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July 01 "The best trip in the world - Taiwan explorers wanted" - competition entry - vote it up if you get a second ->http://www.taiwanbesttrip.net/group/thecorrupted/intro/group-introduction-of-the-corrupted?lang=en(yeah im such a natural and even photogenic)
May 30
It seems the sound on Android is buggy and a mess unfortunately. When I create a SoundPool and add my sounds to it, it will often just hang for no reason at all on say sample 5, or sample 17, then whenever I reload it it will always get caught on the same one. If I reboot the phone and get a "clean" load (ie it doesnt hang on a sample, as it doesnt always) then it can load and work fine. If I quit from it and it doesnt crash on the SoundPool.release (which it does sometimes) then I can exit fine and reloading it is often fine, if the SoundPool.release crashes then it doesnt seem to have exited properly and subsequent reloads will probably hang on loading a sound.
Im worried there are no solutions for this and not confident that I can say android is any better than J2ME so far!!
UPDATE - So I swapped my files to .ogg instead of .wav and everything works like a dream now!!! With Android I think it might be safe to say ALWAYS USE .OGG :-) its made my week finding this out! May 25 As predicted Nintendo will be allowing DS owners to grab new apps/games from the DS App store. Next up has got to be PS3 come on sooooonnny, language for DS app store? I dont know yet but im banking on it being C++, much to my dissapointment. Grab the right file from here: http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=OTA_Updates
You can find out which is right for you by doing Settings->About Phone, the very bottom build number will let you know - mine was PLAT-RC33 so I grabbed: signed-kila-ota-148830.de6a94ca.zip
which is for USA G1s.
Next rename this file to update.zip stick it in your sd card in the root directory. Now you reboot in a special way - hold home and press power, keep holding home. I did this for turning off and on, when it came back there was an image of a phone with an exclamation mark.
Now you can press ALT+L to get a little console window up, and use ALT+S to apply the update!
Youll see it doing its thing like a Windows installer would.
Exciting :-) and now the g1 should have decent audio support for a new app Im doing.
May 18
Everyone is interested in sales figures for these market stores, me included. So I thought I would give a little back by putting up my sales figures which Im relatively pleased with. Bare in mind my app was a relatively obscure one called LapseDROID, for making timelapses on the G1 or any other android device.
I released a demo version for free and the full version for 0.50 GBP. After around 3 weeks I have 920 downloads of the demo (of which 32% of users have left installed, the rest presumably didnt like it and uninstalled). I have sold 27 copies of the paid one (of which 70% have kept installed). In total I have netted just over 5 GBP. Not amazing but still good to know its sellign and working, even for an app Id not expect high sales for.
Here is the site for my app:
and its entries on the android market:
And some videos on youtube myself and others have made as examples:
I will be improving the app according to users comments :-)
Cheers, Gaz.
May 01 New devices all over from HTC, Samsung and more, netbooks the lot, and now it runs on the EEEPC which I happen to have! so more reports on that soon. Also look out for my Article in the Taipei Times about new Android devices, will post a link here when its online.
As promised here is the article, the editor made some small changes to its determiment in my humble opinion but then Im not an editor :) Also note its very hard to make the points required in such a small space, so at times Ive had to over look things, as its got to be understandable by all and not just industry people.
[TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: TAIWAN] By Gareth MurfinCONTRIBUTING REPORTER Wednesday, May 20, 2009, Page 14 VIEW THIS PAGE Android is an operating system like any other — apart from the fact that it is free and open source. For this reason it has distinct advantages over the competition, which may give it that competitive edge and result in it becoming a household name like Microsoft Windows is. Price Being free has obvious advantages — almost any device shipped to a consumer needs an operating system, something to make the machine usable. In most cases this operating system is Microsoft Windows, which costs around NT$4,000 a pop. This obviously adds to the cost of the machine, which makes it less attractive to customers. If a popular alternative were available for free, this would lower the cost of the PC and make it more attractive to the consumer.
Of course there are already free and open source operating systems (OS) out there that have yet to topple Microsoft — Linux and UNIX based operating systems such as Ubuntu, FreeBSD or Solaris to name but a few. Some of these are gaining momentum and indeed shipping for free with PCs, but none have yet to seriously challenge Microsoft’s Windows. Who can say whether in the next decade Microsoft will retain its desktop dominance? One of the largest stumbling blocks for a competing operating system is familiarity: Are users ready to move to something new? This may be tricky given that almost every computer user on the planet uses Microsoft’s OS. Open source
An “open” piece of software is one where its code is all available online to download for free. This means programmers can read the internals of the OS and make changes themselves. This is important because any device that is produced needs an OS — but not all of them are suitable or compatible. An open OS can be made to work by a team of programmers, and then this OS can be shipped with the device with little or no licensing issues. Hundreds of dedicated programmers and managers can work together to improve an open OS, thus supporting more and more hardware — all the while this code is available for other developers to build on at no extra cost.
Android is Google’s own OS, which is currently targeted at cellphones.
Taiwan’s HTC is the first hardware manufacturer to put out an Android device — with many more coming in the next 12 months. The HTC Dream — also known as the Google G1 — runs the latest version of Android. The device is very capable and runs the OS nicely, with a little keyboard, trackball and touchscreen, which make using it not unlike a miniature PC.
Using an OS on such a small device can’t be much fun, unless, like Android, it has been optimized for use on small touchscreen devices. It’s much like the iPhone: touch an icon to select it, swipe your finger to switch to a different function.
Android has been designed with a slightly dumbed down feel from a “power user” point of view, but this allows users to get acquainted with the way it works more easily.
The easy to use personal organizer/cellphone feel captures what companies like Symbian have pioneered for years — a simple, logical and fast operating system for phones. You will have used Symbian OS if you have operated any of Nokia’s S60 devices.
Android builds on and improves on these principles and has a slightly more human feel, mostly provided by the novelty of the touchscreen. A list of 500 contacts can be navigated in seconds by toggling the list upwards with a slight hand movement. Not just a mobile OS
It won’t be long before we see many more Android devices, and not just phones. Things like netbooks, Internet tablets and portable media players running Android have all been announced and confirmed by huge corporations such as Sony Ericsson, Archos, Samsung, Acer and Motorola, among others. None of these devices are available for review yet, but they will almost certainly be running Android version 1.5, which is the latest release from Google.
Many people would say that comparing Android to Windows is not really a fair comparison considering that Windows is a desktop operating system and Android is a cellphone operating system. But these lines are becoming blurred by the day. Android will be running on the desktop in the not too distance future. This is coupled with the fact that touchscreens are becoming very popular. Microsoft has admitted that the mouse will be dead soon, which paves the way for things like a touchscreen-only OS.
Android will dominate within the next decade. Each new small, cheap notebook is bound to ship with Android, leading to a lowered demand for Microsoft in the small PC market — even the iPhone could end up losing its cellphone market share without somehow allowing iPhone clones to be manufactured.
Google has once again chosen a model that holds the potential for a growth explosion. The aim is to get Google not just on our Web browsers but also into our pockets and rucksacks and ultimately on our desktop PCs. VIEW THIS PAGE
This story has been viewed 527 times.
So you tear your hair out making your app, and finally you get to the exciting bit! Uploading! Ok it never works first time in my experience :-) but the net documents most of the problems quite well so I'll address the one that is harder to find here.
When uploading to Android Market it says: "The certificate that signed this apk is not valid until the future. Create a new certificate."
So Google think im in the future? I thought it was supposed to be the Android! No worries here it appears to be a "timestamp handling problem" according to one of Googles own Android dudes that I spoke to on IRC.
So how to fix? Well the problem comes from me being in the wrong time zone, im in Taipei City +8 on Greenwich Mean Time. So eventually I ended up realising that I should tinker with my clock (Windows system clock). I set it to exactly London time/date and re-did the keytool and jarsigner commands like this:
"%JAVA_HOME%/bin/"keytool -genkey -v -keystore LAPSED.keystore -alias ldroid -keyalg RSA -validity 30000 then "%JAVA_HOME%/bin/"jarsigner -verbose -keystore LAPSED.keystore LapseDROID.apk ldroid
and tried again to upload, and it finally worked!!!!
April 30 Palm have just opened up an App Store too, please refer to my blog entries below about App Stores to realise how ridiculous this is. Who next? I dont think there is anyone left to open one! Sony Ericcson? Samsung? Nintendo? Who bloody knows, but its going to be a lot of fun finding out.
Now porting J2ME to and developing specifically for ANDROID. Freelance services available. Resume: www.garethmurfin.co.uk
I love the G1 and I love Android - but right now I'll just list the major blunders that piss me off.
- No Bluetooth OBEX support
- SHOCKINGLY BAD digitial camera (almost as bad as the one I bought in 1997)
- Keyboard too small even for an ultra portable freak like me
- Power lasts under 24 hours if you take any interest in using the G1
- No PPPOE support - might not affect many but it does affect me on current network
- Uploading to Market Place is tedious to say the least, I cant get one online even though Ive paid and been accepted.
- Cant seem to "unmount" G1 as a usb device without unplugging wire and putting it back?
Android OS 1.5 might sort a lot of this - I will check it out soon and post up an entry.
Gareth Murfin - Freelance Android Developer looking for work / contracts. April 28 It seems msn spaces are back after a short hiccup! Everything was down for 2 days. Signed up to Android Market place, expect some Alpha Software Apps very soon :-) Gareth Murfin - Freelance Android Contractor / Consultant. If you are looking for a freelancer, check out my resume/CV www.garethmurfin.co.uk.
April 17
OK quick post to save someone 12 hours of hair tearing I just went through :-) I'll make this brief and use as many key words as I ended up looking for. Lets say you were making a chat program, or any program which needs text to scroll up the screen for the user to see - and you used a ListView to represent this. When you finally work out how to update that ListView (don't use setAdapter() use getAdapter().add() - and use a message handler inside your activity thread - mines not perfect yet so I wont embelish! - ask google) you will end up wanting your scroll bar to automatically move down with it (or you might even think of it as the cursor), like it would in a chat program such as mIRC or MSN etc. You need to use this:
mylistview.setTranscriptMode(ListView.TRANSCRIPT_MODE_ALWAYS_SCROLL);
This will automatically move it to the bottom for you. YAY!
If you are reading this theres a good chance I just solved one or two of your problems - if not, you are very bored indeed!
Thanks to gasolin for helping me, here is a book he wrote about developing in Android, its written in Mandarin Chinese by a Taiwanese guy, so any Taiwanese Android coders should get out there and purchase it, books are well cheap here in Taiwan compared to the UK...
The link is: http://sites.google.com/site/gasodroid/androidentry
Need an Android Freelancer? Look no further. Resume, CV: www.garethmurfin.co.uk April 13
Scared of running a suspicious exe? Convinced there is NO virus but something like Avast says there is? OK try this one for size, www.virustotal.com - you upload your file and it goes through extensive checking on over 40 different virus programs. If 2 of 36 say its a virus, it could be a false alarm.
This is ideal because before now it was a case of, 'ok i never run it', or 'ok i take a risk and potentially see my system go bye bye - which is an exhilirating decision, and one that can write off your next 2 weeks if you're unlucky'.
Who ever thought tapping at a keyboard could be so dangerous?
Good for avoiding virus conspiracy files? What garbled non-sensical drivel is leaking from my mouth right now? Well I came across an odd phenomena and it could be considered a bit of a conspiracy theory, so Im calling the files in question VCF - virus conspiracy files. PUT SIMPLY - if AVAST says something has a virus, then you use virustotal.com and get it saying that 39 different checkers detected no virus (avast included oddly enough) this must mean Avast wrongly detected the virus? Possibly yes, why did it do that? Lets say its a key gen for a popular program, possibly Avast have a deal with the major application suppliers to include certain things on a kind of black list. Thus, users are turned away from piracy since they cant find any keygen without a virus - which isnt in fact a virus at all.
Infact in many ways this makes virustotal.com an almost immoral tool - acting on the behalf of pirates (software pirates that is). But how can anyone call a virus checker immoral - of course its a bit silly, but then in the same way bittorrent is kind of immoral too in the current out-moded models. Bittorrent is that bloke you meet on Newcastle's high street who offers to run into Dixons and steal a camcorder if you meet him by his car in twenty minutes with 200 quid. Soulseek is that kid you knew from school who would steal a BMX or skateboard for 50p, thus relieving you of the guilt yourself. Not that Ive paid for any services like this, nor do I condone piracy (in the virtual world or on the high seas) .
Either way its all interesting :-) A virus checker has now become part of my system, im sorry to say it but the day did come where I need it, windows is riddled senseless by all and sundry any time they fancy it - I cant take risks right now.
PS if everything I just said is bollocks, then the real answer is that virustotal.com sucks, and is made by pirates to trick you into running "clean" keygens that are infact "dirty" - who can keep up these days eh, its nto just spy bot and adaware anymore is it. Oh remember popup blockers? hehe.
Are you looking for an Android Contractor? I'm available now. Resume, CV: www.garethmurfin.co.uk
Well I hate to be uncannily right again with a spot of prediction that would blow Clive Sinclair's Pantaloons off but today MS announced WINDOWS MARKETPLACE.. damn its tough being a visionary ;-)
OK so only I know how often this blog has been vindicated after one of my posts, but still, its.... often. Oh yeh this one DOES NOT use Java, yay Windows Mobile and C++ sounds exciting (im kidding here but I bet it is once you get into it)..
Either way being an indie just got EASIER again, if it gets any easier and continues to do so what will happen to the games industry?
Online gaming, non console based gaming (such as "OnLive" see this http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7969044.stm ) mixed with self publishing/app stores could ultimately be the end for the traditional model that we use. Having said that over 15,000,000 went out and bought GTA4 so its going to be some time yet - but how long before all of the big boys are store crazy? (did you like that? store crazy hahaha hmm).
Gareth Murfin is a slippery fella, like some sort of freelance eel, waiting to get hired to do over some androids (contracts).
April 09
A brief look at the state of the 'App Stores' / 'Market Places' : XboxLive, Apple, Android, OVI, Blackberry, Wii etc
Whether you consider an indie a small studio not owned by a publisher - i.e self owned (the likes of Codemasters as fars as I know) or just a bedroom coder who has struggled by self publishing or selling their wares (for shoddy deals to publishers and distributors) - the following statement is true: This is the best time in the history of computing for independent developers.
If you are one, and have been one throughout, well done keeping your head above water, I'd salute you if I didnt need both hands to keep myself from drowning. If you arent one, and you always considered it but the risk was high and the pay was shite - now is the time.
This last 12 months have been positively mad for anyone wishing to stay on the bleeding edge. At the beginning of the "App Store Era" (which is rightfully named after Apple despite them not being the first to do it - how many millionaires from xboxlive CG yet?) we heard of XNA. The ability to make games at home on your Xbox 360 AND sell them online to the world! Oh and the deal? Flabbergastingly good - 70% of profits and global distribution. Its enough to make me go outside and leap off the top of this building, when I consider the years of my life I wasted for pennies per copy (and I might add fighting for those pennies and not receiving most). But, its all good im optimistic, im deeply entrenched in it all, which is more than I can say for myself say 10 years ago to the day when I would have been still riding off the (non) success of 2 Amiga games which grossed me under £4000 in total for 2 years work. Not bad for a 17 year old though.
Then those posers in the fancy pants arrived - Apple, and brought us The App Store, granting people millionaire status with games of lesser calibre than you'd get from a cover disk off Amiga Power in 1991 - Apples fancy pants have deep pockets - or at least their affluent fan base have fancy pants with deep pockets. Ok, so XNA used C# - everyone rejoiced - C# bah its just Java? Basically YES, good move Microsoft. But with Apple we all had to toil with Objective-C and sleeze over iPod Touch images on google images preying that one day we could afford one (yes even the lesser one). A bit of time passes and all the early adoptors and bleeding edge crew (as well as the 'Im not a coder but I fancy some of that money, how hard can it be?' crowd) aged themselves trying to master Objective-C.
And REMEMBER all of this happened within twelve months...
Eventually Android strutted its funky stuff onto the scene and shocked the world by saying, 'hey we use a good language' - JAVA. Yes sniggers from the back there, Java teehee, well Java is now mainstream like it or not, no longer will I turn up to a games company, whip down my pants and be used as a toast rack for my love of Java. They say every dog has its day, well the C++ dog has had so many days its gone senile, the damn dog has lived way longer than expected, and yes rightly so its a sweet language (im assuming the transcribe I read from Stroustop was a hoax where he claims its DELIBERATELY designed to be cumbersome and crappy as a sort of personal joke - reminds me of 2 things, Kryten from red dwarf being based on a fumbling fool, the inventors husband--and the QWERTY being picked as the dominant design for its inefficiency :-) Oh I could extend this to mention how electric cars got stamped out by lesser vehicles also for similar reasons but we would be here all day right? actually im suprised I havent mentioned the Amiga yet or Betamax vs VHS).
'All hail the android app store' is where we are at right now, lusting over the G1 which admittedly looks worse than an iPhone but as a developer who likes Java and farts in the general direction of Objective-C my prediction is that Apple have shot themselves in the foot. Needing a mac, needing an iphone, needing the skills in Objective-C, it will lead to a more stagnant pool than Android and xboxlive community games IMHO. Oh then what happened? OVI! Ovi? Yes OVI, the Nokia OVI store - yet again Java...... ..... ...... paused there to hurt the Java haters :-) Im not even an evangelist anymore, ive become just generic java guy, thats how mainstream it is (not that Im making excuses for J2ME or Java in any areas). So wait now theres XBOXLIVE, APP STORE, ANDROID, OVI? Oh and guess what BLACKBERRY App store is opening, what language? Oh JAVA... /me chortles.. And next? Wii Store, DS Store....... there WILL be more - and Im not expecting Sony to stay mature about this whole thing, my prediction is they will buckle, and open PS3 App Store which uses PROBABLY C++, mainly because Java can only run in its BD-J format which sucks like a dvd menu. Plus Sony probably have nothing in the pipeline to combat these things, and a C++ solution based on their real dev kits would be a faster route to market -- IFF they haven't accidentally priced themselves out of this one -which I personally think could be the case (ouch thats gonna hurt sony bad). Then what PSP Store? Potentially this could be done quicker than the PS3 one, but with the lock downs on all of Sony's devices I can only hope they too have blasted off a toe, and it might well teach them a lesson.
Keep bleeding & Stay Scared!
Gareth Murfin is a freelance Android, Java, J2ME developer, www.garethmurfin.co.uk
Graphical Portfolio: http://sites.google.com/site/j2mefreelancercontractor/
Looking for J2ME to Android? Porting from J2ME to G1? Check out my new J2ME2Android service and get your fragmented J2ME running in glory on the Android OS. http://sites.google.com/site/j2metoandroid/
I can move your entire Java / J2ME code base to Android.
February 07 OK, so I sit here as a person who has only just begun to get proficient at iPhone development, not that it really matters, you can get a lambourghini in 2 days with a level of understanding of objective-c probably worse than mine right now. Annnd thats why you are most probably reading this, ah yes the iPhone bubble, reminds me of the dot com bubble and indeed the millennium bug days, alas I was too young to get fully involved, back then I was cutting edge just by making static html sites and using javascript to preload graphics! Anyway, developing for the iPhone has brought me into the cosy mac world, and after a rough learning curve im getting way more used to it. Infact I'll be down the mac store this week getting my fix and joining the masses by wasting money on apple accessories - yay!! Thats right im actually going ot buy an imic, imouse and a ipod touch - proper fan boy material!!! This is all in the aid of work, but I cant say that slowly but surely the iPhone has not become as sexy to me as it was to the rest of the world when it came out. I just couldnt see it at all, mainly because like an old dog i was stuck in my ways with java and objective-c looked more like something that you'd see on the pavement on a Sat morning outside a nightclub than a programming language. ALAS, real "c" works fine in objective-c and I have no idea about c, but Java is c-based, and what do you know, you can get away with virtually coding objective-c like a java guy! And thus my erratic objective-c/java coding style has been born, with any tactic in the book to keep it as java like as possible, and no doubt in the future make some true obj-c heads tear out their hair!
But the main point is, its do-able, COCOS2D is one of those abstraction layers where you sigh so long you nearly faint. Couple cocos2d with the skeleton example code on the community pages and you have something to start with, without this you are really alone in a relatively dark room. Even then, dont expect much help from anywhere, its going to take a relatively experienced developer to get to grips with obj-c and make anything robust, imho. If like me you rip form examples, scour google and make a nuisance of yourself in the critical irc channels, then you should be able to piece together what you want to do, and keep cutting and pasting.. for example off the top of my head i still couldnt tell you how to enumerate through an array in obj-c or even concatonate strings, its almost in there but i still find myself copying and pasting from my earlier effors. Of course in my chosen language these things roll of the tips of my fingers like little sausages.
Requiring a iphone to truely release is a kid in the nads, but a good excuse to get one, and like the 360 who can truely release something without that actual testing. Anyway this is a rant after a 12 hour code session, but the point is, REASONS WHY APPLE DONT SUCK? iPhone + xCode + design + opportunity == fun much fun, and maybe some money!
- iPhone Freelancer / Contractor - need an iPhone application made? I have just finished 3 commercial apps all heading to the App Store. Drop me a line about your app ideas, my cv: www.garethmurfin.co.uk January 21
- Mac mini mic port requires a "special" mic from iphone store
- Apple store employees have no idea
- The Cult of Apple
- Pressing insert appears to render my mac useless needing a reboot, this is what prompted this rant infact.
- Proprietary audio formats for true incompatibility and itunes dependance
- Price
- Already had to re-install OSX after 2 months
January 08 OK so Apple locked out Java on their phones (and objective-c is not familiar to a lot of people apart from those who worked at Next like Mr Jobs) - there is various ways to get it going now though. The most clean and official route seems to be XMLVM. This is a technology which uses a simple but clever concept. If you really want to find out more, look for a google tech talk on video.google.com, just search for xmlvm. But in brief it converts existing code files into an intermediate XML file, and then uses this to convert them into a different language and compile.
Thus you give it a java .class and it pumps out a .xmlvm. Then you convert this .xmlvm file to an objective-c file to make a native iphone app, for this you will need xsltproc, see below for installing that.
I cant say much more yet as I dont yet have anythign working on the iphone emulator using this, but hopefully soon it will work :-) Here is a general idea of how it works, this is the main() method from a Java program converted into XMLVM's XML language (it actually makes a lot of sense):
<vm:method name="main" isPublic="true" isStatic="true" stack="2" locals="1">
<vm:signature>
<vm:return type="void" />
<vm:parameter type="java.lang.String[]" />
</vm:signature>
<vm:code language="ByteCode">
<jvm:var name="args" id="0" type="java.lang.String[]" />
<jvm:label id="0" />
<jvm:new type="fireworkstest.Fireworks" />
<jvm:dup />
<jvm:invokespecial class-type="fireworkstest.Fireworks" method="<init>">
<vm:signature>
<vm:return type="void" />
</vm:signature>
</jvm:invokespecial>
<jvm:pop />
<jvm:label id="1" />
<jvm:return />
</vm:code>
</vm:method>
It explains installing xsltproc on windows.Installing xsltprocThe installation of xsltproc is platform dependent since it is a compiled C program. You will need a C compiler and associated Make tools unless you are using Windows. Macintosh users can download binaries fromhttp://www.zveno.com/open_source/libxml2xslt.html. Installing xsltproc on WindowsYou can download precompiled versions for Windows from Igor Zlatkovic's website: http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html That page also describes how to install the files and use xsltproc on Windows. You need to download the packages for libxml, libxslt, zlib, and iconv. They arrive as .zip files which can be unpacked with any of the zip utilities on Windows. Once you have unpacked them, your environment's PATH variable must include the locations of the command files like xsltproc.exe and the set of library files named with the .dll suffix. Since they install into separate directories, you may need to add several PATH entries. So it is perhaps simplest to just copy all the files into a single location already in the PATH. For example, find and copy thefollowing files into C:\Windows\System32: libxslt.dll | iconv.dll | xmllint.exe | libxml2.dll | zlib.dll | | libexslt.dll | xsltproc.exe | |
You will know it is working if you can execute the following command in a Command shell to list the version information: xsltproc -version December 02 Differences between JAVA and C# from a JAVA programmers point of view:
2 day array
declare:
java:
byte[][] tileMap = new sbyte[tilesHigh] [tilesWide];
c#
sbyte[,]tileMap = new sbyte[tilesHigh, tilesWide];
access:
java:
[2][3]
c#:
[2,3]
substring
java:
TEMPlevelWidth = temp.Substring(8, 10);
c#:
TEMPlevelWidth = temp.Substring(8, 3); // ie, 8 and then count forward 3 - rather than the second param being the end point in the string
On a Siemens you may receive the message: "bad dynamic heap objects found" - this is usually to do with your own explicit garbage collection - search your code for this: Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory() and other ones, comment them out and try again.. this should probably work on Siemens A65, S55, and similarly luscious Siemens models (which btw are really annoying to work with). Can I just say this without any justifications for now? I know a lot of people want to hear it :-) JOOMLA SUCKS..
It wont save you time, it will lead to your untimely death! November 14 Check the data in here very carefully, it can be wasting gigabytes of useless space..
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\g\SharingMetadata
Saved me 4 gig.
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J2ME Freelancer, consultant and contract work. www.garethmurfin.co.uk. Available for: development - iphone, blackberry, blu-ray java, Java, Swing, J2ME and other technologies such as porting games between manufacturers and also Android, Sidekick. For web needs, Joomla help is available here also. September 17 Ok, so the geniuses (genii?) at Apple have secured themselves a profitable future with the iphone. Yes because its an iphone and everyone needs one! Only joking!!!! No they force you to buy a mac to develop on, buy an iphone to test on, and buy a developers certificate to allow you to test on the real device. Bing they got themselves nearly £1000 from every developer alone. Now think of % they skim from every single app sold on the App Store. I guess I cant blame them too much its exactly what MS do for XBOX360 XNA, I guess... but the XBOX360 is cooler and seems more justified, plus we all have a pc and their dev tools are free... all you need is xbox360 and creators account. Anyway, I got xcode going and the apple iphone sdk, I got an app written which plays a little video and I wanted to test on iphone itself, but now I need the cert!
The development environment itself isnt too bad, its similar to all of them. Objective-c is a bit of a pain in the a-hole to get used to especially if you are not used to all the weird * and & and odd syntax, ie here is a method call: sorry, function call! [self playMovieAtURL: [NSURL URLWithString: @"http://www.fakeurl.com/phonetest.m4v"]];}. Speaking of playing videos, they actually DO PLAY in the emulator if you get the exact right format, for a long time I thought they didnt, if you are having the blackscreen problem, where it claims to play but you see a sort of quicktime logo, try the video from here:
http://www.geekanoids.co.uk/2007/09/updated-version-of-ipod-touch-iphone.html. My first tip off was when i heard my mac mini in the other room playing internally the sound of a video with no video coming up (im remote desktoping into the mac mini which is linked to a projector in the living room - nifty living room pc!).. then i looked for compatible video files and found that page. Happy hacking on the iphone, get that certificate ordered ASAP.
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Regards, Gareth Murfin - Freelance developer of more than just j2me and java. Stuck with BD-J, LeJOS, C# XNA, LUA, CHDK, UBASIC or other obscurities ? Let me know. www.garethmurfin.co.uk September 15 Everyone has their own fears in the computing world - perhaps you came across an application that just didnt work - or was way too complex for what it needed to. Perhaps you get annoyed at certain things in computing. Perhaps even a program everyone praises you hate with a vehement passion!!! Feel free to tell me Im talking crap but here are a few of my computer fears: - Monitor extension cables never work - no matter how gold is used or how short they are - ghosting always come into play and spoils the fun. This has lead to be ditching KVMs too since Ive never had set up which can avoid the ghosting, and believe me I have tried the most expensive of all. - CVS. Id like to say CVS and me have a love hate relationship, but we dont, its more like a HATE-HATE relationship - all forms of CVS are horrible in my opinion, and I find it extremely counter productive. Of course I see the need for a CVS, Id definiately use them more often if they made a CVS for 2 year olds. - PPPoE - oh why, just whyyyyyyyyy. - Linux - "just type /make" - sod off!!! I struggle to make stuff on linux despite being a coder of over ten yrs. - COM ports. need I say more.. - All video editing software - buggy as hell. Oh the list goes on. Oh no it doesnt, well it might in future.
Gareth Murfin - j2me/bdj/xna/java/c#/xml/php/matisse/swing/processing/ freelance services. September 05
PROS:
Definately seem faster than the rest right now, and certainly on Javascript, gmail runs sweet. It does seem snappy
More screenspace, and half decent looking GUI - not that we need that
really with monitors of today and you can do that anyway in all
browsers with customisation.
CONS:
There seems to be a bug in submitting text - make a blog entry in chrome on your msn blog, then save it. It will remove all the formatting and spaces. Do the same thing on firefox, and the spaces and formatting work perfectly fine. This already means Im dependant on firefox for blogging.
No title window, sometimes you want to click on it to bring the app to
the forefront and you end up thinking where do I click, as you want to
avoid tabs etc. I could see this potentially leading to click on tabs,
links or whatever that you dont want to. May be fine over time tho.
Having to open the download window manually is a bit annoying.
The sound crashed for my entire google chrome (ironically caused by
google video), so much for the sandbox! Firefox loaded up and worked
fine with sound. All it does is use a different process for each tab,
this could end up being annoying when you are trying to kill them or
summise total cpu/memory usage by the browser.
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Blogged by Gareth Murfin. J2ME Freelancer, available for hire now.
Looking for a J2ME Freelancer? Need a Blackberry application developed?
Need an iPhone contractor? Contact me today www.garethmurfin.co.uk
This entry is taken directly from the good fellas at furbo.org - the original post is here: http://furbo.org/2007/08/21/what-the-iphone-specs-dont-tell-you/
What the iPhone specs don’t tell you…
The iPhone technical specifications mention nothing about how much RAM is included nor how fast the CPU is running. Now that I have a toolchain, it was a simple task to take some code from iPulse to investigate.
Note: Apple has obviously not documented the system level APIs that I’m using to extract this information, so take these numbers with a grain of salt. Personally, I doubt that they would bother to make these low-level functions report erroneous information just to protect some consumer spec sheet, so it’s likely that they’re close if not exact.
First, let’s start off with memory. Calling host_statistics() with HOST_VM_INFO returns a count of the number of memory pages in use (the “vm_stat” tool at the command line does the same thing.) Totaling these counts shows that there are 19,500 pages of memory with each page being 4096 bytes. That’s 78,000 KB or 76.2 MB.
Another way to determine memory size is by calling sysctl() with CTL_HW and HW_PHYSMEM. This results in 121,634,816 bytes or 117 MB being reported for physical memory. Similarly, user memory is reported as 93,605,888 bytes or 89.3 MB—close to the 76.2 MB reported by host_statistics(). These calls are equivalent to using “sysctl hw.physmem” and “sysctl hw.usermem” from the Mac OS X command line.
None of these numbers are the nice round powers of 2 that we’re so accustomed to. I suspect that there is some kind of memory partitioning: something like a graphics chip could be using 11 MB of memory and that combined with the 117 MB of physical memory would bring the RAM total to 128 MB.
Now let’s take a look at the CPU speed. Again, sysctl() is our friend, this time using CTL_HW with HW_CPU_FREQ and HW_BUS_FREQ. The results of our test show that the CPU is specified at 400 Mhz with a bus frequency of 100 Mhz.
There have been various hardware reports that place the ARM chip’s frequency above 600 Mhz. Maybe sysctl() is lying to us, or maybe the CPU is clocked down to give improved battery life. Only Apple knows that for sure.
For those of you who care, the source code used for the tests is available.
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Blogged by Gareth Murfin. J2ME Freelancer, available for hire now. Looking for a J2ME Freelancer? Need a Blackberry application developed? Need an iPhone contractor? Contact me today www.garethmurfin.co.uk
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