Recently in Software Category

Problem: Can't pause/fast forward/rewind video or music while sitting on the couch.

Solution: An IR receiver. Luckily it just so happens, I have an old IRMan lying around (basically a commercial version of UIR, albeit long discontinued).

Next problem: The computer is behind the couch, at the other end of the room.

Solution: Universal IR Receiver Daemon. This neat little utility supports the UIR protocol and can send the IR codes over a network as UDP packets. Neat! Now I can connect the IRMan to my conveniently located home server which relays the button codes to my desktop PC.

Next problem: No receiver daemon!

Solution: A simple python script listens for incoming UDP packets, checks if the code matches an action defined in a configuration file, then executes that action. Currently amarok and mplayer are supported. Get the script at the software odds & ends page.

Decided to upload some old, but not entirely useless, old programs I've written. You can find them at the odds and ends page. They are not really usable pieces of software, but might serve as a starting point or inspiration for someone. Currently, I have three programs up:

1. Animtext: A text animation creation tool. I wrote this back in high school (or the Finnish equivalent) to generate the end credits sequence for a student film project. Perfect for cheesy amateur hacker films!
2. powermate qt test: A Qt4 based test program for the Griffin Powermate. Accesses the powermate via Linux event interface. (powermate driver is in the official kernel tree)
3. tablet qt test: A Qt4 test program for (wacom) tablets. Useful for checking if Qt (or X) tablet support is configured properly.
   

A new DrawPile release is out, little less than two weeks after I resumed the project. This was mainly a bug fix release, introducing a new more stable and robust server and fixing many bugs and usability problems in the client.
The 0.5.0 release has one new major feature: an annotation tool. The annotation tool is pretty much like the text tool in other drawing programs, except the text always floats above the actual image. Because DrawPile doesn't have its own image format (yet), the annotations cannot be saved. They can, however, be burned onto the image (in offline mode only, more on that below.)

With this maintenance release out of the way, next up is more features!

After a year's hiatus, I decided to start working on DrawPile again.
First thing I did, was rewrite the old server. The new server is QT based (no more other external dependencies) and built as a shared library that can be embedded inside the client and in a tiny standalone shell.
The protocol also underwent a revamp. The new protocol is much more simpler, but also lacks some of the features the old one had (multiple sessions on one server.) The reason I decided to drop these features was that they weren't being used in the client and were and unnecessary complication.
One nice feature the new server has, is the ability to buffer raster data and drawing commands. The server can then efficiently handle new clients with minimal disturbance to other users, and is more robust to boot.

The latest SVN trunk has the new server and a couple of fixes that should make DrawPile much more stable. The drawing code is still slightly broken though. Next up, a new drawing engine, then the 0.5.0 release!