I am pleased to announce beta 4 of Quasar Media Player.
This new version introduces some new features and big improvements in terms of performance and memory-usage.
The previously separate last.fm Audioscrobbler QScrobbler has been integrated into Quasar as add-on.
This release also marks the introduction of the Cover Art Downloader which uses the new open-source katastrophos.net Cover Art search engine to download cover art images for the new Cover Art Flow album browser.

Binaries for the previous platforms (Sharp Qtopia and pdaXrom) along with new binaries for Windows and OS X (universal) are available on the project’s homepage.

The process is quite involving and not for the faint of heart. Here are some snapshots of the process:

Some of the pictures show my 3G/HSDPA mod.
Also check out the interesting forum thread over at pocketables.

There is no magic here. The ingredients are really simple actually: A few pieces of wood, screws and glue.
The construction is rigid. No angles are required due to self-stability of the quadratic frames. Just make sure the inner length of each edge is exactly 19″ (48.26 cm). Glue and screw the pieces together and that’s it.

If you intend to do the same here is a word of warning: Be sure to use a placement inside the casing that is not covered by the silvery radiation shield coating as it will dramatically reduce the reception quality of the signal. I had to sand down some of the coating to get better signal strength. Your mileage may vary.

It’s been some time since the last update. In my previous post I mentioned I was in the process of setting up a nightly build system. This system has been running silently since May.
I guess it is finally time for me to officially announce the nightly builds of Quasar Media Player:

http://www.katastrophos.net/downloads/quasar/nightly/

Along with the most current sourcecode tarball, binaries are available for 4 platforms:
Windows (win32), OS X (universal binary), Sharp Qtopia and pdaXrom Linux (both for Zaurus PDA)
The Windows version comes in two styles: a generic setup (EXE) and a self-contained portable version (7z archive)

Enjoy and please leave a comment.

First step is to install Wine either as super user or by using sudo:

sudo apt-get install wine

As normal user fire up your X server and your favourite terminal application and get the latest Inno Setup QuickStart pack:

mkdir /tmp/innosetup
cd /tmp/innosetup
wget http://files.jrsoftware.org/ispack/ispack-5.2.3.exe
wine ./ispack-5.2.3.exe

This will start the installer in Wine. Note, for the installation you will need a running X11 server since the installer obviously is graphical. If you have not set up Wine before, the default location C:\Program Files\Inno Setup 5 will install to ~/.wine/drive_c/Programme/Inno Setup 5.

Luckily the Inno Setup compiler offers a command line interface, ISCC.exe, which will run in Wine without the necessity of having a X server running. So it is ideally suited for automated runs.

Here is a simple wrapper shell script called iscc:

#!/bin/sh
unset DISPLAY
scriptname=$1
[ -f "$scriptname" ] && scriptname=$(winepath -w "$scriptname")
wine "C:\Program Files\Inno Setup 5\ISCC.exe" "$scriptname" "$2" "$3" "$4" "$5" "$6" "$7" "$8" "$9"

I installed this script in my local bin directory (~/bin) and added it to the PATH environment variable.
This will allow running the Inno Setup compiler from anywhere and it also makes it very easy to integrate into a build script. You can even feed a script via stdin, e.g. something like:

iscc - < ./myscript.iss

So, I was wondering the other day how to implement a functionality similar to Firefox’s “Open Containing Folder” or OS X’s “Reveal In Finder”.
It turned out to be extremely simple. Here is the Pascal/Delphi-Code:

uses
  ShellAPI;

function RevealInExplorer(const Filename: string; ShowExplorerWithFoldersBar: Boolean = True): Boolean;
var
  Params: string;
begin
  if FileExists(Filename) or DirectoryExists(Filename) then
  begin
    Params := Format('/select,"%s"', [Filename]);

    if ShowExplorerWithFoldersBar then
      Params := '/e,' + Params;

    ShellExecute(0, 'open', 'explorer.exe', PChar(Params), nil, SW_SHOWNORMAL);

    Result := True;
  end
  else
    Result := False;
end;

Here are some photos of the drive itself and how to install it in the U810. Note, the drive is 5 mm high and will fit into the U810 without any modifications.
Also keep in mind that the U1010 has a different connector (50-pin IDE instead of ZIF), so these ZIF-drives will not work here. However, there are reports on UMPC Portal that suggest that it is possible to get a replacement connector flat band cable for the U810 that is the 50pin IDE cable, so I guess it is also possible the other way around for the U1010.

Here are the obligatory benchmarks comparing the new SSD against the old Toshiba MK1011GAH 100 GB hard drive that was previously installed in the U810:

Needless to say that applications cold-launch a lot faster with the SSD. (Firefox with 12 add-ons: ~10 s before -> ~6 s after, Chrome: ~3 s before, ~1 s after, Thunderbird: ~8 s before -> ~3 s after).

Startup time was reduced quite a bit but not dramatically. However, returning from sleep and hibernate saw a huge improvement. Unfortunately I can not provide values of the old drive, so no comparison.
I did not notice longer battery run times. However, the whole system runs a lot cooler because the SSD naturally does not produce heat as extensive as the HDD did.

I am satisfied with this upgrade – especially since it has boosted compile-times when working with CodeGear RAD Studio and Delphi – due to the great performance when accessing, reading and writing small files. Your mileage may vary.

I just installed Windows 7 Business Build 7000 on my U810. It is quite nice actually and seems to run faster than Vista.

I installed the Vista drivers from the driver CD. The Setup.exe on the driver CD will complain that the operating system is unsupported. To circumvent this problem, just start the setup in Vista compatibility mode:
Right-click on “Setup.exe”, “Properties” -> “Compatibility” -> “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” “Windows Vista”.

Install these items:

Drivers
04. Button Driver
05. Camera Driver
07. Fingerprint sensor (driver)
08. FUJ02B1 Device Driver (HotKey Driver)
09. FUJ02E3 Device Driver (System Extension Driver)
11. Pen Driver
12. Pointer device driver

Utilities/Applications
03. Button Utilities
07. Fujitsu System Extension Utilities

I could not get the Auto-Rotation feature to work. Also, you’ll probably have to calibrate the touch screen.
I also disabled the power management feature of the FCL USB Pen Tablet in Device Manager (Right-click on “Human Interface Devices/FCL USB Pen Tablet”, “Properties” -> “Power Management” -> Disable “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”). This improves the response of the touch-screen/tablet.

Oh, and BTW, Windows 7 “only” uses 7.5 GB of disk space, whereas Vista uses 15 GB I think.

Here is a simple way to disable or enable whole code blocks with just two slashes:

PHP / C++:

/*
  Block (commented block)
//*/

///*
  Block (active block)
//*/

Object Pascal/Delphi:

(*
  Block (commented block)
//*)

//(*
  Block (active block)
//*)

Alternatively you can use { and } in the Object Pascal/Delphi example.

Double-Slash-Whole-Block-Switching (Object Pascal/Delphi only)

The Object Pascal dialect used in Delphi supports three ways of commenting code, two for commenting whole blocks ( { } and (* *) ) and one for commenting lines ( // ).
We can exploit this feature to switch between two code blocks easily and fast:

Block 2 is in the enabled state:

{
  Block 1  (commented block)
(*}
  Block 2  (active block)
//*)

Note, I am just adding two slashes in front of the first comment block to activate it again – similar to Double-Slash-Whole-Block-Commenting trick above. This will also magically disable the second block due to the way the comment marks are arranged:

//{
  Block 1  (active block)
(*}
  Block 2  (commented block)
//*)

These tricks are probably applicable to other programming languages as well. Please let me know.