If you have a rooted Android phone, you have full control over your device–and unrestricted access to the data it contains. In this post, I’m going to show you how you can use your rooted Android device to do something that the average person can’t do: namely, export your contacts from the Facebook app on Android.

A couple months ago, I decided to expand my knowledge of artificial intelligence by participating in the 2011 AI Challenge. It was an incredibly interesting and educational experience. Sadly, I was forced to divert my attention away from the AI Challenge to focus on more important things.

One of the more interesting things I learned from the AI Challenge was an A* algorithm which supports searching from multiple sources to multiple targets, simultaneously. I used this algorithm to efficiently gather food: one pass of this algorithm calculated paths to each food tile.

A while back, I wrote about streaming music with Ampache. Ampache is a nice piece of software, with some unique advantages (like Android support). However, there are simpler ways to stream music. I’m going to show you how to stream music using sshfs and (optionally) mp3fs. One of the best things about this approach is that it allows you to access your collection with the media player of your choice.

I arrived at Keflavik airport at about 2 AM. I was planning on spending the night at the airport, but unfortunately the airport is very small outside of the main terminal. I ended up taking the airport shuttle in to Reykjavik and arrived in the city center at around 3 AM. I went to 4 different hostels before finding a place with any vacancy. The place I ended up at, Reykjavik City Hostel, is about a 30 minute walk outside of Reykjavik. It was interesting because the average age of the people staying there was about 30. Iceland is an expensive place; apparently even people in their 30s can’t afford hotels there!

My visit to Copenhagen was relatively uneventful. The main thing I did was go to the Coffee Collective, a coffee roastery run by a former World Barista Champion.

Immediately after arriving at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, I went to the tourist information desk. I asked the guy behind the counter for a map, and he asked for 10 euro. When I asked him where to find a free WiFi hotspot, he replied, “Nothing is free in Germany.” Not a promising start.

I spent a couple days in Prague. Here I found some of the most impressive Gothic architecture I’ve ever seen - it looked straight out of The Lord of the Rings.

I left Budapest on a remarkably advanced “Railjet” train and ended up in Vienna a short while later. Vienna is a great city. In fact, it’s one of my favorite European cities. Vienna is a blend of advanced infrastructure, magnificent buildings, culture, and coffee.

I arrived at Budapest-Keleti station in the afternoon. When I exited the station, some guy approached me asking for money so that he could buy some Xanax. There were a lot of homeless people in Budapest. It wasn’t all bad, though.

When I arrived in Bled, I set out to find a hostel. I ended up finding a really great one called Traveller’s Haven. They offered a kitchen, internet, comfortable mattresses, free laundry, and free bike rentals - all for only 20 euros!