I received a very nice gift yesterday. A box containing seven Raspberry Pis! As a "bonus", I also got seven 8 GB SD cards to boot from.
The main reason I wanted those is because I want a "brain" for my model railway modules. This is especially important for more sophisticated pieces, such as large stations or modules with lots of interactive accessories. It is also important for instances that require a display, such as a controller.
I am really happy! But I'm also thinking: should I find some temporary use for these until I build some model railway modules that need them? Maybe I could assemble a solar-powered shitcoin cluster? Just kidding, but I would really like to try a cluster solution with these, so I'm open to ideas.
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Today I was much more succesful with installing software to phone. Todays phone is Galaxy Trend 2 lite. The lowend device from 2015.
Even though it is a low-end device, it runs very smoothly and the UI does not lag. It is also capable of running relatively fancy 3D games for its age.
It runs on Android 4.4 and is powered by a Spreadtrum SC8830 system-on-chip with a 32-bit, 1.2 GHz processor and an ARM Mali-400 MP GPU. It has 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage, of which around 3 GB is available to the user.
As I mentioned, I was very successful installing games today and managed to fit around 30. There are some really nice ones, such as Sprinkle and Sprinkle Islands, as well as some really funny attempts at making games, such as Traktor Digger and Gravity Drop. I will try them all and make sure they work. I will possibly spend some time on the Sprinkle series, which is a really nice puzzle platformer game.
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I have to admit that I was wrong today. I always thought that sideloading was possible on any Android device. And I failed to install any apps on this phone.
The phone comes with Android 2.1. It partially seems to be some kind of CFW, as the kernel name is a bit weird and there is an app for adjusting root access after a factory reset.
But let's go back to sideloading. Since the phone has very little internal memory available (around 150 MB), I first tried installing apps via ADB. I enabled USB debugging and tried to connect the phone to the PC. Unfortunately, there is no ADB device connected and the phone does not connect as any kind of storage either.
I tried many times to get it working, but I didn't succeed at all. So this method is impossible for me, at least for now.
The second approach was simply to put the .apk files on a microSD card, plug it into the phone and install the apps from there. I failed again. When I opened the file browser on the phone, I was unable to install any .apk files ...
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After a few years, I decided to redesign my webpage HryProDva.cz, as it was really necessary.
The old design was inspired by an HTML template from the 2010s. I really liked it at first, but it was already outdated by the time my page launched.
So I tried some layouts by creating a stylesheet with chatbots, choosing some colour schemes and approaches to the redesign, and then started coding. The goal was to make it cleaner and fresher and to get rid of the grey square elements, which were not very attractive.
After about two weeks of coding and fixing all the misaligned items, I created a working page that I was really happy with. I ran a few rounds of testing on all the subpages and made a few more fixes until I could not identify any significant issues. Then I released it.
Yes, I agree that some things are designed more for appearance than accessibility, but there are also things that are more accessible now. As usual, though, the design changes have attracted a lot of negative comments. People don't really like change, so the core players are complaining a lot. Some of the complaints are fair and I ...
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My rule for buying phones was never to spend more than 4,000 CZK. After adjusting for inflation, I have increased this to 5,000 CZK. I also recently bought another Redmi Note 9 PRO to replace my broken main phone. I did not plan to buy a phone. However, I saw a very nice phone with a hardware keyboard, which I have always wanted. But it costs 9k CZK, which I never wanted to pay for a phone. However, my wife decided to buy me a present, so I now have it.
It's really nice, too. I really enjoy writing on the hardware keyboard, as I'm not able to write quickly or precisely on a touchscreen.
But let's start from the beginning. Firstly, I decided to order a screen protector to protect the screen. Then I had a conversation with a friend who had bought the same phone and they told me that it comes with protective glass already applied to both screens and an extra piece of protective glass in the package. So I cancelled my order. When the phone arrived, I realised that there was just a protective foil ...
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Some time ago, I received a Canon FS11 camera from my friend Tom. The "smart" battery is completely dead. After a few attempts, I realised that the battery was completely beyond repair.
So I filed it away as a future project. And now that future has arrived. After measuring everything inside the battery, I realised that the electronics were completely dead. That was why it didn't work even after I replaced both LiPol batteries inside. After a lot of tinkering and trying to fix the electronics, I made a radical decision. I tried connecting the LiPols directly to the output pins and 'asking' the camera if it would accept them. Surprisingly, everything worked well, even with the bypassed electronics! I will use it for a while, and then I will have to try charging the battery. If charging works well too, I'll have won! I'm not really planning to buy a spare, non-original battery for 700 CZK.
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I got a really nice toy — an Odroid Go Super — and it was free! The only condition was that I had to arrive at the railway station at the exact time and collect it from the previous owner through the door of the arriving train.
It was tricky, but it was worth it. It's a really nice retro gaming handheld and the successor to the Odroid Go Advance that I already have. It has very similar internal hardware, such as the CPU, but a much better body that suits the hand better, and most importantly, it has a really beautiful screen. The only disadvantage compared to the previous model is the lack of out-of-box WiFi connectivity. Unfortunately, the previous owner resolved this issue by plugging a tiny Wi-Fi dongle into the USB-A port on the top of the handheld.
As you can see from the screenshots, it can run a variety of interesting games. I am looking forward to playing some PS1 titles, such as Star Wars: Dark Forces 2 and Carmageddon, as well as many other great games on the NES, SNES and Megadrive.
I ...
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Over the last few weeks, we have read tens or even hundreds of articles about the rising prices of PC components, especially RAM. There have also been many disastrous articles about the notebook and mobile phone markets.
One of these articles really caught my attention. It said that the standard for mid-range notebooks would drop to 8 GB, and that even worse, most phones would fall back to 4 GB of RAM.
That makes me laugh. I think that for most notebook users, 8 GB is more than enough for their basic needs, such as reading emails, articles, watching YouTube videos, and scrolling through social networks.
The situation with phones is even funnier. Is it really necessary to have more than 4 GB of RAM? What would you have to do on your phone to need more than that? I have also experienced laggy phones, but it was probably a software issue, as they were sluggish even with outstanding parameters. I still use phones with 3 GB of RAM, though, and they're still really smooth and can run anything I want without any problems.
So why would I need more than 4 GB? Is it really necessary?
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I have finally revived the last of the three N500s. The battery was completely dead and I didn't want to spend money on a spare one as I have two other working N500s.
I finally found a used LiPol battery that fits into the body. I disassembled the original battery and took the control board with the connector out. I soldered the new LiPol battery and tried it. The thermistor is possibly on the board as there is a pin on the board that needs to be soldered. I did not need to connect any resistors and the phone boots and works without any problems.
So now I have three of the same device working. The last one just needs to be jailbroken. Then I would like to run some tests and compare these "same" phones. Even at first glance, the systems look completely different, so I am wondering what I will find on them.
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This is one of the few devices that I knew I really needed to have as soon as I saw it. At first glance, it looks just like a boring Chinese tablet. But when you take a closer look, you'll see that it's really interesting.
To be honest, the Chuwi Hi8 is not that interesting as it is. But my model is the Chuwi Hi8 Dual, which means it has dual booting. It's not just simple dual booting, but has some nice tweaks that make it different.
So, when you don't know what to expect, the first thing that surprises you is that you power up the device and, even though it has a Windows 'hardware' touch button at the bottom, it boots into Android. It seems a bit funny, but yeah. Why not? The Android version is 4.4. It looks quite normal; just a few Chinese-named apps that I have removed.
The most interesting part is the top icon bar on Android. As well as the classic buttons and switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other adjustments, there is a special button labelled 'OS SWITCH'.
Yes, I know this function isn't really anything special — it just reboots with ...
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