Android Update - last weekends 3G problem

I had intended to get an update in last weekend, but I had one thing go really wrong with my Android on Saturday and I really needed to get past that so that I had lots of good to report as well! I hate having to write whiney blog entries.

So first, my bad experience last Saturday.  On Friday evening I'd installed a bunch of apps, went to bed, woke up in the morning and my battery was dead. That should have been a hint that something was amiss, but I didn't quite take it.  I went out later in the day, and as I was about to head into a shop I noticed my 3G icon was on, indicating I was using data.  This is something I had explicitly turned off, becuase I didn't want to be chewing up data on a casual plan.

Well, I sat with the phone in hand for a good 20 minutes, desperately trying to get 3G to STAY off. It didn't matter how many times I changed the APN to an off one that I had defined, something kept on changing it back to Vodafone and re-enabling it. So I renamed the Vodafone connection settings - STILL it kept connecting! Argh!  Well, finally I went and found the codes for getting into what was called the 'testing' menu under Android 2.1, and I forcably turned off the data connection. (see below for details).

Later I uninstalled Twidroyd, which I think was to blame, but I'm still not 100% certain.  Since then it has behaved. And since then, I've also received the OTA (over the air) update to Froyo (Android 2.2) - which has moved that APN control to a menu you can get to it without entering seemingly random codes!

Unfortunately this episode resulted in me using over 50Mb of data!!!  That one is going to ouch.  (Oh, I know how much I used because I had installed 3G Watchdog on the recommendation of a friend. Thank goodness for that.

Well, that's the bad news out of the way.  A few tech details for reference if anyone needs to know, then I'll close this post and move on to the good news and how I'm using my fabulous new device.

Facts:
OS: Android 2.1
Device: Nexus One

I'd created an "OFF" APN which I had set as my default for data connection. You create this by:

1. Go to Settings > Wireless and Networks > Mobile Networks > Access Point Names. 
2. Press menu button then press New APN. 
3. Set name to "Off", 
4. set the APN to "blank", 
5. then press menu and press Save. 
6. After that press the circle to the right of your new APN so that it is selected as your APN. 

I went one step further and I edited the type field to be Default, and I removed the work 'default' from the Vodafone APN.

I ended up having to do the following to keep the connection off (if anyone can explain why other measures didn't work, I'd love to know!)

1. Go to the phone dialler and enter *#*#4636#*#*
2. This will take you to the 'testing' menu.
3. Tap on Phone Information.
4. Press the Menu key or button.
5. Tap on More.
6. Tap on Disable data connection to disconnect and make inactive any data connection immediately. 
7. Also tap on disable data connection at boot to prevent any unwelcome surprises.

I also installed 'Quick Settings' which I think does both the Disable Data Connection thing above, and it renames all of your APNs to ensure they don't work.  Others have mentioned APNDroid, but I've read some reports of it not working well on the Nexus One.

More details on unexpected 3G use here : http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/04/30/how-to-turn-off-and-disable-mobile-data-connection-2ggprsedge3g-on-android-phone/

Falling for an Android

I just deleted several very eloquent paragraphs for this post because I have soooo much I want to say about this particular story, that I can't afford to dress it up with extraneous words.

The very simple back story:

• iPhone 4 was announced
• Simon said 'hey, you've been wanting a new gadget for a while, you should get an iPhone 4'.
• I didn't protest, funny that
• Simon brought home a loaner iPad to play with.
• I was more impressed that I expected to be (and as Simon will attest, my expectations on technology are so high, the result is I'm rarely impressed)
• I wanted that iPhone 4 more than ever
• Simon brought home a loaner Google NexusOne Android to play with.
• I played
• He took it back
• I pined
• I bought a Google NexusOne Android. 3 days later. (and I was a little bit unbearable in my impatience I might add)

In a nutshell, during that weekend with the Android, I discovered a sleek, functional, usable device, with a boatload of free applications available for easy download, a price tag significantly lower than what I'd be facing with the Apple, and an ideology that I have of recent years become more and more a supporter of (working for an employer who is passionate about open standards will do that for you!)

There is essentially nothing I'd have got with the iPhone 4 that I don't get with the Android - with the exception of the Apple brand - an ommission which I'm more than comfortable with.

Like I've been doing with Open Office, I'm going to write a series of blogposts on my experience with the Android, tips and tricks, things I've learnt, things I'd like to see (I always want more when it comes to tech!), and as always, I'm also more than willing to try things out on request if you care to leave a comment.

Stay tuned!

Open Office Writer - Changing page orientation mid document

Despite this being one of my original goals in my Open Office challenge, I realise I have yet to blog the steps to achieve this. And funnily enough, one of my colleagues asked me just yesterday how to do this.

So what is it we're trying to achieve exactly? Lets say I have a multiple page document (8 pages for arguments sake). It's a portrait document, however, on page 5 I've got a table, or picture, (or whatever) that looks better with the page in a landscape orientation. But then pages 6, 7 and 8 are back to normal and need to be portrait.

I used to find this really difficult to do in OO, even while following the help file. Now? It's a doddle!

To make page 5 landscape, while keeping pages 6,7,8 portrait
First a couple of assumptions:

• you're using at least version 3.2.0 of Open Office
• your default page layout is portrait (so when you create a blank document, it is automatically in portrait orientation).

1. Place you cursor after the very last character or element on page 5 (the page you want to be landscape).
2. Go to Insert | Manual Break
3. Change the Type to 'Page Break'
4. Click the 'Style' drop down and select 'Default'. (This is essentially telling the document to use the default page style AFTER the page break you're inserting)
5. Hit Ok. Nothing will appear to have changed at this point.
6. Now place your cursor after the last character or element on page 4 - immediately before the page you want in landscape orientation.
7. Go to Insert | Manual Break
8. It should default to Page Break - if not, select Page Break.
9. Click the 'Style' drop down and select Landscape and click OK.
10. Now, page 5 will be in landscape orientation, and if you scroll down, you'll see that page 6 returns to portrait - that's because of the break you inserted at step 4 above.

Problems? I discovered a gotcha! (let me know if you have others and I'll update this post).
While I was doing this to type up the instructions, page 5 didn't rotate to landscape at step 10 for me. This was because I just had an enormous continuous stream of text from page 1 all the way through to page 8. So, put a carriage return at the end of page 4, and also at the end of page 5.

By the way - if you're creating a document and you know as you get to page 5 that you want it to be in landscape, you can just end page 4 with the manual break and style of Landscape, and then as you reach the end of your landscape content, insert the second manual page break with the Default style. I do it the opposite way above (by explicitly ENDING the landscape section even before I've created it) in a finished document because otherwise every page after 5 will rotate t0 landscape before you add the next break at the end of that page - which can be a little disconcerting! I hope that makes sense!

Living Life Well

A few little ponderings from my very passionate pep-talk to myself today:

• Love who you are - don't make apologies for you
• Hold people and experiences lightly - they'll stay if they're meant to, linger if they (or I) need time to work it out, or leave if they really ought not to be there (or when their time is done)
  
• Live incredibly well - love the highs, enjoy the lows, knowing they're merely precursors to further highs
• find the silver lining in discomfort - it's actually incredibly exciting being uncomfortable, because it means you're out of your comfort zone - and thus you're in the process of expanding said zone

I really am very excited about living life well right now. And I'm incredibly grateful to have rediscovered that joy.

Embrace the journey, it's a wild ride!

OOW Interoperability - Custom Fields from Word Docs

Long and rambling intro - skip to the next heading if you want to get to the real content
I had a colleague phone from Wellington today needing to work on a document riddled with custom fields, only, it was a Word doc and he wanted to work on it in his Linux environment (I think, either way, he wanted to use Open Office). Problem was though, he couldn't work out how to edit the fields once the doc was open in OOW.

So I suggested Ctrl+F2 and check out the Variables Tab and the User Fields section. Nope, not there. Ok, try double clicking on one of the fields. Yep - opens the Fields Dialog, to the DocInformation tab and there are all the fields listed under the Custom type. But they're not editable there. So, I hunted around, and I have to confess this one took a bit of hunting and adding puzzle pieces together from a variety of hints found on disparate forums, help files, and feature update info, but I got there in the end. So for your knowledge and edification, this has been a very long and grutuitiously babbly intro to:

Beating Fields into Submission When You're Working on a Doc Created in Word
A quick recommendation first up - if the document in question is one you intend to use over and over again and create mutliple versions with different values in the various fields, I would strongly recommend taking the time to go through it and actually put in OpenOffice native fields and remove the converted Word Custom fields. But if it's just a one off use, go ahead and use the instructions below to change the field values to what you need them to be.

NB: remember I am using OOW 3.1 - I believe what I'm about to describe has worked since about 2.4, but I have no way of testing that, so do get the latest version!

1. Open your custom-field-riddled MS Word document in Open Office Writer.
2. Do a Save As, choose the default Open Office format (odt) and save the file.
3. Now close it. Seriously, just close the file. The rest simply won't work if you don't close it. I know, I've tried, many times in many ways. It won't work.
   
4. Open the recently re-saved file (the odt).
5. Go to File | Properties
6. Click on the Custom Properties tab
7. Here you will find all of the fields that had been created as custom fields in Word. You can change their values in here, you can add more, you can remove them as well. (NB: If you didn't believe me at step 3 and insisted on not closing the file before proceeding, you will now discover that every change you make in this tab is a teaser only - close the dialog, open it again and you'll note that the updates you have made - poof! They've disappeared. Bugger. Should have closed the file at step 3. Better do it now and go back to step 4.)
8. Once you've updated the values to what you want them to be, close the dialog box.
9. Your document won't look any different at this point. This is where these fields differ from the ones I've described in an earlier post. They don't automatically update. Easy fixed, just hit F9 (or go to Tools | Update | Fields) and all of the field instances will be updated throughout the doco (unlike word, you don't have to do a Select All first).
10. Save the file.
    

Easy once you know how huh?

OOW - Setting your default fonts

I've just reset my user profile (I'll tell you why at a later date providing it fixes what I'm hoping it will!) and consequently need to re-set my default fonts, so I'll take the opportunity to document it while I'm at it. This is one of those things that took me a little while to work out. To be fair, in comparison to Word though, it is a lot simpler in OOW, and it only took me a while to find because again, I'd been conditioned by MS Word to expect this to be difficult.

1. Go to Tools | Options
2. Open the OpenOffice.org Writer menu and select Basic Fonts (Western)
3. Change your default fonts to whatever you prefer. (Personally I hate Times New Roman, so I I never leave it on this!)

You have to admit, this is a whole lot easier than having to locate your normal.dot and setting the fonts like you have to in Word. (Have I mentionted lately that I continue to be impressed with OOW?)

The Challenge - Update and What Next

I've been sitting here playing silly games this evening, in between catching up on some of my RSS feeds and have been feeling a little guilty that I haven't blogged in a bit on my challenge. Then I got to thinking about what to post next. Then I went back to my original Challenge post and realised that I've actually acheived all of the goals I set out to. Which is great. Except that I'm not ready to stop this little blog journey. So I'm going to just modify my intention statement a little bit.

From here on in, the purpose of my posts will be about sharing tidbits I'm finding about Open Office Writer, in User 101 style instructions. (Occaisionally I'll get into a bit more technical detail, but I'll continue to indicate when I'm doing that!) This isn't really a change to what I've been doing, I'm just being clear about it!

One of the things I'd like to be able to do, is to help people make the switch from MS Word to OO Writer. So I'm also completely open to questions - some of my posts so far have been inspired by people commenting about their pet hates in OOW to me.

See my previous post on my 6 solutions philosophy, and you'll understand that whatever your pet peeve is, I'm pretty confident I can find a way around it, unless of course you're being intentionally difficult! (And if I really genuinely can't come up with something, I'll seriously consider logging a feature request if there isn't already one).

So feel free to leave a comment if you have a question, or message me on Twitter. There is a huge community out there supporting OOo and quite honestly, the answers are already there, but frankly, I enjoy finding them, and a lot of them I find are often very technically phrased and not especially user friendly at times - I like making things 'graspable', so you'll be doing me a favour. :)

There it is! More from me soon!