Just released version 1.1 of MediaInfoFetcher

I've just released version 1.1 of MediaInfoFetcher. This is a application that can be used to find Film and TV Show meta data, and store it in various formats. It also can be used to rename media files using this data. The latest version can be found here.

Changes are as follows:

• Able to rename Films with data fetched from the web.
• Added new Film source for fetching film information from www.imdb.com.
• Updated stores to store film information.
• Added new MP4 store for storing metadata in mp4 files used in iTunes.
• Added support for renaming .mp4 and .m4v files.
• Film posters are fetched from the Internet and stored in .mp4 and .m4v files.
• Updated to the latest format changes of www.tv.com site.

Happy Christmas! let me know if their are any bugs in this release.

Dell Studio 1535 Fan Speed problem and bios update

I've been away with work for a week and I left my laptop at home (used a work one instead :-( ). When I came back and turned my laptop, I discovered a problem. For some reason the fan speed was set to be full speed all the time. This seemed to happen strait from boot, no matter what I did to change it.

My first though was that the temperature was a problem, so I checked this and the laptop is running quite cool. The cores were running between 22 and 24 degrees C.

So after fiddling around for a while I though I'd update the bios to the latest version. To my surprise, this fixed it! I'd love to know what might have caused the problems, if anyone has any ideas. As of yet , I've not tracked down a change log for the BIOS update.

Updating the BIOS from Linux had it's own problems, so I though I'd detail what I did to fix it. First off make sure you have the dell Linux firmware tools and libsmbios installed.

These can be found in the OpenSUSE repos. http://linux.dell.com/repo/community/content/suse11.0-x86_64/

Next you need to download the bios update from the dell support website. This comes as a .exe file, so you will need to extract the .HDR file from the .exe. To do this I used the following command:

wine 1535_A05.EXE -writehdrfile -nopause

This uses wine to extract it to the current directory.

Next you need to update the bios, do so at your own risk. This worked for me, but you do so at your own risk. Use the following command:

modprobe dell_rbu
dellBiosUpdate -u --hdr 1535_A05.hdr



Now reboot your system. When it reboots, it will install the new bios. Then it reboots itself again.
You should be able to see the new version number of the bios on the boot screen.

It's worth noting that the most useful information on updating the dell BIOS from Linux, I found here


Now back to having a nice quite laptop!

Bluetooth on the Dell Studio 15 using Opensuse 11.0

So I've been wanting to get the bluetooth working under OpenSuSE 11.0 on my dell stuide 15. I've had it working on other computers, but it did not seem to work.

I've now managed to get it working by trying some of the ideas on this page. I had to adapt things to OpenSuSE a little, but basicly all that is needed is too edit the /etc/modprobe.conf.local and add the line "options hci_usb reset=1". Now make sure the bluetooth server is running at startup, and reboot.

If things are working, the command "hcitool scan" should list the bluetooth devices near by. I was then able to transfere files and pair my phone :-)

Bomber moves into KDE Games

Work on bomber as progresses well. It was moved playground to kdereview for a bit of peer review. This turned up a few things. Most of the issues I fixed were because I'm a Java coder writing C++ :-) So I learning quite a bit about the best practices, which is good. Bomber has now moved into kdegames!! So should be in the upcomming 4.2 release. Time to start thinking about my next project.

For people reading my blogg for the first time, here is a repost of some information about bomber:

The aim of the game is to destroy the buildings below you, before you crash into them. The space ship will fly over the buildings, getting lower each time. Once the level is cleared, you start of the next, which is harder with taller buildings and a faster plane.


The game is still in development at the moment and can be found in the playground section of the KDE repository. Big thanks to Eugene who worked on the theme.

Media Info Fetcher

I was face with a problem a while back, I had quite a few media files that and the wrong names. I wished to rename these too the correct names. I wished to be able to define what I though was a correct name. The main reason for this is that they show up in my media centre. A second thing I wanted, was meta data associated with each of the media files that could be displayed in the media centre.

It was for these reasons that I hacked together some Perl scripts that used the great Perl module. This allowed me to retrieve the meta data that I was after. However I prefer to work with Java over Perl and as my application was needing more and more features, I decided to rewrite it in Java.

So Media Info Fetcher was born. This is a java application that can retrieve Film and TV Show information, and rename it according too data it looks up off the Internet. This information is then cached using configurable stores so that hopefully it can be used by media centres.

I think I've achieved my first aim so far, but my second aim of getting a media centre too use the retrieved data has yet too happen. This is probably going to involve creating a plug-in for other media centres. Though I'm open too ideas about this.

Anyway I've just made the first release of the 1.0 version of Media Info Fetcher. So check it out here.

I've some plans for the next major version. These may change, but include:

• Adding support for Films.
• Adding more stores and sources.
  

Google Code

I've been working the last few days on a new project that I wish to open source (More on this in another post when the project is in a slightly better shape) and I've been looking for somewhere to host the project. My first though was too give sourceforge a go, however a friend suggest I take a look at google code.

I'm pleased I did, I have to say that it's exactly what I was after. I was able to create a new project very quickly and the web base tools they provide are very nice. The whole site feels a snappy, clean and a lot less fussy than source forge. It's probably unfair to compare it with sourceforge from a hosting point of view as I've never used sourceforge for hosting. Howerver from the point of view of a user looking for software, I find google code much better.

Progress on Bomber

Work progresses on bomber. I think the game is pretty much ready for a release now. It's been moved to KDE Review and I'm now in the progress of cleaning up the code a little. I just need to fix a few things that occurred since I'm a Java coder writing C++ :-) If all goes well, I hope to see it get moved to KDE Games in time for the 4.2 release.