Nicholas Workshop

Find the User Agent Strings of any Mobile Devices

Nicholas — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:08:37 +0000

It’s quite often for a developer to make use of the user agent to determine what browser does a user used, especially for those who develop web services and websites. Recently I found a website which has a huge database of mobile device information, including the user agent string and even the functions supported in the device browser.

ScientiaMobile WURFL Explorer

http://www.tera-wurfl.com/explore/search.php?action=browse

Tera-WURFL Explorer – Samsung GT-9100 (Galaxy SII)

http://www.tera-wurfl.com/explore/?action=wurfl_id&id=samsung_gt_i9100_ver1

InstaMusic Got 10,000 Downloads over Lunar New Year!

Nicholas — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:17:09 +0000

Happy lunar new year to all.

I am flattered. In less than a month since I put the InstaMusic to the Android Market on 27 Dec 2011, today it has already more than 10,000 downloads. To be honest, I never expected this.

If you are uninitialized, InstaMusic is a music player android application with simple and stylish outlook.

There are all kinda music player in the world, in my opinion, a player with style and an pleasant appearance would always become the famous one. Here I would like to thank you for downloading and trying InstaMusic. Especially those fans of minimalism who supported me and AndroidStatic who gave InstaMusic a pleasant review in the post “Instamusic Is A Minimal, Slick Music Player That You Should Download Now“.

Looking back the day that I began my developmement, the reason for me to kick started is that I was really unstatisfied with the music players on the Android Market. Admittedly, I am a perfectionist and I want every part of a music player to meet user’s ways of thinking. So, I hate album artworks to be scratched and unable to tell what album is it. I also hate a song sung by different artists will be will be isolated from the album. And millions of things to list.

Okay, let’s get back to talk about the my next build of InstaMusic. I am sorry for the long waited update. In code level, I really did an upside down on InstaMusic. And as expected, lock screen player is implemented already, but there are just some bug and pressure testing work to do before it can really come out to meet its users.

Caffeine on Mac and Ubuntu

Nicholas — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 05:03:17 +0000

Caffeine has been a very useful app to instantly disable or enable the screensaver on mac. At least for me, I am using multiple computers in office and all of them except the one I am using will usually get idle. Getting into screensaver, however, is bad sometimes especially I was reading from that screen and type things on another screen, and not to mention the password input after the screen lock. Well anyway, I highly recommend it.

Mac

On mac, we can install it easily with the app store.

Ubuntu

But in ubuntu, it is not available on the software center. But you can still get it through command line. Turn on terminal and input the following one by one.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:caffeine-developers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install caffeine

Detecting browsers of iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android and BlackBerry with JavaScript and PHP

Nicholas — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:20:01 +0000

To begin with, we need to understand that in the HTTP protocol, browser send its identity called user agent to the server to request the wanted webpage. Every browser has its only unique user agent value, and therefore we can check that value to identify the user browser. So, first we have to take a look at some examples of user agents of mobile devices.

iPhone user agent

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

iPod Touch user agent

Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A101a Safari/419.3

iPad user agent

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10

Android user agent

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.1; en-gb; dream) AppleWebKit/525.10+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Mobile Safari/523.12.2
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/ERD62) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

BlackBerry user agent

BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.266 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/120

After all, in programming, we gather these data to do the checking. First in JavaScript:

if (/(iPhone|iPod|iPad)/.test(navigator.userAgent)) {
    /* This is iOS */
}
if (/Android/.test(navigator.userAgent)) {
    /* This is Android */
}
if (/BlackBerry)/.test(navigator.userAgent)) {
    /* This is BlackBerry */
}
if (/(iPhone|iPod|iPad|BlackBerry|Android)/.test(navigator.userAgent)) {
    /* This is one of the mentioned mobile device browsers */
}

And this is how it works in PHP:

if (preg_match('/iPhone|iPod|iPad/', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
    /* This is iOS */
}
if (preg_match('/Android/', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
    /* This is Android */
}
if (preg_match('/BlackBerry/', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
    /* This is BlackBerry */
}
if (preg_match('/iPhone|iPod|iPad|BlackBerry|Android/', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
    /* This is one of the mentioned mobile device browsers */
}

Show completions and quick help tips in Xcode

Nicholas — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:18:09 +0000

I know it is troublesome, tedious, or just like hell. Apple has his own way to do a common task. Very often, we need to use the autocompletion in IDE to assist coding so we do not need to memorize the billions of function names. In Eclipse, everything is automatic. A list of function names linked together with descriptions next to it pops up as soon as you type. In Xcode, where is it? Yes, you need to press shortcuts. For the completions, press “control + space”. But, where are the descriptions? It’s called “quick help”, press “control + command + ?” to open it. Look at the figure then you will understand. Good luck for your fatigued fingers.

How to rotate gizmos to fit a game object in Unity

Nicholas — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:16:06 +0000

While you are making a cube in unity which is transparent in gameplay, you would probably want to make it visible only in editor mode with gizmos. However, gizmos doesn’t rotate with the object transform. So you can use the following tricks to rotate the gizmos to fit your object. The code shown is to draw a cube which is totally the same as your object. By setting up the matrix of gizmos, we can transform gizmos to the local position, scale and rotation.

Gizmos.color = Color.green;
Gizmos.matrix = transform.localToWorldMatrix;
Gizmos.DrawWireCube(Vector3.zero,Vector3.one);

Change author info for old commits in Git

Nicholas — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 12:45:43 +0000

While using hit, it is really usual to have regrets on the commits done, especially the name used. In order to change those information in your repository, open terminal (or cmd in windows), go to the folder of your git repositoy, and run the following commands. Remember, replace “old_name”, “new_name” and “new@email.address” with your own information.

git filter-branch --commit-filter '
  if [ "$GIT_COMMITTER_NAME" = "old_name" ];
  then
    GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="new_name";
    GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="new_name";
    GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="new@email.address";
    GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="new@email.address";
    git commit-tree "$@";
  else
    git commit-tree "$@";
  fi' HEAD

Ssh with password saved

Nicholas — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:07:49 +0000

Ssh is a very convenient way to remotely command or control other devices. We use ssh to push commits to git server, to access remote server, and even to manipulate the content of our iphones and ipads. However it’s usually distributing to type your long and elusive password every time. Therefore here I would like introduce a way to create a steady relationship between your computer and the remote server you wanna connect with.

The principle is this, ssh connection establishments requires verification using the computer unique key of both devices. in order to simplify this step, we can generate a public key of your computer in advanced and which allows other to identify you. While you put that public key in the remote device as authorized key, you can kinda fast forward the process.

step 1: open terminal and “ssh-keygen -t dsa”
step 2: open “.ssh/id_dsa.pub” and copy content inside
step 3: open new tab in terminal and ssh server
step 4: paste all content into /home//.ssh/authorized_keys

a@A:~> ssh-keygen -t rsa
a@A:~> ssh b@B mkdir -p .ssh
a@A:~> cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh b@B ‘cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys’

Merge 2 unrelated branches in Bazaar

Nicholas — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 05:07:58 +0000

To merge 2 entirely unrelated branches or projects, we need to specify 0 as first revision in revision range. Turn on terminal (in Mac) or cmd (in Windows) and get to your project folder. Merge with the following shell script. merge -r0..-1 means to merge from revision 0 to the latest revision.

bzr merge [other_branch_location] -r0..-1

Animated sprites in Cocos2D

Nicholas — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:41:43 +0000

I have been working with Cocos2D for a while and I am still a newbie. The way to deal with animations in Cocos2D 1.0.0 – the stable version currently – is different from the way before using CCSpriteSheet. Now Cocos2D adapts animations as cache shared in the project using CCSpriteFrameCache. It also requires a plist file as well as a texture file.

First, put the following assets into the project “Resources” folder to let the program use.

grossini.plist – The file contain the animation information such as frame details.
grossini.pvr.gz – The texture file in pvr format which allow better performance in Cocos2D.

Second, add the following codes into the function init. Take a look at the comments for program explanation. =]

// Capture the window size
CGSize size = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize];

// Load the plist into the cache
CCSpriteFrameCache *cache = [CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache];
[cache addSpriteFramesWithFile:@"grossini.plist"];

// Create sprite with the first frame
CCSprite *sprite = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"grossini_dance_01.png"];
sprite.position = ccp( size.width/2, size.height/2);
sprite.anchorPoint = ccp(0.5f, 0.5f);

// Create array for the animation frames
NSMutableArray *animFrames = [NSMutableArray array];
for(int i = 0; i < 14; i++) {
    CCSpriteFrame *frame = [cache spriteFrameByName:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"grossini_dance_%02d.png",(i+1)]];
    [animFrames addObject:frame];
}

// Convert the array into animation
CCAnimation *animation = [CCAnimation animationWithFrames:animFrames];

// Run the sprite with the created animation and display it by adding it to the scene
[sprite runAction:[CCRepeatForever actionWithAction: [CCAnimate actionWithDuration:2.8f animation:animation restoreOriginalFrame:NO] ]];
[self addChild:sprite z:0];

After all, don’t forget to deallocate the resources loaded in cache in function dealloc.

// Deallocate the resource in cache
CCSpriteFrameCache *cache = [CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache];
[cache removeSpriteFramesFromFile:@"animations/grossini.plist"];

Finally, this is a screenshot. Enjoy. XD