Richey it

Multifunction Education App - Learning English

2011-12-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

Learning English isn't so much a new app as it is a culmination of four of my previous apps. It includes the very popular "Learning Words" and "Talking ABCs" apps as well as the "Color Flashcards" and "Number Flashcards" apps, all in one convenient package. When you open the app you are presented with a menu to choose what function to use.

Buy it ad-free now
Or try the ad-supported version

Updates!

2011-12-10T15:54:00.000-05:00

Both my ABC Flashcards and Learning Simple Words apps are now available as either ad-supported or purchasable for a dollar. Both paid and ad-supported are identical except the paid versions do not have ads.

Both apps have been updated to allow for toggling random order on and off with the menu button.

In other news I'm removing the donate link as I've read that using it for non-explicit-charity things is against TOS and can get your account frozen. Oops. Good thing no one donated I guess.

Busy day, three announcements.

2011-11-10T00:13:00.000-05:00

I have three app announcements today! One, I've developed a new virtual dice rolling app. Two, I've released a paid version of the Learning ABC's app, and three I've updated the ad-free donation-supported version of the Learning ABC's app to include a message to users about the new feature in the paid for version.

The new feature is the ability to use the menu button to toggle between alphabetical and random letter modes. Previously the only mode was random. I've listed it at $1 US.

Let's see if Techdirt is on to something

2011-11-04T13:59:00.001-04:00

I've released the ad-free version of my ABC Flashcards app. It's the exact same app, only without the ad-serving api embedded in it. My hope is that the honor-system will work and people will either use the ad-supported version or will donate at my donate link on my blog when using the ad-free version.

I got the idea from the news site Techdirt. They seem to report all the time about people going the donation-supported route with great success. Here's hoping!

----

And that experiment is over. Many people downloaded the ad-free version, but no one donated or even said as much as a think you. Good learning experience I guess.

Update: Coin Flipper 1:02

2011-11-04T00:53:00.004-04:00

New in 1.02: Lowered Android requirements to Android 2.1, fixed a graphic glitch on the Eagle side of the coin, reduced file size by nearly half.

Still free, Still ad supported.

Learning Simple Words v1.01 released.

2011-11-02T19:36:00.001-04:00

Behold my latest creation, an app to help young children learn to spell simple words. It's pretty slick. Containing a dictionary of 316 simple words, the interface picks one at random to display, and then reads it aloud, spells it, and then reads a second time.

It's ad supported, as usual, but also as usual I'm willing to put up a no-ad version so long as someone asks for it and maybe offers up a donation to my paypal account at the link above.

I'm now an official Android developer!

2011-11-02T11:38:00.003-04:00

So far I've written a Coin Flipping app that flips a quarter at random when you click it and an ABC's Educational app that randomly picks a letter in either upper or lower case, displays it on screen and speaks it out loud.

Before anyone complains, yes, both are ad supported with Airpush ads pushed out a maximum of twice a day. Airpush is entirely opt-out able but if you do that I ask you to please make a donation to my at the link to the top-right of this page. If anyone asks nicely (and a donation wouldn't hurt...) I'll release copies of my apps without ads and publish them along side their ad supported twins.

I'm serious about donations. If anyone donates to me via paypal, no matter the amount, I promise to release duplicates of both my apps without ads. Prove to me this business model is successful.

Make mailto links open in Gmail in Google Chrome browser (Windows 7 & Vista)

2011-02-01T08:01:00.000-05:00

Windows 7 and Vista

Open your registry editor (Type “regedit” at your start menu)
Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command

(If this key does not exist then create it by right clicking HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and selecting new key, type mailto and press enter, repeat for the rest of the keys in the path above.)

Edit the (Default) command from whatever it is (right click and select modify) to:

“C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1

(with “UserName” being your username.)

Open with Google Apps

Instead of:

“mail.google.com/mail?"

substitute in the following:

“mail.google.com/a/yourdomainhere.com?

http://blog.bn.ee/2008/09/04/make-mailto-links-open-in-gmail-in-google-chrome-browser-windows-xp-and-vista/

Disable HTC Hero Track Ball LED [Requires Root]

2010-12-24T00:56:00.002-05:00

The HTC Hero cellphone is a Google Android phone. I found the trackball LED to be rather irritating in dim lighting due to its excessive brightness and general lack of purpose. I like the track ball but I do not need it to be lit up to use it. It seemed silly to waste the extra battery power on this LED so I set out to disable it. After some digging and probing through the phone's OS I found what I was looking for.

The LED's are located here:

/sys/class/leds/

Prerequisites, you will need your phone rooted and will need a terminal to work. I recommend using the Android SDK to connect to the phone so you can type on a full size keyboard.

To turn the trackball LED on and off simply do the following:

on:
echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/vtkey-backlight/brightness
off:
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/vtkey-backlight/brightness

To disable the led do the following:

echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/vtkey-backlight/brightness
chmod -w /sys/class/leds/vtkey-backlight/brightness

This removes write privileges to the LED, effectively locking it in an off state. To undo:

chmod +w /sys/class/leds/vtkey-backlight/brightness

Currently this effect seems to be undone with a reboot of the phone. I'll look into making it permanent eventually.

Fix WDTV HD / LIVE playback issues by recoding to XviD with Ubuntu Linux

2010-05-10T09:30:00.002-04:00

So I was trying to play a video on my WDTVLIVE media streaming device but the video kept freezing or stuttering or going out of sync with the audio. After much troubleshooting I determined the issue to be the encoding of the video file and set out to fix it. The following is a script that, when run, will encode every AVI file in the present directory with the XviD codec. All files are stored in a subdirectory named recoded. I'll walk you through setup configuration, and use.

Ok, first off you'll need Ubuntu Linux installed. Plenty of other tutorials out there for this part.
Next up you'll need to install the codecs and encoding software
Open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo apt-get install mplayer
sudo apt-get install mencoder

Now to make the encoder script:

sudo gedit /usr/local/bin/encoder

#!/bin/bash
function Xvid1Pass {
OUT2="./recoded/xvid.${f%.*}.avi"
mencoder $f -ovc xvid -oac copy -xvidencopts bitrate=1000 -o $OUT2 || mencoder $f -ovc xvid -oac pcm -xvidencopts bitrate=1000 -o $OUT2
}

FILES=*.avi
for f in $FILES
do
echo $f
Xvid1Pass $f
done

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/encoder

Ok, now cd to whatever directory you have your media saved at and type:

sudo mkdir recoded
sudo encoder

Just like that your media should be recoding to XviD at a 1000 bitrate. If that is too low for you then try adjusting it in the script to get a better quality.

This script is a modified (and automated) version of the script found here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=406790

Debian Linux on a Toshiba A45-S150 - A solution that works

2008-01-01T04:22:00.009-05:00

By default Debian doesn't support much of the hardware inside most Toshiba laptops. Some of the non-functioning parts include the Atheros wireless card, most of the function keys, poor touchpad response, and the ability to view ntfs partitions. Here is how I went about getting everything to work.

Atheros Wifi

Open a terminal as root and type:
gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following to the bottom of the list:
#
deb http://ftp.se.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.se.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ sarge main contrib

Finally run this series of commands to install:

apt-get update
apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.18-5-686
apt-get install madwifi-tools
apt-get install module-assistant
m-a prepare
m-a a-i madwifi
modprobe ath_pci

Toshbia function keys
fnfxd - ACPI and hotkey daemon for Toshiba laptops

Run this command to install:
apt-get install fnfxd

To make fnfxd work, open a terminal as root and type:
gedit /etc/init.d/fnfxd

Add the following line immediately below the first line, the one that reads "#! /bin/sh"

modprobe toshiba_acpi

close and save

NTFS partition

Open a terminal as root and type:
gedit /etc/fstab

I added the following to the bottom. Yours may be different so if this doesn't work read up on it elsewhere.

/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ntfs rw,users,umask=022 0 0

save and exit

After this is is necessary to actually make the mount point.
In the terminal type:
mkdir /mnt/hda1

Slow Touchpad Response and/or tap to click not working

Edit the xorg config file, comment(#) out the settings for the touchpad entry and copy and paste in the settings from the mouse. In root terminal type:
gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Find the Synaptics Touchpad section and make it look like this:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
# Driver "synaptics"
# Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
# Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
# Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
################ this is what i added ######################
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"

EndSection

Once I did all this I reset and everything worked fine.
I hope this helps.

To add Windows Fonts:

cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
mkdir windowsfonts
cp /mnt/hda1/windows/Fonts/*.ttf .
chown root.root *.ttf
chmod 644 *.ttf
mkfontdir
fc-cache