[Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0, 5.0] hanthesolo:
Yes yes, this is a life story thread, but I want to chronicle how far we have come in the last few months, and the incredible teamwork this community has.

Around march, I got my Galaxy Player for the first time. With the galssy eyes of a techno geek unwrapping his new gadgets, I tore open the box, and beheld my shiny new toy, something, which I did now know at the time, that would take me far beyond my wildest dreams of technical success. Of course I bricked it withing the first 3 hours, "accidentally" deleting ALL the dalvik control settings from build.prop, and not having adb installed at the time, or even knowing what the heck Odin was, spent a merry 7-8 hours trying to get my prized posession back to it's stock state. I probably repartitioned and flash over 50 times that night, which was also when I flashed the INTL bootloader off of zaclimon's thread (little knowing that I would have a healthy partnership with him in just a few months), and thet next morning, I was back in business.

Of course I crack-flashed ALL the rom's there were for the 4.0 at the time. Klin's klassic, steve's, rooted stock, whatever I could find. I just couldn't help but feel slightly depressed that there wasn't really much of a dev presence for my new device, and I was more the enviously eyeing the 5.0's ICS builds. So I lurked for a few months, pondering whether I should even activate my dormant XDA account, scared that I was just too much of a noob to actually get help.

One day though, I took the plunge. I decided that I was going to try and get my feet wet in this "xda" thing, and maybe browse general, helping the occaisonal user in distress. Just 1 day later, I posted my first contribution thread, without even having 10 posts! The tweak guide for the Player, how proud I was of it. All the nice tweaks I had enjoyed on my TF and had discovered for my Gplayer, all there for my own personal quick applying.

2 days after that, I began asking klin1344 about ICS, as reading through some threads, I thought I heard some rumours about a secret underground build that may have been surfacing, as well as whether or not SGS (what is that?) tweaks can be used on our player. He pleasantly responded with the fact that no, there was no ICS, and he had never considered using SGS tweaks. Would I like to be his dev partner?

I will not lie to you, this FLOORED me. Little me, the noob who had maybe had is Gplayer for 2 weeks, and barely knew his way around the terminal, being asked by a dev to help him? Easily one of the proudest moments of my XDA career. I signed up immedately, we began discussing, and ended up coming to a mutual agreement that partnering may not be the best idea, as we both had differing opinions on what should constitute a ROM. He was going to let me support Klassic (my favorite rom), and he was going to start a SGSII themed rom (which turned into ICY fusion.

With joy in my heart, I learned the basics I needed from him (such as DD) and began applying all the tweaks I had from my tweaks thread into this rom. I decided to rename it "stratusrom", and include multiple releases. One beta, one weekly, and one stable. This was nixed completely as soon as I learned how hard devving could be, and after a few false starts that long time forum members will remember, and renaming it "stratusrom" and eventually "etherealrom" (hence the celestially-named projects that I am related to, if you guys wanted to know), I began devving. Not much happened here, I released a few iterations, guiding hands such as daniel644 and the dev zaclimon provided their amazing help to the poor little dev who could (me), trying to make a decent rom. At one point, I had a falling out with Klin (whcih I am sure most of you remember, that was a scary night for me, the little dev, being whaled on full-force by a senior-class dev, with both us us threatening to remove our work), but let's not dig up old bones. Long story short, I rethemed my rom, made it not-klassic, and just worked on it until about mid-july.

In the meantime, I was releasing a whole slew of threads documenting my research. Who knew that SGS roms could be easily ported, and that rom creation wasn't scary? I had a blast finding all of these things out, and even gained a small following during this time, as most development had died off, with klin never really getting his heart back into 4.0 development, tdm leaving, and Balor leaving his kernel for good.

Then it happened. I decided to spearhead an ICS initiative (as at the point, while I didn't even know what a compiler was, thought I was knowledgable enought to start something like that), to finally get it working. Ah, the good old days. Me, neyodmiun and zaclimon, swapping ideas, with the occaissonal user popping in to offer advice or to comment on our progress. Around this time, I also began getting support questions, and as I answered them nicely, and genuinely tried to help them beyond the normal "find my help post" and no response afterwards, and ended up getting a reputation as being someone who wouldn't blow off noobs (not that I am accusing anyone of doing so, but I know that some devs do not take users seriously at all). zaclimon offered up the idea of hiring a freelance dev, and that was ultimately accepted as our plan. Enter Oisis.

This is where most of you guys will know me from. With Oisis on board, we booted ICS on august 13th, and were in business after that. I formed a team aptly named "TeamSuperNova", and got to work learning what the heck GCC was, and where the vendor folder went. What's github again?

Not much to tell from here, as the rest is just history.

I want to thank everyone on XDA for making this journey possible. From klin1344, and zaclimon, to goldflame, and all the other users to have taken on the excellent role of support, so that we can work on what really matters, I think I, no WE have accomplished what we wanted. While our entire community is very small, we are all united as a TEAM, working together like clockwork. Some new user has an issue with cm9? The support team is on it right away, and we normally have their issues sorted out in a few hours. Someone wants to start development? Zaclimon, me, or any of the other devs quickly pop in and give them some advice on where to start, and some resources to use. Any PM that I get, however noobish or "silly" it seems, I answer, and most of the time I actually get it resolved. So don't be afraid to speak up and give your opinion or ask for help. That's what we all are here for. To help, and contribute, as much as we can.

Thank you XDA, users, and everyone for making all of this possible. Now that my speech is over, feel free to put up your own personal story, or just discuss.