I was just today looking at some examples of tracker use and stumbled on hum-gtk - a gtk music player that combines three very-close-at-heart projects together: gstreamer, vala and tracker. It's a simple app, the picture speaks louder than any description:



But the true greatness comes when you look at the source code of it. I dare you - do take a look at it:

http://hum-gtk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

You can see that you can make a decent music player (yeah, it's the 0.1 stage, so no-one is expecting a miracle) with just tiny amount of code.


Oh, by the way, I've published a new version of theme maker that has lot's of good fixes and font support and I'm now working on including icon support to the diablo.

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=36
[edit] The screenshot is from the 0.1 version that was written on c. The code is still very neat, but not just vala. http://hum-gtk.googlecode.com/svn/branches/0.1/src/

Let me start by telling you that wiicontrol is just marvelous piece of software. I allows you to pair your wiimote with your tablet. Result: Perfect controller for games and really nice controller for media applications.

So, emulators are now usable, doom / quake: check! pengupop / bomberman. Yeah baby! I cannot take credit of the wiicontrol, as it's really a project JL Diaz started, I just pimped it a bit. It's based on wiimote by Will Woods. GPL2+ for wiimote and gpl3+ for the wiicontrol.

Hey, please take a look at this video to see how very simple it is to use. If you toggle the gyro, it will currently produce wasd events when the you rotate your wiimote. Nice for e.g. strafing in quake/doom. Anyway, this is the first version and I'm sure me and JL will be bringing some cool configuration options and perhaps even mouse cursor support in the near future.



EDIT:
Link to install it is in here:
Wiicontrol 1.04

I took a bit time off to polish the Theme Maker. The latest version, 1.1.3 now supports also background images. Background images will appear in the image list of the the 'select background image' dialog.

So, what is the Theme Maker anyway?

It's an easy to use tool for creating themes for the Maemo devices like N800 and N810. All you need is a image editor program like gimp of photoshop and a little patience. It works on OSX, Windows (all versions) and Linux. You'll need java from Sun to run it.

Basically, it's all about editing one single image file like this (this is a small part of a theme template only):


and then setting the theme details in Theme Maker like this:

And Clicking build in theme maker. It will produce a nice installable .deb file of your theme. Just copy that to your device (or publish it ... whatnot) and install it as normal. Now just set your theme on your device and it will transform to something like this (well, for NuvoPearl it looks like this):

And, as stated in the first paragraph of this blog, now themes also include the backgrounds so that your theme is more complete. Icons are still not changeable, but let's see what I can do about them in the future...

If you have a bit of artist in you, please try out the theme maker (install java if needed):
ThemeMaker1.1.3.zip

And if you liked NuvoPearl theme pictured above, you can install the latest version from here:
NuvoPearl

A quick taster of how splendid the latest ukmp looks. Of course, an image is not enough to show how nice UI candy it contains, but it's a taster. As you can see (and deduce the rest), vanilla SDL and python are able to do some pretty nice stuff. Oh, even though there is the reflection, fps is still nice and above the blitting limit of the device.

I completely forgot to talk about theme maker in my last post. Yes, I finally gave into the dark side. I moved to use Nokia official template for theme maker. This is good and bad. Bad in that if you had made something on the old theme maker, you'll have to port it to the new template. Good in the sense that you'll get all the features in exactly the manner god of this device intended (nokia).



Above, you can see the first test theme that I made with the new theme maker. It's there to also test out how 'light' themes look. As you've noticed, pretty much all the current themes are very dark. So, to balance the 'turn to the dark side', here is the latest (1.2) iteration of the nuvo theme.

So, many people probably don't know what theme maker is. It's an java application for windows/osx/linux that makes a theme out of an png file. So, you open the png in gimp or photoshop, edit it out, open theme maker, specify the theme name, font size and click on make theme. Wait a minute or so and you have a .deb file of your newly created theme. Current version doesn't set the bg, but you can't have it all on day one.

If you are interested in Nuvo, dl it from here:
NuvoPearl 1.2

and for theme maker:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/3418/ThemeMaker1.1.2.zip

When you have new themes, please put them to the maemo.org/downloads for all the world to use!

Just to show the nuvopearl a bit more, here's a screenshot of file manager. Smaller font makes it much nicer looking as well. (and usable)

Just a quick short blog post

As requested, I packed in the weekend USBControl as a seprate package. I also upgraded it so that it works even after a reboot. LOL. the previous one actually only worked until you rebooted the device and lost the access to edit your USB mode after that. LOL indeed. I didn't realize that, as I really don't reboot my device too often. Kudos to nokia for the stable device.

Anyway, the new package runs as sudo, so it's able to edit the file even later on. (security people can now cry iik!).

You can install it from here (yo need to have python installed before though):
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/3443/usbcontrol-1.0_all.deb

I'll put it to repos in a few days time, but before that, try it out and let me know how you like (or dislike) it.

Current version also tells the status of the usb as well as the devices attached to your tablet.

Some people have been writing about the USB OTG use with need to hack the cable by soldering a few wires together. Even Ars technica went the hard way of soldering a cable. This is not the way to do it my friends. On a computer-like device, the way is to 'solder software', not hardware. I found the instructions on software solution from muru and then thought:"This is still just too hard". So, what to do? Make it easy, of course.


Enter USBControl


I thought that this is worth a full hour of my time. So, today I put together a new application that you can use to switch the device (N800 or N810) between USB Host and USB OTG modes. All you need, is an USB Female-Female adaptor like this:
http://www.amazon.com/USB-Type-Female-Coupler-Adapter/dp/B000I97N0S

So, remember, that is USB A female to female adaptor. Costs pennies. Well, almost.

After you have the USB adaptor, just install ukmp from here: Garage

That version is beta. You may need to install ukmp first from here: maemo.org

ukmp is my media player, but it now comes bundled with uktube (youtube downloader) and USBControl.

Finally, open USBController from your extras menu. Click on HOST. Attach USB cable and e.g keyboard to the other end and.... There you go. Nothing else needed. Open notes, xterm, whatnot and start typing. Or, remove the kb and attach a memory stick. For me, even wireless keyboards work just fine without any powered hub. Same for one memory stick, but another memory stick needed more juice than the device had.

If your peripheral needs more juice, just put a powered hub in between. Simple, huh?

I was up quite long on friday. Yeah, I know what you must be thinking: partying. Nope, I wish. I was duking it out with ukmp and maemo extras. I finally gave the decisive blow at around 4 AM. I got the ukmp uploaded to the extras repositories for bora and chinook!



I decided on friday that I won't rest until it's there. With hindsight it was a bad decision, as I was pretty wasted the whole saturday. Did manage to go partying then though. However, I'm very pleased that the update support structure is there now and that the new n810 owners will also be able to ge the new UKMP.

So, what is new with the 1.70 release compared to 1.6 series? Layout has been changed a bit, covers are bigger, reflection is done on the fly. Things just look a bit better. Also, the kinetic scrolling has been tweaked quite a lot and the progress bar (although a bit buggy) allows you to skip to correct place. I actually also had really wicked ligting effect at the place where your finger touches the screen for a while. As it was mainly eye candy, I dropped it for a while. It may be making a come-back soon, as it was really neat looking effect. I just want to add a bit more 'fun' to it.

Next up will be a few minor update releases that address the bugs and startup speed issues. And now that ukmp is in the extras repository, updating will be an easy operation for you - the users.

For developers interested in helping out, I've been switching to 'proper' practices and the svn is now up-to date all the time.

So, os2007 users can find ukmp from:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2007/ukmp/

and os2008 users can find it from:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/ukmp/

Simple, eh ;)

Probably some of the people have been wondering how come I've been laying so low for the past two weeks. This is due to the fact that I began working at Nokia on monday. I've very excited about it and people at Nokia have been really great. I am sure I can contribute even more to the device now that I'm part of the process as an insider.

Thanks to guys at internettablettalk, I noticed that youtube had changed the way video files are referred on the page source code. Thus, uktube stopped working until this problem had been fixed. I was just able to fix and test it a few minutes ago and I wanted to let you all know that the problem has been fixed and there is a new version for you to download.


So, once again, thanks for letting me know of the uktube bug. UKMP 1.62 only fixes uktube bug in downloading youtube videos. So, don't expect any fixes related to ogg files.

It seems that ogg installation at the moment is missing ogg demux for some users. I'll try to get oggs working again in ukmp for the 1.63 release some time next week

EDIT: LINK FIXED

Download here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp/