Moving Weekend!

My sites will be down for the next few days. We are currently in the process of moving, and my server has been taken down until we get settled in to our new place. So, some of your favorite Polymorphed sites will be unavailable, most notably, RandySpeak and SourceClip.

I will post again when they're back up and running.

Android x86 for Duo

I've had a Dell Inspiron Duo for a little over a year now, and have been using it as a netbook the whole time. I've found that I spend very little time with the screen flipped over in tablet mode. The only times I ever use it in tablet mode are occasionally when I'm surfing the web. The Windows 7 touch experience seems to be lacking what I expect and want from a tablet PC. Enter Android x86.

The team over at Android x86 has ported android to several x86 platforms including the Duo. So, I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the newest Sparta release, which was 2.2r2, installed the live CD to a spare USB drive that I had using Unetbootin. The installer was pretty straight forward, just pick an empty partition and let the installer do the rest.

The 2.2r2 Sparta release of Android x86 wouldn't allow me to use the touchscreen, it seems that the r2 release automatically disables the keyboard when a physical keyboard and mouse is plugged in. This would be okay if the keyboard and mouse on the Duo could be removed. So I had to find something else. I moved on to the non-Duo versions of Android.

After trying several different versions, I ended up using the Tegav2 4.0RC1 release. It had the least amount of problems with my Duo, the only major one was the physical keyboard wasn't working; however, I did end up finding a fix for this. First press CTRL-ALT-F1 to get to the console, then type:

su
cd /system/usr/keylayout

Then you'll need to rename the AT_Translated keyboard file to something else:

mv AT_Translated_Set_2_keyboard.kl AT.old

Then reboot and your physical keyboard will work, and so will the touch screen one.

SourceClip

Need a website to store a bit of code or just some random text? Well look no further, I've created www.SourceClip.org just for you!  Currently a work in progress, but you can anonymously post some code and SourceClip will syntax highlight it for your viewing pleasure.  There is currently only a small set of syntax highlighted languages: C#, C++, CSS, PHP, Java, VB.NET, JavaScript, SQL, Python, ActionScript 3, and HTML.

More to come as I release new features and update the look and feel.

Baconify the Web

I love bacon, in fact, bacon is my favorite vegetable. If you're like me, you're a fan of bacon. If you're a fan of bacon, then you wouldn't be opposed to adding bacon to the internet. Visit bacolicio.us for instructions on how to add bacon to your favorite websites.

Bacon.

Here's an example: Bacon on Polymorphed.com

Sometimes...

From Abstruse Goose:

 Thanks to Blue!

Project RandySpeak 2.0

Some of you may know of a little project that I created when I was in college, Make Randy Speak. This was a php application that would allow you to insert text into an image of my good friend, Randy Mackin.

Bang, Bang!

I have taken this project and updated it to be a little more modern. By using HTML5's canvas element, I'm able to do the drawing of the text in JavaScript instead of PHP. This allows me to show the user a preview of what they're typing in a canvas element.

Make Randy Speak is now Project RandySpeak 2.0 and it has been redesigned for a mobile device, a more desktop friendly UI is in the works.  You can now, also, post your image directly to Facebook from within the web app.

Project RandySpeak 2.0

Making a map with tiles

People use tiled game engines for several reasons. One of which is that it's easy to generate a fairly large world in a game from a small set of tiles and the tilesets used will have a smaller memory footprint than storing the map as an image. Another is that you can add unique behavior to the different types of tiles. Say you have a grass tile and a mud tile, you could have your hero walk at normal speed over the grass tile and at a reduced speed or not at all over the mud tile. Using tiled maps allow for a large world to be created easily with the right editor, enter Tiled.