A bit of JSON in my bucket
25 Sep 2010Since storing loose bits of code on my blog is far from ideal from pretty much any perspective, I took the time and put the JSON-ME source code up on BitBucket, with all its Mercurial goodness. Enjoy!
Flightradar24 for Android
25 Sep 2010So, Flightradar24 finally developed their own Android application. I figured they would do that, and that it would pretty much make What Plane? obsolete. To my surprise, the app they actually released is surprisingly thin, and at least for me personally does not give the information I'm actually interested in.
Ok, they have map, which makes the app look more polished, but apart from that, you only get the aircrafts' callsign and airline; to me, that's the least interesting information. So, I actually still prefer What Plane - no fancy map, just the real information (like destination, point of departure, aircraft model, etc.) on the planes that are actually nearby. Perhaps that's something they'll put in the pay version of their app.
Anyway, go ahead and try the Flightradar24 app, it's not bad, although it solves another information need than the one I tried to cover in What Plane:
(What's the best way to link to an android market app? Is linking the barcode like above the standard way of doing it?)
Refuserade självporträtt
12 Sep 2010I ett vagt försök att återuppta fotograferande som inte bara gäller barn är jag numera med i Flickr-gruppen Veckans fotouppgift. Uppgiften vecka 36 är att ta ett självporträtt.
Mitt bidrag är upplagt här, men eftersom jag hade en hel del andra varianter så roar jag mig med att publicera några av dem här.
Första försöket - lång slutartid, idén är att få något slags rörelse dokumenterad, samt låta mindre ljuskällor i det i övrigt mörka rummet göra något roligt. Tyvärr ser jag inte klok ut, och det var svårt att få skärpa i mitt ansikte.
Ok, vi försöker med att komma lite närmare, och bort med mitt huvud så man slipper se min konstiga kroppsställning. Lite intetsägande, tycker jag nog själv.
Ok, har nu övergivit hela lång slutartid-idén. Mörker, konstiga ljuskällor. Och låt oss ta bort halva mitt ansikte, det vill ju ändå inte bli bra. Resultat: krystad kroppsposition och fortfarande inte särskilt upplyftande. Dags att lägga sig och försöka igen imorgon.
Slutresultatet: rätt radikalt annorlunda, mestadels på grund av att jag helt plötsligt fick arbeta med dagsljus istället för nattmörker. Förvånansvärt svårt att få rätt del av ansiktet att hamna på bild när man själv är både framför och bakom kameran, den här bilden är beskuren. Reducerad till svartvitt med överdriven kontrast genom att sätta röd-grön-blå-inställningarna till 80/60/-40 i channel mixer, vilket ger huden ett onaturligt blekt och slätt uttryck, samt gör mina blå ögon väldigt mörka. Säger som Ola Lindberg, d.v.s jag vet inte riktigt vad den säger om mig, men det är iallafall ett självporträtt.
More planes
09 Aug 2010A quick update. Since I got an Android phone (an HTC Desire, yay!), I've tested my What Plane application on a real device. I've fixed some minor issues, so that it actually sort of works outside the emulator.
The updated version, 1.0.1, is here: WhatPlane-1.0.1.apk
What plane?
26 Jul 2010So, I've made my first Android application. That was a nice experience, especially after having hacked J2ME on Symbian for a short while. Only sad thing is that I haven't got an Android phone, so I can only use my app in the emulator, which is boring as hell, since it's a GPS based application. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself - so first some background about me, and then some more about that app.
Sometime in my early twenties, I once spent something like two whole days flying around the world in Microsoft Flight Simulator, in realtime. My old friends still like to remind me of this slightly autistic and highly nerdy feat once in a while. For my own part, it's mostly a reminder of the oceans of free time I had while studying at university (I distinctly remember spending a considerable amount of the hours over the pacific studying for some math course I took at the time).
These days, I don't even have flight simulator installed, but my interest in airliners and flying still linger in the back of my mind, and when the skies are clear, I often find myself drifting off, thinking about the contrails I see, what aircraft it might be, where they're heading and where they're coming from. In the last year, this little hobby has gotten a bit more interesting, thanks to a site called flightradar24.com, which makes it easy to check if it actually was a 747 that just passed by overhead, or if it was some other four engine model. (As a side note, flightradar24.com got a lot of media attention while the Icelandic ash cloud from Eyjafjallajökull grounded most air traffic over Europe for a couple of weeks, since everyone was very keen on seeing all the planes that weren't flying. That was sort of weird. Anyway.)
The only thing that isn't perfect about flightradar24.com for my little hobby, is that I'm not very often at a computer when I spot aircraft, and that their site is very Javascript-based, and hence not very useful in a phone browser. To solve this issue, some on and off hacking for a couple of months have resulted in a solution:
- A web service that uses data from Flightradar24.com to list the planes currently closest to a certain location, and presenting it as HTML, JSON or HTML
- A small application for Symbian/J2ME that uses a phone's GPS to query the mentioned web service
- A small application for Android that does the same
The Symbian version is still a bit too much of a hack to actually show to anyone else, but the server parts and the Android application is in a state which I feel is sort of usable. So, if you're interested, here's the application file for version 1.0.0 of What plane?, which will show you the five aircraft closest to where you are, their direction and distance, and some more detailed information on model, airline, where they're heading, and so on.
WhatPlane-1.0.0.apk
Updated 2010-08-10: WhatPlane-1.0.1.apk
Updated 2011-06-09: WhatPlane-android-1.1.1.apk
...and for those anxious of you who absolutely need screenshots, here's a couple of those:
[caption id="attachment_171" align="alignnone" width="324" caption="List of closest aircraft"]
[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_172" align="alignnone" width="328" caption="Aircraft details"]
[/caption]
For those interested, I plan to make the source available at some point in the future (that I haven't done it already is mostly because I don't know where it's best to host it, and I haven't got that much time to work on this). Also, it must be noted that all the data shown in the application is from flightradar24.com - and it's really their data. I haven't checked with them if it's ok to use it in this way, but since they're a free service, aggregating information mostly from enthusiasts sharing the data from their ADS-B receivers, I hope this application is in the spirit of their vision.