Vista » Technology

How to make Amarok play nice

sheilaellen — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:20:54 +0000

These days when I listen to music it’s usually streamed from Last.fm via XBMC, either my own loved tracks or those tagged “ambient“, however sometimes I want to listen to my offline music collection and for that I use Amarok. Given how much hassle it is to get working and that they’ve removed the features I found most useful*, increasingly I wonder why I bother but for the moment I do and this is an aide-mémoire to help the process go much smoother the next time I have to install it.

Check that libxine1-ffmpeg is installed
Check that phonon-backend-xine is installed
Check that phonon-backend-gstreamer isn’t installed
Configure phonon (Amarok > Settings > Configure Amaraok > Playback > Configure Phonon) so that the uppermost option for each “Device Preference” category actually works. Use the test button to check each option if you’re not sure.

That should get the audio working. Now to figure out why it doesn’t seem to be scrobbling…

* They have promised to put them back in but it doesn’t look as though it’s going to be any time soon.

Aide-mémoire

Dual Eclipse

sheilaellen — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:32:12 +0000

Usually I code in Eclipse. It saves me a lot of time, especially thanks to plugins such as oXygen and Mylyn. However, it’s been frustrating me for a while that although I can pop-out individual Views and position them on my second monitor, it didn’t seem possible to open a second instance of the same View. I was wrong! Just select “New window” from the “Window” menu. It seems to have full functionality, you can even select an entirely different Perspective, if you wish. Simples! As Aleksandr Orlov would say :)

Aleksandr Orlov

How to block retweets

sheilaellen — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:15:46 +0000

A very good friend of mine has (very politely) bemoaned the fact that his incoming twitter stream is full of tweets from people he doesn’t know (and has no interest in hearing from/about) all because I retweet so often. He doesn’t want to stop following me and I don’t want to stop retweeting. Luckily, there is a solution to our problem.

Although there’s no option that allows you to block all retweets from all people you follow in one fell swoop (yet), you can block all retweets from each person individually.

So, if, for example, you’re following me (@sheilaellen) on twitter and wish to stop receiving all the messages that I retweet:

Go to my twitter page: http://twitter.com/sheilaellen
Find the retweet icon
Click on it.

Before:

Retweets On

After:

Retweets Off

This should mean that you will now only receive messages from me that have been written by my own fair hand (or, possibly, a spammer who’s p0wned my account).

Repeat for each other compulsive retweeter that you follow.

Temptation Bites

sheilaellen — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:01:57 +0000

Having bitten the bullet and deleted a batch of apps that I like but don’t use very often, because my phone was low on space, I almost immediately installed a new one…

Bites is very simple recipe manager, in interface and functionality; beautifully quick and easy to use. What makes it special, though, for me, is its integration with OI Shopping List: at the press of a button in Bites, I can add all of the ingredients I need to my shopping list.

If I already have an ingredient, I can tick it off before I copy it across and only the ingredients I really need will be added. If, like me, you have more than one list set up in OI Shopping List, the process allows you to specify which one, exactly, the ingredients should be added to. Also, to help you remember why it’s essential that you buy black treacle this week, the name of the recipe it’s required for (fruit cake) is appended to each ingredient name in the Shopping List.

The only feature that I miss, from both apps, is the option to specify the name of an ingredient/item and the quantity required separately. I’ve requested this from both app makers and have my fingers crossed that it’ll be added in the New Year.

Christmas planning is going so much more smoothly with the help of these two apps (and RTM), though. Only a zillion things left to do..!

Low on Space

sheilaellen — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:28:25 +0000

I recently had to revert back to using a 1GB memory card in my G1, since the 16GB card spontaneously corrupted. Ever since, my phone’s been helpfully pointing out, at least once per day, that it’s short of storage space and suggesting that I manage my applications; by “manage” it means “delete”.

There are some apps that I could delete but I’m reluctant to do so because I like them and might forget what they’re called should I acquire a more powerful android device and wish to reinstall them. There are others that I rarely use but do exactly what I need them to do on those rare occasions that I do need them. Until now, I’ve been managing to hang on to the aforementioned apps by deleting apps that I’ve installed either because they looked as though they’d do what I needed but didn’t or simply because they looked shiny in the store but quickly dulled with use. However, with Christmas looming, last night I thought I’d try installing the RTM android app – and it’s a whopper (~3.75MB). I’m determined to give it a proper trial but this means that finally I’m going to have to get ruthless with the other apps.

As I shall probably wish/need to reinstall some of them at a later date, if not on this phone then another, here’s a rollcall of the victims of this cull:

Name	Description	Use	Pros	Cons	Size	Version	Credits
BeyondPod	Full featured podcast manager and RSS feed reader.	Managing the few podcasts I subscribe to.	Easy to use. Can schedule automated checks and downloads.	I get stuck in the interface, looping between the various screens as to exit, instead of pressing “Back”, you have to press “Home”. Also, I’ve yet to get it to successfully subscribe to ABC’s MediaWatch vodcast; not sure if that’s a problem with the vodcast or the app.	1.55MB + 1.01MB data	204	BeyondPod Team
Phonebook	Contacts management: “unified communications inbox” (calls and SMS), stats, birthday notifications, search, groups.	Alternative to the default address book.	Much better than the default address book.	I only keep in contact with a few people via voice calls and/or SMS so don’t really need/use the advanced features.	1.87MB + 88KB data	106	Voxmobili – Onmobile
Meridian	Media player: search, lyrics, subtitles, gestures, ID3 edit, rating, meta data.	For playing media (mostly audio) stored on my phone, which isn’t much with this smaller SD card.	Much better than the default app.	I rarely listen to the music stored on my phone, preferring to stream from online radio services instead.	1.53MB + 100KB data	75	III – Romulus Urakagi Ts’ai
IcWord	Document viewer: Microsoft Word only.	Allows me to open and read MS Word documents.	Provides functionality that isn’t available to me by default.	Only useful for MS Word documents.	1.16MB	2	Derek Li
FBReader	eBook reader: epub, oeb and fb2.	Reading novels.	Gives me the option to read a book without having to carry anything extra around with me.	I prefer to read the paper version.	1.09MB + 44KB data	527	Geometer Plus
Pixelpipe Pro	Media uploader: images, video, audio, text.	Posting to Flickr.	I can upload instantly, no need to wait until I have access to a more capable PC with internet access.	I very rarely use it.	1.05MB + 76KB data	23	Pixelpipe
WordUp!	Word game, very like Boggle.	Killing time on the bus.	I love word games.	I don’t use my phone to play games very often.	0.98MB + 52KB data	28	Anthrological
Odd One Out	Game: spot the odd one out, against the clock.	Get’s pretty challenging to beat the clock towards the end.	Not enough variety, just the same shapes but with less time.	I don’t use my phone to play games very often	264KB	9	CRSoft
OffiViewer	Office document viewer. Opens PDF, Word, Exel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument and RTF files.	For reading random documents downloaded off the web or received as email attachments.	I don’t have to wait until I get to a more capable PC.	I don’t use my phone to read office documents very often	240KB + 4KB data	12	Art of Solving

The RTM app had better be good…

WordCampUK 2009

sheilaellen — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:35:43 +0000

Day 1 is over. I’ve met many interesting people but failed to collect their names so tomorrow’s mission is to remedy this. The crowd is fairly evenly split between developers and users, with a few strategists thrown in for good measure. Co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little both gave talks today – I wonder if, when they began developing WordPress, they even had a suspicion that it would become so popular that there would be conferences about it all over the world?

Jeni Tennison

sheilaellen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:20:10 +0000

Jeni Tennison is an XSLT guru who shares her expertise unstintingly on paper, at conferences and online. If you’re an XSLT programmer, Jeni needs no introduction; she’s probably helped you out sometime or awed you with an elegantly simple solution to what you thought was a horrendously complex problem. She has a knack for it. And this skill for simplicity and elegance in code is something I aspire to. And that’s easier said than done in XSLT – no sooner have you matched a “/” and before you can say value-of, you find you’ve applied templates to the descendant of an ancestor, sorted three ways, with a mode and priorities applied. So I salute you Jeni and will spend at least some of Ada Lovelace Day refactoring in your honour.