Droid2 Unrooting

I'm unrooting my Droid2 in case I ever need it to have that new-droid smell.

Anyway, here are some links I found useful:

Here are the instructions for getting RSD Lite and the SBF file you need:
http://droid2hacks.com/droid-2-hacks/how-to-unrootunbrick-droid-2-back-to-factory/

And here is a tip on what to do when you're stuck at "Please manually power up this phone" -- just go back into the bootloader (up-arrow/power) and plug back in if you became unplugged. Part of my problem may be that I was running under Parallels and I goofed when it asked me to retain the USB connection to the phone.

Anyway, here's the other thing. When you're done, if you go to your settings and it has forgotten your phone number, no need to panic. From here I learned that by dialing *228 and hitting SEND you'll connect to the automated programming system. You'll hear stuff in the earpiece but if you pull the phone away from your face, you'll actually see the phone telling you it's being programmed. As in activated.

And Here's something else I didn't know. When I was done, I still had all of my apps. I'm not sure how this is possible. I expected everything to be wiped out. Did I do it right? Did the flash really happen? I'm assuming that it did, since my phone had to be reactivated onto Verizon's network. Oh well, it does seem to have worked!

If PHP Were British - Added Bytes by Dave Child

This is wicked funny...

If PHP Were British - Added Bytes by Dave Child

Add UIBinder widget to root panel

This page from the GWT doc is very helpful for getting start with UIBinder.

And they give this example for adding your UIBinder object to your application:

Document.get().getBody().appendChild(helloWorld.getElement());

Maybe that's OK for an HTML UIBinder. I haven't tried that.

Instead, I was using GWT widgets in my UIBinder, and I wanted to add a ClickHandler to one of my buttons. But nothing ever happened when I clicked it. Turns out, as I read on Stack Overflow, that indeed the handlers aren't initialized properly unless you add to the root panel.

So here's what I did that worked just fine:

RootPanel.get().add(helloWorld);

Thanks, Hilbrand!

Got default constructor?

got this error?

was not included in the set of types which can be serialized by this SerializationPolicy

could be you're missing a default constructor, like I was.

thanks, holyjeez!!

sls (combination of ssh and ls)

Here's a little bash script I just wrote and thought somebody might find useful. I'm always moving files around using scp and also needing to ssh around to ls them. So why not combine the ssh and the ls into sls -- just like scp, right?

Here are the usage and help text...

usage: sls [ls-option]... user@host[:file]...

sls is a magical combination of ssh and ls. Simply give the sls command some (or no) ls options and one or more remote locations and you'll get a listing for each. The remote spec is the same user@host:file specification you would use with the scp command, and the file part is optional.

And here is the script itself. If you have any fixes or improvements, please let me know.

#!/bin/bash # Copyright (c) 2011 Dave Diamond (at dldnh.com) # This script is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by # the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or # (at your option) any later version. # # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the # GNU General Public License for more details. # # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License # along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. usage() { echo "usage: sls [ls-option]... user@host[:file]..." if [[ $# -gt 0 && "${1:0:1}" != "-" ]] ; then echo $* ; fi if [ "${1}" != "-nodie" ] ; then exit ; fi } help() { usage -nodie cat <<EOF sls is a magical combination of ssh and ls. Simply give the sls command some (or no) ls options and one or more remote locations and you'll get a listing for each. The remote spec is the same user@host:file specification you would use with the scp command, and the file part is optional. EOF exit } if [ $# -eq 0 ] ; then usage "no files specified" fi if [[ "${1}" == "-help" || "${1}" == "--help" || "${1}" == "-?" ]] ; then help fi opts= n=0 while [ $# -gt 0 ] ; do if [ "${1:0:1}" == "-" ] ; then if [ ${n} -gt 0 ] ; then usage "options before files" fi opts="${opts} ${1}" shift else file[${n}]="${1}" n=$((n+1)) shift fi done if [ $n -eq 0 ] ; then usage "no files specified" fi for ((i=0; i<n; i++)) ; do cmd[$i]=`echo ${file[$i]} | sed -e '/^[^@:]*$/ d; /^[^:@]*@[^:]*$/ s/\(.*\)/ssh \1 '"'ls ${opts}'"'/; /^.*:.*$/ s/\(.*\):\(.*\)/ssh \1 '"'ls ${opts} \2'"'/'` if [ "${cmd[$i]}" == "" ] ; then usage "unrecognized user@host[:file] format" fi done for ((i=0; i<n; i++)) ; do echo "${cmd[$i]}" bash -c "${cmd[$i]}" done

p.s. Blogger, when I write a post in HTML, please let me edit it the same way... thank you. And to visitors from the future, if you find yourself needing to edit your HTML-written post, it's actually easy now that I think about it. Just ask your browser to show you the source, grab what you need, and paste that back into the post editor.

Deploying GWT

I'm ready to try deploying my GWT app to WLS... so how u do dat?

I found a handy how-to on elitecoderz.net.

Thanks, Erik!

GWT widgets with radio buttons

Here's something I learned today.

First the problem, which was that setValue didn't seem to be doing anything -- my radioButton's weren't getting set. This isn't actually true. It turns out that if I scrolled down, one of the radio buttons on the page WAS getting set. Can you guess what was going on? That's right, all of the radio buttons from all sets all had the same name.

Heres the lesson: If you make a GWT widget that has radio buttons in it, and you use more than one of these widgets on a single page, you're going to need to make the name of each radio set unique.

And my solution: What I did was to use the hashCode of the panel that contains the buttons, and this worked just fine.

You're welcome!

Summer nest boxes

This is mainly a note-to-self about how to make summer nest boxes, the kind that are open on top. I'm always forgetting the dimensions.

Cut from a 1"x10"...

- a 4" piece for the front
- a 7" piece for the back
- a 17.5" piece for the bottom
- two 17.5" pieces for the sides

The front and back stand on top of the bottom, such that the interior length of the box is 16".

The sides and bottom rest on the same surface, such that the exterior width of the box is 10.75".

If you cut the 17.5's short by the width of your saw blade, you should be able to get three nest boxes out of two 8-foot boards -- one board for five 17.5's and two 4's and the other board for four 17.5's, one 4, and three 7's.

Which nails to use? I'll be back to answer this all-important question.

Google+!!

That's a lot of punctuation.

But here I am!!

https://plus.google.com/110123658033707277435

Fun with Eclipse on Mac OS: the command/option saga

When I tried to run Eclipse on my Macbook Pro the other day, I discovered that the command and option keys were reversed. If I tried to Paste with cmd-V, I'd get some funny character, but if I typed opt-V, it would paste. Instead of quitting, cmd-Q would insert this "œ" character, which is supposed to be input via opt-Q, which instead would quit me from Eclipse. Yeah, loads of fun.

I googled all around and found nothing, nothing at all, about this. The only other thing I could think of was to submit a bug (this one) and hope that someone could point me to some page about a gotcha... or whatever.

Well the plot thickens. Turns out that if I create a new user account on the Mac, that user doesn't have the same problem. So at least I know it's not even something about my system, but rather about my normal user account. So if I can't figure out, the worst case solution is I have to switch users to run Eclipse. Maybe I'd just switch to a new user account instead and move all my stuff to it.

But before I do all that, I'll see if I can figure out what it is about my account that's causing this. If I find any answers, I'll be posting them here.

Update: I tried a bunch of things -- moving all of the Preferences out of ~/Library, moving .* out of ~, moving Application Support files... I finally got fed up and just created a new account. Oh what fun this will be! :/

Kensington Universal Multi-Display Adapter

This is kind a note-to-self, but maybe it will help somebody else some day.

I've got a Kensington Universal Multi-Display Adapter hooked up to my Mac Mini, so I can have two displays. Works really great, but... whenever the power goes out and the system shuts down, I'll start it back up and that monitor is dark, dead, like a paperweight.

Want to know what I did to fix it? It's really complicated. Unplug the adapter from the system and plug it back in. Yes, that's all. Only took me an hour this time to think of that. Maybe next time I'll google it and end up back here and ::facepalm:: suffer for only a few minutes.

You're welcome, self!!

TweetDeck

I've tried a few different Twitter/Facebook apps, but just tried TweetDeck... LOVE IT!! SWITCHED!!
Try it yourself, it's in the Android market: here.

Update: one thing I found kind of annoying is that I couldn't figure out how to switch the order of the columns. Maybe someone can give me a better idea how to do this, but I ended up jotting them down, deleting them (the "home" and "me" columns can't be deleted) and re-adding them. Hey, it worked!

Speaking of Ubuntu (which rocks, by the way)

Hey, speaking of Ubuntu, I didn't mention that I upgraded to 11.04 (natty what?) and have not had a single problem since with the whole suspend/restore on this Dell Latitude C640 that I sometimes use. Thanks, Ubuntu -- you all rock!!

Installing Eclipse (on Ubuntu, of course)

It sure is nice to have the package manager for installing software, but sometimes it's out of date. In the case of Eclipse, I think it gave me the G release, whatever that was, but the latest is Indigo, which you can download from whereverz. And I found a handy page explaining how to "install" it.

SCP and spaces

I was looking for help with linux SCP and spaces in file names. I found a somewhat helpful link here: http://www.thingy-ma-jig.co.uk/blog/14-05-2007/how-to-scp-a-path-with-spaces

Its advice didn't work for me out of the box, however.

What I ended up doing instead that did work was this:

scp -r 'myserver.com:"/path/with/a/Space\ In\ It' ./

Which is to say that I single-quoted the whole source argument and single-escaped each space.

I'm dealing with left-parentheses similarly:

scp -r 'myserver.com:"/path/with/a/Space\(s)\ In\ It' ./

Looks like there are other characters I need to escape, like single quotes, but I'm not going to worry about those right now. If you have any idea about escaping those in this context, please leave a comment.

One less hyphen to kick around

I have decided to stop hyphenating the word "email".

That's all for now.

Changing Ubuntu screen resolution

As I noted in the previous post, I have gotten resume to work. However, when the screen appears, the resolution has changed. Obviously you can click

System -> Preferences -> Monitors

and change the resolution there, but I googled around and stumbled onto a command line solution -- this is the command that did the trick:

$ xrandr -s 1024x768

#resume-fail

pm_op(): pci_pm_resume+0x0/0xa0 returns -16
PM: Device 0000:00:00.0 failed to resume async: error -16

This is a Latitude C640, by the way, in case anyone else is searching for a fix for this... if someone should stumble in here, please leave a comment, even if you don't find an answer, so I can follow up and see how you did.

In the mean time, I've set my lid-close behavior to hibernate, which does seem to work. Odd thing about that, though, is it displays a similar error (with "resume" replaced by "thaw") when the hibernate is taking place. But it does shut itself off and restart does restore the system properly.

UPDATE: I found a post on Ubuntu Forums that mentions a different issue, but the solution seems to help -- here's my /etc/default/acpi-support file...

#
# Configuration file for the acpi-support package
#
#
# The acpi-support package is intended as "glue" to make special functions of
# laptops work. Specifically, it translates special function keys for some
# laptop models into actions or generic function key presses.
#


#
# Suspend/hibernate method
# ------------------------
#
# When gnome-power-manager or klaptopdaemon are running, acpi-support will
# translate the suspend and hibernate keys of laptops into special "suspend"
# and "hibernate" keys that these daemons handle.
#
# Only in situations where there is no gnome-power-manager or klaptopdaemon
# running, acpi-support needs to perform suspend/hibernate in some other way.
# There are several options for this. The options are:
#
# dbus-pm:
#    Perform suspend and hibernate actions via a DBUS request to the power
#    management daemon. This works for power management daemons that we don't
#    know of. (For gnome-power-manager and klaptopdaemon this will do nothing,
#    since those will be detected when they are running, and triggered using
#    a virtual keypress.)
#
# dbus-hal:
#    Perform suspend and hibernate actions via a DBUS request directly to HAL,
#    bypassing any running power management daemons.
#
# pm-utils:
#    Use pm-suspend and pm-hibernate to suspend and hibernate. (The dbus method
#    normally results in this as well, but calls through dbus. Use this option
#    only if you don't have dbus installed.)
#
# hibernate:
#    Use the hibernate package to suspend and hibernate.
#
# acpi-support:
#    Use the legacy built-in suspend/hibernate support. (DEPRECATED)
# 
# none:
#    Do not attempt to suspend/hibernate. Set SUSPEND_METHODS="none" to
#    disable suspend/hibernate handling in acpi-support.
#
# If you specify dbus or pm-utils, the result will normally be the same as when
# you suspend from your desktop environment. If you specify "hibernate" or
# "acpi-support", be aware that this probably does not match what your desktop
# environment would do (unless you have managed to configure something so that
# the DBUS power management interfaces call the hibernate package).
#
#
# Please specify a space separated list of options. The recommended value is
# "dbus pm-utils"
#
SUSPEND_METHODS="dbus-pm dbus-hal pm-utils"



#
# LEGACY BUILT IN SUSPEND SUPPORT (DEPRECATED)
# --------------------------------------------
#
# These options only work for the "acpi-support" suspend method. This is NOT
# recommended, but is retained for backward compatibility reasons.
#

# Comment the next line to disable ACPI suspend to RAM
ACPI_SLEEP=true

# Comment the next line to disable suspend to disk
ACPI_HIBERNATE=true

# Change the following to "standby" to use ACPI S1 sleep, rather than S3.
# This will save less power, but may work on more machines
ACPI_SLEEP_MODE=standby

# Add modules to this list to have them removed before suspend and reloaded
# on resume. An example would be MODULES="em8300 yenta_socket"
#
# Note that network cards and USB controllers will automatically be unloaded 
# unless they're listed in MODULES_WHITELIST
MODULES=""

# Add modules to this list to leave them in the kernel over suspend/resume
MODULES_WHITELIST=""

# Should we save and restore state using the VESA BIOS Extensions?
SAVE_VBE_STATE=false

# The file that we use to save the vbestate
VBESTATE=/var/lib/acpi-support/vbestate

# Should we attempt to warm-boot the video hardware on resume?
POST_VIDEO=true

# Save and restore video state?
# SAVE_VIDEO_PCI_STATE=true

# Should we switch the screen off with DPMS on suspend?
USE_DPMS=true

# Use Radeontool to switch the screen off? Seems to be needed on some machines
# RADEON_LIGHT=true

# Uncomment the next line to switch away from X and back again after resume.
# This is needed for some hardware, but should be unnecessary on most.
# DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true

# Set the following to "platform" if you want to use ACPI to shut down
# your machine on hibernation
HIBERNATE_MODE=shutdown

# Comment this out to disable screen locking on resume
LOCK_SCREEN=true

# Uncomment this line to have DMA disabled before suspend and reenabled
# afterwards
DISABLE_DMA=true

# Uncomment this line to attempt to reset the drive on resume. This seems
# to be needed for some Sonys
# RESET_DRIVE=true

# Add services to this list to stop them before suspend and restart them in 
# the resume process.
STOP_SERVICES=""

# Restart Infra Red services on resume - off by default as it crashes some
# machines
RESTART_IRDA=false

# Add to this list network interfaces that you don't want to be stopped
# during suspend (in fact any network interface whose name starts with
# a prefix given in this list is skipped)
SKIP_INTERFACES="dummy qemu"

# Note: to enable "laptop mode" (to spin down your hard drive for longer
# periods of time), install the laptop-mode-tools package and configure
# it in /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf. 

Do-over!

Well I'm glad I did that, the writing down of what I was installing on this Linux system. Or should I say that Linux system? The disk was bad, I'm pretty sure. I could install Windows on it, but Linux just had a hard time with it. I kept getting this error on restore -- the kind that happens after a suspend. I'm really, really hoping I don't run into the same thing on this new install. The other bummer is that other disk is 250GB and this one is only 30GB. Oh well, this system is more or less an experiment and I'm months from a new laptop that has to be the one true laptop.

How I roll Linux

I was going to write a note-to-self post, something to keep track of system changes on this laptop I'm setting up with Ubuntu (and Windows, which is a long story)...