paul.luminos.nl

I made some modifications to the L4D Launcher, updating it to version 1.1.

You can now start a Left 4 Dead server in Coop, Versus or Survival game modes. You can also specify additional command line arguments, if you wish.

Download L4D Launcher (120 KB)

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Update November 5^th, 2009: updated to version 1.2.

Update November 7^th, 2009: updated to version 1.3.

Update November 14^th, 2009: updated to version 1.4.

Update May 15^th, 2010: updated to version 1.5.

Since my girlfriend moved in with me, I have been treated to some awesome culinary experiences. I occasionally help her out in the kitchen, but most of the time I admit to just being the one that gets to complement her on another great meal.

Thifa was inspired to create a blog with her own recipes — both those she's taken along from Brazil and those we've experimented together. She designed the blog and I set it up for her.

Check it out: Student kitchen

The motivation for the blog was our shared passion for tasty but inexpensive meals. Thifa has shown me some great things you can do with cheap vegetables and even how to make affordable sushi. If you appreciate good food but tend to keep an eye on your budget, subscribe to the feed!

As a developer on Mac OS X, one of the applications that annoys me most is PackageMaker. It's completely riddled with bugs (from not being able to refresh the package contents to mysteriously non-functional buttons).

Perhaps some day an open-source alternative will come to my attention, but until then, here are some tips for making your life easier:

Weird bug	Weird solution
"Could not copy scripts" error	Remove all the script files from the package, and clear the script directory. Save your project and add everything again.
Absolute/relative paths option for scripts is disabled	Save your project first.
Cannot add custom files for interface because localizations is enabled	There's no way to disable localizations again; create your project again from scratch. Make sure not to switch to Raw Editing Mode unless you know how to use it.
Custom files in the interface stop working	I haven't figured out why this sometimes just gives up. Recreate your project and saving it should work.
Packages turn in to distributions	Packages can only have one choice; distributions must have at least two. Additionally, if you want to set up requirements or pre-/post-install actions, PackageMaker will create a distribution. If that's not what you want, write a script instead.
Installer doesn't change permissions	It's not a bug, it's just not clear that this is a feature. Select a package, then open the Package menu and take a look at Package options: "Overwrite package permissions"
Permissions are altered when building	I have no idea why it sometimes does this. I suggest you change the permissions of the package before you add it to PackageMaker to save you all the effort of changing it in there one file at a time (only to find out it changes it back when you build). Make sure to save before building.
The changed package contents aren't reflected in PackageMaker	Hopefully you can get away with PackageMaker not seeing the new contents; it will still copy the files from the source, you just can't see them in the Contents pane. If you need to change file permissions, you'll have to remove the package and painstakingly add it from the source again.

Just remember: punching your screen voids your AppleCare!

The spam filter I implemented almost two years ago has worked a charm for this site, blocking all but a handful of the 15,100 spammers that have visited this site in that time.

I've seen a noticable decline in their number in that time; in early 2008 there were several weeks where over 400 spam messages were delivered. This past year, this number has continued to drop to a mere 50 as you can see from the statistics from the past year:

During the course of the past two weeks, I've been doing some minor tweaking to the Naive Bayes filter in order to help interpret HTML in the message and facilitate other implementations of the filter.

For this reason, you might see a momentary increase of spam on my website until the Bayesian filter has adapted.

I occasionally play a game of Left 4 Dead with my colleagues at the office. Running a server on the local area network is the easiest to set up, with only a few simple commands via the console.

Having to punch in those commands each time is a bit annoying, so I put together a nifty little launcher for L4D.

It's simple: select "Host" or "Join", click the desired options, and hit "Launch".

I'll be putting the source code up on SourceForge some day soon. Take note that you'll need the .NET Framework to run L4D Launcher.

Download L4D Launcher (120 KB)

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Update July 20^th, 2009: updated to version 1.1.

Update November 5^th, 2009: updated to version 1.2.

Update November 7^th, 2009: updated to version 1.3.

I suppose this means it didn't find any solutions.

Yesterday I put the finishing touches into my latest article, Motion capture-aided mobile user interface analysis. Those interested can view and download the document.

In the course of the past year, I researched the viability of using a motion capture lab for performing user interface analysis.

My method relies on recording motion capture data synchronously with the device's video and accelerometer stream using a on-board application for Symbian. With a OpenCV-based application, the motion capture data can then be projected onto the video after camera calibration. This allows for analysis of the sensory information, using the motion capture data as a ground truth.

This technique has significant benefits over conventional computer vision techniques, and is elaborated in the article.

I'll put the source code of the various applications online after improving the documentation in the coming weeks.

Since I installed Nokia's PC Suite, double-clicking executable JAR files no longer worked. The only way I could run them was via the command line:

java.exe -jar [JARFILE]

I spent a little time looking into fixing it until I ran in to this excellent program: Jarfix. It solved everything with literally one click of a button.

Installing SVN and Subclipse side-by-side on a Mac is a painful endeavor. But fear not: this guide will hopefully make things easy. Once you know the right order of things, it's really not so bad.

Install Subversion

Head over to RubyRobot's nifty tutorial for installing Subversion on Mac OS X. You can download the client straight from that page.

As of this writing, the newest Subversion client is version 1.6.1. That's working fine for me: we need at least 1.6.0 to avoid running into the renowned "format (No such file or directory)" incompatibility between 1.6.x and older versions.

Install Subclipse

Start up Eclipse, and install Subclipse 1.6.x according to the instructions at Tigirs. Make sure you select the newest Eclipse update site URL; as of this writing, that's http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x.

In short: open up Eclipse's Software Update window, add the URL to the update sites, select Subclipse and hit Install. You will need to restart Eclipse for changes to take effect.

Checkout your project

It's best to check out your project from Subclipse, but you can do it using Subversion if you prefer. If you do it from the Finder or through the terminal, just make sure to import your project (or, if you already have a project, to refresh it) when the checkout finishes.

Review

You're done! If you're getting the "format (No such file or directory)" message, make sure you've installed versions 1.6.x of both Subversion and Subclipse.

I don't recommend doing SVN updates outside of Eclipse while it's still running. If you do, refresh your project to avoid "out of date" SVN errors.

On April 15^th, Electric AlleyCat presented their debut album, One Size Fits All. Together with film school student Wisse Stolk we recorded the concert and just generally had a great time.

It will be mounted by the guys at EAC and will appear on their website when it's finished. These are some frames from the shoot; it was a pretty cool show!