Android ICS on the LG Optimus Chic

For a while, I thought my crappy LG android phone would be stuck with 2.2 Froyo for ever. I had rooted it, Clockworkmod Recovery and all, but back in mid 2011 there were no ROMs for it – the latest version from LG was 2.2.1. So got rid of the crappy LG software, put a custom launcher on it, and used the phone as though that would be the most I can do to the user experience. The phone’s performance was sluggish, its memory limited, and the insensitive touchscreen (with its lag) made using the thing akin to torture.

I set LauncherPro to mimic the stock 2.2 experience as close as possible.

I set LauncherPro to mimic the stock 2.2 experience as close as possible.

My phone. I don't have a picture from when it still ran 2.2

My phone. I don’t have a picture from when it still ran 2.2

Flicking through a list of apps on the Android market is nearly impossible; it would interpret the flick as a tap, and you’d end up clicking on 10 useless pieces of crap and hitting the back button an equal number of times before you get where you want. To scroll through a list, you have to swipe up very slowly. Don’t get excited, the OS upgrade doesn’t fix the crappy touchscreen.

A few months ago I found a kludgy version of Cyanogenmod 9 ported to the Chic. Fearing the hassle of connecting the phone to my mac and jumping through the same bootcamp hoops I had to to upgrade the thing through the LG updater, I put the project aside for a while. Yesterday, while procrastinating, I finally bit the bullet and installed it -–||||| much simpler than anticipated.

I’m not going to run through the install process, because a) its fairly simple and b) I didn’t document it. (I only thought that it would be a neat thing to blog about after I did it).

While it doesn’t correct any of the problems of the phone’s substandard hardware, it offers a significant performance boost compared to the old LG Froyo, as well as a much nicer UI. I did find the 2.2 lockscreen easier to use, though.

(excuse the poor photo quality)

LG-chic-ics-03

LG-chic-ics-04

LG-chic-ics-05

LG-chic-ics-06

Settings

Settings

Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.4

Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.4

LG-chic-ics-10

Web browsing is finally tolerable

Web browsing is finally tolerable

I haven’t discovered any bugs or major problems with it yet, except for the fact that the battery life is now dramatically worse. Keep that in mind if you’re doing this upgrade.

You can download the rom here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1562538

New Years Resolutions, 2013

This list of “everything I want to do in my time off after IB” has been brewing in my mind for the past 6 months. And now, I’m putting it down as the things I want to get done in 2013, before I head off for college. In no particular order,

Physical:

  • Run more. Stick to a weekly schedule. Stop accumulating fat.

Autodidacticism:

  • REALLY NEED TO LEARN HOW TO TOUCH TYPE
  • Master a text editor. Vim, maybe emacs and Org-mode if I have time.
  • And LaTeX. I need to stop using this wussy GUI for it.
  • More programming languages: Lisp, Obj-C, perl.
  • Finish SICP. Work through the 6.001 Lisp course on MIT OCW. Functional programming is just too elegant.
  • More math: Basic discrete math, more multivariate calculus.
  • Read beyond the first 10 pages of Barendregt’s Lambda book. (In my defense, that was all the time I had to read it in the summer when I found a copy in the HK Central library.)

Non-technical books and writing:

  • Read some classics. If not solely to be able to quote Shakespeare like Captain Picard.
  • Blog more. One piece per month, minimum. Now, if only I have something to write about…
  • Scratch that. Acquire a fountain pen, and learn to write about math like Edsger W. Dijkstra.

Misc and Projects:

  • Pick up playing the guitar again.
  • Finish my wordpress theme. Implement Bootstrap?
  • Clear my backlog of 4000+ podcasts.
  • Sort out all the crap I have in my big box ‘o hard drives.

Don’t fail.

Back on WordPress

Leave a reply

This blog has an interesting history. For 2 years, it mostly existed in my imagination. I first linked it to tumblr, where my ‘blog’ was just a collection of reposted crap (it still is) and the occasional written piece (all of which I’ve removed in the great Online Profile Cleaning of Summer 2012). Then, when I finally got hosting, it was a WordPress install where I tried to hack a theme –with 2000+ lines of code that I didn’t understand– to my liking. When that failed miserably, I pulled it offline and tried to hack Octopress and Jekyll instead. I’m happy to report that my custom Jekyll project is close to completion, but today I’ve decided to just keep it around as a thing to tinker with.

The thing is, while I love the customizability of Jekyll, the publishing logistics of the static site generator just doesn’t cut it. I want to be able to blog from my iPad in a Starbucks, without having to open my laptop, recompile the entire site,  and rsync/FTP/Git push it to the server. It’s that extra friction and complexity to the workflow which is the reason why I never quite seem to get anything written.

I also didn’t want to manage another complex folder structure of blog posts and site assets. With Jekyll, all the photos have to go into another folder, which might get screwed up down the line, resulting in me having to go through a bunch of old posts to change symlinks – ugh.

In line with my philosophy that the goal of technology should be to optimize laziness, I’ve decided to go back to WordPress. I can write in Byword, upload it to wordpress, then fix photos and other stuff later. Everything’s managed automatically, so thats one less thing to worry about (assuming my install doesn’t crash). And with my discovery of some decent looking themes (twenty twelve got me back to using WP ’cause it looked so similar to what I’ve been trying to put together) and some easily hackable ones, it was quite a no-brainer. (I’m still trying to hack simplest, but this time, I’m working with code that I actually understand.)

(Aside) I’ve also come to the realization that a blog is just a receptacle for writing — so I’ve decided stop obsessing over the styling and just publish this fugly site. Now. The styling can be tweaked later. (End of aside)

One of my resolutions half a year ago was to get myself to write more by blogging. Well… that worked out quite nicely. Whenever I sat down to write a post, I’d inevitably start screwing around with the blog engine and its code. And because I never was able to hack my site into the look I wanted, I never started writing. I’m going to try one post a month. Perhaps this time it’ll be different.