Welcome!
You're viewing my personal playground of all things technological. I'm Alex Palmer, often otherwise known as XanderX, a computer scientist of sorts with a passion for technology and doing things right.
The aim of this place is to provide useful help for common (and uncommon) problems, introduce you to new (and old) music, and generally let my thoughts have some form of outlet. Bottling up is bad, don't you know?
I’m Helping with a Monster Hunter Portable 3rd English Fan Translation!
Recently I’ve been helping out Team Maverick One translate Monster Hunter Portable 3rd to English! It’s a fan translation with the aim of making the game playable in regions it was never officially released.
I’ve been correcting machine-translated English and writing lots of useful scripts to help everyone out. ^^
So if you’re wondering what I’ve been up to lately, that’s probably it! Check it out if you have a PSP and are in to Monster Hunter. =3
Searchlight 1.1 released
Searchlight, my application for lighting up your world (or at least a few metres in front of you) using your Android device’s LED has been updated to 1.1.
This update brings better behaviour on HTC Sense devices, where the screen is kept on (as this is necessary to keep the device’s light switched on). In addition, when the screen is switched off (manually) and switched on again, it can switch on the light again; previously it didn’t switch the light back on, yet still ran the service. Oops.
Get the update through the Android Market, or download the APK right here.
Searchlight: An Android LED torch powered by the Search button
In case there aren’t enough of them out there, I’ve decided to chip in my own effort on the Android LED torch scene.
In a sort of sequel to my first Android app Torchure, I have just released Searchlight on to the Android Market.
The unique thing about this flashlight is that it’s activated by long-pressing the Search button. Each time you do this, the LED will toggle on or off. This means that (nearly) regardless of what app you’re in, you can toggle the LED.
You can even switch off the screen to save your battery for the LED. Just note that on most devices the Search button will be disabled while the screen is off, so you’ll probably have to switch on the screen, unlock it, then hold the Search button.
When you long-press the Search button for the first time, you’ll probably get a selection of different apps for you to choose from. Just select Searchlight off the list to toggle the LED. Check the “Use by default for this action” checkbox to make sure that dialog doesn’t appear in future.
If you want that Search selection to appear again, go to Settings > Applications > Manage applications > Searchlight > “Clear defaults” button. Then hold Search again and make a new selection. It will also reappear when the list of actions changes, for example you install or uninstall an app that has global search functionality.
There are a couple of caveats.
- It’ll only work on devices that implement the standard camera flash interface introduced by Froyo. If it doesn’t work on yours, contact me and I’ll see if I can add support for your device or system software.
- Don’t run Searchlight at the same time as another app using the camera, such as Camera, Barcode Scanner or Shopper. Things will go badly, trust me.
It’s available on the Android Market for any Android device with a camera and flash running 2.2 (Froyo) and above. This first version is only a smidge over 11KB and requires no outrageous permissions (just camera for obvious reasons, and wake lock to keep the LED on when the screen is off).
Alternatively, if you prefer not to use the Market, you can download it here.
Descent
Time for my obligatory seagull picture.
Here you can see a couple of seagulls going in for the kill — on some bread. Would they have it any other way?
I’ve increased the contrast and played around with saturation a bit. Call me crazy, but I decided not to crop the picture.
Finding Froggy
This is for all the people who wasted their lives on Sonic Adventure trying to find Big the Cat’s best friend, Froggy. Here he is.
For the curious this is yet another of the amphibians to get themselves stuck in Huntersdale’s basement. But instead of the legions of toads, we have a frog this time! It was a fair bit larger than the toads, although the bubble wrap in the background of this photo gives you the sense that he wasn’t that large after all — and just how small the toads are!
I’ve decided to be a little bit creative for once, opting to make the image duotone, and fiddling with noise, contrast and vignetting a bit. No cropping, mind.
For the duotone part, I first made the photo black and white, then applied a slight yellow tint to the highlights and a slight blue/grey tint to the shadows. I really like how those two colours blend together.
Hope you enjoy!
