I really need to find one that works better with different resolutions.
May 172013
May 162013
Earlier this year I celebrated reaching 1000 words in my vocab deck; now I can celebrate being at just over 1800 words 
Once I get the JLPT out of the way and polish off the Core 2k, I plan on attempting a reading and listening approach.
I found Jade Reader in Google Play which is basically RikaiChan for text files. Using Jade Reader you can pull text from websites and books to read with instant translations of any unknown words. The app can even save the unknown words to a text file to add to Anki later for review. A few days later you can try reading the file again and it should be much easier.
With regards to the JLPT I found that Tae Kim/Genki simply do not cover all of the required grammar points. In fact, they only seem to cover >60% of the grammar required. So I have a lot of sentences to grind through with the trusty olde ‘Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar’ and ‘Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication’ 
I am also working on my listening with an ‘Erin’s Challenge’ listening deck. The actors do speak very fast on this, faster than I am used to with native media such as radio or anime. Still if you can get used to that pace the JLPT should be a breeze.
Mar 062013
I have seen some rumours about an MTK6589 Jelly Bean running Goophone i5 existing on various forums and chinese phone sites. One of the stores selling this phone put up a glimpse of the device on Youtube, which clearly shows it is a fake device. You can watch the video here:
Take head of the following:
- Linux kernel is only 3.0.13 is too low to run Android 4.1 let alone 4.2.You need a 3.4.0 kernal for Jelly Bean.
- It is the only MTK6589 phone available to support 3G outside of 850/2100. Those frequencies are for the MTK6577, which does support those bands.
- CPU Model: Dual Core A7… Bit weird, isn’t it meant to be a quad core chip?
- Invalid GPU SGX531, which just happens to be the MTK6577 GPU. The MTK6589 chipset uses the SGX544. The chipset comes with CPU, GPU, and the modem all together you cannot chop and change them.
- The video shows the phone as ~ 1.5Ghz. Every credible MTK6589 device (THL W8, Zopo, etc) is 1.2Ghz.
Feb 232013
Using some basic tools from XDA I made a recovery image for the THL W6 based on Clockwork Mod 6.0.2.8. I did this because there are issues with ‘fix permissions’ on the 5.x version of the recovery tool which is available for the W6. Thanks to bgcngm from xda developers forums (aka Bruno Martins) or compiling a later version of the recovery source.
This recovery may work on the ZOPO P900 and a lookalike Micromax device, but I’d have a full backup of your phone before attempting applying this recovery to any other phones. Here is a link to the recovery image. Install the image using MTK Root & Droid Tools, the same way you installed the 5.x recovery image. I used 2.3.8 but the more commonly found 2.2.9 will work too.
Jan 302013
It has been around 6 weeks since I reached my N5 milestone back in December. Since then I have completed my JLPT N5 level grammar deck (Tae Kim) and added sentence based on the same grammar points from Genki. So effectively I have reached N5 level. I would have to practice on the tests — and listening — to pass comfortably; however, there’s little point when the JLPT test is not till July!
So I have began my journey towards reaching JLPT N4. This week I will hit 1000 invidual vocabulary items in my Vocab deck! Still, there’s a long way to go before reaching either of my N4 goals: 1250 and 1600. The lower number is based on the NM guide for beginners, which should be enough to scrape by the test with some specific revision; whilst the higher number should make the test less of a chore. For comparison, Jlptstudy has (N5 727+ N4 681) 1408 words, Tanos has the estimated vocabulary level for N4 at around 1500, and the ‘Quick Mastery of Vocab N4/N5′ book has 1800 words.
Outside of dull Anki wordlists, I picked up a iknow.jp subscription on the cheap around christmas. Whilst this is primarily teaching vocabulary (from an updated list, but in a different order) it provides some listening and grammar tests which I find useful. In addition, it teaches production which I find helps memorising words I have found hard in Anki.
I also managed to read a few graded readers, which give a great “I CAN READ!” feeling. So more ploughing on towards N4!
Dec 182012
Since there isn’t much on the internet about this phone (outside of Chinese and Russian sites), I thought I might as well share a few pictures of the device and what comes with it. I have had the phone for about a week now and haven’t had any problems with it. I will probably use this device for 4-6 months — which should be when the British networks start offering 4G. I’d have to have the device for a few more months before commenting on build quality, but the device seems absolutely fine at the moment.
Sorry for the quality of the photographs, my Galaxy Nexus has a terrible camera!
So this is what the phone comes in:
Ooh… a box!
I feel much better knowing the THL W6 is sold under its own name and not xxx ‘Note 2′ , Note 2000, or some other obvious Galaxy Note ripoff name. Well boxes are boring, so lets see what is inside….
I got quite a lot inside the box for my THL W6: headphones, usb cable, 4GB sdhc card, travel charger (usb 2 prong charger), 2 2300mah batteries, screen protector, and a second backcover which can cover the screen. Take a look for yourself:
All the goodies that came with my THL W6
The included charger has only two ‘prongs’ which means it will not work in UK plug sockets; however, since the device uses the standard micro usb port to charge you can use any modern charger. Alternatively, the device can be charged using a computer and the USB cable provided. Whilst your socket may not recommend it, you can use the provided charger in a standard shaver plug socket.
I haven’t tried the headphones, but I imagine they are rubbish like all supplied headphones are!
Anyway, after booting the device tried to detect the sims and networks.
Looks like it works! I only had one sim inserted here.
If you use two sim cards, one will be 3G/2G and the other just 2G. So you could use one sim for all data and the other for calls and texts; the device will ask you which sim to use for calls/texts unless you specify a default, so you can use both if you like. Using a dual sim phone like this is a nice solution for having both a personal and a work number on one device 
I’ll probably use just the one sim for everything, but leave a second sim card in the phone for emergencies.
Bonus Information
If you’re wondering how to get access to the THL W6′s ‘secret menus’ via engineering codes then you need to go to the dialer and try to phone one of the following:
Engineer Menu: *#*#15963#*#* (If this doesn’t work try: *#*#3646633#*#*)
Proximity Sensor Calibration: *#36954#*
Various System Tests: *#36951#*
Serial number: *#08*#
GPS Fix
When you first use the GPS it may not lock in. I think this has something todo with the device expecting you to be based in China! You can clear the GPS data as follows to fix the issue:
1. Turn off the GPS, EPO, A-GPS in the settings menu.
2. Delete the following file /data/misc/mtkgps.dat (You will have to download a file explorer from the Google Play market)
3. Reboot your phone.
4. Go out into the open (street no high rise buildings nearby).
5. Enable the following GPS settings: the GPS, EPO, A-GPS (load the base EPO, if it was not loaded).
6. Go to the engineering menu (see above for how), select YGPS. On the information tab click Full, and then Cold, then A-GPS restart. Go to the tab Sattelites – and wait for the signal to be recorded (this may take a few minutes to tens of minutes).
6. Exit the menu and engineering YGPS.
Thanks to AlexeyMAP from 4pda for this.
Dec 182012
I got a THL W6 earlier this month and came across some useful tips for accessing Google Play, rooting the device, installing clockwork recovery, and removing the Chinese files from a number of sources.
One site compiled a nice starting guide for getting Google Play and root installed, but sadly the site seems dead. I didn’t have the problem with my IMEI, and your IMEI should be located behind the battery or on a separate peice of paper in the phones packaging (well it was for me!)
Note that my phone updated to Google Play automatically on sync with Google; however, the application would not open. To fix this I simply deleted the apps cache and did a force close. Then the application would open. I later used these instructions to root my phone. I had no problems completing the processes, but have rooted and installed recovery images on a number of Android devices — dating back to the G1!!!
This may also work for the Zopo P900 and other MTK6577 phones, but do some reading first. Here is the content of the THL W6 guide from Gurufoxy:
Congratulations on your new China Smart Phone THL W6.
You thought all will be fine with THL W6, but you end with Chinese Apps, which are annoying.
I had similar experience, was able to install GooglePlay but it did not open, Location services were not working correctly, Although default Language is set to English still Chinese Apps are all over the place and Pre-Installed AppMarket is just simple plain pain!
How to over come this??
I emailed to online Chinese Seller Antelife, they just replied after 48 hours “please uninstall chinese Android and install “Universal Android Store” ??? Email to THL W6 customer service email ID, they replied “We only deal with customers in China, No Customer service outside China…Sorry”. So I ended up with a phone which has no customer support and getting money back from seller was zero.
So how I Did it?
All credit goes to www.4pda.ru poeple, They were the only one on the worldwide web who has some guide and tools to make this work, (but in Russian).
Disclaimer: Whatever you do with your phone, do it at your own risk. This guide is for educational purposes only and I don’t take any responsibility for any damage done by third party software and your own mistakes!!
I bricked my THL W6, and I had to Re-install full factory firmware onto it and by doing this, it lost IMEIs numbers i.e. when phone came back to life it shown message “Invalid IMEI” and no sim card was recognise !!Then I had to write IMEIs files again onto the phone system to make it work. But in the end after all this pain all worked fine for me.
To make GooglePlay work on THL W6, you have to ‘root’ your phone using MTK Droid Tool there may be other tools out there. These steps worked for me, there may be small change in steps in your case, but it will give you an idea what you need and what needs to be done.
1) Download MTKDroid Tools and ProgramW6, extract both zip files to your desktop or where ever you fancy. if possible use 7-Zip to extract.
Download gapps-ics-20120429-signed.zip, and DO NOT unzip this.
Download all files here:
I’ll try and upload them here sooner or later… I used the files from 4pda, which are identical.
http://hostingbulk.com/h1bzpzxf8b9o.html
http://hostingbulk.com/pqp69h75ndoq.html
http://hostingbulk.com/so31ueyqbo5q.html
2) Go to Phone “Settings” and make sure you have ‘checked’ ‘USB debugging’ in “Developer Options” and under the Settings>> “Security”, you have also checked, “Unknown sources” i.e Allow installation of non-market apps.
All set sparky!
3) On your PC, go into MTKDroid folder you extracted earlier, Run MTKDroid exe and plug in your phone via USB and see if its shown in left bottom of MTKDroid window.
4) Click on ‘Superuser’ under the ‘root, Backup, recovery’ Tab on MTKDroid tool. this will root your phone and will install Superuser and root explorer apks on your phone. check your phone for these two apps installed on your phone, if yes go to step 5.
5) Restart your phone and connect the phone to PCusing USB cable and click “Turn on USB Storage” on your phone, this will show “USB connected” on your phone and will open “removable Disk” on your PC
6) Now copy and paste “gapps-ics-20120429-signed.zip” to root folder of phone memory drive (do not paste into micro SD card, it might not show up later!).
7) Now safely remove the phone from PC(i.e. Eject the disk method), restart the phone and connect to PC again and go to MTK Droid Tool.
8). button ‘Recovery & Boot’, click on Radio Button “To use boot from phone”, this ll open file upload window, browse to other file “Program_w6″ downloaded earlier and go select “THL_W6_CWM_RECOVERY.img”, (if not sure check my video)
9) Now click on “Recovery and Boot” button, and this will open some message windows, say “yes” to all and now your phone should start in recovery mode. If you see “recovery mode” with “Rom Manager” logo that’s means the CWM image have been uploaded successfully.
10) the phone in the recovery mode, scroll down to install from SD card, select the file gapps-ics-20120429-signed.zip. you should see some lines of code running for a minute or two and it should show message something like app installed fine or similar.
11) restart the phone and connect it to PC, go to MTK Droid Tool again, once you see the phone is recognise by tool, click on “Build.prop”(this ll change your time settings to Moscow from china) and then on “delete china”- this will remove some Chinese files, don’t worry you don’t need them!
12) Now you may restart your phone and once you came back you should see all the new “Google Play” apps installed.and it should work fine.
PS: If people have their phone bricked or its not responding then they have to Re-Install the factory firmware using SP Flash Tool and which may wipe IME numbers, so in any case try to save your IMEIs number files on SD card so you could paste back in case it gets deleted. If anyone needs help restoring IMEIs numbers, please let me know, I might make another tutorial about “how to restore IMEIs”!!
Dec 142012
So I finally get my server and WordPress install uptodate and Wordpres go ahead and release a new version…
Looking at the update notes it seems that WordPress 3.5 contains lots of new gallary functions and improvements. So perhaps it is suggesting I buy a camera? Mmm… well it is christmas soon
On a side note, I recently got a fancy new phone: a THL W6+. It is a chinese import which closely resembles the Galaxy Note II and is actually rather good! I got it to see if I could cope with such a large phone and screen before upgrading to something like a LTE Galaxy Note. The W6 really outmatches my old Galaxy Nexus for battery. On some days my Nexus would die at around 8pm, so not even giving a full days use; whilst without any tweaks my W6 lasted for 2 days!
I also love the full name of THL: Technology Happy Life…
Dec 132012
Two updates in one month, must be Christmas or something
Today I reached the JLPT N5 milestone in my Kore2k Anki reviews やった ! Which means I can halt my daily new cards – or reduce to a low amount – for a few days to lower my daily reviews. I currently have a daily review stack of around 120, which takes around half an hour to complete.
The N5 milestone is only 513 words (kanji or kana -> kana reading and english meaning) and falls short of the real N5 requirement (~750). Before moving on to the N4 stage I will add the few words that I have covered in iKnow and have already covered from Genki; this should bring the count closer to 600. I am tempted to also add any cards my deck has marked as N5, which I believe have been tagged using the wordlist on this JLPT site.
This leaves me with more time to focus reading Tae Kim and finishing Human Japanese, before rushing through my half completed Tae Kim grammar deck. Once this is completed, I feel I would be ready for some past N5 exam papers.
I’d like to actually be able to pass N5 exams before pushing on with my goal of N4 in July. I reckon I should be able to pass the tests by early January, assuming I don’t just eat food and get drunk over xmas This would put me at 4.5 months to get from nothing to N5, this includes extra Kanji not required from doing Heisig’s RTK. So with no more Kanji to memorise and both katakana or hirigana being well ingrained I think it should take less time to get to N4. I hope that I can advance from N5 to N4 standard in less than 4 months.
Dec 092012
does this mean you might remember to post more?
Definitely not
I have had a lot of Linuxy fun upgrading from Ye Olde Ubuntu 9.04 to something more modern. My favourite being the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10, which required me to update the server’s kernel to 3.x.x from 2.6.x in order to boot (a known problem). I find this problem rather funny as the 3.x.x kernel was released after 9.10 support had ended! 
I have been up and down the country having a lot of fun with programming for evil Oil companies (the sort that dump oil in the Mexican coast), banks, and a french investment bank. It is really great to have to remote from Leeds to London then to a completely locked down Paris VM; the best part being the french keyboard layout and french emails with no English translation It’s a good job I did not do a French GCSE or bothered to choose to learn french to make life easier, instead I chose a more useful language
Going for another big upgrade — WordPress this time, which I thought I had setup automatically…