Monthly Archives: May 2011

As someone who tends to fix a lot of technology, I often get compliments. No surprises, eh? I’m not puffing my chest here, it just sort of happens. People who don’t work with technology are often dazzled by the knowledge and activities of those of us who do work with it. It’s a nice feeling, but I don’t see that as a milestone or achievement or anything like that. You run a garage, you know all about cars. You’re a doctor, you can name a million body parts that I don’t know. I happen to be a programmer, I know things that you don’t. It’s no big deal. Being technically savvy doesn’t entitle you to compliments any more than the next person. More

Just flashed Incredikernel on my Android phone. The first thing I notice about it is that the screen turn on/off is way faster. As in before, I’d pretty the button and it would take probably a half second to wake up. Now, it’s basically instantaneous. Awesome!

I am a huge fan of using the combination of ctrl and backspace to delete a word. I use it so much that I don’t even think I just use plain old backspace anymore, except when I’m fixing spelling or something. And even then, I usually just retype the whole word. However, it’s hugely annoying that some programs, namely Windows Explorer, don’t support that combination, and instead just generate a box placeholder character. To fix this, I found a great program called AutoHotKey that allows you to bind macros to certain keys. To make control and backspace always work, I set up the program and used the following line of code in the script:

^BS:: send, ^+{left}{delete}

To make the script launch on startup, you should just move it into your Startup folder.

For my first real flash project that I coded entirely, I decided to attempt a flash “paint shop” that allows you to simply select a color and draw. Not too hard. Check it out.

I primarily use my Android device for four things. Calling people, texting people, playing music, and taking pictures.

In switching from HTC Sense to CyanogenMod 7, I found myself a little disappointed in crucial system apps – the gallery, phone, music player, and SMS client. Although the calender app was a step up compared to Sense, all others felt like a downgrade. For example, CM lacks the ability to start autocompleting a contact name in the phone app by keying in a part of it, like I could in HTC Sense. After some searching, I turned up some great alternatives. If you too are after better system apps, I recommend grabbing these. More