Extremely easy recovery of SD cards, jump drives and other storage devices

Once in your lifetime, when you insert a SD card (or other alike storage devices), you'll see this dreadful thing:

No fear, just never click on "format" and you'll be fine. Open a Command Propt and simply type in this simple command line and return:

Note the "G" is the drive name you saw in the first photo. After just 1 second or 2, you'll see the command output and, bingo, your drive's content will pop up as it usually did:

If above not successful, you can try TestDisk. But be sure to do above first, because it is a 100% recovery and the process takes no time. With other methods, you'll usually lose at least the original file names and they may take several hours to achieve only a partial recovery.

Verizon Moto E (2015) - the king of phones!

For $50 (currently $20, after $25 BestBuy rewards), you simply cannot get a more ideal phone than MOTXT1528PP:

• Global 4G/LTE (see here), works on Verizon, Sprint (see comments below), AT&T, T-Mobile (confirmed LTE) and etc.
• Great battery life with its large 2400mAh battery.
• SD card slot for more storage.
• OTG USB.
• FM radio with exceptionally good reception and sound quality, better than the best FM radios I own. And it is stereo, yes! You may plug in something into the headphone jack as an antenna and then cast audio to a Bluetooth device. I can even click the fast forward/backward buttons on my HS3000 to switch stations! Are we talking about a budget phone?
• Perfect screen size of 4.5", third generation gorilla glass, anti fingerprints.
• Hotspot works out of box, regardless what prepaid service plan you have! No need to do any hack to bypass the entitlement check.
• Loud and clear speaker at top front. 
• Non-slip frame. This frame is also easy to open to access the SD and SIM slots - no need to open the entire back cover.
• Hot swap SIM cards, unlike all Samsung and LG phones that force a reboot.
• Fast data speed (20M download), especially uploading (10M, about double of Samsung S4 and LG G2). 
• Very few blotware if any at all and all Moto "enhancements" can be easily disabled.
• More than 30 languages built in, including Korea, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

So what's the catch?

•  No permanent root yet, but Kingroot works as a temporary one. You just need to use Kingroot to root it after every boot. So yes you can let hotspot go through VPN. Some apps that require modifications to the system folder won't work, such as Busybox and those that need it. BTW, Kingroot 4.0 works better than 4.1. If it fails, reboot, go to settings and apps, KingRoot and clear data. Disabling Moto, Moto Actions, Moto Display and Motorola Alert may also help.
• As soon as it is connected to the Internet, it'll receive an update to 5.1 which makes it more difficult to switch to GSM mode (global mode). So you'd better ignore the "Install system update" notification - don't touch it, just ignore it. Normally you have to have a Verizon account to get an OTA update and prepaid phones almost never get any update at all, so you know how eagerly Verizon wants to patch this and why you must not take this generous offer.
• No 2100 MHz that's used for 3G in some countries such India and China.

Two alternatives:

•  Moto Luge 4G/LTE. It was on sale in BestBuy for $50 before $25 rewards. Smaller (4.3") but better looking screen, slim and adorable. Also a global phone but no LTE on T-Mobile etc. (H+ only). Totally rootable, but Android 4.4.2 has a bug with VPN and ipv6, so you need to use the "OpenVPN Settings" app if you need VPN and disable ipv6.
• LG Transpyre 4G/LTE. It is always $80 or even lower. It is not a global phone though, CDMA only. Beautiful screen. Root and VPN is the same as the Luge.

[update] Kingroot is not practical and thus this phone is not so suitable for hotspot if VPN is needed, unless you can run VPN on other devices. Brand new Luge is only $80 on ebay, the only thing missing is a fantastic FM radio.

[update] Now there is a workaround to the annoying system update.

[update] Success rate of Kingroot 4.1 is high now, almost successful every time, due to either the removal of TogicTV app (very background active), or newer rooting schemes added to KingRoot's database?

Sony cameras - dusts leak to sensor

Dusts can creep into the E-mount interface and they are then be sucked to the sensor:

And these dusts are micro, cannot be blown off with a blower. You must use alcohol to clean them up.

I found this O ring from a local hardware store for about $1:

It is about 45mm x 2mm, perfect to seal the E-mount slot:

Works for a6000, a5100, a5000 and all E-mount cameras including A7 series. No problem for lens swap. May keep water out too, to some extent.

If you cannot find such an O ring, you may use a proper rub band, but might not be so friendly to lens swapping:

Don't fix it if it is not broken

As a tweaker (other than a trouble maker), I know that rule, very well; so I never update any software. Somehow I installed a new version of the TouchMousePointer on my Miix, thought I had a copy of the old version to go back. Well, as always, the new version is erratic and double-tap no longer work (unless I do it extremely quickly). To make it a though tragedy, I can no longer find the old copy in my storage!

After lots of searching, the oldest version I could find is 1.0.9.1 and, fortunately, it works fine on my Miix. To save your trouble finding it, here I uploaded it to my server:

http://www.kots.us/data/uploads/touchmousepointer1091.zip

There are even older versions around, 1.0.32 and 1.0.33. They work more solid than the 1.0.9.1, but they lack of an essential feature: click through the touchpad. For example, if there is an image file underneath the translucent mouse pad, you can still double tap on the mousepad to open it, as showing below. With this fantastic feature, the mousepad takes virtually no space/room on your touchscreen, as you can still see and access whatever underneath, and you can move the mousepad to anywhere you like without blocking anything on your screen.

What all touchscreen computers have done wrong

A tablet is heavy so the relatively lighter keyboard cannot hold it. There are two stupid workarounds so far: 1) MS Surface's kick stand; 2) ASUS T100's iron in the keyboard.

I have a very simple simple solution here: move Surface's kick stand to the bottom of the keyboard, similar to what I did with my Miix 2 8:

Cheap battery used in newer Insignia HD radio

The NS-HD01A is the last Insignia HD radio I bought and it is the first that can no longer hold a charge. I opened the case, this is what I see compared to HD01 (left):

As you can see, the new battery (blue) has less capacity, 750mAh vs. 840mAh, and it is made in China instead of Korea. No wonder, this battery died so quickly after only a year while my older HD01 is still working fine. The dead battery is blown, like many such China made ones I've seen:

As you know, I have two early models of HD01 that crash too often to be usable, so I moved one battery from them into this new HD01A and now it is working fine.

What a crappy company Insignia is!

Jackie Chan's reading glasses

I was reading some news and noticed one common thing among Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh and Madonna: they wear large glasses. Based on their age (61, 53 and 56) and the large size of the glasses, these must be reading glasses and must be progressive (these super stars won't wear bifocal to show their age).

So, where they got these glasses? If you've read my this article, you know nowhere to buy progressive reading glasses and even bifocal ones are difficult to find in stores.

If you, or your parents, are such old, you should get these glasses - very convenient and comfortable. There is no reason to wear ordinary reading glasses. See my this article for more details.


Abstract in Chinese

你们有没有注意到成龙戴的大眼镜？才注意到杨紫琼和麦当娜也都是戴的这样的眼镜。他们都是到了戴老花镜的年纪了（好快呀！）。这些眼镜为什么都那么大个？肯定是逐渐过度的平镜（上面部分）加老花（下面部分），等于是两幅眼睛做在了一起，所以很大。

这种眼睛的英文名是progressive reading glasses。好处是：

• 别人不知道你戴的是老花镜，能隐瞒你的年纪。
• 不需要老是摘下来，一直戴着就是了 - 看人用上面的平镜，看手机用下面的老花镜。
• 看人和远处不需要把头低下来然后从边框的上面去看。

可惜这种progressive眼睛买不到，比较容易买到的是叫做bifocal的，下面的老花部分是能看出来的，不是渐渐过度到平镜的。跟progressive相比，bifocal的缺点是显而易见的： 不利于掩盖佩戴者的年纪、跳跃式的从老花到平镜的转换让人不一定能适应。不过还是比普通的老花镜好多了。我个人现在用的一幅是很浅的茶色的bifoccal，还兼做太阳镜了，一镜走天下！

更多的详情可查阅我的另一篇博文。