Last month we went to see the recently renovated Várkert Bazár –literally “Castle Gardens Bazaar”— in Budapest’s castle district, here are some photos.
Samsung Galaxy Mini
GT-S5570I) doesn’t get system updates any more, so I need to manually move Google’s updates into ROM to make space for regular apps. You need root privileges to do this, so I was following these instructions on the XDA Forum which almost work fine. You need to download and apply a file update.zip but the problem is the update script inside doesn’t include S5570I in the list of phone models it checks for, so the script aborts.
All you need to do is edit /META-INF/com/google/android/updater-script inside update.zip and include this phone model in the assertion list, for example, I duplicated lines 15 and 16 and just added an I to the end:
getprop("ro.product.device") == "GT-S5570" ||
getprop("ro.build.product") == "GT-S5570" ||
getprop("ro.product.device") == "GT-S5570I" ||
getprop("ro.build.product") == "GT-S5570I" ||
Everything works completely fine after that. Obviously this is not a general solution when rooting, you can’t just blindly add your own phone model into any update.zip not knowing what’s in it, but since this was from a post for specifically this model and it already had several very similar models listed, I thought it was worth the risk and it turned out just fine. Woop! 😎
This gallery contains 9 photos.
Monday was a public holiday, so we went hiking following this route through the Buda hills from Hármashatár Hegy to Solymár. Here are some photos of the scenery:
I keep forgetting this, but it’s really useful when working in the command line so I’m writing it down now. I use the grml zsh configuration in my shell and it has several very good features; a cool one I’d use more often if I could remember the shortcut is “in-place mkdir”. The key sequence is:
Ctrl-X, Shift-M
That’s Ctrl and x, followed by an uppercase M.
Here’s an example use case: Imagine you’re writing a command to do something with a very long path, like moving a file deep into a source tree
mv File.java src/something/very/long/
except half-way in your realise some of the directories in that path don’t exist. No problem! Usually you’d have to cancel that command, create the missing directories and then type it again. Now you can just type Ctrl-X, Shift-M, the directories are created and you can just press enter to use them. Much less annoying! This can even work for different directories in the same command; move the cursor to the directory you need and zsh will create that one!
For other useful shortcuts, see the reference card.
You might notice if you browse this blog now, that it’s served over HTTPS. I’ve even added an Apache configuration to redirect plain HTTP requests to secure HTTPS and I’ve spent the last few days checking the pages for URLs including non-secure content and rewriting them to use HTTPS where possible, or otherwise removing them. You’ll also notice in the left-hand corner of the browser’s address bar, there’s a (hopefully familiar) little green lock which indicates:
Of those, the latter usually involves paying a trusted certificate authority a lot of money to verify and sign your site’s certificate so that browsers will mark it trusted. Security is important but this high cost often creates a barrier for small companies wanting to use https. Continue reading
Immediately after the last post about summing a range of numbers, a talented friend of mine, Gábor, offered an even shorter, cleverer solution:
What I especially like about it is that instead of relying on esoteric JavaScript functions to do the job, it’s done with reasoning and plain maths, which makes it clearer and easier to read too.
The Maths.abs() call is only needed because in the original problem, the arguments could be in either order; the logic is still the same though, you just need to make sure the range is positive. In short, it’s (a+b) × (a-b+1) ÷ 2.
A friend of mine hosts meetups for the Free Code Camp, which describes itself as:
We’re an open source community of people who learn to code and help nonprofits.
He organises casual meetings in coffee shops to allow participants to work on their assignments in a nice environment and help each other. If you’re looking to learn programming I recommend finding a Free Code Camp group in your area.
Today I visited such a meeting and one of the Code Campers was working on a solution for one of the JavaScript problems in the Intermediate Algorithm Scripting section. The task was to write a function that takes an array of 2 numbers as an argument and returns the sum of all the numbers between them, including the 2 numbers themselves. For example, an input of [3, 1] should result in 6, because 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. As a hint, it’s recommended you read the documentation for Math.min(), Math.max() and Array.prototype.reduce(). Continue reading
Visiting the Buffalo reserve in Kapolnapuszta
Székely kapu in Tapolca main square
I joined the International Christian Fellowship of Budapest (ICFB) not knowing what to expect. Admittedly, having never been part of any kind of “Christian Group” before, initially I had my doubts. I was more of a quiet Christian, striving to show kindness but rarely talking to another person about Christianity. So it was with hesitation that I told Berni I’d join her to visit a group for Christians, which her friend Eszter had invited her to.
On the way home that Friday, chatting about plans for the weekend, my friend Attis told me the reason he’s got his guitar with him is because he’s on the way to an international Christian meet-up for students and young professionals, and asked me if I’d like to come along. This sounded cool and I like spontaneity but I’d already set plans for the evening with Berni. Of course it didn’t take long before we figured out we’d both been invited to the same event; I laughed all the way there.
I’ve been participating in ICFB’s Friday meet ups for almost three years now. I love the group and I’ve made some good friends there. My favourite part is singing together, so I always bring a guitar with me. I’d say even among other IFES groups in Hungary we’ve made a name for being lively and singing with spirit.
Árpád’s map
However, we don’t just sing and we don’t just meet on Fridays. People often come sharing verses, insights or personal questions that make for good discussion. In good weather we might meet in parks on weekends and sometimes I bring my rugby ball to share a bit of my culture through touch-rugby.
That’s just me though; everyone has their own personal part in ICFB that makes it special for them and even though we’re all so different we all have one thing in common.
This was originally written as a guest post for mekdsz, the Hungarian evangelical Christian student fellowship. You can read their Hungarian translation here:
A nemzetközi helyzet tovább fokozódik.