Point Element

So last week I prepared v0.3 and put it to git. Yesterday I tried to port it to Sailfish as was the original plan. I went at it as below:  I used an existing test application to get the required files and project settings. I added them to my project. This part included copying various tidbits to the .pro file. Also included is copying over folders for RPM, translations, icons etc.  Then I went through the files and updated the file names wherever needed to reflect my app. This gave me a build which built successfully using the mer-arm toolchain. Now to get it running on the device. I plugged in the Aqua Fish to Laptop with microUSB cord, and enabled debugging. Then tried to debug-run the app. First problem - debug-run doesn't work. I got error as - gdbserver not found. On googling for this, found out I need gdbserver installed on device and it will probably take a while since I'm not familiar with this functionality of Sailfish. So I decided to skip debug-run, and go with only ...

For last few years computerization has become common in all government departments and we can do a number of tasks online.  Last few days I had different encounters with a few government systems here around. I'll summarize my experience as below.  1. Online Tenant Registration I'm living at present in a rented apartment. Recently I was looking at a new vehicle purchase and one condition was the tenant should be registered at nearest police station. Being lazy, I looked up if there is anything online for this. Funnily enough, there is a website: http://tenantreg.in . It was started two years back on the outset of "German Bakery Blasts" and "26/11 Mumbai Attacks". The website when I tried to access was down. I tracked the registration and found out one probitysoft maintaining it. I found mail of the registering person and fired an email to that person. I didn't get any reply or acknowledgment, but the website miraculously came online. I went through the op...

Last one week I explored AquaFish more. Found some nifty things too. PC Connection is great and working fine. I can send files to and from AquaFish well enough. Most of my media plays fine on AquaFish.  I checked the events view and there were some options regarding to customizing the Quick Toggles or the WiFi/BlueTooth etc buttons. I added brightness control there since it seems like the natural needed option there.  Besides this I successfully enabled developer mode and managed to connect the phone to installed Sailfish SDK and managed to run coupe of examples on the phone. One problem I faced was the SDK won't connect the phone when I tried connecting the SSH thingie(???) over USB itself. But then I connected both my laptop and AquaFish to WiFi and used the WiFi IP of AquaFish in Sailfish SDK, and debugging worked fine then. Don't know what the real issue is.  Anyway, going forward I side-loaded some APK's and tried to install few Android Apps like Flipkart, Amazon, WPS ...

For last couple of weeks I am working on a small Income/Expense tracking application. It's a small pet project of mine. It's main purpose is for me to get familiar with latest features in QML and code for various scenarios in a live app. Recently I put together another point release for this - a version 0.3. Now I needed somewhere to keep track of it's development and manage changes better than a desktop folder and datewise backups. So I thought I should setup a Git repository for this. So I created a github account and created a repository. To import my project into this, I tried to use a GUI Client, gitg which I thought would be easier to use than stumbling around the commands.  Unfortunately gitg gave an error regarding .gitg-config something file. I didn't have time to shoot it down, so I used the five-six commands shown in github repository page to setup empty repository on PC.  The commands are: $echo "# UIApp" >> README.md $git init Initialized em...

Right a year back this time I was frustrated with my Redmi 1S for not getting through the day. So much frustrated that I sold it to a friend's friend. To add to the cash-pile I sold my four year old Samsung Omnia W on Quickr. And then put in some more hard earned monies, and got this beauty on Amazon Sale with 33% discount.  It was a risk. Nubia as a brand was not well known. But I have used ZTE's back then and knew them to be solid devices. So I went for it. And now a year later, I'm still happy for that decision. The phone came with Android 5.0.3 with Nubia UI which I found to be crap, but the Camera was top notch. I have since shot more than 2000 photos with it and many of them are just superb. So much so that it convinced me to invest in a tripod. Another good investment. Anyway, couple of months in I ditched Nubia UI for Mokee ROM and haven't looked back since. Used Mokee 5.1 for a while, then moved to Mokee 6.0 and been using it so far. The phone's solid thoug...

Soon I'll be completing seven years of career in IT. I have worked as a software engineer, then a senior software engineer, and for last one and half year as a team leader. And during all this time, I have encountered a number of problems. I have seen code of various quality, code that looked like spaghetti,  totally unmaintained and terror to make any changes to. I have also seen well maintained, well architectured code. I have seen C, C++, .Net, Java, JavaScript, PHP, SQL Procedures and shell scripts. I think I have seen more than enough. So while reflecting on all this and trying to apply my previous experience to my current work which is in embedded systems, I thought I need to think about API's and how to apply them to my work. Actually it shouldn't be a debate, API's are needed. To avoid mixing of various different functionalities, you need API'fied layers and clear separation between the various functions. But from what I've seen in embedded applicati...

Well, I got hold of a high speed USB Dongle which I could connect to my laptop/desktop. But I couldn't use it's internet with Aqua Fish. So I thought I would try to share the internet and see how it works out.  1. Make laptop WiFi hotspot - normally it's effortless with apps like Conenctify,but on this current laptop I don't have admin access. Which means I can't do this using windows. But I have Linux on this too. So I rebooted and googled about WiFi hotspot on Linux. Got some decent instructions too. But it wasn't working. So after changing the WiFi driver twice, following three different tutorials, and finally finding out that this laptop's WiFi doesn't have any driver that supports AP functionality, I was disappointed.  2. Try USB Reverse tether on Jolla: The instructions were there. But people threw a number of disclaimers so I thought my phone's brand new. Don't wanna break it so early. Which means this was also a no no.  3. Try USB tether ...

Two issues I noticed: One due to WiFi not connecting to WPA Enterprise network, I had the cellphone reset. After reset I entered my Jolla account credentials. After that I got notification for update. Except this is one update I had already applied. So Sailfish update may not be working well. Don't know. Second issue is seen when using the Android app store. I tried to update the apps but the download keeps getting interrupted. Don't know again whether its network issue or store issue or something else.

[Updates] --------------------------- 5-Oct: Just found out Sailfish doesn't support WPA Enterprise. So no office WiFi for me! Although it connects to plain WPA router. I checked this with my Tata DoCoMo WiFi dongle. --------------------------- Introduction Unboxing hardware The box looks good. Opening it you find a book like design which is delight to open. The box contains handset, 2500mAh battery, in ear type headphones, a power brick and a USB to micro-USB cable. It comes with an orange colored back plate which can be removed by lifting one corner. Intex has helpfully provided a sticker at the corner. The phone has quite a bit of footprint but is light in hand. Removing the backplate shows the dual Sim slots and the dedicated SD Card slot and battery slot. The battery is removable. But you need to remove the battery to insert SIM/SD cards. Display, connectivity, battery life The display is specified as an IPS HD display. It doesn't have any kind of glass pro...

When you have a itty-bitty mail to send with your 100kbps connection, some godforsaken program crops up and gobbles all your little bandwidth starving your browser and making that mail a half-an-hour wait.