A Red Storm brewed some Beatles

Earlier this evening while listening to “I am the Walrus” by The Beatles my wife asked how I knew that song. She wasn’t familiar with it you see. I replied that I had heard it used in a Commodore 64 demo and then spent the next few minutes wracking my brains for the name of that demo.

I thought it might have been made by Nato, and the title started with “Red” but nothing jumped out at me. Then I thought of Fairlight but again, nothing there except some of their demos were produced with another group, Triad! Yes, that was it!

Triad created Red Storm in 1992, it’s not the most technically sophisticated demo but it’s one of my favourite C64 demos ever. It has some nice effects but I really loved the Zoo TV inspired visuals and poetry. The music was great too, but I didn’t realise it was covers of Beatles music. Granted, it was done on a C64 SID chip so it has that 8 bit sound but it still sounds great. ‘Course, that might just be my nostalgic ears playing tricks on me.

What do you think? Yay or Nay?

Greenify your Android Phone

Greenify is an app for rooted Android phones that will cause any named application to hibernate when it is no longer in the foreground.

An app can remain running in the background on Android devices even after you think you’ve exited it. That’s all well and and good when the app is a timer or alarm but not so good when it’s a misbehaving app sucking down network data or slowing down your device. This is where Greenify comes in and it boasts that it will allow your Android device to multitask like iOS does. A dubious boast if ever I heard one!

greenify

It was easy to configure after installing it, I selected the Facebook app and hibernated it. Greenify causes the app to hibernate after turning the screen off for 30 seconds. Once I launched Facebook again the Facebook logo appeared as if the app was shutdown and it took longer to start. It worked! It doesn’t kill the app. If it did then it might be restarted automatically.

I haven’t been able to figure out if Greenify helps extend my phone battery. Yesterday I carried out a small test which I may have botched. I launched Facebook and then left my phone for one hour with and one hour without hibernating the Facebook app from fully charged. After an hour:

  • 93% battery left with the Facebook app hibernated.
  • 95% battery left without hibernation. (Ooops!)

The difference is small and unfortunately it’s not as conclusive as you might think. During the hibernation test I fired up Ingress to paste a passcode in. I did it as quickly as possible but the Ingress app likely remained running in the background for a time. Could it have chewed through 2% of battery?
Also, charging batteries to 100% is notoriously unreliable. Even though it says 100% the battery may not be at at level.

A better test would be an overnight one starting from perhaps 90% of battery. I’ll also keep an eye on things with Better Battery Stats. That app reported that Google Maps caused several “partial wakelocks”. Unfortunately system apps like Google Maps can’t be hibernated.

This app may not save much battery power but it probably will help people with older phones and slower CPUs, but they’ll have to be running ICS. I guess if they’ve rooted their phone it’s likely they can update the ROM too..

Further reading on reddit and AP.

The Weakest Link

As a Resistance agent in the game of Ingress it can be frustrating to see your local city or locality covered in green control fields. Blarney where I live is firmly blue but Cork isn’t so lucky. So when a huge control field popped up extending from Blackrock Castle to the City to Cork Airport to Carrigaline I had to find a way to bring it down.

green-fields

On Sunday I did just that. The Old Bridge portal was level 4 or 5 and had at least one level six resonator. I took down some of the resonators easily enough but the final L4 resonator proved tricky as OliverIE recharged it remotely while I attacked! The most worrying part of the capture was the group of 13-15 year old boys crossing the bridge who chanted penis jokes behind me! Idiots. One of the downsides of visiting some locations I guess. Oliver will earn a tidy sum of AP capturing the portal back again too. (You’re welcome!)

Ingress is quite limited as a game but it’s a very interesting experiment. The hack/capture portal gameplay is one where you have to cooperate or at least be mindful of the enemy. If your portals are too strong you’ll have a nice set of virtual points on a map but you won’t level up any time soon. The “winning side” in any area don’t get any points for maintaining a huge control field.
When you first start up the game there’s a quick tutorial where the players runs through missions designed to familiarise them with the game. Unfortunately that’s about as far as directed gameplay goes. Hopefully in the future missions will be added with objectives for players. Having said that, if this is a taste of what “augmented reality” games can be like I’d like more please. It’s a good excuse to get out walking if nothing else.

I still think it’s a devious ploy by Google to collect photos and information about monuments, statues and places of interest. We’re also feeding them very useful walking information connecting those places.

The Resistance in Cork make a come back

What happens when you severely damage a single Ingress portal?

Ingress map of Cork

Ingress map of Cork

From the logs it appears that 18 links were taken down when I destroyed all but one of the resonators in The Cork Vision Centre Ingress portal this afternoon.

Cork Vision Centre Resonator

So close!

Unfortunately the building was closed so I had to stand outside the gates and the single remaining L4 resonator was at the far side of the portal, away from me. I ran out of time to collect more XMP bursters to finish the job. Still, I think I got about 9,000 AP from that one single portal so I am very happy.

Walk around Cork

I also walked almost 12km in two and a half hours as I tried to scavenge supplies – XMP and XM to aid in my task. Even a month ago I couldn’t have imagined walking that distance. It’s not that far really but I had neglected my exercise. Making walking a part of a game certainly helped my motivation!

I did capture a portal today, the Flower Pot Man on Carey’s Lane. The actual statue that portal is based on appears to be gone now but I remember seeing it years ago. I broke through to Level 4 doing that!

It’s nice to see that gap in green in the Ingress map of Cork now. It’ll give the Enlightenment something to do over the coming week. They were probably getting bored recharging those portals all the time..

4:29PM donncha destroyed an L3 Resonator on The Cork Vision Centre (88 North Main Street, Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland)
4:29PM donncha destroyed an L3 Resonator on The Cork Vision Centre (88 North Main Street, Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland)
4:29PM donncha destroyed an L4 Resonator on The Cork Vision Centre (88 North Main Street, Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland)
4:30PM donncha destroyed an L4 Resonator on The Cork Vision Centre (88 North Main Street, Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland)
4:31PM donncha destroyed an L3 Resonator on The Cork Vision Centre (88 North Main Street, Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland)

Continue reading “The Resistance in Cork make a come back”

Tethered shooting Android apps for Canon and Nikon DSLRs

I discovered Helicon Remote a few days ago. It allows you to hook your Android phone to a Canon or Nikon DSLR via the camera’s USB port and control many aspects of photo taking. It even has live preview on the phone screen which is a nice bonus.

The app itself is free to download but is limited in that it won’t allow you to shoot RAW images. It also doesn’t restore the camera settings when you shut it down so you may need to fix those after using it. If you register it by handing over $38 (discounted price, it’s normally $48!) you’ll be able to make RAW photos.

There is also the free remote release app by Chainfire and his (much) more advanced DSLR Controller costing only €7.13 that looks to be similar to the Helicon app but more reasonably priced.

I tried the Helicon app with my SGSII, an OTG USB cable and my Canon 40D. Images are stored on your phone just in case you’re wondering where they’ve disappeared to after disconnecting everything!

Android: auto connect to Bluetooth speakers

I have two bluetooth speakers at home. One is a Jawbone Jambox and also a Creative D100. The Jambox speaker looks for a bluetooth device when I switch it on that makes connecting a synch but the D100 does not. That necessitates clicking the Bluetooth Android notification and tapping the D100 device to connect. A small inconvenience I grant you but one nonetheless.

This is where Bluetooth Auto Connect comes in. As the name suggests, this app automatically connects to other bluetooth devices. After installing it I selected the Creative D100 so that device will auto connect. When both speakers are switched on it connects to the Jambox which is fine by me. The D100 now connects whenever I switch bluetooth on!

Finally, I wanted to enable bluetooth if I fired up Podkicker to listen to some podcasts but only if I was at home. Llama Profiles to the rescue! I created a new event that checks if Podkicker is running, if wifi is connected to my home network and the phone is charging. If all conditions are true then it enables bluetooth. Bluetooth then connects to whichever speaker is active and I get nice pleasant wireless sound.

It might be a pain if I’m downstairs and my speakers were on in my office upstairs but that’ll teach me not to waste electricity while I’m afk won’t it? If I ever get an NFC tag I could do something with that and my Nexus 7 to do something similar but more localised!

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