Looks like I've begun to really neglect this site. It really is a shame. I've really gone by the wayside with testing out the Cr-48. I've recently booted it back up and look forward to using it more now that I have more of a proper location for it. In the meantime, I just recently acquired an HTC Thunderbolt. This thing kicks all sorts of ass. Maybe ill post some shit about that or something.
I had already installed nano on my Cr-48 so I could get a text-editor working. It frankly wasn't that bad, it operated very well.
However, I wanted the editor that had I had been eluding for so very long: Vi.
So I did what most anyone (right?) would do, ask the mighty Googles if there were perhaps some instructions on how to do what I want done. Well, Google did not disappoint: Installing vi on CR-48 is a nice, real quick explanation on how to install xz and vi. Super painless, and once it was complete (if this is the first time doing the --remove_rootfs_verification a reboot will be necessary before you do any mount commands), boy it sure was nice.
Now to find me some radical quick reference pages.
I'm going to keep this short because there really isn't much to say other than it has been most excellent. I hadn't activated the data plan for the Cr-48 yet, I wanted to save it for the perfect moment - well this was it. I'm hanging out in Vermont, nice place, however I do fear that I have sustained an injury that really has been preventing me from going out there and getting on the mountain with everyone.
So what the heck was I going to do? I whip out the Cr-48 and boom, test out the 100 MB/month plan and so far I've been able to do so much (re-created my page over at http://smokinjoenews.com/sandbox which I'll end up feeding from this api), watch some youtube, browse my email and retrieve some contacts (lost my phone) from my gmail account (woot Android phones) in order to let people know a phone was forgotten here... And of course, the obligatory browsing of reddit (and I'm talkin /r/pics and /r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuu)
And of course I'm able to make this post, all using just over 55MB - this was actually quite a cool test on how much data is flying this way and that. Perhaps I'll check out how http://grooveshark.com treats this data plan. Youtube was surprisingly low, who knows what it takes to stream those songs.
Anyway, I said this was going to be short, but I have to add at least this last part: I paid for the AT&T Data Plan for my iPad 3G and was absolutely devastated with how terrible the transfers were. I never once connected to the 3G network and frankly, the E(dge) network was slower than what I was used to using my G1 (I'd use E simply because my battery was so old at this point). I always wanted to be able to be on a drive with someone in the Navigator seat, toss them my iPad and ask them to checkout where we were, see if we could take another route - it was impossible. I'd nearly have to pull over and let the map load in order to do anything with the surroundings.
AT&T,
I am disappoint.
Something I had been meaning to always do once I flipped the switch to Developer Mode was to run a Recovery/Restore of the Chrome OS as an exercise in the case that I really mess this little toy up. What is required was a thumbdrive with the OS image properly formatted. This is probably the most complex part, although it's a couple fairly straightforward steps. After consulting the Googles, I happened upon two good locations for information on what to do.
To create a Recovery Thumbdrive, one needs to follow steps associated with their current operations system. If you use a Linux Distribution or a Mac, there is information located at the Chrome OS Help page at google.com. Although there are no instructions if you are running Windows, don't fret, http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/ contains great instructions on how to create the Recovery Disk through your particular OS.
I personally did it using a Mac, there are really no hidden strings, simply follow the directions on the Chrome OS Help page. A few little tidbits of information that may help:
After a bit you'll have a fresh new install of the Chrome OS. This is a must if you plan on doing any crazy things on the Cr-48. And now to attempt to get Minecraft running on this bad larry.
I stumbled upon a great thread, which I'll just link right off the bat:
http://3d54s1.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/hello-world/
It's an amazing post regarding how to view the filesystem through a GUI. It takes a little bit of work, but I'll try to paraphrase the process for any of you that may be interested.
ln -s ~/ HOME - in this manner you can also create symlinks to your Media directory and Root!for this example, I'll just make one real nice and quick, if you'd like to go for the full monty, follow the above link and you'll be able to do all sorts of fun stuff.
Boom! That easy!
EDIT: Very interesting, I tried to create a hyperlink for chrome://flags/ - but when clicking it don't do nothing. I wonder if there's a quick way to achieve my desired result without resorting to jquery or something. hrmm.....
Here's a screenshot of me running a few commands that I hoped would work.
sudo lshw
free -m
df -Th
Well, hope you enjoy the results.
I decided to just do it already. I turned on Developer Mode, which really is a very simple task - the hardest part had to be identifying where the sticker cover is for the switch (it really blends right in). I haven't really had much of a chance to try anything totally cool yet, the only thing I can think of is ssh'ing into a server, but that was possible with the Crosh shell. An interesting task would be setting up my blue tooth keyboard and mouse. There is currently no blue tooth interface with the ChromeOS, however, it wouldn't be impossible given that there is a method explained here, here, here, where a command can be given: hcitool scan - where a list of devices will appear.
Type hcitool cc xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx to interface and depending if you need a key you enter the command, hcitool auth xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx and complete the process.
Frankly, I haven't attempted this yet, but I figure I'll just copy the steps and relay them on my own website hoping their research embiggens mine with cromulent hits. Anyway, I appreciate the people who discover these commands and then release them for others to experiment themselves. You can bet your ass that if this works (or even if it doesn't) I'm going to post my findings, along with anything else that may help with reproducing (or perhaps completing) my idea.
Well - Instead of just publishing this and leaving you all hanging, I at least did half of the task and attempted connecting my mouse because I long for something other than this trackpad (yeah.. I should just get my ass to RadioShack). Unfortunately, it didn't work. The hcitool scan worked, it saw my mouse, however hcitool cc xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx didn't work at all, and no feedback to explain. No idea if an auth was required, but I can't find any info online regarding whether it is or not.
I guess I can try the keyboard, but the mouse would have been the larger victory. Either way, it was a fun venture overall. Now to ssh my ftp server and see what trouble I can cause.
Alright, I'm comfortable in admitting I'm not an expert, or probably that knowledeable in Linux and Vim (forgotten much since college, but hey, gotta restart somewhere). However, I just don't understand the lack of support for the Mac Wireless Keyboard with regards to iPad integration. I'm typing up this post right now on it, and it is simply a joy to type on, the keys feel great, and while I'm regularly a fan of the iPad virtual keyboard, this is a nice change of pace, especially when in a rather comfortable location.
Anyway, I'd really appreciate some more loving for the keyboard in regards to better integration with the spotlight search, have the springboard launcher be binded with the esc key, and at least the arrow keys to move around various apps on the home screen.
Well, I guess those are some intensive demands with regards to iPad software/hardware upgrades, but I would consider them great advances and just increase my overall enjoyment when using my wireless keyboard.
This all really came up when using vim on iSSH and just wanting to dick around - well, I could exit insert mode because the esc key isn't bound to any actions. I had to lean forward and hit the 'esc' onscreen key. Yeah, yeah, I'm not that bad and leaning forward isn't as painful as I'd like to make it out to be, however it was just an inconvenience that would really disrupt the flow of my programming.
I mentioned earlier about how poorly the Cr-48 delivers video - notably at hulu.com and southparkstudios.com.
I was mistaken.. somewhat. I returned to southparkstudios.com and attempted to watch an episode using my new understanding of the OS (herp a derp), the video performed extremely well - so I naturally clicked on "Full Screen" where the performance dropped a surprisingly little amount. There was some choppiness, however it wasn't unwatchable. The action taking place on the screen really had me staring closely, trying to identify skipping, and there really were a majority of questionable spots but nothing noticeable to someone not watching for it.
Hulu.com - now that was a different situation. It performed "ok" while in windowed mode, but the performance dropped significantly in "Full Screen." Unwatchable. Not much else to say other than I'm not really sure what to make of it.
All I know is I do stand by my open mentioning of Flowplayer.
One of the major gripes about the Cr-48 from me initially was the almost complete inability to watch videos. The majority of delivery mechanisms rely on Flash, and while I'm not exactly adobe's biggest fan, it has its place, and it standardized the method so that all a web browser would need is the Flash Plugin and one would be able to view 99.99% of the videos on the Internet.
However, as many know and more and more realize, Flash is a resources hog. Many have their beliefs as to why, but regardless, it sucks up what most desktops/laptops nowadays have plenty of - but now with the introduction of Netbooks, that reliance on system resources becomes very significant. I can't even watch more than a few seconds on southparkstudios.com or [JOE: reversed ruling on southparkstudios.com] hulu.com because there is simply too much going on.
There is hope - I recently tested how video looked on this Cr-48 given a rather simple page layout and through two delivery methods:
and
And I have to say, the results were incredibly uplifting:
Both worked extremely well. There was extremely little to no choppy framerate with the Flowplayer Flash Delivery and even less (completely smooth) with HTML5. So there is hope with watching videos on the Cr-48, perhaps it is a different strategy by having a minimalistic layout when displaying the video through Flash or HTML5, but it does work and plays all the way through.
Perhaps the next experiment would be having several events taking place on the same page, seeing what the 'tipping point' may actually be for when a video becomes unwatchable for the limited power these netbooks have.
