All the magic happens by using db_set_active(‘secondary_database’), which connects Drupal to another database. Calling db_set_active() will switch you back to the default one. This can be configured in our settings.php file.

Let’s start with our settings file.

$databases = array(
	'default' => array(
		'default' => array(
			'database' => 'drupal_db',
			'username' => 'root',
			'password' => 'root',
			'host' => 'localhost',
			'port' => '',
			'driver' => 'mysql',
			'prefix' => '',
		),
	),
	'secondary_database' => array(
		'default' => array(
			'database' => 'secondary_data',
			'username' => 'root',
			'password' => 'root',
			'host' => 'localhost',
			'port' => '',
			'driver' => 'mysql',
			'prefix' => '',
		),
	),
);

Let’s do some testing first with our import.php.

<?php
// we need to bootstrap Drupal first
require_once 'includes/bootstrap.inc';
define('DRUPAL_ROOT', getcwd());
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);
print "Importing Entries\n";
// connect to a different DB defined on your settings file.
db_set_active('secondary_database');
// let's get all the entries we need for now.
$query = db_select('tablename', 's')->fields('s', array());
$results = $query->execute()->fetchAll();
print_r($results);

To run this, we can use:

php import.php

This should output an array of objects coming from your second database.

Importing data

Now that we have tested our connection, we can finalize our script:

<?php

// we need to bootstrap Drupal first
require_once 'includes/bootstrap.inc';
define('DRUPAL_ROOT', getcwd());
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);

print "Importing Entries\n";
// connect to a different DB defined on your settings file.
db_set_active('secondary_database');
// let's get all the entries we need for now.
$query = db_select('tablename', 's')->fields('s', array());
$results = $query->execute()->fetchAll();

// back to the default database and building nodes
db_set_active();
foreach ($results as $res) {
	$node = new stdClass();
	$node->title = $res->name;
	$node->language = LANGUAGE_NONE;
	$node->type = 'body';
	$node->uid = 1;
	$node->status = 1;
	$node->body['und'][0]['format'] = 3;
	$node->body['und'][0]['summary'] = $res->description;
	$node->body['und'][0]['value'] = $res->description;
	node_save($node);
}

And that’s it, now you should be able to import entries from other databases by bootstrapping Drupal and connecting to it temporarily. All the new content will be stored in a Drupal way.

This is a cross post that is also published at HybridForge Blog

Smartphones are taking over mobile gaming, we all know it, but they still don’t offer the biggest feature for most hardcore gamers: analog controls. While some puzzle games play well with touch screens, everything else plays just bad: Shooters, FPS, beat-em-ups. So, Sony had the best idea ever: Merge all the goodness from a smartphone and bring it over to the PSP. The result is a beautiful device with a lot horsepower, good controls, touch screen and a touchpad at the back. It is really the device to have if you want to game on the go.

Problems

I will start by saying that the device is not super cheap, around $250. This isn’t that bad either, but what it makes it really bad is the fact that you need a memory card in order to do anything and they are expensive and proprietary.

• A normal Micro SD card 32GB (class 4) costs $34
• A sony PS Vita card 32GB costs $99
  (which are between Class 2 to 6 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-how-fast-are-vita-memory-cards)

This is just plain ridiculous and it sounds greedy. If they really wanted this system to sell a lot, why not just let it use SD cards?

Another really important issue is the amount of games available. I’ve seen basically a full game come out every 2 weeks. That could make up for less than 30 games a year! I’m not counting PS Mobile games or Mini games because these are nice additions but they don’t make a console a device to buy.

And lastly a big issue for me is the store. While it’s well organized, most non AAA games don’t even have screenshots, videos or trailers. The only way I can find more about the game is to launch the YouTube app and look for videos. There is also little to no marketing to mini games and PS Mobile games. Discoverability is something they really need to work on.

Games

I have to admit that even with a little amount of games available and a flawed store, I’ve played my Vita more than my smartphone by a lot. I enjoy playing some games before going to bed, during lunch breaks and when I travel.

Some of the games I love are:

• Aqua Kitty: Nice and polished indie game!
• Mutant Blobs Attack
• WipEout 2048: Good 5 mins time killer (though, it takes like 3 minutes to get into a race)
• Sound Shapes: I love this simple musical platformer.
• Gravity Rush: I like a lot the story, music, ambient, everything! though the combat system is just not for me.
• Super Stardust Delta: Super fun shooter

I’ve been reading a lot about how the Vita is doomed because Sony doesn’t care about it and no games are coming out for it. The fact is, Sony should focus more on the store and try to lower the price or make better bundles, but the Vita is just an awesome system with a lot of gems available to keep you entertained for a long while.

Working mainly on Internet marketing I get two types of projects to work on: simple client websites or medium size websites with web application features. Any of them will have a limited budget, so my task as developer is to grab the best toolset and pick the right tool for it.

I could list the good and bad things from a CMS or framework but I will rather put an example:

Our website doesn’t have a lot of content but it has to connect to a third party service to manage subscriptions for our courses.

Let’s say the site has 15 pages with text and pictures and a pretty regular layout, which won’t change very often. Then, we have a 3rd party API, using SOAP services where we have to list a few courses and collect some registration information and payment. Every request and payment handled by the API.

If we use a CMS in this case, we will speed up the theming, menu structure, file uploads and content editing. Creating the courses section means we need to create custom routing, multiple forms, error messages, and a class that interacts with the third party application.

CMSes most of the time don’t have Forms API, validation API, error notifications or proper custom routing. This leaves you with trying to build some sort of web app functionality using basic PHP. Hello 90′s!

Frameworks on the other hand don’t come with a lot of things, like a backend, WYSIWYG editors, media gallery, etc. So you will have to develop that from scratch, kind of. But nowadays they come with a multitude of modules and plugins that help with the development and the structure of a custom application, so you can get CMS-like functionality in very short time. But, they usually lack the polish and ease of use that well known CMSes have.

So, what to consider?

• Requirement of the site as of today.
• Features that would likely get added over the next years.
• Budget.

On brochure type of websites, using a CMS is usually good because the development time and theming is short enough that it could be thrown away in the near future if the client has a new requirement that calls for full redevelopment of the site.

The problems usually begin when the requirements come in little pieces and they are added to the CMS site without proper planing or testing. That’s why having a set of future features for a site is important.

Why not switch to a framework once the site grows?

Budget. The problem with allocating budget into re-developing that basic site into a framework is that it feels like paying twice for the same thing. But the decision has to be made at some point, which is where a lot of companies fail at.

I’ve worked on many sites on Drupal and WordPress that turn into a plugin-fest for trying to achieve the intended functionality.

Plugins vs framework Modules

Another thing to factor in is the quality of the extensions used on plugins and modules. While CMSes like Drupal have a really strict way to approving and testing modules, other CMSes like WordPress have pretty much no quality control over the plugins distributed. It’s not rare to get hacked because of a faulty plugin.

Plugins are most of the time built with one feature in mind, and to solve one problem. They fail to interconnect with other plugins and there’s pretty much no way of overriding functionality. Frameworks on the other side provide a more solid modular structure that is easier to hook to and modules most of the time are built to interoperate between them.

Making the decision of a custom built site or customized CMS is a tough one. It requires a good understanding of the requirements and understanding the client needs right now and in the near future. That’s why picking the right tool from the start is always a challenge but it has be done.

I usually refer to the following list for when I see a new project:

Use a CMS when…

• You know the site won’t grow much
• They have very few complex requirements
• They are very low on budget

Choose a framework when…

• You know the site will need custom functionality eventually
• They have mission critical needs
• They have to integrate with other services
• They need something custom from the very start.

TL;DR: I quite like it, it’s an improvement on almost every way on the way I use Windows and it actually gives me a lot of reasons to go back to Windows as my main OS.

As a power user (that’s how I consider myself), I will focus on my workflow exclusively. There are quite a lot of reviews out there that mention a lot of casual and light users problems or frustrations with the OS, which I can’t care less to honest. In my opinion, those are comments from power users trying to think as a casual user, which they are not.

Start Menu

This is by far the most talked item about Windows 8. It’s different, big, tiled and very “touch based”. If I stop for a moment and think about what I used the start menu for, the new one is much better. Press Win+Q and start typing any app that you want and press Enter to open it.

Organizing apps is something I used to do with the old school Start menu (Windows 98 version), and I hated when in Vista/7 they made it all go into one small box. I welcomed the fast indexing of apps so you could start typing the app name, but I still missed the the fact that navigating through that Start menu became totally unfriendly. Windows 8 makes that better by offering an even faster indexing and grouping is pretty cool.

Modern/Metro apps and Windows Store

Simply put: If you don’t like it, don’t use it! I personally like it a lot. It’s allowing all that discovery that you get on platforms like iOS, Android and even OSX into Windows. I was hoping for them to have a standardized way to install desktop apps through the store but they decided to only allow modern apps on it. A bummer, but that’s the direction they want to move into.

I haven’t had a lot of time to download and test apps from the store but so far I love both MetroTwit and Reddit To Go! There are quite a lot of games for free too that I will be spending time with.

Another thing I like from the store is that it knew the apps I used on another Windows installation so it listed them under “My Apps”. Same as what Android does, but better because you can check a bunch and install them all at once.

Startup time

Windows 7: 17.3 secs.

Windows 8: 10.9 secs

Enough said.

Upgrade

When trying to upgrade, Windows didn’t let me continue until I uninstalled the following:

• MS Security Essentials
• Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Driver

Then it complained about the integrity of some stuff on my files. I assumed it was some activation problem but it wasn’t. Sadly as always with Microsoft stuff, it’s easier to re-install than trying to fix a problem. The good thing is that clean installations are always welcomed.

Changes

Windows 8 is definitely different than Windows 7 in many ways. Some changes will take some time to get used to, but I’m still happy about them.

The task/dock bar was something that I always thought it was the best way to keep all closed and opened apps (just like OSX), but I’m liking the idea of having a dashboard or app launcher that does that job. Kind of what Apple tried with the launch pad, but it was plagued with animations that i didn’t want and it’s just way too basic.

Windows 8 also made font scaling at 125% (previously 100%) a default now. As a 15″ 1080p laptop user, I love this change. The only problem is that some icons in the desktop and some UI text alignments will have to be fixed on a lot of desktop apps.

File copy is faster and has a pause button and it was redesigned so it stacks multiple processes. File Explorer (ex Windows Explorer) looks nicer and cleaner, and has a ribbon option.

The Task manager was redesigned and it looks much cleaner and better than in Windows 7.

Overall I’ve spend a reasonable time with Windows 8 and I like it a lot. I think it was a step in the right direction and it proves that Microsoft was thinking on both power users and casual users, by trying to bring the best of both into one OS.

I also had the chance to spent some time with a Windows 8 touch based Ultrabook and I have to admit that I loved it. I was browsing for a second and playing a touch based game on another, sketching after and then back to doing serious stuff on my browser. I don’t own one at the moment, but I think it’s definitely going into my list.

Problems

I would love to say that Windows 8 is perfect, but it isn’t. Besides the useless upgrade path in my case, I’m still missing some polish in the OS. It seems that Microsoft tries to find their  visual style every few years. They did with the blueish Windows XP, then moved to a glass style with Windows Vista and then polished some on Windows 7. Now with Windows 8 they went back to tiles and basic colors, very little shadow and almost no gradients. This is all welcomed but the fact that they leave a lot of legacy visual style still very much present in the OS is pretty sad.

Conclusion

All in all, Windows 8 is a good OS, an improved version of Windows 7 that needs refinement, polish and constant improvement if they really want to convince their users that their idea of mixing tablet with desktop features is correct, and that Modern apps can be as powerful as the desktop ones.

Let’s start by saying that I’m coming from a Macbook Pro, which I still use for Android development and other things. The idea to buy a super powerful laptop came to me while on my last vacations in Chile, when I finally had the time to game a lot and, sadly, I had to deal with the poor performance of my Macbook Pro. So I decided to buy something powerful enough to play all recent games and after reading for quite a while I decided to go with Sager, mainly because they seems to give you the best performance for the money you pay. I didn’t go with Asus because they don’t use the fastest video cards and Alienware because they are just plain ugly.

To be honest, when I ordered my new Sager I was a bit skeptical about the build quality, but when I first tried it I was really impressed by how well built it felt, the soft plastic palm rest is a nice detail, and the keyboard feels solid enough and I got used to it in no time. Not to mention the 15″ 1080p monitor that looks simply amazing. Leaving specs aside, this is still a really nice PC laptop.

The laptop itself is big, like two times taller than my Macbook Pro 15″, and to be fair, this isn’t a big problem compared to the massive power brick included that is close to three times the size of my Macbook’s one. This is required by the big video card the laptop comes with, but if you opt for a slower one you can use a 130W power supply (Instead of the 180W I have).

Pricing

Since at some point I had the idea of buying a top of the line Macbook Pro instead of my Sager, I will list the main differences in specs to what you could get today on the most expensive Macbook Pro.

The most important specs on my Sager are:

• 3rd generation Intel Core i7 3610QM
• Nvidia Geforce 675M plus an Intel HD4000 using Optimus technology.
• 16 GB RAM
• 120GB SSD
• 750GB HDD
• No Optical drive
• DVI, HDMI, Display Port.
• USB 3.0, FireWire
• SD Card Reader.

Performance

In simple words: It flies! From opening Photoshop CS6 in less than 3 seconds to playing Diablo 3 maxed out at 1080, I can do everything on this computer (I won’t show benchmarks as they are pretty easy to find online). I was also able to play Diablo 3 at smooth 45fps while streaming my gameplay without any hiccups.

Only comparison I can make is that it feels twice as fast as my work Core i5 iMac from 2011.

Pictures

Here are a few pictures I took comparing it to my Macbook Pro. You can see it is bigger but not by a lot. For someone like me who drives everywhere, this won’t be a problem.

Next »

View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:11, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 200	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:11, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.2 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:11, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.1 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:12, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.067 sec, ISO 800
View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:12, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:13, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.02 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:13, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:14, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 800
View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:14, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:14, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:14, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:14, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 800
View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:15, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:15, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:15, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:15, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 800
View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:16, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:16, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 800

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View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:16, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:17, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 800
View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:17, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:17, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:17, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 800	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:17, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 400
View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:19, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:20, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:20, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:20, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400
View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:20, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:20, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:20, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:21, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400
View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:21, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:21, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:21, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400	View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:33, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400

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View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:33, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400

View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:33, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400

View at Picasa 17-May-2012 18:33, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D60, 1.8, 35.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400

I’m very proud to show the new app I’ve worked on the last few weeks. This app is streaming X92.9 Calgary’s New Rock Alternative station where users can make requests and vote for songs.

I didn’t have a chance to work on the graphics but I tried to give it more of an Android 4.0 look, using the new ViewPages from the Android compatibility library, while at the same time keeping it compatible with older devices.

You can check it out at: Google’s Play Store

In case you didn’t know, Model-View-Controller is a software architecture used in most modern frameworks. The idea is to separate the logic, the data and the user interface.

The difference with this plugin is that it was implemented as a WordPress extension, so you get to use WP routes, users, permissions, etc.

Installing

You just need to download and activate WP MVC and then create a plugin. That plugin can be generated with WP MVC so you can save quite some time. In order to generate an empty plugin you must go to the plugin folder:

cd wp-content/plugins/wp-mvc/
chmod +x wpmvc
create the plugin
./wpmvc generate plugin mPlugin

The plugin will be generated in the correct folder (even when you are inside /wp-mvc/). Now just navigate to the plugin folder and you will see the following:

mplugin.php
mplugin_loader.php
app/
- config/
- controllers/
- models/
- public/
- views/

Creating your first page

Create a controller either by using the code generation tool or by creating a file inside app/controllers/

<?php

class BooksController extends MvcPublicController {
  function index () {
    set('param1', $this-&gt;params['param1'];
    $this-&gt;render_view('books/index');
  }
}

Go to app/config/routes.php and create a route to the new controller

MvcRouter::public_connect('books/{:param1}', array('controller' => 'books', 'action' => 'index'));

Lastly, create a view in app/views/books/index.php

<?php echo $param1?>

You can continue reading about this amazing WordPress plugin at [http://wpmvc.org/](http://wpmvc.org/) and see how to use the included helpers, build models and generate both back-end and front-end controllers.

Visit the Plugin’s site

Sadly, one thing that hasn’t changed much is the browser detection. Tons of websites are still rendering an “iPhone” optimized site on my Xoom and even worse, some people think this is Android’s fault.

Here is a list of iOS and Android based User Agents:

iOS

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3

Android

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/ERD62) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.5; en-ca; Build/CUPCAKE) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Mobile Safari/525.20.1

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 3.0; en-us; Xoom Build/HRI39) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/534.13

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; Droid Build/FRG22D) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.3; en-gb; Nexus S Build/GRI20) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.3; en-ca; Xoom Build/ITL41F) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/534.30

How to detect?

For iOS devices is simple, just detect iPhone and display a mobile friendly site and you can show the normal site for the iPad. For Android devices is still pretty simple, just different. Android believes that devices with larger screens should take the “mobile” part off the string.

Regardless of this post, you should be building RWD websites.

Ingredients

• Custom Filters
• Basic Regex.

Creating a Shortcode

Once you have Custom Filters enabled, go to the module page and add a new filter. Name it the way you want, and click save. Once you are back in the filters list, click on the one you just created so we can create a rule.

When creating a rule, you have to provide a regular expression of the code you want to replace. In this case, we are going WordPress style [shortcode] and we will just replace it with a image. We will use [checkmark] as our short code, so under Pattern add:

/\[checkmark]/i

Now, our image will be located in our theme folder and we won’t be using PHP parsing, so we just insert:

<img src="/sites/all/themes/THEME/images/checkmark.png" />

into the replacement text box.

Now, we just need to enable our custom filter in Text Formats options. Go to Text Formats, select the one you are currently using and under Enabled Filters, locate and select the one you just created.

After giving it a try I decided to create a short script and it works beautifully.

touch slow.sh
chmod 700

Then add this to the file

#!/bin/sh
export PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
	echo "Error: pass 'start' or 'stop' "
	exit 0
fi

if [ $1 = "start" ]; then
	echo "- Slowing the tubes"

	sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 256Kbit/s delay 350ms
	sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 src-port 80
	sudo ipfw add 2 pipe 1 dst-port 80
	exit 0
fi

if [ $1 = "stop" ]; then
	echo "- Back to normal"

	sudo ipfw delete 1
	sudo ipfw delete 2
	sudo ipfw pipe 1 delete
	exit 0
fi

And that’s it. Then you can slow down your internet by just typing:

./slow.sh start

And go back to normal with:

./slow.sh stop

Notes:

1. Page.tpl.php is basically where your main layout is. If you are starting from an HTML file, you can do the same as me and rename it to page.tpl.php and start populating the necessary elements. You can see which elements here.This page needs to contain everything that goes inside the body (you shouldn’t add the <body> tags here).
2. In Drupal 7 everything that holds content is a region, even the region that holds the “content” block.
3. Node.tpl.php is the themed representation of a content entry and when listing content this file will be called multiple times, one after another.
4. A block is just a piece of content that can be plain HTML or be generated from a module. (Like the Login block)
5. A region is what holds multiple blocks. These are the defined in the .info file and called in page.tpl.php

Worth mentioning:

• When creating the theme.info file, starting from Drupal 7 you need a region called “content” or the theme will show up as incompatible in Appearance settings.
• I’m not including all the TPL files but the ones I use the most.

Core TPL Files

Here’s a list of the core TPL files source code. It’s always good to go back to them to see what you have available on each template file.

• html.tpl.php
• page.tpl.php
• region.tpl.php
• block.tpl.php
• node.tpl.php
• comment-wrapper.tpl.php
• comment.tpl.php
• field.tpl.php

There are many more TPL files but these are the most used ones.

Creating a basic theme

First of all pick a name like “mytheme2011″ and create a folder in:

/sites/all/themes/mytheme2011

Then inside, create the file mytheme2011.info and add the files you will be using. Here’s an example for a simple site

name = "MyTheme 2011"
description = " First version of it"
version = "1.0"
core = "7.x"
engine = "phptemplate"
stylesheets[all][] = "css/html5reset.css"
stylesheets[all][] = "style.css"
scripts[] = "scripts/main.js"
regions[top] = Top
regions[right] = Right
regions[content] = Content
regions[footer] = Footer

Now you should be good to go. Go ahead and create page.tpl.php and start populating the content. Pro Tip: Include important variables like $messages as it is your way of debuging.

Like a said, this is not intended as a theming tutorial but as a quick guide for starting a new theme. Leave a comment if you would like to see something added to it.

After being disappointed again at Motorola Canada for being completely useless with updates on their devices I decided to take a look at fashing the US rom into my Canadian Xoom. And it worked!

As a note, there’s no hacking involved here, you are just unlocking the bootloader and flashing an official ROM provided by Motorola. As you will see, you won’t find any link from a non-trusted source. It just involves some terminal work and since I’m a Mac user, I will give the instructions for OSX.

1. Before you start, backup your Xoom, this will wipe it entirely.
2. Download and Install the SDK if you haven’t done it. From: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
3. Unzip the contents of the SDK wherever you want, like in Downloads/
4. Go into the the SDK folder Downloads/android-sdk-mac_x86/tools/ and runandroid. Under available packages install Android SDK tools. (this will download a few files and create a folder under the SDK called platform-tools/)
5. Download the WiFi zip file at http://developer.motorola.com/products/software/ (the 122MB one)
6. Download fastboot-mac from the HTC site (this is the only I could find it): http://developer.htc.com/adp.html#s2
7. Unzip the Motorola zip file into the Android SDK folder platform-tools. android-sdk-mac_x86/platform-tools/
8. Do the same with fastboot-mac file, put it into android-sdk-mac_x86/platform-tools/
9. Now open up terminal and type:
   cd ~/Downloads/android-sdk-mac_x86/platform-tools/
10. Now that we are inside the folder we have our files in, you should be able to see:fastboot-mac, adb and all the Motorola .IMG files that came in the zip file.
11. You need to unlock your device so we can flash it. Run with your Xoom connected and in debugging mode:

    adb reboot bootloader

12. Now when your Xoom reboots you will see it goes into fastboot mode. Now we can run fastboot commands. Type:

    ./fastboot-mac oem unlock

    And follow the instructions, you need to change the answer to agree and then process (I failed to agree on my first try).
    It should now reboot and it will be clean as a factory reset. This is a little annoying because you have the welcome screen from Android again. Just skip everything and get to Settings > Applications > Development and enable debugging again.

13. Once again, let’s reboot into fastboot:

    adb reboot bootloader

14. Now we can flash US ROM because we unlocked the device:

    ./fastboot-mac flash boot boot.img
    ./fastboot-mac flash system system.img
    ./fastboot-mac flash recovery recovery.img
    ./fastboot-mac flash userdata userdata.img
    ./fastboot-mac erase cache

15. Once all goes OK you just need to reboot the device by typing:

    ./fastboot-mac reboot

And that’s it. Now you should have the US firmware, and after setting up your account and stuff you should go and check for the 3.1 update.

Good luck

PS: This won’t enable Movies or Music, etc as we are still outside the US.

Warning: Rant ahead!

Since 2007 I’ve been beta testing Google’s Android. Back in the days were we had one phone, the G1. I say beta testing because the software wasn’t complete, it lacked good audio formats, multitouch, polished UI, etc. I still followed the development (even reading GIT commits). And now we got to a point where I can say Android is capable enough and stable, in fact It’s the best mobile OS in my opinion.

But the fact almost every headache Android gives me comes from manufacturers and carriers is what is driving me away from the platform:

Google’s slow new features deployment to other countries

This is the only non OEM related problem for me: It is anoying that Google releases new products and features to the US but they never give an estimated date of when they will make it available to other countries. I know there’s a lot of legal implications to bring Movies, Books and Music to Canada but at least give the users an idea. This is not the 90′s, most big products are launched globally now.

Updates

It doesn’t even make sense. Google tries to create some hype with new features just so you ask “when is my phone getting this?”. Guess what, maybe never.

• Android is not like Windows, you cannot buy the software and update your phone. So you are stuck to whatever your manufacturer/carrier wants.
• You can download a custom ROM and loaded it into your phone. But again, OEMs are so stupid that they block the devices for doing so. You are stuck.
• They deliver updates for the same device in different countries at different dates (months away, or even a year). How stupid is that? Just take a look at this joke: http://www.facebook.com/MotorolaCanada/posts/10150189626001994

Fragmentation

Tegra2 devices are great, but all these Tegra2-only games are creating confusion, fragmentation and more interest from hackers to modify devices. Same goes to Netflix only available to some devices. I’m sure there are not even hardware limitations.

Different screens and keyboard is what makes Android good, but not letting you access to some content because you don’t have an specific internal chip that most people don’t know what it is, is just plain stupid.

Releases

Same as updates. You read the news online about a cool new Android phone and you have no idea when is that coming out to your country. My interest for the Nexus S went down after having to wait for almost half a year for it to come out in Canada. And the preorders were a joke, no store knew which day it was coming out or even the price. So you will have to pay some upfront and then pay the remaining (whatever amount it was) when it was available.

Well, no thanks.

At the end, when friends ask me what to buy. As a huge Android fan that I am, I end up saying “Well, you will love the iPhone”, and that is really disappointing.

Wanting to try out the new Android Market UI I decided to try a couple of hacks in order to install it on my emulator (which I’m pretty sure you heard is _really_ slow).

1. Install the SDK and create an Android 3.0 ADB, like you normally would. We are going to assume you named the AVD: hcomb30

2. Copy system.img to your AVD folder:

cp /Developer/android-sdk-mac_x86/platforms/android-11/images/system.img ~/.android/avd/hcomb30.avd/

3. Start the emulator with a bigger partition by doing:

emulator -avd hcomb30 -partition-size 200

4. Download GoogleServicesFramework.apk and Vending.apk

5. Now that you have your emulator running with a bigger partition size, run:

adb shell

6. Run:

mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock0 /system

Assuming that is the /system partition, or run mount and look for the correct location

7. Install the APKs you downloaded and remove the SdkSetup.apk so it doesn’t revert the process after we reboot.

adb push GoogleServicesFramework.apk /system/app
adb push Vending.apk /system/app
rm /system/app/SdkSetup.apk

In my case I wasn’t able to Sign in with Google services after installing it so I reopened the emulator.