Rooting the Droid X

Saturday, July 24, 2010 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
First of all let me explain a little bit about root. This is all pretty new to me as well so please correct me if I'm wrong. Root gives the user root access and the ability to be a super user on android phones. This is equivalent to having a jailbroken phone. It gives applications super user access so they can modify and change things they wouldn't be able to without it. I've used root to remove some of the bloatware that was installed with my phone, enabled wi-fi without having been charged, installed some applications that required root, and some other things. 


Here's the guide on how to root I followed. You don't need a computer for this guide. I made some corrections, but the credit goes to birdman and qoncept.


If you want to learn more on how to actually do it.
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QR Codes

Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments

What are QR Codes?

They are kind of like bar codes. The QR stands for Quick Response. It was invented by some Japanese company... which I'm sure you can search for, if you want more information about the background of the technology. 

Anyways, with the modern smartphone revolution it seems like these things are appearing everywhere. They basically hold information that a person can scan with a phone and instantly receive contact information, a website, or a phone number. The usefulness of this remains to be debated, but for now it's a good gimmick that I might put on some business cards. Looks more like a magic eye puzzle than anything else.

You can create your own here : http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/
More information about QR Code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code (yeah... wiki isn't a good reference site... you find a better one and link me.. I'm Lazy)

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Droid X 8mp Photo Test: Pho & Ranch 99 Shopping Center

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Ahh.. nothing better than a bowl of pho for lunch. Though, a clearer 8mp picture would be nice. As you can see from the pictures from my Droid X the pictures are way to glowy, and the luminosity of everything is off. It's like one of those pictures that Asian girls take, or when you make the settings really bright on puri kura machines.

Anyways, the restaurant was the same as always. Service was decent. The food was good. It was packed today with a lot of people. I always like my pho filled to the brim with the red rooster hot sauce. I also like to put the sweet brownish sauce in the broth as well.



After lunch we went to the Ranch 99 Market place in Richmond. (3288 Pierce St. Richmond, CA 94804)

This is a small primarily Asian shopping complex located near Emeryville. It has a variety of restaurants and gift shops. It's quite secluded, but bustling. I guess when you don't want to travel all the way to Chinatown you can go to this shopping complex for Asian goods. 

There are gift shops with your typical Sanrio type things that are very "kawaii", various anime goods, Asian books, and  other asian novelties. The Ranch 99 is an kind of Asian import store where you can find goods that your local grocery store might not have. After looking around for a bit, we purchased somethings at the Ranch 99, got some frozen yogurt by the ounce, and departed.


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Shorebird Park Berkeley

Monday, July 19, 2010 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Today, I went to Shorebird Park in Berkeley with Annie. It's actually a pretty interesting place that's secluded from the busy streets of Berkeley. This is partially due the gray authoritarian bridge that steps over the busy freeway and a long isthmus that divides the mainland from this little peninsula.

The first destination that we adventured to was the pier that was located at the tip of the peninsula. The cool windy weather near the pier was a welcome exception to the heat wave that we have been experiencing lately in the Bay Area.

As we walked toward the pier we saw a small ground squirrel that didn't seem to be afraid of humans. It especially had an interest in the left over spicy chicken sandwich that we had left over from Burger King. We gave a piece of the sandwich to the squirrel and it literally fell in love with the burger. It seemed to enjoy the burger so much it fell backward every time it consumed a piece.
The pier was pretty busy. There were various people fishing, walking, and taking pictures. I was expecting it to be a little bit more deserted being a Monday and all. Located near the railings of pier are some small concrete stalls . They provide solace from the strong winds as well as a canvas for some local artists.

After we left the pier, we decided to walk toward the main attraction of the peninsula, Shorebird Park. Shorebird park is a small park that has a play structure, a small beach, an information center, barbecue pits, and a strange kids attraction called Adventure Playground.

At the park, we saw a dog named Tiger, who was as as stiff as a statue, as he pointed his head toward something in the grass. He was as poised as one of those dogs you see in cartoons. He eventually pounced on something that turned out to be some sort of rodent.

I had a great time exploring this little peninsula, seemingly secluded from the busy bay area bustle that it's so close to. 



Click Picture to see the Album


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Squirrel Falls in Love with Spicy Chicken Sandwhich

Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments


This is a ground squirrel we saw today at Shorebird Park in Berkeley. It seemed to fall over backward due to an orgasmic infatuation with the left over piece of spicy chicken sandwich that Annie threw at him.
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New Phone Droid X

Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
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Yay! A new phone! This is my new phone the Droid X. A smart phone that has Android 2.1 (Froyo = Frozen Yogurt 2.2 Soon), a 1ghz TI OMAP processor and a 4.3" screen, makes this transition from an iPhone painless.

Though I love this phone, I still have some issues with it... the Droid X is nice and all, but it has one small potential problem that might make it useless to me. It features the eFuse encrypted bootloader which makes it harder for hackers to install custom roms on the device. This also means that I won't be able to have root access to the device. Root access is like jail breaking your iphone.

I really like the phone hacking community and if this phone shows little or no progress within the next couple of weeks, I will definitely give serious consideration into switching over to the droid incredible or some other phone... The incredible has a simple rooting and rom flashing application offered by http://www.unrevoked.com/.


As for other phone news, I recently updated to ios4 on my iPhone 3g. It was a simple process and I decided to update because my phone had crashed and I had to restore it anyways.


Here are the steps that I took to restore the phone:
- I updated my itunes to 9.2
- I installed the official 4.0 firmware from apple through itunes with the update button
- I downloaded redsn0w 0.9.5 http://wikee.iphwn.org/howto:rs9
- I downloaded the 4.0 ipsw that matched my iphone 3g from http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/
- I opened redsn0w and followed the directions
- I installed the ultrasn0w repo in cydia to unlock the phone (add the repo: repo666.ultrasn0w.com/ to cydia)

I then restored a backup of all my data and wala completed
Remember if you have cracked ipas remember to reinstall the mobileinstallation file for 4.0  


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LA Adventure

Monday, July 5, 2010 Posted by Snow 0 comments
During the weekend, we (me, Joel, Mary, Julie, Aaron, and Rachel) went down to Los Angeles as a continuation of our supposedly yearly trip. You could say this year was a bit more crowded (with the addition of Julie and Aaron joining us) and stressful. The night before, Julie and Aaron decided to drop by a couple of hours before we were to take off. It didn't leave us enough time to get rested, and we ended up sleeping for most of the ride down to LA.

When we finally arrived at the LA convention center for Anime Expo, we didn't expect the pre-registered line to be extremely long. There were regular attendees and then there were cosplayers in the line too. Julie decided to use this time to 'get ready'. Since Julie and Aaron didn't pre-register and were too broke to buy their own tickets, we decided to do a switch-off to bring them into the dealer's room. For most of the convention, we like to stay in the dealer's room since it has a lot of cute figurines and merchandise. It does seem silly to pay $35 each just to go buy stuff.
     
 For Joel, his enjoyment of Anime Expo was the large numbers of cosplayers. With his nice camera, he took a lot of pictures of different cosplayers. Of course, most pictures focused on Sailor Moon and her Sailor Scouts. I have mixed feelings towards cosplayers but I am still a fan of really well-made outfits. I wonder if the cosplayers ever feel tired and annoyed from posing all day.

After Anime Expo, we GPS'd our way towards our 'hotel' in Chinatown. When we checked out our rooms, we were slightly disappointed to see a very crowded room and bathroom, and hardwood floors. And since there were no carpets, it was the least bit likely for anyone to sleep on the floor. Each bed ended up with three occupants that left some of us unhappy.

After we settled in, we decided to head towards Japantown and maybe find some good food to eat for dinner. We browsed some shops and bought some snacks but we were still trying to decide on a good restaurant. In the end, we settled for a restaurant that had expensive food which most of us ended up disliking. Joel and Mary decided to go to the nearby supermarket and bought something else to eat for dinner. When everyone was done, we retreated back to our hotel room and tried to sleep through the hot summer night.

The next morning, Rachel and Mary woke up and went out to get everyone breakfast buns. After breakfast, everyone got ready and headed out to sight-see and browse the many stores in Chinatown. It was a nice day and everyone got a nice walking workout. I ended up buying a tiny bonsai tree because I forgot to buy one the last time I was there. It was a pretty fun day. The girls and I ended our tour by buying some pretty cakes from a cute cake shop. Too bad me and Mary's cakes were left behind underneath the table trash in our hotel room. It was just very disappointing since I didn't even get to taste mines!

Monday was our last day. Everyone had to wake up especially early so that we could go back to the Bay in time to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. After a long drive, we arrived at our destination. I was surprised to see so many people also going to the Aquarium. I thought they would be chilling at home or maybe at work. It was even more crowded when we entered the Aquarium. There were so many kids, I just knew my patience would be tested. But overall, I had a very fun experience at the Aquarium. I especially like the seahorses and jellyfishes. 

I wish I can say our trip back was fun also. However, the traffic was so bad on a winding road that it proved very stressful for our driver. We didn't get back home until nightfall. I guess everyone else was also going home from an eventful Independence weekend, hence the traffic. Even with the negative emotions, I still had fun because I made some good memories with my friends and sisters. Maybe we'll do this next year too.. or maybe not. :) 




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Los Angeles, Anime Expo, Chinatown & Monterey

Sunday, July 4, 2010 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Just a picture upload. Had fun. Anime expo had cute cosplayers. Chinatown was interesting. The search for good Japanese food was disappointing. Monterey Bay Aquarium was crowded.

Click on the picture to view the Album

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