Android G1 Firmware Hacking

Posted by Timothy on Jan 3, 2009 in Android, Gadgets

Most if not all of my friends know that I can’t leave things alone. I rarely run software/hardware/gadgets in any sort of ‘default’ or ‘factory’ setting. I have to always dig in there and see how things tick and usually find others do the same. My iPod runs RockBox instead of the standard Apple Firmware to allow me to by-pass the usage of iTunes to get music on the device. So with that said– and you already know I’ve traded in the old Sidekick for a spiffy new Android G1 phone. It was time to hack the firmware on there as well. There’s been many articles posted about RC29′s ‘root’ exploit and RC30 fixing this hole. I haven’t really been interested in hacking my G1 up until now. I’ve been reading about other builds of the Android OS and getting a bit curious about trying a community built version of the firmware.

So tonight I took some time to do some research on reverting back to RC29 ( I let my phone upgrade to RC30 ) and then gaining root access and keeping it. Reverting back to RC29 was fairly simple. But upgrading back to RC30+Patches to keep root was a bit more difficult.

Loading RC30+Patches

Turns out if you follow the directions, all ends well with a newly installed RC30 that’ll allow you to keep your ‘root’ access. This allows for flashing new boot/startup screen images along with replacing the T-Mobile G1 splashscreen when you first power up the phone.

IZ IN YOUR ANDROID STEALING YOUR ROOTS

Android Speaks IRC?

Posted by Timothy on Oct 30, 2008 in Android, Programming, Projects

So, I’ve been literally hacking away at the Android SDK/API trying to figure out all the cool stuff. I’m no way a Java developer. Matter of fact, I can’t stand Java. So with that aside, Android is really cool stuff. I’ve been missing a few applications from my Sidekick and one of them is a home-grown IRC app. It’s pretty nice to have around when I was bored and waiting around doing nothing. SO! I’ve threw an XMPP (also known as Jabber) client together using Smack and then linked to IRC via eJabberd’s IRC-Transport. After a few days of hacking… I have results.

I’ll continue work and hopefully I’ll be able to release this into the wild. Still needs a login dialog and status dialogs, etc.. etc.

Open Flash Charts

Posted by Timothy on Jan 3, 2008 in Programming

I was browsing WebAppers the other night to see what I’ve been missing in the wonderful ‘Web 2.0′ world (I really hate that term) when I stumbled upon Open Flash Charts. I just had to check this thing out. There’s another Flash based charting software I’ve been using for a side project of mine. It’s actually fairly cheap at $50 per domain. But I figure I’d give this Open Flash Charts thing a try and see if it’s a good replacement. One of the features I’m in need of is ‘live’ data– where the charts update on the fly at some variable interval without a full page reload. Obviously so you can see ‘live’ data as your database tables are being populated. Open Flash Charts has just the thing using Javascript/AJAX. The developer makes note that the AJAX API is experimental and may change, but for now I have something that works. So here’s what I came up with. Click here for a demo

You should be able to download the OFC project and be able to throw this together in a matter of minutes. It was actually a lot easier than I had original thought. A more elegant way of making this work would be to use Prototype or MooTools or any of the other Javascript frameworks as they have Periodical Executers of some sort.

Comic Strip Live v2.0

Posted by Timothy on Nov 25, 2007 in Programming, Projects

Being bored over Thanksgiving, I decided it was time to crank up the ol Comic Strip Live proxy and get things back in business. I spent sometime porting the code over and added a bunch of things that we wanted to have when we first came up with the idea. We now have emotions, places, props and a comic-like true-type font! We have a few more ideas that I’ll be implementing as soon as I work out a plan of attack.

Click here to view Comic Strip Live v2.0

Visual Studio + Subversion

Posted by Timothy on Aug 22, 2007 in Programming, Software

I recently found Ankh which integrates SVN into Visual Studio. Just thought I’d throw this out there. I haven’t had much time to tinker with the Add-In yet, but so far I was able to easily Commit and Update files. Works with authentication as well.