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

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.

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.

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.

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!

Here’s just a couple of the many toads that have recently hatched near Huntersdale at Royal Holloway, rescued from a dark, dry basement down a set of stairs much too steep for them to climb back up!

I’m finally getting around to sorting out many of the photos I’ve taken over the last year, partly thanks to getting a new laptop, but probably mostly because I’m motivating myself to do so!

This guy likes nothing more than a bit of bread on the Thames.  In fact, the expression tells me he almost expects it…

I’ve been trying out a few post-processing techniques, so there have been some tweaks to contrast, balance and saturation, plus a bit of noise reduction has been applied.

Update 2010-11-09: Added clarification on why I suggest having a short (sub-10 second) ringtone. You want it to loop, right? =P

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.

The file doesn’t have to be less than 10 seconds, but I figure you’re reading this because you want to make a file that loops!  Most carriers will stop ringing your phone after 15 to 30 seconds and pass the call to voicemail.  This depends on the carrier, your preferences (if you can change how long voicemail waits at all), and whether or not you have voicemail enabled!

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 probably add silence and as such will not loop perfectly.

Have fun with this!

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!

Don’t remind me of the irony…

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) 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.

Update 16:41: Re-uploaded the photo as I’d stripped the EXIF data by accident.

This is less a super-amazing photo I’m proud of, and more just here for the duckling factor.

Can you argue with that?  Really?

Anyway, here’s a photo of some ducklings (naw) climbing over a sleeper on the River Thames trying to get back to their mother.  You’ll be glad to know that they all made it!

That reminds me, I should get around to completing No More Heroes…

For once, the photo has been edited with increased contrast, saturation, and a big crop!  Fancy that.

Nature’s accumulated too many costs recently, so it’s consolidating many of its species in an attempt to rein in expenditure.  First up is this BeetleSpider, with the legs and spinnerets of a spider, plus the body of a beetle!

…  Otherwise known as a Walnut Orb Spider, commonly found outdoors in the UK.  Not that I can remember seeing one!

As always, unedited except for a resize for your internet viewing pleasure.  I probably should have changed the white balance, but you can call me Crazy.

If you’ve yet to discover it, check it out!  Or if you’d rather just install software other people recommend wihout thinking, you can install my particular favourite software loadout.

Update 15:42 UTC+0100: Just a couple of things that I should mention about the Ninite installer:

• All programs install with a desktop shortcut, which I don’t use.
  • They’re very easy to delete, mind.
• Skype is set to start on Windows start up.
  • This is easy to change on Skype’s log in screen, or using Autoruns below.
• Steam is also set to start on Windows start up.
  • Change this by logging in and disabling it in the Interface tab of the Steam > Settings window, or using Autoruns below.
• Java constantly runs its update scheduler (jusched.exe).
  • Use Autoruns for this one.

The latter three can be easily fixed by downloading Autoruns and deleting their start up entries from the list.  Just don’t go too crazy in Autoruns, as you could cause Windows to stop booting etc. etc.

Update 2010-07-30: My new personal Ninite installer, to reflect new software being added to Ninite!

Trying to find and complete all the secret missions in SupCom 2?  Here’s a quick and dirty list of them all!

This information is copied from the map files within the SupCom 2 directory.

Feel free to copy and paste — a link back to this page would be appreciated!

The List

UEF

• 1 – Prime Target
  • Survivor
    • Survive the initial wave of Cybran attackers without losing any units.
• 2 – Off Base
  • Economic Opportunist
    • Build at least two Mass Extractors in enemy territory.
• 3 – Strike While Cold
  • Master of the Seas
    • Build an Atlantis II Experimental Aircraft Carrier.
• 4 – Titans of Industry
  • Brutal Conqueror
    • Defeat Coleman without the aid of the Fatboys.
• 5 – Factions or Family Plan
  • Experimenter
    • Build at least four Experimental units
• 6 – End of an Alliance
  • Nuke King
    • Launch your first nuke.
  • None Shall Pass!
    • Prevent any enemy King Kriptors from crossing the main fortress bridge.

Illuminate

• 1 – Delta Force
  • Blockhead
    • Prevent the blockade from taking more than 25% damage.
• 2 – Lethal Weapons
  • Master Tactician
    • Complete the operation by constructing fewer than 30 mobile units.
• 3 – Back on the Chain Gang
  • Not the Bees!
    • You have successfully taken over the enemy air defenses.
  • Pro Anti-Air
    • You have successfully taken over the prison’s defensive structures.
  • Agent Provocateur
    • Capture all of the Security Stations.
• 4 – Steamed
  • Experimental Fanatic
    • Build at least eight Experimental units.
• 5 – Cliff Diving
  • Supremest Commander
    • Reach the highest level of veterancy with your ACU.
• 6 – Prime Time
  • Bot Lord
    • Complete the operation with an army made up entirely of Assault Bots.
  • A Czar is Born
    • Build your first Darkenoid.

Cybran

• 1 – Fact Finder
  • Survival Expert
    • Survive Gauge’s onslaught after the download completes.
• 2 – The Trouble With Technology
  • Master Thief
    • Capture a Rogue Engineer.
  • Great Escapist
    • Complete the operation without a unit being captured by the enemy.
• 3 – The Great Leap Forward
  • Cache and Carry
    • Collect all of the Technology Caches.
• 4 – Gatekeeper
  • Sultan of Soul
    • Build at least four Soul Ripper Experimentals.
• 5 – Surface Tension
  • Master of the Deep
    • Build a Kraken Experimental Submarine.
• 6 – The Final Countdown
  • Research Savant
    • Complete all available research.
  • Master of Pawns
    • Win the operation without the aid of any Experimentals.

Personally I find it irritating as the battery readout in all the distros of Linux I’ve used on my Eee report the battery at 0% over half an hour before the battery is actually dead.  No amount of conditioning or software modification seems to fix it, so I’m living with it.

However, with the newer versions of Gnome Power Manager, Do Nothing is hidden!  So my machine would go to sleep, despite the fact I know there’s at least 30 more minutes of battery life going to waste.  So annoying!

To fix it (albeit temporarily), you need to edit the gconf values for the settings you’re interested in to “nothing”.

The easiest way to do this is to use an application like gconf-editor and edit the values through that:

1. Run gconf-editor.
   • If you don’t have it installed, go to your favourite package manager and install it through that.
2. Using the column on the left side, navigate to apps > gnome-power-manager.
3. In my case, I wanted to change the critical battery behaviour to Do Nothing.  So I navigated in to actions and set the value of critical_battery to nothing.
   • If you want to change, say, the behaviour of a power button press, navigate to buttons instead of actions.
   • Repeat this step for each value you want to change.
4. Close gconf-editor.

That’s it!  One thing you need to keep in mind is that if you later change the setting away from Do Nothing to something else, the Do Nothing option will disappear.

Hope this works for you as it has me.

(I’m typing this post with 0% battery left!  What I crazy daredevil I am.)

Update 19:58: Forgot to mention that Do Nothing will disappear if deselected.  Fixed.

Welcome to BitButcher, a small program designed to do one thing and one thing well: trim Nintendo DS ROMs.

I got a bit fed up of the ones already out there, most because they were either closed-source or they had bad GUI design combined with clashing backgrounds.  Search as I may, I couldn’t find anything that fit my demands.

So I did what any self-respecting programmer would do — code my own!

This program is rather simple, but it’s designed to be just that.  Oh, and fast.  Very fast.

Trimming the excess fat off of DS ROMs isn’t exactly a hardest task in the world, but I figured that people would still be interested in what I have made.  As such, I have made the code entirely open-source under GPLv3.

It’s coded in Java, meaning I get cross-platform support for free!  It is however command-line only, so don’t expect any amazing GUI.

If you want to get hold of the program, or would like to help contribute to a better trimmer, then just head over to GitHub:

http://github.com/XanderXAJ/BitButcher

Any help improving the program would be welcome and awesome.  In addition, you can also report any issues you have at GitHub, on the Issues tab.

That’s it for this time — hope you manage to shave off some bytes!

The Problem

Today I’ve been trying to configure the touchpad on my Eee PC 901 to my liking.  It’s a Synaptics touchpad, and supports tracking multiple fingers, and I wanted to take more advantage of that.

GNOME does have support for configuring multiple finger gestures out of the box, with gnome-mouse-properties (or System » Preferences » Mouse) and then selecting the Touchpad tab.  This is all good and works fine — if you’re satisfied with what GNOME gives you.

Unfortunately I wasn’t.  When you enable clicking on the touchpad, GNOME sets one finger taps to left-click, two to right, and three to middle.  I tend to use middle-click more often than right-click, thanks to browsing the web and liking making new tabs, plus I already have a dedicated right-click button.

So I set off to change it.  After reading material courteousy of Arch Linux’s wiki, I found (and remembered from attempting the same thing ages ago) that configuration is done through the HAL using fdi policies, which are just specifically formatted XML files.  (The old xorg.conf way is deprecated and isn’t as flexible, not that it matters for configuring the trackpad.)

It sounds scary and involves more typing, but in the end it’s just as simple a process as it used to be, even if it involves jumping through an extra hoop or two.

Configuration

First you have to create a file with the fdi extension in /etc/hal/fdi/policy/.  I’ve named my file 99-synaptics.fdi, following example from /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/, but you can name yours whatever you like.

sudo gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/99-synaptics.fdi

Note: You need root permissions to be able to create and edit this file.  If you run Ubuntu (or are in the /etc/sudoers file), this can be accomplished using the sudo command as shown above. You can use whatever editor you like, too. vi, emacs, nano, kate…

Once the file is created, it’s time to get messy!  The fdi file contains a match rule, which tells HAL which device you want to configure, and then a series of merge rules which apply your desired configuration into the HAL.  The easiest way to show this is by example, so here’s my prospective configuration:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.product" contains="Elantech Touchpad">
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_driver">synaptics</merge>
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_options.VertTwoFingerScroll">true</merge>
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_options.HorizTwoFingerScroll">true</merge>
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_options.TapButton1">1</merge>
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_options.TapButton2">2</merge>
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_options.TapButton3">3</merge>
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_options.ClickFinger1">1</merge>
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_options.ClickFinger2">3</merge>
<merge type="string" key="input.x11_options.ClickFinger3">2</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

Starting from the top, here’s a quick description of each part:

• The <?xml part is the XML declaration required in any valid XML file.  Nothing interesting here.
• The <deviceinfo> and <device> are just boilerplate code that tell the HAL to expect rules relating to devices. Again, nothing interesting here.
• Now things start getting good!  The <match> line describes how to find the device you want to configure:
  • Simply put, the HAL searches for the contains string inside the key field.  Whatever matches that search it’ll apply the merge rules to.
  • There are other ways to match aside from contains, but this is all you need to know to get things working.
• The <merge> lines are the meat of the file, describing each and every configuration change you want to make.

You’re probably thinking this is all good and well, but how did I come up with this stuff in the first place?  Well, the answer lies in the HAL itself.

The lshal command lists all the devices the HAL can detect (that’s “ls hal”, get it?).  You might want to pipe the contents to less, to be able to scroll and search through the large amount of text that’s returned:

lshal | less

In less, type /synaptics to search for the string “synaptics”.  less should automatically scroll to the point we’re interested in; your touchpad.  If it cannot be found, you either don’t have a Synaptics touchpad or the synaptics driver isn’t being loaded.  Try searching for Touchpad or similar words, but anything more than that is beyond the scope of this article.

Once you have found the device on your list, you’ll be able to see a list of keys and their values.  You want to pick one of these fields that will not change between boots to place as the match rule inside your fdi file.  I chose info.product, but you can choose something else like input.product if it strikes your fancy.  Either way, fill in the <match> line with the key that you chose and the string that’ll match it.  Ideally this search will only match your touchpad and nothing else.

Next is the fun part — configuration. To do this simply open up the man page for synaptics:

man synaptics

This’ll give a detailed list of everything that can be changed within the synaptics driver.  For each value that you want to change, find its name on the manpage, and add a new merge rule with the appropriate key.  Note that every key in the fdi begins with “input.x11_options.” followed by the synaptics key you want to change.  (The exception to this in my file is the first merge rule, which just makes sure that the synaptics driver has been loaded for my touchpad.)

If you want to test an option before making it permanent, use the synclient key=value command, filling in key and value with the option you want to change.

Once you’ve added all the merge rules you like, close all the tags and save the file.  Now just restart the HAL (or your computer) and your settings will be applied.  Almost.

GNOME Respect

Now that you have your configuration all set up, you need to stop GNOME from changing your carefully crafted settings to ones of its choosing.

To do this, simply run the following command:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/plugins/mouse/active false

If you get cold feet and want to enable GNOME’s control over mouse and trackpad settings, run this command:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/plugins/mouse/active true

That’s really it.  Thanks to jan for finding this value.

I’ve written this to be as generalised as possible, so it should work for many different distros so long as they are using the latest HAL/Xorg/kernel.  I’m running Fedora 11 and have added my name to the /etc/sudoers file, allowing me to run sudo.

If you have any questions or just want to say thanks, feel free to leave a comment or contact me!

Remembering the previous times I’ve used EAC, when you click a button to start a rip, it asks you where you want to save the ripped files.

Turns out if you set EAC to save into a predetermined location instead of asking, EAC manages to rip perfectly fine!

So, here’s a step-by-step guide to stop it crashing:

1. Open Exact Audio Copy.
2. Go to File > EAC Options.
3. Click the Directories tab.
4. Instead of “Ask every time”, choose Use this Directory, and pick a directory of your choosing.
   • I personally use:

     C:\Users\<Username>\Music\Extracted

5. Click OK.

That’s it!  Good luck.