Setting SMSC on Android 4.4 KitKat

Working and living in Hong Kong nowadays means inevitably you have to go to mainland China occasionally.  I need to do so nearly every week since I supervise my company’s China business.  Then to keep connected to the internet and stay reachable while using a comparatively low cost becomes a key issue to me.

I have not found a good solution until a few days ago I bought a dual number prepaid SIM from China Unicom in Shenzhen, China.  The SIM card allows me to make and receive calls, surf web with 3G connectivity in both mainland and Hong Kong, and costs the lowest among all options I knew.  However one issues pops up when I need to send SMS from Hong Kong to mainland, as I just find out it’s one way receiving only.

Checked around the forums in both regions and even abroad, I notice it is the SMSC setting of phone has to be changed to the SMS number provided by the SIM.  My Nexus 4 is just upgraded to KitKat yesterday so it gets a bit tricky to do so, and luckily I find a solution, as showed here:

1. In the Phone app, dial *#*#4636#*#*, a menu will show up automatically, select ‘Phone Information’
2. Scroll down and find ‘SMSC’, click ‘Refresh’ button on the right to see the current number.  In my case a number in quote is showed.
3. Replace the number provided by the SIM.  In my case it looks like ‘+8613xxxxxx’, then click ‘Update’.

   Remark: Some posts mentioned that the number has to be converted to PDU format using a web app here, in which their phone is running ICS.  I find it not necessary in KitKat and perhaps it's an improvement.  Just remember to keep the quote after clicking the 'Refresh' and change only the phone number inside is OK.

4. Nothing will happen and no notification pops up, exit and make a test SMS.  I send one to my own number and also a friend to confirm.
5. Done.  It is as simple as that.

A Good Marketing Strategy

Adobe’s crisis (assuming you know they leaked about 150millions users’ account information recently) has become a great marketing opportunity to other internet companies like Facebook and Evernote, as these company cross check their user account email with the exposed Adobe user pool and let their user know whether their account has been affected.

Have to say it is a very brilliant and smart move.

On one hand these company assure its users that their account information is safe with them, on another they demonstrate to everyone how good they are there to move one step ahead of the potential attack to protect their product and client.  In face, by comparing to other internet service, I will have more confidence if they do things like this when shit like Adobe’s happens.

Setup Sublime Text 2 on OSX Mavericks for Ruby on Rails

1. Install Sublime Text 2.

I choose ST2 instead of ST3 simply because I don’t like using beta app for my work.

2. Verify ST2 installation works.  The follow steps refers to the good post at stackoverflow: Sublime Text 3 .subl command

In terminal, go to a folder with a few documents and type:

/Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl .

If ST2 opens the folder with documents showed in the left pane, then move on to the next step.  If not, go to the post I provided link and see what you miss.

3. Modify “.bash_profile”

In terminal, type

nano ~/.bash_profile

The file will be showed in terminal, add the following 2 lines in the end of file, then save and exit.

export PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH↲
export EDITOR='subl -w'

enable the newly edited .bash_profile by typing:

source ~/.bash_profile

4. Create a symlink subl for Sublime Text:

ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/subl

Please note I follow the post exactly to place the link file in /usr/local/bin

Now you should be able to use subl to open any text file.

5. Install Package Control, by following this instruction.

6. Install Packages via Package Control (⌘⇧P):

My picks here: Soda Theme, RailCasts Color Scheme, CoffeeScript, Git Gutter, and RubyTest (Ruby test cannot be installed by Package Control but manually, following their instruction on their github page).

7. Edit the Settings – User in Preference.

Mine is as follow:

{
 "caret_style": "solid",
 "color_scheme": "Packages/RailsCasts Colour Scheme/RailsCastsColorScheme.tmTheme",
 "font_face": "Menlo",
 "font_options":
 [
 "no_round"
 ],
 "font_size": 12,
 "ignored_packages":
 [
 "Vintage"
 ],
 "soda_folder_icons": true,
 "theme": "Soda Light.sublime-theme",
 "wide_caret": true
}

Then restart ST2 to activate the setting.

That’s it.  I’ll keep this post updated as I move further in my development.

UPDATE: 2013/11/29

As you know that .scss/.less file for CSS showed in Sublime is pure white by default, we can open a such file and form the menu, go to View > Syntax > [Optional: Open all with current extension as…] > CSS, then all .scss/.less will looks like the other CSS file with color theme.  [Source: Sublime Text 2: How to get scss and Less files to have color?]