Habanero Heat Chili

Habanero Heat Wave, originally uploaded by jstedfast.

Spiced up a traditional chili recipe with a handful of habanero peppers to keep me warm in this extremely cold Boston weather we've been having.

Installing A Custom ROM on your Samsung Captivate

Like a lot of people, I'm tired of waiting for AT&T to get their acts together to release the long-awaited Froyo update for my Samsung Captivate phone.

I'm about to take matters into my own hands... but where do I begin?

Many of the forum threads out there contain the information needed to install a custom ROM, but the information is scattered about here and there which is confusing and not exactly confidence-inspiring. That's all about to change...

Step 1: Rooting Your Phone

The first step to installing a custom ROM is rooting your phone. This allows you to gain access to protected bits of your phone that you'll need in order to backup your existing data and the ability to install that custom ROM.

The easiest way to do this is to use the One-Click Root application for the Captivate, but before you can do that, first you need to download and install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 and the Samsung USB drivers onto your computer.

Once you install those two pieces of software on your computer, the next step is to download the One-Click Root zip containing the easiest program I could find to root your phone for you.

Now you'll need to configure your Captivate's USB debug settings. To do this, first make sure you are at your phone's Home screen. Then tap the Menu button on the lower left-hand side of your phone and select Settings. Scroll down and tap on the Applications item. You should see a Development option. Select that and then enable the USB debugging checkbox at the top.

Now connect your Captivate phone to your computer via a USB cable.

Unzip the zip file and run the One-Click Root program. This will pop up a window with the Samsung Galaxy S logo and two buttons on the right ("One-Click Root" and "One-Click Unroot"). Click the button that says "One-Click Root".

This will cause your phone to reboot into a mode allowing you to to use your phone's volume buttons to navigate a text-mode screen of menu options up and down. Follow the directions in the blue text-mode window on your computer screen and select the reinstall packages menu item on your phone. Press the Power button to start the process.

After the process is complete, your phone will reboot again - this time it will boot you back into the normal mode that you are familiar with.

At this point, it is safe to disconnect your phone from your computer.

For an extremely helpful video to walk you through the process of rooting your phone, watch this video.

Step 2: Backing Up Your Phone

It is always a good idea to make a backup of your phone before proceeding any further, so here's how to do that:

Open the Android Marketplace application and search for and install "Titanium Backup", the free version is fine.

Once that finishes downloading, run the Titanium Backup program and tap on the Backup/Restore button at the top of the screen.

Select each of the apps you'd like to backup and click the Backup! button for each. Next, tap the Menu button, select More and then Create "update.zip"... and follow the directions on the next screen before finally clicking the button to create the update.zip file.

At this point, you'll want to copy that update.zip file along with the folder named TitaniumBackup off your phone and onto your computer. To do this, first go back to your phone's Home screen and then click Menu. Select Settings, Applications, and then USB settings (if this pops up a menu saying you'll need to disable USB debugging, just click OK). Now select Mass storage and then click Home again.

Re-connect your phone to your computer via the USB cable and then pull down the notification tray from the top of the screen on your phone.

Select the USB connected item which will pop up a dialog box with two buttons: Mount and Unmount. Select Mount. This will allow your computer to view the contents on each of your phone's internal memory drives.

On your phone's main drive, you should find a file named update.zip and a folder named TitaniumBackup. Copy them over to your computer for safe keeping.

Step 3: Install A Custom ROM

Keeping your phone connected to the computer from the previous step, download the ClockWork Recovery zip and then copy it over to your phone, renaming it to update.zip (overwriting Titanium Backup's update.zip if it is still there from Step 2).

Once you've downloaded the zip file containing your chosen custom ROM (I'll be installing the latest version of Cognition), you'll need to copy the downloaded zip over to your phone's internal memory drive.

Once you've done that, disconnect your phone from your computer and turn off your phone. Next, hold down both volume buttons and the power button at the same time. This should boot you into an Android system menu.

Select reinstall packages using the volume-down button to select it and then pressing the power button to activate. This will install ClockWork Recovery and then bring you back to a green text-mode menu screen (if it doesn't, select reboot system now, turn off your phone and try the procedure again).

Select the install zip from sdcard option using your phone's volume buttons and press the power button.

At the next green menu screen, select choose zip from sdcard.

Navigate the file system to select your ROM zip file and then press the power button.

Finally, confirm that you want to install the ROM by selecting the Yes menu option.

At this point, your phone should be installing the custom ROM that you've chosen. This will take a few minutes, so go watch some TV, update your Facebook page, or go tweet about how you're installing your custom ROM on your Captivate phone (make that a few dozen tweets, because installing will take a while).

Note: If the "Installing..." screen stays at "Finding update package..." for more than a minute or two (this always seems to happen to me), something is probably wrong. Simply pop out the battery and then boot the phone into recovery mode and try again.

Once the install is complete, you'll find yourself back at a green menu. Select +++++Go Back+++++. At the next green menu screen, select reboot system now and press the power button.

The first boot up will likely take longer than normal (Cognition's ROM gives you cool female computer voice updates explaining what it is doing), so don't be discouraged if it takes a good 5 minutes or so to boot up.

Congratulations, you've just installed your custom ROM!

Step 4: Restoring Your Applications

The first thing you'll need to do is open up the Android Market application and install Titanium Backup again (or you could connect your phone to your computer and copy the update.zip that was created by Titanium Backup program back onto your phone and reboot it into recovery mode to install the update.zip that way).

If you installed Cognition, like I did, then it will come pre-bundled with Titanium Backup so you'll have everything you need.

Launch Titanium Backup and tap Backup/Restore. Next, press your phone's Menu button and select Batch. This will bring you to a menu of actions with a "Run" button next to each one. Scroll down to Restore missing apps with data and then tap the Run button next to it, following the instructions that follow.

At this point you may need to reboot your phone in order for some of your apps to be seen by the phone (since some may need to be there at boot-up), so go ahead and do that.

You are now finished!

I am Disappoint: No Love for Froyo on Galaxy S

Based on an anonymous post on the XDA Developer Forums, the reason behind the lack of a Froyo update for Samsung Galaxy S phones in the US appears to be because Samsung is greedy.

The following quote is the entirety of the message as it appears on the forums for your convenience (with added emphasis by me).

Hello,

I’m going to step across the NDAs and explain the issues behind the Android Froyo update to Samsung Galaxy S phones in the United States. I think most of you have come to this realization yourself now: the withholding of the Froyo update is a largely political one, not a technological one: Froyo runs quite well on Galaxy S phones, as those of you that have run leaked updates may have noticed.

To explain the political situation, first, a primer on how phone firmware upgrades work for carriers. When a carrier decides to sell a phone, a contract is usually written between the phone manufacturer and the carrier. In this contract, the cost of updates (to the carrier) is usually outlined. Updates are usually broken into several types: critical updates, maintenance updates, and feature updates. Critical updates are those that resolve a critical bug in the phone, such as the phone overheating. Maintenance updates involve routine updates to resolve bugs and other issues reported by the carrier. Finally, feature updates add some new feature in software that wasn’t present before. Critical updates are usually free, maintenance updates have some maintenance fee associated with them, and feature updates are usually costly.

In the past, most phone updates would mainly consist of critical and maintenance updates. Carriers almost never want to incur the cost of a feature update because it is of little benefit to them, adds little to the device, and involves a lot of testing on the carrier end. Android has changed the playing field, however – since the Android Open Source Project is constantly being updated, and that information being made widely available to the public, there is pressure for the phone to be constantly updated with the latest version of Android. With most manufacturers, such as HTC, Motorola, etc. This is fine and considered a maintenance upgrade. Samsung, however, considers it a feature update, and requires carriers to pay a per device update fee for each incremental Android update.

Now, here’s where the politics come in: most U.S. carriers aren’t very happy with Samsung’s decision to charge for Android updates as feature updates, especially since they are essentially charging for the Android Open Source Project’s efforts, and the effort on Samsung’s end is rather minimal. As a result of perhaps, corporate collusion, all U.S. carriers have decided to refuse to pay for the Android 2.2 update, in hopes that the devaluation of the Galaxy S line will cause Samsung to drop their fees and give the update to the carriers. The situation has panned out differently in other parts of the world, but this is the situation in the United States.

Some of you might have noticed Verion’s Fascinate updated, but without 2.2 : This is a result of a maintenance agreement Samsung must honor combined with Verizon’s unwillingness to pay the update fees. In short, Android 2.2 is on hold for Galaxy S phones until the U.S. carriers and Samsung reach a consensus.

Some might wonder why I didn’t deliver this over a more legitimate news channel – the short answer: I don’t want to lose my job. I do, however, appreciate transparency, which is why I'm here.

Having bought a Samsung Galaxy S phone back in August with the expectation that it would get the Froyo update soon, I am disappoint.

This is just one more annoyance added to my growing list of annoyances about Android-based phones and my Galaxy S phone in particular.

Bitch and moan about Apple being evil all you want, but even Apple doesn't do this to their users. I will never ever buy another Samsung Android phone again. This really rubs me the wrong way.

Update: People have been commenting that Android devices have gotten better OS update support than iPhones. This is simply not the case. The iPhone 3G came out ~6 months before the Android G1 and the G1 stopped getting updates (latest update was Android 1.6) looooooooong before the iPhone 3G stopped getting updates. Apple at least kept providing updates to the 3G through iOS 4.1.x, latest update being this past fall. So even though the iPhone 3G is older than the G1, it got OS updates until long after updates stopped coming for the G1. My point is that to even compare the G1 to the iPhone 3G in terms of time supported by new OS upgrades, the G1 would have to at least have Android 2.2 (which came out how long ago?? I mean, even 2.3 is out now). In other words: Apple pushes all OS upgrades for their iPhones for at least 2 years (length of a contract) while no Android handset maker ever has - the G1 got OS upgrades for what? 6 months?

The Unfettered Mind

During the past month or so, I've been reading books like Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Benjamin Zander's The Art of Possibility. Reading the Art of War gave me a much deeper appreciation for Eastern philosophy and I find myself recognizing a lot of those same philosophical ideas in The Art of Possibility as well which has gotten me even more interested in continuing on with this reading trend.

From what I understand, Miyamoto Musashi, like Sun Tzu, is another man who many consider to have been a "Zen Master" and so I'll be reading his book over the holiday: The Book of Five Rings. But before I read that, I plan on first reading The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi to get a broader understanding of the man. What I really liked about the copy of The Art of War that I picked up (Understanding the Art of War by Robert Cantrell) is that the author not only included the English translation of the original text but also explanations of the history pertinent to understanding the text allowing me to soak up quite a bit more value than I would have just reading the raw English translation. Likewise, I suspect that starting with The Lone Samurai might help me later in understanding Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings.

A third book that caught my eye for the holiday is The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Sōhō, another famous Zen Master who is rumored to have advised Miyomoto Musashi among others.

Maybe one day I, too, will have an unfettered mind (right now it is quite fettered).

Assignment: Apologize to someone you have wronged

This past Friday, on our walk back from lunch, Miguel told me about the latest assignment given to him by his teacher and mentor, Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. The assignment was to pick someone you have wronged and apologize to them.

For those who don't know, Benjamin Zander is the author of the book, The Art of Possibility, a book which I have been reading the past week or so. The idea of this book is to change your perspective on life by teaching you to see things in a positive light and thus present you with a world of possibility where you can accomplish anything you set your mind to because you are no longer held back by negative thinking (fear of failure, criticism from others, and most importantly, criticism from yourself).

To continue on with my story, as I was laying in bed last night after having read a few more chapters in The Art of Possibility, I was reminded of Miguel's assignment and I began to wonder: if I was given this assignment, who would I apologize to?

I thought of 1 person in particular and a community of users and decided to apologize to them all.

Lennart Poettering

Some of you might recall a series of rants about PulseAudio that I wrote a couple of years back. While it was not my intention to insult Lennart personally, it is obvious that I did. I had let my anger and frustration rule my actions and ended up attacking PulseAudio in ways I should not have. I should have, instead, been more respectful, more understanding and more patient. Attacking someone's project often results in that person feeling personally attacked. I should know this as well or better than anyone because I'm one of the authors of the most widely attacked projects in the Free Software community: Evolution, Mono, and Moonlight.

These days PulseAudio has been working well for me and that is a testament to how hard working Lennart and the other PulseAudio developers are.

Thank you, Lennart, for your hard work on Pulse Audio and please accept my sincerest apology for attacking your project and in so doing, insulting you. I was wrong. I should have, instead, come to you (or the bug tracker) and explained the problems I was experiencing in a polite and respectful manner rather than unleashing my frustrations on the project.

I hope we can meet in person at a future Linux or GNOME conference where I can give you a hug (and who knows, maybe even a beer).

Evolution Users

In the course of the 6+ years that I worked on Evolution, there were a number of occasions where I took criticisms in bug reports and the mailing-list as personal insults and lost my temper, attacking back. At one point, Nat Friedman reminded me that I should not take criticism of Evolution so personally and that the reason users criticized Evolution was because they cared.

In the early part of 2007 I moved over to the Mono team, giving me a fresh start. I decided that I was going to be a new me and really take Nat Freidman's words to heart. I'm happy to report that not only have I been successful in not taking criticism as personally and seeing criticism of projects I work on in a new, more positive light, but I have also been a much happier person because of it.

For those Evolution users out there who I have mistreated, I am truly sorry and I hope that my actions over the past 3 years has demonstrated my sincerity.

Lessons in Freedom

In the first episode of the second season of Kung Fu, there exists a dialog between a young Kwai Chang Caine and one of his instructors, Master Po which I think teaches an important lesson in freedom and what it means. I think there are a number of people in the Free Software community who are in desperate need of learning this particular lesson.

Master Po: What have you found?

Young Kwai Chang Caine: A spider, master. It has trapped the fly. Should I destroy his web?

Master Po: Why?

Young Kwai Chang Caine: So that it will not make a prison for other living things that were free.

Master Po: Look more closely, grasshopper. Were you to destroy this web, would not the spider, knowing no other way, build another?

Young Kwai Chang Caine: Yes, but I cannot kill the spider.

Master Po: Look more closely still. Is not the spider also trapped by its own web?

Young Kwai Chang Caine: Yes, but if I do nothing, it will capture more living things, make them prisoner, and kill them.

Master Po: You are concerned, then, with the fly to which nature has given wings so that it might move around freely?

Young Kwai Chang Caine: It is cruel to see it made a prisoner.

Master Po: Ha ha ha. Still you do not see. Which is truly the prisoner? The fly, which, moving freely enters unknown danger? Or the spider, which, having spun its web, remains, never knowing the pleasure or the danger of the fly?

Microsoft Double Rainbow!

Microsoft has just created a new commercial for its Windows Live Photo Gallery software that plays on the "Double Rainbow!" stoner guy. I have to give them props for trying to be hip and cool, but I'm too busy laughing my butt off right now. You've got to see this:

What I want to know is what kind of camera is that guy using? Never seen anything like it. A friend suggested it was this antique digital camera, but I'm not convinced. If you have any idea what that camera is, let me know in the comments - it is gonna bug me for days until I know what that was!