Let see if they can cope with a single blog!!.

More details and downloads HERE.

When I go to sleep, I start the Windows Media Player usually with a large playlist, or even the loop function activated. I do not want, however, the device playing all night long wasting my battery… Well, it’s the very definition of Sleep Timer, ain’t it?

I put together a couple of lines of code, and made this **extremely basic** sleep timer. I did something similar many years ago for the iPaq, and now I’ve don it again. I spent more time trying to make the cab installer that the code itself:D. The code is almost worthless to put here, but I’ll do it just in case someone wants to modify it to start a different process other than the Media Player.

The “Suspend the device” function, calls the SetSystemPowerState API which according to the MSDN its effect may vary on each device, as it relies on some OEM power management implementation. It will not be necessary in most of modern devices, but I included it just in case.

Sleep Timer Source Code ]]> http://somemorebytes.com/wp/index.php/2010/07/sleep-timer-for-windows-media-player-mobile/feed/ 0 http://somemorebytes.com/wp/index.php/2010/07/hacking-a-lg-gm750-layla/ http://somemorebytes.com/wp/index.php/2010/07/hacking-a-lg-gm750-layla/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:15:11 +0000 somemorebytes http://somemorebytes.com/wp/?p=567

GM750

My iPhone recently died due to a sudden deceleration against the floor.

Needing another phone while I decide which will be my next acquisition, I borrowed from my girlfriend a LG GM750 phone that she had lying around. This is a Windows Mobile 6.5 terminal and comes with the (sometimes annoying) S-Class interface from LG. It is not a super modern, super advance terminal, but it has the features I need: 3G which means web and mail, GPS and a nice battery. Add to this a couple of useful apps, and a GPS offline navigator and now you’re talking.And the best part, it was free!!.

Unfortunately there are not stable alternative roms for this model yet, so I had to change manually a couple of things that were making me unconfortable.

The idea behind the S-Class is nice: Use your finger (even with resistive screens) instead of the stylus (for which windows mobile is designed). The implementation however, is not so good. It refuses to blend seamlessly with the rest of the windows mobile OS. Click on the wrong option, and you will find yourself in the true Windows Mobile screen where either you have pen-point sized nails, or you will need to take the stylus out.

So after play with the S-Class interface a little bit, my first attempt was to completely disable the S-Class layer, and rely on the Windows Mobile interface, even if that meant use the stylus everywhere. However that’s not easy, as some events, notifications, and applications  are handled by default by the S-Class layer, and there’s no setting to get rid of it.

Eliminate the S-Class almost completely.

Here are the necessary steps :

1. Of course, Go to Start->Config->Personal->Boot Screen and disable LG-Smart Boot Screen. That one is pretty obvious.
2. Now you would like to disable the Message (SMS & MMS) and email notification system, which by default triggers the LG S-Class one. To do so first go to Start->LG S-Class->Messaging->Settings->Notifications and here select for “New Text Message” and “New MMS Message” MS Notification instead LG Notification.
3. No you’ll realize that when a message arrives the S-Class interface is not fired up, but it starts when you’re composing a message. To disable the S-Class message composer, you’ll need a registry editor. You can try PHM registry Editor, Alex’s Software Simple Regedit or any other. DO A REGISTRY BACKUP BEFORE!!!
   
   Navigate to:
   HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Inbox\MsgTypes\IPMAnd change the following keys:

   Change SMStext\Dll  from LGEUMS.dll to htmlnote.dll
Change LGESMS\Dll  from LGEUMS.dll to htmlnote.dll
Change SI\Dll  from LGEUMS.dll to htmlnote.dll
Change MMS\Dll  from LGEUMS.dll to htmlnote.dll

4. Now delete the following key so the notifier itself isn’t launched as a service:HKLM\Software\LGE\Apps\InitApp\Launch\Launch01  (It will contain the value LGNoti.exe)
5. Disable the LG Skin changing the key value from 1 to 0HKLM\Security\Phone\Skin\Enabled

Now of course disabling completely the S-Class has its drawbacks. You loose the widgets, you loose the horizontal keyboard autorotation in the SMS and email composer, the cute alarm that the S-Class has, and well, you will end up wanting to kill someone with the damn stylus.

To solve the auto rotation feature, which I think is the only real loss, you can install AE Button Plus. This small application will allow you to assign a button double click to the rotate function, so you can see *almost* any application in landscape mode. Simple, neat, fast.

At this point I decided, that maybe I could just ignore the things I didn’t like about the S-Class, and cope with it. However, what I could’t stand was the crap that vodafone (this terminal was vodafone exclusive where my girlfriend bought it) installs in the phone. Having unlocked the phone, it triggered errors about non-existent websites being accessed, non available applications and other sort of misbehaviour.

You can eliminate the Vodafone things even if you decide to have disabled the S-Class. It is not so annoying with the default windows mobile interface though (you do not have the Vodafone shortcuts in the main screen).

Getting rid of Vodafone Stuff

First thing you want to do is to install Total Commander for Windows Mobile. This will allow us to overwrite some files that otherwise would be impossible either from the pocket explorer or ActiveSync.

Let’s start:

1. With the pocket explorer (or the Total Commander) navigate to My Device\Windows\Start Menu\Programs and delete the folder Services. This folder is absolutely useless if you’re not of vodafone.
2. Now the other annoying thing about Vodafone is the “My Web” icon that will start Internet Explorer with the default vodafone site, and can’t be changed anywhere. So the best solution is get rid of the icons and every shortcut to it.With Total Commander, navigate to My Device\Windows and delete the Vodafone_Live application.
3. Here’s a tricky part: S-Class comes with 2 main screens. The Idle, and the HelloUI. The Idle is the S-Class Cube itself and it has a launcher on the Today screen. The HelloUI is the 4 rows icon menu that appears when you touch the menu icon in the above mentioned launcher.To get rid of the vodafone icons in the TopMenu (communications in the HelloUI) you need to navigate to  the following registry key:HKCU\Software\LGE\TopMenuHere you can edit which icons will appear in each menu. Each number represents an icon. The order represents the order that you have in you mobile phone. The vodafone ones are the m151 and the m153. If you delete them, they will not appear in the communications row. I couldn’t find where are those images to avoid test and try in further customizations but they should be anywhere of course.
4. The only thing that remains is the main screen (today) launcher icons. Here you have several options. At first, I just created the Services folder where I deleted it in the first step, and put some shortcuts to some useful applications. This way You have everything at hand… with the vodafone icon though.If you want to remove it, you have to get your hands dirty. Every S-Class screen is a *.swf file. The file corresponding to the launcher My Device\Windows\launcher.swf.I decompiled it using Sothink SWF Quicker and took a look to the action script code on it. You’ll find the following line:var arIcon = [id_contacts, id_message, id_vodafoneSuite, id_myweb, id_topmenu, id_dialer, id_email, id_calendar, id_alarm, id_music];As you can see this is the array that organizes the launcher icons. You just need to remove from there id_vodafoneSuite and id_myweb and you’re good to go. I reordered as well my icons to a more logical position. Once you have finished, you just need to republish the swf file. Adjust the jpg quality to 100  to make it look the same as the original.Take into account that the Sothink SWF decompiler is not free. It adds a watermark to the resulting published swf that will appear on the phone later. Here you can download my version, so you won’t need to decompile and modify it yourself. Jusr rename it to launcher.swf and copy it to your SD card, and then to your My Device\Windows directory using Total Commander.

   To take a look at the code, maybe the Trillix Flash Decompiler is more user friendly, but I couldn’t recompile the swf with it, so I used it only to read code.

   Remember to copy the  launcher.swf file again to the My Device\Windows directory with the Total Commander. Explorer or active Sync wouldn’t let you overwrite this file.

5. Last but not least, you can get rid of your operator’s picture when you turn on and off your phone. The shutdown animation would be this one:HKLM\System\Startup\1\StartUpAni.dllRemoving this entry will suffice.The Log-in picture is referred by this registry entry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Splash Screen\MSBitmapBy default it points to the picture \Windows\StartUpImg_DMDO_000.bmp. You can either remove the registry entry or change the picture itself.
6. If you plan to use the GPRS connection as a USB modem, you should change the default APN for the DUN connecion. Of course, I assume you would have changed by now the normal connection settings to fit your operator. The default DUN APN can be found here:
   HKLM\Software\LGE\Data\APNforDUN
   Just change this value to fit your operator’s APN and you should be ready to go.

And that’s it. The S-Class interface can be modded much more. Flash design is not among my skills, but I bet that I designer would take all the *.swf files in the Windows directory and would be able to modify a bunch of things without needing to recompile a custom ROM.

Every information I’ve found about cracking the S-Class speaks about extracting the firmware, and then cook a custom ROM with the S-Class modified. I guess there must be a reason why nobody is just modifying (maybe I didn’t find it) the *.swf files and making a installer, but hey, it worked for what I needed. And at the end, it is seems to me as the safest option, as if you break something, you just hard reset and everything would revert to a safe state.

Proof of concept: In my opinion, the third and fifth (and probably the fourth) screens of the S-Class interface present an absolutely lack of usability. It would be great that anyone with more actionscript knowledge would disable them in a more stylish way, changing the images of the white dots that mark the cube face index somehow. Here I have two tests. I just modify a couple of lines in the action script code in the file idle_manager.swf.

At the beggining of the action script frame, you’ll find:
var MAIN_STATE_NONE = -1;
var MAIN_STATE_TODAY = 0;
var MAIN_STATE_WIDGET = 1;
var MAIN_STATE_MMIDLE = 2;
var MAIN_STATE_HELLO = 3;
var MAIN_STATE_SHORTCUT = 4;
var TOTAL_CNT_IDLE = 5;

To enable only the two first screens, would be enough to modify the total screen counter (which later in the code is used with a module operator (%) to change from state to state)  this way:

var TOTAL_CNT_IDLE = 2;

Enable 3 screens selectively is easy just reordering the indexes of each state, and modifying the total counter. For example, if we want to enable only the first, second, and fourth screens (today, widgets, and favourite contacts) we could modify the code this way:

var MAIN_STATE_NONE = -1;
var MAIN_STATE_TODAY = 0;
var MAIN_STATE_WIDGET = 1;
var MAIN_STATE_MMIDLE = 3;
var MAIN_STATE_HELLO = 2;
var MAIN_STATE_SHORTCUT = 4;
var TOTAL_CNT_IDLE = 3;

The two modified files are here and here. Just rename them to idle_manager.swf and copy it to your Sd card, and from there to the My Device\Windows directory using Total Comander.

Both files are  just tests. Maybe someone finds interesting to play with those files and make a more usable S-Class interface.

Some information extracted from clublgmobile and xda-devs.

Instructions to update  are pretty clear in this post. However, avoid a reboot is not so simple as it seems. Every tutorial to update to 10.6.4 starts saying “Install 10.6.4 update, an before reboot…”. My problem is that I did it through the software updates, and it installed the actual update WHILE rebooting, so once installed and automatically rebooted, you’re sold. Probably with the combo update you are more lucky.

So basically, what you should do is:

• Install 10.6.4 update.
• Without reboot you’ll need to change some boot files on your efi partition as well as patch DSDT if you didn’t in previous updates. You can forget about the sleepenabler kext there found as you will be using the native power management kexts (see the links above).

Now you installed the update, and your computer rebooted, and Snow Leopard won’t start. How do you complete the process??

You need your USB Key/USB Hard drive you used to make the vanilla install. Remember?

• Connect your drive to you netbook, and reboot. Select the USB device as boot device in you BIOS/Start menu. Chameleon will start. If you select your main hard drive to boot from chameleon, it will not work. ou have to boot from the Install DVD image partitio that you made.
• Once the installation starts, go to the upper menu and open a Terminal from Utilities menu.
• The main hard drive (the partition where you installed Snow Leopard) should be already mounted by now at /Volumes/hackintosh (or whatever you named your partition).

To change the EFI partition boot file, you can manually mount the EFI partition in /Volumes and just copy it over, assuming you have the boot file somewhere. However, if you need to mess around with the kexts, patch the DSDT and rebuild the cache like I had to,  the safest way is to chroot the the new disk and do it using the typical update scripts.

chroot /Volumes/hackintosh

• From here, the process is as always. Go to your Vanilla folder. To patch DSDT copy the DSDT.aml file and run the update.sh script. -Run the 27ae.sh script to patch video kexts.
• To change the kexts, remove sleepenabler, add the new ones and run update.sh to copy them and rebuild the kext cache. (follow the instructions to modify the SMSBIOS in the linked post).

Now reboot, and you should be ready to go.

If you have been looking for imformation about virtualizing LEopard or Snow Leopard, you’ll probably stumble upon this two sites, which contain most of the useful information. However, when it comes to Snow Leopard, information is spread across hundreds of posts, and most of it is for MS Windows only.

There’s another attempt using empire-efi here, which didn’t worked for me.

I just wrote a guide myself about how to get Snow Leopard working under Ubuntu 9.10 and Virtualbox 3.1.6r59338 and I was about to post it. However, I found another guide, for windows, which will work flawlessly under Linux with some minor tweaks, and has step-by-step screenshots, so I guess there’s no need to duplicate the content there.

Here’s exactly what I did to get things working:

First you need, a Leopard OsX86 working virtualbox machine. To get Leopard working, download any OsX86 distro and install it following this guide. I used iDeneb 1.6 and worked fine.

You DO NOT need to patch the VirtualBox files in order to get Leopard working, so just create the VM without applying any patch.

The only difference you’ll find is that under Linux, the required file to edit will be(assuming you named the virtual machine LeoVM) :
/home/your_user_name/.Virtualbox/Machines/LeoVM/LeoVM.xml

Then, there you can add the required line:

<ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal2/SupportExtHwProfile" value="on"/>

The Leopard installation should go without a problem, and boot fine. Everything you need to know is on the guide I linked before.

Now the tricky part. Install Snow Leopard.

You should use this guide. It is really detailed and easy to follow. I used a retail SnowLeopard 10.6.3 image, and worked perfect for me. However, since the guide is for windows, you’ll need to take into account the following changes:

When you create the machine for Snow Leopard (page 13 of the guide), you need to edit the file (assuming you named the VM SnowLeoVM) :

/home/your_user_name/.Virtualbox/Machines/SnowLeoVM/SnowLeoVM.xml

and add ONLY the following lines:

<ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal2/Devices/e1000f/0/Trusted" value="integer:1"/>
<ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal2/SupportExtHwProfile" value="on"/>

Now we need to patch the Virtual Machine files. The thing is that we need support for SS3 instructions, and ACPI v.14 which is not supported by default in Virtualbox 3.1.x. If you’re using the OSE edition, you can patch the source and recompile the whole thing. However, if you’re using the standard edition, you’ll need to binary-patch the files.

You can find more information about the patches in the comments section in this post. SOME of the info is not correct, and some other is incomplete, so be careful and read everything before doing any patch. I am using the GHex to patch them.

The files to patch are:
/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxDD2.so
Every occurence of : 11 00 05 00
Changed for : 14 00 05 00

/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxDD2GC.gc
Every occurence of : 11 00 05 00
Changed for : 14 00 05 00

/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxDD2R0.r0
Every occurence of : 11 00 05 00
Changed for : 14 00 05 00

/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxVMM.so
Every occurence of: 04 C5 01 00 00 00 31 C9
Changed for: 04 C5 01 02 00 00 31 C9


I am providing the files for VirtualBox 3.1.6.r59338 HERE. Just run the patch or unpatch scripts to do the job, or open them to take a look at the files that will be copied and do it manually.

And that’s it.  You should have a Snow Leopard VM working fine. In the guide I provided you have explained how to solve the video resolution problem, which is pretty straightforward.

The network works fine, but you need to set up the static ip address for the interface, and connect/disconnect cable from the Virtualbox menu to get it working. The rest works fine. Of course it will not fly, but it is enough to try the iphone SDK under linux.

Here the first and second parts of the article.

I’m using  a custom eclipse installation. The ubuntu repositories package is too old, so I always update my eclipse installation from the eclipse website. I install it to /opt/eclipse. If you’re using the default installation package, just look for yor install forlder, probably somewhere near /usr/share.

Now, I assume you installed the subclipse plugin, a nice SVN client. This client uses JavaHL libraries to communicate to the svn program istelf, and  unfortunately, this libraries installation is up to you. If you do not have them, subclipse will complain about missing libraries each time you need to do somthing svn-related. So, to fix if:

1. Install the javaHL libraries:
   sudo apt-get install libsvn-java
2. Tell eclipse where to look for them. Edit the file /opt/eclipse/eclipse.ini (or /your-eclipse-path/eclipse.ini), and locate the line:
   -vmargs
   Now just below this line, add the following one:
   -Djava.library.path=/usr/lib/jni
3. Happy coding!.

• “The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.” – Tom Cargill
• “In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.” – Author Unknown
• “I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
• “A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.” – Mitch Ratcliffe
• “There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.” -C.A.R. Hoare
• “The gap between theory and practice is not as wide in theory as it is in practice.” – Author Unknown
• “If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.” – Gerald Weinberg
• “If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.” – Edsger Dijkstra
• “Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.” – Bill Gates
• “Nine people can’t make a baby in a month.” – Fred Brooks
• “Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.” – Rich Cook
• “There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don’t believe this to be a coincidence.” – Jeremy S. Anderson
• “Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable.” – Ralph Johnson

You can see Code Bubbles in action here. I think it’s an interesting approach, but I’m not sure how will this system behave while debuggin complex code. Maybe the cursor starts to move all over the virtual space…