wonder which device to blame

Today our family is driving to Toronto, and I found this the perfect moment to try out thethering feature of my Roger iPad mobile phone plan.  So I turned on the Personal Hotspot feature on my Galaxy Nexus.  MyPad 3 and my Nexus 7 was able to pick up hotspot, but not my Microsoft Surface device.  I was puzzled, and kept trying various options.  Eventually, I yanked out the SIM card, and use it on my iPad 3, and use iPad 3 as personal hotspot.  Now, all my devices, including Microsoft Surface, are able to access Internet.  So I am pretty puzzled now.  I don't whether I should blame my Galaxy Nexus lame at being a personal hotspot, or Microsoft Surface sucks at accessing personal hotspot.  But at least I am glad that I have various devices to try out different options.

So I can still root after 4.2.2 update on Nexus 7

I was so used to accepting all the update on my Galaxy Nexus phone that I did the same on my Nexus 7 when a 4.2.2 update alert popped up.  Only after then I realized that the N7 was, once again, unrooted, and I lost one HUGE feature on my N7: watching video directly from thumb drive.  So now I need to find a working rooting instruction for Andorid 4.2.2 on Nexus 7.

Luckily, the old one that worked is still working as long as you follow a few lines of instruction on the site to make it working on 4.2.2. .  I tried and it worked pretty well.   So ... I am happy again :-D .

Rooting Nexus 7 ... again ...

I didn't realize that rooting is not a one shot deal.  I thought once I applied root to an android device, it will stay rooted forever.  Most tech genius on the net will read this and poke fun on my stupidity.  Yep, making mistakes, and then learned from the mistakes.  That's how civialization get birthed and evolved.  You are welcome.

Anyway, I figured it out a few days before I my trip to Canada, and found that my Nexus 7 couldn't recognize the thumb drive I hooked to the device, and thus couldn't play the videos on that thumb drive.  Not good, consider how many hours of boredom I need to endure during the whole trip.

I rooted the Nexus 7 back when it was JellyBean.  Now the system already updates to 4.2.1.  So I guess I have to do rooting again.  The good thing is that since I rooted once, I don't need to wipe my device to root again.  So found this tool called "Nexus Root Toolkit v1.6.2" (NRT_v1.6.2.sfx.exe), downloaded it and installed it on my Lenovo S12 Windows 8 OS device.  Problem came as the app didn't seemed to work.  Searched the web, and found out that the app and the driver it uses had problem on Windows 8.  No problem since I kept the Windows 7 partition exactly because of this kind of situation.

So I installed the app, and this time I found that it bitched about missing Nexus 7 driver.  No problem again, because I had it in my shared drive (usb_driver_r06_windows.zip).  After that I followed the instruction, and eventually got a rooted Nexus 7.  Now I can watch video during my Canada trip.  Yeah.

More info....

"Plan B" to avoid Google Music messing with my audio files

After being fustrated by Google Music Android app not honoring .nomedia, I finally found a great way to avoid the problem.  It turns out that Google Music can't recognize files that stores 2 levels deeps.  So you if have a folder /MyStuff and put mp3 files in it, Google Music will pick it up and index it in its catalog.  But if you put the mp3 files in /MyStuff/SuperAwesome, then Google Music will ignore it.  So all I need to do from my now is move my audio files in folders at least 2 levels deep.

.Nomedia not work with Google Music

Still not happy that Google Music app on Android does NOT honor .nomedia file.  Damn you Google.

Time to speed up my Galaxy Nexus by uninstalling bunch of apps

The user expert  of my Galaxy Nexus is once again slow to a point that I can't tolererant, and it's time to do something about it.

The biggest reason why it's getting slow is because there are quite a lot of process running at the back for NO GOOD REASON.  I understand that in order to prove me updated information, some apps will kick off some process at the back once in a while, and I understand that.  However, I can't tolerate apps that keep staying at the background all the time and yet:

- Without option to choose whether to stop to service and STAY STOPPED until I choose otherwise
- Before even use it once

So here's the list I uninstalled from my device.  Notice that they are not all bad apps.  It's just that I personally don't use them enough to justify having them keep running at the backrgound for no good reasons:

Android application that runs that background for (to me) no good reasons:
- PhotoWonder
- Amazon AppStore
- PhotoWonder
- DoubleTwist
- SugarSync
- Spotify
- Office Suite
- Dropbox
- Nook
- WeChat
- musiXmatch
- WongXin (Alibaba)

So now they are gone, let me see if my Galaxy Nexus experience gets any better.

Ultimately, I really should just rooted my phone so that I can use "Freeze" tools to keep services from starting.  But it will involve wiping out all data on my phone.  So ... well ... someday I will root my phone.  Someday.

Gaalxy Nexus 7 and speed

I wasn't too happy about the speed of my Galaxy Nexus lately.  The performance was pretty sluggish after I turned on the phone for a while, and it didn't seemed to have anything to do with any specific app I opened.  Eventually I turned on [Setting], look under [Apps], and found that there are some games and process that kept running at the back while I was totally not usually them, particularly for those social games from Zenga, Bloomberg, United Airline and so on.  I was pissed and had them removed, and now my phone is back the quick and responsive that I used to love when I first brought it.  Awesome.