And being 2012, I suppose it’s time to cue the end of the world/calendar cartoons…

From Bizarro Blog:

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From WebDonuts:

From Scientific Madness:

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While I’m not overly concerned about the app, given that Vodafone NZ deny using it and as it turns out the logging/spying appears to have overblown given this post by security researcher Dan Rosenberg, I thought I’d try out one of the detector apps to satisfy my curiosity. The app I tried was the Voodoo Carrier IQ detector and it came up clean for me:

Part of the reason I wanted to check myself is that I’m not running the phone+software as purchased from Vodafone NZ. I rooted my phone and installed a new Froyo ROM on it (see this post) and as such is not running fully vetted/authorised by Vodafone NZ.

So, despite a lack of concern it’s nice to see it’s not on my phone.

For completeness, my phone is a Samsung Galaxy 580 (aka Galaxy 3 or GT-I5800) running Froyo 2.2 (an XXJPM build) on the Vodafone NZ network. Here’s my about/status screens:

The best line in the ad would have to be: “If it looks the same how will people know I upgraded?” followed closely by “I could never get a Samsung, I’m creative”. LOL!

Nice one Samsung. I’d like to think that S2 will be my next Galaxy phone…

Mmm, bushy!

This was of course grown for Movember 2011, to raise awareness of men’s health issues and to raise funds for the Cancer Society and Mental Health Foundation here in New Zealand. The glorious mo you are gazing at was one of 13,112 officially registered mo’s in NZ, and raised $470 (to date) towards the NZ total of more than $1.2M out of a global total exceeding $132M.

So, to all my supporters and anyone else who donated to the cause – thank you for your support! Your generous donations make a month of mo growin’ well worthwhile.

Finally, if you missed out and still want to contribute, donations are still being accepted and you can still sponsor my mo via:

mobro.co/ChrisNZ

Thanks again,

Mo Bro Chris.

From nz.movember.com:

Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health.

At the start of Movember guys register with a clean shaven face. The Movember participants, known as Mo Bros, have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their Mo, raising money along the way to benefit men’s health – specifically prostate cancer and depression in men.

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Here in New Zealand, funds raised for Movember go to the Cancer Society of New Zealand and the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand and in 2010 over 9,500 New Zealand Mo Bros and Mo Sistas got on board, raising $1 Million.

Personally, this will be my 6th year of mo-growing and I’m hoping to match if not exceed my 2010 fundraising total of $595 (which broke my 2009 total of $565).

Why am I doing this? Through my mo growing I hope to raise both awareness and funds by no doubt generating some laughs and sparking conversations. Here’s a few stats,

• 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime
• This year 240,890 new cases of the disease will be diagnosed
• 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime
• 24% of men are less likely to go the doctor compared to women

So how can you donate to the cause? Great question and I’m glad you asked! The easiest way is to hit my Mo Space page and click the big DONATE TO ME button. If you prefer, you can also post a cheque or flick me some cash and I’ll process a payment for you – get in touch and I’ll help out.

Thanks in advance for your support.

mobro.co/ChrisNZ

Stuff.co.nz

My goto site for NZ news – Stuff.co.nz. The app is nicely done and has earned a place on my homescreen. It defaults to “top stories” when you open it, but has easy access to sub-sections and once in a story you can swipe left and right to cycle through the articles in that section.

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My Account – Vodafone NZ

As you might expect, this app gives you fast access to your account summary, top up and plan details. It also sports a store finder map in the event you need to visit the bricks and mortar to see a human or fondle a phone.

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Quick Quake Viewer

This app provides info on both worldwide and NZ earthquakes, using GeoNet information for local quakes. Area options include Worldwide M5+ or M2.5+ and NZ M2.5+ and the app can optionally auto-update in the background. The quick view list includes magnitude, location, time and distance from you or a set location, and if you long-press a quake in the list you can get at the full GeoNet info, or tap to get a Google map with location marker.

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Wellington Airport Flight Info

A nice, simple interface to get at flight information for domestic/international arrivals/departures. Great if live near the airport and need to collect people or have kids who like plane spotting (as I do on both counts!) Feel free to smile at the kiwi-isms for the flight status e.g. Sweet As! for on time and Bugger! for delayed.

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Flicks.co.nz

A local movie guide with two basic sections for browsing – Movies and Sessions. Movies are presented with poster thumbnails grouped into Top 10, Now Playing and Coming Soon, linking to movie info, trailers, reviews and theatre session times.

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PriceSpy

If you buy tech hardware including computer components, electronics and games in NZ (or Norway and Sweden) then you should always visit PriceSpy first to check out online price comparisons. Admittedly I don’t use the PriceSpy app much (I frequently visit their website instead) but it does give the same info as the website and could well come in handy if you’re out and about and contemplating an impulse buy!

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So there you have it. My top 6 NZ specific Android apps. If you’ve got any other favourite apps for kiwis, let me know in the comments!

Aarrgh! Damn you Vodafone.

Not content with that answer, I decided to take matters into my own hands, void my warranty and flash Froyo onto my phone. In short, I got it up and running on the second try and am stoked to be rocking 2.2.

Pics or it didn’t happen right? Sure, here ya go:

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Here’s the nitty gritty…

Rooting and Flashing.
First up, the standard disclaimer. If you do this, you will void your warranty and you may lose some functionality on your phone, gain undesirable behaviour, or could even totally brick your phone. If that freaks you out or you can’t afford to replace it if it goes horribly wrong, don’t do it! And don’t be blaming me if it goes pear shaped!

That said, there are plenty of benefits in rooting and/or flashing your phone. Gaining root access will let you get at some deep dark parts of your phone and the OS, permitting you to run powerful apps (e.g. Titanium Backup). AFAIK rooting is reversable, so you can undo it. Flashing a new ROM on the other hand may not be reversable, unless you have a backup of your pre-existing ROM, or can get your hands on one to flash it back.

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Froyo 2.2.
My Galaxy 580 came with Eclair 2.1 installed. Since this was my first Android experience (I came to it from a Nokia 6234) I was impressed. However, being the geek that I am I started poking around, installing apps at will, and soon found some limitations that I knew were addressed in newer Android versions. The two features I most wanted was a solid way to disable packet data and the ability to move apps to the SD card to both free up internal phone memory and to allow more apps to be installed. Of course a shinier interface and newer features never goes astray either!

When I asked Vodafone directly about an update to Froyo via email they replied with:

2.2 has been released but to confirm it is available for your model phone and how to get you are best to contact Samsung directly

So I emailed Samsung and got the following response:

Unfortunately at this stage no release date has been set. please feel free to check back with us at any stage

Then I found the forum post in the screenshot above which made me angry enough to immediately flash my phone!

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Resources and Requirements:
All the info, software and background reading you’ll require can be found at xda-developers.com (specifically in the forums) and at SamFirmware.com. I’m not going to duplicate everything here, but you will need USB drivers for your phone, the Odin downloader software and a Firmware to flash.

Here’s the references I used (in the case of the forum posts, I did read most of the threads – not just the top level posts):

xda-developers:

• Galaxy 3 GT-i5800: root, gps fix, lagfix, upgrading (JPM/JPD fw)
• Samsung Galaxy 3 (I5801/I5800) Flashing Guide
• Samsung Stock Firmwares [Without Bootloaders, 100% Safe Flash]

SamFirmware:

• Samsung Firmware Android – incl I5800 Firmware (free account req)
• Samsung Program Android – USB drivers and Odin software (free account req)

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Notes on my experience:

• I did root my phone first (using z4root) so I could run Titanium Backup, although root isn’t required to flash a new ROM.
• Backup backup backup! I don’t keep any text messages and all my contacts live at Google which just get synced to the phone. As such, the only things I needed to backup were my apps/data on the phone (which I actually didn’t care about since they can all be installed again later, incl apps you’ve paid for. I didn’t worry about game saves etc, so I lost all game progress – meh, I was over Angry Birds anyway!). Note that anything on the SD card (photos, files etc) is left untouched.
• Prior to flashing I did remember to record the VFNZ APN settings for both Internet and PXT. These have to manually set after flashing, and are listed online in the Vodafone forum here.
• I used a stock Samsung Firmware without a bootloader – everything I read suggested this would be more stable and the lack of bootloader means you won’t brick your phone. Initially I tried I5800XWJPF but it didn’t work – my phone wouldn’t startup and hung on the boot screen, so I then re-flashed with I5800XXJPM which worked fine! I grabbed both firmwares from the xda forum not samfirmware – might as well let someone else remove the bootloaders!
• I didn’t install Kies first – I had it a while ago, but it’s a POS (just like iTunes!) IMHO so I deleted it soon after installing it! This is recommended so you have the latest USB drivers, but you can get them from samfirmware. The only thing you need Kies for is to get software updates, and well, since Vodafone don’t appear to be doing amy more for the 580 I’m turning my back on them and Kies and doing it myself. Note that I can still transfer files to/from my PC via USB using the phone as a mass storage device, or via ftp over wifi – nice!
• I did do the flashing without the SIM and SD card installed just in case anything went wrong. Some people say it’s not necessary, but I decided to play it safe.
• Once done, I reset the APN and phone settings, re-installed my apps, synced to Google and other services and it was all good.

And that’s about it! Now, I should probably answer two post-flash questions you might have…

Any problems?
Not really. However I do think the reported size of apps (via the manage apps settings) is incorrect. Not a biggy, as it still reports the correct usage for the SD card and internal storage.

How’s the performance?
Awesome! In fact I think the phone is snappier through menus etc now under 2.2 than it was under 2.1. It could just be the eye candy distracting me, but I think my phone actually runs better now.

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Final words…
So, it does take a leap of faith to do this sort of thing, but I’ve been voiding warranties, flashing firmwares and building PC’s for a while now so I’m quite happy doing so.

If it ain’t broke, take it apart and fix it!

Just how big are games these days? As an example, take the last five games I grabbed off Steam: DiRT 3 is 11GB+, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Dead Space are both 7GB+, Medal of Honor Airborne is 6GB+ and Battlefield Bad Company 2 is 5GB+. (Yeah, I got sucked in by some good bargins lately!)

Now that's a big download!

Sadly Steam does not have a scheduler built in, so you either have to set an alarm for the middle of the night (and apologise to the missus in the morning!) or use a little craftyness to schedule a download…

The basic solution I’ve used with success is to use the Windows Task Scheduler to run a game at a set time, which triggers the download+install or update prior to the game launching. Here’s what I did,

• Buy a game on Steam (well duh!).
• Initiate the install and start the download, but immediately switch to your downloads list and pause it.
• Go back to your library, find the game and click the play button (or use a start menu/desktop shortcut) to launch the game. We need to do this to get some housekeeping out of the way – sometimes when you first launch a game you get a “here’s your game key” dialogue that you have to click through first. If you don’t do this housekeeping step the scheduled process will hang on that dialogue box.
• Click through any dialogue boxes (copying game keys etc) being sure to tick the “don’t show this again” checkbox. This should get the game downloading again (has to happen before you can play it) but immediately pause it again.
• Start Windows Task Scheduler and create a simple task that launches the game at the start of your free off-peak period. The program you want to run is either the steam executable with the correct game id, or the game exe directly. For example, to run DiRT 3:
  C:\Games\Steam\Steam.exe -applaunch 44320
  where the “-applaunch 44320″ goes in the “arguments” box in the scheduler, or,
  C:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\dirt 3\dirt3.exe
  where your Steam install folder may of course be different. You can find the applaunch id number from a desktop shortcut – right-click the game in your library to create a shortcut, then look at the shortcut properties to see something like: “steam://rungameid/44320″. To find the game exe, look in the game folder inside the “steamapps\common” folder inside your Steam install folder.
• Once you’ve setup your simple task to run once at the start of the free period, you should probably test it. Either set the scheduled time for a couple of minutes away and watch it execute (then reset the time afterwards), or run the task manually. If all goes well the task will run and the download will start (pause it again!).
• Leave Steam running (even if you use the first shortcut example), check your task time, and go to bed! Now hopefully in the morning the game is installed and ready to go – or it may even be running! (but more likely you’ll see the updating dialogue that has the progress bar and “play game” button on it ready to be clicked.)

Of course if the download is slow or simply too big to complete in a short off-peak period, then you may need to check it in the morning and pause the download before the free off-peak period finishes, and repeat the task the next night.

I’ve found I need to leave Steam running as I’ve had trouble starting Steam during my ISP’s free off-peak period. This is pure speculation, but I wonder if some automated filter/prioritisation system is incorrectly seeing Steam traffic as P2P traffic or something and thus blocks/drops packets (as is known to happen on my ISP for connections to torrent trackers during the off-peak period).

So, there you go. That worked for me and allowed me to schedule a large game download overnight.

If you try it, good luck! …and let us know in the comments – or if you’ve got a better solution until they build a scheduler into Steam (but I shouldn’t hold my breath right?!)

Jupiter, Mercury, Venus (brightest) and Mars, 6:21am 13 May 2011:

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Jupiter, Venus and Mercury, 6:16am 19 May 2011:

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Jupiter, Mars, Moon, Venus and Mercury (low on the horizon between Petone and Somes Island), 6:43am 31 May 2011:

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Mars, Moon, Venus and Mercury, 6:44am 31 May 2011:

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To help identify the stars and/or planets, I use and recommend Your Sky – a fantastic site/tool to make a sky map for any location and time. To get started, look for the links to select a nearby city – for example, here’s the current sky map and horizon view for Wellington. On a related note, if you want to track satellites in real time, try this website which lets you track all sorts of satellites overlayed on a Google map, as well as the International Space Station.