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?
Making Ringtones Loop on Android
Following on from my previous articles on ringtones, I’ve finally worked out how to make ringtones loop seamlessly in Android.
My problem before was that, despite the fact I made an OGG that should loop properly, when played back on Android, it didn’t. Turns out, there’s a little piece of metadata you need to add to the tags in the ringtone to make it loop properly.
Using your favourite tag editor (I used foobar2000 on Windows), add a tag/field called “ANDROID_LOOP”, and set it to “true”.
Please note that the file itself will also need to loop properly for things to work out. That means that if you’re basing your ringtone on a longer piece of music, it needs to be trimmed down to 10 or fewer seconds and trimmed in such a way that the audio sounds like it goes on forever when played from beginning to end repeatedly.
Also, you need to use a format that doesn’t add silence to the end of the track. OGG (which I recommend), FLAC and AAC should all work fine. I do not know if Android reads LAME’s metadata with allows MP3s encoded by it to loop. MP3s encoded with other encoders will add silence and will likely not loop perfectly.
Have fun with this!
Team orders in F1? They’re here to stay–get over it!
Just wanted to quickly chime in on the whole Ferrari one-two fiasco.
I basically agree with what David Coulthard kept saying on the BBC’s extended coverage–no matter what fans or press may shout, you can’t take the teams out of Formula 1.
They spend millions of pounds on research, design, manufacture, promotion and, of course, the drivers: so is it so bad when sometimes the drivers have to follow “team orders” to make their team happy? It is their job to work to their team’s satisfaction after all.
Further, the now famous again rule 39.1, stating that any orders that affect the outcome of the race are prohibited, seems almost impossible to police.
Look at what’s happened so far: Alonso is saying that Massa happened to be slow and passed him. Massa claims that it was his decision, not the team’s. Smeadley (Massa’s race engineer), who apologised during the race to his driver after being passed by his team mate, suggests he did so because things hadn’t gone Massa’s way, rather than the conclusion many jumped to: that he had given a team order he wasn’t happy with.
Whilst the way it has all been handled seems to make the situation a painfully obvious case of team orders, there’s very little the stewards can actually do. Like it was suggested in the extended coverage, they can’t just reject what they get told because they “don’t believe it”. The evidence has to be more concrete than that.
Even Massa blatantly slowing down to let Alonso through doesn’t prove there were team orders–Massa said he made that decision, after all.
Although I do find something a bit unsettling about the whole scenario–not that this one has happened, but that it could happen a whole lot more in the future.
A sport where the results are largely governed by politics would probably be a heck of a lot less interesting than one where every point is fought for tooth and nail.
I hope things stay unknown. The last few seasons have been great to watch, since the performance gap between teams–the top teams at least–is so small!
Torchure 1.1.1 Released
I’ve uploaded a minor bugfix release for Torchure to the Android Market, which fixes the buggy systems preference not taking effect.
Don’t remind me of the irony…
Torchure 1.1 Released
My first Android Market update! Hope this goes well.
This update includes:
- A new colour! You can change the screen to red, to help preserve night vision. This makes the torch less effective, mind.
- To switch colour, either swipe sideways on the screen or use the new menu option!
- New preferences have been added to let you choose what colour you want on starting Torchure: white, red, or whatever you last used.
- The Lock Brightness preference has been fixed, and now actually works. (Locking via pressing the trackball or the menu option worked fine)
- Added a new Hints & Tips screen, to highlight the little things I can’t fit anywhere else!
Torchure for Android
Ever found yourself in need of a torch, but only had your phone handy? Look no further!
Torchure (for Android) is a pretty simple application. It turns the screen white and, as default, whacks up the backlight to maximum. I did say simple, didn’t I?
However, it also lets you change that backlight brightness (useful if, say, you’ve been to a particularly wild party and you need to step over some people without waking/blinding them) and lock it so you don’t go accidentally changing it. Torchure is designed to work for you, not make you work for it!
It marks my first release on to the Android Market, and it requires no permissions whatsoever — it is a torch, after all.
Even though Google is telling me this link will not work, go check out Torchure on the market now!
And if you’re not using an Android handset, AndroidZoom has you covered until Google release their updated Market.
NB: The link does work (on Android 2.2). Guess they forgot to update the documentation.
