Hacking
Lifehacking: Making a screen cooler
Aug 31st
Admittedly, I do like the current iMac design a bit. I had a screen lying around, with which I had no idea what I should do with it. So I had the idea to take it apart and do something cool with it. To be precise, it’s a LG Flatron 19-inch widescreen. Looks like this when you buy it:
So I removed the plastic casing, leaving me with the actual monitor unit. I went into a DIY and looked for a frame with at least that size or larger, and found a good one. I took the frame apart, so that I only had the glass. Made some marks on the glass about the size and started cutting. After that, I painted the front plastic shell black, “overwriting” things like the LG logo and the “Flatron” identifier in the top left. Inserting the glass was no problem since it had the correct dimensions.
This is what it looks like now.
Kinda cool eh?
Mounted and ready for prime time. It’s now playing music videos all the time. With the glass in front it suddenly looks far more expensive. =)
How to get full iOS 4 features on iPhone 3G
Aug 24th
While I was fairly impressed at the features of the new iOS 4 for iPhone and iTouch, I was equally as PISSED that people who have older models could not avail of THE most attractive features in the new software for Apple’s mobile devices (apparently you require out-of-this-world CPU to render a wallpaper and some shadows which is why it was omitted on the 3G). Also, I grew a bit tired to boot a VM of XP or boot Vista on the other partition, just to synchronize the phone with iTunes. For this reason, I sat down and wondered if iOS 4 can already be jailbroken.
And yes it can =)
So to make a long story short, follow these instructions and you can be a happy camper – if you care about things that others have on their shiny 3Gs’s and iPhone 4′s. These instructions are FOR THE 3G ONLY!!
WARNING: If you are looking to unlock (remove carrier restrictions), STOP READING HERE!!! This is only for activated iPhones using official carriers.
If you already updated to iOS 4.0.2, you might be out of luck… best to back up your phone before you try this.
1.) Download the IPSW of iOS 4, here.
2.) Download the Redsn0w jailbreak tool, here for Windows or here for Mac.
3.) To be on the safe side, close iTunes.
4.) Turn your phone off completely.
5.) Start Redsn0w and direct it to the firmware you downloaded earlier.
6.) Once the iOS firmware is verified, you’ll see a screen with some options – most of which you will want. Like “enable Multitasking” etc.
7.) Connect your phone. Best with the cable as you need to perform a certain procedure next.
8.) Redsn0w will tell you PRECISELY what to press and when to enter DFU mode. It is a very special technical mode meant for Apple engineers… Once you entered this mode of operation, Redsn0w will do the rest for you.
9.) If everything was successful, your screen will show up something like “Downloading Jailbreak Data…”. This will take a while, so watch some YouTube.
10.) Once it completes your phone will reboot. Everything will be left intact, the way it was! Except that now you have Cydia as additional App Store on the display. Rejoice!!
Cydia is the community powered App Store, in case you didn’t know. It contains thousands of apps that either have not been approved by Apple, or the developers can’t afford the 99$ Developer Membership to officially release apps on the real App Store. Most are free, but some are commercial. Those that are… Have a good reason for it. xPod and iFile for example. No matter what you install, you should get the “Backgrounder” app which enables multitasking for older apps and apps that don’t natively support the Apple way. That one is free.
Once it completes you will probably notice that the phone chose a random image as home screen background… you can change that like you can on the 3Gs and 4G through the settings =)
This is how I did it, and this my iPhone 3G:
Cool eh? Hope this helps some people.
PS: Icon animation with background enabled isn’t as sluggish as you might think.
Like Google Maps, only for EVE
Jul 19th
So after I got a dynamic database running that allows you to browse through all available items in EVE, I sat down for another project. This time I wanted it to be something more epic and something that has not been done before, at least not that I know of.
Pretty recently I learned about the pretty amazing capabilities of the in-game browser of EVE Online. It has certain Javascript-calls built-in that allow to directly access in-game windows, information, or even directly manipulate your gameplay. For example it is possible to alter your course from the built-in browser. I thought this could be pretty cool when combined with something fancy.
Of course there is an in-game map in 3D and so on, but it is very limited as to what information it can provide. So I decided to bring that map to the browser. In 2D at least. The result is Cerberus Maps, a web-based map of the EVE-Universe. Why Cerberus? Because the corp I have founded and that I am in is called Cerberus Network.
First of all you need to sit down and get the basics straight, like zooming and moving – that was easy. The real problem is to accurately calculate the position of each system, on the map. This was quite an interesting challenge, seeing that CCP stores spatial coordinates in exponential values. The engine I for that is something I’m so proud of, I gave it a name… in fact, so proud, that I just had to give it some metal.
But just talking about it is boring. I’d love to show the stuff to you! Some screenies.
Maps in the in-game browser. Since the browser has a modified Chrome under the hood, this is no problem. The map is completely movable, the “+” and “-” buttons zoom in and out. The dots represent a solar system, each with its own stations, planets, asteroid belts, and moons. They are also colored by their security level. The more red they are, the less secure they are. When the mouse hovers over one, the name and security level is shown (very true to actual in-game mechanic). Hovering also automatically fills the search field.
Clicking the “Search” button displays the Detailed Information pane. Useful data is displayed such as Stargate connections, their securities, and in which region and constellation they are located. Stations and planets are linked. In this example I clicked a link for a station, which opened the in-game info for that location.
When you click on the link of the system you are viewing, the autopilot of your ship will set a course to that system. If however you are unsure what the route looks like, you can click the Map icon beside the name, which will open the in-game map without setting a course – but it will tell you how far it is on your current autopilot setting.
And that’s all I wanted to show you right now. Over time I’ll improve it, but I guess for now it’s a pretty good start.
Have fun!
Cerberus Maps
IGB will request trust. You have to accept this as otherwise the navigation functions will not work.
CAPTAIN’S BLOG, SUPPLEMENTAL
Those that came before us:
Landmark Support has now been added for in-game browser. The top-right now has a checkbox which will enable landmark beacons. Clicking on one will open more information about the landmark.
Hackbook Air
Feb 5th
Alright so I bought myself a new toy, a little handy netbook. It is a bit nicer to carry a 10-inch machine, instead of a 17 inch laptop around. In the shop they wanted to sell me all kinds of crap, for example Norton 360 anti-virus. When I said I didn’t need it, he asked me 3 times if I was sure about that (like Windows asks you about 3 times for everything). I didn’t tell him that I didn’t plan on keeping Windows on the machine, I didn’t want to confuse him.
It’s an Atom chip clocked at 1.6 GHz, 160 GB drive, 1 GB RAM. It has 3 USB ports, VGA out, SD Expansion, multiple card readers, built-in webcam, audio out, microphone in, and built-in microphone, and a glossy 10.1 inch wide screen display. RAM and hard drive are replaceable. Battery lasts for about 4-7 hours, depending on what you do.
Before XP Starter Edition could even boot, I prepared a bootable USB stick with the full Ubuntu 9.10 live CD, then deleted all partitions and put Ubuntu on. I could have gone for the Netbook Remix, but I wanted the full user interface. Quickly transferred my theme data from my primary machine, installed Global Menu Bar and Cairo-Dock, and boom!
Adium message styles in Pidgin (Ubuntu Karmic)
Jan 7th
I always liked Adium on OS X a lot, it’s the Mac fork of the famous Pidgin, a multi-protocol messaging client. I really LOVE Pidgin – but one thing was always missing – the fancy look. But finally, it can be helped!
Here’s what to do. These steps are for Ubuntu 9.10 only.
1. Open up a terminal, and type (or paste):
sudo apt-get install pidgin-dev libpurple-dev
2. Next, add the WebKit repository, as Adium styles require WebKit on the Mac. You have to open up the Software Sources tool under System/Administration/Software Sources. There, click on “Other Software”, then “Add…”, and paste this line:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty maindeb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
The content will reload as new software just became available.
3. Back to the terminal, and paste:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libwebkit-dev
This will install required development files for WebKit.
4. Next, download THIS FILE, save it to a location of your choice.
5. In a terminal, do
bzip2 -d /path/to/pidgin-webkit.tar.bz2
to extract the file.
6. In the extracted folder there are two folders which we need to copy into your libpurple folder. This is how to do it:
cp /path/to/pidgin-webkit-folder/message_styles ~/.purple && cp /path/to/pidgin-webkit-folder/plugins ~/.purple
Close Pidgin entirely and open it again. Go to Tools / Plugins, and behold your new entry!
You can now go, to use themes of AdiumXtras.com. Beware – some themes will not work, most of them will however.
To install a new theme, download any one of your choice, extract the zip, and in the folder you will find another folder named “NameOfStyle.AdiumMessageStyle”. You need to copy this to
~/.purple/message_styles
Once you have it in there, again go to Tools / Plugins / WebKit, then select “Configure plugin”. There you will then see a list… In my example I installed iChadium, a iChat emulating message style:
As you can see you can select any sub-style you want.
Once done, behold your all-new shiny Adium on Ubuntu!
Introducing: The Emperor’s Screen
Oct 19th
As you might have seen before, I managed to hook up 3 screens to my machine instead of just 2, and managed to stretch EVE on all of them, which is otherwise not possible with Vista.
Now, to complete the setup, I bought two screens of identical size to the 22 inch which I already had, and arranged them beautifully together. A window to another world. The Emperor’s Screen.
Total diameter is about 1.4 meters, and total possible resolution is 5760 x 1080 (!!).
Black is beautiful. So is EVE.
To The Power Of Three
Oct 12th
Last EVE related post in a while, I promise! If you had enough of me and EVE, you should stop reading now… otherwise read on to see my latest trickery and hack.
So. On this year’s keynote of CCP held in Iceland (Fanfest), they had shown quite a cool feature: the game on multiple screens. This kinda inspired me, I thought it has to be possible to do this already. And what followed was yet another odyssey into technology and the question: can it be done?
The inspiration for me was one photograph… this one:
New Eden extended by 3
Obviously you have to be able to connect three screens. Now you see the problem is, that most graphic cards, even expensive ones (apart from things like ATI’s EyeFinity) only let you connect a maximum of two screens at any one time. However for EVE, with your ship always in center view, having the ship in one piece is quite important to the experience of the game, so you need either 1 or 3 screens.
Here’s where the first problem comes in. Most mainboards only allow you to connect ONE PCI-Express graphic card. With 16x speed that is for immense bandwidth and thus graphical processing. How do you fit it a second PCI-Express card when your board only takes one? Well. You see it is technically possible to connect a second 16x speed card onto a slot with only 1x speed. Problem is there is a physical blockage. So I went and by hand removed the block on the right side, allowing another card to fit in. Obviously you only get 1x speed instead of 16. This isn’t pretty and voided my warranty – but it works!
A bit crammed, but… well:
Don’t worry, the cooling is perfectly fine. They are not touching – even if it looks like that. Besides the cheap one is a passive cooler – so everything’s… cool. With those two finally placed in, I could in theory attach a maximum of 6 screens… Whoa!
Fancy a TV wall? Six screens, maybe? For now, let’s just use three.
Everything is working. Drivers installed, and the screen is in fact detected and Windows says it now has a new display adapter. The screen is showing its wallpaper. I am impressed about myself how far I have gotten already.
Next problem is that Vista does not allow for horizontal spanning (like you have 3 monitors on your desk, but Windows thinks it is one). This was removed in Vista and is not coming back in Windows 7. Windows XP however did this. With the so-called Windows Display Driver Model, or WDDM, which Vista and W7 uses, spanning is not possible. So full-screen on 3 screens is a no-go. But my journey didn’t end here.
There is this little nifty hack called SoftTH (Software Triple Head). This effectively forces any DirectX based game to use all screens. How does it work?
The image is rendered on your expensive beloved graphic card. This tool then takes care of the rest and divides the image by three, and sends the parts onto its respective screens. Left to left, center to center, and right to right. This involved a bit of configuration and I can provide you with my config file if you need it.
And that was it. EVE is now forced to use all screens! Thus, my command bridge is now complete. Bask in the presence of the most immersive gaming experience. EVE To The Power Of Three.
Threesome: Main view in the middle, communication and information on the left, sensors on the right
Can someone tell me why I didn’t use Kubuntu before?
Feb 19th
Right, so I have been playing around with Kubuntu, my new main desktop system, for like 2 days. There has been a bit of trickery and tweakery going on, like for example you have to tell ALSA that you are on a MacBook Pro Revision 3 in order to make the headphone jack work. Well I like to fiddle around with stuff, and I think I finally got my setup working and start to feel comfortable.
Here are just a few screens of the built-in functionality of Ubuntu – this is not Compiz – but it works just like it (I don’t necessarily need the Cube to be honest). There are some features I have grown attached to – I am so glad they are not missing. Others however are from Mac OS X. Like this one in my first screenshot.
Why has Cover Flow not been implemented as task switcher in OS X?
You can obviously have more than 4, but 4 Spaces kinda do the trick for me.
They call it Expose… thanks for porting that too.
Stay iTuned. On Windows, Linux, Mac.
Thing was with iTunes that I copied the entire collection of mine to an external drive as it was, then installed WINE and iTunes 8.0.2 – and then copied my collection over to my Music folder in /home, as it was, and BOOM! iTunes recognized all of it, including settings, ratings, and does even support Genius. I was genuinely surprised… WINE really has come a long way. And yes, iTunes wobbles just like the other windows do. Bujaka!
Leopard Pro Tip: How to watch porn at work [NSFW]
Oct 4th
When Leopard was released, it came with over 300 new innovations. Today, I wanna share with you how you could use one of those innovations to entertain yourself in the office if you’re bored.