Category: Toys & Tech

Installing Thai fonts on a Samsung Galaxy 5 i5503 (custom Froyo ROM)

Above: An example of something that didn't work.

Notes: I am writing this guide from memory and it shouldn’t be considered definitive (or even accurate, ha ha). Also, I get this sort of stuff done with heavy googling and then lots of trial and error, an approach that often ends in tears. It happened to work for me this time, but only after trying several different approaches and tools. It might not work for you and I accept no responsibility for that or what it might entail: Worst case, you might brick your phone.

That being said, it has made the Galaxy 5 one of the best values currently on the Thai smartphone market – cheap (about 5,000 Baht new last time I checked), fast, and installable with almost any app.

Credit where credit is due: The majority of the Thai font install procedure below was adapted from NexusOneHacks.net.

One last thing, is it truly necessary to flash your firmware in order to install the fonts? Maybe not, but it was for me. I was previously using firmware I5500LUYJP2 from this page. I tried the same font installation procedure described below and it did not work until I tried different firmware..

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1. Download firmware and follow the Flashing Instructions on this page: MAD ROM 2.3 Extreme App2SD Edition. If you don’t know how to use ODIN, etc., this guide can help you (just remember to use the firmware you just downloaded instead of the one linked in the guide).

2. After setup is complete, root your phone with Universal Androot (I’ve found that often the first try isn’t successful. Just try again.)

3. Next, install Terminal Emulator on your Galaxy 5.

4. Since Froyo lacks copy functionality from shell (for whatever stupid reason), you need to install busybox. Click this link to download busybox. Then copy it into the root directory of your SD card.

5. Make a new directory in the root of your SD card and name it font. Download this zip file, which contains the Droid Sans font files with Thai support. Unzip it, and copy all the .ttf files into the font directory you made.

6. Open Terminal Emulator on your phone, type each line below (without the $ or # symbols that are there to indicate a new line as shown in the application) and press the enter key.

$ su

Note: This command should open a prompt that asks if you want to grant Superuser privileges to the Terminal Emulator application. Click yes. After this point, the $ symbol before each new command should automatically change to a # symbol. This indicates superuser status.

# mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system

# mkdir /data/busybox

# cat /sdcard/busybox > /data/busybox/busybox

# chmod 755 /data/busybox/busybox

# mkdir /data/local

# cd /data/busybox

# ./busybox –install
(That’s 2 dashes before install!!!)

# cp /sdcard/font/* /system/fonts

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The fourth line from the bottom with the mkdir command probably isn’t necessary, but even if it isn’t, it will just return a harmless error. Also, the busybox install returned a bunch of errors for me, but seemed to work out in the end.

Tiger Joker 120S

Since my Crown is being worked on for another month or so, I really needed to find a cheap motorcycle. It took some looking (thx Yon) and trying (thx Matt) and bargaining (thx Nam), but I finally found the perfect ride for my needs, for which there is a serious lack of information on the net.

The ride I picked up was manufactured by Tiger Motor Company of Thailand (website is hosed as of writing this). The Model is the Joker 120S. I have no idea what the S stands for, or what the different grades were. It’s a 120cc carbureted 4-stroke, front disc – rear drum, four speed autoclutch, extremely ugly bike that I would have hated to buy new, but I picked it up for a good price used. The equivalent Honda or Yamaha would have cost three times as much (Honda is the only overvalued brand of both cars and motorcycles in Thailand; for cars it shares company with Toyota and Isuzu in this regard, and with motorcycles, Yamaha). Plus, I fell in love with its Mad Maxed muffler ( I call it a ghetto supertrapp) and getthefuckouttamyway exhaust pitch.

Of course, the trade off for not buying Japanese is that the electronics are Chinese-inspired level cheesy and most were probably broken beyond repair a couple months after it rolled out of the dealer. So I have to do without an electric starter and fuel indicator, which isn’t a big deal.

The big plus is that this bike has loads of torque, which I’m going to attempt to convert to power with an after-market rear sprocket. Anyway, here’s a few photos of this increasingly rare motorbike, which surely looks better slighty rusted and beat up than it did new:

YouTube iframe embedding

It seems that the new way of embedding YouTube videos is really slow to render when you have multiple videos on a single page. Offhand, I can’t remember tweaking anything else that would cause this blog to be loading in segments like this. The thing is, I don’t really have time to test it now, so I guess I’ll just refrain from posting so many vids for a while and let the ones below fall off the front page.

Specifying a starting point in YouTube’s Flash 5 Player

In my previous post, I set an embedded video to start from a determined point partway through. The video was embedded with the new iframe tags (specifying HTML 5 instead of a Flash player, which is usable by a broader range of devices, but hasn’t been fully accepted by big developers like WordPress and ebay due to inherent security concerns).

This is the new parameter, which is to be appended to the end of the video link in the embed code:
#t=5m55s

(above, m equals minutes and s equals seconds)

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So in my previous post, the embed video code looks like this:
<iframe title=”YouTube video player” width=”560″ height=”349″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/VLuHMB438gc#t=6m17s” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen ></iframe>

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Google states that the actual starting point may vary by up to a couple seconds, so you should take this into account.

Samsung Kies Software

Is the worst piece of shit you ever did see. It’s super slow, bloated, and looks like the retarded monkey who decided on the design gave the job to a colorblind Amiga programmer.

Actually, I’ve never used any mobile phone/digicam/video cam maker’s software that was even close to being acceptable, but this Kies crap bundled with my Samsung Galaxy 5 is just laughably bad. Time to start up on my old desktop rig: FOUR TIMES longer than PhotoShop CS3.

This is just fucking unacceptable, shitty code. Shame on you, Samsung.

Readability

I’ve really tried to keep the design of this site pleasing and simple over most of its incarnations. It bugs me when I visit sites that have interesting content overlaid with shitty design and ads, so I’ve been using the Readability javascript for a long time (it currently exists as a Chrome plug-in). Simply stated, it simplifies pages, strips out extraneous crap, and makes them easier to read.

Readability has now launched as a subscription service, starting at $5 a month. I would pay for it if I browsed on my mobile more often, but $60 a month is a bit too much for me… I like the idea a lot, but I’m not willing to pay that much for it.

I’m very grateful they’re keeping free the Chrome plug-in around.