Ignacio Sánchez Ginés

This fall your iPhone will never be the same…

Get ready for Ozone

I have been working for a week in a project for iPhone and iPod Touch.

I ported the Chip-8 Emulator I already did for J2ME enabled cell phones to the Apple handhelds.

Chip-8 is an interpreted programming language used on the COSMAC VIP and Telmac 1800 8-bit microcomputers in the mid-1970s.

I decided to release the emulator completely free, bundled with several public domain games!! Get it from here.

I am proud to announce that Puzzle Star is ready to download on the App Store, available for iPhone and iPod Touch!!

Get it here!!

I just finished a site redesign for www.geardome.com

Now the website is ready for the new games we are going to publish for iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

Feel free to visit it and try all the games!!

Some time ago I was writing about how you can minimize any application to the system tray in Ubuntu.

My main concern was minimizing the Thunderbird window to the system tray so I can have the mail reader running in the background.

Now I have just found a nice extension that do what I need.

FireTray is an extension for Firefox and Thunderbird that let you minimize both applications to the system tray, and still have them running in the background.

I have it running now in Ubuntu and it seems to work very fine!!

I enjoyed the classic “Same” game in the past, that little game where you have to collect pieces of the same color in order to clear the board.

It’s a really addictive game and I thought it could be a good game for trying out the iPhone SDK so… I created Puzzle Star!!!

I have changed some things from the original game. The difficulty increases as you progress in the game and so does your score. When you finish you can send your score to a worldwide scoreboard to compete with players around the world!!

I have already sent it to the Apple Store and it’s now waiting for review.

This waiting is killing me!!

I am a hardcore C++ fan and I really dislike Objective C.

I decided to take a look to the iPhone SDK and see if I can make some OpenGL programming using pure C++.

I found that it’s really easy to mix both languages in the same project. You can even mix Objective C and C++ code in the same file just by adding the “.mm” extension to your files, instead of “.cpp”.

Using the OpenGL ES example bundled in the SDK I made a wrapper in C++ that receives the iPhone events I need, like input and drawing.

I modified the example so it calls to my wrapper in every drawing and input event and then, the wrapper calls to my pure C++ objects.

I can now concentrate my efforts in writing the logic and drawing methods in pure C++ and see the changes in my iPhone

I have just installed a fresh copy of the new Ubuntu 8.10.

In order to mantain all the packages installed in my old system I generated a list of the currently installed packages, so I could restore them later.

dpkg --get-selections > packages

This generates a file with all the installed packages in your system. Just copy it to a safe place, usbstick or CD.

After you have installed the fresh copy of Ubuntu you can recover what was installed in your previous system with the file you generated and the following commands:

dpkg --set-selections < packages
apt-get dselect-upgrade

And there let be buttons…

Like I already said in my previous post, I ordered all the buttons, joysticks and electronics at Ultimarc.

The buttons and joysticks are controlled by an IPAC interface, that we can connect to a PS/2 or USB port of our motherboard:

I am going to use some spare parts I have from my old desktop PC to build the CPU.

This is the motherboard (MSI K8N Diamond Plus), with RAM (2GB Crucial Ballistix) and processor (AMD X2 4200) already mounted:

The hard disk drive. Segate Barracuda, 320 GB for loads of ROMs!!

The video card. I think this NVIDIA Geforce 7900GT is enough for my purposes:

Some wires and connectors to setup the IPAC and the buttons:

The joysticks. I have chosen the E-Stick model because it’s easier to mount:

This little thing is the switch itself. It is mounted in the base of every button. We use the connectors shown below to plug it to the IPAC:

I am pretty sure you know what are this buttons for…

Well, now begins the hard part: designing and building the cabinet itself from wood panels…

You may have seen that when you create a new class, interface or something with Netbeans, the IDE automatically generates some code for you.

It is possible to customize this code using the Netbeans File Templates.

Under the “Tools” menu there is an option called “Templates”. This dialog let you create and edit every template used in the IDE. Just click on the “Open on Editor” button to edit the desired template inside Netbeans.

Let’s see how the Java/Class template looks like:

<#assign licenseFirst = "/*">
<#assign licensePrefix = " * ">
<#assign licenseLast = " */">
<#include "../Licenses/license-${project.license}.txt">

<#if package?? && package != "">
package ${package};

</#if>
/**
*
* @author ${user}
*/
public class ${name} {

}

If you edit this file and save it, the IDE will be using your new template for every new Java class you create.

Since Netbeans 6.0 you can use the FreeMarker template language in your file templates. This way you can add logic to the templates via directives such as if/elseif/else and loop constructs.

You can also use some predefined variables:

• ${date} — Inserts the current date, in this format: Feb 16, 2008
• ${encoding} — Inserts the default encoding, such as: UTF-8
• ${name} — Inserts the name of the file.
• ${nameAndExt} — Inserts the name of the file, together with its extension.
• ${package} — Inserts the name of the package where the file is created.
• ${time} — Inserts the current time, in this format: 7:37:58 PM
• ${user} — Inserts the user name.

This is an example of a modified file template for Java classes:

////////////////////////////////////////////////
/// File: ${nameAndExt}
/// Created: ${date}  ${time}
/// Encoding: ${encoding}
////////////////////////////////////////////////

<#assign licenseFirst = "/*">
<#assign licensePrefix = " * ">
<#assign licenseLast = " */">
<#include "../Licenses/license-${project.license}.txt">

<#if package?? && != "">
package ${package};

</#if>
/**
*
* @author ${user}
*/
public class ${name} {

}