A couple of days ago I unveiled (aka quietly uploaded some files, in contrast to Kim Dotcom I suppose) version 2.0 of randomlygifted. The front page hasn’t changed all that much – you still have the option of picking a gender and setting a maximum budget. But now, instead of going through items one-by-one, randomlygifted now has an awesome “infinite scrolling” feature that pulls up random items pretty much forever. AND IT ACTUALLY WORKS!

Sometimes it’s the little things in life that are the most exciting.

Anyway, check it out: randomlygifted

Dynamite? What dynamite?

The game begins in a train car on the Orient Express. There’s an intro movie, of course, but other than showing your character, Robert Cath, getting onto the train in fashionably late style, you get a scant few details. It’s your job to figure out who’s who and what’s what.

As you make your way through the cars, you’ll get the very real sense that this train is surprisingly lifelike. Things are actually happening. There’s the annoying kid running through the cars, blowing a whistle and amusing himself at everyone else’s expense – until his mother yells at him. There’s the conductor that stops to tip his cap and say, “Bonsoir, monsieur” as you walk by. There’s the two socialite girls sitting in the dining car, conversing about Madame Bovary in a mixture of English and French. Sure, it’s a game, but if there was ever a game to make you feel like you’re sitting on the Orient Express circa 1914, this is it.

The Last Express is largely a point-and-click adventure game. If you’ve played Return to Zork, 7th Guest, or Myst, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect from the context-based mouse interface. You move around and explore the train by clicking certain areas of the screen, and carry an inventory of items that you can use to interact with the world. It works, but I can’t say it works quite well (more on this later). The entire game takes place on the train, and a good bit of it consists of going from one end to another, waiting for opportune times to sneak into other passengers’ compartments, and rifling through their luggage. I’m not even kidding.

Breaking into yet another compartment yields a lesson in pubic hair.

One of the game’s major gimmicks (I hesitate to even call it that, it’s done so well) is that it takes place in real time, except sped up significantly. That means, while you’re sitting there reading the morning newspaper, there are conversations and events going on that you’re missing out on.

Fortunately, The Last Express also provides a rewind and fast-forward feature, letting you go back in time to any cutscene, train stop, or other semi-important point. You can then opt to replay the game from that point on, erasing your now-future progress, or simply go forward in time up until the latest point that you’ve reached. It’s an excellent save system, and if you miss something important, it’s pretty much your fault.

It’s hard to actually describe much of the story without giving away substantial hints, but here’s a taste of what you’re in for on the Last Express: murder, a golden bird, terrorists, spies, a bomb, a concert, more murder, a million conversations, and by far, my favorite – getting punched in the face and losing the game.

*crunch*

Presentation is solid; the game uses a mix of pre-rendered backdrops and line-drawn animations, and the sound – the music, sound effects, and the voice acting – is well done. The voice acting is especially good, and combined with the script, makes for an extremely memorable experience. There’s an amazing variation in languages onboard the train – expect to hear a mixture of English, French, German, Russian, Serbian, Persian – some of it subtitled, some not (your character understands English, French and some Russian, so you get subs for those).

A good example of the pre-rendered background/line-drawn art.

So where does the game fall short? Two areas.

First: in The Last Express, there are many ways to end the game (99% of which are deaths or being arrested, but in one you take care of the bad guys, get a medal AND STILL LOSE), but only one way to “win”. Getting there will require you to fail repeatedly and rewind/replay certain points until you figure out the exact path that the game wants you to take. Are you supposed to help the Serbians? Or the prince guy? Or the Austrians? You don’t find out until someone stabs you in the chest and you realize, welp, I guess that was the wrong move.

Second: the interface. 1. There’s a fair bit of pixel hunting in this game, and since locations are pre-rendered shots, it’s often hard to tell what you can and can’t interact with at a glance, short of moving the mouse over every possible thing. 2. Some items are designated as “large”-sized, which means you can’t do much while holding them – including boneheaded things like PICKING UP A KEY. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t tell you when you’re carrying something large-sized. 3. You’d be better served ignoring the manual’s advice: “it is not productive to take items from your inventory at random and ‘scan the screen’ with them.” When you’re stuck, this is EXACTLY what you need to do.

All in all, these are relatively minor quibbles that detract from what is really a pretty brilliant game.

The Last Express is available for the PC and iOS; I haven’t tried the iOS version, but a touch interface would be pretty well-suited for the game. Recommended.

Curiosity is actually an EP (extended play, basically not long enough to really call it an album), and comes with six fun-filled tracks:

Call Me Maybe

Just a Step Away

Picture

Curiosity

Both Sides Now

Talk To Me

(if you have FlashBlock running, click on the black bars to show the YouTube player)

So why do I like this album? It’s light, it’s fun, and it’s catchy. Songs like Call Me Maybe (the leadoff single) and Just a Step Away are simple affairs: it’s just a girl, some violins, maybe some small drum beats here and there, and yet – these are songs that’ll be stuck in your head for days. Picture and Curiosity throw some electro-pop into the mix, but fortunately never outshine Carly Rae’s pleasant vocals. Rounding out the EP are Both Sides Now (a cover of an oldschool Joni Mitchell song) and Talk To Me, a song that probably gets my vote for worst song of the bunch (which, honestly, is not that bad, considering how good everything else is). This is an album to be blasted in your car in the middle of summer.

Highly recommended if you like strategically placed violins. Or if you appreciate good catchy female pop.

(And when you’re done listening to Call Me Maybe for the 584th time, be sure to grab Carly Rae Jepsen’s first album, Tug of War (2008). It’s slower, maybe not quite as catchy, but it’s certainly more acoustic. Unfortunately, no violins.)

…and now, back to the original subject.

Here’s a summary of AT&T’s data plans (updated 3/4/12, a couple of days after AT&T “clarified” their throttling policy):

300MB Smartphone Data: $20, $20 for every 300MB after
3GB Smartphone Data: $30, $10 for every 1GB after
5GB Smartphone Data 4G LTE: $50, $10 for every 1GB after
Unlimited Data for Non-Smartphones: $15

So the first three are your typical baller data plans where, at the cheapest, you get a whopping 300 megs for 20 bucks a month. And if you go over your 300MB, you get dinged with another $20. But there is hope. And that is the unlimited plan for non-smartphones (aka dumbphones), which just happens to be only $15.

Non-smartphones are supposed to be any phone that doesn’t have some kind of actual OS (versus, say, firmware). But on AT&T, a non-smartphone is any phone that is not tagged in the system as a smartphone OR is not sold by AT&T. That means if you can find a smartphone on a provider that uses the same frequency bands (basically, specific parts of the radio spectrum where data is transmitted) as AT&T, you can have your cake and eat it too: getting unlimited 3G/4G data while paying the $15 non-smartphone fee. Note: this method does not work on iPhones, and in some rare cases, specific smartphones that use similar IMEIs (that really long number that identifies your phone) across different carriers.

The hardest part in executing this strategy is finding phones that use the same 3G/4G frequencies, which are 850 and 1900 mhz. Luckily, there are two providers in Canada that use 850/1900 and thus make our job easier: Bell Canada and Rogers. So you can buy pretty much any smartphone phone on either carrier, or any phone that has AT&T’s 3G/4G bands but isn’t AT&T branded (ie, many Nokia smartphones).

Once you acquire a phone (and possibly unlock it), all you need to do is pop in your AT&T sim card and you’re golden.

So why would you want to go this route? A couple of reasons:

• You want an unlimited data plan (no overage fees but possible throttling).
• You want to save money ($15 for the non-smartphone plan vs. $20 for 300MB or $30 for 3GB).
• You want a different phone that you can’t normally get on AT&T.
• You want to stay off-contract. Since you’re procuring the phone yourself, this doesn’t affect your contract in the slightest.

And of course, there are a couple of caveats:

• If you use less than 300 megabytes of data per month, this is probably not financially worth it (since you can opt for the $20 data plan, you’d be saving only $5 per month), unless the phone you buy is SUPER cheap.
• If you go the traditional route and get a new contract/upgrade your phone, you will pay less up front than doing the non-smartphone strategy. Unlocked smartphones can be up to 500 bucks (in some cases, even more).
• You lose the ability to take your phone into an AT&T store and get it replaced instantly.
• Most likely, you’ll need to get your Canadian smartphones from eBay.

This strategy really shines if you’re trying to maximize your wireless plan savings, and are willing to use an old Bell/Rogers beater smartphone. In this situation, if you snag a cheap beater smartphone from eBay, you could be killin’. That translates into saving $15 bucks per month for however long you stay on the non-smartphone plan. From a different perspective, that’s a savings of $360 in two years where you’d normally have paid $720 for 3GB data. Nasty.

Yet again, I find myself rushing to catch a train that I’m pretty sure will zoom away while I attempt to chase it down – you know, like in the movies. But karma’s on my side today, because I actually make the train, thanks to a system they have here – if you don’t have time to buy a ticket, the clerk at the desk gives you a slip of paper that allows you to pay at your ending station. And they don’t charge you some stupid surcharge like NJ Transit.

Nagano City is kind of like Nagoya, minus the mountains in the distance.

It's Nagano City!

The train station is a sort of two-leveled strip mall of sorts, and there’s a variety of restaurants, convenience stores, and the ubiquitous Yenshop. There’s a shopping mall close by the station with a nice selection of eateries in the basement.

A view of the statue in front of the Nagano City train station.

For now, I’m off to take a bus (bus stops are located right in front of the station) to the fabled land known as Togakushi. I’ve since learned that the roads in Togakushi are as bad – or worse – as you’ve heard about Japanese mountain roads. Ever heard of Initial D? It’s a famous anime series/live-action movie that stars a kid who tears down mountain roads at blinding speeds. My version is called Initial C, and it’s about a guy in a large bus tearing through mountain roads at 2 mph.

By the time I get to Togakushi, the rain is coming down nicely. I’m ready with a pair of rain boots that was graciously lent to me by the innkeeper. that are, quite unfortunately, at least 3 sizes too large. Maybe more. So I came up with this brilliant idea of stuffing my boxers (as in boxer shorts) into them so they could fit. Okay, it was actually a terrible idea and I’m now walking around Togakushi with MY BOXERS IN MY BOOTS. This is beyond embarrassing.

The entrance to Togakushi: take the straight 2km path, or wind around the botanical gardens.

The main attraction in Togakushi is the shrine, and the 2km path that precedes it. You can either take the direct path, or take a stroll through the botanical gardens on the side. I opt for the latter, and slosh around in the mud (thank goodness for oversized rain boots, I guess) for an hour before I make it to the shrine entrance.

A map of Togakushi forest preceding the gate.

The gateway leading to the shrine is kind of, really, seriously deceptive. After the long trek, you’ve finally arrived at the shrine, where you can pay your respects and all that jazz, right? Noooo-pe! The actual shrine is further up, way up, through a long path that slowly gets steeper and more treacherous as you get closer to the top. By treacherous I mean lots of medium-sized rocks and rock stairs on the path digging into your feet and making the ground completely uneven. You do get treated to some views of giant trees, like the redwoods in California, and some great viewing spots/picture-taking areas by a stream running parallel to the path.

Gigantic trees line the sides of the main path up to the shrine.

I'm a sucker for cool-looking bridges and streams.

A set of stairs venturing deeper int o Togakushi forest.

For what it’s worth, the shrine is pretty lame. But it’s more about the trip there and back.

Here's your reward for climbing to the top of the Togakushi path: a shrine.

There are other notable spots in the Togakushi area, like a Ninja museum for kids (tourist trap warning?), random ice cream stores, and a ski resort. I can’t vouch for the quality of any of these, however.

I spend my afternoon traipsing about Nagano City, going through various nooks and crannies. Among one of my sadder findings:

You can visit the place (I think?) where the Olympics' closing ceremonies were held. It's been reduced to a rusted parking lot, merely a shadow of its former self.

So why Nagano?

I don’t really have a good answer, unfortunately. I started in central Japan (Tokyo), and moved west (Nagoya), then even more west (Osaka), then Northwest (Kyoto). I figured I’d circle around and make my way back to Tokyo, where I would take my flight home on Day 22.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to circle around from Kyoto to Nagano. You have to basically backtrack back to Nagoya, then take a different shinkansen directly north.

I wasn't kidding about the fruitcakes.

Leaving Kyoto is a sad experience. I know I’ve said this like five times already, but I feel like I’m leaving a part of me behind – and while I could stay (and cancel my Nagano ryokan reservation – at Hostelworld you have to pay 10% if you cancel, which is not a huge deal), Yashi informs me that there are no more openings for tonight, so I’d have to find another place to sleep anyway. Idea scratched.

There isn’t much to say about the trip to Nagano, other than that I guess I’ve gotten accustomed to the Japanese railway system.

Arriving at Togura is like my first night in Japan. And probably the sign of a bad omen. It’s quickly getting dark, and absolutely POURING when I step off of the train. I have my small umbrella, but after two weeks in Japan it’s bent and one rod is broken. I honestly have no idea how. But I suspect it won’t last the rest of my trip all the same.

Anyway, the walk from the train station to the ryokan looked short on the map, maybe 15-20 minutes tops. Nope! That map must not have been to scale. Or maybe the rain slowed me down. It’s hard to say. Either way, it takes me fifteen minutes just to get to the bridge.

I’ve since nicknamed this bridge “The Bridge of Death”. Let me describe it.

First, it’s about 100 feet high. There’s a very low railing, and it spans two rivers, one of which looks like it has some minor rapids included free of charge. I hazard a guess that falling from this height would hurt a lot. Not that it matters, I’d probably die from sheer fright way before hitting the water.

Normally, I would just stand like 10 feet away from the edge, but that’s not possible since the road is narrow and cars regularly drive by. So I’m stuck tiptoeing the length of the bridge about 2 feet from the railing, as the wind picks up and starts blowing me around. So the choices are either:

1) Don’t get wet but possibly get blown off the bridge from the wind, or
2) Get really really wet.

In the interest of my own self-preservation, I choose option #2 and just trudge through the rain as fast as I can without falling into the murky depths. Did I mention I have a really, really bad fear of heights?

So, yeah, it’s not a good day. In hindsight, I probably should have just walked back to the station, grabbed the first train to Nagoya/Kyoto, and enjoyed lovely Gion district, playing pachinko and singing karaoke.

After crossing the bridge I end up in what I can only call a backwater sort of town, flanked by a large mountain range. It is quite dead, unless you count the occasional dimly-lit street lamp. I walk around a bit, mostly trying to pinpoint the location of the ryokan where I’ll be staying the next two nights. It’s called Kamesei Ryokan, after a legend about a turtle that I will not rehash here because I’ve forgotten it already. It was fascinating though.

I meet the innkeeper, who’s – surprise! – a white guy from the USA named Tyler. Our conversation goes something like this:

Innkeeper: “Hey, how come you didn’t call us up? I could’ve given you a ride from the train station.”

Me: *facepalm*

Innkeeper: “You know, we offer a full course meal of local specialties. You should give it a try. So how about it?”

Me: “Uh, I’m not really-”

Innkeeper: “It’s a really great way to sample a lot of the local cuisine.”

Me: “Thanks but-”

Innkeeper: “You should definitely try it.”

Tyler-san gives me an overview of the surrounding area, and recommends several places for dinner. None of them sound particularly appealing, unless you count the one that’s owned by a retired geisha who doesn’t speak much English. I decide against it though. He also takes pains to remind me, yet again, that I should try the 4300 yen specialty dinner in the ryokan’s own restaurant. I do the mental calculation in my head: roughly a shirt and a half from RageBlue. NO THANKS.

Well, at least the digs are nice.

Eventually he shows me to my room, and it’s nice. Really nice. Much nicer, in fact, than any other room I’ve stayed in during this entire trip. It looks like a four-person room, but fortunately for me, no one else decided to stay at the Kamesei. So I have this huge room to myself. There’s a separate bathroom and nice indoor balcony area, but no shower, because Kamesei is one of the only inns with their own natural onsen (which has its own showers anyway). On my first trip to the bathroom, I spot a medium-sized spider running up a wall and jump back roughly twenty feet. I really hate spiders, and I don’t particularly relish the thought of sitting on the toilet with a spider waiting to drop onto my head.

Yep, that's rain.

I head back out into the great unknown with the purpose of procuring something for dinner. Everything looks closed. I end up at a Hotto Motto fast-food (I guess it’d be fast-casual here) joint and, with my awesome ability to read Japanese and not understand it, manage to order a Korean beef bowl that I take back to my lonely room at the Kamesei.

A fine choice of cuisine, courtesy of Hotto Motto.

With nothing much to do and no desire to go back out into the rain, I enjoy an evening soak in the onsen, and for a time, think of nothing but my own quiet thoughts. Tomorrow is another day.

I did, however, need a decent note-taking application for daily reminders and the like. I had only one real requirement: the app had to let you add a widget on your home screen that actually displayed the note. And believe it or not, I couldn’t find a single one on the Market that did the job right without looking like a cartoony slanted Post-It note.

So finally I decided to just write one myself.

Clear Note Widget is the result. It does one thing and one thing only, which is to let you add and display notes on your home screen. You can customize the look and feel of your widget up to the point where you can make the background completely transparent. Which looks pretty cool.

Here’s some screenshots of the app at work:

Clear Note Widget is 99 cents on Android Market.

Thanks to the Market’s liberal returns policy, you can buy it, try it for 15 minutes, and return it if it doesn’t meet your (arguably high) standards for Sticky Noting.

An oldie but goodie.

Nature Valley Fruit and Nut Bars

The fruit and nut bars have long been a staple in my snack food diet, and for good reason: they’re tasty and aren’t horribly bad for you. I consider them the standard by which all other snack foods must be judged. I eat several hundred of these a year. I’m serious.

Anyway, the nice thing about these bars is that they have a nice, satisfyingly chewy consistency, unlike many of Nature Valley’s other offerings. Ever try the dark chocolate bars? They’re dry, rock-hard, and taste horrible to boot. The last and only time I bought a big box of the stuff from Costco, I had to resort to Tom Sawyer-level trickery to get other people to eat them (“wow, mmm, they’re so goooood!”).

So if you haven’t tried the Fruit and Nut bars, you should do so. They come highly recommended. The strawberry yogurt ones are good too.

Smart Fries. In the flesh.

Gourmet Basics Smart Fries, Classic Sea Salt

I came across these fries after surfing around Amazon looking for healthier alternatives with high reviews. These got some pretty high marks across the board. Well-deserved? You be the judge.

So the main draw of the “smart” fries is that they’re “air-popped”, which sounds awfully like popcorn to me. In actuality, the fries are thin and curvy little tidbits that are also hollow, ie. filled with air. That’s “air-popped”. As a result, eating a fry doesn’t give you the same satisfaction you get from eating a single pototo chip. It feels like you’re eating, well, nothing.

These taste almost exactly like the famous Calbee Shrimp chips (which look more like fries than these). It’s lightly salted, and not bad as far as taste is concerned.

One bag is 1 ounce, and contains a lot of fries. Considering each fry is like .0000001 ounces, the amount of work it takes to eat an entire 1 oz bag of fries feels like going through five bags of snack-size potato chips

The bag is also half-full/empty:

Peeking inside a bag of Smart Fries.

Clif Kid Zbar, Variety Pack

Credit slickdeals for this one. I bought the 24-pack of these Zbars, albeit with some hesitation considering how bad normal Clif bars taste. I can safely report that the Kid Zbars are much better than the adult Clif bars.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Clif Kid Zbars are made for kids. Now my rule of thumb is that anything for kids usually tastes better than comparabler adult stuff, with certain exceptions like Flintstones Complete chewable vitamins. Try them if you don’t believe me. But the Zbars are actually quite good even though they don’t look particularly appealing. As for the differences between the three different types of bars (Honey Graham, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Brownie), there aren’t many. Chocolate Brownie is a little more chocolate-y than the rest, Chocolate Chip has…chocolate chips, and Honey Graham tastes like Chocolate Chip without the chips.

As you can probably tell, I don’t have a lot to complain about here. I also don’t have a picture of the bars because I ate them all.

It was probably a mistake buying this variety pack considering I dislike 24 out of 50 of the included bags.

Doritos, Lays, Fritos, Cheetos, Variety Pack

Tucked away in the Cheetos ingredients label under all of the marked-up fat and sodium content is a well-known crowd-pleaser: monosodium glutamate, aka MSG, aka the stuff they put in Chinese food to make it taste extra salty and extra good. Is MSG actually bad for you? I can’t really tell you, because Wikipedia can’t really tell me, because no one seems to have really figured it out yet, despite the fact that the stuff’s been around for 100 years or so.

For me, I’m not so finely attuned to the taste of MSG that I can identify it on contact, like my brother, who also claims that it gives him headaches.

But I don’t know why a bag of Cheetos needs MSG, and because of this Cheetos has lost 90% of its respect points.

Anyway.

In the variety pack, you get two different kinds of Doritos, three types of Lays potato chips, some Fritos and some Cheetos. What’s annoying is that there isn’t an even number of bags in the box, no; instead, you get a lot some arbitrary mix of bags that Frito Lay decided to throw into a Classic Mix box. That means 20 bags of Doritos, 10 bags of Cheetos, 8 bags of Lays, 8 bags of Fritos, and another 4 bags of Lays BBQ flavor.

Now, this review is a little biased because I absolutely hate Doritos. So you might have to take this with a grain of salt, or MSG, when I say that both types of Doritos taste the same: terrible. But for the purposes of conducting a thorough review, I ate every single bag of Doritos in the box. (I first tried to give them away but no one wanted them…) The sacrifices that I make for science.

The two bright spots in this variety pack are the bags of Regular Lays and Fritos. And the nice thing about both of them is that their respective ingredient lists are bare amd empty, like it should be; Lays is made of potatoes, oil, and tons of salt. Fritos is made of corn, corn oil, and tons of salt. That is how I like my chips, down to its simplest form with a ton of salt.

Do yourself a favor and buy a big bag of Regular (or Wavy) Lays, and a bag of Fritos. Your brain (if those rumors about MSG causing brain tumors are true…) will thank me later.

The anatomy of a Balance Bar Gold, S'mores Flavor

Balance Bar Gold, S'mores

Balance Bars are pretty highly rated, or at least they were highly rated on drugstore.com, where I bought two boxes of the S'mores and Lemon Meringue flavors.

The reason that these are so-called Balance bars are named so is because they’re supposed to provide you with a nice balance of protein, carbs, and fat. That sounds great on the wrapper, but I don’t see why you need to have 20% fat to go along with the 40% protein and 40% carbs. It sounds like a hollow excuse for making a really fatty chocolate bar.

And the Balance Bar Gold ™ does not taste like a really fatty chocolate bar, nor does it stack up with actual S'mores. These bars don’t taste like S'mores any more than Smart Fries taste like French Fries.

But do they taste bad?

Not quite. But they don’t taste good either. I felt like writing some poetry, so here’s a haiku describing the sensation of eating a Balance Bar Gold ™ bar, S'mores flavor.

Bar goes in the mouth
Tastes just like chocolate
With sawdust and corn

Unfortunately I still have to eat 13 of these bars.

The Amazing Lemon Meringue Balance Bar

Balance Bar Gold ™, Lemon Meringue

Now, normally, I would have grouped the Balance Bars together, but this time I figured that the Lemon Meringue flavor deserved its own special place. Not a special place in hell, as you might have guessed. Oh, no. Quite the opposite.

After chewing my way fiercely through a Balance Bar Gold, ™ S'mores flavor, I was initially hesitant to try another. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I still had approximately twenty-nine bars left, which equates to over 3 pounds of bars, I wasn’t left with much of a choice.

I’ll say it straight: lemon meringue is the Balance Bar you want. Sell your S'mores bars on eBay, or whatever you do with leftover bars, and just buy these instead.

As you might expect, these bars have a distinctly lemon-y flavor. There’s also that annoying hint of cornmeal that seems to define all protein/carb bars, but the lemon does a pretty good job at hiding it.

Really Basic Stuff: A Quick Primer in webOS Usage

Most of the time, you’ll want to access your Launcher/app drawer. To do that, swipe from the bottom black bezel (the one with the button on it). Note that if you’re already in an application, this will only bring you to your card deck, which shows all of your open apps (aka cards). Touching the currently card and swiping it upwards will close that application, while left and right swipes will go through your cards. Swipe up again from the bottom bezel to bring up the Launcher. Pressing the Home key (that oval button on the bottom bezel) will do the same thing but I’ve found that it’s simply annoying to use in actuality.

To change preferences or get help within an application, check the top left corner. Usually you’ll be able to swipe downwards (this time, starting from the top left black bezel) to bring up the application menu with preferences and other fun goods.

The lock button is located on the top side of the Touchpad. Pressing it once will lock or unlock the pad, while holding it down will bring up the shutdown menu.

Updating Your Touchpad

First things first. Your stock Touchpad is version 3.0.0. The latest is 3.0.2. Time for an update.

Check out the System Updates application in the Settings tab.

The System Updates app will display your current version and let you download the latest one, if there is one. As of this writing, 3.0.2 wasn’t available (probably due to your fellow fire-salers hitting the update servers). However, there’s another way to get your Touchpad updated to the latest version, and that’s the webOS Doctor, a Java application prepared by HP that is supposed to be for recovering your device after bricking it. But it also works as an update alternative.

To see the Doctor, log into your HP webOS account. You’ll be using the same account that you created when you first booted the Touchpad. This page will also let you change your personal options, like your security question and email address, as well as show you your current devices. We’re only interested in the button that says “Device Options”, which is located next to the OS Version. Click that.

That’ll pop up another little box that has three options: I Lost My Phone, Remove From My Account, and Get webOS Doctor. I would suggest getting the Doctor.

The Doctor is a pretty damn big file and clocks in at a little over 220 megs. Once it’s installed, run it. Plug in your Touchpad and follow the prompts.

Eventually, the Doctor will download and install the 3.0.2 update, and reboot your device. Congratulations, you’ve completed the first step…the first of many steps.

Speeding Up Your Touchpad

The 3.0.2 update should speed things up a bit compared to the stock. But there’s a couple of ways to make things even faster and reduce choppiness.

First, you’ll want to turn off logging. Logging is basically storing all of the messages that Linux is outputting (that you can’t see and usually don’t matter) in case someone wants to debug it. Well, considering that the Touchpad is going the way of the dodo, these functions are pretty well useless, unless you’re some kind of super whiz-kid ninja hacker, in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this post in the first place.

Disable Logging, Part 1

Go to the Apps tab and load up the Phone & Video Calls application. As stupid as this sounds, you’ll need to either log in to or create a Skype account to get this trick working. Assuming you completed that step and you can see the DialPad in front of you (you’ll need to tap it to open it up), type in ##5647# and hit Dial. Presto! You should see a new menu appear that has four logging options. We’re only interested in the last one, Change Logging Levels…, so tap that. You should now see another dialog box with the option Set Logging to Minimal. Give that another tap.

Install Preware

Preware is a software installer/portal application that lets you install a whole crapload of homebrew (aka unsanctioned apps that are generally less friendly and look worse than your typical app store fare but seriously extend functionality). Its real strength lies in letting you install certain patches and nifty utilities, chief among them two patches that can reduce your device’s logging even further.

To start, you need to get your touchpad into Developer Mode. This lets it interface with your PC.

To activate this mode, go to the “Just type…” search box on the top of your home screen and type in webos20090606. You should see an option immediately pop up underneath it, aptly labeled “Developer Mode”. Touch it. Smell it. Like it.

After this, you’ll see a screen that prompts you to submit the developer mode password. Leave this field blank and click Submit.

Now you’re ready for phase two of installing Preware: installing Preware.

But before that, you actually need to download the webOS Quick Installer. This lets you install (duh!) homebrew from your PC to your Touchpad when connected through USB (vs. Preware, which lets you do it straight from your Touchpad). You’re going to use it to install Preware. (make sure your Touchpad is not connected to your PC)

Download the Quick Installer (PC).

Once installed, the program should prompt you to install the Novacom drivers. Do so. Quick Installer should automatically download and install the drivers.

Now you may connect your Touchpad to your PC, but don’t make any selections on the Touchpad. Back to the Quick Installer, click on the button that looks like a globe with arrows around it. This will sync the repository catalog to the installer. Once you have control of the program, type in preware in the search box and hit enter/click the magnifying glass. You should see one option on the left, and a whole bunch of stuff on the right side. Verify that it shows Preware in large letters, and hit Install.

You now have Preware.

Disable Logging, Part 2, 3 and 4

Open up the newly acquired Preware, and you should see a short list of options: Available Packages, Installed Packages, and List of Everything. You want Available Packages (tap). Next navigate to Patch -> System -> Muffle System Logging. Glance over the patch details, and when you’re ready, tap the Install button on the bottom. You don’t need to restart now, since we’ve got a couple more packages to install.

Next up is EOM Overlord Monitoring, available from Available Packages -> Linux Application -> Utilities. Read the description, and then hit install.

And finally, do the same for Available Packages -> Patch -> Misc -> Remove Dropped Packet Logging.

Make Swipes and Animations Smoother

There’s an excellent patch called Increase Touch Sensitivity and Smoothness which will effectively speed up animations and make things look smoother to the touch. Grab it from Available Packages -> Patch -> Misc. There are two versions, a standard version and a 10 version which I’m not quite sure about. Try both and see.

Get Rid of the Ripple Effect

You know the drill by now, right? Available Packages -> Patch -> System -> Remove Tap Ripple gets rid of that water rippling effect whenever you tap the screen, making things that much smoother.

Disable the Keyboard Clicking Sound

Sometimes it’s easy to mistake the Touchpad, with its ultra-realistic PC bleeper click sound, for the 110-key real deal, right? Uh, we’ll let our 10 words per minute speed record speak for itself. Get rid of the infernal clicking noise by going into Settings -> Sounds & Ringtones, and changing the value of “Keyboard Clicks” to Off, and you just might do yourself (and the whole world) a favor.

Overclock Your Touchpad

I remember the good old days of having to use pencils to overclock my PC. Fortunately, on the Touchpad, it’s a lot simpler.

Open up Preware and go to Available Packages -> Applications -> Govnah. Install it. This app lets you configure your maximum clock speeds and view a whole ton of data.

Get back to Preware. Swipe down from the top left corner to open up the application menu, and choose the Manage Feeds option. You’ll probably see a nice list of random feeds that are connected to Preware – these feeds basically populate your application list. Scroll all the way to the bottom, to the section titled “New Feed”. Guess what we’re going to do here?

Tap on the Name field and type in webos-kernels-testing. In the URL field, put in http://preware.is.awesome.com/ (I’m not sure that it matters, but the original thread from XDA uses it). Now hit Add Feed. You should get a disclaimer that you will need to agree to to continue. Now completely restart your Touchpad. (This step is required)

Once your Touchpad has finished rebooting, fire up Preware again. Open up the application menu and select Update Feeds. Hopefully you won’t get any errors here – if you do, delete the feed you just added and redo it.

You now have the ability to download new kernels, which provide you with overclocking powers.

In Preware, go to the Available Packages -> Kernel -> All. You should see a couple of options here, like F4 Phantom, F15 Eagle, Warthog, etc. I opted for F4 Phantom, but you can choose really any of them. Install it.

If you’ve gotten this far, then all you need to do to overclock your Touchpad is to change some settings. Load up Govnah.

The default page in Govnah is your at-a-glance profile view: it shows the frequency of both of your CPU cores, as well as some battery temperature and current data. Tap on the Profile option, and then tap on Advanced Settings, and then CPU Frequency. This should bring you to yet another list of options, although these options will be your bread and butter for overclocking.

Your Governor option (the first one in the list) should be ondemandtcl, unless you want both of your CPU cores to be constantly overclocked (probably not a good idea). Pay particular attention to the Min Freq and Max Freq options – they directly control your CPU frequencies. If your Max Freq is a mere 1.242 Ghz, you may change it here to 1.512 or even 1.728 if you so choose. I’ve been running my Touchpad on 1.512 Ghz and it’s been rock solid, but you may want to go deeper. Three levels deeper. Heh.

The Min Freq is the absolute lowest frequency that your Touchpad will go, even when idling. I’d suggest keeping it at 192 Mhz.

Congratulations, you’ve successfully overclocked your Touchpad.

Making Your Touchpad Look Cooler

Change Your Background Image

Hit the Settings tab again, and this time select Screen & Lock. Here you can Change Your Wallpaper (drop your images into /Wallpapers) and adjust brightness and auto-dimming.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Get Rid of the Default Email Signature

By default, the email client will attach a signature to all of your emails, even if it’s a reply: “Sent from my HP Touchpad”. This always seemed like a douche-y sort of move on phone/tablet companies’ parts, so let’s get rid of it and make the world a less douche-y place.

With the email client open, open up the application menu (swipe downwards from the top left corner, near the area that says “Email”) and select Preferences & Accounts. This’ll bring you to email preferences, where you can toggle whether you want to be prompted whenever you delete an email. In the middle of the page, there should be an Accounts listing, with all of your email addresses. The nice thing is you can change the signature for each account, and not just all of them at once. So tap on the email account that has the offending signature, and you’ll be at the Account Settings screen. And again, near the center of this screen, you’ll see a Signature field. Tap that to edit your sig.

Take a Screenshot

Hold down the Launcher button (that lone button on the bottom bezel) and press the Power Button. This will take a screenshot and store it in your /screencaptures folder.

Touchpad VNC and Remote Desktop Apps

Did you know there’s a very usable, free VNC client for the Touchpad? It’s called Rcontrol (beta), and you won’t find it on Preware or the HP App Store. Instead, mosey on over to here to download it. Install it with the WebOS Quick Install java application (see above, Installing Preware).

Splashtop is a remote desktop/VNC alternative that works really well with the Touchpad. Besides letting you control your PC from afar, Splashtop supports streaming music and user-configurable desktop resolutions. Note that it uses a proprietary protocol, which means you’ll need to install a separate application, called the Splashtop Streamer. You can find the Splashtop Touchpad app on the official HP App Store (it’s $9.99).

In my opinion, both of these two applications open up a new world of possibilities for Touchpad owners. Having access to your home PC from any place with wi-fi means you don’t necessarily need to lug around a laptop any more. That’s huge.

Improving Your Touchpad’s Battery Life

First, make sure you follow everything in the Speeding Up Your Touchpad section. The stuff in there will also improve your battery life, except for the overclocking part.

Battery Saver

If you’re unnaturally lazy like me, you probably don’t dutifully turn off your Touchpad every day before you go to bed to save battery life. A Preware app called Battery Saver (originally created for use on the Pre, but it still works, whatever) automatically puts the device in airplane mode during the hours that you specify. On the Touchpad, this equates to turning off the wi-fi, great if you have your device continually fetching mail every 5 minutes. Grab it from Available Packages -> Applications.

PHP stands for…you know, I actually have no idea what PHP stands for. Who really cares, anyway? Certainly not me, and probably not you either. Or maybe you do care. Well, too bad. Sherlock Homes said it best: “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.”

So we aren’t going to worry about trivial matters like this.

Instead, the important thing to know is that PHP is the de-facto language of the Web, powering high-powered sites like Facebook, Digg, and – I know you won’t believe this – angbox. All those blogs you read online? They’re probably created with WordPress, which means…yep, PHP.

Learning programming languages is rarely fun, unless you’re a born nerd. I know this because I am not a born nerd, evidenced by the fact that I got C+’s in Physics, Calculus, and pretty much every math and science course I’ve taken since the seventh grade. But I’m going to make a serious effort to keep things enjoyable, unlike every other PHP site out there that is boring as hell. I plan to do this with a lot of heavy sarcasm.

So why would you want to learn PHP?

This is an important question, maybe the most important question. Well, first, PHP is, quite simply, the most accessible language I’ve ever dealt with. That is big. It’s hard to describe how big. You know that kid who made an iPhone game when he was 9? Yeah, that’s great and all, but if he had tried his hand at PHP he could’ve built himself a fleet of websites by 5. That’s how easy it is. No, seriously, it’s a really flexible language where you will never hear the words “stack”, “inheritance”, or “null pointer exception.”

The second reason is that it’s rewarding. Not personally rewarding in a, hey, I just spent 27 years building a giant robot that lights up and nods its head but doesn’t actually DO anything, cool right? …kind of way. But actually rewarding, to the tune of $50 billion dollars rewarding. That’s the low end of what Facebook is worth now. And Facebook, most PHP developers will probably tell you with an exasperated sigh, isn’t a difficult web site to create. Yes, you too can develop a Facebook clone with the help of these tutorials*.

For people who aren’t interested in reading through my previous paragraphs, let me give you a two-sentence summary: PHP is easy. PHP can make you oodles of money*.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s get PHP up and running on your computer, so we can start you on the path to fame and fortune.

*results not guaranteed.

Check out php.angbox.