Monthly Archives: January 2011

My FUDCon Experience (Days 0-1)

Posted by on January 31, 2011 Comments Off

I’m a “blog early, blog often” kind of guy, but I was exhausted yesterday and couldn’t write anything. Better late than never, right?

So, FUDCon Tempe. I could quote half of the “Still Alive” lyrics just describing it. It was a huge success.

For starters, the Welcome Package, a blue booklet with restaurants to get some food, a map with the important locations highlighted, a place to write down the BarCamp Sessions, the badge and the shirt. Everything looked great and worked as intended.

Getting to meet the people I’ve talked over IRC and on the mailing lists is really great, finally putting a face to their online nicknames (Though some of them, I recognized from their hackergotchis on Fedora Planet). It was also great to meet Toshio, Tatica, Dennis, Neville and Igor, who I met back in FUDCon Porto Alegre.

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Stop the Press!

Posted by on January 30, 2011 Comments Off

LiveIRCing the #FUDCon conference. Thanks, Paulo Cereda!

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Penguins at the Disco

Posted by on January 30, 2011 Comments Off

Penguins at the Disco

My one regret is not betting One American Dollar.

That is all.

Spectral Souls Fix

Posted by on January 28, 2011 1 comment

Spectral Souls is a pretty awesome Android game. I’ve been meaning to write the review, but writing isn’t as fun as playing it. In short, it’s a Turn-Based Tactical RPG (And I’m a sucker for all things Tactics).

The recent update, 1.2, broke the game. I emailed the developers and they immediately responded with the following instructions:

To do a fresh reinstall of all the data without losing your previous save please do the following :

1) mount your sdcard
2) delete the file sdcard:\\hyperdevbox\ss\opeX.dat
3) unmount your sdcard

Well there you go! I’m in the process of re-downloading all 1.5GB of data. It’s heavy and it’s slow, I hope this’ll fix it. At least I get to play Pong in the meantime :P

Packing up for FUDCon Tempe!

Posted by on January 28, 2011 Comments Off

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Its funny how long I’ve had WordPress for Android installed, this is the first time I’m actually using it.

I’ll be assisting FUDCon Tempe, I’m still packing my bags and the plane leaves at 7am.

I wanted to tease something I’ve been working on. Its small, but I hope you’ll appreciate it!

Now lets see if this thing works…

Meet Lowen L10nhart

Posted by on January 24, 2011 2 comments


A couple of days ago I asked opinions on a Lion-droid design for a project I was working on, and it’s about time to unveil it.

Meet Lowen L10nhart (Pronounced Lionheart).

He’s the mascot for L10nhart, a project that’s been keeping me off the Xbox for the past few weeks.

L10nhart is a webapp, similar to Narro and Transifex, but focused on translating Android applications.

I’ve designed the application with CyanogenMod in mind, mainly because it’s the biggest Android project I know of, hosting dozens of Android applications within it, all in need of an easy way to handle the translations.

Gu1dry has been extremely helpful in the development of the project, providing both the initial Lion-droid design, as well as the actual webdesign, which I immediately fell in love with.

For now, I can only tease you with a pair of pictures, but I hope to release alpha access to the site once I finalize all sanity checks as well as some missing features.


Pictures are alpha quality. Does not represent the final design.

I am l10n. Hear me roar.

Posted by on January 12, 2011 Comments Off

Update: I took down narro while I work out some bugs and quirks. It should be back online (And greatly improved) next week.

Localization, more often known as “l10n” is a huge pain in the ass of any project.

So I’ve set up a Narro instance on l10n.k3rnel.net (Or lion.k3rnel.net if you prefer) that’ll host the strings used in CyanogenMod.
So far, I’ve got the Phone app set up. It’s a manual process for now, but I intend to automate it. The scripts I’m using will be released once I’m comfortable with them.

How to use Narro

  • Create an account. Humans only. Don’t make me implement a crappy captcha.
  • Go to your Preferences page and select the language you’ll be translating in. Don’t forget to click save.
  • Select a Project to translate and click on Texts. Double check that the language you selected is correct. (The dropdown on top)
  • On the Show dropdown, select “Untranslated texts“
  • Click the Suggest/Vote link on a text you’d like to contribute.
  • PRO-TIP: Check the “Proceed to the next text” checkbox. It’ll make things easier.
  • If you can translate it, Type in your Suggestion and click on Save.
  • If you can’t translate it, click Next.
  • You can also Vote on Texts that Require Approval.

One final note: This project is currently unofficial. It’s currently not endorsed by Cyanogen or the CyanogenMod Dev Team.
The translations you provide may sit in limbo forever (Though I certainly hope they won’t)

Bugs? Comments? Want to coordinate a specific language? Let me know in the comments here, or ping me on #k3rnel on Freenode

Try CyanogenMod 7 on the Android Emulator

Posted by on January 10, 2011 12 comments

Update: I’ve updated the emulator image. The instructions are exactly the same, but you get newer goodies.

Disclaimer: I am not allowed to call this image “CyanogenMod” and this does not represent the project’s quality. This is only a kang.
As of this writing, CM7 has yet to hit “alpha” status. However, the following images were compiled using CM7′s Source.

Android Devs and Android Phone Modders should like this. A couple of days ago, Cyanogen added some code that allows us to build emulator images.

I decided to try it out and it works!

So, I decided to create a User Repository you can import.

To install, simply run the Android AVD Manager you’re already familiar with, and under Available Packages, click Add Add-on Site and type:

http://nushio.fedorapeople.org/cyanogenmod/repository.xml

I’ll update the images with official releases once official releases are out (And only if the CyanogenMod Team doesn’t provide emulator images themselves), but for the meantime, you can enjoy the emulator with some CyanogenMod 7 Goodies built in.

Thinking Out Loud: Linux App Shop

Posted by on January 10, 2011 3 comments

Apple’s Mac App Shop made about a million bucks in a single day, and it got me thinking… How would a Linux App Shop work?

The culture around this OS seems to be on Free (as in Freedom), and who would pay to use Gimp or Pidgin when they’re freely available in their sites? You wouldn’t have to.

Software would be downloaded and installed as easily as ever, using yum, apt-get, emerge or your distro’s favorite installation tool.
What I’d add is a donation button. Make it convenient and easy for users to give back, and they will.

And that got me thinking… What donation system would work best for this case? Paypal? Google Checkout? How about Flattr?

Flattr works in the following way: A user can set a defined quantity (Lets say 20 USD) per month. The user can click the “Flattr this” button on the apps he likes, and at the end of the month, his 20USD is divided by the number of developers he ‘flattered’.

Implementing Paypal and Google Checkout would also be welcome additions to the system, as many already have those accounts set up.

Donations would go towards the project, which hopefully means that the projects might get more developers, more features or just improved user interface features.

Alright, so with this said, it wouldn’t be much of an “App Shop” as it would be some sort of an “App Tip Jar“, but I still think it would work.
If you build it, they will come… Right?