Ho, I’m sorry, I forgot that I only exists when you need something.
Category Archives: Personal
WordPress should have a way to share pictures directly from camera roll
Or any other app..
I mean, you are already in camera roll looking at pictures, it would be great to upload your pictures to WordPress just by using the “share” button.
By now I have to enter the app and publish from there…
2014
So, this is my review of the 2014.
The good things:
- New year new baby, I started this year with a newborn, although she was born in Dec 17 2013, she was only 14 days when 2014 started.
- I released a lot of stress caused by a debt with the bank.
- We move the family business to another place where we are exposed to more people, all of them potential customers ;-).
- Sofia and Diego are more and more independent. Sofia is 5 years old but she is pretty smart, she questions everything, “Why this..? why that..?”, sometimes too many questions may be irritating but I prefer that, she needs to keep asking, being curious. Diego just plays a lot.
- Ana started to walk, she is still learning.
- I’ve got a new cellphone (twice) and finally got a tablet.
- I moved from the old blog to this, made in WordPress.
- Made 4 years working with SpamExperts.
The Bad Things:
- I’ve been robbed, and my brother too.
- The social/economical situation of the country is every day worse, 2014 is clearly not a good year for Mexico.
- My PS3 died.
- We couldn’t make it to visit my parents in law in Chiapas this year. I hope we can do it in the first months of 2015.
- I couldn’t make it to have a healthier way of life.
- I have to work a lot, I spend most of my day working.
What I hope for the next year:
- Be healthier.
- Visit my parents in law.
- Increase my business opportunities with friends that I know my knowledge could help them.
- Move away from where I’m currently living. Me and my wife have been thinking in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, but we are also thinking in other places, including another country.
- Reduce my working hours. I need to have more time for my kids, for my wife and me.
- Maintain my Android apps and create a couple of apps that I have in mind.
- Renew my laptop.
Unfortunately, reballing didn’t help
Lollipop
As you may know, I have Android 5.0 Lollipop installed in my Moto G, I did this 13 days ago and so far thing are going well, the system is responsive and even whit all those animations it is fluid, although there are some parts that I don’t really like.
Lets start with the things that I like.
First, everything is fluid, all animations runs smooth even whit this phone that is not the beast as the flagship models. The material design language adds a lots of animations and those in Kit-Kat were a bit choppy, but with Lollipop they run perfectly at least at 30 fps if not 60.
The new notification bar is indeed an evolution of that it was, its more functional now that the quick settings area is just a pull down ahead and include more options than with Kit-Kat, still, custom ROMs like Paranoid Android are beyond this, letting you customize this area (in Kit-Kat).
The “meh..”
The recents panel is not limited to a small number of apps, it seems to remember all the apps you have open since the phone booted up, this have its downside since there may be a lot of apps in the recents, it doesn’t mean they are all open but there are traces of it in the recents panel, it may be just easier to open the app from the homescreen or app drawer instead of looking for it in recents. Also, I don’t like that Chrome splits all its tabs in the recents, at some point you don’t know how many “tabs” you have open.
The “buu!”
Although there may be tons of new API functions/methods in the OS to support Android Wear and other fancy things, to be honest and aside from the material design, Lollipop doesn’t offer something new to the table, it is prettier? yes, as it should be, but I don’t see a key feature that it wasn’t in 4.4.
ART to a simple mortal user means nothing, is like if you changed the sparking plug of your car, it may improve something but the normal user won’t really notice something.
So..
So far so good, Android 5.0 Lollipop feels like a more mature OS, but if you have KK there should be no rush to upgrade since there is possibly nothing new for you.
Lollipop at the Moto G
As you may know, I have a Moto G, a great device at a really low price, it has a 720p display that gives you 320dpi, 16GB of storage which to me is more than enough, 1GB of RAM, again, enough; and the latest version of Android. Well, you may have Android 4.4.4 but you can install Android 5.0 by now.
The Brazilian version of the Moto G, the XT1033 (dual SIM) have now the upgrade if you enrolled to the Motorola feedback program, then getting the OTA was just a matter of time.
In order to upgrade to Lollipop you must flash your device with the Brazilian firmware, you need then an unlocked bootloader, but if you are interested (or desperate) enough to install it I guess you already have it unlocked.
What you will need to have:
- Unlocked bootloader
- fastboot
- adb
- a custom recovery (eg. TWRP)
- Brazilian firmware from here.
- OTA Update from here.
What you will need have to do.
- Restore the stock Brazilian firmware
fastboot flash motoboot motoboot.img fastboot flash logo logo.bin fastboot flash boot boot.img fastboot flash recovery recovery.img fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.0 fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.1 fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.2 fastboot flash modem NON-HLOS.bin fastboot erase modemst1 fastboot erase modemst2 fastboot flash fsg fsg.mbn fastboot erase cache
- Boot the phone and let it build the basic structure of the system.
- Reboot into the bootloader.
- Press the Power Button and the “Vol Down” button for around 5 seconds, then release them, you should see the bootloader menu.
- Flash the custom recovery
fastboot flash recovery custom_recovery.img
- Copy the OTA update to the SDCard.
adb push Blur_Version.210.12.40.falcon_umtsds.Brasil.en.BR.zip /sdcard/
- Flash the stock recovery (from the stock firmware)
fastbook flash recovery recovery.img
- Then reboot into the stock recovery.
- Turn off the phone,
- Press the Power Button and the “Vol Down” button for around 5 seconds, then release them, you should see the bootloader menu.
- Press one time Vol Down to select “recovery” then hit “Vol Up” to select it.
- You should see the Android robot with the belly opened and an alert triangle with it. Don’t worry, you haven’t bricked your phone (yet).
- While in this screen, hit Power Button and “Vol Up” for around 3 seconds, the recovery menu should appear.
- Select Install update from ZIP
- Select the ZIP you put in /sdcard/
- Wait for around 15 minutes, until it says that the upgrade is done. The “Patching system files” process is the one that takes that long.
- reboot.
Did you upgraded to Lollipop? Post your screenshots in the comments 😉
Oranges
Last Saturday I went with my father and a friend to take some measures of my father’s orange field, a not so simple task to forget about the daily work (yes, work can help you to relax) and also a chance to get some really fresh oranges (just taken from the tree).
Since my father has used zero fertiliser, grass killer or any other chemical the oranges are pure joy! some of them taste like lime, some others are a bit acid (like normal oranges), I easily ate four in the 20 minutes we were there (after we measure the field) and took at least 30 to home, my dad took another bunch to home and to my brother, Marcos (my friend in the picture below) did the same.
Yumy yumy fresh orange!!!
The awkward when you don’t know which tab is important.
Huachi again
This time we went for the IDs, but also take a time with kids.
Dat merge
Cleaning the PS3
My PS3 is basically a Netflix client (the Wii do the same thing) for my wife and kids, but for me this is where I play, my MacBook Pro sucks at games because of the shitty HD3000 video chip which is fine for video play but not that good for gaming, which in some way is good for me since I don’t play that much in the computer and the games that I really care about are not in OS X.
Yesterday the PS3 wasn’t starting, a few seconds after I hit the start button and the green led turns on the system halted with three beeps and the green led turned red and pulsating. According to this it is supposed to mean that the PS3 got overheated and turned itself off. So, what should I do?, nothing more than cleaning.
I live in a very dusty place, is not that dusty like the places that every Hollywood movie puts as Mexico but its dusty, and since I’ve never cleaned my PS3 it seemed to be logical that the fan wasn’t working fine or the head dissipator was blocked. Also, the PS3 already have some years and the warranty has already expired, so opening can’t make any hurt.
I opened it yesterday, and it was dirty inside:
But there was still an issue, the PS3 wasn’t working, so I took it to the office, reading a bit I found that because of the overheat there may be some unsoldered chips and the way to fix it is heating it with a hot air gun, just clean the thermal paste, add more, and it should do the trick. There is even a vide of a guys putting the whole motherboard in the oven…
Well, it turned on and and I’m happy, although I think I should consider selling it to get a new PS4.
Some pictures.
Another thing that iOS needs to improve
I have to create an email for work, I usually respond to email in my computer but since it have no power (I left it like that, I’m doing the monthly maintenance), I tried to do it I my iPad.
The message must contain a PDF file, the good thing is: that file is in Dropbox, so, just get that file and Do the mail. Wrong.
Dropbox in iOS doesn’t let you export the documents, if you want to “share” a file e you send only the link to the file but no the file. In some cases you need to send the file not the link to the file (automatic email processing for example). What did I did?
Took my phone with android, went to Dropbox, hit the three dots button and a menu opened, then select the “export” option, select the GMail app, create my message and sent it. That simple.
iOS is definitively far behind android. Is just not that easy to use.
Disk speed
Although this is not the fastest SSD drive, it takes nothing to launch the apps I use every day. Please excuse me, I’m amazed.
from Flickr http://flic.kr/p/pyniDg
via IFTTT
SSD
I’ve recently post about my laptop having almost 4 years, also, if you follow me in twitter/facebook you know my rants about the OS X FS (HFS+) issues related to the IO. Many people have recommended to me to use an SSD disk, I hadn’t basically because of two factors: First, I’m kind of afraid to data loss because the lifespan of the SSD and the price.
Well, I finally put one of this things inside my computer and I’m really happy, let’s see how long this happiness last, I hope at least two years.
P.S. I wonder if “HFS” really means “Holy Fucking Shit!”
Enjoy your life, not just your phone
I really like this video, I’ve seen many people just staring at the screens when I go with my wife and kids to the market, sending selfies to instagram, what they are going to eat, of course is their right to do that, but when a friend prefer to be watching at his/her phone screen instead to be watching at me when I’m talking you know things are wrong.
If you are a friend of me and we usually talk face to face, please put your phone/tablet down when I’m talking to you, be sure that I’ll do the same.
IFE.. or INE… Inefficient
Today I’ve tried to renovate I’m federal ID, that ID is used for everything although in most cases it is just an identification but it is required for many means.
Since my current ID has expired I cannot do anything that involves the ID. The solution just renovate, but there’s a problem.. In order to renovate it you have to go to the IFE (INE) the requirements are: an updated and original birth certificate and something that proves where you live.
and that’s where my problem starts, I don’t have any original birth certificates, I just couldn’t find one in my house, I have copies but they just don’t work. I wonder why do I have to give that papers if the only thing I want is to get a new card. They are supposed to have my data already and providing the original current ID should be enough.
Well, I’ll have to get someone to send to me that birth certificate from the place where I was born because, as you may know, I can’t get one here, I’m not in the records/books.
I think it should be possible to get a new birth certificate on any municipal office on any state, we are in the age of the information, internet makes it possible to have either a central database or one per estate with the records of every citizen, the any other municipal office could query. With that you can get a new birth certificate everywhere, just request it in the apropriate office.
yes, it’s my fault not having the birth certificate, but things could definitively improve if nonsensical papers are required and if the can’t get rid off it the make it easy to get new ones.
Huachi
https://flic.kr/p/pnVLZk
Well, today I went to Huauchinango, Puebla, the main reason was to get my new federal ID since the one that I have has expired. But I couldn’t get the paper done and I’ll have to go in a couple of days again.
The trip is a bit tired, a couple (if not three) hours in bus mostly because of the road, curves in the sierra.
I like that place, seems to be a nice place to live and makes me reconsider Tuxtla as my next hometown, maybe San Cristobal de las Casas is better 😉
I really hate this weather
