Sunday, 30. October 2011
multilingual 5ud0ku 
Our JavaME
5ud0ku got equipped with a new language set. The puzzle game was created in 2006 for feature phones (not some many smartphones around at that time), but it still is downloaded and used a lot.
So now
5ud0ku contains czech language set in addition to italian, norwegian, russian, slovak, hungarian, polish, english, french, greek and german. If you don't own or want a smartphone, but still want to play a decent game of sudoku, try
5ud0ku (point your mobile to
http://wintermute.de/wap/sudoku)

Thursday, 14. July 2011
9 digits - sudoku variations 
Next to our
java mobile Sudoku we have created an iPhone/iPod game featuring high quality sudoku games. It also includes variations for mathdoku, killer sudoku and x-sudoku - 9 digits.
9 digits' helpers guide your next move and teach you solution strategies.
So go get your copy!
9 digits - website
9 digits - iTunes Preview

Friday, 17. December 2010
iPhone Action Sheet replacement 
While developing an iPhone app, I wanted to change the look of the UIActionSheet to match the overall app appearance. Unfortunatly it is not possible to customize the UIActionSheet in iOS4 - at least if you want to avoid it to break with future iOS releases.
So I implemented a simple WMActionSheet feasile for iPhone (no iPad look implemented). It has some drawbacks such as it does not adhere to orientation changes and does not cover the status bar area, but still works pretty ok.
The source code is available at
github

Saturday, 27. March 2010
including WordPress posts into static website 
To make a "news" part of a static website more maintainable (and editable by end-user), I decided to include WordPress posts into that site. Doing so, I stumbled over issues with the post paged navigation.
Despite that, WordPress documentation about
The Loop in Action tells you everything you need to know to get your posts into your static website.
Just make sure to start your php file with
<?php include ('./blog/wp-blog-header.php'); ?>The trouble with the post-navigation was caused by the fact, that I installed WordPress into a subdirectory, while the posts actually would be shown on a page at the top-level directory. Now using the function
<?php posts_nav_link() ?>
would result in broken links as they would try to locate the current page url within the subdirectory.
Instead of checking out the original functions's php code I used hints from multiple sources and built up my self-made navigation. I haven't used php before, so there might be easier and much more smart ways to do this.
Nevertheless here is it in case you stumble across the same issue:
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php
global $wp_query;
/* set paged if not set (entry page) */
if ($paged == 0) {
$paged = 1;
}
/*add newer link to entry page without $paged parameter */
if ($paged == 2) {
echo "<a href=\"";
echo $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];
echo "\">« newer posts</a>";
}
/*add newer link*/
if ($paged > 2) {
echo "<a href=\"";
echo $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];
echo "?paged=";
echo ($paged-1);
echo "\">« newer posts</a>";
}
/*add older link*/
if ($paged < $wp_query->max_num_pages) {
/*add new-old separator if needed*/
if ($paged > 1) {
echo " · ";
}
echo "<a href=\"";
echo $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];
echo "?paged=";
echo ($paged+1);
echo "\">older posts »</a>";
}
?>
<?php else: ?>
<p><?php _e('no entries found.'); ?></p>
<?php endif; ?>

Thursday, 04. March 2010
exploring new shores 
soe is more a braindump than it is a weblog. Nevertheless at least it's noteworthy, that I started to get familiar with objective-c to build iPhone apps.
To understand and follow Apple's paradigms and approval processes I took the chance to 'port' my
shoppingList to the iPhone.
It is a simple app, so after requesting approval, it got
ready for the App Store within 3 days. I tried to give it a fancy name (german: Auf der Liste, english: It's on my list)
If you have an iPhone or iPod touch and don't mind having an actually simple and easy grocery list, give it a try. You can access it via its landing page at
http://wintermute.de/itsonmylist

Friday, 20. November 2009
Date dependent content with Server Side Includes 
Today I had to update a static website to show some xmas content in December. As I am a lazy guy, I searched for an option to show the content somehow automatically as soon as it is December and to stop displaying it in January.
Because that site is a simple static hosted website with only SSI available, I checked on SSI capabilities and inlcuded the content as follows:
<!--#config timefmt="%b" -->
<!--#set var="month" value="$DATE_LOCAL" -->
<!--#if expr="$month = Dec" -->
<!--#include file ="xmas.html" -->
<!--#endif -->
With some more tweaks you could rotate the look (e.g. with different css files) and content of your static website in regular intervals without too much work involved.

Saturday, 07. November 2009
iTunes U 
Somehow I missed iTunes U launch. And since beginning of this year, german universities have joined, as well. Currently I am following
iPhone App Programming and the provided training material and course content are quite ok.
After
passing that, I might will have a closer look at the german presence (select Country in
iTunes U Overview)

Sunday, 04. October 2009
Berlin bei Nacht 
Gestern habe ich zum zweiten Mal
Michael Kessler bei seinem aktuellen Taxifahrer Job
begleitet: Der
rbb streamt nämlich die Aufnahmen zur Sendung
Berliner Nacht-Taxe.
Michael nutzt dabei - manchmal ein wenig gesetzeswidrig - seinen mobilen Helfer (ein Android Phone oder auch mal ein iPhone), um mit den Zuschauern des Streams Kontakt zu halten. Das ganze läuft dabei über seinen
Twitteraccount. Um alle Kommentare zu verfolgen, sucht man bei Twitter nach
kesslermichael.
Wenn die Fahrgäste ausbleiben, hält Michael die Laune der Stream-Zuschauer mit Selbstgesprächen, Anekdoten und natürlich Antworten auf die Twitter Anfragen aufrecht. Und wenn er mal abgelenkt ist und sich auf die Straße konzentriert oder Fahrgästen nachjagt, sorgt die Twitter-Community schon für genug Gesprächsstoff.
Leider werden nur zwei der insgesamt acht Aufnahmestunden gestreamt, aber zusehen lohnt sich trotzdem.
Ich bin schon gespannt auf das nächste Mal (Livestream am: 09.10, 10.10, 16.10. und 17.10 jeweils 22:00-00:00 Uhr).

Saturday, 26. September 2009
Backup Dell mini 10 Using True Image 11 Home 
I felt the need to backup my Dell mini 10 before installing another OS.
Being owner of a True Image 11 installation on my old machine, I gave it a try.
- I prepared a Kingston USB stick to boot from (using the True Image rescue media builder), but had no success.
For whatever reason I tried the "HP Drive Key Boot Utility" (google for it) and did it work the USB stick. After that, I had rescue media builder do its job once more.
- Dell mini booted from the USB stick (Check the "Legacy USB support" and the "Boot options" of the Dell mini - accessible by pressing F2 on startup).
- True Image Home 11 did not recognize the internal HDD of the Dell mini when loaded as full version (incl. USB/SATA Support). I tried to change the kernel parameters (F11: acpi=off noapic), but that did not help at all. This might work with other versions of TI, so give it a try.
- True Image recognized the internal HDD only, if I selected the safe mode start of True Image - but then I could not use an external USB HD to backup to. So I took an old USB HD and followed the instructions at
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/supportfiles/acronis_bootable_usb_hd.pdf . In short, this guides you to backup the USB drive with True Image to a .tib file and restore it to the USB HD. Afterwards the leftover space on the USB HD can be formatted as primary NTFS partition to work as the storage drive.
- So with the USB drive loaded with the True Image rescue system and having space for my backup, I booted into TI safe mode now using that USB drive instead of the USB stick.
- Finally I could now backup my internal HDD to the USB drive's storage partition. As this method (safe boot) does not allow you to use USB 2 speed, the backup procedure will take ages (I started it up 3 hours ago and it tells me, I have 16 to go...).

Sunday, 06. September 2009
browser decision 

After some steps with Snow Leopard and Safari 4 I really would like to switch to Safari. But I am so used to some Firefox Add-ons, that I will stick with
Firefox as primary browser.
Firefox Add-ons I use more or less regulary
Stylish styles from
http://userstyles.org:
(FF/Safari icon by
decompositionbeauty) 
Wednesday, 02. September 2009
snow leopard 
After NOT updating to 10.5.8 (I was stuck on 10.5.6.) I upgraded to SL today. Here are some experiences and also open issues:
Installation on my late 2008 MacBook Pro (5,1) took less than an hour.
After Installation, Software Update downloaded two fixes. One was a new bt firmware.
Everything seemed to work fine. Expected battery time was and still is low.
That seems to be caused by a heating issue. SL keeps my CPU about 10C higher than Leopard. I could not identify a reason for it and other users have made the
same experience.
Other problems I had:
- After having run a time machine backup, the time machine buddy widget somehow become source of trouble: The whole dashboard got stuck and I delete com.dock.db and .plist but finally removing the widget seemed to fix it.
- Printing: The installed network printer (Canon iP4000 with Gutenberg drivers) did not work. Clearing it, adding it again as new ip printer and changing the driver back to the Gutenberg one made it work.
- growl is not fully compatible
- truecrypt cannot create new containers
[Update] The heating issue mentioned above did resolve itself after a
SMC Reset.
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