My foray into 'tweaking' Android

Okay, I believe I discussed this some time back about me playing around with trying to ROOT and flash my HTC Magic.  It just never took.  Ah well.

heh...  I need me texting on the Galaxy Nexus at the end (and it's missing my Rolodex REX)

I get a little gunshy pretty easy.  And when it comes to messing with my expensive gadgets, I get worried.


I pooched a Treo700w, a Treo650, and nearly a couple other Palms when I would attempt to do some 'fun' with it.  I've jiggered with dozens of WinXP or Ubuntu ISO's for my netbooks, and nearly had a couple unrecoverable.


So when I'm trying with my latest phone, the one I've had over a year now, and contemplating getting a new one, I start getting somewhat braver.


I start to read up, and I'm no slouch -- should be pretty straight forward.  In order to flash a non-signed ROM (version of an operating system) I need a special recovery mode... so you flash that kernel, and you should be fine.  Except it wouldn't boot up.  I could boot into recovery mode, but I had no ROM to flash onto the phone.


Luckily with the help of some G+ friends (and a real chance to play with the Hangouts feature - which is awesome btw), I was able to get it back to where it was before I experiemented (nothing lost, but nothing gained either -- except a healthy dose of respect to not do things wrong).  But so close to having to make a quick choice.


Not my first foray into tweaking, but a true honest try, not a successful one however... *le sigh*.


So, I'm debating about buying the new Galaxy Nexus... I'll have a separate post about that.


Here's my geekery on what happened, play by play.


I rooted my phone with  - http://www.unlockroot.com/
very straight forward (thanks Sylvain)


Then got the Heimdall program from the Cyanogen Wiki site for the Captivate.


I downloaded the Speedmod for the recovery, and I think that it didn't like being installed and then booting into the standard Samsung ROM, which is why it just hung.


I'm debating doing it again (maybe after I have my new phone in hand).  Do it the 'standard cyanogen' way, or go all freaky and try the leaked ICS option?

My android army

Heh... my geek toys... they're growing in number!


Thanks Mandy and Charm.

Geek Status - +1 Level Up

So, I'm sure people know that I'm a geek (remember, not a nerd; nerds wear glasses).  So I've just furthered my own stereotype by volunteering to guest post for a great blog:



I decided to write for this blog a) because they asked for volunteers; b) it's a great blog about Android, but has that Canadian flavour.  I always found it interesting, albeit a bit behind on the posts (it was only one guy at the time).

So, what to see my thoughts on what I think about the state of Android in Canada?  [should this be a topic for debate?  as I'm watching the Leaders' debate]  Check out my articles by following this link [not sure how to automatically import them into here].