Blrg

So I've gotten myself a Nexus One, an Android-powered cell phone, hoping to have a good platform to test Android apps on (Only to learn that months ago, Google was giving away phones to developers).

Anyway, so far it's been great. The only gripes I have is that the touchscreen seems to be a little off and the wifi has issues remaining connected now (it used to work fine), but the Wifi Fixer app works as a work-around for the latter.

Furthermore, I've gotten the phone connected to WIND Mobile, and so far my experience with WIND has been OK. Even ignoring the issues getting started (the people signing me up were kinda new, so I forgive them), every now and then I seem to drop out of their towers' reach and be considered roaming! Also, in some situations where other providers would manage to get *some* signal, I get none at all - but I shouldn't be too surprised, I guess. These situations are the usual suspects - elevators, bus network basements, etc..

On the bright side, though, the cost is fairly small (~30$ for voice+voicemail+data) and I have unlimited texts for a year.

Yeah, so I have an HTC Dream from Rogers because my boss wants me to be able to get e-mails and calls when things go wrong - expensive for an on-call phone, eh? - and I was having difficulty updating it. See, Rogers has been for the past month demanding that users update their phone due to a bug concerning dialling 911 (apparently, if you have GPS enabled and try to call 911, the call fails or somesuch; but I never have GPS enabled anyway, since Google tracks you if you have it on and I have no use for it - besides, the cell location works better), and they disable your data plan until you update. After trying to update it on two Windows systems and trying to manually put the firmware on it as well as calling Rogers tech support, I finally found these instructions:

Windows 7 Instructions for Rogers HTC

It's actually pretty simple, but here's the real problem I was encountering:

I had mistakenly assumed that since it was a new device, the SD card was formatted FAT32, as they need to be for the update. However, it was not (Good job, Rogers). After getting everything off the card and formatting it to FAT32 then replacing the firmware onto the card, I was able to update the phone without a hitch.

I'm still disappointed that it took Rogers so long to update the HTC Dream... ...and didn't even provide a real update. Geez, guys, get with the program already.

Okay, so it turns out you CAN use themes with 3.6 — the theme just has to be correctly updated for it. Simply version bumping does not work for this version, it seems.

Phew!

Oh, and since 3.5, the auto-complete behaviour changed, so for those of you who liked browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped, you may want to read about changing automcomplete behaviour in Firefox 3.5/3.6.

That is all for now.

Just a quick note:

I've upgraded to 3.6 on my main system, and again, while most extensions work, a few still do not and I'm waiting on them to be upgraded. The biggest change, though, is that themes no longer work (even if they lie about their compatibility); Instead, there are "personas", which work like Chrome's "themes": They're basically background images, which you can switch between instantly.

Which look good often depend on your configuration, but I've managed to find a few that I like and work well with my layout. However, this doesn't stop it from reminding me of the infamous Hotbar infection for IE. (With notes that all you need to do this in IE is to use TweakUI - at least, until Vista/IE8, which I don't know if they have any such settings.) While this change makes it easier to develop a look for Firefox, it does drop the overall customizability of the look a whole lot.

Goodbye, themes. Rest in peace.

August has been an... interesting month, not counting the humidity.

It started off with my ear infection (which actually started some time during the second-to-last week of July), which gradually got better and finally went away. It also had coupled itself with an eye infection which I had to deal with an eye infection which I had to deal with at the same time.
However, it ended perhaps a few days before I was scheduled to go off on a canoeing-camping trip (more on that later), and hardly had the time to recover, nevermind time to do exercises to be in shape.
It doesn't end there; during this time I'd noticed some tiny insects - feel free to make your guess, but I've stumped everyone so far - around my apartment. I originally didn't think they were a big deal, but I eventually noticed that regardless of what I did, they stuck around.
I'd done a last ditch effort at the last minute before the camping trip, and even that hadn't done much. And when I came back... I realised that they'd originated from my mother's house. They were on every floor; they'd gone unnoticed because these insects (or mites, or pseudo-lice, or whatever they are) are light-shy, activity-shy and seem to only eat... ...well, I'm not sure what.
The day I realised this I informed my mother about it, but she wasn't terribly worried, especially when I mentioned that I believed they were book lice, and that one source said that one of the things they feed on is mould. *sigh* Mentioning that one of the ones in the basement was a tad larger than I'd seen so far had no effect.
I wasn't convinced these bugs were benign due to their quantity; My argument was that it is rare to see, for example, large amounts of spiders in a human living area and there was a fair quantity of these bugs around. At this point you're likely wondering why I didn't contact exterminators or even the land-lord; I'm not sure. Part of it was procrastination, part of it was that I didn't even know what kind of bug it was, and part of it was that I thought I could get rid of them myself.
Oddly enough, I seem to have done just that; I do not see them in my apartment anywhere anymore, so one or more of cleaning, vacuuming, powder insecticide, and compressed "air" did the trick in getting rid of them. I'm thinking that it was a combination of the last two, because a day after using the compressed "air" they were all over, a fair bit bolder than they'd been before... ...and then the next day, they seemed to have altogether vanished save one or two.
I have yet to scour the apartment for them, however, to make sure they simply haven't just located another source of food (something I could not doubt considering my roommates (several reasons)), but I will do this soon as I'd like to capture at least one and bring it somewhere for identification (Any suggestions? The apartment's office staff will not recognise them, I'm sure, given my past... experience with them.).
As for what I suspect them to be, I believe they are book lice (in which "lice" appears to be a misnomer).

Update: Actually, they're still around. Guess they were napping.