Five One

RADIO Dandelion 1.1

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:28:00 +0000

My first iPhone App got it’s first update published today.
I hope you enjoy it!!
Ecstatic reviews and ratings for the new version would be very welcome!!

Oh Happy Day!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:37:00 +0000

My first iPhone App is available in the App Store.

RADIO Dandelion is an audio streamer coupled with a content discovery engine. It plays the music from a radio station inspired by the late great John Peel. As it does so, it looks up info about what is playing, finding images, biogs, discographies, related artists, videos etc. etc.

It was a fun but challenging project.

The review process was more problematic than I expected. I sent it to Apple in late November, just after reading reports about single station radio apps being rejected, which was scary.

Actual review started two weeks later and it was almost immediately rejected.

The grounds for rejection were very vague and I cannot say I ever got a straight answer from them about what was wrong. It became almost Kafka-esque as they began to accuse me of trademark and content theft. Content that on even a cursory inspection you could see I was not using. I even told them at one point that it was not logically possible to prove that something did not exist. I was mildly rude a few times when I thought they deserved it, I was finding the process unhelpful and disrespectful, I even reminded them I had paid to be treated fairly by the review process.

Finally yesterday, out of the blue, someone wrote to say the process had moved on, thanked me for my patience and even left their name. Hours later it was on the App Store.

They do like their mystique.

So, quite a steep learning curve for me. This has got to be the most complex bit of software I have written.
It is heavily multi-threaded, something I had done little of before. Making it behave sensibly in very poor conditions was a challenge. Reproducing variable networking conditions for testing can be very difficult. Manual memory management is not fun at first. Migrating from the iPhone Simulator to a real device was more of a shock than expected.

My first update is in development, I hope to send that to Apple in a few days.

Lots of ideas about where to take this.

Loving the combination of design and coding.

Please take a look, tell me what you think, write glowing reviews, then hire me!!!

Beta Testing started

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:29:00 +0000

I delivered the first distribution build, of my first iPhone App to my first beta tester today!!

I am really enjoying this platform, though some of the learning curve has been pretty tough.

Obviously coming direct from Java, Javascript, etc., the biggest headache is memory management, in Objective-C on iOS you have to do it manually. The last time I had to worry about stuff like that was when I used to program in 6502 Assembly back in the 1980’s!

There will be new issues to deal with I am sure.

I used to be a designer before I became a programmer, so I feel very comfortable with developing for this platform, the various skill complementing each other.

So what is my business plan?

Well at the moment, I do not expect to make money selling my own apps on the AppStore, it is just too crowded, I don’t expect to be able to invest enough in marketing etc.

What I do hope is that once I have my own apps in the store, they will help me find contract work.

Fingers crossed.

I did applaud

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:21:00 +0000

Just in case you wanted to know, unlike his brother, I was one of those who did applaud the new Labour leader’s view that Britain getting involved in the Iraq war was a mistake.

XCode - turn off logging for Release

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:35:00 +0000

Welcome to my first tip for iPhone developers.

If you have logging statements in your project for testing and debugging, you’ll want a way to turn them off for released code.

I have seen many complex solutions requiring custom macros and preprocessor parameters, most of them overkill IMHO.

The simplest thing to do that I have found so far is to use this technique.

Place the code-snippet in your project’s *_Prefix.pch file, continue to use the standard NSLog() macro.

NSLog statements will be automatically left out of projects compiled for release.

I hope this helps.

An Apology to the Workers?

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:19:00 +0000

The Governor of the Bank of England has just apologised to us, for the mess the policy makers and financial sector has put us in.

That’s what it sounded like in his speech to the Trade Union Congress, as reported by the BBC.

I am not currently a member of a union, but as a British worker, I feel it may have been extended to me too.

Maybe this will further encourage the redress the British people will bring upon those policy makers and financial sector he mentioned.

What I’d really like …

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:12:00 +0000

What I’d really like to see in the ‘Hardware' menu of the iPhoneSimulator, is all released Hardware.

i.e. the ability to run realistic, reduced CPU and memory simulations for all released devices, plus the ability to select simulations of networks conditions, i.e. Good Wifi, Bad Wifi, Good GSM, Bad GSM etc..

Not just get what 'Your Mac Can Do’.

I thank you.

(Oh, BTW Steve wants it)

Painful Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:47:00 +0000

Two quotes I enjoyed during the election.

A BBC commentator after Gordon Brown’s post-results speech :

“He took it in the national interest”s

Ouch! Maybe it will become a new euphemism.

A Conservative spokesman on the BBC, after the Con/Dem government had been formed :

“We don’t know what the whipping arrangements are”

Public school boys … they never change.

SpoonMan

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:18:00 +0000

I don’t know what led me to look this up tonight, but of course this old classic is on YouTube ;-)

I worked with QuickTime since version 1.0, when you only had postage stamp sized movies, we got the Dev CDs, I have managed to keep the original (120 x 160 px, 10 fps) on my series of computers since then.

And what is amazing is that the original file still plays!

Enjoy Spoonman, and good luck!

Peace & Quiet

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 10:52:00 +0000

While I am sorry for all of the people caught up in airports etc. the closure of Britain’s air-space for the last few days has brought some welcome peace and quiet to my area.

We normally get planes flying over every few minutes, now they are gone, it is amazing what difference it makes.

Once things get back to normal again, I imagine people living under the really busy flight paths are going to realise even more strongly what a blight air-transport bring to their lives.

Where I’d like to live

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:23:00 +0000

I hear people around here saying house prices in Brixton will boom in the next few years as (The Council expects) the area to become the next Notting Hill.

Maybe that would be a good time to sell up and move?
I have lived in Brixton since the late 70’s, the place I grew to love has already changed beyond recognition.

So, where do I want to live?

no more than 10 minutes walk from the sea
but at least 30m above sea-level (thats not a flood plain)
within 5 minutes walk of the shops
in easy reach of a public swimming pool
in a place I don’t need to have a car
good public transport
at least semi-rural
in a building that is efficient enough not to need heating
with a workshop
with very fast broadband
where I can play loud music
where there is good cultural diversity
with a good local pub
and a few nice restaurants

Where am I going to find this combination?
Am I asking too much?

I have most of these already, apart from the efficient building and rural/coastal location.

I had better start looking …

Best Mail.app Tip Yet

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:42:00 +0000

The best tip I read for a while on MacOSXHints.com was this one :

Select your “Inbox" and “Sent" mailbox at the same time, then turn on threading.

(you get a view of them both interleaved, even better than the GMail “All Mail” view)

External Drives on MacOSX

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:35:00 +0000

Another one of my external hard drives has failed, after only two years. I was very lucky not to loose important data!!

So here is my latest bug report to Apple.
I post it here because I do not expect a response from them, maybe one of my readers has an idea if there is a simple solution.

My hard drives connected to Apple equipment are wearing out faster than they need to.

When I have external hard drives connected to my mac via FireWire, I like to let them spin down to reduce noise and energy usage, however every single time I do something like go to save a file, all of the drives spin up, one by one. All activity on the machine is blocked during this and is very frustrating, specially when I did not need to access any of the external drives. It makes more sense IMHO to only spin up a drive if it is actually selected (in the Open/Save dialog).

This problem is causing unnecessary delays in the system and extra wear and tear on the drives.

To try to mitigate this problem, I moved one of my external drives to the USB connection on my TimeCapsule. Now another issues rises.

With the external TimeCapsule drive unmounted, every time the TimeCapsule is accessed via a computer on my network to perform a backup, the external drive spins up, then immediately spins down again!!

This is completely pointless and causes even more noise, delays and wear on the drive.

Compiling Asterisk 1.4.27 on MacOSX

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:10:00 +0000

Asterisk is a powerful Open Source telephony toolkit.
The latest version 1.4.27 does not compile on MacOSX 10.6, due to missing libraries.

The solution is simple and slightly strange as this bug was fixed 3 years ago :-/

In the file “Makefile” locate line 360 :

+@_ASTCFLAGS="$(OTHER_SUBDIR_CFLAGS) $(_ASTCFLAGS)” $(MAKE) --no-builtin-rules -C $@ SUBDIR=$@ all

and replace it with this :

+@_ASTCFLAGS="$(OTHER_SUBDIR_CFLAGS) $(_ASTCFLAGS)" AUDIO_LIBS="$(AUDIO_LIBS)" $(MAKE) --no-builtin-rules -C $@ SUBDIR=$@ all

Now at least it compiles on my system :-)

A good winter meal

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:37:00 +0000

Channa Saag Aloo
(produces 4 or 5 servings)

Ingredients

2 tins of chick peas
1 lb spinach
3 potatoes
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
1 green pepper
2 tomatoes
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp ground black pepper
salt to taste
green chillies to taste (try at least 4)
olive oil and/or butter (or ghee if you are really serious)

Preparation

Halve then coarsely slice the onion
Thinly slice the garlic
Remove seeds, cube the green pepper
Slice the chillis
Cube the potatoes (1 inch cubes are a good size)
Peel and dice the tomatoes (pour boiling water over the toms to make peeling easier)
Wash and tear up the spinach a bit
Drain and rinse the chickpeas

In your biggest pot, ideally with a thick base and a lid :

Warm the olive oil and/or butter (I mix them, butter has a good flavour, adding olive oil helps stop it burning)
Add the dry spices to the oil, keep on a low heat, when you hear the mustard seeds popping (a few minutes) add the onions and garlic and coat them in spices
Let the onions soften and begin to brown, stir often
Add the green pepper and chillis, let them soften, stir often
Add the tomatoes, let them develop a sauce, stir often
Add the potatoes, coat them in the sauce for a few minutes
Add a cup of water (enough so the potatoes are nearly covered), put the lid on, let it simmer on a low heat until the potatoes are nearly cooked, stir often
Add the chick peas, coat them in sauce, simmer gently for a few minutes, stir often
Add the spinach and salt, put the lid on, leave it on a low heat
When the spinach wilts, give it a good stir and you are ready to serve as soon as the potatoes are done

Serve with rice, pitta bread or wholewheat toast, mmmmm

enjoy !!

My Latest Hint

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:02:00 +0000

I just had this hint posted on MacOSXHints.com.

On my last project, I was collaborating with people in the States via iChat, using audio, video screen and document sharing.
We had such wide-ranging and complex discussions, I kept wishing I could record them.

Ironically, it was not until after the work ended that I found the iChat / Video / Record menu item (aarrgghh!!).

Well anyway, I thought it would be useful to automate the recording feature and wrote the script featured in MacOSX Hints.

You can attach this script to specific buddies, or to everyone. When an AV Chat starts, recording is automatically started ..... well actually the other party is first asked if they mind and can choose to reject the request.

It seems that only the person who initiates, records, so if both parties want a recording they both have to start it.

Many thanks to Ross and Dave for help testing :-)

Logging to GTalk

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:04:00 +0000

I was reading yesterday that Apple is thought to be using XMPP the Jabber protocol for their new iPhone Push Notification technology.

That's funny I thought, I had just started using XMPP for logging!!!

I am experimenting with Asterisk at the moment. Asterisk for those that do not know is an Open Source PBX (Private Branch Exchange) a phone system in software. I have it running on my ancient 500 Mhz Mac Cube, it has been extremely reliable. My home office now has a ridiculously sophisticated phone system ;-)

IMHO most of the monitoring tools for Asterisk suck. They are written in nasty languages like PHP, Perl, Flash etc. that not only do I not want on my system, they are overkill.

What I wanted was to receive simple messages about the run-time status of the system. I wanted to be able to receive these messages securely, from wherever I was (because I can use my phone system from wherever I am, but more on that another time).

Asterisk has a Jabber module, so this was an easy way to go.

So, I have two GMail Accounts, one for personal email, one for mailing lists.
I have iChat on my desktop/laptop/iPhone already subscribed to GTalk on my personal GMail account.

First I added my spare GTalk account as a buddy to my personal account (requires some fiddling around, but if you know your IM client, it's pretty easy).

Then I configured Asterisk (beware, she's a complex beast, BTW a semi-colon marks a comment).

First configure /etc/asterisk/jabber.conf :

[general]
debug=yes ;Turn on debugging by default.
autoprune=no ;Auto remove users from buddy list.
autoregister=no ;do not auto register users from buddy list. 

[gtalk-logger] ;label
type=client ;Client or Component connection
serverhost=talk.google.com
username=MY_SPARE_GTALK_USERNAME@gmail.com/asterisk ;Username with optional roster.
secret=************** ;Password for MY_SPARE_GTALK_USERNAME
port=5222 ;Port to use defaults to 5222
usetls=yes ;Use tls or not
usesasl=yes ;Use sasl or not
buddy=MY_MAIN_GTALK_USERNAME@gmail.com ;Manual addition of buddy to list.
statusmessage=Up and Running ;custom status message for Asterisk.
timeout=100 ;Timeout on the message stack.

This allows Asterisk to connect to GTalk to send messages.

The next thing to do is to emit messages from the appropriate parts of your dialplan.

First I defined a Macro, that can be used from anywhere in the dialplan, this goes in /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf :

[macro-logger]
; log message - to Jabber
; @param ${ARG1} - the message to send
exten => s,,Jabbersend(gtalk-logger,MY_MAIN_GTALK_USERNAME@gmail.com,${STRFTIME(${EPOCH},GMT,%C%y-%m-%d %H:%M%n)} ${ARG1})

This sends the message in $ARG1 with a timestamp.

Next is to use the macro from the dialplan. Here is an example of an outbound route to go via SipBroker, matching dialed numbers beginning with * :

[via-sipbroker]
  exten => _*X.,1,Macro(logger,Outbound call to ${EXTEN} via SipBroker) ; log the call
  exten => _*X.,2,Set(CALLERID(all)=${JQNAME} <${JQOFFICE}>)  ; Set outbound CallerID
  exten => _*X.,3,ChanIsAvail(SIP/${EXTEN}@sipbroker,j) ; Check to see if available (jumps to priority + 101 on fail)
  exten => _*X.,4,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN}@sipbroker,,tTW) ; Dial, allowing transferring and recording
  exten => _*X.,5,Macro(dial-result) ; Check result
  exten => _*X.,104,Playback(all-circuits-busy-now) ; if ChanIsAvail fails, say message

I know, it looks really weird !!!! :-)

I left out a few details like, looking up the phone number in my AddressBook.app to show the recipient's name and using Growl.app to splash these messages received by iChat. I plan to cover these in a subsequent post.

I have found this to be a really simple and reliable solution.

There are XMPP libraries for many systems, I may start using this technique elsewhere as well.

Nested Screen Sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:14:00 +0000

I am starting a new spare-time project (more on this later).

I am using Maven, Spring etc. etc. within IntelliJ.
While I have worked on projects started by other people using this tech, this is the first time I have started a new project using this stuff myself, so I reckoned I needed someone to review what I was doing.

So I contacted my good friend "M" (all names redacted).

We both fired up iChat and had a video conference for a while, M became interested.

Then we switched to an iChat screen sharing session to look through my code and show him what worked, this included me launching Screen Sharing.app to open a session to my server (so now we have one level of nested screen sharing).

M became even more interested.

M wanted to check out the code, so I fired up a Terminal and let him type in his own password into the htdigest command.

M then suggested that a mutual friend "G" would be really interested in this. iChat would not let me add G to it's screen sharing session, so M shared his screen with G via Skype. Now we have 2 levels of nested screen sharing.

G cannot type into my machine, but we can all talk to each other.

G wanted to check out the code, but as he could not type, I made a password for him using the Password Assistant in KeyChain.app, then pasted it into our iChat text session.

G could not read the text easily, so I used Control-ScrollWheel to zoom into the stuff we were discussing.

M had compiled the project and wanted to run it, but could not set up the complex server the project connects to, so we reversed the screen sharing session, so I could set up his machine to connect through my VPN.

M and G make their first commit, adding their names to the project's pom.

It was an incredibly constructive few hours.

And a very warm welcome to my two new collaborators !!!!

Street View Celeb

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:02:00 +0000

Google Street View is out in the UK and what fun it is!!

My younger brother is now a Street View Celebrity, but he's not sure if he likes the idea or not.

Radio Uncompromising

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:58:00 +0000

I used to listen to the John Peel show.
Unfortunately he died a while ago, I still miss him.

Most of you have probably never heard of him, but I listened to his show for something like 30 years, I managed to record the last few years of his show and still enjoy listening to them.

Apart from being an incredibly nice guy, he was considered by some the most influential DJ in the history of the BBC.

He would play whatever he liked, which included a lot of stuff that would never otherwise get a chance to get on the radio, always surprising, always eclectic.

I recently found a kind of substitute, a radio show that streams over the net called Dandelion Radio. “The Internet Radio Station Inspired by John Peel. Independent. Original. Uncompromising”.

I use this stream URL in iTunes.

The same with John's shows, I cannot say I like everything that is played, some of it is pretty challenging, but if you have as deranged and confused a taste as me and you crave your “new music hit”, maybe you'll like it, give it a go!!

My New Tripod

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:04:00 +0000

I have been yearning for a new tripod, ever since I found the old one was not sturdy enough for a DSLR.

I did a lot of research, some of it probably useful but in the end there is no substitute for actually getting your hands on something like this ...... and there lay the first problem, actually finding somewhere that keeps stuff in stock at a shop, where you can go ...... you'd think, living in London that this would be easy but even professional suppliers would have everything in their online catalogues but next to nothing in their physical shops.

In the last few months I watched different photographers use tripods in different situations, doing astonishing things with them, easily ..... they were all Gitzos, so that began to narrow the field, except Gitzo seem to have a ludicrously huge range.

I eventually found one in a shop in Tottenham Court Road, it had a broken leg, so I could not buy it but I had a chance to play.
It was one of their levelling range, there is a gimbal holding the centre column, which has a spirit level at the bottom, so you can adjust the level of the camera after setting up the legs. This interested me, I like low light panoramas.

You can do a lot with it. It's light and strong. No catches to catch my fingers. The legs are easy to use, they can lock at different angles so you don't just have to use the floor. I can place the camera anywhere from taller then me, to ground level.

I found this one, end-of-line, big discount.

So, it finally arrived. The first thing I tried was to get it really level, level enough so that when you rotate the camera, it stays level.

No way.

Maybe my eyesight is not as good as it was, maybe the spirit level is too small, maybe it's the slight nudge it gives as you clamp the gimbal, so far I have been unable to get it level enough for a panorama that did not drift.

The leveling is really useful for fine tuning your framing, but my expectations were too high regards panoramas.

So I went out on my first night shoot with it.

I was very pleased. It was a very windy night and I was doing long exposures, not a good combination but I could do what I needed and work quickly with it.

The unexpected problem was the law.

I got moved on by renta-cops from the South Bank. Later I heard Lambeth Council requires anyone using a tripod in the street to have a permit and pay by the hour, because if you use a tripod you must be (a) professional and (b) causing a potential public liability insurance issue.

Paranoia Britain, don't you love it.

Do Something About It

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:22:00 +0000

http://www.dosomethingaboutit.org.uk has just issued it's first vote to members, to choose the issues it will attempt to tackle in the next few months.

Their boilerplate text :

I've just cast my vote to decide DoSomethingAboutIt.org.uk's campaign priorities for the coming months. We can either wait for political parties to tell us what the next election is about, or we can take the initiative and tell them what matters to us. By logging on to www.DoSomethingAboutIt.org.uk, you can let politicians know what you want to see happen- and if they don't listen, then you can get rid of them by using DoSomethingAboutIt.org.uk to link up with thousands of other progressives across the country. Check out the website yourself, and cast your vote today!

Hopefully a worthwhile attempt at grassroots democratic lobbying.

Birthday Present

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:09:00 +0000

It was my 50th birthday recently, I celebrated with a party in my local pub, the Effra Tavern, friends came from all over, it was a great evening, many thanks to you all.

Two friends Gab and Mau came all the way from Amsterdam, impressive in itself . . . but they topped that by giving me the most incredible present.

They chose a load of photos from my Flickr Photostream, downloaded them all, copied all of the captions and assembled it all into a book, using blurb.com.

Mau just made it public, so you can see it for yourself or even buy a copy!

Many thanks guys, you're the best :-)

“I’m A Photographer Not A Terrorist”

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:48:00 +0000

I was at the demonstration by photographers outside New Scotland Yard this morning, there even are a couple of glimpses of me in the BBC TV report, maybe the orange jacket was a good idea after all :-)

Here are mine.

100 Today

noreply@blogger.com (Jerm) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:07:00 +0000

I finally did 100 pushups for the first time today!

A few months ago, I started using the schedule published on hundredpushups.com (someone mentioned it on Planet Apache).

It worked well for me. Even though I could not always follow the course (it took me longer than 6 weeks) there was always somewhere I could fit in on the schedule and feel like I was advancing.

I have also been swimming several kilometers a week for the past few months, enjoying it and improving there too.

Eating more, loosing fat and putting on muscle, it is doing me a power of good.

(I hope this encourages you)