Prose and Crons

I loved squirrels very much. On my way to work this morning, a frisky fellow dashed right into my path.  I saw him, slammed the brakes and knew in the pit of my stomach that I wouldn't be able to stop in time...when he put on his own brakes at the last possible nanosecond!!! And his brakes seemed to work better than mine! My heart was pounding as I skidded past him.  He was actually looking at me right in the eye as I shot past. He seemed to be saying to me 'Sorry 'bout that, bud! I'll take better care the next time!' The feeling of relief that washed over me was beautiful.  Oh, I'd have felt soooooo miserable if I'd run him over.

The background:-

Android is a Linux-based operating system for mobile and hand-held devices, and like Linux, it bestows full power only to the 'root' user, that is, the power user or the administrator.  However,  Android phones for most part are 'locked', that is, users don't have 'root' privileges.  They can only use the functionality provided by the various applications and nothing more. This is done partly to ensure that users don't screw up the software on their phones and in many cases, to ensure that a user stays bound to a particular service provider. While the typical user would put his/her hands up if a feature or the lack of it frustrated him/her and leave it at that, I'd want to get my hands dirty and try and fix it.  This led me to the forums that discussed 'rooting', that is, means to 'unlock' the hidden powers of the devices, to be able to change things at will.  Rooting however comes at a price: the warranty is immediately voided and there is a very real risk of turning the device into a really expensive paperweight, in case things go wrong! 

A casual search of the terms 'Android' and 'Rooting' throws up a whole lot of data, but not all of it is easy to understand, or even relevant. While some articles describe ways to get super user privileges on the existing system, most talk about replacing the entire system with a different system.  I was more inclined to try the former than the latter, as I was pretty happy with the software provided by HTC.  I only wanted to iron out a few kinks, not have a completely new system which I may or may not like.
Sometime back, HTC announced that they were allowing users to 'officially' unlock the bootloaders on their phones and I grabbed the opportunity, as an unlocked bootloader is the first requirement to be able to obtain root privileges on a phone. The bootloader unlock process was pretty straight-forward,  and before long, I had accomplished it.  The next question was how to go about getting superuser privileges on it.  Once again,  there was a lot of information, but two webpages were particularly helpful:
http://androidforums.com/incredible-all-things-root/420788-how-regain-root-s-off-htc-unlocked-bootloader.html
and
http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/root-and-install-clockworkmod-recovery-in-htc-salsa-guide/
It was not all smooth sailing, as the primary method, including the software listed and the method described didn't work for me. User scott85's comments on the first site were really helpful, and I successfully rooted my phone, that is, obtained super user privileges without changing the whole system. Let me sum up what it took, to successfully root the HTC Salsa, just in case anybody needs it.

DISCLAIMER:-
This is what I did to successfully root my HTC Salsa (Gingerbread 2.3.3) phone.
I offer no guarantees that these steps will work for you and and take no responsibility for any damage that may occur to your phone, if you decide to try these instructions out. The links provided and the packages referred are not owned/maintained by me and I'm not responsible for any content on those sites or in the actual packages.
ROOTING IS DANGEROUS AND MAY RENDER YOUR PHONE USELESS IF YOU GO WRONG. LET THE USER BEWARE!

How I rooted my HTC Salsa

1) Updated my phone's software version to approved Software number (1.12.720.5 for my region) by accepting the OTA update (HTC Twitter client).
2) Downloaded the RUU (only works on Windows) for my software number, from the HTC dev site, after logging in with a new account.
3) Installed RUU and completed the listed steps to unlock bootloader.
4) Formatted my sdcard in Fat32 format. 
4) Downloaded recovery image archive PH11IMG.ZIP and unzipped it to get 'recovery.img' which I copied onto my sdcard.
5) Downloaded superuser application files archive Superuser-3.0.7-efgh-signed.zip which I copied onto my sdcard.
5) Put my phone into HBOOT mode and THEN attached phone to computer with USB cable. 
6) Ensured that the phone was detected by the computer and then executed
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
7) The fastboot command reported the successful flash.
8) Rebooted my phone into HBOOT mode, and then into recovery mode. This brings up the 'Clockwork Mod' recovery tool.
9) Chose the 'Install zip from SD card' option.
10) Chose the 'Choose zip from SD card' option.
11) Selected the Superuser-3.0.7-egfh-signed.zip file and selected the 'Yes, Install' Option.
12) Got a 'Success' message and rebooted to normal mode to find the 'superuser' app installed. The rest of my apps and original system were unaffected.

Some really cool apps that I found, for my newly rooted phone. All these apps are available for free, in the Android market. While not all of them require root, they make a lot of sense on a rooted phone.

1) Titanium Backup:  Very powerful utility to backup and manage applications.
2) BusyBox:  Enables many, many useful system commands.
3) Terminal Emulator: Allows you to use all those useful commands enabled by BusyBox.
4) SSHDroid: Allows you to setup an ssh server on your phone, allowing you to log in to your phone from another phone/machine on the same network (wifi)
5) ConnectBot: Allows you to log in to other machines/devices on the network (wifi).
6) RomManager: Check/fix file permissions, reboot into recovery and a lot of ROM related functions (I don't use most of them).
7) Link2SD: Allows you to combat the dreaded low internal storage space problem.  This deserves a whole post.  Coming up soon.
8) Root Browser: Allows you to browse all directories and cut/copy/paste/move/delete files/directories. I prefer the commandline, but this is a nice graphical tool.

For a techie, my relationship with technology has been rather atypical.  So much so that my friend killjoy_20 once called me a Luddite! Facebook is one thing which I resisted for a very long time, though it seemed to be all the rage, but now, I've made my peace with it and am even enjoying it. I used to argue that it would never be like lj, and on that score, I'm still right: lj still holds a place much closer to my heart, but the fact is, most of the people I know are not on lj.  I use fb, and sometimes even twitter for sharing links and videos. I often find links to interesting videos and news articles on twitter and fb, which I read when I find time for it.  However,  if there is one major difference between lj and the rest, it's permanence. If I post something on lj and come back after a month, it's still there. My friends who are interested to go through my posts can find it right away, unlike on fb and twitter where wallposts/tweets get buried under tons and tons of other content that keeps going up every moment. The lifespan of content on fb is a few minutes, most often, and a few hours, if it's a slow day for others.  I often get the feeling that I can't really keep pace with fb and twitter, but it doesn't really seem to matter much now.  For me, lj is where I go when I have something important to share.  fb and twitter are what I think as random babble gatherers and I like them for their own strengths.  I've even started to post links to my lj posts on fb and I daresay more people seem to be reading my blog these days as a result!

The technology that I refer to in the subject line of this post however has nothing to do with facebook or even lj.  It's simply the technology that's literally come into our hands and into our lives.  The technology that we have today that we couldn't even dream about a few years ago.  How often was it that we'd have a haunting melody in our heads but couldn't  look it up simply because we didn't know the name of the song or the lyrics, even partially? Often, it was just a tune in the head. 

Enter software like SoundHound and Shazam. I have SoundHound, a free application, installed on my Android phone.  How does it work? You simply launch it and either sing the song or better yet, hum the tune into the microphone and then it does its magic: within a few seconds, it furnishes the name of the song, the band/singer and a lot more information, just like that. The success rate with international songs seems much higher, but I've had success with a few old Hindi songs too. There was this beautiful song that I'd heard several years ago.  The music was so hauntingly beautiful that the tune had stayed in my head for years, yet I'd never been able to find the song itself over the years. I remembered that tune all of a sudden today, and equally suddenly, I realized that I now had the power to find the song! I pulled out my phone, launched the app, hummed the tune and waited with bated breath for the results. Within about ten seconds, it came up with a bunch of 'possible' matches. I launched youtube and entered the first 'possible' match and immediately realized that I'd found the song I wanted.  Technology does change the way we experience life.  It changes the experience called 'life'.

The song, called Ameno by a new-age group called Era, for your listening/viewing pleasure:

"That's a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind."
-Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon.

Man has always aspired to achieve things hitherto believed impossible.  For each inventor/adventurer/scientist who succeeded in achieving greatness and gone on to get a hero, thousands perished, aspiring for the same greatness.  While the Wright brothers invented the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft, many were those who tried and failed before them. "If I have seen farther, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants", Sir Isaac Newton is reported to have said, and it describes perfectly the efforts of many who failed, which went on to serve as a guiding light or a warning beacon to their successors.

The idea of being able to take off and land aircraft, from ships on the sea was one such: a desire which seemed too difficult to bring to fruition. Yet, people tried, failed, and tried again, and again, and again, till they achieved it.
Squadron commander Edwin Harris Dunning of the British Royal Naval Service, on the 2nd of August 1917, became the first man to successfully land an aircraft on a moving ship, the HMS Furious, creating history and providing hope to people who'd almost started to question the feasibility of the whole idea. Trying to repeat his feat, just five days later, on the 7th of August 1917, Edwin got caught in an updraft due to which he wasn't able to bring his aircraft to a complete halt before it tipped over the edge of the ship, drowning him in full view of his horrified shipmates and friends. Since then, aircraft carriers and indeed aviation itself, both civilian and combat, have come a very long way, but such progress just wouldn't have been possible had it not been for the incredible bravery and sacrifices made by people like Squadron commander Edwin Harris Dunning. I found these pictures of him on wikipedia.org



Squadron Commander Dunning being cheered by his colleagues upon achieving the first ever landing of an airplane on the deck of a moving ship.



Horrified crew members look on as Dunning fails to bring the airplane down in time. Though he managed to bring it down on the ship, he was not able to stop it before it tipped over the edge of the ship.

I also found this video which documents some more early attempts to land airplanes on the decks of aircraft carriers.

I've just got myself an ebook reader (Nook Simple Touch by Barnes and Noble) and I've been having a gala time reading novels on it.
I'd always been cynical about the quality of experience of trying to read a book in its digital avatar, but this device threw all those reservations right out of the window!
It's light-weight, sits comfortably in one hand and provides an incredible reading experience which in my opinion not only provides an experience at par to that of reading a print-and-paper book but actually surpasses it!  Now, I know this is a lot to digest for a lot of traditional book lovers, but I used to be one of them myself before I became a convert! Allow me to me explain!

The common complaints regarding ebooks is that print-and-paper gives more of a feel to the reading, complete with the feel of crinkly paper and smell of old paper and print. That they strain the eye and are in general clunky.  Modern ebook readers still don't flatter the tactile and olfactory senses like the books of old did,  but the rest of the drawbacks have been completely ironed out.
The Nook comes with something called the e-ink technology, which besides being very frugal on the battery (provides up to sixty hours of reading on a single full charge!), it is extremely friendly on the eye.  Also, the capacitive touch screen is a joy to use: the gentlest of finger-strokes are sufficient to turn a page or access other functions such as a built-in dictionary lookup tool which allows you to instantly learn the meaning of hitherto unencountered words.  A neat feature which would have appealed very much to my late grandfather is the notes feature which allows readers to highlight portions of text and to write their own 'footnotes'.  Changing font sizes is also a breeze and the page resizes accordingly thereby preserving the aesthetic beauty of a page intact and saving the user the trouble of having to scroll vertically and horizontally, to read the text.
( Read on ... )

News reports of an Indian couple being persecuted under Norwegian laws recently made headlines and triggered a lot of heated debate.  Are our laws really any better, fairer? Feminists who want to bash me up for this post can get in a line, but before you do so, I ask that I be given a fair trial.

For years, women have been persecuted by the dominant male faction in this 'glorious' country of ours.  Do I condone that? Not for a moment.  I also don't condone the caste-based excesses that have thrived unopposed, for centuries in our country.  Today however, we have two things in our society, neither of which is constructive or helpful to build a society free of caste and gender-based inequality.  Caste-based reservations, which were aimed to give the repressed a fair life have now gone on to become an electoral issue rather than a social one: political parties use reservations and the promise of more lucre to the 'supposedly backward' to attract votes.  The other deplorable thing? Laws which are totally gender-biased, laws which are made to give women supreme power, absolving them of all wrongdoing,  while punishing the men, often for no reason other than for the excesses committed by their forefathers.


( Continue to read. )

I hate Februaries as they have that day when people are expected to write mushy notes and exchange gifts and chocolates.  From sites peddling gift/flower/chocolate delivery services to card companies urging me to send out that card to that wonderful someone in my life, I get them all, this time of the year.  I just need to open my inbox and suspend my disbelief. Wait, did I mention matrimonial sites? Oh, they ensure that your inbox is chock-full of special offers to woo that, you guessed it, special person!  As the dreaded day approaches, more friends will start posting pictures of red hearts, roses and pink balloons! A couple of friends even call up and wish me, taking care to remind me that I'd better do something to fix that single status of mine! Oh yeah, like I'd completely forgotten!

I guess V day brings out the sadist in me. I imagine socking the first couple I spot kissing in public, in the eye, for flaunting their lovey-dovey status, but then, I wouldn't want to be mistaken for a Sri Rama Sene member, so I suppress the thought, whenever it rears up. I guess some people really do feel all mushy and giddy on V day. I don't. So before anybody asks me what I intend to do on V day, lemme tell them: If it had been over the weekend, I'd have found another single friend or two and sat down in the neighborhood pub, downing a couple of cold ones, but since it's a Tuesday, I guess I'll just work late.  Or I might go to a movie or something with the person I love best: myself!

Here are my thoughts about criticism in general and about criticism over writing in particular. I believe that a one-size-fits-all approach can only be an unfair attack on a lot of people. When it comes to literary skills, it would be wrong, in my opinion, to judge and criticize, for instance,  a blogger, a newspaper journalist and a novelist, using the same yardstick. I'd expect the highest standards from the newspaper journalist as I'm not buying the newspaper to read 'his/her' writing. I'm buying it to read news presented in a coherent and correct manner.  If the journo writes terribly, he/she is spoiling my experience of reading a newspaper and I'd reserve my harshest criticism for him/her.  A novelist? I am buying a novel to read a certain author's work, and if I don't approve of his/her writing, I can just junk the book or write a letter of protest, which will in all likely-hood be consigned to trash by the author in question. A blogger? He/she is a person who is writing for pleasure, their own and possibly that of whoever happens to read their posts.  They are not paid to do it and they rarely even get comments and positive feedback, even from people who enjoy reading their posts, so should they be subject to ridicule and discouragement when a reader does not like their work?


( Read on... )

When I speak, am I too not listening?
-Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

Balls and courage can be summoned up when one is cornered, but what's even more important, is discretion. The adage, 'Discretion is the better part of valor' is a very apt one. The balls and courage that we work up can be both, our best friend, as well as our worst enemy. It's hard to remain level-headed when emotions come into play, but that is the most important thing for one to master.

Hindsight teaches us to not pick battles just to prove a point, but to avoid them instead, whenever possible. The movie First Blood (Rambo I) drives this point home wonderfully. How does Rambo respond to a bad situation? He makes it much worse by reacting emotionally when he needed to be unemotional and level-headed. We often commit the same mistake. We can either unleash our frustrations, much the way Rambo did, and paint a huge target onto ourselves, or diffuse the situation with a compromise or two, and stay strong.

It's important to be able to differentiate between the unpleasant and the unacceptable. When emotions overpower reason, even merely unpleasant things seem unacceptable and intolerable, but in reality, they are not. None of us can avoid unpleasant situations entirely, no matter how hard we try. If we embark on a crusade to eliminate unpleasantness in entirety, we WILL run out of steam. Instead, if we learn to swallow the odd bitter pill, we can save our energy for more important and significant battles.

Whenever we feel the urge to get into a protest with all our guns blazing, we need to ask ourselves whether it's really worth the bother. If it's not, a more defensive approach may well pay richer long-term dividends.

I'd written about Swype here. While I was pretty excited back then, over time, it's something that I've come to both love and loathe.
In principle, it's a wonderful idea: it allows users of touch-enabled devices to just trace out the letters of the word they intend to use and Voila! The software works out the word you intend to use and puts it into whatever you are trying to enter text.  It makes it possible to quickly and without too much effort, type out whole sentences and paragraphs, ideal if you, like me, write long emails, blog and  write comments which run into paragraphs on Facebook posts, all using your mobile device! The undesirable side of it is that it often throws up words which you certainly had no intention of using. What makes it worse is that once you get used to Swyping, nothing else seems as much fun, and Swype is in general very accurate, but the times it goes wrong, it can go horribly wrong, as I've been finding out time and again, of late.

deponti had posted a witty poem about spell-check horrors sometime back and Swype just takes it to the next level.  In spell-check, you are less prone to mistakes and if you are really confident of your spelling abilities, you can turn it entirely off.  With Swype, a boon turns into a bane in the time it takes for you to swipe your finger across the screen of your shiny touch device!
Just last night, I was chatting with Deepa and I saw that Swype had offered 'simmering' when I'd wanted to say 'something'. Since I'm so used to Swyping fast, the rather meaningless line went on to Deebah and I had to explain the gaffe.

I started explaining to Deebah all the cases of Swype-bloopers and even as I was attempting to do so, many more sprung forth and I kept adding them all on. The conversation went something like this:

Me: 'Something' becomes 'simmering' and many a time, 'post' becomes 'pussy', for God's sake!
Now, even as I swyped God, the default selection was 'good'.
Me: And 'God' almost always comes out as 'good'.
Now, Swype had given me 'add' when I wanted 'as'. It does it every single time and it's really irritating.
Me: And 'as' comes out as 'add'.
Simple sentence right? Wrong! 'comes' came out as 'chimes'.
Me: And when I typed 'comes', it came out as 'chimes'.
Me: And when it typed 'typed', it offered me 'touted'!!

Swype also routinely substitutes 'have' for 'gave', 'stud' for 'stuff'....I was telling another friend of mine about my woes with Swype and he recommended that I upgrade to the latest version. The new version has done nothing to ease my woes and has in fact become worse as the Swype guys have further shrunk the keypad to add another couple of function buttons. When the user is somebody like me who has short, stubby fingers, usability just goes right out of the window.
I've switched keyboards for now.