Author Archives: The Extremist

Taking screenshots on Android (without root) and iPhone

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s say you want to show off something cool that you’ve got going on your Android smartphone or iPhone on the web somewhere.

This means you want to take a screenshot or six in a standard image format and upload them somewhere people can see them.

Let’s take a look at how you would do that on an Android device and compare it to how it’s done on iPhone.

Android screenshot tutorial

This tutorial is shamelessly lifted from everyone and his dog. It’s specific to any platform, so if you get stuck there are some good Windows and Mac tutorials available elsewhere. The Ubuntu tutorial on the community documentation site is decent, but lacks some details which I’ll cover in a post tomorrow.

  1. Download and install the Java Runtime Environment from Sun/Oracle. The procedure is different for Windows, Mac and Linux, but there’s plenty of instructions on the web on how to get this done.
  2. Download and install the Android SDK. You shouldn’t need to use the tools/android program to install a platform SDK just yet, but if you’ve gone through these steps and it’s still not working you may need to.
  3. Turn on USB debugging on the device you want to use. This is usually under Settings->Applications->Development.
  4. Install and/or configure the relevant USB drivers. This can be relatively tricky and I will publish a post tomorrow dealing with how this is done on Linux.
  5. Connect your device.
  6. Sacrifice an iPhone to the robot overlords (or say “Roger, roger” while dancing around in a circle pretending to shoot your laser gun at Jedi).
  7. Run the tools/ddms program from wherever you installed the Android SDK.

If everything went right your device should be listed and you can now take screenshots from it.

Grabbing screenshots with DDMS

Capturing screenshots from an Android device with the DDMS tool

iPhone screenshot tutorial

Taking a screenshot on the iPhone is a little easier, but for those who struggled to keep up with how it’s done on Android I’ll draw a picture to make it easier to understand.

How to take screenshots on an iPhone 4

How to take screenshots on an iPhone 4

On the upside, at least you don’t have to copy the images from the Android device to your PC.

Adobe AIR 2 on 64 bit Ubuntu: Tutorial and download

Posted on by
3

Adobe Air logoThe obvious question is, “What are you installing Air on Ubuntu for?”

Sadly, it’s because the best PC Twitter clients by far seem to all be written in Air. If you haven’t tried them yet, check out Seesmic, Twhirl, Tweetdeck and Spaz. It’s unlikely you’ll be satisfied with anything less once you do, though.

The less obvious question is: “What are you still using Ubuntu 64 bit for if you keep having to jump through hoops to install stuff?”

To that I don’t really have a proper answer. Maybe because I enjoy blogging about my struggles with it?

I’ve put up with Gwibber this long mainly because the instructions for installing AIR on 64 bit Ubuntu on the Adobe site needs you to install a special tool to download a bunch of 32 bit libraries to install AIR.

Not only don’t I like doing that, it’s somewhat daunting for a lazy bum that isn’t that into Twitter.

Enter James Ward and his 9-step seemingly flop proof method of installing Adobe AIR 2. His post is the source from which I’m shamelessly stealing the below tutorial, so please go check it out.

If you’re too lazy to go through the steps yourself and you’re feeling trusting you can grab the Adobe Air 64-bit .deb I built from my Dropbox.

You may need to update AIR after installing it if you came upon this post some weeks after I published it. If you don’t want to download a package and then download an update once it’s installed, here’s the tutorial.

  1. Download the 32-bit Adobe AIR .deb package
  2. Open a terminal window and go to the directory where you downloaded the installer
  3. Create a temporary directory: 
    mkdir tmp
  4. Extract the deb file to the directory: 
    dpkg-deb -x adobeair.deb tmp
  5. Extract the control files of the deb to the directory: 
    dpkg-deb -e adobeair.deb tmp/DEBIAN
  6. Change the architecture parameter on the control file from “i386? to “all”: 
    sed -i "s/i386/all/" tmp/DEBIAN/control
  7. Repackage the deb file: 
    dpkg-deb -b tmp/ adobeair_64.deb
  8. Install Adobe AIR 2 by double clicking the file or running the command: 
    sudo dpkg -i adobeair_64.deb

Farewell for now Gwibber. Until you have the basic features I need from a social networking client, Adobe Air apps it will have to be.

Last ever murder committed today

Posted on by
Reply

Today, 25 September 2010, marks the day of the last murder committed in the San Angeles area for the next 22 years.

Wesley Snipes, Sylvester Stallone, Sandra Bullock in Demolition Man

That’s according to the future envisioned by director Marco Brambilla and writers Peter M. Lenkov and Robert Reneau who were involved in making the action trivia gem, Demolition Man.

Now to see if the American franchise wars leaves Pizza Hut (or is it Taco Bell) the only restaurant left and whether Arnold Shwarzenegger will eventually become president of the US.

No mail notifications from WordPress

Posted on by
Reply

For some reason WordPress stopped sending email notifications of new comments on one of my sites, even though all the options regarding such notifications were checked.

There are two such options under Settings->Discussion in the WordPress backend:

  1. Notify when any comment is posted
  2. Notify when a comment is held for moderation.

Some Googling around got me to a forum thread at the WordPress.org support site.

It turns out that some hosts require a valid “From:” address in an email before it allows the mail to be sent.

Since all comment notifications are sent from wordpress@YourDomain.YourTLD, this means that you’ll need to create a wordpress mail account before your host will allow the notification mails to be sent.

I just created an alias for one of my existing email addresses and that was enough to get comment notifications working again.

Equilibrium is not a state of peace

Posted on by
Reply

Equilibrium isn’t a state of harmony.

Peace and harmony is when multiple potential influences exist without coming into conflict. Everyone agrees, or agrees to disagree.

Sometimes “agreeing to disagree” simply isn’t possible. Sometimes something is too important for people to just believe as they will without being challenged. Some things are just worth fighting for.

It takes immense wisdom to know what those things are and when to debate, argue or fight, however.

When it comes to conflict resulting from a basic difference of world view some people possess the innate wisdom, even at a young age, to know when to be content in their own beliefs and let it be. Others refuse to back down or are perhaps simply afraid of not being heard or understood. Sadly, more often than not, people are just too apathetic to participate in an argument.

Arguing ad nauseam

Continue reading →

Experiments in website design

Posted on by
Reply

For those who haven’t noticed, I’ve changed the layout of Entropy. Again. I’m pretty sure this means I’ve spent more time on developing the site than actually publishing through it.

Those that know WordPress would probably instantly recognise the theme on Entropy as a tweaked version of the new default “Twenty Ten” theme. The simple reason for switching to it is that there are a bunch of new features in WordPress 3 that were only available in the default theme initially.

I also discovered child themes, which allows me to build on the Twenty Ten theme while retaining the benefits of any updates the theme might receive.

Entropy has always been more of a blogging experiment than an actual blog, though. Which brings me to my latest experiment and call for feedback.

Continue reading →

Google Image Search: Now like Bing!

Posted on by
Reply

Google has (finally) revamped their image search results page to work/look more like Bing’s (Google: http://j.mp/crjcTV, Bing: http://j.mp/9eH4XW). It feels a whole lot slicker and faster, though.

*EDIT: A friend discovered that to experience Google’s new image search results pages you have to access it from http://images.google.com (rather than searching from Google and then clicking “Images”) plus you have to be logged into your Google Account.

Thunderbird 3.1 on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx 64 bit

Posted on by
Reply

About a month ago Mozilla released Thunderbird 3.1.

The problem is that Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) ships with Thunderbird 3.0.x. Normally this isn’t an issue because the newest version of something as big as a Mozilla project is usually in a PPA within a few days of the release .

The Personal Package Archive (PPA)

Personal Package Archives are a service Canonical (the creators and custodians of Ubuntu) provide via their Launchpad website. Basically it allows Ubuntu users that know what they’re doing to upload packages (such as applications like Thunderbird or Firefox) which can then be relatively easily installed by other Ubuntu users.

No PPA package for Thunderbird 3.1 existed within the first few days of launch and the “official” Ubuntu Mozilla Daily Build Team PPA hadn’t received a new version of Thunderbird since February.
Continue reading →

What does Eugène Terre’Blanche’s murder mean for South Africans?

Posted on by
Reply

A(nother) man was murdered in South Africa today. This one happened to be on a farm, and happened to be white. If the latest (2009) statistics on farm attacks from the SA government are to be believed, we’re looking at 165 attacks per year with an increasing trend.

But what seemed to have made all the difference in this case is that the man murdered was Eugène Terre’Blanche.

White South Africans in particular may find themselves paralyzed, or worse, making wild generalised statements out of fear. Not because they share ET’s far-right wing ideologies, but because of a conflation of unfortunate events.

Our local court jester, Julius Sello Malema, led a gathering in the singing of Idubula Ibhunu (“Shoot the Boer”) at the University of Johannesburg on 9 March 2010 (source, accessed on 4 April 2010). This led to a backlash throughout the month that eventually saw the song as being declared hate speech, but had the ruling party (the African National Congress) respond by appealing the decision. Naturally, many white South Africans saw this as the government supporting the hatred of whites (and minorities in general) Malema seems to be preaching, rather than seeing it as them attempting to defend their right to sing any song they pleased, anywhere they liked.

The South African constitution doesn’t allow that amount of freedom of speech, however (from my limited knowledge of consititional law). You (whether black or white) aren’t allowed to sing a song with the lyrics “Shoot/kill the Boer” anymore than you’re allowed to sing  a song with the hypothetical lyrics “Burn the Black” or “Run over the Indian with an 18-wheeler.”

So because we let our government and our government’s sock puppets keep us in racially charged fear we might be tempted to see this attack for more than it is.

All indications currently point to a wage dispute. Both News24 and The Post have reported that the SAPS have stated that their current theory for motive is that ET didn’t pay his murderers for work they did for him. It is most likely that it had nothing to do with the infernal song that is at the foremost part of our collective psyche. It is even highly possible that the murder had nothing to do with Terre’blanche’s prior sins.

Occam’s razor pointing to the likelihood of a more conventional money-based motive rather than a racial one shouldn’t be that comforting, though. At the risk of being overly speculative I think this is a unique opportunity to get depressingly analytical about the state of the nation.

Hundreds of farm attacks occur every year and yet there’s rarely as quick and definitive a response as has been to ET’s. Within hours two young men were arrested and charged with his murder. Most farmers that are attacked like this don’t have the privelege of such swift justice. It’s ridiculous how differently you’re treated by the police when you have a known face, or when the media is watching a case. It’s unacceptable, in fact.

Let’s say the murder was financially motivated. More specifically, revenge for money not received because with the employer dead the employees obviously won’t be able to get their pay. How much could Terre’blanche have owed them? Let’s overestimate and say just shy of R10 000 each. That’s well above the average monthly wage for a skilled worker. It’s likely that these two young men were labourers and not skilled workers (reducing that estimate to R3000 each) but we don’t know that for sure yet.

R20k… Is that what a life is worth?

Maybe that’s too utilitarian a view. Maybe this was about the principle of the thing and not just the money. One man promised two young men compensation for work and then didn’t hold up his side of the bargain. Revenge for broken trust, not just unpaid wages. Not impossible, but completely unlikely.