swemoney

[swemoney]

Motion MJPEG stream crashing Safari 12

I recently had some fun with Motion, a Raspberry Pi and a webcam. I wanted a cheap wifi camera I could use to show my adorable cat on my Twitch stream. I had never played with Motion before but it was really easy to install and after a little tweaking I got it set up just like I wanted. I didn’t need motion detection or snapshots or security cam recording, just a live stream of the camera. Motion can do this, but I wasn’t able to find any format to return the stream in besides MJPEG but as long as my iPad and OBS had no issues displaying the stream, all was good for me.

Sadly, with Safari 12 came a little bit of an issue. I noticed the webapp I was using on my iPad started crashing pretty frequently after I had updated to iOS 12. After looking into it, I also noticed that Safari on my MacBook Pro was crashing as well. I narrowed the problem down to the MJPEG stream I was displaying and the "fix" was actually pretty simple.

I was going directly to my webcam’s address to display it. When I inspected the page, it was a bare bones page with a single img tag but when trying to select the img tag, I noticed that Safari was rapid-fire refreshing that tag. Like it was deleting it and recreating a new img tag for every frame.

How’d I fix this? I went to the webcontrol page and noticed that the small preview of the stream didn’t seem to have this crashing issue. I didn’t notice much else that was different on this page aside from the control links on top so I decided to put together a bare bones html page that just included an img tag with the src being the webcam’s address. That’s it. Now Safari loaded it fine without rapid-fire reloading the tag over and over again.

I’m posting this in hopes that someone else might be having this weird issue and stumbles across this before they spend a lot of time trying to figure it out.

[swemoney]

Selecting text in a UISearchBar

For some reason, it’s incredibly difficult to select text in a UISearchBar programmatically. I was specifically looking to reproduce something like Safari, where tapping the text to edit it would automatically select it all. This allows the text to remain and gives easy access to copying as well as starting a new search without hitting the X button to clear the current one. After much searching, I found a pretty simple, albeit a little hacky, solution. I’m posting the code for hopes that it helps someone in the future.

func searchBarTextDidBeginEditing(searchBar: UISearchBar) { NSTimer.scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval(0.1, target: self, selector: "selectSearchBarText", userInfo: nil, repeats: false) } func selectSearchBarText() { UIApplication.sharedApplication().sendAction("selectAll:", to: nil, from: nil, forEvent: nil) }

Using the UIApplication.sendAction method to send selectAll in this way ends up sending the method to the current first responder. Calling this directly from the searchBarTextDidBeginEditing delegate method wasn't working so adding a small delay seems to ensure that the search bar has focus before attempting to select the text. The only downside to this (besides it being unneccessarily hacky) is that the selected text has the handle bars around it which looks a little weird. But other than that, it works! Hope this helped someone out!

[swemoney]

Destiny for MMO and Halo Lovers

Classes. Class means everything in almost every MMO you'll play, but really, I don't think you need to worry about what class you play in Destiny. I don't see much in the way of any class being super over powered and since there is no Tank/Heals/DPS paradigm to adhere to, you can be who you want. The easiest way to look at it is where you like to fight from. Titans fight up close and personal. Warlocks are a little squishy but can do damage from afar and offer buffs to their teammates. Hunters are a middle ground and are focused on precision shots over shotgun blasts. It's all about how you like to play.

Patrol. Every planet has a Patrol mission. These are like the open world of your favorite MMO. You roam around and kill baddies while picking up small quests that ask you to kill certain things or to run to a specific place for something.

Tower. Orgrimmar if you're Horde or Stormwind if you're Alliance. It's the capital city. You'll head here after a couple of missions to turn in bounties and decrypt gear.

Cryptarch/Engrams. I can't think of an analogue to World of Warcraft for this one. Engrams are encrypted piece of gear or weapons that drop after killing enemies or handed out as random rewards at the end of a Crucible/Vanguard game. You will get these often. You turn them in to the Cryptarch at the Tower to find out what piece of usable gear it contains.

Vanguard. PvE. Player vs. Environment. Your traditional baddie killing mode. Co-op or single player.

Crucible. PvP. Player vs. Player. It has it's similarities to traditional Halo multiplayer. All of your attack and defense stats are normalized in this mode, but your upgrades (that don't deal with increased attack or defense) still matter.

Iron Banner. Similar to the Crucible, but without evening everyone's gear stats. If you go in with a level 2 auto-rifle, you're probably going to have a bad time.

Bounties. I'd relate these closest to dailies in World of Warcraft. Both Crucible and Vanguard variants exist. They are handed out by a robot at the tower or you will sometimes get a message from the Postmaster (but you still need to get the bounty from the robot). There is a countdown timer to when they reset (which currently appears to be at 4AM CST). They give you a pretty large XP boost so I recommend you always have some on hand. You can only carry 5 at a time, so managing which ones you have on you at one time sometimes becomes challenging.

Light. Destiny has a soft level cap of 20 at the moment. After you reach level 20, you are able to nudge that level up by obtaining armor with the Light attribute. The more Light you have on your armor, the higher your level goes. I compare this to the World of Warcraft item level (ilvl). After you reach max level in WoW, the only way to really tell how powerful someone is at a glance is to look at their item level. This is just represented differently in an artificial boost to your actual level in Destiny. You will be required to boost your level in order to be effective against higher level enemies.

Crucible Marks. Honor or Conquest in World of Warcraft. This is the currency awarded for doing Crucible (PvP) things.

Vanguard Marks. Justice or Valor in World of Warcraft. This is the currency awarded for doing Vanguard (PvE) things.

Strange Coins. I'm not sure if there are other random currencies, but the Strange Coin is used to buy things from a vendor at the Tower who only appears on weekends. He's located on the left side of the tunnel that leads to your classes representative.

Control. It's closest relative is something like 3-Plots in Halo, but with a twist. Control still has you trying to maintain control of various points (3 of them) on the map, but it changes the way you score points. In Halo, points were scored over time by controlling the points. In Control, no points are awarded over time, but each spot you have control over grants you bonus points for each kill.

Clash. 6v6 Team Slayer in Halo. Straight up guardian killing.

Skirmish. 3v3 Team Slayer.

Rumble. Free for all, 6 player Slayer.

Strike. Dungeons from World of Warcraft or most other MMOs. These are limited to a 3 player fire team with matchmaking available to fill your team if you're short.

Raids. Although raids haven't been made available yet, plenty is known about them. A 6 player fire team is required. They are the end game content in Destiny and will require a lot of skill and coordination in order to complete. It has been stated that raids will not inform the players about where to go or what to do, but rather just let them figure it out for themselves. Because of the coordination required, matchmaking will not be available so you will need to have 5 other friends who are all around the correct level to participate. I'm unsure if you are capable of doing raids with a fire team that's smaller than 6 players.

Strike Playlist. After you unlock each of the different Crucible types, you'll unlock the Strike Playlist. If you play WoW, this is a pretty nice way to grind strikes (dungeons). You get thrown into a random strike with an increased difficulty and when you finish that, you queue up for another one.

You'll also want to understand how your weapon's stats correlate into damage done. The two important things to consider are your Attack vs. your Impact.

Attack. The attack value on your weapon is showcased in a large number at the top of your weapon information. This value is directly related to the defensive ability of the enemy you are shooting. This number is a lot less meaningful when shooting enemies who are lower levels than you.

Impact. The Impact bar in your weapon stats is the actual damage that a weapon will do on a per-bullet basis.

Attack + Impact. basically, if you're level 10 and you are attacking a level 12 enemy, your Attack power will come into play and help you do a little more damage to that enemy. But if you're attacking a level 8 enemy, you might find that Impact is the stat that does the most damage to this enemy. Bottom line, you want a high value for both of these. This video does a pretty good job of describing the difference. Obviously, Rate of Fire, Magazine and Reload combine as well to compute your overall DPS.

A few last minute tips, as well.

Play with friends! Can't stress enough how much fun I've had playing this game with friends, and I'm normally one who really enjoys playing games alone. Both Crucible and Vanguard are a lot more fun when you have a full fire team of friends along for the ride.

Don't play the story like you would in Halo. Story mode in Halo was always something I turned the lights off and immersed myself in before I did anything else. Destiny's story isn't really made to be played like this. You're really meant to explore and patrol between missions and take your time. Playing with friends doesn't hurt the story either. Cutscenes are really short and you can't skip them. So if you're new to the story, you get to experience it. If you've already done that mission 10 times, they're short enough to not be annoying.

Explore and have fun! I've noticed that everyone is able to play the way they want to play and still have a blast. Hardcore PvP guys can level up and do everything in the Crucible, while people who'd prefer to explore the world and level up by shooting Vex in the stomach are able to get there that way. Destiny does a great job of letting you play however you'd like, so take advantage and find the perfect way to play for yourself.

[swemoney]

2.4.0 on it's way!

So 2.4.0 was going to be a really quick update that would be nice for the time between now and when 3.0.0 comes out but I actually spent all week working on it and tweaking it and testing it so it turned out a lot better than I originally planned. It’s in Apple’s hands now and barring any unforeseen issues, it should be in yours in the next week or two.

The biggest addition to this update is official iOS 7 support. Secret Browser will no longer look like a really old app in iOS 7 and will now blend in nicely. I also tried to clean up and buff out any rough edges that had been lingering. This will be the last update that supports iOS 6 so I wanted it to be able to stand the test of time for those of you who either can’t update or choose not to.

With this update out there, I can continue working on the iOS 7 only rewrite that is 3.0.0. More news on that when it’s available.

[swemoney]

Xbox One vs. PS4

I was going to write up a whole thing about what I thought of both systems after owning them both for a couple weeks now (almost). I even got through a good chunk of writing before deciding that this Kotaku review summed up what I was going to say for the most part.

What I will say, is so far, the PS4 is winning. Just as an overall "done" system, the PS4 feels the most solid. Top that off with the extra graphical power edge it has on the Xbox One and it's a pretty clear winner for launch. I've played more Resogun than any other launch title across both systems, and that was FREE!

I will add a small rant about the Xbox One, though. I don't hate it. It has some good ideas. My plan from the day these systems were launched was to use my PS4 for games and use my Xbox One for "everything else". Today, after only a weekend, I have unplugged my AT&T U-Verse box from my Xbox One and will not be using the TV functionality on the Xbox One at all until it gets fixed. I was able to deal with the lack of surround sound via the passthrough, but it was impossible to use. I've tried at least a dozen different HDMI cables with no real changes. My U-Verse box became unresponsive MANY, many times. I'm not even sure it was unresponsive, I think the U-Verse box started doing it's work, but the Xbox One decided it wasn't going to update anything on the screen so it resulted in a frozen screen and 3 minutes later, the screen refreshing and probably playing a video from my DVR I didn't mean to play. I really liked a lot of the ideas Microsoft had with the TV functionality and I did enjoy (50% of the time, anyways) controlling certain aspects of my TV just by talking. This afternoon, it felt great to walk into my living room and say "Xbox On", and then say "Xbox watch Comedy Central" and for all that to just happen without needing to sit down and find the remote and all the rest of the hassle that we've all gotten used to. The instability, though, is just not worth it.

I'll try and reconnect everything again after an update comes out, but I'm not too optimistic anymore. PS4, you're winning. I don't see that changing for some time, either.

[swemoney]

A "Cubs Equality" picture for your profiles if you'd like.

[swemoney]

Fix screen sharing in OSX Mountain Lion (10.8)

Ever since Mountain Lion, I lost my ability to reliably connect to my Mac via Screens or iTeleport (or any other VNC client, for that matter). I finally found a solution on the Screens support page.

Since there was no clear solution on anything that I searched for on Google, I thought I'd throw the solution up here and hope it helps someone in the future.

My problem was an odd one. I could turn Screen Sharing on without a problem and even connect to it with any VNC client fine. But only once. If I disconnected and tried to reconnect, the authentication would now take forever (the first connection was nearly instant) and then it would get stuck on "Downloading Screen". Your message may vary depending on VNC client but I was connected, but probably very, very, VERY slowly. To make things even stranger, while I was waiting for the screen to download, I was able to move the mouse. I found a crash report for screensharingd once for a EXC_BAD_ACCESS, but that didn't help me find any solutions either.

Finally, on Screens support page, at the very button of their iOS FAQ, was a "Connection Timeout While Authenticating" post. I thought, "That seems close enough, even though my connection isn't actually timing out" and saw that it looks like Screens has been contacting Apple about this problem for a while now without any answer. The newest software RemoteDesktopSoftware package that comes with Mountain Lion (and I believe was updated in 10.7 as well) is causing all the problems! So the solution was pretty simple, even if it's not ideal. Just remove the new version and install the old one.

TLDR; Apple's Remote Desktop Software package with a version of 3.6.x is broken, but version version 3.5.3 is not. navigate your Finder to /System/Library/CoreServices/ and delete the RemoteManagement folder. I copied it to my Desktop first so I would have a backup but this isn't necessary. Next, download the old 3.5.3 version of the RemoteDesktop Software and install that. Viola! It should work as it's intended to again!

Hopefully Apple fixes this with a future update to the Remote Desktop Software but for now, it seems that those of us who have problems are going to have to slum it in old-software-ville for now.

[swemoney]

Mass Effect 3 - First 3 hours...

I was late to the Mass Effect bandwagon. I bought both 1 and 2 for $20, brand new, on the same day and took my time spending 25 hours in the first one. I regret not being more meticulous about doing everything, because when I rushed through Mass Effect 2 in 41 hours (over the course of about 10 days) in preparation for the Mass Effect 3 release, I realized how cool the whole "save game transfer" system was... Anyways, Mass Effect 3 has been out for about 3 hours now and that's how much play time I've put into it.

First impression right from the get-go, importing a ME2 save file is 100% better now. You are now able to choose from multiple saves from the same career instead of being stuck with the save from the exact moment you beat the game. In addition, you have a pretty sweet list of all the major decisions that will carry over for you to see. I think this did exist when importing a ME1 save, but I don't remember it looking as nice. It's also nice that your character starts at whatever level your saved character was.

The story starts and you feel right at home with the same epic Bioware story telling you've come to know and love. I have a Kinect, so the first time my FemShep gets to respond, I immediately noticed the microphone in the middle of the conversation wheel and thought, "Whoa, what if I SPEAK my response!?", and proceeded to do so. The voice recognition works great for conversation. I feel like you have to speak louder that I'd like to, but that might be because I like to play my game a little loud. Using Kinect in combat proves to be much less useful. It's almost always easier to just hold RB and select an option (let alone, hit a hotkey) than it is to try and yell your command and hope whatever you want to happen actually does.

The cover system is kind of "meh". It's my only gripe so far. They've definitely worked on it to try and improve it and you can tell it's an even bigger part of the game. Moving from cover gives you nice little arrows to show which way you'll leave cover, which is nice, but I've found myself rolling out of cover to just standing behind a short wall that Shepard wouldn't couch behind no matter how many times (and how many different ways) I pressed or held A. I may just need to get used to some subtle changes that I'm not aware of yet. It's not a deal breaker, but I've noticed it already.

Power upgrading has changed quite a bit. It seems like they kind of took ME1 and ME2 and picked the place right in the middle. There are more powers than ME2 for everyone, but it doesn't feel like as many as ME1. Each power now has 6 levels. Each level costs that level number's skill points to upgrade (i.e. a level 4 upgrade, costs 4 skill points) The first 3 are straight forward upgrades. The last 3 levels give you 2 options to pick from. It makes the upgrades a bit more complex, but also a lot more fun.

Choosing weapons is done the same as ME2 for the most part, except you have the option of choosing to leave a weapon type empty. Each weapon now has a weight assigned to it. The less weight you carry, the greater your power recharge bonus is. Maximum of 200%. There seems to be upgrades that allow you to make your weapons weigh less. I haven't messed with the weapon upgrade system at all yet, though, so I can't go into detail about that.

On that note, Mass Effect 3 has just finished installing on my Xbox, so back to the Citadel!

[swemoney]

Tiny Tower vs. Dream Heights

So, I've spent a week or two playing Zynga's newest game which is a pretty blatant ripoff of Tiny Tower. I figured, I really liked Tiny Tower, so I might as well give it a shot. I really don't know how they did it, but Zynga just managed to sap all the fun and charm out of Tiny Tower. Every time I load up Dream Heights, I ask myself why I'm doing it. Tiny Tower let you collect their premium currency in game for free. Not the case with Dream Heights. After you spend your only 3 bucks on an elevator upgrade, you need to shell out money for any more. Zynga's game just feels like a money grab where at Tiny Tower always felt more fun and quirky. That's about all I got on the subject. Just my quick thoughts. I'll be deleting Dream Heights from my iPhone and iPad.

[swemoney]

Messages Beta for OSX

I just downloaded the new Messages beta for OSX and gave it a shot. I haven't used it all that much but I thought I'd share some of my initial impressions.

Pros

iMessage support. This was inevitable. Now you can send iMessages to iPhones, iPods, iPads and Macs!

Interface. Looks just like Messages for iPad. An improvement over iChat.

Simple. The iMessage stuff (mostly) just works as expected.

Cons

Buddy list is kind of hidden. Clicking the application icon in the dock brings up the window for all your open messages. You have to either right click and select Buddies or turn on the menu icon and select Buddy List from there.

Hitting the red X to close the messages window removes all "open" texts. It would be nice if things worked more like the iPad and iPhone, where your messages are eternally open unless you close/delete them individually. I feel like this is an oversight and will probably change when it gets out of beta. It makes the search box over your open messages kind of unnecessary. (You can get around this by keeping the app open. I'll probably end up keeping it as a full screen app)

No iMessage status. You can't see what users are available for chat via iMessage. I'm actually not sure this is really a con. iMessage's are more made for an always-available type of interaction so this isn't really something I care about but I have read others would enjoy it.

Overall, I'm happy with the app and will give it a shot for a while (over by current IM application, Adium). Download it here!

[swemoney]

Why Apple doesn't release things until they're ready...

When iTunes Match finally went live, my iTunes Library was sent to the cloud for the last time and I was finally able to not worry about what music I had synced to my iPhone since I could grab anything I wanted to listen to on the fly. Yesterday, things didn't go quite as well as usual and it frustrated me. It wasn't Apple's fault. I was in a less than ideal spot for 3G coverage at the time and that prevented the song I wanted to download quick enough to listen to without stopping. The problem cleared up as soon as I drove further down the road, but there were moments that I was actually angry at the phone and service.

I'm a patient person and very understanding, so my brief spout of anger surprised me a little bit. Thinking about it a little, it just reminded me about why Apple devices forgo features that aren't at least 99% perfect. Apple's hardware and software works so well together that the slightest hiccup causes hysteria amongst it's users because we're just not used to it. I'd say that's a pretty awesome problem to have.

[swemoney]

[swemoney]

understatementblog:

The announcement that Nexus One users won’t be getting upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich led some to justifiably question Google’s support of their devices. I look at it a little differently: Nexus One owners are lucky. I’ve been researching the history of OS updates on Android phones...

[swemoney]

So long Halo 3 Players...

Due to a general lack of interest (I'm assuming most players of Halo 3 have moved on to Halo: Reach by now) and a lack of resources, time and money, I've decided to discontinue Halo 3 Players in it's present form. I would really love to rewrite the whole thing for Halo: Reach at some point in the future but I am not sure when I will be able to get this done so I'm not going to tease anyone by saying "soon". I appreciate all the support from Halo 3 Players. We started out as the underdog and slowly but surely ended up being the most used Halo 3 stats app on Facebook. Halo 3 Players was my first "large" project and I had a lot of fun writing it. I hope to have just as much fun writing every else in my near and far future. I apologize for the lack of notice to the few active users Halo 3 Players still has.

Stay tuned here for more info on what I'm working on and if Halo: Reach Players ever does materialize, I'll post about it here first.

It's been a fun ride!

[swemoney]

[swemoney]

Secret Browser v1.7.0 Submitted!

UPDATE: Approved and ready to download!

After quite a long wait, I've finally deemed version 1.7.0 of Secret Browser to be ready for prime time! I've been spending a lot of time tweaking and testing to make sure everything works great and now it's time for you all to have a go at it. What does 1.7.0 have in store for you?

Custom User-Agents! A very popular request is finally here! I've included a bunch of pre-made User-Agent strings or you can put together your own! You can, now, start tricking websites into thinking you're using a different web browser or a different device all together! (Ad-Free Mode exclusive)

I've rewritten a TON of code so things work more smooth under the hood.

Cleaned up Secret Browser's Settings page. All Ad-Free Mode exclusive settings can be found on their own page too.

An optional Forward button has been added to the smaller screened devices. This was another big request. Flip the switch on in your device's Settings.app.

I've (probably poorly, I apologize) translated what few words there are in Secret Browser to 6 new languages. Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German.

I've squished a LOT of little naggy bugs.

Rewrote the entire front page! I know it was ugly. I'm sorry it took so long. But the new front page is already live so you don't have to deal with it anymore.

Hopefully it doesn't take an eternity for Apple to approve. Keep a look out! It should be available very soon!

[swemoney]

L.A. Noire Mini Review. Initial Impressions.

I picked up L.A. Noire at midnight and just finished about 4 hours of play. My initial impressions are definitely very positive. The game does a GREAT job of making you really feel like you are heading up the investigations and making a name for yourself. I'm INCREDIBLY impressed with the facial capture technology they used. It's amazing the level of realism you get when it's not just the mouth and eyes that move on a face. Every tiny detail of an actors face is captured and translated into the game beautifully. I could just watch the characters speak all day long. It's a good thing too, because a large part of what you have to do is really watch people talk to you. I loved the idea from the first time I heard about the game but I was really afraid that the "tells" would be extremely easy to decipher. They really aren't. And on top of that, if you suspect a character of telling lies, you have to have the evidence to back it up so it makes for some very challenging puzzles.. And it's still quite early for me! Combat is pretty fun. Hand to hand seems a little easy so far but it Is still fun to watch. Ranged combat is a whole lot of cover based shooting but I found it pretty easy to line up enemies while in cover. Overall, so far, I'm loving the game and a can't wait to get back to it tomorrow.