Lots going on, not much posting.

Follow me on twitter, yay, here:

http://twitter.com/gordonturner

New project (using Google code) to provide a processing library for the wiimote:

http://code.google.com/p/openwiimote/

A quick note, do not use the Twitter client Tweetdeck and the web UI testing tool Selenium server at the same time on Windows XP, or you will get the error:

“This page requires a secure connection which includes server authentication.”

“The Certificate Issuer for this site is untrusted or unknown. Do you wish to proceed?”

March 17th 2009 Apple has scheduled a Preview of the iPhone OS 3.0. I am looking forward to it, mostly that it will jump start my own iPhone development efforts, but also that they will address a few ‘gaps’ in the platform and built in apps.

First, I want to say that the v2.0 OS and iPhone is one of the best mobile platforms out there. The big caveat is that if you type a lot, you are better off with a Blackberry. But it has the better web browser, app support and it is and ipod.

So what could make it better, here are my top five:

1. Cut and Paste. Nuff said.
2. Back ground apps, the notification api never showed up.
3. Mail.app, landscape keyboard, would seriously close the typing gap in email
4. Mail.app, expunge when deleted, at least an option to do so.
5. Update Springboard to handle more apps. Nice problem for Apple to have, that people are struggling with Application managment.

I don’t really care that much about Flash, MMS or Bluetooth, but they would be nice too. Totally selfish list, lets see if Mail.app gets some love in this release.

In Canada backing up dvds for for personal use is legal, but it is not as easy as ripping audio cds. This is (mostly) thanks to the Content Scramble System present on almost all dvds. The companies that author and press the dvds sometimes throw in other tricks to prevent computers from reading the discs.

The first step in backing up the dvd is to decrypt it. There are many free ways of doing this, often involving decss. My recommendation is a commercial app called AnyDVD. Yes, you can use free apps to decrypt 90% of the dvds out there and yes AnyDVD is expensive and only runs on Windows. AnyDVD is actively maintained, in fact they have released a version that will decrypt Blu Ray discs. I guess I am old enough to choose my software battles.

After installing and inserting a dvd into the drive, backing up the dvd is as simple as navigating to the drive and copying the VIDEO_TS directory to your hard drive. The size of the backed up directory will usually be about 7 Gigs or less.

At this point the backup can be played on any software that can play dvds. I suggest VLC media player, which is cross platform and will display the full dvd menus.

Finally, if you wish to play back the content on your ipod or game console I would suggest HandBrake. It has profiles for the different platforms and allows queuing of transcoding jobs.

Side note: The OS X DVD Player will play the backed up image, start the application first and drag the VIDEO_TS onto the icon in the Dock.)

One of the huge pain points transitioning between Windows and OS X is the muscle memory. Cut and paste is different on OS X, the iTunes track keys are different, undo is different, you get the idea.

I tried remapping the key binding in OS X to match Windows, but some applications (like Firefox, see bug 316459 and xcode) did not play nice.

So remapping the OS X keys in Windows was the next best thing, partly because the Windows Key doesn’t get used by many apps.

There are many hot key / macro apps out there but AutohotKey seems to work really well for me.

AutohotKey is an Open Source task tray app that has some pretty comprehensive macro calls. It even allows me to remap the keys on my Apple Aluminum keyboard, such as Print Screen.

My Autohotkeys script is behind the cut.

UPDATE: Script got mangled, please see this page instead.