Here’s a short video recap:

So I bought a truly Chinese – but surprisingly good tablet from this store a few days ago.

Upgrading the firmware

The first thing I noticed that the Users menu was missing from Settings, so I couldn’t create a user for my wife. When I ordered the tablet I was sure I need to hack something so I instantly began with updating the firmware to the latest one which I downloaded from here.

I have a V4 tablet, you can check your hardware version by looking at the serial number’s 9th and 10th character. There was an installer inside the zip which had the Windows software and drivers for the tablet. There was a Chinese .doc about updating the firmware but luckily I found it translated to English here (V989 Brush ENG Tutorial.docx).

Rooting

After “brushing” (or whatever they call fw upgrading) I rooted the tablet using this tool. First I had to copy update.apk and ondaos_V989_Root.zip to the tablet, then I installed the apk, launched the Update application and started the Local Update using the zip file.

Enabling multiple users

I used this build.prop editor which is a very comfortable tool for editing that text file. I had to add this line to the file (without the line number of course):

I saved the file and rebooted the tablet, and the Users menu popped up in the Settings.

Changing the usernames and profile pics

If I try to open the profile settings of a user the Settings app quits unexpectedly, so I had to edit each users’ XML file in the directory /data/system/users/ to change their names. I used ES File Editor for editing the XMLs as it supports root mode. As the user profile files get overwritten at reboot, I had to change the permissions of the files to read only.

I replaced the profile picture PNGs too (for example the user with ID 0 has the pic at /data/system/users/0/photo.png). I used images with a size of 256×256 pixels.

So I’ve read two books this week. I admit that Arduino is a cool thing for those who are just getting into the embedded world, but I’m not a very big fan of it. I like to do stuff on a low level way, interacting with the CPU registers and writing everything in plain C, but that of course is just my problem :) Anyway, the book is cool, clearly understandable even for a beginner, has lots of images and drawings. Every chapter deals with a different kind of home automation problem and solves it by using some kind of wireless transmission. It even covers designing a custom PCB using Eagle.

I started music editing with FastTracker 2 back in the 90s, and continued with Fruity Loops later. I’ve tried Cubase for a short time and settled with Ableton Live, which suits my needs perfectly. I think FL is too much based on loops, Live supports them as well but I can make music more comfortably by using only the playlist (as they call it in FL).

I enjoyed this book very much. A very good introduction for a beginner who wants to know how to create music with FL Studio. Everything is clearly understandable and well explained. The book is full of good images. The chapters are well structured, and in good order. I would definitely recommend this one if you want to know more about FL Studio!

Wow it was fantastic!

Music video:

Musicless video:

I was at the Tolcsva Wine Festival this weekend. Yesterday Misa’s father showed us his favorite fishing spots.

I chose this book because I like Javascript very much, but I’m not familiar with Node.js, so it was an interesting read.

The author chose the best way to teach Node.js (in fact, I think this is the best way to teach anything, and keep the reader’s attention): by real-life examples. These examples are very good, they show the reader how to deal with real-life problems like interacting with a MySQL database, implementing a blog engine, implementing a REST API, and creating desktop apps.

I definitely recommend this book to everyone who know Javascript well, and want to know more about Node.js.

Recently I got another bunch of books to read from Packt Publishing, here’s the first one.

It’s a very nice, but brief book for those who are not used to the a Linux shell, but familiar with IT security techniques. I feel that the chapters on security are too brief, they don’t explain the techniques enough. However, the Bash introduction is very well explained and I can recommend it for everyone who want to try the shell out for the first time.