Thoughts

Wiicontrol for nokia n810 / n800

2008-05-04T04:20:00.000-07:00

Let me start by telling you that wiicontrol is just marvelous piece of software. I allows you to pair your wiimote with your tablet. Result: Perfect controller for games and really nice controller for media applications.

So, emulators are now usable, doom / quake: check! pengupop / bomberman. Yeah baby! I cannot take credit of the wiicontrol, as it's really a project JL Diaz started, I just pimped it a bit. It's based on wiimote by Will Woods. GPL2+ for wiimote and gpl3+ for the wiicontrol.

Hey, please take a look at this video to see how very simple it is to use. If you toggle the gyro, it will currently produce wasd events when the you rotate your wiimote. Nice for e.g. strafing in quake/doom. Anyway, this is the first version and I'm sure me and JL will be bringing some cool configuration options and perhaps even mouse cursor support in the near future.

EDIT:
Link to install it is in here:
Wiicontrol 1.04

Theme Maker 1.1.3 out

2008-03-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

I took a bit time off to polish the Theme Maker. The latest version, 1.1.3 now supports also background images. Background images will appear in the image list of the the 'select background image' dialog.

So, what is the Theme Maker anyway?

It's an easy to use tool for creating themes for the Maemo devices like N800 and N810. All you need is a image editor program like gimp of photoshop and a little patience. It works on OSX, Windows (all versions) and Linux. You'll need java from Sun to run it.

Basically, it's all about editing one single image file like this (this is a small part of a theme template only):

and then setting the theme details in Theme Maker like this:

And Clicking build in theme maker. It will produce a nice installable .deb file of your theme. Just copy that to your device (or publish it ... whatnot) and install it as normal. Now just set your theme on your device and it will transform to something like this (well, for NuvoPearl it looks like this):

And, as stated in the first paragraph of this blog, now themes also include the backgrounds so that your theme is more complete. Icons are still not changeable, but let's see what I can do about them in the future...

If you have a bit of artist in you, please try out the theme maker (install java if needed):
ThemeMaker1.1.3.zip

And if you liked NuvoPearl theme pictured above, you can install the latest version from here:
NuvoPearl

Sneak peak to ukmp 1.8

2008-03-18T15:16:00.001-07:00

A quick taster of how splendid the latest ukmp looks. Of course, an image is not enough to show how nice UI candy it contains, but it's a taster. As you can see (and deduce the rest), vanilla SDL and python are able to do some pretty nice stuff. Oh, even though there is the reflection, fps is still nice and above the blitting limit of the device.

Theme Maker

2008-02-25T10:40:00.001-08:00

I completely forgot to talk about theme maker in my last post. Yes, I finally gave into the dark side. I moved to use Nokia official template for theme maker. This is good and bad. Bad in that if you had made something on the old theme maker, you'll have to port it to the new template. Good in the sense that you'll get all the features in exactly the manner god of this device intended (nokia).

Above, you can see the first test theme that I made with the new theme maker. It's there to also test out how 'light' themes look. As you've noticed, pretty much all the current themes are very dark. So, to balance the 'turn to the dark side', here is the latest (1.2) iteration of the nuvo theme.

So, many people probably don't know what theme maker is. It's an java application for windows/osx/linux that makes a theme out of an png file. So, you open the png in gimp or photoshop, edit it out, open theme maker, specify the theme name, font size and click on make theme. Wait a minute or so and you have a .deb file of your newly created theme. Current version doesn't set the bg, but you can't have it all on day one.

If you are interested in Nuvo, dl it from here:
NuvoPearl 1.2

and for theme maker:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/3418/ThemeMaker1.1.2.zip

When you have new themes, please put them to the maemo.org/downloads for all the world to use!

Just to show the nuvopearl a bit more, here's a screenshot of file manager. Smaller font makes it much nicer looking as well. (and usable)

USBControl and Theme Maker

2008-02-21T10:25:00.001-08:00

Just a quick short blog post

As requested, I packed in the weekend USBControl as a seprate package. I also upgraded it so that it works even after a reboot. LOL. the previous one actually only worked until you rebooted the device and lost the access to edit your USB mode after that. LOL indeed. I didn't realize that, as I really don't reboot my device too often. Kudos to nokia for the stable device.

Anyway, the new package runs as sudo, so it's able to edit the file even later on. (security people can now cry iik!).

You can install it from here (yo need to have python installed before though):
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/3443/usbcontrol-1.0_all.deb

I'll put it to repos in a few days time, but before that, try it out and let me know how you like (or dislike) it.

Current version also tells the status of the usb as well as the devices attached to your tablet.

USB OTG the easy way

2008-01-31T10:55:00.000-08:00

Some people have been writing about the USB OTG use with need to hack the cable by soldering a few wires together. Even Ars technica went the hard way of soldering a cable. This is not the way to do it my friends. On a computer-like device, the way is to 'solder software', not hardware. I found the instructions on software solution from muru and then thought:"This is still just too hard". So, what to do? Make it easy, of course.

Enter USBControl

I thought that this is worth a full hour of my time. So, today I put together a new application that you can use to switch the device (N800 or N810) between USB Host and USB OTG modes. All you need, is an USB Female-Female adaptor like this:
http://www.amazon.com/USB-Type-Female-Coupler-Adapter/dp/B000I97N0S

So, remember, that is USB A female to female adaptor. Costs pennies. Well, almost.

After you have the USB adaptor, just install ukmp from here: Garage

That version is beta. You may need to install ukmp first from here: maemo.org

ukmp is my media player, but it now comes bundled with uktube (youtube downloader) and USBControl.

Finally, open USBController from your extras menu. Click on HOST. Attach USB cable and e.g keyboard to the other end and.... There you go. Nothing else needed. Open notes, xterm, whatnot and start typing. Or, remove the kb and attach a memory stick. For me, even wireless keyboards work just fine without any powered hub. Same for one memory stick, but another memory stick needed more juice than the device had.

If your peripheral needs more juice, just put a powered hub in between. Simple, huh?

UKMP for N810 and N800 now in the repositories

2007-11-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

I was up quite long on friday. Yeah, I know what you must be thinking: partying. Nope, I wish. I was duking it out with ukmp and maemo extras. I finally gave the decisive blow at around 4 AM. I got the ukmp uploaded to the extras repositories for bora and chinook!

I decided on friday that I won't rest until it's there. With hindsight it was a bad decision, as I was pretty wasted the whole saturday. Did manage to go partying then though. However, I'm very pleased that the update support structure is there now and that the new n810 owners will also be able to ge the new UKMP.

So, what is new with the 1.70 release compared to 1.6 series? Layout has been changed a bit, covers are bigger, reflection is done on the fly. Things just look a bit better. Also, the kinetic scrolling has been tweaked quite a lot and the progress bar (although a bit buggy) allows you to skip to correct place. I actually also had really wicked ligting effect at the place where your finger touches the screen for a while. As it was mainly eye candy, I dropped it for a while. It may be making a come-back soon, as it was really neat looking effect. I just want to add a bit more 'fun' to it.

Next up will be a few minor update releases that address the bugs and startup speed issues. And now that ukmp is in the extras repository, updating will be an easy operation for you - the users.

For developers interested in helping out, I've been switching to 'proper' practices and the svn is now up-to date all the time.

So, os2007 users can find ukmp from:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2007/ukmp/

and os2008 users can find it from:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/ukmp/

Simple, eh ;)

Urho Konttori has Started working for Nokia (update - UKMP concept image included!)

2007-09-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

Probably some of the people have been wondering how come I've been laying so low for the past two weeks. This is due to the fact that I began working at Nokia on monday. I've very excited about it and people at Nokia have been really great. I am sure I can contribute even more to the device now that I'm part of the process as an insider.

Will I stop developing for the community? Nope.

Out of context, I just read GeekPenguins blog about the media centers for the internet tablets.

It's a quick comparison of Canola, Kagu and UKMP.
http://geekpenguin.blogspot.com/2007/09/onboard-media-your-way.html

EDIT:
Quick photo of UKMP 1.7 concept here as well to show on the planet maemo page:

I'll try to do some development this weekend on ukmp. At least I'll try to fix some bugs and if possible there will be bigger changes as well. I have such a great plan on how the interface should behave. The basic idea is this:
In the cover list view, I'll move to a bit more cover flow (iphone) like mode of scrolling from left to right. Covers themselves will be bigger (160x160). Covers will be in two rows. 160X5=800, so you will be able to see 10 albums on screen at a time. This is less than the current of 12, but I think it's worth the hassle.

I'll move the progress bar to be displayed on the top part of the screen all the time, along with easily pressable buttons for previous, next, play, pause. Also, this will mean that the 'currently playing' view won't probably be needed anymore in the future.

As you can see from the list of changes that they are not minor. It will take me probably 12-20 hours to do. What this means in calendar time will depend on how much I want to finish GTA San Andreas. ;)

Anyway, I'll now start making the sketches and bug fixes. There will be a bug fix release hopefully today. If it happens, I'll blog about it.

EDIT:
Took just a bit over an hour to make the 'proof of concept' image of the new cover interface. You know, I really love to work towards something specific. A plan has to be in place before any coding should start. And everyone (in this case: me) has to have a common view on what to aim for. In most of the cases, an image tells the best story. Worth more than thousand words? Definately!

Anyway, this is a concept sketch and once I add the party mode toggles and whatnot, it'll change a bit, but this is what I'm aiming for. If you have comments on the positioning and stuff, please let me know asap!

Oh, and I'll add the artist names in pretty much the same manner as in the previous versions. The lower row will have the name in the reflection and the row above will have the artist name above the cover. This should be good way to not to confuse the user.

EDIT: Alternative interface where buttons are positioned at the bottom. Also, note that the scrolling will be from left to right, not from top to bottom.

Edit 3:
Added exit button, lamp for keep screen lit - mode and repositioned things a bit. It's becoming a bit cluttered already. I'll have to think about the icon positioning a bit more. Anyway, I'll next move to implementing the new cover artwork behavior and then proceed to sideway scrolling and finally focus again on the buttons. Anyway, until then, keep comments coming. It'll probably be the latter part of next week until I have anything solid to test. Could be even longer.

uktube bugfix version released

2007-08-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks to guys at internettablettalk, I noticed that youtube had changed the way video files are referred on the page source code. Thus, uktube stopped working until this problem had been fixed. I was just able to fix and test it a few minutes ago and I wanted to let you all know that the problem has been fixed and there is a new version for you to download.

So, once again, thanks for letting me know of the uktube bug. UKMP 1.62 only fixes uktube bug in downloading youtube videos. So, don't expect any fixes related to ogg files.

It seems that ogg installation at the moment is missing ogg demux for some users. I'll try to get oggs working again in ukmp for the 1.63 release some time next week

EDIT: LINK FIXED

Download here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp/

UKMP 1.6 is out

2007-08-16T05:54:00.000-07:00

I've finally come back from the summer vacation and I've had the time to look into UKMP again for a while.

Well, many new thing have happened since the last version.

1. Exit button
2. Maemoscrobbler integration (scrobbles to last fm)
3. Automatic thumbnail images from video files
4. Currently playing -screen
5. Progress bar
6. Touch to seek functionality in the progress bar
7. Full M4A support, including cover image from the m4a files
8. Larger video thumbnails

Here are two screenshots to illustrate a bit:

All right, a bit deeper explanation on each one.
1. Exit button.

Just click to exit. You can also press back-button and keep it pressed for about two secs to exit.

2. Maemoscrobbler integration

Maemoscrobbler is an excellet program made by disq. Install maemo scrobbler, insert your login details to last fm in the control panel application and from that on, whenever you have net connection, ukmp will scrobble your music to your last-fm account.

3. Automatic thumbnail images from video files

UKMP uses mplayer to retrieve the thumb images from the video files that you have on your device. It will take the first frame and use that. If you have an idea on how to get an image from seeking 30 secs into the video, let me know.

On the down side, this feature needs the latest version of mplayer, so please update your mplayer. It's great to do that anyway, as the latest mplayer version is at least 30 % faster than previous one. Well, that's my subjective impression anyway.

4. Currently playing screen

This is the first iteration of the screen. The most important thing about is the progress bar. I will also add a bookmark feature to this screen in the future.

REMEMBER that you can use back-button to switch between the views at all times.

5. Progress bar
A pretty cool looking progress bar that shows the time played, song length and your position on the bar.

6. Touch to seek functionality in the progress bar
You can just click on any place in the bar to seek to that location. Pretty basic stuff, but worth mentioning IMHO. So many people listen to long songs / audio books.

7. Full m4a support
If you have converted most of your music to m4a format, then you'll really like this one. Pasi Keränen has done a wonderful job of integrating m4a support to ukmp. It is even able to read the images from the audio files. However, if you happen to have such files, bear in mind that saving and converting them will take quite long time, so your first startup might be a long one. Thumbnails will be saved as smaller images so it won't take THAT long in the future.

However, this also means that you have to have Pythin imaging library installed. Which sadly only comes in the latest python version. So, that's a requirement now as well.

8. Larger video thumbnails

I noticed that the thumbnails were a bit too small still, so I modified the thumbnails to be a bit larger (from 125 pixels wide to 143 pixels wide)

Summa summarum:
A great update, but you'll have to update to latest python version. If you have python 2.4, you need to unistall it first. To do that, you have to uninstall all python applications and then uninstall python 2.4. Sucks. Yeah. I know. I hope you all have python 2.5. If you have python 2.5. Just go to application manager to update.

The light theme is not quite ready yet, so I didn't include the desktop file to it. You can test it out from xterm with command:
ukmp altskin

You can download the latest version of UKMP and UKTUBE from here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp

and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

I will be in Iceland from Friday to Wednesday, so I won't be able to respond to questions during that time.

EDIT:
If you need ogg support, you can install ogg to your device from here:
http://ogg.garage.maemo.org/ogg-support.install

I've also updated the ukmp to 1.61 after fixing some bugs.

Seems like it's semi stable now. So, have a great weekend!

UKMP 1.51 combined with updated UKTUBE

2007-08-03T06:49:00.000-07:00

UKMP 1.50 release was a bit hasty one and I missed a few real annoyances. Well, 1.51 version is a bug fix version and should fix the most critical bugs.

1. Clicking in the album works ACTUALLY selects the album you clicked on and not the one above or below it. (Yeah, how did I miss that? I have no idea)
2. If you have less that 16 albums, song list allows you to scroll (It actually didn't allow you to scroll in 1.50)
3. 1.51 consumes almost 0 processor time when idling. Previous version only went to energy saving when it was doing something and went to full 100% power use when it was idle. Just a small mistake of using == instead of != in one place... An example of why not code after midnight.
4. Because of the number three, smooth scrolling is smoother, as it's not in processor saving mode when it's scrolling ;)
5. Press and hold back button to close the app works.

All right. So, it's in a usable state now. I've been using 1.51 for a few days now for listening hours and hours of music and it seems stable and a joy to use. Next version will have exit button and optimized startup time.

UKTUBE has also been updated to support logging into youtube account as well as it tells you if a download fails instead of crashing. Most of the time if a download fails, it's because there is a age check in youtube. Just insert your login credentials to uktube to le uktube to login and tell youtube that your are not underaged.

Next uktube version will store the credentials and I will probably clean up the interface a bit.

You can download the latest version of UKMP and UKTUBE from here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp

and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

UKMP 1.5 is out and it's looking sweet

2007-07-24T03:00:00.001-07:00

Big thanks to Roope Rainisto from Nokia for helping out tune up the interface. The song list now sports thumb interface for selecting songs. Looks better too, have a look at it yourselves:

Another big thing that's been asked for is kinetic scrolling. After trying it out for a while, I am very impressed by it. Yeah, I know, here is another developer again boasting his ego, but I am not applauding myself for that. Kinetic scrolling is really sall thing to add technically once you have smooth scrolling anyway. But the thing I've been thinking about now is that Nokia should implement that same thing to the web browser. It would be so much better to use that to scroll around the page. Let's say you've read the article through. Wan't to go up to the beginning of the page? No probs, just flick the finger quickly and it will scroll to the top in a split sec. Want to scroll in a controllable fashion, scroll with your finger and stop it before raising it from the device surface.

One more thing I have forgotten to write about is that this version also supports wma files and might also support aac files as well as some bug fixes related to continuous playback.

You can download the latest version of UKMP and UKTUBE from here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp

and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

As always, you can check out the new features from the video below:

UKTUBE 0.6 out, UKMP 1.4 out (in beta)

2007-07-05T04:42:00.000-07:00

UKTUBE 0.6

Uktube 0.6 adds support for streaming of videos. You no longer have to wait for the video to finish downloading, as UKTUBE will just buffer the first one megabyte and then start playing.

I also added delete, which deletes the file, takes it out of the dropdown and selects the next video.

UKMP 1.4

UKMP 1.4 has major feature of supporting video. Now, basically that means that it also needs mplayer. As UKMP and UKTUBE are bundled together you would need mplayer for uktube anyway, so I don't see that as too much of a problem. What makes this really beta quality is that ukmp cannot make thumbnails of the videos by itself. It relies on UKTUBE to make thumbnails for the videos it downloads. If Serge (ssvb) can compile mplayer with support for -vo jpeg, I can add the thumbnails automatically on start.

Have a look at the video to see how watching videos works on UKMP at the moment.

About the release:
I managed to squeeze out the major bugs from UKMP 1.4 and UKTUBE 0.6. I'm about to leave for a week long vacation, so I felt that even though I would have wanted to give both of the apps some more polish, I just didn't have the time to do it. In any case, I'm relatively happy on how the new features turned out.

1.5 of UKMP will focus on improving the UI to look better. Thanks Roope Rainisto for a very good suggestion on the songlist part. I will implement that to the 1.5 version.

You can download the latest version of UKMP and UKTUBE from here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp

and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

UKTUBE 0.5 out

2007-06-28T05:04:00.000-07:00

UKTUBE 0.5 is a nice small step for internet tablet users. Have a look at it:

Ok, since 0.3, there have been many great features.

Supports dailymotion videos
Allows you to play downloaded videos (there is a dropdown for those)
It's much faster in downloading
Paste link (now, that's hot) - you copy the URL in browser and then just press that button.
Allows you to also just download (if you don't need to watch it immediately)
Videos are automatically added to the list
If you download a video, after you've downloaded it or watched it, just press show in widescreen / normal to replay it. No need to select the same movie from dropdown.

So, there are two ways to copy the URL from youtube and dailymotion. The traditional is to navigate to the page where the video is located and click on the address bar and then select copy, like in the image below.

The second option is to hold your finger / pen over the link to the movie and keep it pressed for two seconds or so. Then a menu appear from which you can select copy link location, like in the image below.

Then you just open UKTUBE and click on the paste button.

URL address will appear in the text field and by clicking either of the show buttons, the video will be downloaded and displayed immediately after download is complete. If you press only download, it won't play the video.

UKTUBE works in 770 and N800.

Download UKTUBE 0.5 from here:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1677/UKMP-1.3-uktube0.5.deb
and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

UKTUBE 0.3 out

2007-06-26T05:17:00.001-07:00

0.3 version of uktube out. I think this is what Ari Jaaksi meant by Release early, release often. Ok, perhaps not this early and not this often, but I thought you guys might enjoy the latest additions even though it means you have to download new versions this often.

So, 0.3 brings possibility to open file in 16:9 mode, which crops the video to use the entire N800 screen width. This is especially suitable for those videos with black borders. So, if you want to view the video in 4:3 mode, click on the 4:3 button and if you want it to be seen in 16:9 mode, click the 16:9 button. Simple!

Also, you can opt to not to save the file. It will make a temporary file though and next time you save something, it will be overwritten. Also, as a nice new feature, the application stall less. Maybe that's more of a bugfix and less of a feature.

I had a test and it seems that playing partially buffered video is completely doable, so that might be interesting to do next.

Download from here:
garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1667/UKMP-1.3-uktube0.3.deb
and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

UKTUBE 0.2 out

2007-06-25T03:01:00.000-07:00

I just released a bug fix version of uktube.

You can download it from:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1664/UKMP-1.3-uktube0.2.deb

It handles youtube clips better than before (seems to download all clips while the previous version had problems with some of the clips).

Files are now stored with the video title instead of the youtube id. This makes it much easier to access the archived files in mplayer.

nl.youtube.com and others are now converted to use www.youtube.com address. Thus, you don't have to manyally change the url.

Video playback is now smoother than before and it uses the default mplayer config (you can seek, access mplyer menus and stuff like that).

Files are now stored in mmc1/Videos or mmc2/Videos.

UI stalls just a little less than before ;) - still, don't press the download button twice!

If someone knows hot to (or if) make mplayer crop the playback video, I could add the option of playing clips in 16:9 mode as well. Now all videos are played in 4:3 mode.

So, to wrap the install instructions, you need to install python and mplayer for uktube to work. Here are the installer links:
Python (as ever)
mplayer

And again, the updated uktube:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1664/UKMP-1.3-uktube0.2.deb

Here is the initial uktube release video in case you missed in the last time.

UKTUBE - smooth playback of youtube files

2007-06-21T01:30:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a few Nokia guys some time ago and they asked what was the single thing I would change for the tablet immediately. I said: make a proper D-pad (direction pad). Get one from the n-gage team. They said, yeah, but software wise. I thought for a while and said: calendaring / PIM. Almost every review complains about that.

But now, after a few weeks from that, I've been thinking again. Nope, the answer is playable youtube. Make the device web 2.0 compliant. It has to be able to play youtube movies smooth as silk. That's just the way it goes these days. Jittery playback is not an option.

So, yesterday I though - well, if no-one has made that app so far, no-one probably will. That is, unless I do it. So, I scanned the net a bit for youtube info, got some scripts to start the project and had a working application that plays smoothly youtube clips in fullscreen.

Then I went to bed.

Now, I put two hours more and the user interface is adequate for end user use and I've packaged the program as part of ukmp 1.3. Why part of? I didn't have the time to make a separate package. It's holiday time, midsummers fest is about to begin.

All right, so what do you need?
Python (as ever)
mplayer
ukmp-1.3-uktube

So, how does the app work?

Go to a youtube page.
Copy the url of the page.
Open uktube

paste the url to a field.

Press Play clip (only once, even if the app may seem to stall).
In a short while, it'll tell you the download size and progress. Once download is complete, it'll use mplayer to play the clip.

Files are stored on MMC1 in the root, so you need to have the front panel SD /MMC inserted.
On the very bright side, the files can be player later on as well from mplayer.

UPDATE:
I just added a youtube video that demonstrates how it functions. Have a look at it.

EDIT: ALSO WORKS ON 770!

UKMP 1.3

2007-06-20T03:09:00.000-07:00

Another wednesday, another release of UKMP.

Major features in this release are: faster startup and delete song functionality. 1.3 uses a database file that is stored in covers directory. Basically what it contains is the id3 data of mp3 songs on your system. By using this file, ukmp doesn't have to scan all your mp3 files on startup. It'll just check which files you have on your system, then retrieve them from db or from id tags if it doesn't have them on the db. On my music library of around 400 songs, this dropped mmc scanning from 21 secs to around 3 secs. Nice improvement, huh?

Delete song is just that, delete. You enable it by pressing the mode toggle. First switch is party mode, second is delete songs mode. Once you are in delete song mode, just click on a song in the song list and it'll delete it.

This version fixes a few bugs from previous versions, most notably the cover.jpg bug.

Download from here:
http://downloads.maemo.org/product/ukmp/

as always, you need to have python installed. Install python from here:
Pymaemo

As always, here is a video that demonstrates the new functionality (also shows the light theme).

UKMP 1.2

2007-06-13T12:57:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday and as promised, I'm launching UKMP 1.2.

The major reason why you should upgrade to this version is party mode.
WTF.
Party mode is basically a queue of the songs you want to be played next.

Let me demostrate to you.

Install 1.2
Open UKMP.
Click on any album of yours.
Looks a bit like this:

At least if you chose Norah Joneses new album (very good - highly recommended).
Ok, what's new in this picture. You see on the right a button: Continuous mode. Click on that and it will switch to party mode. Now, click on a few songs and after each click the song you clicked will get a play order number at the end of the song name. Like this:

Also, the button will tell you that the queue size is at the moment 8. All right, I also chose songs from another album in the mix. Yes, you can switch back to cover list, click on another album, choose songs from there, add them to the mix and in a few minutes you have DJd yourself a sweet mix of music and you are ready to transform and roll out ( - if you are a transformer - if not, maybe just take your n800 to your car and don't worry about clicking while driving. It's dangerous. Just listen to your set of relaxing and antistressing tunes while driving in the traffic).

And that's not all. There's also support for using your existing collection of cover images. It works the same way as canola. Just put a cover.jpg a folder containing mp3 files. It will then default to that image for all albums in that folder.

Also, by popular reques (yeah. I requested it myself), UKMP will skip any folders titled: Maps. This improves living besides maemo mapper.

And last but not least, accidental clicks in cover view are now handled a bit better.

I may post up a video demonstration tomorrow.

Ahh... The links.

Remember, you need to have python installed. If you don't have it, you can install it from here:
http://pymaemo.garage.maemo.org/installation.html

And UKMP you can install from here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp

If you need ogg support, you can install ogg to your device from here:
http://ogg.garage.maemo.org/ogg-support.install

I was able to make a quick one take video and put it on youtube. It demonstrates the functionality in a quick manner. I wish I had the time to make these things in a proper manner.

Theme Maker 1.0 Ready

2007-06-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

I took some time to get the theme maker to a 1.0 condition.

Great things about this 1.0 compared to previous betas:

Colors are embedded in the image itself
Full set of buttons and widgets (well... almost)
User customizable postinst and prerm
You can make a black theme

Here's proof of the 4 th improvement:

Cool, eh?

While testing the 'blackness', I also made a NuvoBlack theme as pictured above.

For part two, I give you keyboards from theme NuvoPearl:

And don't worry, the theme template hasn't become any bigger or more complicated than in previous versions. I also included both NuvoPearl and NuvoBlack as template images, so that you can easily modify them to make your own theme. Seriously, making a theme takes fifteen minutes if you use those templates as a basis.

Download theme maker and NuvoBlack /NuvoPearl from here: Garage
Please Note that installing NuvoBlack / Pearl will change some of your icons as well. They won't change until you reboot. Uninstalling theme will put back the original icons.

Lastly, to try to get more people to create exciting themes, I put together a two minute tutorial to theming and uploaded it to youtube. Have a look, it's really simple. Sorry for not narrating the tutorial. I hope it's self explanatory even without it.

Oh, and in case anyone of you needs to take screenshots on your N800, the only screenshot utility I found that works is gnuites:
load-applet-run_0.4.3-2_armel.deb

Bear in mind that you have to go to control panel to add the applet to your toolbar.

UKMP 1.1

2007-06-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

Usually 1.0 versions need a quick 1.01 version. Quite surprisingly this was not the case for UKMP release. I didn't receive a single critical bug report. One seemingly annoying bug that was reported was that some people didn't have much luck with the album cover downloads. This has now been greatly improved for the 1.1 version. Yes. 1.1 is now ready for public consumption. Both, the accuracy of the cover images, as well as the quality of the images has been improved.

A single most often asked improvement was support for OGG files. This may be mostly due to me specifically asking no-one to say anything related to playlists, partylists or queues of any sort. Where was I? Oh yes, OGG support. A rather good first step support has been added now. UKMP loads ogg files and can play them as well. Album data for OGG files is based on the folder file is located in. This is not a long term solution, I will add proper tag reading for ogg files soon enough.

If ... no, WHEN you install UKMP 1.1, installer will ask you if you want to clean your cover images. I strongly recommend you to do it if you haven't perfected the covers yourself. As many of you already tried the 1.0 version (650+ downloads in a week from garage), you probably noticed that the first time you open UKMP it takes a while to download the cover images. The process was boring and only displayed the progress in a manner of showing the downloaded album name. 1.1 improves this by also displaying the cover image below the album name. So, slighly less boring first time. Ok, maybe it's a 'second time' for some of you if you opt to clear the archived cover images (which I still recommend).

And lastly, the code has been cleaned up slightly, resulting in a tiny bit faster functionality than 1.0.

While I've been writing this blog, five people have downloaded 1.0 version. I hope they don't mind downloading the 1.1 while they are at it.

1.1 is available from
Garage download page.
It needs python, so if you don't have it, you can install it from here:
Python maemo

If you want to have OGG support, install OGG libraries, which have been ported by Tuomas Kulve.

An installer for them is here:
http://ogg.garage.maemo.org/ogg-support.install

UKMP 1.0 out

2007-05-30T05:20:00.001-07:00

UKMP is a music player for the Nokia internet tablets 770 and N800. It focuses on ease of use of graphic way of accessing your music.

It comes out on two skins: light and dark. This is mainly in the interest on supporting theming in the future versions and currently just to work better in sunlight. The dark skin is a bit too dark to really work when you are on the move, so the light skin is better for those situations.

Here is a screenshot of the dark skin:

It took much longer than I anticipated to get the ukmp out. This has mainly been because of problems playing mp3s that have cover data in their id3 tags.

New in this release is the support for all mp3s, a bit modified layout and support for seeking forward and backward in the song.

You can download ukmp from here:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=234&release_id=658

It needs python, so if you don't have it, you can install it from here:
Python installation

If you have never heard of the payer, have a look at this video I conjured for your pleasure: Link to demo video

UK Media Player Community Release Candidate 3 out

2007-04-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

If you thought iPhone had nice and smooth scrolling and had tested earlier release of ukmp, you must have felt a bit down afterwards. Is this all the device can do? Or is it just the coders messing up of things.

Fortunately it was my bad.

Smooth scrolling was probably like half a frame per second in the RC2, worse in the earlier ones. So, I decided to make some manual profiling on osx and found that one frame update in smooth scrolling took 0.0133 seconds. Wow, that's a lot for a dual core computer. Must be something wrong with the code. A little tinkering with the surface blitting flags and it was down to 0.0068. 2x improvement! I was stunned. Anything else I could do? Well, some more profiling and the next hot spot was found. Updating of the covers position (and some other random stuff related to that) on the screen was culprit of 0.003 secs. So, some tuning up and phew, a frame took only 0.0034 secs to render on osx. Quite an improvement from 0.013 to 0.003.

So, now I can honestly give you smooth scrolling on UKMP.

Other improvements are not so noticeable, such as improved sorting on all fronts, shuffle that works and tons of small fixes.

I can honestly say that this is worth the upgrade.

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1286/Urho-Konttoris-MediaCenter-1.0RC3.deb

You'll need python for it to work. If you don't have it, fetch it from here:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1182/python2.4-runtime.install

Oh, a word of warning: mp3s that have images in the id3 tags, seem to crash the player when played. Working on that still.

Theme Maker updated to support N800

2007-04-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

I've just released a new theme maker version. It is available from:
TM_1.0_beta2.zip

It will produce themes that work on all nokia internet tablet devices and firmwares (N800 and 770). I had to drop support for background image for this version. It will come in some form in a near future release.

Notice that the template image size is a bit bigger than previously and the colors are now in the image itself, on the very right side of the image. For the colors, thanks goes to tigert and mdk who work at nokia. Give lots of kudos to them.

There is also an example theme that you can download and test, nuvotheme: download here.
NuvoTheme.deb
I think it's pretty sweet and I use it myself these days. It's nice and simple. And uses a font size that *I* like, which probably means it's too small for the most.

I'm also like *this* close to being able to support Bora template images that Nokia has created. But I'm missing the time to debug what is wrong in the current state of things.

Media Converter 1.42 update

2007-04-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

After some feedback from folks and good tips, I updated the resolution settings for media converter just a little bit.

640x384 resolution is now set to 13 fps. It's a bit low, I know, but it doesn't drop frames. If you want to, just edit the resolutions txt and change the rate to 14 or 15.

I added a new resolution of 480x288. It's splendid looking and runs at 18 fps without frame drops. Thus, it's a very nice balance between good looking video and smooth playback.

Also, there is a wicked 800x480 resolution for mplayer users, mainly for those videos that need to look just picture perfect.

It seems that bit rate affects the default player a bit, thus you get a bit smoother playback at 512 kbps than at 768 kbps.

Download here:

MediaConverterLinux.zip
MediaConverterOSXPPC.zip
Media_Converter_Windows_1.42_setup.exe
MediaConverterOSXIntel.zip