Geiodo

Words cannot describe this:

http://kathack.com/

Hi! Better Battery Alpha is here. Please note this IS an Alpha (Not even a Beta). That means it’s experimental.

Key features missing:

• Does not install its self for life. You need to run the program when your computer starts up.
• Does not have preferences.
• Does not have an application icon.

Those are just some of the features which I will add in later releases.

Until then, here is Better Battery Alpha:

Download

I’ve been working hard at Better Battery. Got around the issue with the NSProgressIndicator by just using an image similar to one, and looping the position over time.

But, that’s not really what I am here to talk about…

BetterBattery is nearing completion! Yep! Pretty soon, the Alpha will be out.

Alpha release checklist:

• Make the Status Bar Display: Check
  • Make the basic status bar: Check
  • Make the status bar flash red when critical: Check
  • Make the status bar display moving lines when charging: Check
  • Make the status bar moving lines blink when nearly full: Check
• Make the application force sleep at 5% battery power: Check
• Make the application send growl notifications for different stages in battery power: UNCHECK
  • Detect change in battery power: Check
  • Send growl messages: Check
    • Configure various messages for different levels: Uncheck

At that point, I’ll be done, and release Better Battery Alpha!

Well… That’s not quite true… I am waiting on some questions to the growl community before I go ahead and release. These questions relate to Better Battery Beta, but are relevant to Alpha too. (Though they will be a hidden feature in Alpha)

That’s about it. Alpha will probably be available tomorrow!

The NSProgressIndicator is one of those white glossy bars with diagonal blue stripes moving horizontally. My god, these things are tedious.

I am attempting to give BetterBattery a way to display when charging. I decided to go with a good old progress indicator. HTe idea was to make it transparent over the main status indicator. My plan failed miserably…

In order to start these things spinning, you have to start a coroutine by calling StartAnimating on them. Simple enough. But wait! Doing that overrides transparency… That means it can either be transparent, or spin.

Luckily, it does have a method called Animate. That just causes the bar to move by one step. Simple enough ,great even. It worked like a charm, I just started my own coroutine and animated it there, all the while setting the transparency to be correct. Well… Guess what? Animate is deprecated! I can’t rely on deprecated code, and there is no alternative. That one went out the window, and it even worked!

In desperation, I decided to go with a somewhat complicated approach: Surround the indicator with an NSView, animate the indicator, and apply transparency to the NSView. Now the damn thing won’t even spin! (Spin = move. It’s based on those spinny things outside old barber shops)

Sometimes Cocoa really gets on my nerves…

Right around the time of the whole Geiodo going down thing, I was thinking about how to get this blog seen. It occured to me that someone had once “stumbled” this webpage in the past, and that made me start thinking: Maybe I should check out StumbleUpon and re-stubmle my page. To my immediate amazement, Stumble Upon dragged me into a world of amazement… Uhh. Yeah. Sort of an infinite loop, just kept getting better. Appearantly, StumbleUpon is designed to bring the best of the web to YOU. And BOY did it.. I’ve been having real fun stumbling around, it’s really a gem.

Anyways, if you haven’t tried or even heard of StumbleUpon, do yourself a favor, and check it out. BE SURE TO LIKE GEIODO IF/WHEN YOU SEE IT! !

Woo! Yay! Several days it took, but, but! Geiodo is back up, and ready for action. Now you can actually comment! No wonder all those spam bots had stopped spamming me… lol

The permalinks to my posts aren’t working

Hi, I am editing this post rather than posting anew. I posted this because… Permalinks were broken, making commenting, and individual post viewing impossible.

I suspected started ages ago, and in ever noticed it, on one of my bouts of WP core messing. I tried to fix it this morning completely breaking my WP installation.

I had long been using multiblog on 2.9.2 (VERY outdated), and, the combination of unstable technology and old version number has really held me back. I am finally in a space where I understand enough about WP to begin managing it myself. (Dad did the managing in the past) With all the above stated… It is time to drop multi-blog and finally upgrade.

Due to the nature of the break, I have to COMPLETELY delete my blog’s internal systems and reinstall them, and hope to god that my backups work. That is what I did here, minus the deleting part. I installed wordpress on this domain and restored my posts from a backup. It’s worked great! That means I can move on to do the real deal.

GREEN:
Completed

YELLOW:
On hold or in progress

RED:
Incomplete

completed (And update this post as I complete more)

• First off, test the concept in a separate domain
• Next, go back to the old domain, and organize the MESS that I have on the main directory into two groups: Old WP files, and, miscellaneous stuff.
• Next, create a new database for the new system. (Will keep old one around just in case)
• After that… I will need to reinstall wordpress on the old domain. NORMAL wordpress this time
• Finally, I will need to carefully, CAREFULLY, install my backups. I’ve decided to copy over form this site, so, comments will be restored.
• Move all the plugin and theme files form the old WP files to the new installation.
• Last, but not least, restore the categories, which, sadly will not be taken into the backup. I suspect them as a possible source, and they need to be redone.

Further down the road:

After I have accomplished this, I will go back to work on BetterBattery for a while. I really need it ,and just today I came across the issue which it was meant to fix.

Once I get BetterBattery finished and published, it will be time to take a look at space.geiodo.com, which will still be running multiblog. I will do the same project, though, THAT installation is a lot cleaner, so no organizations, 404 redirects, etc. In fact, I don’t even want any of the old content. (Though, a lot of it is concept material which I want to keep for game conceptualization purposes, so I will likely be doing a backup anyhow)

Anyways, that’s the plan. Off to work!

Ooorr, do the apple developer docs just plain out suck?

Last night, I was running into MAJOR issues figuring out how in blazes to get the battery level! After a while of googling, I managed to find the following IOKit docs:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/IOKit/IOPowerSources_h/index.html

That’s great, but, apple dev being apple dev… It doesn’t tell you what to import. Just a lousy little “IOPowerSources.h”

Turning to StackOverflow, I managed to get some help, and I’m here to share that with the rest of the world!

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6502949/iokit-iopowersources-troubles

To get to the import(s) of whatever it is you are trying to use, first, you have to add the framework. I, being an idiot, thought the framework was… All ready there..

To do that, well, that will take some googling. Apple messes around with Xcode ALOT, and every version has a different way of doing it.

For me, double clicking my target, going to the general tab, and editing the list towards the bottom called “Linked Libraries” did it, but, then again, I am still using Xcode 3.2

Once you do that, you have to open the framework, and manually search for the H file (In this case, IOPowerSources.h) and then look at its location.

To convert its location to an importable form, do the following:

First off, find the path from “Headers”

In this case, it was “/ps/IOPowerSources.h”

Then, append the name of the library to the front, and surround with the proper import syntax, end result being:

#import <IOKit/ps/IOPowerSources.h>

I just did the research, and I came across some very nice code which demonstrates telling the OS to go to sleep. It’s fast, and uses no prompts, so, emergency sleeping at 5% battery is definitely going to be a feature of BetterBattery! Woohoo!

He I go again.. This is, what, my… Fifth “I’m back for good this time!!” post? Gee, I’m setting a record here! Given my past history, this one will probably be just another addition, with more to come.

HOPEFULLY though… It won’t!

I don’t have a readership, but, surely some random soul googles me occasionally every once in a while, no? It’s been years, so I bet that at lease a couple dozen have. Just.. They are probably turned away, revolted by the utterly outdated posts…

So, I figure, if I keep posting to an empty audience, maybe some day that audience will grow to one, instead of turning away that random soul. Wish me luck, nobody!

I’m going to go for a post a night. It’s summer now, and I have time to do that! ! ! (:!

Anyways, what I really wanted to talk about is… BetterBattery!

I got my new Macbook Pro a while back, and it is LOVELY. However.. One issue.. It has a habit of not going to sleep until it hits 0% power, as opposed to older models going to sleep at 3% This sucks, as, at 0%, it has to go into RAM preservation mode instead of sleep. And, 50% of the time, restoring that RAM makes my computer go BOOP, then start up completely reset. If I am REALLY unlucky, the thing can’t even do that, and wakes up with the date reset (Which makes it impossible to access passwords, which in turn makes internet access impossible, which in turn makes automatic date update impossible.) The only solution is to set the clock to some random date, then fix the internet, then have the clock fix it’s self.

That is… well, annoying. Especially if you are like me, and you open so many windows that if your computer doesn’t die because of battery power, it eventually dies due to RAM overload. RAM overload I get. But, battery power? Man..

On top of it, I never even get warnings! I get ONE warning, at 10%. Ooh, Ooh, mega bonus. If the power level goes ABOVE 10% in the sleep. No warning. Same if it goes BELOW during sleep. So, then, I end up being clueless that I just ticked to 0% battery power until the screen randomly goes dark, and I have to run to the other room to get my power chord. IF I don’t make it in 10 seconds, the ram is practically toast. What’s worse is the voodoo logic that has surrounded it’s self around this. It seems whenever I force myself to believe the computer is lost, the computer makes it out alive, and vice versa.

I’ve finally gotten sick of this. It’s time for a solution. BetterBattery! *buh buh buuh*

This nifty little install will install a new battery display in the menu bar, and remove the old one, right off the bat. (This is easily undoable though!) The new display is nothing fancy, but, certainly better. First of all, it is a full fledged, full rendered percentage display, instead of the 3-state battery icon that we currently have. This means that 47% battery looks different (Though not much) than 48%

Second of all, the color coding is better! WOo! WOOO! YEAH. No, but really. Above 50% = green. 25-50% yellow. 10-25% red. 5-10% flashing red (Hey, what better way to get your attention) 0-5%.. Well, at 5% it forces your computer to sleep (Hopefully, no promises though).

Finally, and this is the main feature… It will send you alerts at critical moments in your battery level (via growl, THE notification system for mac).

Anyways, it’s my dream come true to have a system like that, and, I’m aiming for it