tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96081232012-02-06T19:45:30.014+01:00problems, solutions and general blabber about computers and interesting stuff. as seen by yours truly.matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.comBlogger401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-3383880159160138602011-11-01T12:43:00.002+01:002011-11-01T12:55:29.951+01:00

As Internet becomes mainstream and stupid people start using it (perhaps "nontechnical" would be better in many contexts, but in this case I believe "stupid" is more accurate), services must cater to the needs of the stupid. That's what happened at Google, who, apparently around 2009, started to search for "what the user meant" instead of what the user actually told them to search.Now, this might

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-79744355321806797292011-02-02T11:59:00.004+01:002011-02-02T12:09:04.836+01:00

I can't believe Google doesn't have anything to say about this...The situation is usual: you have a python module, let's call it bravo, and a set of unittest-based unit tests in bravo.test. Now, there's nothing like "runtest" or whatever to run the test suite. Of course, you could run each of the tests individually, but maybe there's twenty of them and you're lazy, or maybe they don't even

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-28422379992431069732010-12-09T15:38:00.004+01:002010-12-09T16:05:13.531+01:00

When using full-disk encryption, it is useful to prefill the disk in question with (pseudo)random data. This makes it harder to tell how much of the encrypted volume's space is already written to - in other words, how much data you have on the volume.There are many ways to do it - specialized tools, reading from /dev/urandom (reasonably fast), reading from /dev/random (true randomness, but unless

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-55601330583156491722010-10-17T15:51:00.002+02:002010-10-17T15:55:30.967+02:00

This way:Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[]{"/system/bin/su", "-c", "setprop ctl.stop zygote"});If you are getting failures like this:W/su ( 1043): request rejected (0:0->0:0 /system/bin/setprop)that means thatyou didn't send "-c", oryou didn't give it a parameter, oryou gave it more than one parameterYou have to make sure that after "-c" you only send one parameter. Alternate syntax would be

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-86878621867489485102010-10-17T11:46:00.003+02:002010-10-17T11:51:08.210+02:00

Imagine, for example, that you need to stop the Zygote service and start it again later, because you're toying with Android internals and Zygote is getting in the way.Or maybe you want to test out a new bootanimation binary, and for some reason running /system/bin/bootanimation directly is not what you want.This is what you do instead:setprop ctl.stop zygotesetprop ctl.start bootanimSimple, right

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-13477163102351503632010-10-02T13:16:00.002+02:002010-10-02T13:28:41.883+02:00

While trying to solve this issue, i have found a document from RIM's Knowledge Base about verification errors in Java packages.This is it.Some choice tidbits:7. Comment out any non-executable code. Verification errors might be related to the size of the main code file and the library files. If you comment out non-executable code, the file sizes change, which may correct the problem.2. Remove any

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-63897063017712745492010-05-07T17:25:00.004+02:002010-05-07T17:33:22.697+02:00

Imagine a situation: You are using git (maybe you like it, or maybe you just have to deal with it because people on the other end do that), you are starting to get familiar with it, make some changes to some source code, then want to synchronize with upstream.You know that your changes are nothing dramatic, a line here, a word there.So you go ahead and type git pull, expecting the merge to go

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-46879794991408956272010-03-29T16:28:00.004+02:002010-04-07T01:22:55.400+02:00

When I'm not working with NetBeans and Java, I'm working with vim and python. Vim is unquestionably the best text editor of all time, but this post is not meant as an evangelism. This is aimed at those of you who are already using it.Maybe you know that vim can do folding. That means that you type "zc" and the piece of code under your cursor neatly folds itself into one line (very much like in

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-74670945886821386962010-02-01T18:40:00.002+01:002010-02-01T19:08:01.834+01:00

J2ME implementation on new Samsung phones has a few peculiarities. Yes, they're doing everything right by the spec - but they do it just slightly differently than most of the others.First of all, InputStream.read() method, the one that reads single character, seems to be rather slow. When you say something like:while (true) { int ch = istream.read(); if (ch == -1) throw new IOException ("

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-80322701694126291332009-12-14T00:43:00.003+01:002009-12-14T00:50:11.462+01:00

If you have a slower computer (although i'm extremely reluctant to call my P4@2.8GHz "slower", it's a fact that my work computer with a Core2 just feels that much snappier) and want to play DOS games in dosbox, you might experience this:The overall game performance is good, your CPU is not even fully taxed, sounds generally work as expected - all nice and fun, except for the MIDI music. Which

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-88793745717489403282009-08-02T23:45:00.003+02:002009-08-02T23:55:42.123+02:00

Version 0.3.92 is underway.Biggest spectacle of this is cartridge saving and loading. A few moments ago i have successfully stored and restored a game of Wherigo Player Tutorial.Technical details about the solution will follow in a separate article.And that's pretty much it. There's the usual bunch of random bugfixes, minor improvements and extended Wherigo functionality (did i tell you that you

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-57016741724222222852009-08-02T23:34:00.003+02:002009-08-02T23:52:27.714+02:00

S40 Nokias do weird things when you put a StringItem on a form, give it a label but no text. It will prevent users from scrolling that form.S60 Nokias do some weird stuff too, but only sometimes. Best not to do this.SonyEricssons, on the other hand, retain image size on ImageItem when you setImage(null). You have to set a dummy 1x1 image first (or instead).And last but not least, with certain

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-69304120759141945142009-06-12T18:30:00.003+02:002009-06-12T19:02:45.597+02:00

situation:Imagine you have your basic midlet class (say gui.Midlet). This class references another class (gps.InternalProvider) which implements a specific interface (gps.LocationService). Note that there is no reference to the actual class gps.InternalProvider, except for instantiation, and that is pretty well hidden in a function under several ifs and switches. Everything else is done through

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-51142337439509198832009-05-19T13:33:00.004+02:002009-08-02T23:45:11.209+02:00

Well well well. It sure has been a long time.Today i have released a new and improved experimental version 0.3.90 (yup, that means pre-0.4), codenamed "Threadless". Why? Well, it's not because it makes t-shirts. It's because it doesn't use threads. Not too much of them, anyway.Before this release, OpenWIG relied on threads for event synchronization. Whenever I needed to call an event handler, I

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-19730469421365754582008-12-11T15:44:00.004+01:002009-05-19T13:46:36.242+02:00

Just so i don't forget next time.install gammucreate a .gammurc:[gammu]# your phone BT address:port=00:02:5B:00:A5:A5connection=bluephonetcd /directory/with/jar/and/jadgammu --nokiaaddfile Application NameOfJarWithoutExtension

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-23772334098883127612008-12-05T19:16:00.004+01:002008-12-11T15:51:03.978+01:00

OpenWIG 0.3.07 is out and it supports JSR-179 style "Location Providers" a.k.a. internal GPS.Getting that to work was no picnic, though.Here's a basic overview of how it's supposed to work:choose a list of things you want from your GPS device and set it all up in a Criteria objectinstantiate a LocationProvider by calling LocationProvider.getInstance(myCriteriaObject);periodically ask for a new

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-73500812388607875942008-11-24T01:54:00.002+01:002008-11-24T02:06:33.457+01:00

Version 0.3.07, that's what. It will have all bugs from the previous post fixed, and its navigation arrow will be prettier and move smoother and just be plain old sexy.Oh, and internal GPS's will be supported!It will be ready sometime this week.For the version after that, I intend to try and dig a bit into saving and loading. It won't be perfect, but maybe, just maybe, it will work well enough

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-76007726281092296262008-11-24T01:00:00.003+01:002008-11-24T01:44:38.292+01:00

a.k.a. OpenWIG bugs worth mentioning, and their respective cartridgesSrnčí důl:the official Players call "OnSet*" before performing the setting. I.e., when you set task.Complete = true, then the player first calls OnSetComplete and only after that actually sets the variable.The OnSetComplete event in Srnčí důl (Roedeer deep), for some wicked reason, checks for this behavior: if task.Complete ==

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-15926054145637894872008-11-03T02:27:00.003+01:002008-11-03T02:35:00.700+01:00

Released this night. Head over to the openWIG project page and get it (link is on the right side).It has its own functional file browser, and a pretty preferences screen. It mostly looks the way i described it a while ago.No big changes on the player side of things, though, only some minor bugfixes.Caveats:It's a beta and i didn't really test it (mostly because of the emulator stuff mentioned in

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-89806511463405007962008-11-03T02:08:00.003+01:002008-11-24T01:00:14.664+01:00

...is difficult at best, and impossible most of the time.UPDATE: ...CAN be very easy, IF you "specify the security domain" in NetBeans (and choose Manufacturer, for best results). All the problems mentioned below disappear, because the emulator stops asking questions. But if you want to test behavior on regular phone with no rights, you'll have to test on an actual phone - read on.one: unlike

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-42917076657705543062008-10-06T02:10:00.002+02:002008-10-06T02:40:05.561+02:00

Which, as stated before, didn't look like one.True, the midlet would die on me when the GPS was forcefully disconnected ... but isn't that what midlets do? You take away their bluetooth connection, they die, right?Wrong, apparently. And it wouldn't make sense, too - why should an application die just because of lost bluetooth connection?For some reason, i started thinking about it yesterday,

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-89348030977161830832008-10-06T02:05:00.002+02:002008-10-06T02:10:01.746+02:00

Last time i did something with openWIG, it was a rather nifty little midlet that did some cool stuff.When i fired it up today, it didn't do anything. Plus it seemed that it only has parts of my most recent work. Or something.Apparently, it has gone bitrotten from not being touched in few months. I'll have to dust it off, clean it up, look for the missing parts on my laptop and push out a

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-76406830709489567522008-07-24T23:42:00.004+02:002008-10-06T02:40:24.107+02:00

I'm a DefectiveByDesign subscriber, because I have a strong distaste for DRM.Recently, DefectiveByDesign launched a campaign against iPhone, and generally, they fight against iPod and Apple products, because of the DRM employed in them.Well.You know what's sad?Apple products rock. Seriously, they do. Did you ever hold an iPhone? Touched it? Typed on its wonderful multitouch-aware onscreen

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-84643888721967431712008-07-12T23:57:00.004+02:002008-07-13T00:04:11.670+02:00

In case you wondered why, all of sudden, you can't use Home key to go to top of page, wonder no longer. There is a setting under preferences -> advanced -> general -> accessibility, called something along the lines of "use caret to move around the page" (Not sure about exact english variant, i have only czech translation. It's the first checkbox, anyway.)For some f**ked up reason, this seems to

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-33624093869239068702008-05-27T04:15:00.004+02:002008-05-27T14:36:05.547+02:00

one: Obfuscation must be handled with care.If you choose to obfuscate your midlet, you gain two things: the final size will be reduced, and the contents will be hard to disassemble.But. If you turn on obfuscation in NetBeans, it will be used for your local debug builds as well. Due to that, you will lose debugging information, notably filenames and line numbers in stack traces.two: Version

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-85659789327225372012008-05-22T06:08:00.006+02:002008-05-22T06:18:02.275+02:00

Version 0.2.99 was released sometime this night, as opposed to what I wrote last week.It has pretty navigation and crude but functional reading from filesystem. Everything important is on the project page, follow the link on your right....oh, and did I mention that we can now decode the GWC format? Well, we can. Feel free to load your memory card with cartridges and head outside.

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-41844475855189689562008-05-22T06:00:00.003+02:002008-05-22T06:06:54.702+02:00

Well yes, it is horrible, but not nearly as horrible as I originally thought.Once again, I misinterpreted a part of the spec. You do need to reopen the InputStream if you want to seek() back, that's true, but. If you keep a FileConnection object for the file in question, you can call getInputStream() on it as many times as you want - the security prompt is shown only for first access, then the

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-1684398260901334852008-05-14T18:07:00.002+02:002008-05-14T18:13:32.932+02:00

Just a quickie: navigation is almost done, filesystem access is not.But, since i had to employ quite a bunch of clever tricks (let's call them that, at least until they all fail spectacularly), i need guinea pigs to test them on as many phones as guineapigly possible.There will be a highly experimental version 0.2.99, as a precursor to actual 0.3.0 (which, according to my roadmap, should have at

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-76634051325912635312008-05-14T11:49:00.006+02:002008-05-22T06:08:15.549+02:00

let me stress this: J2ME doesn't have seek() method.How gay is that? (pardon my french)File I/O in Java has been traditionally too generic to be of any use (as are most parts of its standard library), but there was always a way to do what you need without excessive hassle.Not true in J2ME.Imagine that you are trying to read data from a file in a certain format. The file contains three distinct

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-66840907093266649612008-05-14T02:36:00.004+02:002008-05-14T03:10:40.890+02:00

a.k.a. DOP, a.k.a. PDOP, HDOP and VDOP. And, in some very special cases, TDOP, but i haven't seen that one and have no idea what's it good for.What they are and how to make heads (but not tails) of them.In today's GPS applications, you will see those values under "precision". Plus, if you happen to be writing a GPS application, you will see them in NMEA messages. When people compare their GPS

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-38364879428463107942008-05-07T00:57:00.005+02:002008-05-14T18:18:44.803+02:00

In short: the fun is over, now begins the hard work.In longer...Well.Version 0.2.6, released some two weeks ago, doesn't have it all, but it has most of it: rather reliable zone detection and navigation, support for all basic Wherigo constructs (including Timers) and their events, images (preloaded in the jar file), PlayAnywhere features...There are still quite a few loose ends in the Lua library

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-13350137111338299452008-04-18T05:18:00.003+02:002008-04-18T05:37:09.580+02:00

OpenWIG development finally slowed down as I approached the more difficult problems - zone and distance detection.However, they now seem to be finished and working nicely on my SE K610i.I even implemented "slow hysteresis" to compensate for GPS fuzz: when you are about to walk into a zone (where "zone" is not Wherigo.Zone, but a well defined area, e.g. the proximity space around a Zone, the

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-55641092351206052912008-04-10T04:48:00.002+02:002008-04-10T04:51:18.999+02:00

[panicks] Yaaaaaaahh!!! They're coming! ... must ... keep ... ahead .... !! [panicks again, runs around in circles]In other news, OpenWIG 0.2.3 is out and it supports various kinds of Inputs, as well as few more dummy functions.

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-27517133262468355832008-04-08T18:13:00.002+02:002008-04-08T18:25:05.059+02:00

OpenWIG 0.2.2 is out.In addition to task support, it can now work with practically any cartridge code - although most cartridges will be unplayable anyway, because of missing functionality. See what is implemented and how to install your cartridge.Since 0.2.1, it is possible to choose between manual input of coordinates and Bluetooth GPS device.Misch's gwc decoder appears to be functionally

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-55736847235813793052008-04-07T03:39:00.002+02:002008-04-07T03:49:42.760+02:00

Version 0.2.0 of OpenWIG has crude support for Bluetooth GPS modules. Plus a Play Anywhere mode, so you can play the included Zooventure Level Two regardless of where you live.In other news: misch of geocaching.cz said that the gwc format doesn't look at all difficult to him. And that he would probably be able to decode it.That means that OpenWIG will probably have support for original Wherigo

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-77075767406840943122008-04-05T23:57:00.003+02:002008-04-06T00:54:54.301+02:00

Oh Me Oh My.For whatever reason, Wherigo is designed in a way that perfectly maps to J2ME's gui handling. Commands, actions, dialog boxes, it all looks like somebody designed it to work in a midlet.Except for one thing.To quote Wherigo Advanced Concepts on the subject of MessageBoxes and Dialogs: The Wherigo Player automatically cancels any message box that is buried by another user

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-27037272442297014652008-04-05T18:22:00.001+02:002008-04-05T18:24:30.902+02:00

OpenWIG now has its own project hosted on Google Code.Head over there and check it out!

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-57384291391302850662008-04-05T04:12:00.003+02:002008-04-05T04:16:19.665+02:00

As of today, there is no bazaar plugin for NetBeans.There is one for mercurial, but it does not work when the OS is Linux and underlying filesystem is FAT. I didn't try in Windows yet.Just so you know.

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-1768207023734533312008-04-05T03:42:00.003+02:002008-04-05T04:03:52.364+02:00

When working on OpenWIG, the mobile phone emulator would always crash (and i mean crash hard, that's segfault for you) before running anything useful. Weird, I thought, and reinstalled NetBeans, then switched to a different JDK, then different operating system, then different WTK (not really different, though; turns out that SonyEricsson's J2ME SDK contains basically unmodified WTK from Sun).

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608123.post-77946466050684355582008-04-05T03:07:00.005+02:002008-04-06T00:05:49.033+02:00

Once upon a time, there was Wherigo. It was closed-source, closed-format, and worked only on PocketPCs (and some kind of obscure navigation device). It did not work on cellphones and the developers apparently weren't interested in making it work.Turns out, however, that the Wherigo Builder produces plain Lua source files. It can't be too hard to make that work on a mobile phone, now can it?Well,

matejcik neasihttps://profiles.google.com/100784373127420482627noreply@blogger.com0