What? Yes, it’s true, my first name is not Alex. Yet I have gone through my entire life being called Alex. My parents wanted to call me Alex, but felt that “Mark Alexander” sounded better than “Alexander Mark”, and so it was.

Generally this is fine. Everyone calls me Alex, no one calls me Mark. However certain circumstances can become somewhat awkward as a result.

In college we had to use the first name on our birth certificate/passport. It confused me. Would my college friends call me Mark? Fuck that, they called me Alex. However in every class roll-call I would have to respond to “Mark Leonard”. Furthermore, the college inscribed my chefs knives with “Mark Leonard”. I still own those knives. They’re mine, but they don’t entirely feel like they’re mine.

Recently I’ve been told by different airlines that I should book my flights as Mark Leonard. So I now travel as Mark. That said, my credit cards are “Alex Leonard”, so I travel as Mark, but book as Alex. I have to watch out for that.

Now that I’ve moved to Northern Ireland I needed to set up a local bank account to handle money stuff. I met with Bank of Ireland and asked to set up my new account as “Alex Leonard” (per my Republic of Ireland account). Mark was never mentioned, but when my bank card arrived in the post “Mark A Leonard” was my name. A phone call later and I’m not allowed to have my bank account registered to Alex; Mark is my only option – as it is on my passport. I can not change that.

I can see that this will cause some sort of issues down the line. If nothing else it’s confusing for me to remember what situations I am Alex, and which times I am Mark.

I’ve used it a lot when driving and travelling. Even now that I’ve got a reasonably large collection of music on my phone, this blocky little media player still has a place – especially when it comes to longer trips away, giving me an extra 10 hours of playing time.

Last month I plugged it in to charge and there was a tiny popping sound and the screen went blank. The device would no longer charge. At first I investigated and thought a loose battery wire was causing the issue, but a quick solder proved that thought incorrect.

A quick search of the battery part number resulted in a replacement being ordered from fusionbattery.co.uk. Once this arrived it was just a matter of installing it.

Replacing the iAudio X5 battery

Step 1: Removing the back cover

Step 1: Remove the back cover

The screws are small, but they’re a standard Philips head, so it’s easy to get sorted.

Step 2: Removing the hard drive

Step 2: Removing the hard drive

Next up you need to take the hard drive out. There’s a small piece of tape at the top of the drive which you need to peel off, then you can pull up the top of the drive and slide it out from the base of the unit. There’s no need to unplug the drive cable.

Step 3: Reveal the battery

Step 3: Reveal the battery

Underneath the hard drive there’s a small rubbery moulded plastic separator. This is fairly easy to remove and you’ll see the battery with cables soldered to the motherboard.

Step 4: Un-solder the old battery

Step 4: Un-solder the old battery

Now you can just un-solder the old battery, re-solder the new battery (red wire bottom, black wire top), and put the device back together.

Step 5: Et voilà

Step 5: Et voilà

Once putting it all back together, I plugged it back into its charging dock and lo and behold she happily started charging again.

It might be old, somewhat clunky and not exactly head turning, but it works, and it continues just working. I’ve got Rockbox installed on it and lots of good music. It plays FLAC, OGG and other files types often not played by other digital media players. And it’s still going strong!

I knew that if I went with a system where I had to crop, export and upload each different image size, well, I’d never do it. So I decided to take advantage of the built-in featured image functions in WordPress. I have a feeling, looking back on this, that I could have done this a slightly simpler way (using the option to define image sizes on the fly, and not on export – but perhaps this is a slightly less intensive method as regards server load).

Set your image sizes

First up I’ve defined all the image sizes I want to offer for download. It’s important here to use a standard prefix on the wallpaper sizes if you’re using other pre-defined featured image sizes.

if ( function_exists( 'add_image_size' ) ) {
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1920x1200', 1920, 1200, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1920x1080', 1920, 1080, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1680x1050', 1680, 1050, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1440x900', 1440, 900, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1366x768', 1368, 768, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1280x1024', 1280, 1024, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1280x800', 1280, 800, true );
}

As you can see here, I’ve covered the most common desktop wallpaper sizes. I’m not covering things like smart phone screen sizes, and I’ve obviously had to set the crop setting to true on each of them. I have to make sure when I’m uploading a photo blog post that I’m uploading a larger size than my greatest desktop background size.

One other proviso: this is only going to really work on landscape aspect images. I’d have to do some extra work to make this system work for portrait aspect images – but portrait aspect doesn’t really work for desktop backgrounds. Potentially the easiest thing would be to have a custom field specifying that the image uploaded is portrait aspect; if that field is ticked, I would entirely skip the desktop background download option in the code.

Create the function

Next up we have our function, which you should add to functions.php in your WordPress template.

/**
 * Create an unordered list containing links to wallpaper sizes of featured image
 *
 * @param	string		optional $post ID
 * @return 	echo unordered link list
 */
function pa_the_post_thumbnail_wallpapers($postID = NULL) {
	// if $postID not specified, then get global post and assign ID
	if (!$postID) {
		global $post;
		$postID = $post->ID;
	}
	if (has_post_thumbnail()) {
		// get the meta data from the featured image
		$postThumbnailID = get_post_thumbnail_id( $postID );
		$photoMeta = wp_get_attachment_metadata( $postThumbnailID );
		// prepare our download links
		// if the sizes key is an array
		if (is_array($photoMeta['sizes'])) {
			// assign the sizes array to a variable
			$photoSizes = $photoMeta['sizes'];
			// loop through our photosizes array
			foreach ($photoSizes as $key => $value) {
				// if the key starts with wallpaper assign the key name to an array
				if ( substr($key, 0, 9) == 'wallpaper' ) {
					$downloadableWallpapers[] = $key;
				}
			}
		}
		// if there are any downloadable wallpapers
		if ($downloadableWallpapers) {
			// start our ul
			echo  '<ul>' . "\r\n\t";
			// loop through available wallpapers
			foreach ($downloadableWallpapers as $downloadableWallpaperSize) {
				// get the image source and assign to variable
				$dwInfo = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $postThumbnailID, $downloadableWallpaperSize );
				// create the title by removing the prefix
				$sizeTitle = str_replace('wallpaper-', '', $downloadableWallpaperSize);
				// expand SIZExSIZE to SIZE x SIZE
				$sizeTitle = str_replace('x', ' x ', $sizeTitle);
				// echo our download link
echo '
<ul>
	<li><a href="%27%20.%20$%3Cspan%20class=">dwInfo[0] . '">Wallpaper: ' . $sizeTitle . ' px</a></li>
</ul>
' . "\r\n";
			}
			// close our ul
			echo  '</ul>' . "\r\n";
			// echo some advice on how to download
echo '</pre>
<p class="wallpaper-download-advice"><em>Right-click/Cmd-click and select "Save link as" to download</em></p>
<pre>';
		// if no downloadable wallpapers, then echo error message
		} else {
			echo '<p>Wallpaper downloads not found.</p>';
		}
	// if no featured image, echo error message
	} else {
		echo '<p>Featured image not found, no downloads available.</p>';
	}
}

What’s happening here?

Essentially we’re grabbing our featured image sizes array and looking through it. If any of the array keys start with ‘wallpaper’ then we place that key into another array. This array will only contain our wallpaper sizes.

From there we start an unordered list and output the download link. I’m parsing out the image size for each one so I can use that as the link text, and grabbing the URL for the specific image by using wp_get_attachment_image_src().

Usage

In my case I will only be using this option on single posts in my photo blog category. So I’ve edited my single.php template file to include the following:

if ( in_category( 'cat-slug-or-id' ) ) { ?>
	<h4>Download as wallpaper</h4>
	<!--?<span class="hiddenSpellError" pre=""-->php pa_the_post_thumbnail_wallpapers(); ?>
<?php } ?>

That’s it! You will now have a nice outputted list of wallpaper sizes. If you’re doing this retrospectively, you might want to alter the function to generate the different sizes on the fly, or you can use a Thumbnail Regenerator plugin to recreate all your featured image sizes. There are a few available, but most recently I’ve used AJAX Thumbnail Rebuild.

Any questions or suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

It’s a solid little app and gives you some nice extra options for photo taking whilst out and about with your phone.

I’d been testing the free version of the app and just happened to look at the pro version today and was happy to see that it was selling super cheap for a limited time only (the princely sum of £0.63).

I’d suggest it’s well worth the price, for those situations where a normal Android camera app just won’t cut it.

HDR Camera+ features

• Full resolution
• Real HDR: exposure bracketing and tone mapping
• Simple: take a HDR image in one tap
• HDR images fused and tone mapped on device within seconds
• Hand shake compensation, no need to be rock-solid while shooting
• Correct handling of moving objects, de-ghosting
• You can control tone-mapping parameters: contrast, micro-contrast, color vividness, exposure
• Save original exposure bracketed images
• Location tagging
• Shutter sound can be muted (not on all models)
• Support for Flash on/off/auto

Visit the Android market to buy this app.

I know, I’m being slightly facetious. This post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Obviously this N9 ICS port is not something that you can use in everyday life, it’s more a proof of concept. However, one has to wonder – how long have Samsung had access to the code base for Android 4.0? How long can it take them to roll out upgrades to their users?

I haven’t been able to find out exactly what functionality is working on the N9 port of ICS. I’m guessing not a lot:

The project, which is still in its early stages, made significant progress after recently overcoming a framebuffer driver/HAL hurdle, allowing ICS to be displayed on the phone.

I really do think that the next device I get will likely be of the Nexus series. Knowing that I would have a stock version of Android and that I’d get updates when they upon release would be a comfort. None of this waiting around wondering when you might get an update.

Speaking of updates

According to Android Spin, the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note are looking likely for an update on March 1st.

 Not from an official channel, but from Eldar Murtazin. Who, coincidentally enough, seems to know what is going on most of the time. According to him, the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S2 should be picking up an Ice Cream Sandwich update on March 1st.

Of course there’s the issue of carriers doing things in their own sweet time, but I’m hoping I’ll at least be immune to that as I bought my SGS2 off contract in Cambodia.

This is no doubt going to be aimed at the international unlock versions first as usual. Don’t expect your stateside version to see it for a while after March.

All that said, this release date hint is not from an official channel, so it might not happen then. I don’t see why Samsung won’t just give us an official statement as to their expected release dates. Granted, the masses probably don’t care, but the early adopters and tech nerds do. And those tech nerds are the ones asked by family members and friends for advice as to which phone they should buy. The long, long delays in any sort of official updates for the Motorola Milestone left me unlikely to recommend anyone to get a Motorola device. So Samsung, listen up, keep the tech nerds happy and you’ll definitely get an knock-on effect.

In my own personal case, my ownership of a Samsung Galaxy S2 has resulted in at least 3 other people purchasing from Samsung, one of whom was a long-time Nokia die-hard.

It’s quite stunning, as most of his paintings are - there’s a certain fluidity, vitality and rawness to them that excites me.

However I highly recommend heading over to the original blog post to see a whole series of photos he took where he shows the painting at various stages of development. I found it quite interesting to see it grew over time. It’s great to have the artist baring the painting’s development for all to see, to see the layers building up.

The scale of this is impressive and it’s wonderful to see so many people motivated to protect their rights and stand up to this highly suspicious piece of legislation. Check out the map below of all the protests going on. If there’s one near you, get along and be counted.

View ACTA Protests Worldwide – Brought to you by stoppacta-protest.info in a larger map

What is ACTA?

The oppressively strict regulations could mean people everywhere are punished for simple acts such as sharing a newspaper article or uploading a video of a party where copyrighted music is played. Sold as a trade agreement to protect copyrights, ACTA could also ban lifesaving generic drugs and threaten local farmers’ access to the seeds they need. And, amazingly, the ACTA committee will have carte blanche to change its own rules and sanctions with no democratic scrutiny.

Big corporate interests are pushing hard for this, but the EU Parliament stands in the way. Let’s send a loud call to Parliamentarians to face down the lobbies and stand firm for Internet freedom.

How can I get involved?

1. There is an on-line petition which Avaaz will deliver to parliamentarians in Europe. It has already received over 2.1 million signatures. Add your name to that list.
2. Join the day of action at one of the protests shown in the map above. Visit this page for a full list of events.
3. Contact your elected representative. There’s detailed advice on how to go about this over on laquadrature.net.
4. Visit the ACTA Day of Action Hub on Avaaz.org and add your voice, or spread the word to your friends.

Is this protest effective?

Yes! The amount of voices raised against this legislation is already having an effect. A mass turnout at today’s protests will only further strengthen the message that the European voters do not want this legislation to be passed.

From an Avaaz.org newsletter:

Four Eastern European governments and now Germany have just said they’ll stall their decision on the treaty. Now, if hundreds of thousands of people attend thousands of rallies all across Europe tomorrow, we can ensure that all politicians across the 27 EU countries are put on notice that people don’t want ACTA and will continue to take action until the treaty is buried.

For those of you interested, she’s a Seat Leon Mk1, 1.9L SDI Stella, just shy of 100k on the clock. She’s running well and came with a full year’s MOT. I’m pretty thrilled with it I must say. Looking forward to expanding the reach of my daily photo walks by adding a motorised starting push to them. It was getting difficult feel inspired on the same little stretch in this small town (although definitely a good exercise).

Anyway, this will also make it much much easier to get down to Dublin or visit my parents in Wexford. Will also be nice to drop in to Niall and Chrissie in Belfast which is only an hour away or so.

Photos!

Still, when it hits the mainstream it will be a nice addition to the Android platform and, most importantly, will save you having to do strange workarounds to get bookmarks in sync and so on.

There’s a good review of Chrome for Android on The Verge and they do point out some minor flaws that exist in the beta.

Of course, Google’s clear that this is a beta product right now, and it’s not without its flaws. As we mentioned earlier, we saw the occasional “hiccup” while zooming and scrolling pages — not normal stutter, just a seemingly random pause here and there.

However, the overall impression is positive.

We’d go so far to say that it’s good enough in its present beta form to be used as your only mobile browser, though — it’s solid, fast, and already head and shoulders above the aging app it replaces.

It certainly looks good, sporting a nice browser tabs view, and I think it will make a lot of sense on a tablet as well.

Below you can find the announcement video from Google.

New! Custom styles

I opened Google Docs this morning to work on a client specification and I was delighted to see that they’ve finally implemented custom heading styles.

It’s relatively simple to use. You can style selected text in the way you like, and then go to the heading style you want to change, click the fly out arrow and select “Update heading x to match selection”.

There’s some more information on Google Docs help.

Here’s a sample screen shot showing some custom headings I’ve applied to a basic document.

You can also, via the options fly out menu, save your current settings as the default style on all your Google Docs documents.

This is a really important update as the lack of styles definition was one of the reasons I wouldn’t use Google Docs to create work documents – it’s so important to have consistent styling across your work files, and I wasn’t going to settle with redefining heading styles every time I worked on a document.

That said, it’s not perfect though – we’re still missing style rules for lists, and there’s only 3 heading rules available (although I guess you could say that ‘Title” and “Subtitle” make up for this and really give you 5 heading styles). Also, the choice of available fonts is still somewhat limited, but the real-time collaborative editing functionality makes up for this in many ways.

I would be interested to see how these headings translate into PDF bookmarks for proper document structuring.