How to Install CM9 onto HP TouchPad - Step by Step Instructions

Here are the set of detailed instructions to get CM9 (ICS) Alpha 0.6 release installed onto your HP TouchPad - courtesy of my brother Rohit.

Download the following 6 items:

1.  ACMEInstaller2

2. Clockwork Open Recovery Tenderloin

3. Moboot 0.3.5 (Mobile Open Bootloader for HP TP): http://code.google.com/p/moboot/downloads/list

4. update-cm-9.0.0-RC0-Touchpad-alpha0.6-fullofbugs (Alpha0.6 CM9 for Touchpad): Mirror1: http://goo.gl/wL2NQ ; Mirror2: http://goo.gl/VZofl

5. gapps-ics-20111230 (Google Apps for CM9): http://goo-inside.me/gapps/gapps-ics-20120317-signed.zip

6. To run "ACMEInstaller2" from your PC, you need Novacom drivers installed.  If you do not have them, please download from here: 

Universal Novacom Installer - supports Windows (32bit and 64bit), Mac OS, and Ubuntu (32bit and 64bit)

Official version that you need

Once the appropriate version of this file is installed on your computer, a folder named "Palm, Inc" should be created under C:\Program Files folder.  

1.  Copy "ACMEInstaller2" in this folder.

2.  Connect the HP Touchpad to the computer via USB. Once connected, tap the alert to enable Mass Storage Mode on the HP Touchpad.

3. Copy the ClockworkMod Recovery & Moboot zips into a folder in the media directory of the HP Touchpad called "cminstall" and Restart the HP Touchpad.

4. Once the screen goes black, hold down the Volume Up button until an USB symbol appears on the screen.  Once the computer recognizes the HP Touchpad, open terminal and naviagte to: C:\Program Files\Palm, Inc ( the directory Novacom is in) .

5. In the terminal on the computer, run the following command:

      

      novacom boot mem:// < ACMEInstaller2

The ClockworkMod Recovery & MOBoot should now be installed on the HP Touchpad.

To Install Google Market & Apps on CM9:

1. Reboot the HP Touchpad, and boot using Moboot by choosing "ClockworkMod"

2. Choose "install zip from sdcard", then choose "choose zip from sdcard"

3. Find and select the "gapps-ics-20111230.zip" file you placed on the Touchpad;

4.  Google Market & apps will install;

5.  Reboot into CM9 - viola! you are all set.

Can't wait to play with Raspberry Pi and Twine

Have been keeping an eye on Twine and RaspberryPi as two very interesting little harwdare toys to lay my hands on and play with. Both are very interesting in terms of providing a very small footprint & energy usage profile at a reasonable price-point, while still managing to do something useful. These are like building blocks that you can tinker around with to create a useful real-life application. If you have wanted to play around with hardware applications without getting your hands dirty (for that, there's Arduino!), then these are very good starting points.

But most importantly, need to get some good ideas for applications based on these devices ... hmmm ... ...

Date Math in Oracle

If you are using Oracle 9i or greater, you can use the interval data type to do simple Date arithmetic as follows:

select sysdate + interval '2' hour from dual; -- to add 2 hours to current time

select sysdate + interval '5' minute from dual; -- to add 5 minutes to current time

select sysdate + interval '24' second from dual; -- to add 24 seconds to current time

For adding or subtracting days, you can simply add it as below:

select sysdate + 3 from dual; -- to add 3 days to current date

select sysdate - 6 from dual; -- to subtract 6 days to current date

select last_day(sysdate) - sysdate from dual; -- to find the number of days from current date to end of month

However when adding months, it is better to use the functions provided by Oracle:

select add_months(sysdate, 2) from dual; -- to add 2 months to current date

select add_months(sysdate, -3) from dual; -- to subtract 3 months to current date

To select the date of the next specified day, you can use the NEXT_DAY function:

select next_day(sysdate, 'SAT') from dual; -- to get the date on next Saturday after current date
-- use SUN, MON, TUE, WED, THU, FRI or SAT

To get the last date of the month for the specified day, you can use the LAST_DAY function:

select last_day(sysdate) from dual; -- to get the date on last day of current month

Cloud based app delivery starts heating up

Embarcadero Technologies has come up with its AppWave Store which converts Windows applications into apps and then delivers them through its own AppBrowser, thus removing the need to install applications. It also provides a free AppWave Studio to developers to convert their Windows applications into AppWave apps.

On the other hand, Numecent has come out of stealth mode with a new concept call Cloud Paging where it almost automatically "cloudifies" applications using its' Jukebox Studio tool which is then published to the Jukebox Server from where it is delivered to the client. Looks like a very interesting technology as it provides real time control over licensing, patching & upgrading. It also reduces the footprint by delivering only those pages that are required with an intelligent mechanism to predict and pre-deliver pages before they are required for commonly used scenarios.