Two days ago I was attending annual, one day conference, dedicated to virtualization with VMWare products.
More or less all presenters were using vendor provided slides, often the same or very similar (boring). Only a handful prepared their own presentation. In my opinion the highlight of the day was gentlemen from SRC d.o.o, who illustrated very well the paradox of various (failed) predictions from Gartner, Forrester Research and similar bunch of companies who’re “predicting” the future with “statistical observations”, with a joke about predicting the winter.

Here is my translation of the joke from Slovenian to English (with my interpretation):

It’s autumn and time to prepare for the winter in a small North American Indian village.
Local Indians are visiting their shaman to get some advice about the coming winter.

Indians: “Hau shaman, can you tell us how chilly this winter will be?”

Shaman: “Hau my people! Better prepare the firewood for the winter, because long and chilly winter is ahead of us.”

Indians: “Are you sure about that?”

Shaman: “Of course I’m sure, I’m not your shaman for nothing!?#%?… But, I’m willing to seek further confirmation with our Manitou. Please come back in a week or two.”

Indians: “Ok, chief, we’ll start to prepare the firewood immediately, see you next week.”

As soon as Indians left the shaman tent, he called his white man friend, meteorologist in the nearby city.

Shaman: “Hi Bill, long time no see, we shall meet and smoke a pipe or two. By the way, can you help me with the weather forecast for this winter?”

Bill: “Sure chief, what do you want to know?”

Shaman: “What’ll winter be this year?”

Bill: “Ughh.hmm…I think it’ll be long and chilly winter.”

Shaman: “You think or do you know?”

Bill: “Well, I don’t have all data at hand, but I can do some additional research, just for you, my friend. Please call me in a week or two.”

Shaman: “Thanks Bill!”

Weeks goes by, Indians preparing the firewood started complaining; hard work in the wood hurt their backs, they started to wonder if the winter will really be as cold as shaman predicted.

Shaman sensed the tension in the village, furiously picked his iPhone and quickly dialed meteorologist.

Shaman: “Hau Bill, what’s up? Did you get your forecast data for this winter?”

Bill: “Good news chief, I can firmly confirm that the winter will indeed be long and harsh. For several weeks we observed how Indians are madly chopping down the trees, they must be preparing for harsh winter…”

Shaman: “What the @$%&#$%”

Disclaimer: any resemblance to real life reports from various IT researchers is a pure coincidence.

I tried for several days to somehow make HTC Sync (the latest and greatest Version: 2.0.18, that should work with Windows 7, but does not) connect to my HTC Hero. Finally, I gave up and decided to use Windows XP workstation for ROM upgrade. The reason I decided to upgrade from ROM 1.76.405.6 to 2.73.405.5 was sluggish screen navigation. Barely noticeable but annoying, nevertheless.

Here it is what I did to upgrade ROM on HTC Hero:

• made a backup of my files on SD card
• downloaded and installed the latest HTC Sync Version 2.0.18 on my Windows XP SP3 Workstation [protected with UPS, of course]
• connectec HTC Hero to Windows XP workstation with HTC Sync
• downloaded and installed ROM Upgrade for HTC Hero, Version 2.73.405.5, after I read accompanying readme. Update was done in approximately 4 minutes.
• new ROM means that you’ll need to repeat registration process (make sure you note down APN data of your mobile provider, otherwise you’ll not have data access to Google!) and make some minor tweaks, such as pick your default ring tone, setup wallpaper, re-create bookmarks, thumb pictures of your favorite people, enter your stocks in Yahoo Finance! etc. I hope some day HTC will provide a better backup method than limited HTC Sync with calendar and contacts backup. And that is not all, you’ll also need a fresh installation of all the applications that you installed from Android Market.
  [Unfortunately, I found out about Android excellent Astro File Manager application too late to use it to backup my old applications. Sic.]
  Installation of applications can be time consuming and error prone process. For example my attempt to install my “old” applications failed miserably – hanging with “Starting download…” messages. I found on the net several hints about rectifying stuck download, what worked in my case was to clear the cache: Menu->Settings->Applications->Manage Applications->then scroll down and select the Market and "Clear cache".

Since my hands were already dirty, I decided to setup Dalvik Debug Monitor, primarily for taking some screen shots of my phone. Here it is:

• downloaded Android SDK, at the time of writing this blog it was android-sdk_r05-windows.zip
• I unzipped file in some temporary directory
• then I run “SDK setup.exe” from directory where I unzipped SDK (E:\DVD\HTC\android-sdk-windows)
• I checked for installation only packages that are needed for Android 1.5 platform (see below picture)



• connect your HTC Hero to USB port on your computer and check that USB debugging is turned on (Menu->Settings->Applications->Development->check USB debugging)
• run Dalvik Debug Monitor by executing ddms.bat from \android-skd-windows\tools directory. When GUI starts, select yout HTC from left upper pane, then open Device menu and select Screen capture. That’s it. Here are some screen shot examples from my HTC:

The last picture is from Astro File Manager, imho a must have application for every android based phone owner!

After a day of using HTC Hero with upgraded ROM, all I can say is that screen navigation is now smooth. Certainly an upgrade effort worth of my time.