Welcome
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The State of Android
Jean-Baptiste Queru had this to say upon the release of the Froyo code into the Android Open Source Project (the "dump" of Froyo, making it available to modders, coders, reviewers, bug hunters, etc.):
In order to make it easier for device manufacturers and custom system builders to use Froyo, we’ve restructured our source tree to better separate closed-source modules from open-source ones. [...] We’ve also incorporated into the core platform all the configuration files necessary to build the source code of Android Open-Source Project on its own. You can now build and boot a fully open-source system image out of the box, for the emulator, as well as for Dream (ADP1), Sapphire (ADP2), and Passion (Nexus One).
Very interesting. That's a big portion of the Android phone market that's going to be upgradable to Froyo very easily. Google are paying attention to fragmentation. But here's a rundown anyway:
The Good Stuff
- Have a Droid, Dream (G1), or Magic (G2)? Don't wait for CM6, upgrade now. It may not be OTA, but it's worth it, and it's easy to install.
- Have a Slide, or Hero? CM6 is just around the corner: it looks to be a pretty snappy release. Follow @koush for updates.
- Have a Desire or Evo? Get CM6 if you want, but your OTA should be arriving shortly (or a few days ago :-).
The bad Stuff
- Have a XPERIA™ X10(lulz)? Just wait; the modders should catch up with you in a bit. Alternatively, you've only got the rest of the year to wait until you get 2.1. No word on what's after that, though. You better hope these latest configuration changes Google have done make it easy for Sony. Otherwise you'll end up like...
- Telecom's new Android phone: the LG GW620f. Well, you're screwed. 1.5 or 1.6 for you, and no upgrade in the forseeable future. No eclair, no froyo, no gingerbread. No WebM, no native Exchange support (instead supported by potentially crappy third-party app), no Google Navigation, no Swype, no ADW launcher, no multiple Google profiles, no Twitter and Facebook contact syncing, no Google Apps support, etc. And you'll miss out on this:
On the performance front in particular, we have seen realistic improvements of 2x to 5x for CPU-bound code, compared to the previous version of the Dalvik VM. This is equivalent to about 4x to 10x faster than a more traditional interpreter implementation. (Dan Bornstein)
Really: if you want to get a reasonable Android experience, buy a phone with an unlocked bootloader and a recent version of the OS. The improvement from 1.5 to 2.2 is huge.
Ultimately, I think, consumers will just have to factor this into their decision of which brand they purchase. HTC has generally very upgradable phones: it treats Android well. Google marked phones (Dream, Sapphire, Nexus) do also. Others vary. Buy accordingly.
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Farewell, friends
On Friday I board the Cap Beatrice, a Hamburg Sud freight ship which should take me through the Panama Canal to Philadelphia. After that I have only vague ideas about what I may do, probably including New York and Oregon and anarchist communes. Many of you who could care about this already know it and came to my going away party on the weekend: thank you for coming, it really meant much to me.
Right now I am trawling through project gutenburg, picking up some serious reading for the trip, which should take about four weeks. Tonight I saw and greatly enjoyed The Last Station, and so I've downloaded War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Also Proust, and a few texts which aren't massively long.
Also on the list of things to do while at sea are write some more and finish updating jimmy. Then there are the onboard gym and table tennis table, and I found out today that at least one other passenger will be boarding at Auckland, so my fear of cabin fever is somewhat alleviated.
And, well, it'll be something of an adventure, I hope. I don't know when I'll come back to New Zealand, but I won't forget all the great friends I have here: I won't be able to stay away forever.
Love to you all,
Travis
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Marginalia
Dom, this is for you. I know how much you like Hemingway, and I know how much you hate people who write in library books:
Describing a group of men causes our friend to write "gay" in the margin.
Oh, Brett's a girl? Never would have guessed that from the fact that the next word is "She".
The best is: "I suppose you like to add them up." -> homo.
It's so much fun having a studious precursor point out the nuances of a writer's prose for you.
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Tax Changes Won't Keep Kiwis Home
Fran O'Sullivan thinks that the 2010 budget may change the thinking of present and future expats:
Kiwis have been sent a clear message to stay home and build their careers here with today's Budget package that will result in New Zealanders paying less tax that Australians once they hit the $50,000 pay rate.
Later on in the article O'Sullivan mentions OECD rates of expatriatism: ours is apparently third highest in the world. But see, funny thing about the OECD: they say our tax rate was already one of the lowest in the world before the budget.
The OECD Factblog, this month, posted a nice interactive graph. It shows that, for all eight family types in the dataset, New Zealand has one of the three lowest tax rates in the OECD. Our taxes are already lower than the vast majority of countries New Zealanders leave for: adding Mexico and Korea to that list is not going to make much difference.
Expats clearly don't go overseas for lower taxes. They go overseas for higher wages.
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Looking for the 1.3 or 1.4 version of "The Definitive Guide to Symfony"?
Well, it doesn't exist. Yet. And never under that name - it's now known as the "gentle introduction". But it's essentially the same thing: comprehensive coverage of the most commonly used bits of Symfony - not too vigorous, not too limited and not too example based. An excellent middle-of-the-road reference.
The only problem is it's not quite finished. But, luckily, it's now at github. This is great for two reasons. Firstly, it's not too bad viewing the latest version right on the site - it's written in markdown, which github understands and displays nicely. And secondly, it makes is super easy to fork and correct any problems that you come across while you're looking stuff up.
Edit: The guide has now been finished and is available here.
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Queen Street, Fleet Week, 1908
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Oh Snap, The Timelords Are Back.
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In a Land of Plenty
Very, very good full-length history documentary about New Zealand's economic and political reform through the late '80s and early '90s. Highly recommended:
It's weird for me watching this, as I grew up watching the evening news and seeing these faces, these things happening. But, of course, when I saw them then they were the strange adults talking about serious things on the telly. So a detailed look at broader themes of what was going on is fascinating for me.
Also, Phil Goff had some sweet glasses in the early '90s.
