About me
Digital astrophotography: beginning
Although my hobby is the amateur astronomy and I’ve been watching the sky for a few years, I began to take photos about the sky only a few months ago.
After I’ve got some experiences in this topic, I decided to write a blog, because it was not easy to get the necessary information how to do it or what type of pictures I can take with different cameras and devices. To tell the truth, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money while I didn’t know it will worth.
Just to clarify, I wont introduce the professional digital astrophotography or all parts of this theme but try to introduce what kind of problems a beginner can run into and how nice photos he can take with different cameras.
So, it is an astrophotography description from a beginner to beginners. Because I am also a beginner, please forgive me if I make some mistake.
Before starting the post, let me draw your attention that you shouldn’t expect such a perfect photos as Hubble Space Telescope does, but don’t forget: creating own photos can be so magical and I think it’s a very good thing in the life.
However, if you don’t want to take photos, you can watch the sky looking into the telescope with your naked eyes, and it also can be very amazing. Unable to write the experiences of the first look when someone discovers the moons of the Jupiter or the rings of the Saturn, and usually everyone shouts: “wow, it’s moving…”
In the furthermore, I assume that you already have some astronomy knowledge and tried to use a telescope, if not, you should learn the basics before dealing with astrophotography.
And now, here is a list that you need for astrophotography:
The telescope
To choose the best telescope is always a hard decision because there are a lot of different telescope types, some of them are suited to watch the Moon and the planets, and with other ones you can observe the deep-sky objects. In my case, I am using a Skywatcher 150/750 Newton reflector telescope, the numbers means that the diameter of the telescope is 15 cm, and the focus length is 75 cm.
Generally, this is an entry-level class for astrophotography, the telescopes under this class are not capable to make good photos.
However, choosing the telescope is always based on compromises because for bigger telescopes need bigger place and it’s difficult to move them but you can use them to take better photos. Usually the ones having shorter focus are offered for looking deep-sky objects, and the ones having longer focus are offered for looking planets but as you will see, this is just a recommendation.
Here are a few photos about my telescope:
The mount
First of all, what you have to know on it: the mount is at least so important as the telescope, in the astrophotography. When you use your telescope at high magnification (200-300x), a little wind can cause bigger excursion in the telescope, and it makes impossible to take photos. In my case, I have an EQ-3 mount, with all equipments its weigh is around 20 kg. This is an basic mount for astrophotography, but the bigger ones can be very heavy and if the observation point is far from your location or you need to move the telescope more than 10-20 meters, it can be very exhausting.
However, it’s recommended to use better mount, but this is also a hard decision, because you need to choose between the easiest moving and the massive, stable mount. Anyway, using more stable mount, you can take better photos.
The driving
Now, you have a telescope and a mount, but to take photos you need a motor to control the telescope. Due to the Earth rotation, the objects are also moving on the sky and the telescope needs to follow them. For example, the Jupiter will go out from the field of view during 20 sec at 200x magnification. The easiest way is to use a RA driving motor, but if you want to take photos about the deep-sky objects, you should use a better system, like computerized auto-guiding (GOTO) systems. For now, I am using only RA driving.
The following video will illustrate how quickly Jupiter is moving without driving:
The Jupiter without driving
The camera
Basically, you need to know two things:
The CCD cameras are used to make films about the planets or the Moon, and a special computer software will create the photos from this film (which contains hundreds of frames).
For taking photos about deep-sky objects, DSLR cameras are used with long exposition time because these objects are very pale, and the camera needs to collect as many light as possible. Due to the long exposition time, a precision driving is also needed and a massive mount. However, the DSLR cameras are very expensive thus I recommend to use it if you already have one, or you already know the basics of astrophotography. Because I don’t have DSLR camera, I wont introduce it in this blog.
I will only take photos with compact camera and with CCD camera.
Compact camera
Most of the people would like to take photos with its compact camera, no doubt, it’s the simplest solution, but the compacts are not really suitable for this purpose. However, you can take very nice photos about the Moon.
In the furthermore, I will compare the photos taken by a compact camera to a CCD camera.
First photos
I am using the following equipments: Skywatcher 150/750 Newton telescope, oculars, barlows, EQ-3 mount, RA driving, Scopium planet camera, a compact camera (Samsung s760) and a notebook for storing the films and photos.
Firstly, let’s see what kind of photos you can expect, if you take same photos with a compact (the target is the Moon, in order at 80x, 160x, 240x magnification):
The above photos succeed very good, taking into consideration that the Moon is an ideal target for compacts, because it has good brightness and no apparent rotation. Based on my experiences, using lower shutter speed (1/30, 1/45) I could take better photos.
But what will happen if I try to take photos about the Jupiter?
The photos would be blurry, and not too detailed. That’s the disadvantage of the compacts. You cannot remove the lens of the photo camera thus you need to use also an ocular in the telescope and thats the reason why you cannot make very good photos. It does not matter in case of Moon, but it is in case of planets or the deep-sky. Tuned the compact settings my best picture was the next:
In the next step, let’s see what kind of photos can we take using the Scopium planet camera. Actually, this is a special CCD camera with built-in IR filter and it can join into the telescop easily. Ocular is not required, and there is no lens for the camera thus you can minimize the lens errors. The maximum resolution is 640×480 and the maximum frame rate is 30 fps. This camera can record the video in raw uncompressed format, that means that 1 frame will be ~1 MB thus a 10 seconds length video will use 150-300 MB space on the disk and you have to make a dozen video in a night.
To take a photo in proper resolution, I need a barlow lens, it will increase the focus of the telescope, after using it, the the focus will be 225 cm. Because the size of the CCD chip is usually very small, you also need to use a barlow lens. As I mentioned it earlier, it’s very important to drive the telescope because the sky objects are moving very quickly. In the following, I will show a few photos about the Jupiter without driving:
I think these photos are better then the previously ones created by compact, but they are not really detailed.
And now, here are the bests. I created the following photos with Scopium camera, using 3x barlow lens and with RA driving:
I think the above photos tell everything. The difference is amazing compared to the compact. Just a notice:
You can see the similar picture in this telescope even if you look it into with naked eyes, so the Jupiter will be as detailed as you can see it on the above photos (it’s good to know, because a lot of deep-sky objects are so beautiful only on the photos due to the long exposition time).
Making deep-sky photos with compact
As mentioned earlier, DSLR cameras are the best for this purpose, but I tried to use my compact to take photos about deep-sky object. However, the pictures would be noisy and not too detailed, but I expected worse pictures after reading a tons of forum about it. Based on my experiences you should use as long shutter speed (if it can be set on the camera) as the motor can follow the object without diversion and increase the value of ISO to a highest value (e.g.: 800).
The following pictures will be created by Samsung s760 at 50x magnification and using 8 seconds shutter speed with RA driving.
The first photo shows the Pleiades (M 45), the second one the Andromeda Galaxy. I think these are the best for this compact, if you want to take better photos, you need to get a DSLR camera.
Now, here are a few photos about the Moon created by Scopium camera. As you can see, the resolution was less thus the photos contain only a little part of the Moon but they are sharper and more detailed even at higher magnification. If you would like to see the full Moon, you need to use focus reductor.
The third photo was created at higher magnification, the diameter of crater on the middle of the picture is “only” 100 km (Theophilus crater), and the minor crater on the right side of this is 24 km (Madler crater):
Update: I’ve uploaded my sky photos to flickr: pzolee’s sky photos
[.] MoreDo you want to process 800.000 messages/sec?
Well, I’ve just measured the performance of syslog-ng PE 4.1 (it’s under development but releasing soon) in a little performance test, and it could process more than 800.000 messages/sec in multithreaded mode.
The performance environment was the same I used during measuring 4.0, but I added two extra client computers and a newer gigabit line, so the maximum transfer rate could be 2Gb/sec for the 3 client computers together. On the server there were no changes.
Because I wanted to do a real performance test, the messages were written into files but after I reached the maximum performance of the HDD, I created a second log path where I used /dev/null destination.
I used 150 bytes of messages and the runtime was 10 minutes. Then I started the loggens on all clients in the same time.
The results for the three clients(the first two used the same log path and the destination was file, the third used /dev/null destination. Also, “zbssyslogng” and “ztssyslogng” used the the same gigabit line, the second (“syslog-ng-perf1″) used a second gigabit line):
root@zbssyslogng:/opt/syslog-ng# bin/loggen -r 1000000 --active-connections=10 -I 600 -s 150 10.140.0.179 1999
average rate = 284284.76 msg/sec, count=170575200, time=600.015, (average) msg size=150, bandwidth=41619.29 kB/sec
root@syslog-ng-perf1:/opt/syslog-ng# bin/loggen -r 1000000 –active-connections=10 -I 600 -s 150 192.168.20.2 1999
average rate = 269683.63 msg/sec, count=161811024, time=600.003, (average) msg size=150, bandwidth=39481.68 kB/sec
root@ztssyslogng:/opt/syslog-ng# bin/loggen -r 1000000 –active-connections=10 -I 600 -s 150 10.140.0.179 1998
average rate = 263340.71 msg/sec, count=158013385, time=600.034, (average) msg size=150, bandwidth=38553.08 kB/sec
If I sum the above numbers: 284284+269683+263340 = 817307 msgs/sec. Nice, isn’t it?
For fans, just look the following picture:
Also, I measured the performance with 1024 bytes of messages:
Because the HDD of the server was too slow, I used only /dev/null destination for this test and used only two client computers, because I had only 2 gigabit lines.
The results:
root@zbssyslogng:/opt/syslog-ng# bin/loggen -r 1000000 --active-connections=1 -I 300 -s 1024 10.140.0.179 1999
average rate = 98442.40 msg/sec, count=29533354, time=300.006, (average) msg size=1024, bandwidth=98385.70 kB/sec
root@syslog-ng-perf1:/opt/syslog-ng# bin/loggen -r 1000000 –active-connections=1 -I 300 -s 1024 192.168.20.2 1999
average rate = 113906.23 msg/sec, count=34171872, time=300.000, (average) msg size=1024, bandwidth=113840.62 kB/sec
It’s 207 MB/sec… The end of the two gigabite lines. So it means that syslog-ng can process more than 700GB messages/hour or 17 TB/day. Now, I am going to get more gigabite lines 
Of course my configuration was tuned for the maximum performance, but later I will make a full performance test for syslog-ng 4.1, where I measure different syslog-ng settings how affects to the performance.
However, don’t forget, syslog-ng PE 4.1 is not released yet, but it will be soon.
Cyber War in Reality
It can be read in the recently published cyber strategy of the American government that as a cyber attack can be just as dangerous as a real attack, it can happen that it is answered by a real military counterattack. It may seem to be an exaggeration at first glance but let us analyze the threats inherent in a cyber attack. The first thing that needs to be said is that the following issue would deserve several articles due to its complexity; now I only attempt to demonstrate the critical points in general.
I think I do not need to stress more the fact that attacks carried out with the help of computers have become very dangerous recently. And they will become especially dangerous in the future as nowadays computers control most of the main infrastructural elements (of course it depends on the country): the nuclear power plants, the electric power supplies, the stock exchange systems, the mobile phone network, the traffic lights, the banking services system and, of course, the Internet itself. The incapacitation of these infrastructures can evidently cause huge economic damages and – though nowadays still rather indirectly – it can also take human lives.
Although the incapacitation of the Internet infrastructures by a cyber attack would mainly cause only economic damages, but let us imagine what would happen if someone targeted the real infrastructures as well. For example, what would happen if someone manipulated the track switches to make trains crash? Or if an ingenious virus could get into the navigation software of the airplanes (possibly right in the factory) and it would do only one thing when activated: the altimeter of the plane would indicate 10 meters more than the actual height… Of course, Hollywood has got an inexhaustible supply of such ideas but we have experienced it several times that life can rewrite even the best script.
Although there have been attacks mainly against the Internet infrastructures so far, there is a good chance for an attack against the real physical infrastructures as well actually committed in the virtual space. The first example for this is the virus called Stuxnet. It was developed especially against the uranium enriching centrifuges of the Iranian nuclear power plants, destroying them by making them spin over. But what would have happened if the target had not been this but the melting down of the nuclear power plant? Of course, it would require a great amount of human error as well, but I am eager to know what the employees of the nuclear power plant would trust more: what the computers display or what they experience?
It could be even more alarming if such attacks were prepared carefully and previously simulated even under realistic conditions and then the virus was prepared for even the most unexpected human reactions to mislead the employees of the nuclear plant. If one of the thermographs of the plant indicates incorrect data it is soon detected by the staff but what would happen if the virus ran a complete program to confuse the engineers? Of course, that would require a highly excellent virus developed by the substantial support of a country as nobody has a power plant at home for testing, experimenting with it and the operation of the inner systems of nuclear power plants is not the concern of the public. What has to be done to mislead people so much that they themselves would take incorrect steps or they would trigger the catastrophe themselves by taking the necessary steps based on the data thought to be correct – but which are actually incorrect? Of course, this is all just fiction but the existence of viruses similar to Stuxnet was once fiction as well, so the possibility can not be disregarded at all.
However, modern nuclear power plants are essentially well-protected and many times overprotected, so the attackers would definitely have a hard nut to crack. But as I have mentioned above, there are still several other infrastructural elements operated by computer systems to be attacked. These are regarded to be much less important therefore their level of protection is probably much lower but in return a successful attack can cause quite a big destruction. Who would have thought before 2001 how huge destruction one or two passenger aircrafts can do? …
Of course, critical systems are usually protected against cyber attacks by software but how effective this is, well, that is doubtful. If we just consider how many big corporations (including several security companies), how many systems of government or banks have suffered successful crack attempts during the past year with hackers getting access to several hundreds of millions of client data, than it is beyond doubt that the cracking of a rail or an aircraft control-command system can not be a lot more difficult.
Certainly, we can say that these systems are physically separated from the Internet, so they are protected against cracking attempts but the human factor can never be eliminated. Just to mention one example: how many people connected their smartphones to their computers by a simple USB cable to charge them? And how many of them thought of the possibility of infecting their computers if their mobiles had been infected by a virus or another malicious application? I do think that cracking attempts making use of the safety margins of mobile phones have a great future ahead. This issue would deserve another post but I will deal with it at another time.
But let us not forget it either that although the computer system of these infrastructural elements can be cracked it is a bit more complex challenge to cause real damage. Most of these systems are unique, their operation is not or hardly documented for the public. So it is not that easy to write a virus that is able to control the real target hardware as well by penetrating into the system. To illustrate it with a simple example: it is one thing to crack the computer system of a car factory that most likely uses the well-known Windows operating system, and it is another thing then to control the robots working by the assembly lines with unknown software and special control.
After all, such an attack can be especially devastating right because of its unexpectedness as it has never happened before, so it may hit us unprepared. Let us admit that it has never crossed our minds that the traffic control signal we are approaching by car could be controlled by a virus and it could show green to others as well arriving from the other directions… (This is not fiction as even in many cities the traffic control signals have been controlled by a central traffic control system).
We can admit that the seriousness of cyber attacks can be almost that of a real military attack, and this tendency continues as more and more things are controlled by computers. And having thought these over, a real military counterattack in response to a cyber attack does not sound like a mad idea any more.
There is only one question left and everything depends on this: do we know who committed the attack against us?
Without thoroughly going into the problem, we can answer no. By making use of the anonymity of the Internet, a cyber attack can be initiated in any of the countries while the real attackers are likely to be in another country and it is almost impossible to trace back the attack. Not to mention that although the attack is executed from a certain country, it does not mean that at all that this country attacked us, only some citizens of this country decided to do so.
And if the attack is not committed online but e.g. with the help of a virus, than we have even less information as that virus could have been written by anybody, anywhere. So, in my opinion a military counterattack – although it would be justified – would not make any sense as we will not know who the attackers are unless somebody claims it.
But for the same reason, the cyber attack can be a very attractive form of attack for the countries. Honestly, today, in the era of nuclear weapons, nobody would take the risk of an open attack against a nuclear weapon owning country, even if they were not defeated.
At the same time, an attacker can initiate a cyber attack against a country while remaining anonymous right to the end. What is more, the paradox is that the more developed a country is, the more vulnerable it is for cyber attacks.
All in all, I think, each and every country has to seriously prepare itself for such a cyber war as well that initiates an attack against the real, physically existing infrastructural systems while the identity of the attackers remain unknown all along. Do not deceive ourselves with the false sense of security that as no such attack has ever happened before, so it will not happen in the future either as we can easily become similar to the driver in the story who did not look around at the crossroads thinking that “nobody came yesterday either”.
Here are some recent events from the past few months to underpin the above:
The details of the cyber strategy of the Pentagon can be read here (in English).
Hackers stole one million clients’ data from Sony: link
It was a piece of cake to crack into Citibank: link
Android in practice: Internet connection sharing and email client usage
As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, I have a HTC Wildfire mobile that runs Android operating system. Because I’ve already got a mobile Internet subscription, I started to use the services related to the Internet access and now I will share my experiences with you. Firstly, I will describe how to share the Internet connection of this mobile that is a very easy procedure, then I will introduce on how I found the best email client for myself. Don’t forget that the following description says about the HTC Wildfire and Android v2.2.1 operating system, perhaps it’s not true for other versions.
HTC/Android: How to share the Internet connection – USB tethering
There are two ways to share the Internet connection with this HTC mobile. Good to know, that you don’t have to root your mobile, they work by default on this HTC mobile.
The first way is to use the phone as a network device. To share the Internet connection, just plug the phone to the computer using the USB cable of the mobile, then choose the “USB tethering” option in the popup window. After that, the computer will detect the mobile and will use it as a network connection. The computer will use the Internet connection of the mobile by default, you don’t need to do anything. The best thing is that sharing the Internet connection takes only for a few minutes.
I tested this procedure using Windows (Windows 7) operating system and using Linux (Ubuntu Lucid) and it worked properly in both cases. If you encounter any problem, just disconnect and connect the USB cable again, it will solve the problems. Additional benefits that the mobile can share the WiFi connection also with the computer on this way, it can be very useful if your computer does not have WiFi card, but there is available WiFi Internet access.
In case of Windows, the connection is displayed as HTC Remote NDIS based Device in the network connection tab, in case of Linux it is displayed as usb0 network interface. Here is ifconfig output of my Ubuntu Lucid:
root@thor-t410:/home/pzolee# ifconfig usb0
usb0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 32:3c:25:fa:c6:1d
inet addr:192.168.42.18 Bcast:192.168.42.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::303c:25ff:fefa:c61d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:61 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:89 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:13166 (13.1 KB) TX bytes:13626 (13.6 KB)
Finally, here is a screenshoot about the USB tethering popup window and other one about the network card displayed in Windows:
HTC/Android: How to share the Internet connection – Wi-Fi hotspot
The second solution is to use the mobile as a WiFi hotspot. It means that the Internet access of the mobile is shared as a WiFi network, your computer can connect to this network as it does for other WiFi network.
The benefit of this method is that you can share the Internet access of the phone without using any cable, the disadvantage is that WiFi card is required for your computer.
To share the Internet access via WiFi:
Choose the Settings/Wireless & networks/Portable Wi-Fi hotspot settings menu item, but before enabling the WiFi hotspot (you cannot change the settings while the hotspot is active) give a custom SSID and password. For security reasons, it’s recommended to change the SSID and the default password.
If you are ready, you can turn on the hotspot selecting the Portable Wi-Fi hotspot check-box. After enabling it, your computer can connect to this network and you can use the Internet connection of your mobile. On the bottom screenshots you can see these settings and a screenshot about the WiFi network displayed in Windows 7.
Summary:
I was very satisfied the Internet sharing capability of this HTC mobile and Android system and very happy because I didn’t need to hack my Linux or Android to be able to use the Internet connection of the mobile.
The above procedures took only for a few minutes and it was very easy to set up them if you are using Windows or Linux.
Email client
In the second part of my blog post, I try to describe on how I found the best email client that met my requirements. To use an email client in Adroid seemed to be very easy at first sight, because Android has two built-in email client, but my requirements included special things.
Here are my special requirements:
- Off-line reading and searching in emails
- Storing the dowloaded mails in SD card instead of the phone memory
- low data traffic because I check my emails a lot of times a day
- I prefers to use IMAP instead of POP3
Because mostly I wanted to download emails from my Gmail account, I tried to use the built-in Gmail client firstly. Unfortunately, I couldn’t set up the offline mode for this client (it gave “No connection” error message if my Internet access was down), and it cannot store the mails on the SD card, thus I gave up to use it. Secondly, I tried to use the website of the Gmail, but I still couldn’t set up the offline mode, and it used highest network traffic (see my tests) so I rejected to use it. Finally, I tried to use the default built-in email client of Android, but it still couldn’t work in offline mode in case of IMAP protocol just in case of POP3 and it still couldn’t store the mails on the SD card.
After that, I tried to search email clients on the Market, and I was very happy when I found the K-9 Mail client. This client can download the messages via IMAP and also displays them in offline mode. Also it can store the messages in SD card insteand of the phone memory, and uses low data traffic because it can use compression for IMAP. Now, I am using this email client as default, and works properly.
For more details about the K-9 mail client:
http://www.androidtapp.com/k9-mail/
Also, I did a few tests to measure the network traffic usage of the different email clients and the results were the following when they downloaded and displayed 5 messages(the size of a message was 2 KB):
- Gmail web client: 186 KB
- Android built-in client (POP3): 55 KB
- K-9 email client (IMAP, compression on): 15 KB
As you can see, K-9 caused the lowest network traffic and the Gmail website caused the highest network traffic, so you should avoid to use the websites of the email account (not only the Gmail but other ones, too) if you have a small limited mobile Internet subscription.
Finally, here are a few screenshots, about the K-9 mail client settings:
Android in practice: my first experiences
Recently, I’ve got a HTC Wildfire mobile and this phone already runs Andorid operating system (v2.21) thus I thought to share with you my first experiences. Because I’m also a software tester, it’s a normal thing that I can spoil any software as I also did it with Android.
To avoid the misunderstandings, the following post says about the Android v2.2 that is running on HTC Wildfire mobile
Before buying the mobile, I collected a lot of useful information about the Android on the Internet. Because I didn’t have mobile Internet subscription, I wanted to know how I can disable the data traffic on my mobile because the tariffs of the Hungarian providers are very terrible without having Internet subscription. Great to know that this mobile can work without inserted SIM card (of course, you cannot make a call), so I could test it without risk. Firstly, I disabled several automatic update service, but it was a bad idea…
Can’t establish a reliable data connection to the server
On the Settings\Account & sync tab, I disabled the Background data option because the description of this item was the following: “Applications can sync, send and receive data at any time”. However it displayed a warning message that disabling this option will extend the battery life and lower data use. I thought it would be good for me thus disabled it than forgot it until I did not want to download applications from the Market.
Later, I wanted to download applications and to do that I would have to login using my Google account (It accepts only @gmail.com email address, you cannot use other valid email address for login). It failed, gave the following error message:
“Can’t establish a reliable data connection to the server”
I tried to login to Google on my notebook and it worked and I checked the Internet access on the mobile, but it was fine and my notebook and the mobile used the same wifi connection, so I didn’t understand the problem. A few minutes later, it came to my mind that I disabled several automatic update on my mobile and perhaps that is the reason for this problem. After I read a lot of forum, I found that it was a bad idea to disable “Background data” option. If it is disabled, I cannot login, if it is enabled, I can.
So, I enabled this service and could login to Google and download applications from the Market.
Downloading applications are OK.
Disabling mobile network (Internet access)
As I’ve mentioned it before, I didn’t have mobile Internet package thus I wanted to disable using Internet access on my mobile. To test it, I got another SIM card with Internet package. Disabling the mobile network seemed to be easy, but later I received a strange behavior. I could disable the Internet Access on the
Settings/Wireless &networks tab, using the Mobile network check-box. There was a widget to make it easier, too. After I disabled the Internet access, the mobile network went away. I checked it on the status bar of my mobile, there was no 3G icon and the Internet browser also complained about the missing network connection. I was happy, but not for a long time. While I was discovering the functions of the Android, suddenly 3G icon was displayed on the status bar, and the mobile was on-line without warnings. I did nothing, didn’t enable the Internet access. After that, I could not disable the access with the widget anymore, and the network service crashed and restarted because I had to type the PIN code again. I could not reproduce it reliably, but this behavior happened a few times in the next few days.
I decided to search other solution to disable the mobile network and later I tried to use the APNdroid application. This app can rewrite the APN information and prevent the mobile to access the Internet. It worked. I asked my friends who have android mobile about this behavior, but they have never seen this behavior. Perhaps my “tester hand” caused it. However, I am using both method to disable the mobile network and it works.
Disabling mobile network is OK.
Incoming/Outgoing SMS
Well, it’s very subjective, but the SMS manager system of the Android seems to be very complicated at first sight. For me, it seemed to be complicated at second sight, too. Compared to classic SMS management system, Android does not use inbox, outbox and other folders, the SMS messages are grouped by threads. I really don’t like this design, thus I decided to find other solution to use the classic view.
After reading a tons of forums I didn’t find any solution. The conclusion was that it’s a by design feature of Android.
Later, I was really happy when I found two applications to solve my problem. The first was the n2manager app, but I rejected to use it, because it seemed to be slowly, and displayed an advertisement at starting for 3-4 sec.
Finally, I chose the free GO SMS Pro application and I am really satisfied with this. Now, I have inbox, outbox, sent and drafts folders, and I can add custom folders, too. Also, I can set up the style and the font types and a lot of other things for the messages, and I can manage my SMS messages as I did it with my normal mobile before. Important to know that the folder views will be only displayed if on the Settings/Application settings/Message grouping tab the Separet mode is selected.
Alarm clock
The alarm clock does not work if the phone running Android is powered off. It’s logical for an operating system, but all of my previous mobiles could make alarm signal in off state, so I wanted to get a solution. There are two reasons why I want to turned off my mobile for night:
-This extends the battery life
-I wouldn’t like to be available when I am sleeping (the wrong news can wait, the good news will not arrive at night)
However, I couldn’t do that with Android but I found an alternative solution:
I am using Airplane mode, this disables all the radio traffic and will extend the battery life and I don’t need to turn off my phone because nobody can call me. Also, my phone can go to sleep mode and using together the both modes were a good alternative for me.
Remote access
There were two important things for me, the first one was to login to my router running Linux via SSH, the other one was to login to my Windows via RDP. I found two useful application to do that, the ConnecBot SSH client for SSH (it can use public-key authentication) and the PocketCloud RDP/VNC client for RDP (it worked with my Windows 7, and you can zoom in/out to see the details of the Windows display).
Screenshots
I didn’t plan to write on it, but I wanted to take a few screenshots for this article and it was not easy. Android cannot take screenshots by default. There are a lot of applications to take it, but they need rooted Android, and I wanted to avoid it. So I chose a difficult method. I had to download and install the Android SDK and the Java SDK then plug-in my mobile to my notebook and I can take screenshots using an Android SDK tool. For more details about it: http://www.androidcentral.com/taking-screenshots-without-root
Other useful applications
Finally, here are a few of my useful applications:
-Netcounter
-EasyUninstaller
-ASTRO: filemanager program
-Shazam
-Wifi manager
Games:
-Angry birds
-Teeter: It’s a funny g-sensor game
-gBall Lite: g-sensor game
-Snake
-Tetris