Busy hands | Disquiet mind

A while back I got a fantastic birthday present; the Electric Sheep! I've wanted one for ages! So I started reading up on it, and discovered it would only work on a phone with Android version 2.3.4 or higher, because that's when they introduced the new USB driver for it to work.

I waited, and waited. I'd bought my phone SIM-free, so I got Gingerbread while all my friends with the same branded phone did not. Then I waited some more. Lo and behold, another update! Yes, install! ... Hmm, only a security update, still only 2.3.3? Get in contact with HTC, asking when they're going to push the 2.3.4 update that all the other, newer phones had already received. The answer; "HTC has not released android 2.3.4 update for this phone due to the hardware requirements of this phone." This is plainly not true as several people having rooted their phones are even running 4.0.x on it.

What am I to do? There is only one way forward of course, root my own phone. The first step is actually just setting up a software development environment. On the phone that just requires enabling debug mode, and on the laptop installing the Android SDK (painful enough, remember to run as Administrator on Windows), and from that the drivers for the phone. Only, the driver kept on failing to install/recognise my device. Turns out I needed to edit the driver. In a minor way that is not nearly as scary as it sounds. Simply add info about my phone to the .info file, as described here: http://alt236.blogspot.ie. Then install the drivers again, successfully this time, and make sure the Android Debugging Bridge (adb) is working. adb shell lets you walk around the phones file system copying and deleting files and such.

This part isn't necessary for rooting your phone, but hey, I'll probably want to write some apps at some point, so I followed the procedure described here. To finish setting up the dev environment I installed Eclipse, built a virtual approximation of my phone and played with some of the samples. They are surprisingly slow to run.

Ok, great. Next step, make backups. There is an adb backup -all command, but it only works with Android versions 4 and above. *sad* So I'm going to have to do it the long way, copying file by file. I thought I'd give scripting it a try, but that's for another day.

( Memory lane, the path travelled, how I got here, and all that jazz )

Anyway. What all this has taught me is how much of a control-freak I am when it comes to technology. All these 'helpful' programs and processes, auto-start features, auto-sync, not only drains the phones battery, but mine as well. Simply put; do not want. I turned everything off. GPS services, both kinds, wlan, bluetooth, data, everything off. I will turn it on as needed, then swiftly shut it down again. (Maybe I've been spending too much time dealing with firewalls and ports...)

The Quest to download apps from the Android Market
( Mighty battles )

Apps
( Enjoying the spoils )

Back to fixing what in the old days we called a 'phonebook'
( Tending wounds )

Bluetooth connection to Parrot car-kit
( Breaking in a new saddle )

That's as far as I've gotten, and what I would consider functioning adequately. Once I've become a bit more familiar with the device I'll install the SDK and have some real fun!