I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Tag: Geekery

Yeah, you know, just your regular geeking out with stuff.

iDroid on my 3G, a bit of an update

Posted by on in TV

So I’ve actually got an Android app running on my 3G under iDroid, and it actually works. It doesn’t work very well, but it does work. The app I managed to get running was Beat Dialer. The other app I tried to get to work was Tasker, but for reasons that I just don’t understand it will not install at all. Which is a shame really.

Is it worth me building my own local App Inventor?

Posted by on in Tech

Yesterday or late last night at any rate Google announced that they were releasing the code for their Android App Inventor product. You can download it here. Now I’m considering whether I should attempt to compile and run it locally myself.

It sounds like a kind of cool project to try out, but almost certainly one that will cause lots of problems for me. I’ll let you know if I can make it work, or even if I try.

G1 is go!

Posted by on in Tech

Well I’ve finally got my G1 up and running again. It’s taken a while to get this far, and it’s really just the beginning as it’s currently running Android 1.5 and I’d like to see how far I can take it. Hopefully up to 2.1, but we’ll see.

I have to say that T-Mobile were really helpful getting things working for me. They were brilliant. My plan is to get it working as a remote security scanner. We’ll see if I can make it work effectively.

What can you do with an old PDA?

Posted by on in Tech

I still have a number of old devices which are for the most part doing nothing whatsoever. So I started to wonder what I could do with them. Especially my Dell Axim x51. It’s a nice device, but I really don’t use it for music anymore, nor do I really use it for anything. It seems a shame to just sell it off as I’m sure I’d regret it. I’d like it to have a reasonable use for it.

So I’m going to have a nose around and see if there’s a way to get some more life out of it.

Making my G1 useful

Posted by on in Tech

I remembered that I still have an old Android G1 knocking around. So I thought I’d upgrade it and see how useful it could be, perhaps using it with Tasker and PAW Server. It’s going to take a little while to get it all up and running though as this old G1 is on Android 1.5.

One thing that is quite interesting though is the ability to connect a G1 to an Arduino, with a little messing about of course. I might just give that a go.

AxisPad on the 3G

Posted by on in Mobile Applications

Well I took the plunge and bought StyleTap for my 3G. I think it works pretty well so far, although I think I’d rather have StyleTap for Android at the moment, but never mind.

Getting AxisPad running on it was great. AxisPad was one of the last Palm OS music apps to appear, and I still really like it. I think I have all the miniMusic apps running on the 3G now, which is good. I still couldn’t get Bhajis on there, but perhaps I’ll have more luck next time I try.

Hello Einstein

Posted by on in Tech

Einstein running on Android. So far I haven’t been able to do much with it as it’s so slow, but I’ll keep at it and see how I get on with it.

Running iziBasic and ViziBasic under StyleTap

Posted by on in Tech

So today is my last day of using the StyleTap trial. I knew that I’d have to get the last bit of testing done today to see if I could use iziBasic and ViziBasic on the emulator. The short answer? You can. In fact, in some ways they work better, especially in terms of being able to zoom the screen, which is very handy when you’re not using a stylus.

So I ran a ‘generate code and compile’, from Vizibasic, and that worked fine, and a compile from iziBasic and that worked too. All systems go then. Looks like I’ll be buying StyleTap after all!

Tasker makes Android completely awesome

Posted by on in Tech

I’ve been messing around with Tasker for a few days now, and I have to say that it is one very good reason to move completely to Android. Tasker is so flexible and modular that it can do pretty much anything in terms of automating an Android device.

If there was a Tasker like app for iOS it would be a massive seller, but of course it doesn’t fit with the whole sandbox approach from Apple. Big big shame.

I found myself seriously considering a move to Android away from the iPhone on my next contract renewal, and if Apple don’t pull something stupendous out of the bag with the iPhone 5 I might just do it.

I’ll post some of my Tasker automations soon too, then you’ll see what I mean.