Hack-O-Matic 3000 J2ME Version

Before I worked with Android I also ported the Hack-O-Matic to the J2ME platform. This version requires the MIDP 2.0 profile or higher. This worked well on my Sony Ericsson Viewty very nicely.

Download:
Hack-O-Matic J2ME

This version works in the same way as the other versions.

Hack-O-Matic 3000 Windows

There is also a version of this utility available for Windows and other systems that run Java.

Download:
Hack-O-Matic for Windows
Hack-O-Matic Crossplatform

The application works in the same way as the other versions. Once you start a hacking session, you need to enter all the available keywords, and then provide the matches count. With this the program will elimiate the incorrect answers, helping you find the solution quicker.

You will need Java 5 or higher installed.

Hack-O-Matic 3000 Android

The Android version of the Hack-O-Matic 3000 supports all Android handsets from Android 1.6 upwards.

Download: Hack-O-Matic for Android

Like the other versions, you can easily enter in all the available words on The screen and update each word you try with the matches count. The App will eliminate all words which are not possible making your search easier.

It is not currently available on The Android Marketplace and you will need to install by enabling installation of Apps from outside the App store, and then download and run the file to install it.

Hack-O-Matic 3000

The Hack-O-Matic is a free tool designed to help players of the game Fallout 3 with the hacking mini-game. The application applies the word elimination logic based on the feeback the player provides for each guess. Each guess eliminates the incorrect guesses and usually leaves only one correct answer.

Windows Version
Android Version
J2ME Version

There are many articles and blog posts on how to complete the mini-game. This tool makes it quicker and easier to complete. There are also many tools that do the same job.

Most of them have user interface which gets in the way, so I thought I would do a better job and make it free, because everyone likes free.

I also have ported the program to a number of platforms to ensure I can use it when ever I am playing fallout.

Programming on an Android device

A surprisingly rare subject to find on the Internet. The ability to code on your Android and be somewhat effective.

The main problem with programming on one of these platforms is the lack of compiler/runtime environment for the language you are interested in. My interests for example cover Java, C and a wiff of TCL. However trying to program any of these on the Android is a non starter from a native compilation point of view. At least at this present time of writing.

So what are the options? I recently discovered an app called Touchqode. A text editor aimed at coding, it supports various language syntax. This solves one of the problems with coding on a smart phone. The development environment.

The other part is how to compile the code. Two I thought of were:

• Ideone.com
• DropBox + Compile/Run/Test Daemon

Ideone.com

Ideaone.com is an online compilation/runtime environment. It allows you to paste code in and see the results of the code executing. It isn't really intended to run full projects, at least from what I can see. (I suspect logging in will provide you with a few more features).

As a starting point, this might be a valid option.

DropBox + Compile/Run/Test Daemon

The other option is to make use of the fact that DropBox is awesome. If you load and edit a file on your smart phone, that change will be transmitted to all other computers that run DropBox.

If you have a computer you leave on, say your work PC, then you could easily setup a daemon which watches for the changes in files in a certain folder, and executes a specific command storing the output in another file.

Then you would simply need to wait and then reopen the 'results' file to see what happened. Make some more changes, resave, and wait for the recompile.

If you wanted to go one stage further, you could setup a command/control signalling mechanism either via DropBox file changes, or via a distributed network like Twitter to provide signalling that the compile is complete.

Conclusion

The obvious point to make here is, you are not going to write a complete application in this fashion. An application with user interface is not a sensible objective, however, something that can produce meaningful output on the command line still covers a wide range of applications.

The other main usage that comes to mind is unit testing, which is an important task and can output entirely to the command line.

HTC Wildfire video conversion

Converting video for the HTC Wildfire has proven a little tricky becuase its video player is very particular as to what it will play, and no one seems to know the answer.

I started with encoding using 3gp which worked well enough, though the quality was poor in comparrison to what I wanted.

After some searching around I found this site gave me my initial starting point, so a hat tip to you: stolenkid wordpress.

 ffmpeg.exe -i %1 -s 320x240 -vcodec mpeg4 -r 13 %1.wildfire.mp4  

That when placed in a dos batch file will provide something you can drop files onto or use from the command line. Useful.

There are a number of ffmpeg strings out there with various modifiers for the audio encoding (16khz audio @ 32kbit) etc. I found by experimentation that none of these matter and the video player would happily handle full quality audio (greatly appreciated).

It is however very sensitive to the size of video you provide, so the encoding has to account for that.