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Monthly Archives: April 2013

Friday Fix: Android keyboard not working

I have a Samsung Epic 4G. A really old-ass Android phone. Fortunately for me, Android is an open platform and a very talented pool of hackers and coders have created a vibrant non-commercial ecosystem.

Case in point, I am running Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) on a phone that Samsung never intended to get past Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). The features this opened up to me (running apps that previously were blocked, Google cards, enhance system customizability, etc)  made the phone feel as though it were brand new!

Now, to clarify, I am running the very popular cyanogenmod ROM. Currently running version 10. I could go into a whole other blog post about the bluetooth and memory issues I experienced in CM 10.1, but I just want to get to the fix I needed to get CM10 running smoothly.

I immediately started experiencing issues with the software keyboard after I loaded the gapps package for CM10. I was continually getting the error message, “Unfortunately, Android keyboard (AOSP) has stopped working”  popping up everytime I tapped on something that needed text input. This practically made the phone unusable. Fortunately, the Epic has a hardware keyboard and I was able to find a workaround.

First, you will need to download some alternative keyboard app. I had purchased SwiftKey a while ago when it was on sale, so I just added that to my phone again. I imagine that you can install your keyboard app of choice.

Select Menu (hardware key) -> System Settings – > “Language & input”

language & input

Select Language & input

Select SwiftKey or whatever keyboard app you downloaded

Select alternative keyboard app

Select SwiftKey or other keyboard app

Notice that the Android keyboard (AOSP) can’t be unchecked. This is a problem. Even though the SwiftKey keyboard now appears whenever a keyboard is needed, the Android keyboard is still being opened too. The error message is still appearing. This can be fixed by disabling the Android keyboard app.

In order to do this:

From the Home screen:

Select Menu (hardware key) -> Manage Apps

Swipe all the way to the right until “ALL” app list is displayed, and navigate to the list until “Android keyboard (AOSP)” is displayed

Navigate to Android keyboard (AOSP)

Navigate to Android keyboard (AOSP)

Select the Android keyboard to bring up its properties. Then select ‘Disable’.

Disable Android Keyboard (AOSP)

Disable Android Keyboard (AOSP)

This will deactivate the keyboard and thus, Android won’t continue to try to open the broken keyboard.

I haven’t had a keyboard error message since I have done this.

Friday Fix: Credit score

Just a quick teaser post for today’s Friday Fix. It is of a personal nature as well.

About two or so weeks ago, I began looking for a house. What should be a fun and exciting life event, has been marred by the incredibly frustrating and stressful process of trying to get a loan. I am going to do a proper write-up on my situation shortly and the challenges involved. But in the mean time, I want to point out that not having a credit score, even if you have no other debt or delinquent payments, is a huge deterrent to getting a home loan. Without a credit score, a person is automatically deemed a high risk individual until proven otherwise (via manual underwriting).

Friday Fix: My first open source contribution

Hey everybody, kind of an exciting Friday Fix this week. I just submitted my first pull request to an open source project!

First, a little back story. A short while ago I noticed a discussion on Twitter, that spread to github, regarding the name of a particular javascript testing library named Testacular. I believe that it was meant to be a play on the work ‘spectacular’, but it doesn’t take a huge leap to notice that it is one vowel away from the word ‘testicular’. A very valid argument was made that by naming the library in such a way, the project’s author was potentially alienating women and thus undercutting the project’s adoptability. After a semi-heated debate on the project’s github issue tracker, the name of the tool was changed to ‘Karma’. Fast forward to this week, and I’m checking out AngularJS to see what the buzz is about. In checking out the tutorials page, I see a reference and link to the Testacular framework for testing. Knowing that this information is no longer accurate, I click the “Improve this doc” button, modified the references to Testacular, created a pull request, and submitted! As of the writing of this post, the change isn’t on the site. But it does look like it passed testing and will be merged into master at some point.

It is an odd feeling, the level of accomplishment I experienced for having done something so simple. But I guess that’s the nature of open source. So many individuals providing contributions, both large and small, all striving toward a common goal. Everyone wants to improve the project, and anyone can contribute. And now, in a very tiny way, I have helped make the open source community a little bit better.