Headset button mod for Nexus 6

If your headphones have a button and you press and hold this button, your Nexus 6 will activate voice search. I don't need voice search and I want to use this long-click for music control.

Edit the apq8084-taiko-tfs9890_stereo_co_Button_Jack.kl file, found under /system/usr/keylayout/:

Before: key 226    HEADSETHOOK
After: key 226    MEDIA_NEXT

Save the change and reboot.

Now use an app like the Headset Button Controller to configure the right (not left nor center) button to do what you want. Here is how I set the button:

Single click: Play/Pause
Double click: Next track
Triple click: Previous track
Quadruple click: Volume up (one step)
Long click: Volume down

Nice, now I have convenient and full control with just one button and I almost never need to touch my phone while playing music. Without this mod, I had to use quadruple alone for volume adjustment and every time I had to increase the vol from 0 by steps - quite a pain.

Note: even if your headphones have three buttons, most of them are Apple compatible and only the center one works on Android phones. After above mod, the center button appears as right button to the phone, which is why we configure the "right" button although we still use the center one (again, Android cannot see other buttons).

Three alternatives:

JAYS Headset Control
Ultimate HeadSet Controller
Headset Control Center

If you use FireFox, you must have Firemin

For many reasons, Firefox has been my primary browser. But its memory management has been hopeless and I have tried almost all methods in vain, until Firemin. I wish I have tried it earlier, well, I won't believe in snake oil if Firefox did not push me to the limit so desperately.

Before, my Dell Venue Pro 11 7140 running Windows 8.1 with 4GB RAM complained constantly "Low on system memory" and I had to frequently restart FireFox to make room for other applications such as Lightroom to be able to run.

No more, and here you can see the effect:

Incredible, but all true.

The only downside, as you see, is few percent of CPU consumed by Firemin; not a big deal, processor speed is more than adequate these days. Also, pagefile will get bigger and more heavily used; not a big deal again, SSD is large and fast these days. So, no free meal, but what you get is far more than what you pay in this case. As long as I no longer need to manually and frequently restart Firefox, I'm happy.

Wireless charger

This LDesign Qi charger was on sale for $9.99 after $4 coupon (MBPABZQX), so I got one.

Turned out it works very well with my Nexus 6 and charging speed is no different than wired charging! If I use Nexus 6 charger with this Qi pad, charging is turbo fast and hot; if I use a general 2A charger, charging stays not hotter nor slower than normal. Exactly like a wired charger.

It works with LG G2 too, but I have not tested it much yet.

Convenient and no different than a wired charger in terms of charging speed and heat, and for just $10, why not!

I bought a $1 stand from Dollar Tree; charging vertically is less hot, takes up less room and is more convenient to use the phone:



[update] Sometimes charging is fast and hot but sometimes not. Strange.

An easier way to enable SBS in Kodi

Kodi, by default, disables 3D whenever you restart it. Here is another way to enable it by simply playing a short video clip.

First you download the video file, 3DEnabler.mp4, then watch the following video for how to use it to easily enable 3D:


Related articles:

Watch 2D video with Cardboard

Watch 2D video with Cardboard

3D and side-by-side contents are still scarce; the good news is, you still can watch any video with a Google Cardboard.

The first method is using Kodi. You need to set the pixel ratio to 2 and follow these steps:



Alternatively, you can install the SBSVideoPlayer on your phone. It is not a stand alone player though, it just converts a normal video to side-by-side within a video player. You open your video in a file browser such as ES File Explorer and select SBSVideoPlayer to open it:

The 2D video will look like this:

Related articles:

Tweaking Google Cardboard for Virtual Theater

OBD2 scanner - a must for all car owners

A big lesson from my last article: don't get the engine fault code(s) from an auto parts store! They use dumb scanners that cannot get correctly all the code(s). In my case, the code they read was P0456 - slow vapor leak. So I replaced the gas cap; the engine lights were gone for about 3 weeks and I thought it was fixed.

Then the lights showed up again. I went to the store again and got C1201. Weird code, so I went to another store and, this time, got P0456. Two different codes from two stores! It was at that moment, I said to myself: I must read the code by myself, otherwise I never know exactly what's wrong in my car.

A friend led me to OBD2 and ELM327. After some search, the BAFX stood out, although it cost about $10 more than the $10 ones.

I regret that I did not get one sooner. Even if you don't fix your car by yourself, you still should get one.  For $20, you can have a good understanding about the trouble you are facing and thus a dealer will be hard to rip you off or make things even worse.

In my case, water went into the canister filter and pump assembly and generated 5 codes: P043E, P043F, P2401, P2402, P2419. Toyota and Scion acknowledged this failure as a design flaw but they never figured out the real cause and fix. Some people got the expensive canister replaced several times and $$$$ spent on parts and labor, but the lights will still come back. A canister cost anywhere from $120 (used), $230 (3rd-party) to $650 (dealer), plus at least 3 hours of labor to install.

Well, I found out the real cause and fixed it with a condom and some blow job (no kidding) done on the pump assembly. I did not replace the canister nor any part, neither did I used any special tool other than my mouth. Watch this video for details:




[update] In the end, I had to open up the pump/valve module to clean the water in the pump orifice:


Related articles:

Check Engine light and a $5 easy fix

LG G2 Lollipop Diag Mode

I think it work for G3 too: