EVOlving

Growing up I've seemed to have a unique view on technology. When I was younger I always liked to take-apart different thing old phones, small appliances that didn't work anymore and some that did. Most time with the avail of not being able to get it back to the state it was previously. Fast forward 20+ years and that curiosity still looms. Grant it I'm not tearing apart items for the fun of regularly, but it's shifted. Taking a step back I've noticed that my desire to modify or tweak has move to more complex or expensive ventures.

For those who noticed the reference in the title EVO refers to the smartphone moniker from HTC. Overtime I've became more curious about how smartphones have evolved. Funny enough my first "smartphone" I had was a Palm Treo W800 running Windows Mobile 6.1. The ability to have email, word processing along with the ability to play games on a touch screen was great to have on a phone. Considering all that phone went through it lasted great until it quit charging.

After my Palm died I began my "decent", as most iPhone users would say, into the world of Android. The first Android powered phone I bought was infamously know as the HTC Hero on Sprint. For those who have used that phone or still use it know it reaches it limits rather quickly. My favorite feature on the phone was easily the scroll wheel on the bottom of the phone which made navigating the small screen easy. Also the ability to display widgets on to the home screens was nifty (Sense flip clock w/ weather). During the time I had that phone, I put it through it's paces and it worked well until I decided to start dabbling with a program call "Torque". For a while the phone was able to keep up with the program, but my obsessive dabbling on pulling information from the automobile quickly revealed the HTC Hero's weakness.

About a year into the 2-year contract I bought a HTC EVO 4G (E4G) off contract. To this day this was my favorite smartphone. The E4G was fast, sleek, and had a kickstand. After 6 months of using my E4G as a stock phone I nerved up and decided to throw the warranty to the wind and root the sucker. I don't regret it one bit, once I got a custom rom and kernel on the device I had it overclocked, stable and flying. The phone didn't have any issues running Torque or even running as dash cam in the car. Looking back I should have probably invested in a case for it because little over a year into having the E4G I dropped it on some concrete and turned the screen into a very impressive spiderweb.

When I had my E4G I purchased two tablets to use when I was out and about or at home. My first tablet was none other than the Samsung Galaxy Tab (SGT) from Sprint that I bought online as a refurbished off contract device that I never activated. This device I rooted a week after I bought so I could OC and run some Super User apps. It took me a while to install a custom rom on the device because the modding community for the SGT wasn't very established for the CDMA Sprint version.

After a few months I bought a Motorola Xoom, again a refurbished one. This one took a little while for me to get around and root because it had a good warranty on the device. After I got past the fact that some of the updates were a bit slow at getting out and were occasionally buggy, I looked to the modding community for cleaner and smoother version of Honeycomb (3.2) and Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0). I tried a few different roms for the Wingray Xoom (WiFi only). After a while I settled on using one particular rom from Team Eos which has been my daily driver on my Xoom for 6 months now. After buying a car dock for my Xoom it is now my media hub / "Torque" display within my car since I did not have a touchscreen interface on my car. The other advantage is since my car is equipped with Sync I can easily play audio over Bluetooth.

As I mentioned earlier my E4G met a early demise complements of me dropping it on concrete. My first choice was going to be a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but since it was not on Sprint at the time of the miss hap I went with my second choice the now ignored by Sprint (cough, ICS, cough*) HTC EVO 3D (E3D). This phone lasted stock for about a month, and it was rooted through HTC's unlock method. Although gimmicky I do like the 3D capabilities. I find the ability to shot 3D photos and video a nice feature. Yes I am one of the few people that does not get sick from viewing 3D images or video. Unlike my E4G I seem to rom hop quite frequently with my E3D.  When I was on Gingerbread I use to like using Eternity from Virus, but I had numerous rebooting issues with later versions. I finally switched over to MeanRom on Gingerbread then to MeanRom ICS (based of a VM leak) and have had good luck with how the rom has been running. Holding true to my modding / tweaking personality, I've been looking around for a good replacement since MeanRom is missing a few features I really miss from Eternity. Performance wise I enjoy how snappy the E3D is because of the dual core processor and 1GB of ram on-board. I'm planning on keeping this one around until the next nexus phone comes out. Yes if you were wondering I do have a case on my E3D, (it has a kick stand built in) and it's saved it at least 3 times already. 


For those keeping count I've fallen pretty far (*for the iOS crowd still reading*). So 3 Android phone and 2 Android tablets later where does this put me? Well after seeing the unavailing of the Microsoft Surface and the "new" iPad. I'm going to be sticking around with Android. I'm looking forward to installing Jelly Bean (4.1) on my Xoom in a few weeks and when a port is available for my E3D I'll be installing it on there. The Android OS fits my personality the best. I like to dabble and tweak and even if it doesn't work sometimes it gives me more chances to learn how it works. Understand I'm not slamming the iOS community; the iPhone is a very nice device. The issue is my personality does not fit into the simplistic and minimalistic world of iOS.


Best Regards,


-Dan


Check me out on Google+. 

Mother Angelica Live Classics - Excuses

I seem to post many "Mother Angelica Live" shows on my Google+ account, but this one really seemed to stand out on YouTube. In this day and age with all the technology and push to be productive as humanly possible we find all to many ways to come with 'excuses' to cover up items or things that we find inconvenient. Whether it be inconvenient with how we want to live or if it is just away for us to cover up our laziness. Mother talks a bit on why there's no room for excuses.

Regards,

Dan

Finally figuring things out on Blogger

I finally figured out how this blogging tool is now working after it all changed up from the last time I blogged frequently. For those who only saw partial posts earlier they are now showing in their entirety including photos.
Best Regards,
Dan

Turning the power back on.

Two years ago I put this blog to rest rather abruptly based on loss of interest and lack of time. The topics I brought up were alright, but going through the old posts, a few/most of them they seemed to lack spirit. That said the old posts will remain online through this blog like they have for the past 3 years. Moving forward the direction is still somewhat in the air. The title, "The Long Winding Road" will stay the same since it moreover covers such a broad range of material. For now I'll stick with the tag that was used 2 years ago, "Mix of Life, Automobiles, Weather, and Faith. Welcome to The Long Winding Road."


Finally, since I have linked this to my Google+ account you're welcome to add me to any circles and I'll add you to one of mine. With that in mind I do post a fair amount of Catholic focused content from EWTN over on my Google +.

I look forward to having you join me on the Long Winding Road.

Regards,

Dan