Welcome to my little place on the web.

I'm a software developer and occasionally when time allows, I like to blog about my various coding project here. I also like to tinker with home automation, retro gaming and more.

I have also shared some of my software, which I hope may be of use to others. It's on my software page.

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First mobile app Profit Accumulator in the Play Store!

Wow, it's been a while since I wrote a post. Most of my evenings have been busy with a website a friend told me about called Profit Accumulator. It's a great a site, with lots of videos that explain how to do matched betting. This is not gambling. It's a system where you place bets on all outcomes, so you can't lose. You then do the same with the free bet and pocket the money! It's all legal and completely tax free! I have been doing it for over a month, following the member offers, and made over £1,000. If you're in the UK, I would recommend you sign-up for the free membership and make an easy &poun... read more

USB motion sensor to wake Kitchen touchscreen using a Arduino and PIR

Now that I have the touch screen fitted in the Kitchen, I needed a convenient way to wake the tablet. I was hoping that just swiping the screen would wake it up, but unfortunately not.

kitchen3_2.jpg

After a little bit of internet searching, I came across a blog entry on dotmana.com. The site goes through the steps to create a motion detector to wake the screen, using a Arduino and PIR sensor. This was almost perfect, except it ... read more

Kitchen touch screen fitted

It's been a few months since my post about the custom bezel arriving in the post. Today it's finally all fitted. Another project done!! Pictures below.

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I'm very pleased with the outcome, and very relieved I didn't cut the wrong size hole and have to re-buy the cupboard door! Over the next few weeks I will be finalising the software and getting my HouseBot software remote to fit the new larger screen resolution. Below are some more photo's taken while cutting and fitting.

... read more

Spam Spam Spam

No I'm not talking about the tinned porky ham that Monty Python likes to sing about. It's the electronic type. I added the option to add comments to my site a few months ago. Being aware that this could be abused I coded some email notification.

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Late last night I received over 300 emails notifying me that comments had been added to one of my blog entries. Anything from Obama healthcare to Casio slot machines. All linked to various other sites with 404 errors. I don't believe they were malicious, just simply to increase other sites r... read more

Leaning Java - Android game development

I have been meaning to learn Java for a while a now, but as usual it’s all about finding the time. Over the last few weeks I have been fortunate enough to come across the brilliant Java tutorials over on Kilobolt.com. Not only do they cover Java basics, but they continue to step you through creating your own framework for game development. Then port them across to Android via the Android Studio IDE.

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At the end of the tutorial you have a one level robot platform game, shown above. The development has gone fairly smoothly. ... read more

Arcade games list

With all the thousands of arcade games, what games are on your list? Here are my favourites. What have I missed ? Comment below.

Ms. Pac-Man
1942
'88 Games
1941 - Counter Attack
64th. Street - A Detective Story
720 Degrees
A.B. Cop
After Burner II
Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars
Alien Syndrome
Aliens
Altered Beast
APB - All Points Bulletin
Arkanoid
Arkanoid - Revenge of DOH
Arkanoid Returns
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
Bad Dudes vs. Dragonninja
Bad Lands
Bagman
Balloon Brothers
Batman
Blasteroids
Bloo... read more

Arcade build - Marquee and bezel fitted

The cut perspex has arrived from acrylic-online.co.uk. I'm pleased to say that it fits the marquee and bezel gaps perfectly.

For the marquee I borrowed the great design from angel88888 over on the overclock.net forums. His post is here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1436501/hyperspin-arcade-machine-lots-of-pics

arcadebuild4_1.JPG

I had to crop the image a bit of fit my cabinet. Cropped version is at the bottom of this post.

To print, I just used my inkjet printer, it came out pretty well (in 2 piece's). You can just see t... read more

MediaPortal 1.11.0 Final is out !

I have been a user of MediaPortal for a number of years now and I am happy that I made the switch from Windows Media Center. As much as I loved WMC, I started getting frustrated having to manually configuring EPG and guide data for my DVB-S2 satellite cards.

When I discovered the Custom Data Grabber plugin from DJBlu that just pulls all the guide data and channel line-ups from Sky automatically (saving me hours!) I was hooked on MP!

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This new release has an improved TV experience that will display things like audio channels, bitrate, etc.

G... read more

RSS feed updated and a sitemap

It seemed crazy to me that the original code would generate a feed every time you accessed the page, generating lots of unnecessary database class. I have updated my code so that when I add a post it will replace a static blog.xml file.

So if you have subscribed to my RSS feed, please refresh your reader by re-pointing to digitalgeek.me/blog.php or digitalgeek.me/blog.xml.

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I have also improved the site indexing files. This is using pretty much the same code to create a sitemap.xml. I hope this will help getting my pages listed on Google... read more

Added support for coloured toolbars in android

Continuing from my previous post regarding the dynamic backgrounds and colours. Starting from version 39 of Chrome on Android (Lollipop) you can also set the toolbar colour. It's easy too. You just need to add a meta tag for theme-color in the head. So now if you're on Android hopefully your toolbar should be not the boring grey. Head over to the htmlrocks.com website for more details.

http://updates.html5rocks.com/2014/11/Support-for-theme-color-in-Chrome-39-for-Android

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