Command-Tab

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 9:49 AM

Grab your iPhone and DVD remote — something awesome is in the works.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Apps, Projects, iPod. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 2:40 PM

For those eagerly anticipating Widerbug: Widescreen Firebug for Firefox 3, the wait is over. Firebug 1.2.1 was just recently released, and I’ve merged the Widerbug modifications into the latest version and tested them under Windows XP and Mac OS X on Firefox 3.0.1.

Head on over to the Widerbug page to grab the latest version and get coding, widescreen style! (Please leave comments and note any bugs on that page, just to keep things centralized.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Programming, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 9:43 PM

The result of the “Tunes” sidebar element on the Command-Tab homepage, fmTuner is a small WordPress plugin for retrieving song details from your Last.fm profile and publishing them anywhere in your WordPress theme. It provides options for choosing among your Recent, Loved, or Top tracks, as well as tools to adjust the update frequency and appearance:

Of particular note is the customizable Display Format option. Using simple tags like [::artist::] and [::image::] intermixed with regular HTML, you can tweak your Last.fm tracks exactly how you like, or however your WordPress theme requires. You have full control!

Requirements

• WordPress 2.5 or later.
• PHP 5 or later (fmTuner uses PHP 5’s SimpleXML for decoding Last.fm data).
• Basic knowledge of PHP, HTML, and WordPress.

Installation

• Upload “fmtuner.php” to a directory inside “/wp-content/plugins/” directory. For example: “/wp-content/plugins/fmtuner/fmtuner.php”
• Ensure “/wp-content/plugins/fmtuner/” is writable by your webserver (chmod 755 fmtuner).
• Activate the plugin through the “Plugins” menu in WordPress.
• Set up options in the “Settings” menu in WordPress.
• Place “if(function_exists(’fmtuner’)) { fmtuner(); }” in your templates, between PHP tags.

Release History

• fmTuner 1.0.3
  Released on Nov. 15, 2008
  By request, a [::number::] fmTuner tag has been added, which emits a sequential number for each track (starting at 1). This is particularly useful for CSS and JavaScript display purposes.
• fmTuner 1.0.2
  Released on Oct. 5, 2008
  Added a cURL-based alternative to file_get_contents to hopefully resolve “URL file-access is disabled” issues. If allow_url_fopen is disabled in the php.ini, cURL will be used to fetch the Last.fm feed instead.
• fmTuner 1.0.1
  Released on Sept. 9, 2008
  Added better failure checking and informational messages, removed development code, and updated instructions.
• fmTuner 1.0
  Released on Sept. 6, 2008
  Initial release.

Released under the MIT License. Do with fmTuner whatever you wish. Mod it, mash it, hack it. Make it yours.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Programming, Projects, WordPress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 3:25 AM

Back when Command-Tab first started, I did a hack where I managed to connect a full size hard drive to a 3G iPod. I’m happy to present today a much easier solution — the “iPod Junior” — using a laptop hard drive and a nearly pre-built adapter. The end result is an iPod with an attached 2.5″ hard drive with next to no soldering.

In my earlier hack, I noted that the 1.8″ hard drive inside the iPod runs on 3.3v (see for yourself) instead of the 5v used in slightly larger laptop drives. Again, some external power source will need to be connected to power the drive, as the iPod alone can’t even spin up the laptop drive, much less a full desktop-sized drive. What I discovered is that the hard drive caddy inside IBM ThinkPad 240 laptops are almost a perfect iPod-to-laptop drive adapter, with the exception of power. On the front of the adapter is a female 1.8″ hard drive plug normally used for connecting to the laptop bus, and on the back is a standard female laptop hard drive connector. With some slight modification to route in the correct power, this modified adapter can easily attach a laptop hard drive to your iPod’s ribbon cable — ready for formatting and use.

You can see more photos of the modification in my Flickr photoset. To do the hack yourself, you’ll need to acquire a ThinkPad 240 hard drive caddy off eBay, like I did. Cut the +3.3v power trace that leads to pins 41 and 42 on the 2.5″ hard drive bus, and also scrape some of the green coating off both positive and ground traces. With the positive lines cut and some bare copper exposed on both traces, you can then solder on whatever power connector you prefer to run 5v to — I used two simple pins from a pin header, as a floppy drive power connector will easily plug onto them. From there, connect everything up, power up the drive, and then the iPod. Format and use. Rinse and repeat.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 3:25 am and is filed under Hacks, Projects, iPod. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.