Stefan aka Noneus

Last decade (it’s really just a month ago) Google released the Linux (and Mac) Google Chrome Beta. Since then I use Google Chrome on top of my Ubuntu 10.4. I wanted to share my favorite extensions for chrome:

1. Xmarks Bookmarks Sync

I allready used Xmarks for Firefox. Xmarks is so awesome. It syncs bookmarks for all important browsers. For my Android Phone I use Xmarks Mobile.

2. Xmarks Thumbnails

This plugin puts an image of the website next to every search-result. This makes the search-results a bit more appealing.

3. RSS Subscription Extension (by Google)

With this you can easily add RSS-Feeds to Google-Reader, if there are any on the site.

4. Easy Youtube Video Downloader

If I’m browsing Youtube for music I want to be able to download them. Sure there are many desktop-applications that do that. But this extension is easier. It adds dowload-links right on the youtube page. You can download all available formats. Including 1080p, if available!

5. Google Translate

If you search in Google sometimes you get foreign websites as results. This extension makes translating pretty easy. When on foreign website just hit the translate button and boom!

6. AddThis

I just found this extension yesterday. It lets you post the current website to a bunch of places. Its made for tons of social-networks. I will use it for my blog. I really want to write for it more frequently.

Cyanogen release a new version of his mod, that is legal. It features the latest Donut release. Check it out here. I didn’t have Cyanogen’s Recovery Image, so installing this version was not very easy. 4.1999 won’t install without Cyanogen’s Recovery Image. I always got an “Installation aborted”.

• Get the cm-recovery-1.4.img from here
• Get fastboot tool from here and follow the instructions below the downloads:

On OS X and Linux, you can store the fastboot executable anywhere on your machine. On Windows, you must store the fastboot executable where it can find the AdbWinApi.dll file (included with the Android SDK), otherwise it will not work properly. The recommended place to store the fastboot executable on Windows is with the other tools in the Android SDK, in the <sdk>/tools directory. On all platforms, you may want to add the location to your PATH, for convenience.

USB Driver

If your development machine is running Windows, you should make sure to update your USB driver before continuing. For your convenience, the Android SDK (1.0 r2 or later) includes an updated USB driver that you can install. For more information, see Setting up a Device for Development on the Android Developers Site.

• Get the device in fastboot mode:

To enter fastboot mode, power up the device (or reboot it) while holding down the BACK key. Hold the BACK key down until the bootloader screen is visible and shows “FASTBOOT”. The device is now in fastboot mode and is ready to receive fastboot commands. If you want to exit fastboot mode at this point, you can hold down the keys MENU+SEND+END (on the Android Dev Phone, SEND is the “Call” key and END is the “End call” key).

• fastboot boot cm-recovery-1.4.img
• now you can apply the update.zip for 4.1.999

I just got my Arduino I ordered at watterott (http://www.watterott.com/). Watterott is a german shop, which sells arduino and accessories for it. I orderd the standard Arduino board: a Duemilanove.

I also ordered a book for it. It’s called “Getting started with Arduino”. But this book is for people that never had anything to do with programming, electronics and programming. So it’s pretty much useless to me. I gave it to me father. Perhaps it will get him interested in electronics and microcontrollers.

But the board itself is pretty cool. You don’t have to know that much about the microcontoller for settings of special-function-registers and so like with the mikrocontrollers I tried at home or university. You just have to download the Arduino software. Then put in a sketch, which is basicly writing C++ with some addons for the mikrocontroller. Now connect the Arduino with an USB-cable and upload the sketch. As a first test I connected 9 leds to the arduino board. Each in series with a 1kOhm transistor. I wrote a short sketch, which now outputs predefined patterns to the 9 leds. For the full sketch take a look under the more link.

Here are some pictures and an animated GIF showing a pattern I display with my sketch.

Getting Started with Arduino by MAKE

Arduino with some LEDs

The patterns I programmed:

Read the rest of this entry »

To better understand what exif tag is in which ifd I wrote a little exifviewer. A simple little programs which list all exif-tags from one picture and the ifd’s the tag belongs to.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <libexif/exif-data.h>

void display_entry(ExifEntry *entry, void *null) {
	char b[1024];
	exif_entry_get_value (entry, b, sizeof(b));
	printf("%s: %s\n",  exif_tag_get_name (entry->tag), b);
}

void display_content(ExifContent *content, void *null) {
	printf("\nEXIFIFD: %s:\n---------\n\n", exif_ifd_get_name(exif_content_get_ifd(content)));
	exif_content_foreach_entry (content, display_entry, NULL);
}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
	ExifData *data;
	data = exif_data_new_from_file(argv[1]);
	if(data == NULL || argc != 2) {
		printf("Argument must be one valid jpg-file!\n");
		return(1);
	}
	exif_data_foreach_content (data, display_content, NULL);
	return 0;
}

Build it with(Install libexif-dev):

cc -lexif -lm -o exifviewer src/exifviewer.c

So I bought the Android for a reason. Developing. And that’s what I did. Since there is no really great Podcastfetcher for the Android Platform I decided to write my own. It’s called APodder. (Guess what the A stands for. ) After a few days of work. I got some base functionality going:

• Downloading and parsing RSS2.0 feeds
• Storing podcasts and their shows in a SQLite databse
• An Interface that has a podcast-view and a show-view (see the pictures below).
• Possibility to download shows with showing a progressbar (see the pictures below).

Not everything works 100% as I have it in my mind. But I’m getting there. This is my first bigger project in Java. Until now I only developed in C++, C and Python.But thanks to Eclipse and its awesome AutoCompletition I’m doing quite fine. Expect to see more APodder news in February. I have exams in university in the end of january. So I will minimize developing hours.