Another 15 minutes » howto

How to hide media from players on Android

Draupner — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 05:00:28 +0000

An Android phone will scan your entire memory card for music and images and display them as available media in the players and albums, but maybe you don’t want to show all media but only specific folders. There is a solution for this. To hide media in a specific folder from the player apps do this:

Windows: Open notepad and save an empty file as filename “.nomedia”. Linux: In a terminal window create a file called “.nomedia” by typing “touch .nomedia”.
Connect your Android phone by USB and copy the file into all folders you wish to hide from the media scan.
Done.

The media (music, images and movies) contained in this folder will now be ignored and not show up in your MP3 or movie player on the phone. To access and play them you can use a file manager, like Astro File Manager.

Howto flash your HTC Touch HD with custom ROM

Draupner — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:03:21 +0000

Ever since I noticed that TouchFlo 3D (also known as Manila) got updated on newer phones, but not on my HTC Touch HD, I have been thinking of doing it myself with one of the multiple custom ROMs available for this phone, made by enthusiasts of the Windows Mobile community. The newer versions of Manila has alot more nice functions and much better looks that I want, my phone comes with version 1.3 so it’s pretty basic. The procedure seemed a bit complicated though, and I didn’t want to risk my warranty on the phone. But after e-mailing HTC asking whether or not the HTC Touch HD (Blackstone) would ever get an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 and newest version of Manila and they replied…

- We currently have no knowledge of any planned updates for the HD. It is unlikely to be updated to 6.5 or beyond as Microsoft have made some hardware restrictions on devices that can use 6.5 that the HD does not meet.

… I decided to go ahead with my plans, since I know that many people use Windows Mobile 6.5 and later versions of Manila on their Touch HD’s and it runs just fine. I’m gonna go for Dutty’s “Leo” ROM with Windows Mobile 6.5 and Manila 2.5, since Dutty seems to be the most popular and skilled ROM cook out there, and here’s a step-by-step guide on how I did it.

First off, let me just say that I take no responsibility in any damage done to you or your phone for following my example, just in case.

Now, you need to decide if you want to use HSPL (Hard SPL) or USPL (User SPL). USPL is a temporary upgrade in memory only, to make the change permanent (survive a reset) you should use HSPL, and so I will.

You also need to check what SPL version you have, boot the phone holding the volume down button. This will put the phone in it’s “bootloader” screen. My phone had version 1.54 and I have a 1.56+ version ROM. In order to upgrade to a custom ROM you must change your SPL to allow uncertified upgrades, such a SPL has been made by “Olinex” and you must first install/flash this to you phone.

A guide and all the files you need are found in this tutorial; http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=505377. This will explain the terms more in details if you want.

I got an error when first trying to change the SPL (connection problem), but there is a troubleshooting guide just for this scenario. The solution is to download a program file to launch on your phone instead, then flashing the new SPL worked great.

TouchFLO 3D (Manila 2.5)

Once you have the new SPL in place, you can flash any ROM you like. I chosed Dutty’s Leo R2 ROM (Windows 6.5 and Manila 2.5). Just put your phone in bootloader mode again just as before, connect the USB-cable to your computer and wait until “USB” pops up on the screen. Then just launch the “BlackstoneRUUWrapper” program which usually is distributed with each ROM package, then flash your phone as you would with an official release.

After this it’s recommended to do a hard reset/factory reset twice. Do this by holding both volume up and volume down button while turning on your phone and follow the instructions on the screen.

All set, worked great for me! Just sync back all your contacts and files, install the CABs and customize your phone again. Programs you should install one by one and test them, to make your they are working correctly with the new ROM.

To sum up:

Backup your phone using Activesync etc.
Go for HSPL method.
Flash new SPL, if it fails then use SSPL (running boot loader from phone).
When SPL version is “1.56 (Olinex)”, flash new ROM.
Hard reset.
Hard reset.
Restore backup.
Done!

Good luck! I can really recommend this if you’re getting abit tired of the same old user interface on your phone, this is close to getting a new phone, and much cheaper :).

Automatic update of WordPress to 2.8.2 freezes at download

Draupner — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:37:54 +0000

Alot of people seem to have problems with auto-updating WordPress to version 2.8.2 with the processes freezing at download, stuck with message the the file is being downloaded but nothing ever happens. This only seem to happen on some blogs, 2 out of my 3 blogs worked just fine, but one needed more help.

The problem seem to be with some plugin. Here is what you do to successfully get the update through. Go to the plugin page, select “Active” plugins and then use bulk action to deactivate all active plugins. Don’t worry if you have many plugins already deactivated and don’t want to manually activate the ones you actually used one by one, you can activate them just as easy. Now proceed with the core upgrade, it should go through right away. Then, go to the plugins page again, select “Recently active” plugins and then bulk action activate them again. All done!

Howto setup WordPress automatic updates without FTP

Howto setup WordPress automatic updates without FTP

Draupner — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:46:40 +0000

If you run your WordPress blog on some hosting partner you probably have the automatic updates of WordPress core and plugins working, but if you ever setup your own Linux server and trying to run WordPress on it, it is likely that this will not work out of the box, especially if you’re running multiple websites on the same server.

I don’t want to use some 3rd party plugin for this to work or FTP, so I investigated what it is that makes it work in my hosting partners server, but not my own. I figured it was some PHP configuration missing but it was much simpler than that.

You will need root-access to the server to continue. The problem is that the webserver process (httpd) does not have write permission to the files (let’s say in “/home/user/public_html” for example). The httpd process is most likely to run as user “nobody”, “apache” or “www” (it must not run as “root”!). One possibility to fix this is to set the directory public_html as write permitted by anyone, but that is not a good solution so I won’t write how.

Instead we wan’t to change owner of the files to match. To find out which user is running your httpd process you can login as root and issue the command

ps -axu | grep “httpd”

One process will run as root to bind to the port, but the other ones should be another user.

The easiest thing to do, and this is how many hosting partners have set it up, is to make sure the owner of public_html and all subfolders and files is the same user which is running the httpd process.

I am running Fedora Linux and in my case the user is “apache”, so while still logged in as root I just run the command

chown -R apache /home/user/public_html

This will change owner if the public_html directory, which is the root directory in my Apache configuration, and all subfolders and files. Now the automatic updates will work right away!

Asus eee pc low volume with eeebuntu solution

Draupner — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:04:37 +0000

Ever since I got my Asus eee PC 1000HE installed with eeebuntu linux I have had problems with very low volume on the speaker, even tho the speaker volume slider was showing max volume. I didn’t spend much time investigating why this was, just accepting it. But today I found the solution to it, and it was very easy. Just right-click the speaker icon, select preferences. A new windows pops up, if you select the “LineOut” device by clicking it, and then click the speaker icon again to adjust the volume slider you will notice it’s only at 50%. Just set this up to 100% and you will have all the volume you need.

Photoshop tutorials & howto’s

Draupner — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:03:42 +0000

Recently I’ve been playing around with Photoshop, retouching photos and making artistic twists in particular, and have come to like it after finding some very cool blogs with Photoshop tutorials, guides and how-to’s. One of them is “moderskeppet” which is an awarded Swedish Photoshop blog with lots of video tutorials and tips. The other I found was a blog by Dave Cross who is an author of Photoshop books and he also has nice video tutorials of how to make some pretty cool effects in Photoshop. Both of these sites have ideas and tutorials which I’ve been using when training and retouching photos of myself. I hope to get working on some pictures of other objects too and creating and modifying images. Video tutorials really helps alot more than just a written guide and you get instant results.

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