April 19th - The Right Eye Operation

Susan was kind enough to drive me to Drammen for this event, which took much longer than I expected, and sounded more like a trip to the dentist!

First there was a tablet to be taken, then a series of 5 or 6 drops, a 15 minute wait, then more drops, and finally I was positioned horizontally on the operating chair, and things began.

My eye doctor was supporting a younger guy, who may or may not have been doing his first op., encouraging him in a very positive way at every step in the process. When it was all over I was amazed when Susan told me it had taken 2 hours!

We paid NOK 300,- or so and picked up 4 boxes of Tobrasone to be dripped 5 times a day.  AND we should come back tomorrow for a check..

The next morning I was able to take off the plastic shield, and see white again for the first time in years :) And colours are quite fantastic... the checkup by a women specialist went very well, and I was impressed by my ability to make out small letters on the optical test cards.

As far as I'm concerned these doctors carry out miracles!

The left eye is to be operated on the 23rd May. After that my vision should begin to be excellent again.

Right now I can read what I'm writing quite clearly, but if I focus on individual letters directly there is a tiny visual disturbance. However, if I focus slightly above what I'm looking at, its clearly visible. Hopefully that will go away, or both eyes together will mask the disturbance..

Nexus 10 no longer rebooting

Just a quickie to report that the N10 has not rebooted since I decided to  Restore Stock Backup taken by the Franco Kernel Updater. This got me back to the original kernel, but About info didn't look right to me so I ended up using the Nexus 10 Toolkit to restore Stock JDQ39. This showed the same build info (i.e. the repeat was unnecessary) but it restored pretty well everything from the Google auto backup, since which I've kept an eye on surfaceflinger, and had no reboots.

Must say I'm surprised, and am left wondering whether my reboots were mostly a Franco problem or not. Once again, one cannot keep too many notes about what one actually does when faultfinding. Memory fades invariably, and I'm afraid my notes were not good enough to know when the Reboots began, on Stock, pre-Root, pre-Franco, or what :(

The Nexus Reboot Fiasco Continues

My previous post was about Nexus 10 reboots, but I should mention that the Nexus 7 is prone to these  too. My latest experience of this happened when I pulled the recharge cable from my N7.. happily the N7 is far more stable than the N10, though they have been virtually identical from a software point of view. Both were running the Franco until a couple of days ago when I restored them to the #1 backup taken with the Franco Updater, so both are basically 'Stock 4.2.2 + Root'

The following is a post I made in the Phandroid forums:

Nexus 10 Reboot in Safe Mode

---

I've been following as many threads as possible about Nexus 10 reboots, and an odd thing just occurred.. I came across Safe Mode earlier today, and was surfing around on the N10 (in Safe Mode) looking for SM threads.

I came across a thread on the Nexus7Nexus10 forum at Safe mode and blow me down, when I should scroll down the page my N10 froze and rebooted!

LOL

The only odd thing about the page is some flashing forum indicator which you may see for yourselves.

I am rooted on JB 4.2.2

Mvh
cintra

Really must update my signature to include GS2, SG Nexus, Nexus 7 & 10

__________________

iMacs, GS2, SG Nexus, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, & Win8

It was a laughable coincidence really, as I wasn't aware of Safe Mode until that morning. For those who are equally ignorant, it boots up with just the Google apps present. I had done a search and found  the URL hidden behind 'Safe Mode' in the post above, and as soon as I arrived on the thread and went to scroll down the page, it froze and then rebooted! Unbelievable... :)

From the lack of reboot reports while in Safe Mode I would believe this fact to be of interest to Google, particularly if it occurs again.

Nexus 10 Reboots

Many people on XDA have been experiencing odd problems with the Nexus 10, such as reboots and freezes. I have been suffering with the former only, and faultfinding a problem which occurs randomly 2 or 3 times a day is known to be difficult.

I started 3 days ago by stopping all kinds of syncing, and slowing down monitor events quite a bit. Since then I have seen no reboots :) Of course, as soon as I post this, one is likely to occur, but I was getting them fairly regularly..

Today I felt it was time for the next stage. Which of the sync events was most likely to cause trouble? Well those which happen most frequently are Google+ and GMail, so they could be a good place to start. First though I had to find where on earth auto sync is enabled. This turned out to be hidden in Data usage, click on the 3 dots and there it is :)

So, my first step was to enable auto sync and thats all for now. I have not enabled sync on any of the apps, though I believe Jottacloud has been doing its thing all along. That will do for a few hours before enabling sync on GMail and G+.

What about the ROMs matey?

ROMs I am taking my time with. Now that I have all of my Android devices happily functioning on Jelly Bean 4.2.2 stock ROM  (the GS2 is on a Samsung version), I'm hesitant to go the whole hog as they say in Wiltshire, and turn one of them into a 'brick'.

So, I went part way, attracted by the words better battery performance, the Franco-kernel Updater was next on my list. I had read nothing but good about this kernel, and the updater app made light weight of the job. It was/is well worth the NOK 30 or so it cost, divided by the three Nexus devices I have it running on.

Where battery performance is concerned, take a look at last night's..

Couldn't wish for better results than that, with wi-fi on too!

Replacing the T91MT with a Samsung

My experience rooting the GS2 on the tiny T91MT started a growing itch in the back of my mind.. how much easier it would be if I had a 15" PC. Its very difficult not to scratch at itches of this type, so for days I perused Prisguide.no, and the various ads which fell in my postbox from previous suppliers, until I settled on a Samsung  NP900X4C-A03SE, at a touch under NOK 10K. Gulp! Windows 8 too (Microsoft is not my favourite company, but neither is Apple for the time being). Komplett.no did an excellent job of getting it to me fast, before the Easter holidays, so I had something to do while everyone holidays in the mountains ;)

Thank heavens for search machines! I would have said 'for Google' but they are in my bad books for dropping Google Reader :( Windows 8 was utterly confusing at first. Swiping is not my favourite navigation method, and the Metro/Modern UI is built on this.

I fast found out that:

1.  Keyboard shortcuts are essential
2. ModernMix app from Stardock helps
3. Desktops, a tiny app from Mark Russinovich & Bryce Cogswell gives me three more virtual Desktops.

These helped curb my rage, so now I quite like the black metal panel PC.

On with the story..

I expected the Samsung to come with some 'crapware', but it turned out to not be an unreasonable amount. Norton Security stuff was the most difficult to remove, but when it had gone Windows Defender could be taken into use. I later added Malwarebytes anti-virus too. There was another package too, but it rings no bells with me now but for the word 'cyber' in its name..?

As one should do when a new machine is in a useable state, I installed Macrium Reflect, and made a clone of the 128GB SSD drive to a new 1TB WD USB 3.0 external drive. Bit of a waste of space, but it might come in useful later.

Other 'must have' apps installed were Dropbox, Evernote, Airfoil, VNC, and of course Odin, Kies, Wugfresh, and some other ROM flashing apps, plus WinRar & WinPatrol from my old days ;)

Nuff about PCs!

Rooting the Galaxy S2, the odd man out

As the Nexus Rooting euphoria gradually faded away, I was left with my unrooted Samsung GS2. Looking for a way to Root this wonderful device required much Googling, and reading of XDA threads, as I searched for a Mac way to carry out this task. This proved to go unrewarded..

So often willing helpers would point to the simple PC way of carrying this out. "Use Wugfresh", "Get Odin", "Install Kies", etc., so, in the end I thought OK I'll give it a go, not knowing what frustrations this would stimulate!

At the time I had a tiny ASUS T91MT, which invariably started with an hour or so of Microsoft updates, before one could begin the slow process of installing Kies, a large package needed just for the drivers Odin requires. (Why can't someone simplify things and put up a link to the drivers?).

Anyway, all my thanks go to Jose Farrugia aka @wiredmash who offered the clearest instructions on Rooting the GS2, using the Siyah kernel, see the video and point by point instructions at http://www.wiredmash.com/how-to-root-samsung-galaxy-s2-i9100-jelly-bean-4-1-2/ ... :)

All went well with the above, but for one hitch. The Odin UI more than filled the vertical dimensions of the tiny T91MT, so I was unable to get at the Start button! I tried everything, including a lot of very bad language, until the solution came to mind - change the screen resolution! That gave me a 5x3 inch UI with a tiny Start button I could press, and a minute or so later all was done. Dead simple as the XDA guys said..