 😀

On the whole, JB is just an incremental update, but I’m quite hopeful about how things are turning out. Maybe with the next Android release (the rumoured Key-Lime Pie), Google will have an answer to Passbook.

PS: It seems that PA1.95 is out! It’s going to be another long night…
If you guys have any thoughts or questions, feel free to leave it in the comments below!

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I’ve been testing Jelly Bean ROMs over the past few days. I’ve tried three—CM10 Preview, CM10 X-TremE, and ParanoidAndroid 1.92.

They all work flawlessly as stock, except for one thing: gaming performance sucks. So I looked in the forums for a fix, and stumbled upon Dream Kernel. And performance has been dream-like ever since. I believe Dorimanx kernel has been updated to support JB as well!

I’ve been using ParanoidAndroid as a daily driver on my I9100 for the past couple of days, and thanks to CM10 team, and D4rKn3sSyS over at XDA, and I must say, there have been *almost* no issues so far.

I do not think there could be a more stable and functional “Preview” build out there. The only bits not functional yet are HW Composer and Audio over Bluetooth, and there will be updates to get them working quite soon. PieRs Kang even has HW Composer implemented, and that means it has Project Butter working.

There are rumours that Siyah will be updated to support Jelly Bean. I noticed that non-availability of Siyah was a deal breaker for many, but even that is about to change!

Here are the links to some of the ROMs I’ve been talking about…
PieR’s Unofficial CMX Builds
ParanoidAndroid
Official CMX Preview
X-TremE CM10

Feel free to ask questions if you encounter any issues, down in the comments below.
So what are you waiting for? Happy Flashing!

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I’ve been noticing some strange activity statistics on my blog, Vox Intus. Would anyone have a clue? Did something change in Germany/Eastern Europe? Did I write something to pique their interest (highly unlikely!) Or is it simply someone hiding behind an anonymous proxy?

Strange Visitor Statistics

The other strange thing is, they seem to be using IE!

Well, anyways, good to see that blogger has got a good visitor tracking mechanism for daily overview. Makes things easier than going through Google Analytics every time.

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Hey guys! I just implemented facebook comments on my blog, Vox Intus. What do you think?
It was a simple process really, as detailed here, but is it a change for the good? Is it better than the good ol’ blogger comments? Should I implement it here?

Thanks to this indecision, I’ve left blogger’s comments intact (as there doesn’t seem to be a way to migrate them,) and simply disabled the ability to post new comments..

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Here’s the first Yahoo! Pipe I came up with. It’s mostly a mashup of all the feeds, Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Goodreads, and any other site that came to mind… And it’s pretty big. I could probably write up a decent tutorial, but instead, I guess I’ll just help out if anyone asks (now we all know, that’s not gonna happen!)

Yahoo Pipes

You guys can see it in more detail at my Yahoo! Pipes library

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It wouldn’t be hard to guess the thing I miss the most about MNNIT. Yeah, that’s right! It’s the Internet Connection. Here’s a preview of what I did with it when I got the 2TB External—it went on for about two months, and then I ran out of space…

Those were the times! 10-12MBps (note: Its B, not b, so its about 100Mbps; cosumer broadband does not exceed 4Mbps,) and unlimited!

PS: There was one thing I missed even more! But I think I’d rather keep that to myself…
PPS: The internet we had was what I believe to be an Internet Leased Line. 100Mbps costs ₹2.5 Cr

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And we’ve been given Thinkpad T420s! ZS Rocks!

A sample of the computing power this baby has:

That’s the laptop running it’s default Win7 OS, VMware player running WinXP, and an instance of RDC connected to Win Server 08! And take a look at the programs running in the various desktops! All this, and the baby’s still lag-free!

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I’ve been busy with too many things at once, and hence, haven’t done a single thing; as it so often happens… So well, here’s a preview made using a set of wallpapers I’ve been working on..

The desktop previews Rainmeter 2.0 Enigma with a few self-made skins—8 Disk HDD Meter, Word of the Day, Music Preview—which are, needless to say, available on request.

Using an extremely transparent Win7 Theme, it is possible to have a completely different experience every time the wallpaper changes. Hence the effort put into making them. They will be up on deviantart soon…

Here comes the preview!

PS: There’s a set of 24 walls right now.. all in 1440p!

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