it took many hours and some hardcore hacking, but i’m proud to say i did this all by myself, with the help of google, xda/cyanogen/droid forums, and big ups to this guy for the sweet gimp python script (animated gif to individual png frames!).

here’s a link to the bootanimation.zip, if you want to try it on your phone.

my phone (your mileage may vary):

htc g1

cm recovery

cm 5.0.7-ds-test3 w/ hotfix

hedwig and the angry inch

primal fear

falling down

standard operating procedure

overnight

aside from “falling down” (which was cheesy) and “standard operating procedure” (which was, sadly, nothing new to me), i was pretty happy with my choices. i was especially stoked about hedwig. i thought the story was great, the music was rad (performed by eli and girls against boys), and the lead actor was amazing. i’m bummed that i missed the boat on that movie, cause apparently, it was released in 2001? heh.

anyway, tomorrow, we have a quick jimmy-less rehearsal, before we meet back up with him in los angeles on saturday. i’m pretty excited about this next leg of tour, as it will be in a 15 passenger van. it’s always nicer to have a place to call home, even if it’s a home on wheels. the flying and renting minivan deal was getting a little rough, and it never felt like we were a band on tour. so, it’ll be nice to be doing it legit. now, we just need our full backline and that will make for a very happy me. hehe.

what else is new? i rooted and installed cyanogenmod on my g1. very happy about it. i bought a class 6 microsd card and partitioned it with a fat32 media storage partition, an ext4 app storage partition, and a swap partition. the combination of the swap and the custom mod have definitely given me a performance boost. and i don’t have to worry about running out of space again! now, if only phone makers would stop seeing android as a low-cost alternative and actually start putting it on decent hardware, we wouldn’t need to do so much hacking! haha.

first off, google latitude location badge! so rad! haha. i’m currently using it on my site, right now. if you’re not there already, head over to claudiorivera.info to check it out. and if you have a blackberry or g1, add me!

next, cupcake! it’s finally coming! so stoked! this means i’ll finally be able to take hilarious videos and upload them directly to youtube. and not having to hold down the shutter for 3 seconds? very nice. it’s kind of sad when someone makes a crappy feature and then fixes it and us nerds get excited, like we didn’t get ripped off, originally. haha.

my goal for the next month or so is to ride my bike exclusively. i know i’ve made similar pledges in the past, and i end up doing half bike, half bus. but, with jordan opening his new studio much closer to me, it’s actually feasable. only 3.2 miles each way! that’s about half the distance to my space, which i’ve done there and back more than a few times.

by the way, i think that’s my plan for the summer. i’ve been pretty involved with producing drums on jordan schmidt projects for a little while, now. i also did my first co-producing project with him, recently. hopefully, things keep going that route and i’ll stay involved with either just drums or everything. i think everyone’s pretty flexible and we’ll probably take it a project at a time.

motion city isn’t doing much touring this year, so this would be a great alternative. it’s almost more fulfilling, cause a lot of times, i’m playing drums, or writing parts, etc. it’s definitely more than just tuning. heh. anyway, aside from the next month or two (including subbing for a recovering-from-arm-breaking tony), there won’t be much work coming my way from them. i wish i could be involved in the recording, but there’s not much i can offer that someone in l.a. can’t do better. and, sadly, “studio friend” isn’t a paid position. hah.

in other news, i’m bummed that google latitude isn’t taking off, so i’ve gone back to loopt. similarly, i’m bummed that there’s been no cupcake for g1, and that iphone 3.0 is looking to trounce the g1, in the near future. what gives, google?! you’re letting me down!

for example, in the past, i could always find something to do, on my computer. internet for hours, then maybe do some pro tools, or maybe some online gaming, or even solitaire. heh. but, more recently, after internetting, i get bored. and i get “the bug”, where i want to install linux or give osx a try. but, i always talk myself out of it, because whenever i’ve done these things in the past, i always revert back to my regular setup.

with music, i enjoy being a drum tech, and playing in gloria. but, there’s something else lacking. and i’ve come to the conclusion that i only feel fulfilled when i’m helping to write/arrange music. i haven’t really helped to write a song, since doing writing/recording somerset demos in 2005/2006. doing my lady four with jordan was the closest that i got.

my current living situation is certainly helping me pay off my medical bills, but it’s likewise unfulfilling. i miss my apartment. i miss downtown. and, so, even though i haven’t fully completed my goal of paying off my bills and saving up, i feel like i have to figure out a way to live downtown again. and soon.

my brother is trying to get back into voice over/on camera stuff. i really hope things go well for him. i’m genuinely excited about it, and hope that i can help him get some good opportunities. meanwhile, i’ve also felt like, “hey, i can do this!” heh.

i don’t know if that’s a result of a surplus of ambition, or if i’m just bored and/or dreaming. but, i feel like, at this moment in my life, i am willing and able to do almost anything. i just can’t be in a stagnant situation. i know that i’m better than that and that i deserve more.

i’m turning 27 very soon. yikesss.

redmond has let me down.

if you’re a nerd like me, you understand what it is to get bitten by some kind of tech bug. it could be “i want to install linux for no reason”, or “i want to wipe my drive and re-install for no reason”. you never know! well, yesterday, i felt compelled to do a fresh install (and downgrade) to windows xp.

why xp? no good reason, really. except that i was beginning to feel my somewhat new install of vista getting a little sluggish to startup. i guess this got me thinking about how fast xp would be on this machine. after all, i upgraded to 2 gigs of ram and a faster/bigger hard drive, long after making the change to vista.

the first hitch in my plans for a flawless tech victory was the copy of xp that i used. now, i’ll be the first to admit that ever since losing my original dell operating system disc, i’ve been using a “special edition” copy, if ya know what i mean. that particular copy has worked time and time again. however, yesterday, i did not have that copy, cause carla borrowed it to fix her dad’s computer.

instead of waiting, like any reasonable human might do, i decided, “well, crap, i’ve got this mysterious cd that says ‘winxp’ that i don’t remember making. i’ll just use that!”

it wasn’t as horrible as it sounds. haha. but, it was bad. in hindsight, i think this was a slipstreamed version that i made a looong time ago. there were no services, no themes, no eye candy, nothing. and, at first, i rejoiced! i was at a usable desktop in roughly 20 seconds! but, then, came the problems.

my pro tools mbox didn’t work. i had to tweak my services to get the damn wireless from continously showing “aquiring ip address.” and, the best/worst, it wouldn’t recognize my generic usb hub! wtf? did we regress to windows me, or something? it was usb hell, i tell ya!

it was at that point that i decided, “well, crap. as long as i’m having to re-install my os, why not try that fancy new windows 7 that even leesha didn’t have huge issues with?”

so, i headed over to the microsoft site, where i was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to download a fully legit version of their newest and best operating system.

long story short, windows 7 was a nightmare on my machine. at every instance, it failed to properly shut down/log off/restart. magicdisc (virtual drive) didn’t work, so i wasn’t able to install rosetta stone. my external drives would sometimes show up and show their contents, and other times just freeze windows explorer. even my system drive would mysteriously disappear from windows explorer.

i’m sure with enough work, i could’ve figured out how to get everything to work, but for me, it wasn’t worth the time. i immediately uninstalled that and went back to vista. right where i started. haha.

other thoughts on windows 7:

• you CAN get classic mode. just go to your system properties, advanced tab, performance, and select the “adjust for best performance” option. this was one of the first things i did, because the default visual settings are hideous.
• the dock is atrocious and needlessly complicated.
• the default “action center” is distracting (you can disable it, fortunately).
• it wasn’t as fast as people claim.
• the loading page was so fucking amature. like, spinning orbs in glorious 256 colors. and like 5 fps, tops. i felt like i was about to play return to zork.

i’ll tell you what, though. i’ve really come to appreciate vista, especially with sp1. it only took a few hours to install and update, and that’s not meant to sound sarcastic. it hasn’t crashed once. all of my software/hardware is working (except for my webcam, for some reason). which goes to show: you don’t know what you have, until you’ve lost it! haha.

oh yeah, i finally started my blogroll. it’s not much now, but they are quality people that you should definitely know.

in more laptop news, the fan is definitely fine. it starts and stops (at both speeds) without a problem, even without i8kfangui. however, everything changes when i run on battery. for some reason, running on batteries causes the fan to never kick on, and the cpu overheats and shuts down. wtf?

and, in other news, i’m really excited about the stuff me and jordan came up with a while back for my lady four. i think the end product is gonna be really good, and i’m glad to hear that the band is stoked on it. as soon as i get something, i’ll throw up some samples.

anyway, it looks like i jinxed it, because just today, the fan decided to crap out. it went out with a beautiful plume of dust, too. my first thought was that it was smoke, which really made me panic. i immediately hit the power button and sat and pondered it for a while.

i came to the conclusion that the fan was spinning and then abruptly stopped, and the stopping made the dust kick out, much like you would fly out of a car’s windshield, if you weren’t wearing your seatbelt and your car abruptly met a brick wall.

i guess the part that is bugging me the most is that i paid an extra $200 for a year of accident protection (spills, drops, etc.), thinking that it would be good for a guy like me, who is on tour a lot. well, of course, a year went by, and nothing bad happened. it came time to renew my warranty and i thought “you know, i’ve gone this long without any problems, i think i’ll be alright.”

i should’ve just held onto that $200. because, guess what? to get my laptop fixed out of warranty by dell is gonna be $159+. awesome.

on a side note, carla’s hp is also sick. it was randomly turning off. and, just yesterday, it crapped out completely. what are the odds of that? hah.

update: i downloaded i8kfangui and set it the fan to high, manually. it worked just fine. wtf? so, i’m using this program’s automatic fan settings, and we’ll see how things go from here on out. maybe my fan was just dirty and needed to cough up all that dirt? heh.

• the ability for the compass to orient the map, so that you’re viewing it as it is in real life. this is possible with the andnav application, already. why can’t the native app do it?
• the ability to move your current location. when in gps mode, this is irrelevant. but, i’m looking at the 90% of the time, when i don’t want to waste battery, and so i have gps disabled. with gps disabled, my location on the map is usually in the right ballpark, but can sometimes be far off enough to give you inaccurate search results.
• public transit! specifically, here is a very common scenario, and how i’d like it to play out:
  • open up the maps app and find my location
  • click on directions and enter my destination address
  • click on find route
  • now, i should be presented with options: car, walking, or bus
  • i should be able to click bus and have it give me both a map overview and detailed walking and bus schedule information
  • in addition, i should be able to click on the bus stop/station icon on the map and have it pull up schedules for all buses/trains serving that stop. these schedules will also include real-time data that nextrip currently offers.
  • once i’m in transit, the app should pull real-time data for my connecting buses and warn me if i won’t make my connection. it should, then, re-calculate your route and perhaps suggest an alternate route, if there is one.
  • on top of all of that, there should be some way to easily view a system map overlay, which includes scheduled departures and such. in other words, digitized version of the pdf’s that metro transit already offers.

so, that’s it. easy, right? haha.

i wish i knew even a tiny bit of programming, so that i could make these things happen. i’m so jealous of people that know enough to just say “i need xyz feature to work on this” and then just do it. that’s one of the reasons why i was so excited for an open source platform. cause, even though i won’t be (and probably never will be) the one to plug a hole or add a feature, i know that there’s others out there with the talent and time to do it. and for that, i’m thankful.

true, i could use the generic rss feed, but with my minimalist feed layout (one just infers what the action was, based on the icon: see a digg icon? means i dugg something. see picasa? means i added a photo), i needed more than just an rss icon to tell people that i was actually enjoying qualities movies from netflix. haha. the lifestream plugin was updated and i can’t figure out how to get just icons. boooo.

the most i have ever dabbled in php is doing simple things, like installing wordpress, where all you’re doing is replacing REPLACE-ME-WITH-YOUR-INFO type placeholders with my info. and even though there was information on how to extend lifestream, which is probably super simple to follow for your average php programmer, i was definitely in the deep end of the pool, with my little html floaties.

after lots of trial and error (and sad, broken web site), here’s the code that finally worked, which i added to feeds.inc.php (located in plugins/lifestream):

update: there’s been a few changes to the plugin. here is the new way to implement the netflix feed. you need to make a lifestream/local_feeds.inc.php file and paste this into it:

you will also have to add the following to lifestream/inc/labels.php:

i used sectorprime‘s neat fav2png image converter, which i used to save the netflix favicon (renamed to netflix.png!) in my lifestream/images folder.

the end result is certainly making this php n00b feel like he’s on top of a mountain! haha.

enjoy!