sebastianvogelsang.com

Scaling images to fit a screen

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:58:37 +0000

Lately I had to do some image scaling for a .NET compact framework project. While the actual scaling can easily be done by means of the Smart Device Framework (OpenNETCF), the process of deciding whether to adjust the image to the screen’s height or the width takes a little more effort than on a regular (landscape) computer, due to the multitude of possible screen/picture aspect-ratio combinations (most phones let the user switch between landscape and portrait mode). The following code solves theses issues (IBitmapImage and ImageUtils are OpenNETCF classes):

private IBitmapImage scaleImageToDisplay(Image img, Stream s)
{
float ScreenRatio = this.targetWidth / (float)this.targetHeight;
float ImgRatio = img.Width / (float)img.Height;
 
if (ImgRatio > 1.0f)
{
if (ScreenRatio > ImgRatio)
return ImageUtils.CreateThumbnail(s, new System.Drawing.Size((int)Math.Round(this.targetHeight * ImgRatio, 0), this.targetHeight));
else
return ImageUtils.CreateThumbnail(s, new System.Drawing.Size(this.targetWidth, (int)Math.Round(this.targetWidth / ImgRatio, 0)));
}
else
{
if (ScreenRatio < ImgRatio)
return ImageUtils.CreateThumbnail(s, new System.Drawing.Size(this.targetWidth, (int)Math.Round(this.targetWidth / ImgRatio, 0)));
else
return ImageUtils.CreateThumbnail(s, new System.Drawing.Size((int)Math.Round(this.targetHeight * ImgRatio, 0), this.targetHeight));
}
 
return null;
}

Bahncard Photo

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:05:31 +0000

So you apply for a Bahncard 25, send in photo number 1 and what do you get?!? They crop the hell out of it until it only shows the stupid guy with his stupid beanie next to you! Since Shrek, donkeys have not been taken serious anymore! Damn you, humans!

NightTunes - a plugin for iTunes that shuts down your PC

admin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:15:43 +0000

I released a new iTunes plugin on http://www.earlybirdapplications.com today: NightTunes, a simple plugin for iTunes that can automatically shutdown, hibernate or send your PC to standby at the end of a playlist.

If you, like me, enjoy listening to a good audiobook while dozing off to dreamland, but don’t want to leave your computer running throughout the entire night…

NightTunes is for you!

No more harddisk clatter noise or blowing CPU fans disturbing your sleep …plus you’re reducing your your energy bill and your carbon footprint

Unlike other shutdown solutions, NightTunes does not depend on user-set timers to determine when to shutdown your PC. That way it is guaranteed that your computer won’t bail out on you right in the middle of your goodnight tale, only because you forgot to set the timer right.

Enabling the TV-Out of an NVIDIA graphics card

admin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:44:50 +0000

I don’t know if this goes for all the GeForce 8 and 9 series graphics cards, but getting the S-Video tv-out of my brand new Gainward 9800GT Golden Sample to run seems to be a real hassle. In the following, I wanna how I got it to work:

Hardware setup:

Starting from the video card’s s-video outlet, I use a standard s-video/cinch adapter as depicted below. Please notice that this is not the adapter that came with the card, but instead one that only has four jacks on the s-video side.

On the TV side I use a cinch/Scart adapter like the one below:

Software Setup:

This is where it gets icky To get it running, you first need to enable the “old” Nvidia control center. This can be done, by means of the registry entries you can download here. Upon unzipping the file, double-click on “enableoldNV_CP.reg” and confirm. Then do a right-click on your desktop and click on “NVIDA Display” -> TV. In the opening window, click on the left button (only have it in German here, but I guess in English it says something like “Properties”).

Then you should see your monitor and your TV side-by-side. Right-click on the TV, select “Choose TV-format” -> bottom entry (again….only have it in German here:-) but should be something like “more/enhanced/advanced”). In the new window you may choose the right signal format in the top chooser, although this will make no difference at this point. The important selection here is “S-Video-Output” in the bottom chooser. Don’t leave it set to “automatic”. Click OK on this and all other dialogs from before to close them. Now you should have an image on your TV, which most likely is black and white. To get your colors, do the following.

Double-click on the second file (disableoldNV_CP.reg) from the zip-archive to deactivate the old and re-activate the new NVIDIA control panel. Next, right-click on the desktop and click on “NVIDA Control Panel”. In the left menu choose “Run television setup wizard” from the “Video & Television” menu section. Click “Next” and select “S-Video” in the next (”Connector Type”) dialog. Click on “Next” to get to the “Television Signal Format” dialog. There you want to choose “PAL-B”. Click “Next” until you’re done with the dialog.

That should be it! Have fun with your TV!

Counterstrike - the root of all evil

admin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:01:25 +0000

Ich muss sagen, dass ich seit gestern insgeheim auf diesen Moment gewartet habe. Die Welt fragt sich, was Tim K. aus Winnenden zu seinem Amoklauf getrieben hat. Dabei scheint sich die Antwort auf diese Frage in vielen (alten wirren) Köpfen längst gefestigt zu haben. Wie in einem Video in Spiegel Onlines Mediathek zu sehen ist, gab heute ein Sprecher der Polizei folgendes Statement ab: “Wir haben während diesen Abends seine Computer noch sichergestellt und auch analysiert, grob analysiert, die Feinanalyse läuft aktuell, und auch daraufhin sich die typischen Spiele, die auch in das Raster eines Amokläufers passen, wie Counterstrike (…gefunden?)”.

Damit dürfte sich die Sache für viele auch schon erledigt haben. Kein Gedanke wird an das erzieherische Defizit der Eltern oder die Tatsache dass K. anscheinend seit 2008 an Depressionen litt, sich deshalb zunächst stationär in psychiatrischer Behandlung befand und eine anschließende Therapie nicht aufnahm, verschwendet. Ebenso wenig interessiert das Faktum, dass sich im Elternhaus 15 (!!!) Schusswaffen befanden (an dieser Stelle frage ich mich ernsthaft, warum jemand auch nur 1 Waffe in seinem Haus verwahren muss???).
Stattdessen ist eine der ersten Meldungen, welche man der Presse nach dem Amoklauf entnehmen darf, eine Ausprache von Union und Polizei gegen ein schärferes Waffenrecht. Das oben erwähnte Extrakt aus der Pressemitteilung lässt erahnen, was dem folgen wird. Wieder einmal werden sich Unionspolitiker, wie zuletzt Niedersachsens Innenminister Uwe Schünemann, für ein Verbot von sogenannten “Killerspielen” (wenn der Begriff nicht Populismus pur ist?!?) aussprechen und damit jegliche wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse der Wirkungsforschung in den Wind schlagen. Ich frage mich: Wie geht so etwas? Warum kommen diese Menschen damit durch, wenn selbst auf einer Partnerseite des Bundesministeriums für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, jugendschutz.net, eindeutig statuiert wird:

“Direkte Wirkungen in dem Sinne, dass ein Spieler nach einem blutrünstigen Deathmatch mit der Pumpgun auf die Straße läuft und dort wahllos alles abschlachtet, sind nicht nachweisbar.”

und weiter

“Der in der Öffentlichkeit beliebte direkte Schluss vom Inhalt von „Killerspielen“ auf deren Wirkungen ist aber unzulässig. Der Wirkungszusammenhang zwischen Spieler und Spielen ist so komplex, dass generelle Aussagen zur Wirkung von Gewaltdarstellungen nicht gemacht werden können.” (Quelle)

Haben diese Menschen keine Berater, die ihnen diese Fakten zuteil werden lassen, bevor sie hergehen, ihre Kausalketten auf einen einzelnen Strang reduzieren und sich damit lächerlich machen? In ähnlicher Manier könnte man ein Verbot von Tischtennis verlangen…offentsichtlich war Tim K. ein großer Anhänger des Sports.

Auch wenn es in diesem Beitrag weniger um den schrecklichen Amoklauf in Winnenden, als vielmehr um auf die Reaktion darauf geht, möchte ich allen, die in Winnenden Angehörige, Kinder oder Freunde verloren haben, mein Beileid aussprechen.

——EDIT——————————————————————————————————————

Und es geht los:

You got AIM-Fish-Bot-ed!

admin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:53:42 +0000

Today I got AIM-Fish-Bot-ed (not that that verb exists). As Nixie explains in her article, Fish-Bots do exactely what you may have done as a child: call two total strangers, then hold the two phones together and listen in on how they accuse each other of doing a prank call. Only Fish-Bots do it via AIM or ICQ. While the whole thing seems to upset a lot of people, I found the idea hilarious and would love to read more chat protocols of “victims” Here’s mine (the first message is from the bot (RolyPolyCoho), the following come from the person I got connected to):

16:20:00 RolyPolyCoho
Greetings! I know this is hard to believe, but I’m you - from the future. I bear important news.
16:20:13 seboslaw
holy crap! How old are you….err…am I?
16:21:00 RolyPolyCoho
still didn’t answer my question
16:21:13 seboslaw
what question?
16:21:42 RolyPolyCoho
the question asking who are you?
16:22:07 seboslaw
well……if I believe you, I am you
16:22:49 RolyPolyCoho
whatever
16:23:20 seboslaw
whatever my ass….you said: Greetings! I know this is hard to believe, but I’m you - from the future. I bear important news.
16:23:31
so what’s the important news?
16:23:48
or do I know already? this me-you thing’s kinda confusing me
16:25:42
haha, I guess we both got tricked…..http://nixiepixel.com/blog/index.php/aim-fish-bot-help

Wrestling safety

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:48:17 +0000

After watching “The Wrestler” (a totally awesome movie by the way) the other day I went online to research, whether the story was biographically or not. After some time I came across “Wrestling Obituaries” and was shocked to learn that most of the (former WWF) guys I watched doing their showy thingy on TV more than 20 years ago have already passed away, most of them due to heart attacks….in their mid-40s!!!. The following names rang some bells and brought back some childhood memories for me:

Jerry “Crusher” Blackwell–January 22, 1995–Died of complications from injuries sustained in a road accident.
“The British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith (39) –May 18, 2002–Died from a heart attack.
Owen Hart: May 23, 1999–Died from 50 foot fall from ceiling to ring.
Yokozuna (34)–October 22, 2000–Died from a heart attack.
“The British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith (39) –May 18, 2002–Died from a heart attack.
“Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig (44)–February 10, 2003–acute cocaine intoxication.
Ray “Big Bossman” Traylor (41)–September 22, 2004–Heart failure.
John Tenta [Earthquake] (42)–June 7, 2006–bladder cancer.
Bam Bam Bigelow [Scott Bigelow] (45)–January 19, 2007–Drugs.

RIP. I guess, “The Wrestler” portrays the reality of wrestlers better than you’d expect.

Contact Alarm v.1.0 released

admin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:45:58 +0000

Today I released version 1.0 of my Skype plugin “Contact Alarm”. Amongst many new features like audio/video alarms and logging, it integrates with Snarl and allows for nice fade-in/fade-out status notification windows.

Check out http://www.earlybirdapplications.com for details.

NEW WEBSITE - http://earlybirdapplications.com

admin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:49:57 +0000

For a while now I’ve been working on a platform to publish some of the software I’ve developed in the past (and that I will be developing in the future:-). Well, it was a long path, some people even doubted that, given my tendency to perfectionism, I would ever finish up on this…but after way too many several re-writes, platform switches and logo changes (big thanks to Tobi for the final one), today I proudly present to you (*drumroll*):

http://earlybirdapplications.com

Come in, take a cookie and browse through the, yet, sparse exclusive product list!

Setup an IVR with Asterisk (on an Ubuntu VPS)

admin — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:29:09 +0000

Wanna have your own infoline that users can call and navigate through using their dialpad (this is normally called an IVR, which stands for Interactive Voice Response)???
Well, all you need is a VPS (Mine is a 256MB Ubuntu server at hosteurope for 9.99€/month) and a VOIP-account (I went with a sipgate basic plan from sipgate, since it’s free and you get a local phone number with it).

If you haven’t done so already, you may wanna upgrade your ubuntu to hardy (although I don’t know if this is a requirement). Next, install the required asterisk packages:

sudo apt-get install asterisk asterisk-config asterisk-mp3 asterisk-prompt-de asterisk-sounds-extra asterisk-sounds-main

You may exchange the asterisk-prompt-de for your local language pack or skip it altogether….this is just the way I did it. Also the asterisk-mp3 package is only mandatory, if you want to play MP3s to your callers.
Next, open the file /etc/asterisk/sip.conf and put the following line into the OUTBOUND SIP REGISTRATIONS section:

register => SIP_ID:SIP_PASSWORD@sipgate.de

(Note the “:” in-between SIP_ID and SIP_PASSWORD) Replace SIP_ID and SIP_PASSWORD with the infos from your sipgate account page. Afterward, you may wanna restart your asterisk with:

sudo /etc/init.d/asterisk restart

Wait a little while and look at your sipgate settings page. It should now list your VPS as a registered device. On the same page, click on the fourth tab (called “Telefonie” in german….probably something like “phone” in english), which should list the local phone number, under which your asterisk setup should be accessible now.

Dial it and be happy you made it so far. It’s your server talking on the other end of the line:-)

I’ll write about setting up the actual IVR soon.