XDA Minds

Word is that Google quietly lit up the Android Honeycomb music cloud syncing. Let’s take that for a spin, got two phones, might as well step up for you but just to show you the determination there is in the mind of an XDA junkie to do something he has absolutely no need for when I have important shit to do, well I’ll do this one differently. So this is not a how-to, it’s certainly not news anymore; it’s just a stream of consciousness into the pointlessness of the addictions and obsessions, seemingly innocuous, born on places like XDA, while I do a bunch of things to two phones.

Grabbed the Honeycomb player on my Nexus S and started syncing a half hour ago. Now we’re shifting into real time. If you don’t know what this is about but care, just Google around for it, I don’t have time to hyperlink here.

I just dusted off my old Nexus (yeah I just couldn’t sell it, not yet), deleted the music from the chip, grabbed a CyanogenMOD Gingerbread nightly, wiped, flashed, right now I’m booting up it up, now I’m signing in, next I’m going to get that Honeycomb music player on it, currently being emailed to myself from the other phone, and see if I can play my music while the other Nexus continues to sync. So you’re read this article live baby, this could go either way, whether it works or not, I have no idea which but either way I’m posting because it’s been a while.

All right time to get that /system/app/Music.apk out of there, hope the filesystem is read/write. Damn, only readable, gotta go in and remount it. Damn adb can’t lock onto the device, switching to laptop. Damn, laptop wants to reboot and I have a bunch of shit open – I’ll just do this through the phone’s terminal… su, mount, got the device path, mount –o –w –t yaffs /dev/yadayada /system – argh device busy, forgot to include remount, argh no arrow keys on the stock keyboard, have to redo it … mount –o remount –rw –t yaffs /dev/yadayada /system, okay we’re mounted and got /system writable, now rm /system/app/Music.apk, good.

I hate how coffee doesn’t stay hot. Anyone know how long you can leave it on the burner before it gets nasty? Half hour? If as long as you Microwave it are you good for most of the day?

Okay stay on track – installing the Honeycomb player through the file manager, player installed (Winning!), music player’s empty, good, now let’s fire up the syncing and see what happens. Settings –> Accounts and Sync > Sync Music checked. Permission granted for chromiumsync. Now I’ve got both phones with the sync wheel spinning next to Sync Music. Oh wait gotta go into Music > Settings and enable Stream music, done. Might as well have it cache, maybe that means I can listen on the subway, though probably just for one stop.

Hmm, nothing yet, no music piling up. Now it wants permission for Music to get at my account – Allow. Feel the excitement? Both phones have a sync wheel on the status bar, no items yet on the old Nexus. Guess I’ll hit that Jumper thing and see what shows up in the log. I’m hoping right now that the sync doesn’t need to complete on one phone for it to start on the other because that’s going to slow me down, got over a gig to upload on that phone and I’m itching to post. Guess I’ll kill time by posting goofy pictures of animals typing. Damnit the ones I want to use are on my Nexus S’s SD, can’t mount it while it’s syncing, damnit. How can I get at those pictures… I’ll email them from the phone. Oh wait no I backed up my card yesterday, I’m good, phew.

I don’t know if this is supposed to just let me listen through some stream or if it downloads my entire collection but I’m guessing it’s like Picasa syncing in that it streams. Well that’s not good, tried to play something on the new Nexus and the player FCed. Better fire up the other apk I’ve got. Might as well reboot the Nexus One. Oh right, animals typing. Just dogs for this article, I’ll save the other animals for future articles. Hmm should I zig zag them or just dump them on the right side… go heat up my coffee again. All right the other one isn’t crashing on the new Nexus, I’ll throw it up on my server to mirror as some guy’s currently using some rapidshare crap to relay this file. Playing Sheep by Pink Floyd by the way, figured it’s a good pick for an article written by someone accused of being a Google sheep.

Done with the dog pictures, file’s mirrored, both phones still claiming to sync. Would like to know if they’re just spinning icons or if they’re connected to anything, but didn’t hack my router so let’s see if Android includes the good ol’ netstat command. Got a handful of connections to 72/8 IPs,  which has let’s look them up to see if they’re Google or some virus botnet mothership in China or Eastern Europe. Let’s portscan the sucker. No, not just doing this to show off, just wondering what the hell these IPs are, particularly in the wake of more Android exploit articles.

They’re pointing at hosts on 1e100.net, let’s see what that is. So we’ve got port 80 open, that’s what netstat’s reporting the connections as being locked in through. The IPs like 72.14.204.113 load up Google’s site, they’re in Mountain View so that’s a good sign, just wish I had a bandwidth monitor. Could simply be keepalives for other services. Maybe if I knew more about netstat. Whatever.

Starting to feel like it wants to sync the whole damn thing before my other Nexus can get at it. Start > Run > calc > 1000KB / 60KB = 17s (17 seconds to upload a megabyte on my home connection give or take), 1000 * 17 = 70K / 60 / 60 = oh no, this is a 5 hour upload.

Crap what the hell do I do. I’ve got to wait another three or four hours at least just to find out whether what I’m writing about will work or not. I don’t have that kind of time damnit. I got billable hours to invoice and more work to add to tabs, can’t be farting around on this already-tl;dr article. And no need to update this, the whole point was not to let you know how to do this and whether or not it’s awesome but to illustrate how effed up my head is nerd-wise and in other ways but I’ll keep that world separate from you guys.

Screw it, publish the son of a bitch as it is. No wait I made room for a couple more pictures. Ahh there we go.

My comeback article baby, you’re welcome.

Doug Simmons