Irrelevant is my relevant …

Hi, Well I have finally got round to finishing enough of this application to give you a version. Unfortunately all the features I wanted to release are not there but its close enough. Future versions will incorporate these.

This application is basically a sound board with the ability to add user created content.

As before, requires .Net 3.5 CF.

The sample sound themes included in the application are a little weak and could do with some extra ones being created. Post your creations in the thread please

There are two types of themes available, a button theme and an image theme.

The button theme uses positionable windows image buttons to play the sounds.

The image theme uses an image to play the sounds. So for example you would have 2 images one for the background on the application for the user to see and one for the application to use. The overlay image will contain a single block of colour where you want to place a button, this colour is then indexed in the themes XML file. So when you press down on the background the colours are matched and the matching sound played.

The best way to get to grips with the themes is to look at two of the themes I have provided. The XML files are fully commented and quite simple to understand.

Example of ButtonTheme, \content\Roy Walker\RoyWalker.xml
Example of Imagetheme, \content\Mr T\MRT.xml

I am sure there will be bugs, but I wanted to get a release out as soon as possible to get some user created content. Please post any creations on this thread and I will include them in the .cab file with the next version.

Any feedback or suggestions please post on this thread also.

Future features:
Volume Control
More audio support, e.g. mp3 etc
Options to save last theme and other stuff
visual feedback on an Imagetheme button press, perhaps a greying of an area (Simple but havent had the time)

Any way have fun!!
Download

Nostalgia…

A friend of mine got me playing UFO: Enemy Unknown again the other day, I can’t say the idea thrilled me but I thought I would give it a go none the less. I have to say I had completely forgotten how great old games were to play. Yes yes yes the graphics were not so hot, but the gameplay was totally amazing. Something that has been long forgotten about recently.

This got me thinking, I own all the Space Quests and Police Quest games (they are in a box in the loft) and I remember wasting my childhood playing them. I thought how amazing would it be to play these games again?

Considering I legally own these games, I set about googling a place to download them. So very easy, a simple google search for:

• “sq1.zip“
• “sq2.zip“
• “pq1.zip“
• “policequest2.zip“
• I think you get the idea.

A few minutes later I had my complete collection. Knowing these games would no longer work on the bloated operating systems of modern day I set about downloading DosBox.

DosBox is a dos emulation utility, it is open source and as such free. Plays all the games perfectly, here are a few screenshots.

I have to admit I am hooked playing space quest, dreamweb and UFO: Enemy Unknown.

I am collating a selection of the best wakeup songs for the morning. This is for the primary purpose of listening to in the morning when I have a shower.

My choices so far are:

1. Karate Kid – You’re the best – Great tune to get you going, being told that you are the best does it every time.
2. KISS – God gave rock and roll to you
3. Cat Stevens – Wild World
4. Theme tune to MASH
5. Journey – Don’t Stop Believing

The faulty hard drive i have will be the perfect place to have a daily task at say 3 in the morning to do an rsync of differences.

It would back up:

• Mp3’s
• Complete Mysql database, only keep last n copies
• wordpress directory
• mythtv home directory

Even if this disk did die, it wouldnt particulary matter, it would just be quite useful as a secodary back up. I have marked all badblocks with fsck.ext3 and then mounted the drive.

My simple solution was to create a bash file with the following, chmod +x, and add it to the crontab

Mainly it dumps my whole mysql database and Rsyncs any files i want to backup

DATE=`date +’%m-%d-%Y’`

mysqldump -c –password=xxx -A > /mnt/backup-drive-faulty/mysqlbackups/mythsq
l.dump.$DATE

rsync -av –delete /home/tomas /mnt/backup-drive-faulty/root-backup/
rsync -av –delete /root /mnt/backup-drive-faulty/root-backup/
rsync -av –delete /home/etc /mnt/backup-drive-faulty/root-backup/
rsync -av –delete /usr/share/wordpress /mnt/backup-drive-faulty/root-backup/
rsync -av –delete /home/mythtv /mnt/backup-drive-faulty/root-backup/
rsync -av –delete /mnt/store2/music /mnt/backup-drive-faulty/music

Seems to do the job nicely, not the best solution, but its quick and works.