This Old Blog

This is going to be a tough one to write. From Christmas Day until New Years Day, my wife and I were owners of the Barnes & Noble HD+, their entry into the 10" high definition table contest. I in particular really wanted this to work, but in the end I deregistered my HD+ and returned it to Barnes & Noble. The Good First and foremost was the build quality of the table. Compared to my older Nook Tablet and even my Nexus 7, the HD+ is a very well-built table that exudes quality. It never flexed or creaked when handled, especially when it was put into and then taken out of it's book-style cover. The external frame looks to be made of metal (either aluminum or magnesium), with an excellent glass display on the front and non-skid back. From a material and construction viewpoint it stands head and shoulders above everything, including the Apple iPad. The version of Android used on the HD+ was a customized version of Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with Barnes & Nob

Father's Day was mellow this year, just like it was last year. I called my dad, who will be 80 this year, and we spoke for a few moments. We exchanged pleasantries and give the ritual "happy father's day" greeting to one another. In all the years we've done this I've never quite gotten used to hearing the echo come back across the phone line, separated by 22 years. Later in the morning I had brunch at a local First Watch with my wife and my oldest daughter. I set some sort of record for the hostess when I ordered three of their pancakes (with blue berries) and ate the whole stack. She warned me they were large (plate-covering) and that maybe I wanted just two. Since it was brunch I was a bit hungry and ordered three. She was impressed when I finished them off. Outside the First Watch, the former Samba Room is evolving into Rocco's Taco's and Tequila Bar. I haven't a clue what the menu will be like, but it looks to be a fancy Tex-Mex restaurant.

It was only a matter of time before the siren's call lured me to install the source for Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS, Android 4) and attempt to create my own version for my Nook Color. There are two links I've been following to install ICS from its git repository and then building from the repository. I need to list several caveats before we go much futher; I am a complete novice (otherwise known as "a noob") when it comes to the use of git[1] and building Android. So I'm depending on a lot of hand-holding at this point in time, meaning reading lots of xda forum threads and wiki pages to piece together a process that works with my Fedora setup. My Dell Latitude D630 isn't some awesome build machine. It's now considered a modest little notebook powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 processor running at 2.4GHz. It took a long time to pull the git repository, and it's going to take a long time to build the project. Right now as I type this the system load is

Executive Summary In which I detail how I installed CyanogenMod 7 onto a Nook Color via an 8GB µSDHC card, added the modified Nook Color to my Android SDK development environment running under Fedora 14, and discovered that Foxconn was involved in the Nook Color's manufacture. Installation of CyanogenMod 7 I have, since around the first of February, been hacking around with the Barnes & Noble Nook Color. This is the same Nook Color I rather reluctantly returned a little over a year ago, and wrote about it on Matthew's Reviews [LINK] . What changed my mind enough to re-purchase another Color? Three events: Barnes & Noble released the Nook Tablet November 2011. I received a copy for Christmas and have been completely happy with it (a review is forthcoming on Matthew's Reviews). It cost $250. Which lead to the next event; When the Tablet was released, Barnes & Noble reduced the price of the Nook Color to $200. Which led finally to; In late January, Barne