So how did I do it? Well, the basics are the same, take a Palm Pre back cover (€10) + Touchstone dock (€20) and tear off the inductive circuit from the Pre back cover and insert it into the cover from the Samsung Galaxy S Plus. The tricky stuff is modifying to the micro USB plug. To be exact, to cut it really short so it doesn’t stand out. This requires some skill and a lot of patience. As the plug is really small, you definitely don’t want two wires coming from it. Two wires would require really small solder points which offer no stability at all and will just break after some days of use. So what you will have to do is to only wire the +5V only. Luckily, you can get 0V from everywhere inside, I used the micro SD card slot for it. The rest is pretty straight forward. Take a look at the video to see the finished mod:

If you like to rebuild the mod, here are some more hints for you:

• Remove all pins from plug by pulling them out forcefully before sawing.
• Buy more micro USB plugs to play with, as you will certainly break some before you finish one. I suggest using the inner (black) part of one plug combined with the metal casing of a different plug.
• Bent one pin as shown on the picture so it can fit into 2 pin slots, then cut it to a length that it won’t shorten any pin.
• Make the solder point as long as possible, this will add more stability.
• If you happen to have black hot-glue, use it as a finish to cover up the complete slot.

UPDATE

After I have shown this mod to my girlfriend, she wants it too on her Galaxy S. But she wants to keep her micro USB port free for cable connections for USB charging. Warranty is not much a problem for her, so she just wants a really pretty looking and invisible mod. If you like see a guide for that, drop me a comment here and I will document the process for you guys.

UPDATE 2

So as so many of you seem to want it, I’ll be filming the whole process of creating the high WAF mod. For this, I will try to do this mod with no visible wires (why do girls hate them?), everything else as invisible as possible, backcover easily removable just as without the mod. I already ordered the parts and I am waiting for them to arrive. The camera is ready to roll.

UPDATE 3

Still waiting for parts to finish the high WAF mod, half of the mod is already completed and documented. I ordered them on Monday and they still haven’t arrived. Until then you can take a look at a step to step guide for this version of the mod done by Yujie.

UPDATE 4

Done! View the results here.

The people at printjob24 are really nice, so I can really recommend them if anyone else needs an engraving. Here is the video:

This effect is caused by playing the sound “ba ba ba”, but showing the video for “ga ga ga”. You brain will see the lip moments and decide that the only possible thing to hear is “da da da”. People who can’t lip read at all will hear “ba ba ba” and hearing impaired will hear “ga ga ga”. You won’t encounter this effect in real life, because lips are always synchronized with the voice, but in some amateur dubbed movies, the is the possiblity of you hearing something which has not been said.

I’ve found a video on Youtube showing this effect:

Here is another with an complete sentence as example:

More about our trip can be found on my girlfriends website: Junny’s Homepage

I filmed a little with my N70, so here is the video:

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• An Internet café is a place for me, where I can go to play games with friends. Not because I can’t play at home, but because you can play with more people just as if you are on a LAN party except that you don’t need to bring your PC along. But two things are necessary for an internet café. A clean environment is required and at least a well equipped PC to play with. But that’s what I didn’t find in Minhang. 500 MHz with 256 MB Ram and a Geforce2MX 64MB was the system I was using there. It was worse than my desktop computer I used in 2000. Playing Counter-Strike at 800×600 at 50fps is one thing, but having to use a mouse that was almost glued to the table… So much for gaming fun.
• Course grading is also something I wasn’t used to. 35% of the grade comes from whether you went to class or not, another 35% comes from your homework, 10% could be earned by raising your hand in class and asking something and finally 20% for the “big final exam”. So basically, when you go to class, have an intelligent group for your homework and ask some stupid irrelevant questions, you could pass that class with an nice and shiny “A” even if you fail the exam with zero points. This is definitely not what education should be. This is of course only one course of the two I’ve taken. The other one was completely normal to me with 20% for homework and 80% for the final exam. But I was told that most master-courses where like that in SJTU. Bachelor-courses in SJTU are one of the best, but master-course are for the monkeys. PhD on the other side is supposed to be very good. But that’s only what I’ve heard.
• Bike theft is another major thing I will remember. I heard a lot of bike theft before, but I never though that my bike will be stolen too. Well, I guess I should have brought the big lock with me that day… Anyway, Frank is riding his 4th bike now and a student from the US had bought his 8th bike or so.
• Buying bikes on the other hand is so cheap compared to Germany. You can get a really nice GIANT bike for 1200 RMB. For an equivalent bike in Germany, you have to spend at least 6000 RMB!
• You can pay your bills in every little supermarket. This is a very convenient way to pay your bills. I really liked this effective way because it’s perfect for lazy people like me.
• It’s amazing how many QQs cabs there are in Minhang. One third of all cars around the campus were QQs. They look incredibly small, but I heard they are quite comfortable. I never sat in one of them though.
• Every weekend, where I used to enjoy my long beauty sleep, I was woken up very early by those extremely noisy crackers. Right when the hour pointer of the clock reaches 240°, I jump out of my bed thinking the world war 3 just started.
• Shanghai has a really nice skiing hall. You might have seen the old snowboarding video before. Anyway, the point is you can go skiing every time in the year, but there are no one single shop selling skiing clothes in the summer! I figured that out after intensively searching the city for 2 days.

Anyway, I had a really nice time in Shanghai and I want to especially thank these people for making my time so enjoyable: Shen Xiao for taking care of Frank and me the first days, we would have been lost if he didn’t show us around. Li Bing for managing all of our university needs, finding us the correct classes, getting us through the bureaucratic stuff. And finally Zhao Ming for helping me improve my Chinese. Thank you a lot! Hope to see you again soon!

Here is a video of us snowboarding for the last time. Enjoy!

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Frank, Shen Xiao and me, along with some friends of Frank had a great time racing on the track. We were twice on the track, 16 minutes in total, but after that, we were wasted. For 100 Yuan each, we got a real nice butt massage in front of a high end ventilator and next to incredible loud speakers making “brrrooooooom” all the time. And sitting in a tumble-drier which starts rolling whenever you get in a curve. Well, you know what I mean. My hands were shaking after every race from the uneven road. If you can’t imagine what I am talking about, go race a little for yourself. Then you will know what I mean. Anyway, a friend of Frank shot a video and I just cut it together for you to enjoy. Btw, I’m the dude in red t-shirt, Frank is in a black addidas shirt with 3 white stripes and Shen Xiao wears a green t-shirt. Have fun:

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First, I needed a voice, so I started searching for computer generated voices. My first results were Microsoft Sam & Co. They didn’t sound anything close to real. After some more googling, I found Neospeech’s Lily Chinese Voice. It really amazed me, because the voice sounded really realistic. It was quite fun to let the voices read all kinds of stupid things.

I used Neospeech’s demo and recorded a little sound file. Then, I imported it into Crazytalk Media Studio and combined it with an image from ??&???’s website. After some customizations with the image, the virtual talking person was ready to go. Here is the result of my work:

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The hall is very big, but had almost no decoration, so it looked really ugly. The lift was way too slow, it was going at 1km/h or so, 3 times slower than walking! So skiing there is basically 30 seconds downhill, 3 minutes uphill with the lift. Not so much fun.

Anyway, I shoot some videos with my cell phone and cut them together in a video. Take a look:

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The result is amazing. Here is a list of the common locks and their security:

• Cable locks, which are pretty popular in China, can be easily opened within 1 minute. Very thick ones may take up to 5 minutes. (See this video on Frank’s Website) How to do that? It’s very simple, just cut through the cable wire. For cheap locks (less than 10 Yuan) you only need a screwdriver. See me opening such a lock in the video below. For those 5 Yuan lock users of you, no tool is needed at all, just pull a little harder and the lock will break.
• Rear Wheel locks, the one every bike has, seems a little bit more safe, taking us first time lock pickers about 15 minutes to get open. But it could have been opened easily in 1 minute with the appropriate tool you can construct. For those interested: You simply need a modified pincer to pinch the pins (the little bronze dots on the hull of the locks) in. After that, you can simply use a screwdriver to open the lock.
• Bolt locks, which Frank and I prefer, can’t be cut open with simple tools. So their weakest point is the lock. So don’t go cheap with the lock, because a cheap lock can be broken easily. My first one cost 22 Yuan. Frank got the same one. His got picked. The reason? The lock was too weak. They tried to pick mine, but fortunately mine somehow jammed. Lucky me or else my bike would have been stolen, too. Well, the bad thing is that it took me 5 minutes to open the lock with the correct key because the damn lock jammed! It was a simple one-pin-side lock pointing to the center. To open that kind of lock, you only need to drill a hole in the lock, let the pins fall out and open it is. Franks second lock was a two-pin-side lock which pointed sideways. It is a little harder to open, but still open able. After my lock got picked, I got myself a heavy motorcycle lock, which I can’t make out what is going on inside, but several people tried to pick it already (I can see the marks they left), but they all failed and the lock never jammed and is still easy to open with the correct key.
• Other kinds of locks. Don’t think your lock is safe, it isn’t! Just go to Google, search for bicycle lock picking and see for yourself.

So now I follow the tactic to have a strong secure lock, whereas Frank uses a new tactic: Get the cheapest and ugliest bike and the cheapest lock. No one will steal it because it is too ugly and if, then you didn’t loose much because you got the cheapest bike and the cheapest lock.

Of course there is another way. We thought about it a while ago. We pick every single lock on campus. Then, anyone can just take any bike and go somewhere. If nobody needs to buy a bike then nobody will buy stolen bikes and then nobody will steal bikes. This is very utopic and will probably never happen, but I think it is worth a try.

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