Category Archives: Technoramble

All things technological.

Taking screenshots on Android (without root) and iPhone

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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

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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.

Thunderbird 3.1 on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx 64 bit

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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.
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Everything you can do I can do better: Charting in OpenOffice.org Calc vs. MS Excel

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For the most part OpenOffice.org does what an office suite needs to do and thus far it has served me well. Recently however, I came across two features that affected me as an average user of spreadsheet applications.

Firstly, I wanted to draw a chart of data that wasn’t located in contiguous regions of the spreadsheet. That is, the cells weren’t next to one another. Step one: Create a blank chart. Step two: Right click in the chart and select “Data Ranges.” So far, Excel and Calc work exactly the same.

OpenOffice.org Calc Data Range selection dialog for charts

OpenOffice.org Calc Data Range selection dialog for charts

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Intrepid Ibex (or How Ubuntu just made Linux even friendlier)

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Sequestered from my humble (by global standards) DSL connection in the heart of the Cradle of Humankind I desperately try to get online with the few bars of GPRS signal that I have. It’ll be expensive, but I’ve not checked my mail, Slashdot, or miscellaneous forums in over 16 hours… Violent withdrawal was moments away and it’s never pretty.

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Far Cry 2 – Preview

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A gorgeous African savannah

Sequels can be such a messy business.

Crytek, the studio that brought us the original Far Cry and the more recent Crysis, isn’t developing Far Cry 2. The game won’t be built on CryEngine 2 (the engine behind Crysis) but on Dunia, a custom-built engine that re-uses only 2-3% of the original CryEngine code. Lush island forest landscapes have been exchanged for 50km² of African savannah. The story is quite different from the original and Jack Carver won’t even be reappearing as the protagonist.

So what about the game makes it Far Cry 2? Using the original CryEngine, Far Cry showed us that games could have great graphics and be set in a large open-ended environment that can be explored non-linearly without pausing to load. Far Cry 2′s game mechanic centres around this concept and it promises to push the envelope of open-ended first-person shooters.

Fairly little is known about the characters or story. Apparently our hero is the “strong, silent type” and seeking to rid the world of a filthy literary critic slash warlord. You find yourself in a fictitious African country, bed-ridden with malaria and this man has the gall to enter your hotel room uninvited, read your memoirs, and mock them. He also happens to supply both sides of a faction war with weapons.

Malaria is one of the biggest killers on our continent so what better choice of handicap mechanic for a game set in Africa? Peter Redding, narrative designer of Far Cry 2, revealed at the Game Designer’s Conference earlier this year that the disease is also used to force the player to interact with the non-threatening characters. The friendlier NPCs have access to medicine without which you will die.

The depth of the interaction with NPCs promises to give more scope to the open environment than just being able to wander wherever you want. Your path to the kingpin is not pre-determined by a set story but guided by an intricate progression mechanic. To get to him you must advance through the ranks inside the factions. This you earn with your reputation.

Your reputation is based on how you do a mission and who you do it with. Walking the fine line of fame and notoriety within the factions gives you access to different missions, each of which can be approached in a variety of ways.

Ubisoft Montreal have gone to great lengths to immerse the player in the game world. They use new ways of graphically depicting game mechanics as Far Cry 2 will forego a classic heads-up display. Mission briefings, healing and even viewing the map are seen from the first-person perspective.

Far Cry 2 promises much, the hype machine stands poised and the fans have high hopes. It’s a little sad that the studio that was responsible for the original Far Cry has had no hand in it’s sequel but (dare I say it) given how Crysis turned out… maybe that’s a good thing.

We makes it asplode

Call of Duty 4 Review

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Flash out!

Flash out!

How many First Person Shooters can be praised for its compelling single-player storytelling? How many of those boast a multiplayer component potentially capable of displacing the most entrenched shooter in competitive gaming?

The single player game seizes your attention from the first mission and the intensity doesn’t let up until the closing credits roll. It’s almost like playing a blockbuster movie. Cinematics are in the style of Half-Life’s interactive tram ride but are more visceral, more engaging. The fierce pace of the action combined with the amazing interactive cinematics makes for a single player campaign that does justice to the Call of Duty franchise.

It took about 9 hours to finish the single player game the first time. This includes replaying certain sections a few times as well as stopping to admire the scenery. If you knuckle down and play the game through on the easiest difficulty setting don’t expect anything more than five or six hours of entertainment. You can replay the game at higher skill levels (which only makes the AI more accurate) or take on Arcade Mode where you rush against a timer. This doesn’t make up for the short single player, though.

Occasionally your team mates seem completely useless while other times it’s as if you’re just along for the ride. As with its predecessors, COD4 focusses on infantry combat. You can’t commandeer vehicles, though you do ride shotgun (in a helicopter and Spectre gunship!).

Similar to Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 4 uses a persistent online profile that stores your rank and accolades. Instead of choosing which new equipment and skills to unlock, players of equal rank have access to the same weapons and perks. You are awarded XP for your performance in every multiplayer match. After amassing enough XP to gain a level you are granted access to new weapons, new perks and new challenges. Weapon attachments (such as sights and silencers) are unlocked by getting kills with the weapon. The weapons themselves are well balanced, but realism is sacrificed at times in favour of balance.

Sometimes you win but it sure doesnt look that way...

Sometimes you win but it sure doesn't look that way...

When you create a new profile you’ll have access to three of the five basic classes. Each class represents a weapon group and is unmodifiable. As soon as the Create a Class feature becomes available the basic classes become redundant, though only five custom classes can be created.

If ranks, levels and unlocks don’t appeal you can always play ModWarfare, a mod that installs with the main game. All equipment and perks are then available but at the cost of fame and glory. The game didn’t ship with bots, so you won’t be able to play  multiplayer game modes unless at a LAN or connected to the Internet.

A multitude of configurable multiplayer game modes are available to suit every occasion. Modes like Free for All and Team Deathmatch are there for those that enjoy the classics. The objective-driven game modes (Headquarters, Domination, Search and Destroy, Sabotage) play best. Headquarters, a capture-and-hold derivative that allows respawning, is a LAN favourite. Search and Destroy features as the equivalent to Counter-Strike’s bomb defuse maps. Depending on the mode you can have a fast paced, no down-time game or a tactical one where death means you’re out for the round.

Infinity Ward has taken what they and others have done well in other games and combined them into a shooter with an excellently told story and multiplayer that just plays well. The graphics and sound are excellent, providing the atmosphere for a truly engaging tale and immersive gaming experience. Call of Duty 4 doesn’t revolutionise the genre but it certainly comes near to perfecting it.

Before...

Before...

After

After

How many dirty bombs does it take to change a lightbulb?

How many dirty bombs does it take to change a lightbulb?

The First rule of Hellgate: London Alpha is…

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A lesser author would feel guilty at such blatant plagiarism. But Steve Jobs, quoting Picasso, says, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” That said, I still extend my heartfelt apologies to Chuck Palahniuk.

By the measure of Picasso (and Jobs) I am the Leonardo da Vinci of the blogging world. If you would dare to call blogging art.

But I digress. Only those gamers who played Diablo for the first time in 1996/97, fell in love with it, and were then forced to wait from 2000 to 2005 for Diablo 2 to be released would understand this fully. Remember the excitement when you were invited to the closed beta? What about the horror of the 100MB beta client download? I was on dial-up at the time so let me assure you that it wasn’t fun.

Now imagine that times 4 gajibazillion. Hellgate: London promised even more than Diablo 2 did (aside: and even D2 disappointed the followers of The Great Hype Machineâ„¢ back then).

Then imagine this in your inbox.

Congratulations! You’ve been selected to be part of the very first group to help test Hellgate: London, the highly-anticipated Action-RPG from Flagship Studios!

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