Ooh a useful widget!

The nice folks over at Inventive have released a dashboard widget of their iClip software. Get it here. It's pretty nice but probably more useful for people that have a few things they want to paste many times (I'm thinking coders, web designers) than for generic use, eg. while editing documents.

Popcopy is probably more useful and intuitive, but I don't think it's worth $14. It seems the free version is fine apart from the reminder when you first load it. Will have a play with it more, and who knows maybe buy it!

MOD2AKAI

I intend to write a program (command line initially) which converts tracker *.xm files into AKAI MPC2000xl PGM and mid files. It will need to strip out samples (and convert to wav if necessary), and create the *.PGM file as appropriate. Then it should look at the arrangement and create a sequence for each pattern. The third stage of development would be to create an AKAI song file corresponding to the complete arrangement in the xm file. One day maybe I'll make a GUI, and support the buzz format (in fact that would be very sweet, but proportionally complicated).

To do this I will need:

1. XM API/Jar
   
• Sample converting???
2. Midi API/Jar
3. AKAI PGM API/Deffinition/Jar
4. AKAI Song API/Deffinition/Jar

All software will be GPL/LGPL (as appropriate). Program will be written in Java (to be cross platform), and hopefully reasonably well documented. Any libraries that I need to create will be released independantly of the complete program, for future use by other developers and myself.

If you are interested in helping/testing please leave a comment.

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Relevant links:
http://aluigi.altervista.org/mymusic/xm.txt
https://jmod.dev.java.net/releases/
http://www.midicase.com/akai/
http://ieee.usask.ca/members/snorum/pgm/
http://java.sys-con.com/read/37803.htm
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/javax/sound/midi/Sequencer.html
http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/626471

TWIKI for Tomcat

Port TWIKI to Tomcat, so it can be installed as a jar file. Might not be possible, look into it just in case.

Man it's been a long time...

Thesis writing and job have sort of got in the way of writing anything for fun - which is a shame. Think I'll use this blog for handy tips/links as well as documenting stuff I'm writing (I was working on a smart file browser for OSX, but decided against it - it's already been done better :D).

So the reason I'm posting this is because I got sent new internet settings for my phone from O2. I don't use the web much from my phone, but it has been really useful on occasion. I use the ace Opera Mini for my browsing (the default Sony Ericsson one is terrible!!) and, annoyingly, these new settings killed it - I could no longer connect.

Frustrated I deleted all the internet/data settings and got them resent from O2 using their nifty settings page, I could now connect with the SE browser. "Hmm", I thought, "maybe its a broken config in opera", so I reinstalled opera. Still no worky worky.

Decided to hit up the mighty Google. (why am I bothering to make that a link?!?!?!?) and found a rather useful forum posting here. In summary of that post the default O2 settings transfer data over wap (why?!) and you need to change them to use http instead. This is done in:

"Menu" -> "Settings" -> "Connectivity" tab 
   -> "Internet settings" 
   -> "Internet Profiles" -> Highlight "O2 WAP GPRS" and select "More" 
      -> "Settings" -> select "Internet Mode" and change this to "HTTP"

You also want to use the proxy.

So now my phone is connected to the web again, I have the latest Opera browser and I think my MMS problems are sorted. I also found that you can install client certificates on the W800i - wonder if it'll like my grid certificate.....