Holiday planning

The past week (or maybe more?) I have mainly been trying to find out how to get to all the different places we will be visiting on daytrips during our Ukraine holiday. I guess it will still take me a couple of days more until I am done.

Finding out where bus stations etc. are can be quite tricky, even with Google, Google Earth, Google Maps, and Wikimapia at my disposal. I was quite pleased with myself that I managed to work out the location of image 36/37 on this page: Photos Kiev >Page 3. It took quite a bit of work though.

Various

This morning I prepared my pog website update for tomorrow and wrote a blog post for my photo website.

In the afternoon I did some sculpey with L, and made a body for David Roberts. After that I took a UV photo in the garden. It took me a long time to get everything set up to take the photo.

After dinner I watched Dai Rangers with L, which had another really good bad guy. This time it was a tofu monster that gets drunk and makes other people drunk.

I played on Eledees with L for a bit, then put away all my photography equipment.

Testing USB3 hub

This morning I was doing some more work on my wordpress plugin.

After lunch I was going through some old emails. One I got a week or so ago was from ebay, inviting me to write a review about my ebay purchases. The purchase specifically mentioned and linked to in the email was a Nikon Nikkormat EL 35mm SLR Film Camera Body Only. Only problem is, I never purchased that camera. I've not even bid on one or watched one.

I received my Sumvision USB 3 hub this afternoon, which I think must have some of the worst designed packaging ever.

What are all those bright coloured lines and the Comics-sans-esque font about? The package is also much larger than it needs to be. It just contains the hub and a usb connection cable, the packaging doesn't need to be much larger than the hub itself.

When using the hub, the first time I tried it, I plugged it into my PC, and plugged my external HD case and card reader into the hub. I then copied a folder of images from a CF card in the card reader to the external HD. But the copy got stuck part-way through. It actually messed up my PC, and I could only get my PC to shut down by unplugging the hub. Task Manager wouldn't kill the copying process for some reason. Process Lasso couldn't kill it either.

I tried again (with a different HD), and this time the copy went smoothly. I then tried with the hub connected to my Nexus 7 instead of the PC. But I couldn't write to the (NTFS formatted) HD. After much messing about, I found the following worked:

• Plug HD and card reader into USB hub. Plug hub into Nexus 7. Stickmount will auto mount the card reader. Switch on the HD, and stickmount will auto mount the HD.
• Open Paragon NFTS/HFS+. It will mount the HD. Unmount the HD in Paragon. Mount the HD again, and choose the auto location (/sdcard/ParagonNTFS).
• Now you can access the HD contents via /sdcard/ParagonNTFS, and it should be writeable.

I thought that because I was using the Motley Kernel (which is supposed to have NTFS rw support), that copying files to the HD would be easy (and not require extra software like Paragon NTFS/HFS+). But obviously I was wrong. The strange thing is that when the drive is mounted through stickmount, but not Paragon, then the drive contents show their properties as being writeable. But if you do try to write to the drive, you just get an operation failed message.

Also, when Paragon first mounts the drive, it is not writeable. You need to unmount it in Paragon and then mount it again to make it writeable. Very strange.

I still need to see how the whole setup will work when trying to copy multiple cards to the HD. That will be my task for tomorrow.

In the evening I watched an episode of Dai Rangers, which was very skill. The bad guy was a magnet priest who kept saying degauss. He put different polarities on people and objects so they either repelled or attracted each other. Very funny.

After that I went out on a walk. There was a nice pre-sunset, but I was too late for that. The sun set behind a bank of cloud, the sky was probably still reasonable, by the way I walked you couldn't see down to the horizon. I think in future I would need to go out straight after dinner (around 6.15pm) to get sunset photos.

Looking

This morning I started recording a video on modifying the Vivitar 283 flash. Then someone came round to service the fire and boiler, and they were too noisy for me to do the video. So I did some more work on my wordpress plugin instead. I now have import and export of settings working okay (I think).

In the afternoon I finished off my video and then edited it. While it was exporting I looked for screen protectors for the Nexus 7. There seem to be two ones that are recommended Bodyguardz anti-glare / anti-fingerprint screenguardz and Steinheil Ultra fine matte. Both are recommended at reducing smudges, reducing glares and reflections, and having little to no effect on touch operation and screen resolution.

But unfortunately I couldn't find either for sale in the UK, they both seem to be US exclusives. I did find Mofred Nexus 7 case with screen protector and stylus on Amazon UK, which has a lot of good reviews. But I think that the screen protector they include is just a standard one, not an anti-smudge or anti-reflection one.

In the evening I made some macaroons. Unfortunately I made them using semolina, I didn't realise until after I had poured the semolina in with the icing sugar that it was semolina and not ground almonds. I did add almond flavouring. They taste a bit weird, not too bad though.

I also looked at how I could mount my Nexus 7 on my camera for use as a monitor. (I used it flat on the table as a monitor for my video earlier, using the free Helicon remote app.

I found this suggestion: Nexus 7 mounting bracket for your DSLR rig. But unfortunately, like the screen protectors, it is difficult to get hold of the parts in the UK. There are UK ebay sellers selling that RAM mount parts (so no astronomical intl. postage fees from the US). But their prices are much higher than the USD prices from amazon.com.

So I still want to try and find a reasonably cheap way for mounting the Nexus 7 for use as a camera monitor / controller.

Oh yes, here is a link to how to use Google chrome browser on android.

Trying to get my HD recognised

This morning I did some more work on my wordpress plugin, then did some more Ukraine holiday planning.

In the afternoon I did more Ukraine holiday planning. My USB OTG cable arrived today, so I tried to get the Nexus 7 working with my card reader and USB hard drive enclosure. The only USB hub McRad had was a USB 1 one, so I ordered a USB 3 hub. Apparently the Nexus 7 isn't USB 3, but I thought I might as well get a USB 3 one anyway. It should be backwards compatible with USB 2 and slightly future proofed compared to a USB 2 hub.

I couldn't get my 3TB HD working with the Nexus 7, but the other drives I tried and my card reader worked fine. (Though I didn't try copying any files, just checking I could browse the disks). When I get the USB hub, then I can try copying files from the card reader to the external HD.

I tried a lot of different apps, and plugging, unplugging etc. in trying to get my 3TB drive to work. It was the first drive that I tried, so I didn't realise that my other drives would work okay. I just thought the tablet wouldn't work with NTFS formatted drives.

I also had a look at how to view RAW files. There is an app called RAWdroid, which should let you view RAW files. Nik Snapseed should apparently be released for Android soon, and will hopefully include RAW support.

In the evening I watched an episode of Shinkengers with Billy, then played on Eledees with him for a bit.

WP plugining and Nexus 7ing

This morning I tried to update the kernel on my Nexus 7. Apparently the linaro optimisations can make up to 100% performance improvement: Linaro Android Nearly Doubles ICS Performance, And Now Parts Of It Are Being Added to CM9. I was trying to install the Motley kernel, which includes linaro optimisations, and often seems to be recommended.

I did some research, and it seemed like you copy the zip file of the kernel to the nexus. Strangely, when I connected the Nexus 7 to my PC without USB debugging ticked, it did not show up as a drive. But it did show up when USB debugging (in the developer options) was ticked.

I copied the zip file across to the Nexus 7, I just placed it in the root (which I'm not sure is the real root, as it often seems to be referred to as /sdcard? I then booted into recovery mode. I downloaded an app to do this, but you can actually do it from the ROM manager app, or there is a manual way to do it: How to Put Nexus 7 Into Recovery Mode.

But when I booted into recovery mode it just had a fallen over android with a red exclamation mark triangle above him. After trying a few times I gave up and did some work on my wordpress plugin.

I was thinking that the work I wanted to do on my plugin today would be quick and easy (add an import and export settings option). But actually it was quite difficult. I had a number of problems, such as:

• registering actions too late (but I didn't know it was too late)
• checking an array was empty when actually I wanted to check it contained no values (an array with an empty key is not empty)
• Serving a file (Can't serve a file and a page)
• Saving a file using a user provided name (can't allow forward slashes)
• cron task not working

The cron task not working I haven't solved yet, but in the afternoon I decided to take a look at getting the new kernel installed on my nexus 7 again. It turned out that when you boot into recovery mode, the tablet must be connected to your PC. So I did that and got the new kernel installed. Easy when you know how!

After writing this blog post so far I did a bit of work in the garden. Then I made a cake.

In the evening I was watching more Nexus 7 videos. It turns out there is an N64 emulator for it, and it works well. The emulator is called N64oid. It costs a few dollars. There is another one that is free, but it isn't meant to be very good performance wise, as well as having lots of adverts.

You can also use a PS3 wireless bluetooth controller with the tablet: Unofficial how to set up ps3 Sixaxis controller App thread.

This post here has a good list of different emulators (though it doesn't mention the MAME one): [GAMES] Nexus 7 Gaming Thread.

I also watched an episode of VR Troopers and played on Eledees with Billy in the evening.

Various

This morning I did some more work on my wordpress ebay plugin.

In the afternoon I did more Ukraine holiday planning and Cyrillic learning.

In the evening I watched an episode of VR Troopers with Billy. The rest of the evening I read tutorials and watched a couple of videos about unlocking and rooting the Nexus 7. My Nexus 7 arrived today, so I followed the procedure. I think I still need to install a custom kernel, I am not exactly sure how to do that. So I will look at doing that tomorrow.