It's the end of the WoT as we know it...

The end is near, only about 900 pages away now... The last and final book of Wheel of Time, a fantastic story started by the late Robert Jordan and now finished by Brandon Sanderson.

I got it few days ago but haven't started reading yet. While waiting I've read through most of Brandon Sandersons books and I was halfway through Warbreaker when the book arrived and I wanted to finish it first. Before that I read through the Mistborn Trilogy, The Alloy of Law, The Way of Kings, Legion and The Emperor's soul.

12 years after I started reading the first Wheel of Time book I will now read the final volume. To bad Robert Jordan isn't here with us to see the completion of his masterpiece.

EKH Tutorial 6 - Workaround for Samsung devices

The is the sixth tutorial for External Keyboard Helper. You'll find a all the tutorials here.

This tutorials is only interesting for Samsung users. I'm going to use my Galaxy S3 as an example but the problem is present with most (if not all) Samsung firmwares.

The problem looks like this:

Just a little information popup, how could that be a problem? Well, once you press OK on the dialog it will change your Input Method to "Samsung Keyboard" so it's just not informing you what it thinks you should use, it also makes you use it whether you want it or not.

On my Galaxy S3 this pops up whenever I connect a Bluetooth keyboard but only if "Samsung Keyboard" is not the currently selected Input Method. So let's say I use SlideIT as my preferred Input Method:

 
Now let's say I connect my Bluetooth keyboard and since I'm using External Keyboard Helper it will show the Input Method selector. However first Samsung will show their dialog and then the Input Method selector puts itself on top of it.

So I first select External Keyboard Helper and then I get back to the Samsung dialog and press OK. What happens now is that the Input Method will be switched to "Samsung Keyboard" which is not what I wanted. Not good!

I do not think there is a way to prevent the Samsung dialog from starting unless you are rooted and willing to mess around on your system partition. Still there is a workaround, it's not perfect but it's better than nothing.

What we need to do is to increase the Detection delay in the Advanced settings for External Keyboard Helper. In this example I set it to 4 seconds but most people will probably settle for 2 seconds after getting used to the procedure.

Now we bought us 4 seconds where we can press OK in the Samsung dialog before External Keyboard Helper brings up the Input Method selector. What we do is that we let Samsung first set the Input Method to their own one and then we switch it back to External Keyboard Helper.

So by setting up a delay we can make sure that Samsungs switch takes place before our switch and not the other way around.

Nexus 10 - Unboxing and first look

Santa was early this year and today my Nexus 10 arrived.

Carefully opening the box reveals the Nexus 10 complete with protective plastic.

Under the Nexus 10 we find the charger, a UK plug for the charger, a micro USB cable, a quickstart guide and some warranty information. The majority of the space in the box is occupied by air.

After removing the unnecessary parts (protective plastic, quickstart guide and warranty information) this is what remains.

Actually the UK plug is useless for me and Handtec had promised to include an international adapter but they had forgot to include it. However they quickly responded to my mail and promised the send me one. Luckily I have a lot of micro USB chargers so I'll manage for now.

Side by side comparison with my Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Thickness seems pretty much the same but the Nexus 10 is thinner at the shorter edges while the Galaxy Tab 8.9 has the same thickness on all the sides (Nexus 10 to the left).

 The Galaxys Tab on top of the Nexus 10.

After a short time of using the Nexus 10 it got a 60Mb OTA upgrade. Not sure what changed but I do not think it had the lock screen widgets before the upgrade (but I could be wrong).

Compared to my Tegra2 based tablets it's really fast but someone who compared the Nexus 10 with a Galaxy Note 10.1 felt that the Note 10.1 was slightly more responsive. Considering the massive amount of pixels the Nexus 10 has to push I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't the fastest tablet in all benchmarks. High resolutions usually has a price. However so far I feel it is "fast enough" and the screen is really good. Although I still consider the screen on my Galaxy Tab 8.9 to be very good with it's 1280x800 pixels you can easily see the difference when you compare it to the Nexus 10.

I have not had that much time to play with it yet but it runs Netflix perfectly and I also tried hooking it up to my 42inch plasma using a micro HDMI cable it it worked as intended.

The only thing that I'd like to chamge is the placement of the virtual buttons that in Android 4.2 is centered and not left aligned as they are on tablets with Android 3.0 to 4.1. I'm used to reaching the buttons with the left thumb even in landscape mode and with this new centered buttons the joints in my left thumb are already starting to hurt.

EKH Tutorial 5 - Application shortcuts and Text strings

The is the fifth tutorial for External Keyboard Helper. You'll find a all the tutorials here.

A nice feature in External Keyboard Helper is the possibility to add Application shortcuts and Text strings to keys. In this example I will configure Alt+G to start Gmail and Alt+M to start Maps. I will also make it possible to quickly write http://www.apedroid.com by just pressing Alt+A.

I will not go into details on how to create a new custom layout, go to the second tutorial for that.

First I enter the Advanced settings and choose to setup some Application shortcuts.

Right now all the slots A0 to AF are empty.

I select the first slot, A0, and a list of all my installed and system apps shows up. From that list I select Gmail.

I repeat the procedure for A1 and select Maps and when I'm done the list looks like this.

Now I go back into Advanced settings and choose to configure Text strings.

Also here we find 16 empty slots, T0 to TF.

In the first slot, T0, I enter http://www.apedroid.com.

Do not forget to scroll down to the bottom of the list and press Save.

Now all that is left is to map them to keys so i choose to customize my layout. If I would already have mappings for G, M and A then I would need to select those from the list but since I'm using the English(US) layout in this example there are no current mappings to those keys so choose to add a new mapping.

First out is G which has scancode 34 and in the AltGr field I enter a0 for Application shortcut 0. The app will automatically change a0 into unicode 0x2410 so I could, if I wanted, have entered 0x2410 directly. However entering a0 (or A0) is much easier.

I repeat the procedure for M (scancode 50) and enter a1 in the AltGr field. For mapping the Text string the procedure is the same and I enter t0 in the AltGr field for A (scancode 30).

Back in the list of remapped keys I can see the new mappings.

Checking the mappings confirms that a0, a1 and t0 are translated into 0x2410, 0x2411 and 0x2400.

This is the end of tutorial 5 that should give you a pretty good idea on how to setup Application shortcuts and Text strings for yourself.