Short takes: managing Bluetooth devices in a Volkswagen; seating Micro SD cards in a Hudl

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

In an attempt to close some tabs in my browser and transfer some notes to blog form, another “short takes” post…

Deleting paired Bluetooth devices from a Volkswagen MFD

The advice is for a 2012 Passatt but it worked for my Tiguan and probably for a Golf, etc. too (there’s a maximum of 4 connected devices – although only one can be active at any one time):

  1. “Go to the Phone on the center information panel
  2. Go to Users and you will the the phone names
  3. Scroll to the phone you want to remove
  4. Push the OK button on the steering wheel
  5. You will be offered some options, scroll down to Delete and hit OK”

Incidentally, Know Your VW is a useful site (although it is intended for the North American market).

Patience required inserting a Micro SD card in a Tesco Hudl

After buying my Tesco Hudl a few weeks ago, I decided to get a memory card to expand the on board capacity (e.g. cary more music/video with me).  Of course, Tesco is the last place I want to buy accessories like that and I picked up twice the capacity for half the price (or something like that) at MyMemory.co.uk.

The problem came when I wanted to insert the card into the Hudl.  For a while I seriously thought I had a faulty tablet that would need to be returned (a bit of a shame after getting it just how I wanted it, including rooting and customising…) – I kept on pushing the card in but it would spring straight out again.  It turns out that the Hudl’s card slot is very deeply recessed and some long nails (or even a knife) might be needed to push it in far enough and get it to stay in place!

 

 

Short takes: special cyclists’ edition

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

As this post goes out, my beloved Bianchi C2c Via Nirone 7 should have just emerged from the workshop after its first service.  Strava says I’ve ridden it for around 1200km and, as I rack up some miles in my training for several events this year (London-Paris in June, Wakefield to Manchester over Holme Moss in July, and the Ride London-Surrey 100 in August), it seems a good to point to take it back to Epic Cycles to give it a once over…

I’ve also got a few open tabs in my browser with cycling-related bits and pieces I mean to blog about… so here’s a special cycling-themed “short takes” blog post…

Editing GPX files

Every now and again, it’s bound to happen… you forget to stop the cycle computer/app on the smartphone and the resulting GPS eXchange format (GPX) file has a block in the middle where you were waiting for your mates to arrive/sitting in a coffee shop/whatever.  Then there are times when the GPS goes haywire and thinks you did 87.8kph down a hill, or when it just straight-lines a corner. In those instances, you might want to edit the file.

Thankfully, GPX files are not binary – they are just another XML schema – and the OpenStreetMaps Wiki has advice for editing GPX files in a text editor.  Hack around to your heart’s content, then upload to your social sharing site of choice.

Searching for bike serial numbers

We’re off to Centre Parcs later this year, and I needed to provide details of our bikes (useful for insurance purposes too).  Once again, I was searching for the serial number for my mountain bike and, once again, it was eluding me so, whilst it’s unlikely to apply to everyone who reads this blog, here’s the link to Trek’s advice on where to find your bike’s serial number.

 

Time for another #MKGN

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Woah… where did the last three months go?  It’s Milton Keynes Geek Night (@MKGeekNight) again tomorrow and I haven’t blogged about the last one yet (for that matter I can’t find my notes – in Evernote, OneNote, Keep, or anywhere else).  It’s a good job I don’t rely on this blogging lark for a living…

Luckily, the MKGN team have details of past talks on the website and the audio was recorded for posterity too.  As always, all of the speakers were great – but I particularly enjoyed hearing Christian Payne (@documentally), who I’ve followed for a while on Twitter, gave a really engaging talk about Storymaking.

So, who’s talking this time around?  Keynotes are from:

  • Andrew Clarke (@Malarkey) on the (I imagine somewhat provocatively titled) subject of “take your stinking paws off my design you damn dirty developers”.
  • Relly Annett-Baker (@RellyAB) on “future perfect tense: creating good content for an impefect web” (I think Relly has been promised before – so looking forward to hearing her at MKGN #8).

Then, there are 5 minute talks from:

  • Jeremy Taylor (@jdt_me), talking about “distributing the future more evenly, with JavaScript”.
  • James Bavington (@jamesbavington), on the topic of “knowing you know nothing”.

And, whether you’ve attended MK Geek Night in person, or enjoyed the recorded talks on Soundcloud, maybe you’ll consider voting for MKGN as “Grassroots event of the year” in the .Net Awards 2014?

Right… now lets hope Virgin Trains get me back from Manchester in time…

The importance of good communications for project success

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Once or twice a month, I travel to Manchester for work.  I usually get around by tram (Metrolink) when I’m there – there’s a stop close to our office and its convenient for travel to/from my hotel and the railway station.

Manchester’s tram system is being upgraded at the moment and, last week, I was amused by posters asking passengers to “bear with us whilst we make Victoria posh”:

As much as my southern sensibilities (actually, I’m from the East Midlands) cringe at the idea of “making something posh”, in fairness to Metrolink, they do have a great series of communications around their project (and whoever is responsible clearly has a sense of humour). One of my favourites is reproduced below:

“Dear [customers]
It can be fast.
It can be slow.
You can measure it in feet, inches, weeks, months and years.
And, occasionally, in leaps and bounds.
It’s going to take a little time.
And a lot of hard work.
But, rest assured, it is moving forwards.
Creating something better for us all.
So thank you for your patience.
And while our network is undergoing this transformation, we’ll keep you up-to-date with information.”

I like that poem, and I started to think about other applications for its use… something to consider for my next IT transformation project, perhaps – because good communications are vital to project success (and so many updates that I see are just dull walls of words).

Fixing the Apple iOS SSL bug on a jailbroken iPhone, without upgrading

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

My iPhone (4S) is jailbroken.  I won’t go into the details of how I did it as it changes with every release but I currently run iOS 7.0.4 and I used the Evasi0n method. Unfortunately, Apple has a pretty shocking bug in that version of iOS which means SSL transactions are not secure.

I didn’t want to go to the hassle of upgrading the OS, then jailbreaking again and, luckily, there is a workaround for fixing the iOS SSL issue on jailbroken iPhones without updating to iOS 7.0.6 (or 6.1.6) – although by the time I get this post written, 7.1 may well have hit the streets…

  1. Launch Cydia
  2. Switch to the Manage page, then select Sources
  3. Add Ryan Petrich’s repo (URL is http://rpetri.ch/repo)
  4. Go back to Manage and select Sources
  5. Search for SSLPatch and install as usual
  6. Restart SpringBoard when prompted

To test the patch (before and after), use the Goto Fail Apple SSL bug test site.

Removing Tesco customisations from my Hudl

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Just over a week ago, I bought a Tesco Hudl. It was an impulse purchase but the reviews were good considering the low price point (Gizmodo, Engadget) and that £119 price tag meant the risk to me as a consumer was low (considering what I paid for an iPad 4 years ago, which admittedly is a premium device but has hardly stood the test of time…).

After a couple of days I knew I’d made the right decision – I’ve been disappointed with Android on my phone but on a tablet it’s really usable (the Hudl uses Android 4.2.2 JellyBean) – and Tesco have provided an almost stock distribution. Even so, there are some “customisations” – a few apps and widgets to try and encourage more Tesco shopping, and a [T] launcher button in the bottom-left corner of the screen.  The apps and widgets are easy enough to move out of sight, but I really wanted to lose the Tesco Launcher [T]…

Rooting the tablet

Step one is to “root” the operating system – i.e. to give myself full access to all of the files and folders on the device.  Paul O’Brien (@paulobrien) has a great post on his MoDaCo forum on rooting the Hudl.

I fired up my Linux netbook (it still has some uses!), downloaded the ROMraid archive for the version of the Hudl software my device was running (JDQ39.20131016.200812) and extracted it but running sudo ./flashroot.hudl.linux.sh returned command not found.

After scratching my head for a few minutes I realised I also needed to chmod 755 flashroot.hudl.linux.sh to make it executable.  I tried the script again but this time the response was cannot execute binary file – it seems that the version of rkflashtool.linux included in the ROM download was for 64-bit Linux and my netbook only has a 32-bit installation.

Plan B

Being a good geek, I have a pile of media waiting to be “sorted out” including some Linux live CDs, so I fired that up on another PC and this time managed to flash the Hudl (I used an Ubuntu 13.10 live CD – CentOS 5.5 refused to play).  If you’re having trouble getting the device into the right state, then check out Matt Foot (aka @glossywhite)’s advice on MoDaCo:

  1. Turn Hudl off.
  2. Connect via USB to PC.
  3. Hold down Volume Up (+), push the reset button for one sec (recessed hole with gold dot in it) and continue holding the Volume Up button.
  4. To check that this has put the Hudl in flashing mode, and to verify that it isn’t merely in charging mode, release Volume Up after around 10 seconds and tap once on the power button; if you see a battery, it has failed, so try again.

I found that the Live CD didn’t want to execute anything from a USB stick or local hard disk in the PC (Windows file systems), so I copied the following files to /home/ubuntu:

flashroot.hudl.linux.sh
rkflashtool-linux
system.backup.img

I also chmodded and to make them executable, then ran sudo ./flashroot.hudl.linux.sh

At this point, I saw lots of lines like:

rkflashtool: info: writing flash memory at offset 0x00000000

(up to 0x00341fe0) and then:

rkflashtool: info: rkflashtool v5.1
rkflashtool: info: Detected RK3188…
rkflashtool: info: interface claimed
rkflashtool: info: rebooting device…

The device then restarted in charging mode, and I powered it up as usual. Paul’s instructions say to install SuperSU from the Google Play Store but it seemed to be installed already; however I did update it.

Removing Tesco customisations

As I mentioned at the top of the post, the Hudl comes with a Tesco Launcher icon in the bottom-left of the screen and is also pre-loaded with a number of apps for Tesco services. Paul O’Brien has posted one method of removing the Tesco Launcher [T] but I decided to use a variation of Mr Akufu’s method, with Paul’s hacked SystemUI.apk file (which can be used with the JDQ39.20131016.200812 firmware):

  1. Extract SystemUI.apk from SystemUI.hudl.zip.
  2. Using your method of choice, transfer the file to your device – I used Dropbox, and then selected the option to Export, then Save to SD card (Internal Storage) but others have suggested Bluetooth, or ADB.
  3. Install Rooted SSH/SFTP Daemon from the Google Play store and start it.
  4. Connect using your SSH client of choice (I used PuTTY) over a Wi-Fi connection to the Hudl.
  5. Login as root, with password abc123
  6. Issue the following commands:
    su
    mount -o remount,rw /system
    cp /system/app/SystemUI.apk SystemUI.mybackup.apk (I didn’t do this but it would have been sensible…)
    cp /storage/emulated/legacy/SystemUI.apk /system/app/SystemUI.apk
  7. After this, the Hudl should reboot.
  8. Following restart, the Tesco button should be gone – use Root Uninstaller to disable (not remove) the Hudl Updates package.

If you want to go further, there’s another MoDaCo post that talks about removing all of the Tesco application packages… and more information on which Android packages are safe to remove at Android Central.