Continue reading »]]> Running a little bit late with this as they have been up and available for a little while now but I recently quickly whipped up a couple of Super Clock skins for that great Beautiful Widgets. So without further ado…

Cosmic Liquid

Cosmic Liquid Alt (Background on the clock part rather than whole widget)

I’m working on other skins for both the Super Clock and other parts of the Beautiful Widgets collection so keep a look out!

Continue reading »]]> So, if you read the previous post here I want on quite a tangent with my phone and now my trusty HTC Desire is running CyanogenMOD 7 with various things done to ease off the situation with the atrocious internal memory.

To continue on the story I was using Launcher Pro for a while, even forking out to use the widgets but getting increasingly dismayed at what would seem the lack of current active development. So thought I would take the jump and give Go Launcher Ex a try… well I was pleasantly surprised, just as good to use as Launcher Pro, if not better, strong active development with good strong theme support, all completely free with free separate downloadable widgets to go with it. Widget themes are not so strong at present however. So armed with this and Beautiful Widgets I give you my theme styling for this week…

And all the bits you need (see also screen shots at the end)… Obviously you need Go Launcher Ex and Beautiful  Widgets (paid version) installed first! Find the separate TronPro Go Launcher theme download on the market and apply it through the theme section of  Go Launcher. In Beautiful Widgets you are looking for the Tron super clock skin and Vos-Neon weather skin, apply and place accordingly. The last thing is to set all the text to a cyan like colour as shown. Additional stuff you may prefer to fiddle with, the included wallpapers with the theme are good but can clash with the cyan text, the wallpaper in the screenshot is one of the default ones but you may prefer sourcing your own. I also changed the default icon for the marketplace to one of the themes other icons, it just didn’t speak marketplace to me and last of all I changed the app draw icon to the app draw icon in the Honeycomb Go Launcher theme, personally think it fits the theme better. Enjoy!

Continue reading »]]> Been sitting on this write up for several days tweaking it etc. but about time I uploaded it.

So, you are looking at a phone thinking of picking up one of the latest fangled smartphones and effectively faced with making a base choice from four possibilities, Android, iOS, Windows or Blackberry.

I will stick my hand up here and openly admit I am very much in the Android camp here but my recent experiences has made me wonder what the current manufactures are doing to their poor Android handsets and how it can impact on the general public. Let me see if I can break down a few stereo types, do forgive me if I offend.

iOS phone = typical Mac user, loves the shiny gloss and all the techie stuff hidden away from them numerated to a couple of button selections

Android phone = typical Windows/Linux user, loves to fiddle and customise to their heart’s content

Windows phone = probably somewhere in-between…

Blackberry = Possibly the same, can’t say I know much about the range of phones unfortunately and probably the last you’ll see me type it for the ret of this entry.

Apple kicked off the big smartphone trend when they released the iPhone powered by what is now known as iOS, took a normal smartphone, heavily glossed over the technical gibberish to make it accessible to the masses and it worked in a big way, made the Windows phone at the time seem very clunky and Symbian just, well, outdated (and speaking as a former Nokia owner as well). So of course Google wants a bit of the pie and has iOS well in it’s sights giving birth to Android.

Google and Microsoft have one thing in common that set them apart from Apple, they just do the phone’s OS, it’s up to the manufacturers to put the hardware together… but this is where Google and the Android platform could fall over with it’s open nature and it would be the fault of the manufacturers unless Google can get some sort of handle on the situation.

Where as there are some hardware guidelines for a Windows phone for the manufacturers to follow, Google leave it completely up to the manufacturers and so all sorts of model configurations are being stuck out into the market and some with heavy customisations. The word ‘fragmentation’ comes into play here but that is not what this is about and personally think this is more strongly connected to the OS customisations that the manufacturers apply to the Android OS making the overall behaviour of the Android OS inconsistent. So what am I saying then?

I am the owner of a HTC Desire and never been so happy with a phone but it wasn’t without its gripe, internal memory. Prior to the Android 2.2 update apps could only be installed onto internal memory and phones with low internal memory where quick to run out. Google addressed this with Android 2.2 by allowing apps to be moved to SDCard however the app had to support it and system critical apps where advised away from the feature so in the grand scheme of things phones with low internal memory where no better off.

Now to more recently, Android 2.3, HTC Desire owners get some bad news, they are not getting the 2.3 update, massive uproar meaning they had to rethink the plan by cutting out select apps. You see, if HTC had have just put in that little bit extra internal memory.

Before HTC u-turned on the decision I finally had it, rooted the phone, s-off’ed it, replaced HBOOT reconfiguring the internal memory partitioning and put on a custom 2.3 rom… I effectively ripped my phone apart software wise and put it back together again.

It was literally like having a new phone, smoother, more fluid and presently don’t have to worry one bit about running out of space when installing new apps. I don’t know if what I’m experiencing was solely down to but it got me wondering about what was and could be going on.

You see, the way I’m seeing Android phones at the moment is equivalent to manufactured PC’s, use the cheapest hardware possible for the cheap spec you want it for and then stick on a load of completely useless software that serves nothing more than to use up space and clog up the operation of the phone… and that is just the manufacturers, the carriers get a hold of the phone and make it worse!

I have to admit, the core user experience of Android isn’t the best out there and so the manufactures add and customise to try to get round that but they are not apple, they can’t tell us what we want, we android users do think for ourselves and so everything that is included with any Android phone is not always welcomed with open arms… assuming it all works to any feasible level in the first place!

Add to that there are plenty a stuff on the marketplace to provide any given wanted function to an acceptable feasible level so do we ultimately need all the custom stuff put on phones anymore? Or at least to a point they can be removed if we find a better alternative.

To me all this coupled together could be killing the expected Apple alternative experience, we know how apple devices work, smooth and fluid, I now know for sure that an Android handset can be the same but for me to get there took the action of taking off what was already on there.

This example is a simple little thing and is something I’ve seen mentioned a number of times. Take browsing the installed apps, Apple you flick through the pages, responsive and smooth, Windows Phone you scroll around panes and hubs, again responsive and smooth, my Android phone pre root, jittery as hell and have noticed the same thing on numerous display phones as well. I root etc. and suddenly the simple task of browsing apps is responsive and smooth… well, that proves the hardware was capable of it so why the hell was it all jittery before hand?

Really makes me wonder what the manufacturers are doing to their handsets.

Continue reading »]]> In need of new memory, mentioned stuff about computer memory a number of times in previous posts, the cause of a number of problems but the end result is simply this, I only have two gig and I really need four gig.

Got me remembering however, looking through the prices and seeing that it would cost around a hundred pounds to replace the current two gig with four gig I remember how I paid sixty four pound to upgrade in the past from sixteen meg to thirty two meg and even when I paid ninety nine pound to upgrade Ye old Atari ST from half meg to two and a half meg!

How things have moved on, and no, I don’t know why I wrote out all the numbers…

Continue reading »]]> Currently laid here in bed, the lady has Big Brother on which I am trying my best to ignore, I do like this WordPress app a lot but all that is not what I’m wanting to tap on this screen about.

Got a couple of videos up on the new channel now with more in the works… even more amazing however us that I’ve actually got them posted onto the site as well! Although I probably should have had the posted into the site as soon as I had them uploaded rather than a day later, don’t worry, I intend on getting a good habit with the whole thing.

However I only wanted this to be a quick note, going to get this uploaded now and have a few more blasts on Hyper Jump before I go to sleep.

Continue reading »]]> You get days that are good, you get days that are bad, but you get days that are just weird, you just can’t put anything to it.

Today has been like that, little strange things not working, not in a big way, little weird unrelated things that only take a little juggle to get back on track.

Created the new YouTube account to start from scratch, had intentions to be productive on that front before heading off to work that didn’t happen in a strange feeling way.

Got news the wedding album is done now so that’s good, also some other possible good news that could change a few things in the future… so yeah, some good news in there but a strange feeling day all the same.

Continue reading »]]> It is something I keep saying but this time it is quite important. For those that don’t know (all of you?) I have a sister site ’4 the fun of it’ (4tfoi) which is gaming related stuff, mostly gameplay oriented videos at present. The videos are uploaded onto YouTube and linked back over accordingly.

This year I have been pushing for being part of the partnership program to try and get something from the time I put into my work, however, a video in the past got caught in copyright nuisance and left what would seem to be a permanent mark on my YouTube account and so have been refused because of this.

As much as I hate the pathetic pushyness of these big corps I sadly need to ‘play the game’. The issue I’m faced with at this present is trying to ‘resolve’ this mark or starting from scratch with a new account, building it back up to the same sort if level in preferabley a short time and then trying again and at this point I believe it will be easier starting from scratch!

Decisions decisions…

Edit: This is my first post from the WordPress Android app

Continue reading »]]> As I have mentioned a number of times previously I do gaming related videos providing real life and other computer issues are not getting in the way but I thought I would share a couple of things in case any of you also have issues like the ones I am going to talk about. As a further note, I am currently using Windows 7 RC 64bit with latest versions of all codecs and software at the time of typing this up so problems may or may not be present for you but at least you know of possible solutions.

Picked up the Blackmagic Intensity Pro capture hardware last year some time and is a lovely bit of hardware, in fact I think I made a post about it. My first problem came about with a slight limit on my hardware setup, HD capture would result in sound falling out of sync. A lovely bit of free software called Virtualdub is able to compensate for any momentary delays and so keep everything in sync and for the most part is not noticeable with how it compensates.

When I started capturing from my 360 I soon came against my first problem, when I would play back the video it would look like it had a bad interlacing problem and I would be capturing at 720p! Processing the videos even in this state resulted in some horrible results. I soon tracked down the issue to the mjpeg codec that ffdshow uses and a prompt disabling of these fixed it all up.

Before

Disabling MJPEG

After

Next up I started on some retro compilation projects which are now primarily known as ‘Mashups’, a lot of this is done via emulators and a lovely little program called ‘Fraps’, enter the next issue. Playback of the captured video would be very slooooooow, not a case of it couldn’t handle it, a case of the timing was completely gagged. Enter ffdshow again, it has a decoder for Fraps which I had to also disable, but this wasn’t to be the end of it all.

Fraps Disabling

So I sorted out ffdshow to stop it interfering in my work but when I came to importing the video’s into the editing software all was still not well. In the case of the Fraps video footage I would get no sound, no strange encoding or anything like that, even though it knew sound was present, it just wasn’t seeing it. Which is strange as it all worked in the 32 bit XP setup. Also some of my raw captured 360 video footage would also play with incorrect timings.

One very simple solution to these two issues and probably others that I have yet to encounter and I can only think the reason it fixes up might be down to something with the headers in the files themselves. Load the files into Virtualdub, make sure both video and audio options are selected to direct stream copy and just re-save. Sorted, both problems were solved and the videos imported fine into the editing software.

Continue reading »]]> As the title might suggest the computer is not quite to a point that I would prefer it but it is behaving a hell of a lot better than it previously has been, what with the banishing of that memory chip that proved to be such a misery! Currently tidying up a Win XP install on the system, I did have Win 7 RC 64 bit on prior to it but as usual I have some freak hardware configuration that causes problems.

All started out very good, got the OS installed, most of the drivers built in off the bat but still updated what I could of it. Got my usual essentials all set up and started to feel a love I hadn’t felt since I first started using XP all those years ago. Testing various aspects that I needed, fraps capture in various proggies, video playback (a bit of a no brainer that one but still had to be tested) and capture from the 360, that’s where it all started to go wrong. On the other hand I discovered I seem to have broken something on my Audigy card, the headphone socket on the front panel no longer seems to be working properly so at the same time there could be some connection there too.

At the moment I just want a stable computer so I can wrap up on a number of things and continue on with other things, I’ve had enough of computer problems for the present time no thanks to that memory chip and just want to get on with my little projects. Only potential problem at present is I’m a bit paranoid over the heat it’s kicking out but I do have a meaty Phenom 2 black edition now so probably just not properly accounting for it on the case cooling setup, all is fine in the mean time thanks to that wonderful cool ‘n quiet technology but will have to keep check when it comes to the more strenuous tasks.

Really wanted everything to work in Win 7, was starting to really like using and working in the environment.

Update 16/09/09 – Category change

Continue reading »]]> Mashup? What ya on about? Well that is a very good question. To put it simply, at the time in my computer reduced state and with the prospect of no longer being able to work on my bigger video productions I had the thought of applying the ethics of ’12seconds’ to my Youtube videos. However the computer is all up and running again but I’m still going ahead with this idea.

It partially came about running through some ’100 of’ videos (a number of them I have showcased on 4tfoi), it’s all well and good for the first couple of minutes but might get a bit tedious if, say, you are not doing something while watching the vid (eating or something like that) or if you are trawling through 99 other clips just to find the clip of the one thing that you so fondly remember. However at the same time I thought it could prove a good creative booster given my computer restriction at the time.

At the end, a video can’t be any longer than 1 minute, beyond that I’m not trying hard enough. The mashups will mostly consist of gaming related material but I do intend on exploring other areas… hence why this is being posted on both 4tfoi and srmurphy.com, gaming related ones on 4tfoi and the others on srmurphy.com. Will start off simple with compilation clips but… well who knows where the creativity will take me.

Continue reading »]]> Let me start this by explaining a few little bits. Computing today is currently present in two main forms, 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need to go into the nitty gritty but I do need to explain a couple of differences between the two… well, just one really.

Due to technically restrictions in relation to the way computers work which I don’t need to go into, 32 bit Windows has a limitation on the amount of memory that you can use, 4 gig or more and it will generally only use a little bit above 3 gig, might report that it sees more but ultimately it doesn’t utilise it. Enter 64 bit Windows, allows you to use 4 gig and more (depending on any restrictions imposed within the software).

Now let me present some evidence, only recently 32 bit Windows xp started hanging solid on me, did have some occasional oddities prior but nothing major to threaten operations so to speak. Eager to try Windows 7 during it’s beta period I try installing the 64 bit version however it would display some bad instability which I put down to the test code. When the computer became inoperable I obtain a new motherboard and CPU, in the installation process the memory chips go in reverse order in comparison to how they where in the old board, major instability problem, so much so that even memtest hangs solid!

The verdict in all this is simple, the computer has been operating with a bad memory chip for possibly a long time, you see, I had it installed in the upper most slot so 32 bit Windows didn’t allocate all of it and of course when I tried the beta of 64 bit Windows 7 it was using all of it. The past few months the chip must have degraded to a point that it started effecting 32 bit Windows and when I swapped it into the new board in reverse order, it was the first chip to be used for memory, hence the instability increase.

So why did I not suspect the memory before hand? Well, I was going by prior experience in my judgement, I have experienced both motherboard and memory issues before. Motherboard issue had the symptoms of hard hangs like I had been experiencing and the memory issue produced very very random error messages.

What I have learned in all this, not everything is always as it seems and probably should be a little less quick to judge to which I should probably make an apology to Gigabyte for any bad mouthing that has been roughly aimed in their direction, may have been this memory chip all along and nothing to do with the motherboard.

This is the little bugger