New Phone!

For the past two years I've been using the Samsung Captivate, which is a variant of the Galaxy S, as my phone.  It's an Android phone and has served me well.  However, when I originally bought it I didn't realize how much I would love it.  It was really the only Android phone available on AT&T at the time and since I knew I didn't want an iPhone, it's what I got.  Let me just say I got very lucky.  As I've recently learned, the Captivate was used as a model for the Nexus S phone by Samsung and since the Nexus line always receives updates straight from Google, it was fairly easy for developers to port the newest Android versions to the Captivate as well.  This leads me to why I love the phone.  The software that it came with was pretty crappy.  Samsung was not considered the nicest manufacturer at the time, and was trying to throw out tons of phones in attempt to battle the iPhone.  As such, my phone wasn't slated for many software updates and the skinned version of Android wasn't it top shape.  Because of the many crashes I had to endure over the life of my warranty, I decided to root it once it expired.

Using Heimdall and the CyanogenMod website as a guide, I managed to successfully root it and install CyanogenMod 7.0.  It was an amazing change of pace to say the least.  New options were suddenly open to me.  Instead of software created by a huge corporation with little concern for providing all the bells and whistles, I was suddenly using an amazing culmination of the thoughts, ideas, and innovations coded by the developers over at XDA.  Features that I didn't even realize I wanted were suddenly open to me.  It felt like an entirely new phone.  And for someone like myself who always wants to stay on the cutting edge, the amount of ongoing development was wonderful.  I could easily reflash new ROMs on my phone and stay up to date with the newest versions of Android.  Over the past year I've kept my phone merely weeks behind the latest version of Android, something manufactures can't claim to have accomplished.  In fact, via XDA my Captivate is currently running Android 4.2.1, Jelly Bean, which is actually an upgrade ahead of my new phone.

Deciding on a replacement for the second most valuable piece of tech in my life (the first being my laptop of course) proved exceedingly difficult.  The Android market has changed drastically in the past two years and as such there are a huge number of options available, and while I try to keep up with the latest and greatest in mobile technology, I still had no clue what I wanted.  After some thought on the phones available on my new carrier, Verizon, I narrowed my options down the Samsung Galaxy SIII and recently released HTC Droid DNA.

The SIII was an amazing piece of hardware, with a huge following and massive developer community.  It also was, and still is, the most successful Android device.  The main drawback, however, was the fact that the phone was around 8 months old, which is an eternity in mobile years.  With a dual core processor, it had a hard time competing with newer devices, at least as far as benchmarks are concerned.

The DNA, on the other hand, was barely a month old and had a quad core processor and 1080p display.  The only thing that had me worried about this phone was the lack of developer support.  Compared to Samsung, HTC is a rather small company and hasn't been able to achieve the same success as the Galaxy series of phones.  It can't afford to push a flagship phone to all the carriers or advertise as heavily as Samsung has done for the SIII.  As such, the DNA is only available for Verizon, a rather disliked corporation as far as XDA is concerned, and has garnered comparatively little attention when considered with the SIII.  So while I realized the DNA had everything I wanted in terms of hardware and specs, I knew it wouldn't be able to match the amazing amount of development I had become accustomed to on my Captivate.

After much deliberating I finally went with the DNA due to the hardware specs and build quality.  I decided that while the development may not be as good, it might encourage me to do some developing on my own.  And even if I never do get around to it, Android has become very stable in the past few years and as such I won't need to deal with the same amount of crashing and problems the original software for my Captivate provided so at the very least I'll have a working phone.  It's been about a week since I got the DNA now and I'm definitely not regretting the decision.  It's an amazing phone, feels fantastic, and is a pleasure to use and I look forward to tinkering with it for the next 22 months!

Exciting Stuff on the Horizon

Well, I'm late for my second post of the year, so that certainly bodes well for the future.  Anyways, I just wanted to mention that I'm really excited for some of the projects I have on the horizon, specifically the Iron Man/Awesome helmet I want to build.  I got the Wild Planet Spy Car in the mail a few days ago and it's awesome!  The video is black and white, and a little distorted, but I assume the fuzziness is mostly a result of the wireless connection or the camera and not the display itself.  I also ordered a Mind Flex game for $10 which is a steal!

For those of you who aren't familiar with Mindflex, it's a headset with a built in EEG sensor that can determine brain waves.  It can differentiate between several frequencies that represent how relaxed or focused you are.  I was thinking I could somehow couple this with the video headset to form an augmented reality helmet of some sort.  Anyways I'm excited about it and look forward to playing with it at the very least.  I'll post more when I get it and when I hack the video headset!

New Years Resolutions

Between school and work I've had a hard time sitting down and getting stuff down for myself.  That's why, this year, I've set several New Years Resolutions that pertain to bettering myself and focusing on things that are important to me.  The resolutions I have planned are as follows:

• Run 100 miles
• Read 24 Books
• Finish 12 Projects
• Blog once a week

I used to run a lot in high school, and during my sophomore year actually got my mile time down below six minutes.  Since during the school year I don't have enough time and will power to wake up early and run every day to form a habit, I've decided to focus on establishing a regular running schedule and work on getting my mile time back down.

Last year I set a goal for myself to read twelve books over the course of the year and managed to do just that plus some, so this year I wanted to up the ante and double the books I wanted to read.  I've already finished the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (phenomenal book btw) and plan on reading some other recommended sci fi books (e.g. vN by Madeline Ashby, Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card, etc.) as well as some classics like Lord of the Flies and 1984.

Since my mind is very disorganized, I tend to get obsessed with one project, work on it for a while, and then get distracted by something else and completely forget about it for a few months.  I'd like to work on changing that by setting a goal to finish twelve projects this year, hopefully one a month.  I've already thought up some ideas on what I'd like to finish including:

• Some sort of Augmented Reality Game - I've been interested in game design for a while, and I think the augmented reality possibilities provided by smartphones really gives a lot of potential for cool games.
• Augmented Reality Glasses - I've recently ordered a Wild Planet Spy Car.  The great thing about this toy is its hackability.  The wire leading to the video headset actually uses the component standard which conveniently, can be outputted by the Raspberry Pi.  I plan on using a combination of these two to form a fancy augmented reality system akin to Google Glass.  I'm not sure what specifically I'd like to do, maybe a face tracking HUD or some sort of targeting system, but I'm pretty excited.
• Iron Man Suit - So I think Iron Man is awesome, and at some point I'd like to create an Iron Man suit replica, possibly integrating the HUD I mentioned above.

Lastly is I'd like to blog more often, so I'd like to set Monday as my official blogging day and set aside a few hours every week to type out and submit a blog post.  I'd especially like to include lots of details on my projects so I'll work hard to do just that.