I really like my phone. It is an oldie for today's average (Samsung Galaxy 1) however it just fills most of my needs such as email reading, note taking, web browsing and sporadic picture snapshots.
However, I was feeling a bit down because of the aging user interface. While playing on the stores with the newer Ice Cream Sandwich version from Android, I was really hoping that something could be applied to my current phone without need of buying a new device.
The answer to my hopes came from the GO launcher. It is a freeware product much in the magical taste of WindowBlinds with the difference that this one is completely free to use.
With this go launcher I was able to completely overhaul the user interface to my liking. I tried a few themes and eventually stick to the ICS look & feel that one finds across the google marketplace.
The top status bar is kept hidden most of time now, I removed text labels of the icons, added a bigger grid to lodge more icons per page and removed the static icon bar from view.
Now it looks like a fresh and renovated machine without losing any data nor needing to spend money on a new device. One other option would be flashing the ROM of my device, however I'd really hate losing all my stored data and risk wrecking the phone.
I am happy. Could finally customize and place the most often used icons on the front page.
The page with the all applications is now sorted alphabetically, an improvement when considering that the stock option left huge gaps when an app was uninstalled and used no sorting whatsoever so it was mess. Now I can even remove apps straight from the all apps view, much alike the newer ICS.
If you have an Android phone, go ahead and try it out.
Not only this runs well on my Samsung S1 as I have also tried this on a tablet running a very old/slow/limited version of Android and still performs quite well without noticeable battery drain or slowness.
And if you don't like it, just uninstall and carry on but at least you tried it.
Have fun!
Git: Why so complicated?
Recently I've been juggling through a lot of projects that nest between themselves and I'm finding myself in troubles with the management of diverse SVN repositories.
Sometimes they simply get broken while developing and this is really unpleasant. So, I've started looking for alternatives.
I quickly got interested in trying out Git. The wonder versioning tool that is so popular across domains like github and many others. I read pages explaining that the days of SVN were over and a better day came along.
From what I could read, it was indeed wonderful. All the config is placed inside a single folder instead of having to deal with nasty .svn folders all over the place (yes, I know how to "export" but still the pesky .svn get in the way while developing, notoriously when browsing the file system from your program).
Yes, all seem wonderful from what I read on the official wiki page.
However, the nuisance is installing the darn thing.
It seems to have been made with the intention of cursing Windows users since it does not use a authentication system based on user/password but rather a system based on allowed SSH users.
All this is nice and dandy to solve. Just generate an ssh key with putty-gen under Windows and then place that key on a fresh assembla.com repository. You will soon discover that you are unable to login for some odd reason and then be left onto to wrestle with an infinity of problems.
I hated it.
If I can't put it to work in 10 minutes then I am quite sure that it would give serious headaches explaining other co-developers how to set up and keep Git running. Worse even would be explaining them the concept of "push", "pull" and "clone".
Sincerely, I just want a versioning system where I don't need to dedicate so much attention. Farewell Git, I don't like SVN that much but at least it works flawlessly out of the box with Netbeans and that is what I need right now.
Sometimes they simply get broken while developing and this is really unpleasant. So, I've started looking for alternatives.
I quickly got interested in trying out Git. The wonder versioning tool that is so popular across domains like github and many others. I read pages explaining that the days of SVN were over and a better day came along.
From what I could read, it was indeed wonderful. All the config is placed inside a single folder instead of having to deal with nasty .svn folders all over the place (yes, I know how to "export" but still the pesky .svn get in the way while developing, notoriously when browsing the file system from your program).
Yes, all seem wonderful from what I read on the official wiki page.
However, the nuisance is installing the darn thing.
It seems to have been made with the intention of cursing Windows users since it does not use a authentication system based on user/password but rather a system based on allowed SSH users.
All this is nice and dandy to solve. Just generate an ssh key with putty-gen under Windows and then place that key on a fresh assembla.com repository. You will soon discover that you are unable to login for some odd reason and then be left onto to wrestle with an infinity of problems.
I hated it.
If I can't put it to work in 10 minutes then I am quite sure that it would give serious headaches explaining other co-developers how to set up and keep Git running. Worse even would be explaining them the concept of "push", "pull" and "clone".
Sincerely, I just want a versioning system where I don't need to dedicate so much attention. Farewell Git, I don't like SVN that much but at least it works flawlessly out of the box with Netbeans and that is what I need right now.
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