Cross Dominant

#“Fun and games with LiPo batteries and cheap Android Tablets” The replacement LiPo battery arrived for my daughter’s Eken T02A ultra-cheap Android tablet yesterday. Only 2 weeks from China which isn’t bad. As I mentioned before, the Eken’s battery life iscatastrophic Sometimes less than 45 mins. Even at idle, it dies in no time at all. I’m guessing one of its two cells isn’t actually functional. The eBay replacement quotes 3500mAh which I’ll take with a big grain of salt. »

#“An evening in the company of the delightful Mr Samsung Galaxy S4” I’m sure you’re dying to know how I’m getting on with the S4. How many of you struggled to sleep last night with the anticipation? Where to start? That screen, OMFG that screen. 5" of bright full 1080p HD. I played the classic Big Buck Bunny 1080p video and everything was crisper than crisp. I haven’t used it in bright sunlight yet but I’m sure it’s as crap as all modern phones. »

#“My Smartphone evolution from N95-8GB to Samsung Galaxy S4 #SGS4” My first actual “Smartphone” was a Nokia N70 but it has the dubious pleasure of being the only phone I ever lost. The one that really got me using Apps and understanding the importance of SoLoMo was the classic N95-8GB which I loved despite its numerous flaws. It was also the most I ever spent on a phone. When I realised that Android would be an unstoppable juggernaut, I got a HTC G1 back in Nov 2008, shortly after it was released. »

#“Amazing kuvitteellinen prizes to be won if you can guess what this is.” And bykuvitteellinen, of course I mean the Finnish for imaginary. What do you think this is: Hint: It’s not crystal meth, washing soda, fish food or a new type of running shoe compound.   »

#“Your prayers answered, Old Chapel temperature server now online” I must get 20 emails a day asking the same question: “Conor, what temperature is it,right now, outside your office window?”. Thankfully, after literally several minutes work, you have your answer. Courtesy of an Arduino Nano, Ethernet adapter and Sparkfun temperature breakout board, I can exclusively reveal the temperature is12.44C and 54.39F i.e. about 2C higher than reality. To get something more accurate I’ll need to put the sensor away from the building, away from the ground, out of direct sunlight and with good air flow. »

#“What the inside of an \u008088 Android Tablet looks like” My daughter’s Eken T02 is still going strong after nearly a year but it still has the same two problems as ever. [a] the accuracy of the touch screen is awful and [b] it barely lasts 45mins on battery. I don’t think I can do anything about the first problem but I decided last week to sort out the second one. »

#“Adding an audio amplifier to your @Raspberry_Pi” We have a treadmill setup in our house which has always faced some sort of media centre setup. It’s the only way I don’t lose my mind with boredom when running during Irish bad weather (August to June).Originallyit was an XBOX-1 with XBMC on a 14" Philips portable CRT. Then it became a Patriot PBO connected with a HDMI-VGA adapter to an LCD monitor and now it’s a Raspberry Pi running Raspbmc connected to the same monitor. »

#“Endo2Atom - An Endomondo ATOM/RSS feed to post your activities via tools like IFTTT #OpenData” I was very disappointed to realise that Endomondo has no API. The best they can do for pushing your activities elsewhere is built-in Facebook/Twitter and some widgets. When will companies learn that lock-in is not how you keep customers? I’d like to be able to push my activities to sites like App.net, Tumblr or anywhere really. »

#“TP-Link TL-WA830RE Wifi Extender - A pile of junk until you install DD-WRT” I use a lot of TP-Link gear for home stuff. It’s as cheap as chips and the hardware is usually totally reliable. But the software, dear god the software. I cannot understand why Chinese manufacturers of cheap networking gear don’t take a leaf out of the book of Chinese manufacturers of cheap phones. The latter all use Android now, so why don’t the former all use DD-WRT or OpenWRT? »

#“The state of Open Source projects in Ireland vs other countries, based on GitHub activity” Last weekend I was working away on a personal side-project of mine and I suddenly realised I follow almost no Irish projects or developers on GitHub. I then started writing this post which was going to be an attack on our lack of people who work on OSS projects outside of work. But rather than go with gut, I decided to see if I could back it up with data. »