KHomeInventory announcement

Seeing as my current project simple rowLog is slowly approaching completion, I have come to the conclusion that I need something new to do. Seeing as I have had so much fun learning C++, Qt and the like while trying to implement manual panel hiding in KDE4 (although it isn’t quite done: there still is some confusion as to how the hiding buttons are best to be integrated with the panels…), I have decided to do something using C++ and Qt.

My new project is called KHomeInventory, and is a home inventory program, designed to integrate with the KDE desktop. I’m currently in the design and analysis stage, so will probably post more once I have more concrete plans.

2010
Sunday,
07 Mar
CATEGORY
Programming
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Manually hidable panels coming to KDE4.

For all you retroists out there who are missing having manually-hideable panels on your desktop (or those, who like me, are sticking with kde 3.5 due to this regression), there is good news. After some discussion on a certain bug report) I have decided to try my own hand at adding this functionality. And I have now finally figured out where the necessary code resides. [View KDE online source repository here.] Work is starting (and I am beginning to learn some of the intricacies of CPP and Qt).

As outlined in the same bug report linked to above, I will implement this feature/necessity by adding a new display mode to the panel, labelled “Manually hideable”, which will make the panel behave the same as when “Always visible”, but adding two hiding buttons (or one if the panel is only connected to one side of the screen), which will then (as the name suggests) hide the panel, displaying a small button (on top of all other windows) where the panel has been hidden to. What will (probably) be missing is the option to manually set the width of the buttons, or set animation times and suck like as in 3.5, but I don’t think that is a key necessity, and it wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the idea of KDE 4.

Whether or not this change would then be incorporated into mainstream kde (assuming I get it done) is not known yet; this depends on quality of code (eek!) and whether or not the devs think this is useful.

2010
Saturday,
27 Feb
CATEGORY
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Additional Grub splash screens

I have added two new Grub splash screens, which can be found on the grub-splash page. They comprise a picture of flowers, and a picture of candles. I will soon start learning how to make Grub 2 splashes, so expect some to arrive within the next year.

I also would like to apologise for the downtime over the past few days, caused by a server change by the hosting service I use. I hope you weren’t too inconvenienced…

2010
Monday,
08 Feb
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Java/Swing: sending an event to a specific component…

While working on the gui for simple rowLog last night I came across the problem of trying to send the keyboard input to a popup-menu to a text entry box. It turned out the dispatchEvent() method of Swing components doesn’t do what it says and dispatches the event to the keyboard manager instead of the component itself, which might reroute it somewhere else (if you’re unlucky it does an endless loop where the same event keeps getting sent to the same component over and over again, which tries to reroute it, but can’t). After fiddling about with reflection and other complicated things, simply in order to get dispatchEvent() to dispatch the event to the component on which the method is called, I discovered the simple solution of using:
KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager().redispatchEvent(boatEntry, arg0);

This, it turns out, actually sends the Event (arg0) to where you want it to go (boatEntry), in contrary to the dispatchEvent() method which claims to do this, but doesn’t. I.e. the following code DOESN’T work as specified:
boatEntry.dispatchEvent(arg0)

2010
Monday,
18 Jan
CATEGORY
Programming
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Mv_Embed in use for html5 videos

Today mv_embed, a javascript solution allowing the playing of html5 videos in non-compliant browsers was installed on the site. On browsers with javascript enabled, but that don’t support html5 videos, the script modifies the page, and can also load a java-applet based player, meaning that videos can be viewed on almost all platforms, no matter what browser or plugins are in use. The script is completely free, and is released under the GPL v2.

The only video so far on the site is one of a TI Calculator Emulator here. There probably will be more soon though.

Noteworthy is that the mv_embed script broke my wordpress theme’s (!) scripts. This turned out to be a jQuery problem, explained in a post here. Strangely enough editing the mv_embed script was not enough to fix the page, and the theme’s scripts had to be changed as well, but now everything works, so everyone’s happy :) .

2010
Monday,
11 Jan
CATEGORY
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Me on google Earth

I have discovered myself on Google Earth, and also on Google Maps, right here. What’s more, it includes the whole Scottish Junior Quad. (You can almost smell the sewage works we’re rowing past on the picture…)

2010
Thursday,
07 Jan
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Life, the universe, and everything?

While once we thought to know, in fact, it was but the appearance of knowing, but not the knowledge itself, that in our possession was. Seemingly the appearance of knowledge was knowledge itself, but now it appears not to be. While knowledge seemed to be abound, the knowledge that we knew not what knowledge was, seemed to make it not knowledge to me.

The idea became out of nothing, it seemed. But nothing itself an idea, the idea must have come from idea. But whence came the first idea, on which these ideas come to rest? Without the one, the second could not have arisen. Is the idea an absolute, infinite existence, condition-less, on which all else depends? We know not, but think, ourself using the ideas, from whence we do not know they come.

2010
Wednesday,
06 Jan
CATEGORY
Randomicity
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Welcome

After some kaffuffle, it’s up…

Enjoy

2010
Tuesday,
05 Jan
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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