Coastal's Blog

Popularity of WMS InfoFormats

2012-01-09T03:28:00.000-08:00

I'm doing some development work on a web map that brings wms layers from a host of UK public wms providers. Part of the work is to provide an info tool and we're using OpenLayers getFeatureInfo control to do this.

The problem with working with so many external wms providers is the lack of consistency in info formats supported. A quick summary (below) shows that html and plain text are the most supported with ogc xml a reasonable third. So we'll be concentrating our support for these formats and hopefully, if time and money permits, to extend support to others. Not good findings for ogc gml as it comes last with only 11% support.

100% support: html & plain
89% support: ogc xml
67% support: xml
19% support: esri raw xml & esri feature info xml
11% support: ogc gml

RSS feed of Google Calendar Events

2011-09-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

Use the following;

https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/[your account]/public/basic?orderby=starttime&sortorder=ascending&max-results=5&futureevents=true

Now to put it on XBMC. The GF will be impressed.

GIS Technologies - DotSpatial

2011-07-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm going to hopefully run through the majority of the technologies on show at FOSS4G this year. I probably won't be going myself but at least by September I'll have first-hand experience with the big names.

Okay, the first one I chose was DotSpatial. I think i'll bunch up the OSM stuff into one long session - that's why I've gone and skipped over it.

So DotSpatial. I've only had a half a day but there's plenty of clear tutorials over at DotSpatial Docs to work through. I tried out a few and it's normally stuff for a dot Net Spatial library - map controls and ease of loading/editing vector and raster files.

Loading WMS into a map contol - no simply single layer class yet but a workaround was posted by Ted - here

Coming from working with ArcObjects it's looks a godsend of common sense. I'm not sure if I'll yet see a job post looking for DotSpatial as a requirement but you never know.

GIS Technologies this year at FOSS4G

2011-06-17T04:37:00.000-07:00

This is a boiled down list of the technologies to be discussed at FOSS4G this year. I've been using most of the OSGeo GeoStack a fair while but I knew there was a lot out there I wasn't getting exposure to. Simmering down the tech list from the FOSS4G schedule has given me an insight into what I should be looking at. And really, I wasn't expecting it to be so darn large.

Sorry there's no links. Some entries are missing from the schedule due to their particular focus but I've tried to keep it complete as best possible from a developer's point of view.

OSM - OpenStreetMap
JOSM - an editor for OpenStreetMap in Java
OSM + PostGIS + QGIS - Data analysis
DotSpatial - Mono/.Net Framework C# GIS library
PostGIS
MapFish - web framework, companion to OpenLayers, GeoExt, GeoAlchemy, Shapely
FormAlchemy / GeoFormAlchemy
Geomajas - a client/server framework, uses GWT
Spatial Data Infrastructure/GeoNetwork/GeoCat Bridge creates metadata
GeoMoose - client framework for MapServer, good on data organisation, data maintenance
pgRouting - routing extension to PostGIS
Geoserver
OpenLayers
Common JavaScript libraries - jQuery UI, ExtJS, Sencha Touch
GeoKettle - ETL tool, GeoMonrian (Spatial OLAP server) and GeoBIExt - all @ spatialytics.org
OGC WFS-T, TinyOWS
GeoExt
MapServer
QGIS
Mapnik, Node.js
i2maps - geocomputational platform, spatial/temporal data (built around OpenLayers and GeoDjango)
GeoNode
NodeJS framework, Polymaps framework - both for back-end
Inkscape - SLD production
Zoo-Project and WPSs (Web Processing Services)
Amazon Web Services - autoscaling, load balancing cluster
Spatial Wiki - Ubuntu, MediaWiki, Apache, Geoserver, OpenLayers, PostGIS
NSDI, GIS in urban planning
Flot plotting library, spatio-temporal modelling - surfaces
HydroDesktop, free GIS for hydrological modeling
Tilecaching, secured WMS, MapProxy
Imposm - imports OSM data into PostGIS
gvSIG Mini - production of PoI data from OSM, map viewer for Android
Flex, OpenScales, NetCDF, AXIIS, Degrafa, SOS, AIS - for Oceanic applications
Mod-geocache - caching server
MapMint - SDI manager
MapQuery, gRaphael (SVG chart library)
TileMill with Mapnik and Carto (map styling language)
Glob3 - 3D framework, suitable for iOD and Android devices
Google Fusion tables > kml for google maps
GDAL
GeoTools - Java GIS library
MapWindow - MS Windows GIS with .Net API
GXP - Javascript library connects to OpenLayers, Ext JS, GeoExt using a JSON configuration.
Tinyows, GeoPrisma, Zoo WPS - part of the MapServer project stack
GeoScript - extends python, javascript, scala, groovy
CartoSet - web map framework, built upon Ruby on Rails framework ‘CartoDB’.
GeoShield - security access-control to OGC services
MapGuide OpenSource Server & Web Extensions
OGC Web Processing Service (WPS), 52 North, Geoserver
OpenAerialMap
Mobile mapping: BeeGIS (uDig ext) and Geopaparazzi
Partitioning Around Medoids clustering algorithm with Grass & R
GeoWebCache
Cartagen Knitter - rectifying aerial imagery
Opticks - open source image processing software
OpenLayers Mobile
Esri Geoportal Server
Web of Things demonstration - SenseBox
WebGL Earth
WCS 2.0
MassMov2D - landslide modelling
libPC & libLAS - point cloud processing
PyWPS
mapnik2geotools
FalconView
Cellular Automata QGIS plugin
GeoCouch, CouchDB
HydroLiDAR
jai-tools
Geomondrian
GeoServer Plugin for the NoSQL Mongo Database
PostGIS Raster support/extension
JTS Topology Suite
HTML5/WebGL
OGC SOS
GeoCommons
GeoExt vs MapQuery vs Legato
Postal Address Geo-Coder (or PAGC)
AcidMaps
JGrass/uDig
Stado
HSLayers - a Openlayers/ExtJS based mapping framework
Neo4j Spatial
MapBender 3
GeoAPI 3.0
GeoCat Bridge - publishing data from ArcGIS to GeoNetwork/Geoserver/MapServer

and Oracle, FME and ArcGIS Server!

Reproject shapefile for google maps

2011-05-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

This is always a bind in whatever GIS package I seem to use - probably because I forget to concentrate over my projection details. However the easiest way to do it is to use fwtools. Download the pack from fwtools.maptools.org and move your data (in this case a shapefile) to the fwtools directory to make it easier.

Load up the FWTools Shell and type the following to convert a shapefile from OS National Grid to Google Maps EPSG:900913

ogr2ogr –f “ESRI Shapefile” –t_srs EPSG:900913 output.shp input.shp

Load into geoserver and test in a google maps page and you're done.

How to remove apps from Facebook

2011-02-04T15:08:00.001-08:00

this might change but the current method of removing apps, as of Feb. 2011, is..

1- Account (top right hand corner)
2- Privacy Settings
3- Applications and Websites – edit your settings (bottom left corner
4- Applications you use – edit settings
5- click x to remove whatever application wanted to remove

Seeing XP machine from Windows 7 machine

2011-01-21T16:29:00.000-08:00

I renamed one of my XP machines on my home network and ever since the Windows 7 box has failed to see it.. An unidentified error occurs in windows explorer when trying to access the XP machine (as it is listed) but a different situation arises in command line;

In command line
net view
returns the XP machine along with all other machines.. good.
net view \\xpmachine
fails with system error 53 message.

I've tried checking netbios is enabled, firewalls off, ip6 turned off, and a heap load of other things that i've googled on.

Weirdly NET USE M: \\xpmachine\myfolder /user:myUserName myPassword works and I get a mapped network drive. Once done new view \\xpmachine works.

But I don't want mapped network drives. I want to access drives by \\xpmachine\myfolder. But I've found that if i enter \\xpmachine into the address bar of windows 7 explorer window it will prompt for user and password. And once done it seems to have stuck and net view \\xpmachine returns the available resources.

-----------------------------------------

Well it happened again. I can't believe that what I wrote last time actually worked. If it did then lucky me. This time it took me a while to work out that the clock on both machines must be in sync (to some degree I guess) for windows 7 to be happy. I was doing some work that required me to set the year back to 2010 (#cough) so correcting that back to normal fixed it.

Honestly, you think network diagnostics were explain that's the reason why the shared folder access fails.

How to convert epub to mobi correctly

2011-01-11T15:23:00.000-08:00

- Convert epub to epub in Calibre, removing the spacing and margins in the "look and feel" section
- Open the resulting file in Sigil
- edit the stylesheet in Sigil to make sure that all references to "leftmargin" are set to "0"
- save the file in Sigil then open it in Calibre again
- use Calibre to convert to mobi

Takes about 5 minutes per book. Not a major deal unless you're converting a lot of stuff

- courtesy of TeleFunken @ EG

Gran Turismo 5 on PS3 - Stuck on logo?

2010-11-23T05:21:00.000-08:00

Bad huh? Never mind, log out of PSN and then play the game.

Disable Digital Driver Signing in Windows 7

2010-05-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

Purely a reference for myself, useful if you happen to be running peerguardian for windows 7 or something only slightly more legal - tileproxy for fsx

http://www.killertechtips.com/2009/05/05/disable-driver-signing-windows-7/

How to use a Belkin Universal Range Extender as an access point

2010-02-27T11:09:00.000-08:00

I was given one of these and for the life of me couldn't get it to work. Adding security to the device would cause the web management page to crash and make the device unconfigurable. I discovered that though the security on the belkin causes problems the MAC address rules do. So if you've got the same problem leave the device as an unsecured access point and define your MAC rules. Worked first time.

Streaming video onto your iphone or psp

2010-02-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

For psp you'll need custom firmware, one that'll run 1.5 homebrew - run over to pimpstreamer and get going. You'll have to muck about with the conversion rates if your wifi is a little bit slacky.

For iphone I'll recommend Air Video. Works a treat and you won't have to convert all your nice avi files. It'll convert on the fly - on a dual core machine or higher. Runs fine with my little HP 3020 Slimline PC and that's something like a AMD x2 3800+ if memory serves me right.

Editing Google Docs on the iPhone

2010-01-27T08:11:00.001-08:00

The only app that currently allows editing of your google docs is Office2. It's at an introductory price of £1.79 which is bit of bargain. Now hurry up Google.

Rotate your XP wallpaper to make it look like Windows 7

2010-01-25T01:30:00.000-08:00

You'll need Autowallpaper. The only annoyance of the software is that it doesn't run minimised on startup. You'll want to create a batch file (.bat) in your startup folder and paste the following (changing the folder to suit your own)

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\AutoWallpaper"
start /min autowallpaper.exe
exit

How to disable driver signing in Windows 7

2010-01-22T16:46:00.001-08:00

Run cmd.exe as administrator and enter the following;
bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON

These currency maps

2010-01-19T15:27:00.000-08:00

Though I've provided currency maps for all the major currencies the thematics applied to each country within the file refer to the country's currency performance against the dollar. When you download the Euro map you are obtaining a map of all currencies against the dollar with popup information for the exchange rate between the Euro and the country in question. I don't have access to the complete Euro exchange rate board (or whatever it's called). If you have access and are willing to share - please get in touch and i can code that up to.

Google Earth currency maps back up

2010-01-19T14:31:00.000-08:00

Australian Dollar (AUD)
British Pound (GBP)
Canadian Dollar (CAD)
Euro (EUR)
Hong Kong Dollar (HKD)
Japanese Yen (JPY)
Swiss Franc (CHF)
US Dollar (USD)

All of these show currency performance in the last 30 days.

Currency maps

2010-01-18T11:07:00.001-08:00

Still down. I believe there's some fault with the original kml source so i'm running plenty of tests to find the fault. Should be another two days.

Windows 7 and Star-Force protection drivers

2010-01-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

Installing Toca Race Driver 3 killed my windows 7 box today. It installs an old Star-Force protection driver and this popped up as corrupted on a reboot. Windows 7 wouldn't load and running the repair tool couldn't fix it or if i ran it from the MS disc wouldn't even find the fault.

Here's the bad file: c:\windows\system32\drivers\sfsync04.sys

Rebooting back to last known configuration worked and I quickly made a restore point. That'll teach me. If that wasn't going to work i was going to reboot with driver signing protection off (in adv. boot options) and that might have worked to. Ok not a big thing but i was hesitant to run last known config as I hadn't done this under win 7 and wasn't sure of the consequences. The strange difference between win 7 and xp is that there doesn't appear to be a reinstall option from the dvd. If anyone knows better please comment.

Windows 7 and MySQL 3.51 driver

2010-01-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

There are two versions of this driver: 32 and 64 bit. The 64 bit version does not come with an installer from mysql.. and try as I might I can't get it to install. The idea is that you unzip the package, command line to the folder as administrator and run 'install 0'. But it fails..

On the plus side the 32 bit version does come with an installer and installs fine. It won't appear in the ODBC panel but you can still use it. I'm using Visual Studio 2005 to develop with still and it's a simple case of loading up your project, selecting the project's properties and select to build for x86 machines only. On a debug run you'll find the mysql driver is picked up and used without fuss.

If anyone has a solution for the 64 bit driver I'm all ears... and so would the mysql forum - there doesn't appear to be much interest in it.

Here's one nice resource on the matter and I hope he can provide a little more info on his method.

Ah some problem with the currency maps

2010-01-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

I've noticed a bug with some of the currency maps available. I'll investigate the problem asap.

USD, EUR AND CHF currency maps still work.
AUD, CAD, GBP, HKD, JPY currencies don't work.

It's a little odd as they all use the same data so i'm too worried. It will be done.

Switching Audio Devices in Windows 7

2009-12-02T15:48:00.000-08:00

/update

I've just released Coastal Audio Changer. This neat little tool will set in your system tray and swap between audio devices with a couple of clicks of the button.

The scripts I've placed below certainly work but they don't work if you hit the corresponding button of your current device. Selecting a different device is fine but if you hit the current device's button the audio control panel won't disappear. That's a little messy and I knew I could do better.

/update over

Those that were use to VistaAudioChanger or STADS in XP to swap between audio devices may have found that like me there was no working version for Windows 7.

Some simple modifications to [Kevin Lo's vbscripts] and [VistaGadgetAudioSwitch] and i've got a working gadget that swaps audio devices.

Instructions
Grab audio switch and drop it's folder into C:\Users\You\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets

Load up the AudioSwitch.html in notepad and add height:130px; to the css body definition
and the javascript should look like this

var WshShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
function SetAudio(index)
{
switch(index)
{
case 0:
WshShell.Run("Speakers.vbs");
break;
case 1:
WshShell.Run("Headphones.vbs");
break;
default:
break;
}
}

i have two buttons defined, first one is speakers with an onclick value of SetAudio(0), a second headphones button has an onclick value of SetAudio(1)

I would have pasted the complete code but bloody blogger won't allow the html to be displayed - got some reading to do of my own.

Now you have to create the two vbs scripts for headphones and speakers.

My speakers.vbs looks like this (thanks Kevin);
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "%windir%/system32/control.exe /name Microsoft.Sound"
WScript.Sleep(1000)
WshShell.SendKeys "{DOWN}"
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"
WScript.Sleep(1000)
WshShell.SendKeys "{ESC}"
Set WshShell = Nothing

The above script selects the first option in your sound devices list, sets it as the default sound device and then quits the window. You can test the file is correct by just double clicking on it and checking the results. My headphones is the third device so i have an extra couple of WshShell.SendKeys "{DOWN}" before the {TAB} lines and that's named headphones.vbs.

Drop both files to your windows\system32 folder and you're ready to launch your desktop gadget. That's right click on the desktop and select Gadgets. Drag Audio Switch to the desktop and you should have a working audio switcher.

brief pause in currency transmissions..

2009-11-04T14:53:00.001-08:00

Sorry - went on holiday and had to shut down the little server that does all the currency maps. Now it's back on you should see them appearing any day now. I forget the time gap used in generating the change in exchange rate but i think it's a week.

Radio 4 mms url

2009-10-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

For winamp, mms://wmlive.bbc.net.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio4/radio4_bb_live_int_eq1_sl0

Tracking Memory Usage in Windows XP

2009-09-03T03:07:00.000-07:00

Another personal reminder.

I've been asked to track the memory usage of a colleague's application. It crashes without a trace after two days. So a series of virtual machines are set up to run the software and I'm using windows xp's perfmon to monitor the memory usage - as that's the suspect here.

In Task Manager we have a column called Mem Usage but if we enter the various counter options in perfmon you'll see no such counter. MS provide a breakdown on what memory counters are available for a process and here's the list;

Process : Page Faults/sec. Excessive page faults from a particular process are an indication usually of bad coding practices. Either the functions and DLLs are not organized correctly, or the data set that the application is using is being called in a less than efficient manner.

Process : Pool Paged Bytes.

Process : Pool NonPaged Bytes.

Process : Working Set. This is the current size of the memory area that the process is utilizing for code, threads, and data. - And this is the equivalent to the Mem Usage column you see in Task Manager.

Now I know next to nothing about memory management so I'm not going to pretend I do but one should remember that applications' working sets are allows to grow if free memory is available in abundance.

Streaming music sites

2009-08-19T04:52:00.001-07:00

Shame i can't use StreamingSoundtracks (workfirewallslol) but have been recommended a few to try;

http://www.citysounds.fm/ is a fantastic hack from music hack day 2009
and http://radiotime.com has a neat option for different streams

and http://listen.grooveshark.com/ also seems to work. nice.

/personal note rather than a blog

Fix for currency maps

2009-07-15T00:49:00.000-07:00

The currency maps are now back. I'll properly test them over the next week. Let me know of any faults.

MMS Urls: BBC radio on Winamp

2009-07-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

BBC Radio 6
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio Five Live Sports Extra

Winamp + BBC Five Live Sports Extra

2009-07-09T06:13:00.000-07:00

Winamp loves mms urls so here's one for the bbc 5 live sports extra channel. Just in time to listen to the Ashes.

mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio5/5spxtra_bb_live_ep1_sl0?BBC-UID=14e87a4b4fd508318a6572473010ec403085feedd060d134242fa9b714a34d55&SSO2-UID=

A fix to the currency maps...

2009-07-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that some of the countries are not appearing.
A bug fix will be in place tomorrow and the data should start working by friday/saturday time.

More exchange rate kml files

2009-05-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

Shortly after i post this my little server should be spitting out some currency maps for the other major world currencies. Data is still shown as the rate of change over the last 48 hours.

Australian Dollar (AUD)
British Pound (GBP)
Canadian Dollar (CAD)
Euro (EUR)
Hong Kong Dollar (HKD)
Japanese Yen (JPY)
Swiss Franc (CHF)
US Dollar (USD)

From the 4th June i'll switch the currency maps to reflect a 30 day change which should be pretty useful for planning holidays. If you find this data useful or would like something specific drop me a line and i'll see what i can do.

Dollar exchange rate map for Google Earth

2009-05-05T13:28:00.001-07:00

I'm pleased to publish my dollar exchange map for Google Earth. Each country is colour coded to how it's performed against the dollar over the last 48 hours. So if the country is red in colour then it's currency has dropped against the dollar and if green then they're doing alright.

Click here for the KML file.

I'll be switching to a 30 day view rather than a 48 hour period once enough data has been sufficiently captured. I'm accepting requests for private services if anyone would like access to the data in a different format than provided.

The data comes from some of the regualr exchange rate sites and it was a case of a using a mixture to identify all the currencies used in the world. Before now i had no idea you could use the Euro in South America and off the coast of Canada. It's been bit of a lesson in geography 101 tbh.

Anyway hope you enjoy.

daily reasons why one should dislike ESRI

2009-04-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

Here's an extract from the ArcObjects's Dynamic Layers section of their manual;

BeforeDynamicDraw(esriDMDPLayers) event is being fired
Layers are drawn; these are the layers that do not support IDynamicLayers (static layers)
AfterDynamicDraw(esriDMDPLayers) event is being fired
BeforeDynamicDraw(esriDMDPDynamicLayers) event is being fired
Dynamic layers are drawn
Immediate phase (esriDDPImmediate)
Compiled phase (esriDDPCompiled)
AfterDynamicDraw(esriDMDPDynamicLayers) event is being fired

'is being fired' just grates right up my spine. Horrible, horrible english. On aside, i have no idea why BeforeDynamicDraw and AfterDynamicDraw takes non-dynamic layers as a parameter. Clue's in the name buddy.

Step back in time

2009-02-24T02:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when expensive software expires it's annual licence and the new licence key is lost in the post.. sometimes, just sometimes the old hack of turning back your system clock does the trick of fooling the licenced software. Unfortunately if you're on a domain time date updates are handled not by the user. Sure you can change the time but after a while the pc will correct the error. So what you need is a batch file that will change the date & time and schedule task that to run every ten minutes or so.

Contents of batch file
Echo Time_Format | Time
Echo Date_Format | Date

eg; Echo 00:00:00 | Time
Echo 01/01/70 | Date

Coastal's Movie Cleaner now does Fan Art

2009-02-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

My little movie cleaner now supports fan art. I still prefer it's use over other movie info tools out there. Movie Info Plus seems to load all the fanart into memory before asking you to select one. I'm not sure of the reasoning for that but mine uses the same source [thanks theMovieDB.org] but you just download the one you want. I'll have to tidy up the .nfo file bit now as that's looking like a proper cheap trick.

Anyway, to get my little movie cleaner click here

Augemented Reality

2009-02-06T06:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.enkin.net/ have made a very nice app. for the android platform. Tagging 3D objects such as buildings it exploits gps, geotags and object detection.

MySQL Backup command

2009-02-06T03:48:00.000-08:00

A complete reference to myself and no other;

How to dump all databases from MySQL command line;
mysqldump -u root -pPassword -x --all- databases > db_dump.sql

Winamp and BBC radio

2009-01-22T03:11:00.001-08:00

Due to network restrictions at work i'm forced to use Windows Media Player to listen to BBC radio. I've noticed that you can drag and drop the 'play this station' link to the desktop and then load this up in Winamp. It works fine and you can save it as a bookmark.

Here's an example mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/radio5/5Live_e1s1?BBC-UID=14e87a4b4fd508318a6572473010ec403085feedd060d134242fa9b714a34d55&SSO2-UID=845545f13b58b6323a1fa459d15254ab4ae0d22f2883c169648a2d11d287610d10

MySQL connection checks

2009-01-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

After months of not being methodical i finally sorted out my connection problems with win64 client to win32 mysql server. A great post by Michael Kay sums up the checks to run through though i didn't particular understand the netstat check. I'll have to read up on that.

To quote Michael;
10060 is the error number not the port so no need to open that up on the firewall.
3306 is the standard port for connecting to mysql.
Check that skip_networking isn't on by running SQL Query
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "SKIP%"
locally to the machine... If it is ON then turn it OFF. This can only be done in the config file and just means commenting out the skip_networking line. Also check that the port for networking is 3306 while your there.
Also check that mysql.sock is listening on 3306 using netstat from a console on the machine locally.
Check your firewall allows port 3306 to connect to your machine. This will depend on the firewall your using.

Coastal's Movie Cleaner - Create .nfo files and thumbnails for movies

2008-12-02T04:58:00.000-08:00

I've updated my Movie Cleaner. Primarily designed to be used with xbmc, it will create the necessary movie .nfo files and thumbnails for movies. Movies must be stored in individual folders & it is the name of the folder that is used as the movie title.

There are some other movie cleaners out there which do more than mine i have to admit. But it does a simple job well and satisfys my needs. Let me know if you enjoy using it.

When broadband speeds exceed the ability to view the files

2008-11-20T02:14:00.001-08:00

My broadband supplier is excellent. They now offer 24Mbs service for £18 a month. This allows me to download video files quicker than i can watch them. This is clearly a turning point in ISP service.

Excellent.
Andrew Bailey

XBMC plugin for Firefox

2008-10-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

This is a real nice tool by LiquidIce629.

New download link somewhere at the bottom of the thread. Install it into firefox by dragging the xpi file into the browser window. Then right-click on a video source and send it to the xbmc'd xbox.

Here

Newcastle vs. Man City

2008-10-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

It's going a bit bad for JK and the boys. Watching it here.

Cities XL

2008-09-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

A really interesting game is being developed by Monte Cristo. Online city builder, each player gets to build a city and and you can then explore other's cities too. There's some economy rules set up but if you would be cool for your local authority to use such a system to show town centre improvements and such like. CityGML would be a nice transfer format to go from a dry town council GIS department to an online game environment.

West Hame vs. Newcastle

2008-09-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

Here is is through Veetle.
Cracking picture.

linky

newcastle vs hull city

2008-09-13T07:24:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to watch every toon game i can this season through the internet. Today's Hull game at home can be found through veetle and very good quality it is too.

http://www.veetle.com/viewChannel.php?cid=48cb03bd8ab18

Google should do this

2008-09-09T13:46:00.001-07:00

Google should have a 'not this' in their search results, then we all help get rid of dumbass results like those fake page creations and price checkers.

And if google want to treat me to a new car for this excellent idea then please feel free ;-)

How to export contacts from dead phone with no screen

2008-08-31T04:55:00.000-07:00

My PDa phone died the other day - well, the screen at least. The phone can still talk to the PC but i couldn't for the life of me extract the contacts from the phone to Outlook.

Still i found a nice solution. You need the pim.vol file from the phone and Perl installed.
Plonk the pim.vol file in c:\perlscripts and grab Sasha's script from here from which you'll have parse_pim.pl in the same directory.

If like me you're on WinXP, do start run cmd.exe and cd c:\perlscripts. Once there type parse_pim.pl pim.vol and the script will extract all the phone details.

Passing references to variables between forms in c#

2008-06-19T02:24:00.000-07:00

Somedays i forget everything i've learnt. Being a VB programmer in the past has instilled some bad habits on how to think about forms, their controls, methods or properties when in C#.

Luckily ahmedilyas has posted a lovely little tutorial here. Ok, perhaps we shouldn't be referencing a form with another form. If doing everything by the book you should be building some data classes external to both forms and allow them to access the data through those. But today i catch myself modifying someone else's code and the oppotunity isn't there to completely rework the class definitions.

Streaming uk football through xbmc

2008-04-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

Perhaps i'm late on the scene on this but it's a nice trick.

Ok, how to get uk football streamed to your xbox. You need sopcast installed and running on a pc on your home network. You need a file on your xbox in a location where xbmc will see it. The file is a text file - i've named mine sopcast.m3u. Contents of the file are;

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:- 1,http://:8902/tv.asf
http://:8902/tv.asf

Edit it for your pc's ip address obviously and if you're using a recent copy of sopcast the port should be correct. Older sopcast versions use 8900.

On the pc, find a stream to watch. For UK football you should be able to find a sopcast stream from;
http://www1.myp2p.eu/competition.php?competitionid=&part=sports&discipline=football or http://www.engfootball.com/

Once it's running on the PC, switch over to your xbox. Load up xbmc (you have got it installed as the dashboard right?) and add a source which points to the folder containing the m3u file. Click the sopcast.m3u and you're away.

Getting out of BT Broadband

2008-04-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

It can be done! BT have provided a trickle of a service since i started with them six months ago. A letter of complaint followed by two months of line testing. At the end, one guy on technical support ran a different test from normal and determined the line was capped after all. No compensation followed by further real poor speeds and i complained once more - they helpfully gave in and released the MAC code. Straight back to BeThere via Quidco and i earnt myself forty quid in the process. 24Mbps, static line and no limit all for £18 a month inc. vat. Can't complain and happy to be back.

Where to put pspvice on your psp

2008-03-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

I'm running 3.90 M33-2. Make sure you have the 1.50 addition. PspVice goes in psp/game150. I use stylemo's excellent guide to upgrading.

now for a bit of C64 Kickstart pleasure

Flickr photos now in planetnomad

2008-03-30T04:41:00.000-07:00

Flickr photos are now arriving in planetnomad.com. There's still some style settings to correct in regards to their size in the gmap marker htmlwindows but i'll fix that any day now. It's surprising how many photos are loaded onto Flickr without decent names or descriptions but nevermind, that's what ppl do.

Just like any other feed, e.g. Reuters News Service or Road Traffic News, users can set up to receive emails on new objects as they arrive in a certain area.

Generating HTML emails using c#.net

2008-03-25T03:10:00.000-07:00

This missed me for days. My code was generating html which i placed into the body of an email. Problem was that the html was appearing as, well, html rather as text even though i had set the content-type as text/html. Found out this weekend that i was missing a single line of code;

MailMessage.isBodyHTML = true;

fixed.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.mailmessage.isbodyhtml.aspx

PlanetNomad accepts all UK road traffic data

2008-03-25T03:07:00.000-07:00

Planetnomad.com now takes in all rss streams from the UK highway agency and maps them. I noticed the main rss feed didn't contain all the regional lower-graded road data and therefore was incomplete.

I now get a lovely email sent to me each morning detailing any trouble on my route into work.

New Line in c# Textboxes

2008-03-16T03:05:00.000-07:00

Use: static string nl = Environment.NewLine;

Yes, a complete personal reminder.

Planet Nomad now receives UK Highway traffic feed

2008-03-15T05:51:00.000-07:00

www.planetnomad.com now receives UK highways traffic data - detailing all problems on the major routes in the UK. If you're a registered user planetnomad will send you an email every morning listing problems along your route into work.

I'll be looking into SMS reporting soon. That would be rather cool for some. I generally check emails before txts so emails came first.

Installing MySQL ODBC Connector 3.51 on win64

2008-03-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

There's no installer for this so the easiest way of installing is unpacking it to c:\Documents and Settings\User and run your Dos prompt. Once there run "Install.bat 0" and it'll work like a charm.

Replacing double quotes in VB strings

2008-03-06T15:43:00.001-08:00

If you're forced to use VB and some of us occasionally you'll end up at some point wanting to get rid of the double quotes in a string. More as a note to myself this one but here's the help..

The way to do that is replace instances of " with "".
Sample code -

Dim str As String = "I ""love"" VB"
Console.WriteLine(str)
Console.WriteLine(str.Replace("""", ""))

now relax, job done, compile and move away.

What is Social Media?

2008-03-06T15:40:00.000-08:00

My good friend Ruth has a piece on Social Media here. Well worth a read with plenty of references of how we're all exchanging info these days. Personally i use a pigeon. He's reliable and cheap to run on birdseed.

Setting up an email server at home on a dynamic IP address

2008-03-04T16:56:00.001-08:00

Being a tight arse i was hoping for a free way of doing this but ended up paying a little to get this working. Here's the situation: i'm on BT broadband in the UK and all their dynamic IP addresses are blacklisted automatically. But i want to run a smtp server at home which will spit out emails once a day to users of my beta site: www.planetnomad.com when they request it.

I purchased a Mail Outbound service (from dyndns.org) and Postcast Professional Server - $15 a year and £48 respectively. Postcast allows you to enter a Smtp gateway server which will act as a hop to get your emails out there. Dyndns gives you the server details and once entered you can create emails and send them to your heart's content.

www.planetnomad.com is a google map app. that will send out emails to users notifying them of new information in a specified location. For me, i've got it sending out emails detailing new stories from Reuters news service that occur every day in Europe. To try it yourself just register and set up a favourite view.

Launchy and Winamp

2008-01-26T17:26:00.000-08:00

Just got back into using Launchy - the Silverlight of the XP world. Found that it won't work with mp3 files (i'm using winamp in this case) if the media library is a named computer on the same network. You'll have to map a drive letter to the library first and then use that. Then Alt-Space and you're away.

Lifehacker has a great article on tweaking Launchy for twitter, amongst others, here.

Wikipedia on yer phone

2008-01-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

Google Mdict and Wiki.mdk (the 120Mb reduced wikipedia). Chuck them on your phone and hey presto you can win most arguments down the pub.

Tony Hart deserves an OBE

2007-12-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

Guys, i could really do with some help here. My gf's mum is a district nurse and is currently assigned to Tony Hart. He's apparently a lovely chap but really rather frail.

I was thinking that it's a bit wrong that he's never been acknowledged for all the nice work he's done. Everyone i talk to has fond memories of Take Hart. Here was a nice man making inspirational programmes for children. Not zany or whacky, didn't jump up and down or patronise. Just shared his love of art.

So could you please sign this petition: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/tonyhart/ and even better pass it on to friends and family. Use your facebook/myspace powers if you have any.

BT Vision causes home network to die

2007-10-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

I've had right trouble with the home network ever since i moved to BT. Turns out it was the BT vision box causing the trouble. The BT Home Hub has only two ethernet ports. I've got 2 pcs, the vision box and two xboxes all to fit in. So i thought put the pcs and xboxes on the hub and the bt vision can go direct to the BT HH. But the vision box crashed all file sharing, remote desktop connections.. all apart from simple pings. Only when i put the vision box into the hub and placed something else into the spare ethernet port on the HH did the trouble disappear. Haven't a clue why and BT seemed to know less than i did.

XBMC media sources: fixing invalid computer name

2007-10-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

New oct 2007 T3ch builds may have some problem with sources that don't contain user name and passwords. The jury's still out but if you have this problem find sources.xml under xbmc\userdata and edit as follows;

smb://user:pwd@computer/videos/
.. or ..
smb://user:pwd@192.168.0.xxx/videos/

obviously make sure that it's a valid user account on your computer.

Ahh... the uplink port on an ethernet hub

2007-10-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

I've had my little hub for years and never looked at the 'uplink' port as anything special. If i had to guess it would this is the one you connect to the router. Turns out it's the most badly named piece of kit ever made. It has nothing to do with uplinking. All it means is that the standard crossover cable can't be used on that port. Once i stopped using it and rebooted all devices in sight the network starts to shine again. If you have to use it use a non-cross cable. Mine's a cheap little hub and these often share port 1 with the uplink port. You can't use both together. So it's one of t'other. Yes, i feel miles behind on networking knowledge now but it's always the small things that you think you're familiar with that you always ignore. Pirsig had the same pain with a little nut on his bike and all of a sudden that little nut or ethernet port suddenly becomes all important.

WinXP 64 and BBC Radio Player

2007-10-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

RealPlayer is used by the BBC and unfortunately being a bunch of lazy bastards never got round to writing a nice win64 version. But you can use RealAlternative (much better anyway) to use the Radio Player service. BBC won't tell you that because apparently they're resolving the problem by being in discussion with RealNetworks - have been infact for about a year and a half. RealNetworks are saying that RealAlternative nicked their code but never took them to court. Either put up or shut up. And BBC, it's a case of innocent till proved guilty. Hopefully they'll dump the RealNetworks bedpartnering and get something that will work on all platforms.

BT Home Hub and Team Fortress 2

2007-10-13T03:11:00.000-07:00

Well they don't like each other do they? I was getting loads of connection problems. But the advice doing the rounds is to asign your pc has the DMZ device. Go to the router's advanced settings and you'll see it there. Works a treat. Thanks to MagicPanda at Eurogamer for pointing me in the right direction.

Tidying up movies in xbmc

2007-10-06T06:29:00.000-07:00

Ok. If you put a new movie file into xbmc it'll try to work out what movie it is from imdb.com. It's not 100%, more like 75%. To get round this you have to manually edit movie titles and run searches again. If you lose your xbmc database you'll have to start all over.

Well, this was bugging me so i've written a little prog. to handle tidy up movie files. It'll create a NFO file for each movie plus you can grab images off the net and use them as the thumbnails in xbmc.

grab it here

you'll need .net framework 2.0 to run it and it presumes that all your movies are in the following format;

main movie folder
--> movie name as folder

--> -->

some file.avi

-->

movie name as folder

--> -->

some file.avi etc..

sorry that looks bad, can't get any indenting to work on this blog. :-(

i keep my file names matched to the folder names apart from split files. Let me know your thoughts. I'll be happy to pass on the source code if you want to expand it.

Movie ripping

2007-10-06T05:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's the quickie guide to ripping your DVDs to xvid/divx. You'll need Auto Gordian Knot (AGK) and DVD Decrypter. AGK you can download fine from their website, DVD Decrypter you'll have to get from a torrent share.

I found using AGK to run the process from start to finish would cause a few lip-synch problems. What you want to do is run DVD decrypter first and then run AGK on the files that it produces. I haven't found a lip-synch problem yet.

DVD Decrypter is a joy. It'll hunt for what it thinks is the main movie file on the DVD and you should be able to just press Go. When you run AGK afterwards you'll want to point it to the first IFO file that is created. You'll know you've got the right one as the movie length and details will appear in the AGK window. Choose your output and mps settings, a guide on that can be found over at doom9.org.

CD Ripping

2007-10-06T05:19:00.000-07:00

The xbmc has a great music library system but you want to get your id3 tags right first time. I've recently ripped through my cd collection and wanted to get it right - finally.. all nice and tidy.

AudioGrabber is the best bit of cd ripping kit i've found out there. i'm sure there's others but the clear advantage with AudioGrabber is the ability to handle track artists rather than just album artist. Xbmc will pick up on those and just makes all those compilation CDs rip just fine.

You'll also find Tag&Rename, Mp3Tag (for it's integration into windows explorer) and a bulk renaming utility very useful. I use 'Bulk renaming utility', does what it says on the tin. Good for tv show rips as well but more of that in another post.