My Panasonic 3DO Broke, So I Fixed It

Over the weekend my friend and I were playing some epic RoadRash on my classic Panasonic 3DO console.  A few minutes in we noticed that some of the textures weren’t loading.  Then, all of a sudden, the machine froze and then ejected the disc.  Afterwards, it wouldn’t play any games but it would boot fine and the CD tray would open and close like normal.  I tried using a CD lens cleaner but it wouldn’t play that either. 

So I did what any of you would do: I TOOK IT APART AND FIXED IT.

To make this easier on myself, I set the system up on my desk and then set my GameCube-with-built-on-LCD-screen next to it.  I disconnected video from the GameCube and hooked the screen up to the 3DO.  I thought this looked pretty freaking awesome so I began taking pictures.

Once I had everything set up where I could start to disassemble the 3DO and then easily test it out on the little GameCube-mounted LCD screen, I took off the top piece by removing four annoying screws on the bottom.

Next up was this gigantic metallic shield coving the CD drive. 

I popped it off fairly easily and then had a clean view of the CD tray and lens.  Cleaned the lens and tested again, but no luck.

Every time I’d test, I could tell that the lens’s sliding housing wasn’t moving along its rails.  I used a flathead screw driver to loosen where it seemed to be jammed against one of the rails and it came free, letting me slide it back and forth with ease.  I cleaned the railing as best I could, but I’ll likely have to go back in with a touch of WD-40 at some point.

I hooked everything back up and dropped a game in and guess what!  It worked!

Mission Accomplished.  Oh- and what was the game I tested it with?

Hell yeah.

Kudos to Google Plus for Phrasing

The Liberated Software blog would like to express great pleasure in the name that Google+ gives to the process by which you can download your account’s data to your local computer.

People Jeff Hates – My Blog of (Mostly) Lies

A few weeks ago while discussing a tech issue with my officemate (@thomaslangston), I realized that the best way to convey my thought was to draw it on our whiteboard in Venn diagram form.

We were discussing the issue of mobile location tracking that had just made it into headline news as something that seemed to be universally agreed upon as “bad,” yet I was convinced that there had to be some subset of those complaining people that also use social location services such as Foursquare.  I determined that whoever that subset is, should it exist, is worthy of my hatred.  Thusly, the center, overlapping piece of the Venn diagram in this instance was labeled “People Jeff Hates.”

Now I want to be clear on this point: I’m not a hateful person.  I might curse and use a certain finger at other drivers in traffic on occasion, but really, I’m a pretty agreeable guy.  That’s why we got a good laugh out of the overlap of “People Jeff Hates.”  I’m just not hateful.

The diagram stayed on our whiteboard for a couple of weeks until one day, in another conversation with the same officemate, I realized that I could comically make my point yet again simply by erasing the two outer labels (“People complaining about location tracking”, and “People who use Foursquare”) and replace them with new labels that were relevant to the current conversation.  The humorous bit, again, was that the overlap in the center remained “People Jeff Hates.”

Now that two of these diagrams had been thought up, it became a game to think of more.  The challenge for me is like I said- I’m just not a hateful person.  But, after much effort, I was able to come up with several more ideas, almost entirely tech themed.

Next thing I know, my coworker is drawing them crudely in Gimp and creating a blog for them to live on.  And that’s how People Jeff Hates came into being.

It gets updated each week on Wednesdays and now holds a couple months’ worth of content.  I only have a few more weeks’ worth thought up so I’ll have to go think up more people to hate.  I’ll likely have to occasionally break from the tech-theme and I may even mix it up with some non-Venn diagrams, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

A Year of Launching Later

A Year ago today I released my LaunchLater project into the wild as open source software.  This has been one of the most fun adventures in my career as a software developer.

Since its initial launch, it has gone through several versions.  There have been bug fixes, new features, and improved user interface design.  It has been mentioned on blogs in the U.S., Russia, Brazil, Italy, Slovakia, Japan, Turkey, and even shown up in a video blog from Spain.

It has included code written by one of my coworkers, who added one of my most desired features to the app: the ability to import existing Windows startup items.  Another coworker has forked the project to play with his own ideas of where the app could go.

The app itself has been downloaded over 4,500 times as of this writing, and its source code has been downloaded by over 70 developers.

I’ve gotten to receive and respond to feedback via Twitter, blog comments, Reddit, messages over Codeplex, and conversations with friends and coworkers.

Most importantly though- it does its job well for me.  My Windows-based computers boot faster because of it, and I love that.

Happy Birthday, LaunchLater!

Suck it, Apple! I’m goin Android!

I grew up playing with PC’s- building them, writing text adventures in QBasic, knowing DOS well enough to remove the “win” line from my autoexec.bat, and customizing boot disks for every game I owned.  That was all at home, where my real education was happening.  Meanwhile, while I was at school, I was reduced to working on nothing but Macs.  I’m normally pretty good about separating the notion of “I’m not used to this yet” from “I don’t like this.”  But it didn’t take long for me to decide that I hated Macs, and therefore Apple as well.  Being all presumptuous and removing the floppy drive, building the monitor into the tower so it’s just one unit, hard to upgrade any single piece without replacing the whole thing (back then anyway).  Hatred doesn’t begin to describe how I felt about Apple.

They’ve changed though.  Thank god.  I recognize that their OS is just based on top of BSD.  And the company itself rests firmly on top of its iPod, iPhone, and iPad lines rather than its computers.  So two years ago, when I deemed it time to get a smart phone, I bought an iPhone.  I even wrote about it, here.  At the time of purchase, it was THE smart phone to own.  There wasn’t another competitor that offered anything even close.  But that’s changed now.

For two years I carried that phone- eventually jailbroke it.  I swallowed a lot of pride the day I bought it, and last Thursday, I spit that pride right back out.  Damn, that felt good.

I bought a Motorola Atrix 4G.  It’s AT&T’s top of the line Android-based phone as of the time of this writing.  It’s the first (and time will tell if it is the only) phone to dock with a laptop-shell and launch into a webtop OS that runs full Firefox.  It’s dual core, has a gig of ram, and it knows the last digit of pi. 

Why do I like it better than the iPhone?  Besides the power itself:

• It can run Flash, which means I can read Shacknews AND watch the videos.
• I can develop for it FROM ANY OPERATING SYSTEM using Java, a language I already know, as opposed to buying a Mac and learning Objective C.
• I can download and install apps that aren’t necessarily in the app store, legally and without jailbreaking.
• Google makes free apps that I like better than the free apps on the iPhone- like Google Goggles and Google Sky.
• I can browse the file system of the phone without jailbreaking.
• I can use widgets all over the place, and even code new ones, without jailbreaking.
• There are console emulators in the freaking app store.

There are more, but I feel like I’ve established my point. 

Over the weekend, I picked up this book on Android development, and I’ve already started development on a little app to help manage Codeplex-based open source projects.  More to come on that.

I can’t wait to see what I can do next on Android.  Whatever it is, I bet it’ll be really easy and won’t require any jailbreaking.

LaunchLater 2.0 Released

That’s right- finally released the new LaunchLater!

This release embodies my original vision of what the application should be.  With help from partner programmer Jabrown85, you can now import your existing Windows startup applications directly into LaunchLater.  This makes initial configuration a cinch for any user. 

A few aesthetic improvements have been made, including a new LaunchLater icon inspired by some graphics work that my wife put together for me.  She’s awesome.

So, if you’re looking to optimize your Windows experience, grab a copy of LaunchLater and plot a better boot process.

My New Favorite Toy: The Rii Wireless Mini-Keyboard

Go here and buy this: The Rii

My completely awesome wife surprised me today when I got home from work with a brand new Rii!  “What the crap is a Rii?” you ask?  I’ll tell you what: it’s the coolest damn wireless mini-keyboard/mouse/laser-pointer you ever did see, that’s what.

The model that she purchased for me is Bluetooth based, but you can opt for USB as well (requires using a tiny USB dongle attached to the PC).  It works great with my laptop and will supposedly sync up with my PS3 as well.  Don’t have a Bluetooth adapter?  No problem, the Rii comes with its own adapter that conveniently slides into a compartment in the Rii.

It also uses a built in battery that charges off of USB.  The USB cable included even has a splitter on it that allows you to charge your Rii without forfeiting a USB on your computer.

Do I sound like a commercial?  If not, then I’m not doing justice to how cool this thing is.

I’ve already used it as a wireless gaming controller and won a race on Need For Speed Hot Pursuit.  I can’t wait to use it next semester when I’m teaching C++ again! (Especially for the laser pointer!)

Obligatory pics:

Here it is!

The keyboard is even backlit!

This is the little Bluetooth adapter that slides out of the top, with its own little sleeve. Cute huh?

ZOMG LASERZ!

Tell Ubuntu to Do Nothing When Laptop Lid Closes

If you like to connect up your laptop to a real keyboard/monitor/mouse, like I do, then you might also like to close the laptop’s lid and shove it to the side of your desk and just use it like a desktop system.  And if you run Ubuntu, like i do, you don’t get the option to do that automatically.  The power settings limit you to things like “shutdown”, “standby”, “hibernate”, and “blank screen.” 

Turns out there is a fifth option, but you have to run this (seemingly obscure) command line to get it:

gconftool-2 –type string –set /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_ac "nothing"

Once you’ve run this, you should see the new option, shown below:

It is things like this that make my relationship with Linux both love and hate.  I absolutely love the ease of 90% of things in Linux and the freedom of it all, but this kinda small thing that requires a bunch of Googling really gets on my nerves and prevents me from recommending it to less computer savvy family members and friends.

Still, the new Ubuntu is pretty great and I can’t wait to get started on some RoR coding in it!

Cycorder Crashes When You Hit Record?

Does this happen to you?  You should uninstall Veency. That worked for me anyway.

My only regret is that I didn’t jailbreak sooner.

A Nifty Build Version Incrementer for Visual Studio

Need a quick and simple way to auto-increment builds of assemblies in Visual Studio 2005, 2008, or 2010?  Try this.

While working on my LaunchLater project’s installer application, I ran into trouble with an installer not necessarily updating the app to the new version.  Even though I had configured the project where RemovePreviousVersions was set to true, it would compare more than just the product version of the installer, it would compare each assembly and only update if the assembly had a newer version number.

Visual Studio, despite its clear superiority over other IDE’s, still does not have the capability to auto-increment assembly versions.  Fortunately, the open source project linked to here, known as Build Version Increment Add-in Visual Studio, works excellently.

I configured every assembly in my project to auto increment such that the major and minor versions wouldn’t change, but the 3rd and 4th designated version place holders would.  The 3rd position would increment by 1’s and the 4th would be a timestamp.  This allows for versions to go from 1.2.4.3839 to 1.2.5.9928.  This also allowed my installer to always update previous installs correctly, since the newly built assemblies are versioned accordingly and automatically.

Many thanks to the devs on the project!