Although I mainly like google, especially for their Android stuff, I also must say I really really dislike their account managment. About a year ago, I installed google talk. For that you needed google mail. My common nicks where all taken, so I picked a stupid one. After using google talk a bit, I tried to disable it…no chance. I had a hard time finding the delete button of the google mail account too…but somehow I managed to do it. Everyting fine again.
Last weekend I logged into Android Market on a mobile phone and somehow the old stupid email nick got activated again. And not that that would have been enough, it also replaced my google account name, showing up in e.g. all the google code pages…that sucks hard! Again I tried deleting or deactivating all the apps which use the name (google mail and talk) – with partial success. Yesterday evening, my old nick appeared on google code again. Today, the stupid one once more…and now after some more clicking around – nearly getting crazy – the old one again.
Yesterday I struggled with how to update a Vodafon HTC Magic to Android 2.1 (which I urgently needed for testing purpose). The offical update has not yet been published, although several blog posts from spring 2010 stated, that this summer an update will arrive. In case you’re in the same situation, here’s my resumé.
!!! DISCLAIMER: NO WARRANTY! YOU COULD RUIN YOUR DEVICE !!!
First I recommend cyanogenmod. Go to their wiki and follow the instructions: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=HTC_Magic. Thanks to their nice write up, I discovered the first important thing: I have a HTC Magic 32B. So, the next step is to proceed to the Full Update Guide – HTC Magic 32B. Read it carefully! And also, if you live in Europe, read the last section! For me, I saw the three skateboarding Androids in the fast boot menu (access it with back + power on). I got the “Incorrect Model ID” error after loading the SAPPIMG.nbh, but didn’t need the goldcard part! I just followed the “Non-TMobile 32B Magics and ION/ADP2” section – everything worked fine. Maybe it’s just me, but after that step I restarted the “old” system, and also copied the backup on my PC…just to be sure.
Now proceed to Upgrading From CM 4.2 or other rooted ROMS to 5.0.x(Dream/Sapphire). Don’t get overwhelmed, it’s a straight forward process. The important thing is, to perform a FULL WIPE. First I only cleared the dalvik-cache, which resulted in a never ending boot phase. Then I tried again with a full wipe, and it worked like a charm!
And that was it. Hope this helps…the whole process took me a few hours, but if you do it like described here, you can do it within half an hour (including all the downloading ).
I recently stumbled over ShiVa, a 3d game engine. In fact, I am so impressed, that I’ll also include it in the rapid prototyping tool part of my thesis, although I actually have finished that chapter. For only around 200€, you get the full package: webplayer publishing, mobile devices (iphone and Android) and of course cross-platform PCs (Win,Linux,OSX).
I’ve ported a small 2D game we did for Android in about three days. Since I also had to get the hang of ShiVa, I think that is quite a small amount of time. I am going to wrap up the experience I made the next few weeks (hopefully more frequently than the last two months), so stay tuned!
A colleague of mine is writing his thesis about Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) and also covers the topic of rapid game prototyping. He’s (at least in my opinion ) up to some really crazy stuff…although I must admit I don’t understand everything he talks about.
Recently, he also started blogging about this, so if you’re interested in some alternative programming thoughts and styles, check out his blog every once and a while: http://lambdor.net/
I also linked him in my blogroll in case you can’t remember his URL .
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