I was preparing to write a preview of CyanogenMod 6 (CM6) before it became officially released. But alas, by the time I got around to it, CM6 is now officially released. The pre-release alphas, release candidates and nightly builds have been circulated around for quite some time now. I’ve been following the development and for the last several days, noted that activity, in terms of updates, had been slowing down. Seemed like things were winding down for the final release. Well, CM6 is now ready.

CM6 is build on Android 2.2 Froyo. Froyo itself became available in late May. It didn’t take too long before CyanogenMod picked up Froyo to work on. My Nexus One with CM5 has already been a great phone, but CM6 takes the Android experience to a new level. I can quite safely say that I’ve never been so pleased with what I’ve been able to do with my phone.

There are just so many new things with CM6 that it just doesn’t make sense for me to list them. But some of the chief features that matter to me are:

• The camera department is a big hit: touch-to-focus (so you can select the spot to focus on, much like how the iPhone lets you do that), 720p video recording, and significant improvements in the user interface so that settings are so much easier to change now.
• New home launcher using ADWLauncher 1.0.1. The smoothness of window effect transitions and expose effects are just lovely. I must admit that when ADWLauncher was first added (and after the kinks were ironed out), it was chiefly responsible for a drop in my phone’s battery life… because I kept messing around with the phone to experience the launcher’s smoothness!
• Using trackball to wake and unlock the phone, instead of using the not-so-accessible power button.
• Apps can now be installed/moved to SD. It’s not the Apps2SD of CM5 style, but just as useful nonetheless.
• Properly integrated customizable trackball colour notifications.
• Music player controls on lock screen.
• Torchlight application.
• Better Exchange integration (but alas, I decided for various reasons to stop syncing with Exchange…).

There are actually so many other nitty gritty details like the tons of customization settings, new Dalvik JIT, various types of hardware acceleration on ARMv7, etc… but I shan’t just go on and on about them. You can find them in the CM6 changelog yourself.

Oh yes, naturally not all of these are CM6-specific. They could be features that came as part of the stock Froyo.

One of the chief reasons why I came to Android is the same as why I started using Linux on PCs: Access to source and ability to build thing on my own. I’ve been building CM6 from the git repositories and I’m quite pleased with it. Particularly when I can make changes to changes from others that I don’t want. That’s the beauty of open source.

If  you’re still using the stock ROM on your Nexus One, HTC Magic, or any one of the many phones now supported by CM6, I’d encourage you to flash CM6. Your phone is probably already great as it is, but you can still go so much further!

Related posts:

1. Building an Android ROM I’ve been struggling to build CyanogenMod ROM from source for...
2. Building CyanogenMod 6 from Source This is a how-to guide on building your own Android...
3. Android 2.2 Froyo Source Code Released Hmm, I must sound very geeky to be excited by...

I just realized that I’ve been “offline” for a while. “Offline” in the sense that this blog hasn’t had any updates for almost 2 weeks now. There are a couple of reasons for it. Probably the chief reason is that I’ve been very under-the-weather lately. Then, there are also critical project milestones to meet at work. The two combined together have left me no time and no “mood” to blog anything.

It’s the first time that I’m getting such an acute sinusitis. It was so bad that the pain I had felt, wasn’t headache, but literally pain the sinuses. It was as bad as, or perhaps worse, than the intensity of my typically headaches.

The illness caused my productivity to go down. I haven’t been actively doing any programming for a while, but it just so happened that I needed to do some intense programming this last few weeks. What made it even worse is that it was someone else’s code that I was trying to fix/enhance. If you are a programmer, you’ll understand it isn’t so difficult to fix your own code as it is to fix someone else’s.

Then, I decided that I needed to do major “code surgery”. This required plenty of brain juices to formulate the surgery plan, to visualize the process and the end-result. But my illness meant that I couldn’t think very productively. I sat at my computer, wondering how come the thinking process wasn’t happening. Usually, I can visualize how code flows, how various components would interact with each other, etc. It wasn’t happening quite the same way this time.

Eventually, what had to be done, was done. Painfully slowly. I couldn’t recall a time when programming was so unproductive.

Related posts:

1. No More GoDaddy SSL Certs For Me I have used GoDaddy for some years to buy domain...
2. Gambling at MacDonalds If you think students hogging tables to study at fast...
3. Vanessa Celebrates 5th Month Vanessa celebrated her 5th month birthday yesterday enjoying 2 meals...

The most patriotic member of the family this year has got to be Vanessa. She’s been bugging both me and Mummy: “Why we no Singapore flag?” “Why our car no Singapore flag?” “See, Singapore flag!” “Why we no Singapore flag?” “See, another Singapore flag!” “Where’s my Singapore flag?” (She got one from her child care centre.) “Why our car no Singapore flag?” ”Why we didn’t bring my Singapore flag”? Repeat and repeat, in various random sequences.

We just never thought of getting a Singapore flag to put up anywhere… whether it’s to hang from the window at  home, or in/on the car, etc. After Vanessa’s continual bugging, we decided to drop by SPC to get a flag for our car. By then, of course, they had already run out of flags. We did check out a few other places… no one had it.

Looking out of my window, I can only see two flags flying… from a low floor, mostly obscured by trees. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel much of a National Day mood around here.

The most patriotic thing that I’ll be doing is watching the National Day Parade… on TV in the comfort my my living room.

Related posts:

1. Celebrating National Day This is Vanessa celebrating National Day. This is her 2nd...
2. Table Tennis vs National Day Rally Table tennis wins over the National Day Rally. The live...
3. National University of Shopping What do students at NUS do? Shop of course. Why,...

I decided to get my free pizza today. It’s from Domino’s. Basically, whenever they fail to deliver your pizza order within the promised 30 minutes, you get a free regular pizza. I’ve got two of these vouchers already. Time to claim my free pizzas. The only “catch” is that you’ve gotta purchase at least one regular pizza if you’re ordering delivery (or any pizza or side order for take-away orders). It’s a reasonable condition.

An interesting new feature on their website since I last ordered is their pizza tracking service… or what they refer to as “GPS Tracker”. It’s not quite GPS. It just tells you how far along your order is coming. The various states tracked for my pizza order:

• 18:15 – Order placed
• 18:16 – Preparing
• 18:18 – Baking
• 18:24 – Boxing
• 18:25 – Packing
• 18:26 – Preparing for delivery
• 18:26 – Delivering

Just 11 minutes from time of order till they are out of the door making the delivery. It looks like they will make it in 30 minutes today. I imagine it’s not going to be too difficult to extend this service to provide GPS tracking of the delivery rider. After all, they claim to be “the pizza delivery experts”.

The delivery man knocked on my door at 18:33. That’s just 7 mins from Chun Tin Road to my home.

They are opening more stores, greatly expanding their limited delivery service areas. The first is at Chun Tin Road, serving the Upper Bukit Timah area where I live. Their subsequent stores are in Katong, Kovan and Killiney.

Related posts:

1. Domino’s Pizza Singapore is Back I thought they’ve all but disappeared from Singapore, but they...
2. How to Get Free Pizza I heard about it from a friend. I didn’t try...
3. KFC Delivery Experience We ordered KFC delivery today for an office event. It’s...

I have unintentionally become an expert at installing and reinstalling Windows. It’s Windows XP this time.  This is my third Windows XP installation in two days, before I finally got a problematic program running correctly. It’s a silliness with software compatibility. It’s the year 2010, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is standard. But no, this problematic program isn’t compatible with MSIE8. It isn’t even compatible with MSIE7. It needs MSIE6.

Then, I’m reminded about how difficult it is to deal with Windows. I installed a program. I attempted to install its update, but failed. The program doesn’t work anymore. So I try to uninstall. Uninstall failed. So I tried to reinstall, but it requires to uninstall the existing installation first, which fails. So I’m stuck.

I retried in a Windows XP virtual machine I have on my MBP. Main program installed. Then attempt update, but failed due to lack of disk space. So I cleared some space. The update needed about 300MB free, and I had over 600MB free after clearing some space. The update ran, then failed, oddly still running out of space. Fine, uninstall the entire program. After uninstall, I found my disk still entirely full. Huh, what happened to that program that was supposed to have occupied about 1GB of space? I checked Add/Remove Programs… it’s really not there anymore. Somehow, uninstalled without freeing any disk space. So I’m stuck again.

There’s many more silliness that I couldn’t be bothered to list them all. Just one other example is about the setup program insistence that a network installation requires the network path to be mapped. Fine. I did that. The setup program still bombed out with exactly the same error.

Sigh, dealing with these “old programs” is nightmarish. Fortunately, virtualization solutions like VMware make things just a little bit easier.

Related posts:

1. Windows 7 to Launch at US$30 Apple’s Snow Leopard must really have put the pressure on...
2. Booting Windows XP on MacBook After procrastinating for too long, I’ve finally gotten around to...
3. Linux for Newbies I’m sad to say, Linux still isn’t quite ready for...

It’s a tussle between individuals and the wishes of business organizations wanting to protect their data. The “problem”, is that phones nowadays are so powerful, so ubiquitous, and used so much for personal and work needs. The “problem” is that individuals want to own the phone, because it’s personal; At the same time, work organizations want to own the phone because it contains work secrets.

This “problem” used to be limited to enterprise-type phones like Blackberries. But now, I’m faced with the same issue on Android.

I cannot understand why an Open Source platform like Android would subscribe to the idea of such a misfeature: To allow Microsoft Exchange server to remotely wipe all data on my phone. The misfeature was recently backported into the source of CyanogenMod 6 ROM. I’ve setup my phone to sync with Exchange, so that I can finally be compliant with my company’s corporate direction to use Microsoft-based collaborative mechanisms. Email, contacts and calendar, working very nicely on my phone. It’s really cool, since now both my phone and MacBook Pro can collaborate on Exchange.

Except that, now, my phone is asking me to grant the Email app the privilege to wipe all data on my phone. Huh? But… it’s my phone! Ok, if you say the company data belongs to the company, fine… then wipe the Exchange related data. Exchange email, Exchange contacts and Exchange calendar. But surely, not wipe all data from my phone?

Thank goodness for source code being available. I was annoyed enough to figure out what was changed, reverted the change, and rebuild the ROM. That’s the beauty of open source.

Related posts:

1. Google Sync with Nokia N95 8GB A little misadventure with my Nokia N95 8GB a few...
2. Exchange 2007 for Mac OS X at NUS When Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was launched last...
3. Android World Domination I came across two interesting bits of news. First of...

I went along with Vanessa for her school excursion a couple of days ago. Mummy did not come along this time. I think Vanessa quite enjoyed herself. I asked her at the end if she liked the trip, and she said yes. I asked if she would like to come to the same place again, and surprisingly, her answer was no. Hmm. I asked if she didn’t like the place? No, she didn’t. Okay, so she enjoyed the trip because I went along with her? Yes. Happy daddy

The excursion was to a place called Garden Asia Kids. It’s so far away you could accidentally fall into the Straits of Johor. Okay, not really that near. But to get there we had to travel along the Kranji dam, which separates Kranji Reservoir from the Straits of Johor. Also, my phone decided to roam to Celcom. Apparently Celcom signal was so much stronger than SingTel’s, because even after I set my phone to lock on to SingTel, I still couldn’t get data working.

Garden Asia Kids was mostly about plants. Perhaps Vanessa wasn’t too fascinated about plants at this time. There was one hands-on activity: potting a plant. Vanessa was quite alright with that activity. Maybe it was early enough in the morning’s programme so she wasn’t tired out yet. She potted a money plant. Money plant to help daddy earn more money.

As the morning wore on, she became less interested and eventually, wanted me to carry her. Apart from the hands-on, the rest of the morning was mostly of a see and touch experience. I suppose kids slightly older would be able to better appreciate the programme.

For Vanessa, she just wanted to have fun, and walking around listening about the various variety of plants, feeling and smelling them… that wasn’t much fun. Hmm and particularly not touching frogs.

Related posts:

1. Baby At Suntec Koi Garden Baby Vanessa went galavanting around Suntec City with her daddy...
2. Daddy Brings Baby To School Yes, Daddy (me) has been bringing baby Vanessa to school....
3. This Baby Loves Hot & Spicy Just like her daddy and mummy, it seems like Vanessa...

I didn’t think the YOG intended any courtesy in their Give Way sign. My suggestion to “Please give way” was moot. It’s now officially “Give Way or Give Me $130″.

Related posts:

1. Courtesy is for YOG too After so many years of courtesy campaign, it seems our...

16. At least. Sixteen! That’s for academics!

It’s not a big building. There are only just 4 storeys (and one basement). It’s not a maze. It’s just a rather longish building. There are only two stairwells. But it seems, some academics need, or believe they need, 16 directional signs to locate a single room on the 4th storey of the building.

The excessive numbers isn’t so much because the directional signs started from the wrong building. The wrong building, because it seems it is preferred to take the elevator up three storeys, walk a long way, then climb one storey up the stairs, mostly in air-con comfort. As opposed to starting from the correct building, walking mostly along a corridor with no air-con, to take an elevator directly to the 4th storey.

That’s not the reason. The signs are just excessive. Like, for example, the above directional sign was put at a point along a narrow corridor that turns to the right. There is no where else to go. No doors. No forks. No junction. It is a mandatory right-turn. Is someone expected to get stuck trying to find an alternative to the obvious?

Or some other sign that points towards the stairs, but before that there is a door to the Gents. So add another sign to point again toward the stairs. Would someone be left wondering if their destination was through the Gents?

The most complicated thing in NUS is finding the right building. Not finding a room once you’ve got the right building.

Hmm, I wonder which way to the PREVIOuS Workshop? We need some signs…

Related posts:

1. Hotel Ibis Singapore Review – The $1 Room Yup, I’ve checked in. The deal at paywhatyouwant.com.sg is for...
2. Mother’s Day Lunch at Bukit Room I’ve been so busy lately, the backlog of blog postings...
3. Wan Chai Hong Kong Tea Room This is the Ham & Cheese Bread Toast from Wan...

Not quite riches. But it’s amazing how in a little over a week, all this mess is going to turn into something that actually does look nice enough to be paraded around in a sort of competition. That is going to become a float for NUS Rag Day which, this year, is going to fall on the opening of the inaugural Youth Olympics Games.

The campus is bustling with orientation programmes right now. Week 0, which is the official freshmen orientation week, starts next week. But the noise, particularly when some student groups take their activities rowdy indoors, is starting to cause the peace to be disturbed.

I came across something that is quite funny. One student group had been practising their dance in a certain space, with their loud music upsetting the quietness of the work space of some staff. The said space had to give way to some renovation works. Loud music was replaced by loud hammering, knocking, drilling, etc. You know, the renovation noise. The noise was also upsetting the quietness of that work space of those same staff. I asked them, which do you prefer, the music or the renovation noise? Their immediate answer: renovation noise.

Related posts:

1. NUS Rag and Flag It’s funny that I should have something to post about...
2. On The First Day Of School Today is the start of Week 0 of the new...
3. Dance Class No More Vanessa had her last dance class today. At least for...