Hardware Growler Fork Notification Software 2020

Hardware Growler Fork Notification Software 2020

Introduction

Growl is a notification software for macOS (Mac OS X), it looks nice and configurable eg. display location, duration stay on the screen. Growl is available on Windows systems as well. With Growl, you can have a universal notification system for application.

Growl started when there was no good notification system on Mac OS systems. Notification Center was included in Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in 2012. Growl can send notifications to macOS Notification Center.

Early days of Growl. A few Mac OS software bundle Growl with their software, eg. Adium, Dropbox, Adobe CS5 etc. Some users are angry because these software just install Growl on their system without them knowing it. Later Adobe made an announcement about it, here, https://blogs.adobe.com/deployment/2010/05/growl_installation_with_adobe.html.

Hardware Growler

Hardware Growler is a software that sends notifications (to Growler) when users plug in or unplug a device in the system.

Growl 2.0

Growl started as a free, open source notification software, but it started to charge USD3.99 on macOS App Store with version 2.0. Growl is licensed under BSD, so it can be used for commercial and close source.

Growl and Hardware Growler fork

Since Growl (and Hardware Growler) is open source, someone has mirror and fok the software. Now it can be found here:

https://github.com/pranav-prakash/HardwareGrowler-NC

I am not sure how to compile the above software. When I load it with Xcode (10.13.1), it warn me about 32 bit, so it may not works with macOS 10.5 Catalina.

This following Hardware Growler has been modified to send notification direct to macOS Notification Center. This software is small and easy to compile. https://github.com/cirrusj/HardwareGrowler. I have tried it on Mojave + Xcode 10.13.1.


$ git clone https://github.com/cirrusj/HardwareGrowler
$ cd HardwareGrowler
$ make
⇒ build/Debug/HardwareGrowler.app


Then run the HardwareGrowler.app, you can move/copy to /Application[/Utilities] folder.
I tried this on macOS 10.14 Mojave, it works.

If you just want the binary for Growl 2.0, you can check the blog here http://blogs.umb.edu/michaelbazzinott001/2014/09/21/growl/

Virtual Machine on ARM CPU

The 2 virtual machine software (VMWare and Virtualbox) that I know runs on Intel x86 architecture. This sounds reasonable, as most popular operating system software runs on x86. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X (10.5), Solaris are all available on x86 cpu architecture platform. Simulator for ARM like armware is in working process, new virtual machine software for ARM should be coming soon too.

What is a virtual machine? What is it use for? Virtual machine (VM) is a software platform which simulate the computer hardware (cpu, memory, hardware storage and I/O etc.), to allow different operating system running at the same time on the same machine. VM simulate as many standalone computer hardware on a single machine, as long as you have enough hardware resources to support it.

Simulation software are normally slow and use a lot of resources. As hardware technology improve, and price getting cheaper and cheaper, a newer personal computer machine is much more powerful than an older server.

As virtual machine software technology improve from time to time, the performance of the software running on virtual machine is closer to the software performance running on native platform. The using of the virtual machine software came with many advantages.

There are many advantages with using virtual machine. With virtual machine, you can run a different operating system software on the same machine. For example, you can setup 2 operating system on the same machine, 1 for development, another 1 for testing. You can easily setup the software environment on the virtual machine by backup, copy and restore the VM image. With virtual machine, testing and server management are much easier.

Current iOS and Android runs on ARM cpu platform. As mobile environment getting more popular, ARM cpu are getting more powerful and more popular too, improve with multi-core and moving to 64 bits. Apple is pushing its mobile cpu to 64 bits with A7 cpu, other competitors like Samsung and Qualcomm will follow as well.

AMD is trying very hard to include ARM cpu in their hardware platform (read here), not sure AMD is pushing ARM into their server platform. There are rumors that Apple is testing ARM cpu for their notebook actively.

CPU performance is not the only benchmark, power consumption is the area where ARM cpu out perform the Intel cpu. Apple notebook will equipped with ARM cpu, sooner or later, then a virtual machine for ARM will exist.

Tutorial: Create Unofficial Midnight Commander package for Debian 7.x

This is a quick hack on how to create debian package using Midnight Commander as an example. The Midnight Commander version that I am using here is MP version. The MP version is without glib dependency.

Midnight commander MP version get from here.
Update 2023: older link above is not exist anymore. Try this link.

I am using version 4.1.40pre9.

$ tar xzvfp mc-4.1.40-pre9.tar.gz
...
cd mc-4.1.40-pre9/
mc-4.1.40-pre9$ ./configure --prefix=/usr

checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... yes
checking for gcc... gcc
...
mc-4.1.40-pre9$ make
mc-4.1.40-pre9$ make DESTDIR=/tmp/mc install
mc-4.1.40-pre9$ cat > control <<-EOF
Package: mcmp
Priority: optional
Section: utilities
Installed-Size: 45
Maintainer: fuyichin <fuyichin@gmail.com>
Architecture: i386
Version: 4.1.40-pre9
Description: midnight commander
this is more powerful version without glib.
EOF

Create the debian package:

mc-4.1.40-pre9$ install -d /tmp/mc/DEBIAN
mc-4.1.40-pre9$ install control /tmp/mc/DEBIAN/.
mc-4.1.40-pre9$ dpkg -b /tmp/mc mc-4.1.40pre9.deb
mc-4.1.40-pre9$ ls mc-4.1.40pre9.deb
mc-4.1.40pre9.deb

mc-4.1.40-pre9$ sudo dpkg -i mc-4.1.40pre9.deb

Post processing mp4 with Subler Mac OS X

Subler is an open-source mp4 muxer and editor software on Mac OS X. I use it to edit soft subtitles, chapter information and add movie (or video) information.

What is soft subtitles? 

Soft subtitles are subtitles that are not embedded in the video or image. It can be turn on ond off by the software.

In VLC player, enable from main menu - Video - Subtitle track. In Quicktime player, enable from main menu - View - Subtitles.

In iPhone/iPod video player, there is an extra icon if the mp4 video has soft subtitles.

If the mp4 video does not have soft subtitles, the icon will not appear.

The subtitles can be added into the mp4 video when you create or convert the video. Or it can be added after the mp4 video was created.

I have tried to use muxo and iHex editor to add in the subtitles. Using Subler is much easier.

Subler quick tutorial 

Add soft subtitles

To add a soft subtitles, click on the (+) button, choose the external subtitles (current support srt format). If you are using double byte subtitles file, prefer to save it as UTF-8 encoding.

If the subtitle not sync with the audio, you may need to adjust the offset of the subtitle. Select the subtitle track, menu - edit - offset. Adjust the time with +/- value (in milliseconds). eg. +1000ms will delay the subtitle by 1 second.

Movie info and artwork

You can add your video (or movie) description into the mp4 file, by clicking the (+) button at the bottom. The information will be displayed at iOS players or iTunes software.

To make your job easier, you can get movie information online, from menu - File - Import Search metadata online. Search the movie information by name, if the movie is found, the information and artwork can be downloaded from the internet.

Create chapter info


The last function I want to show here is to create chapter information using Subler.

Chapter information supported by VLC, Quicktime and iOS player. The chapter information can be added in when you create the mp4 file. 

create chapter info with handbrake software

Sometimes chapter information is not available, you can add in using Subler, from menu - Edit - Insert a Chapter Every (nn minutes).

If the chapter information created by the software (eg. handbrake) is not supported by Quicktime or iOS players, save the mp4 file with Subler again will solve the problem.

Conclusion

Subler is powerful and easy to use open-source software. I just show a few feature of the software. There are more features and functions came with Subler, you need to explore it yourself.

Convert iPhone movie with handbrake

iPhone support Quicktime and mp4 (H.264) video format, which is not common as rmvb and avi (divx, xvid).

There are many video converter software which turn various video format to mp4. I was using MediaCoder before, but I prefer handbrake. Handbrake is much simple and easier. (A quick tutorial was shown at the later part of this post)

A common problem with convert iPhone (iPod or iPad) video is, only specific parameter setting (eg. video resolution) will be accepted by i-devices. Sometimes we converted a mp4 (or m4v) file, but it just rejected by the device. We have to put the specific parameter, especially the display resolution and audio format. Is difficult for normal user like us to get the right parameter for the i-devices.

Handbrake is an open-source software which convert mp4 file, it makes the job so much easier. Handbrake is available on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. If you ignored the subtitle, multiple audio track and other advance features. Convert iPhone video is just as easy as one click operation with handbrake software.

Handbrake came with some preset profile like iPod, iPhone. The handbrake version 0.9.5 support iPad profile too. Handbrake convert variety of video format, but I always have problem to convert rmvb (real video to mp4) with handbrake. For real video, I suggest to try MediaCoder, another open-source video converter, it has specific iPod (iPhone) preset profile version.

A quick tutorial for handbrake.

When you first launch handbrake, it will ask for the source file. Or you can click on the source file icon on the upper left corner of the software.

Choose the iPod, iPhone or iPad profile listed on the right.

Click start and then wait, that's it. It could take some time to convert the video file, it depends on the machine speed, size of source file, size of target file. It may takes 15 minutes to more than 1 hour time.

This is just a short and simple tutorial to convert mp4 video, hope I can share more next time.

TenFourFox Firefox on Mac OS X PowerPC

I want html5 on my old mac which running OS X 10.4. When Mozilla announced new version of Firefox browser 4.0, they also announced to drop support for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

This is no big deal for most people out there, except for just a small group of users who still using old PowerPC Mac. I miss the html5 features on my OS X Tiger, espcially location and video playback features.

For some of the Tiger users out there, they may still need the latest web browser, especially for the html5 support. The latest browser that can be installed on OS X 10.4 Tiger is Safari 4.1 and Firefox 3. Both doesn't support html5. Luckily TenFourFox came into rescue.

TenFourFox(10.4Fox) is Firefox 4.0 code base run on OS X 10.4 Tiger, especially for PowerPC Mac. TenFourFox is not just a recompilation for OS X Tiger, it replace some framework coding like CoreText framework which doesn't work well on Tiger. (check the technical differences)

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is the last OS X version that you can install on a PowerPC G3 machine. PowerPC G4 and G5 user still can upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Is make sense for Mozilla to drop support for older OS X, so they can focus on new framework which came with the later OS X version. It doesn't make sense for some users, if Firefox still works on old Windows XP (2001), it should works on OS X 10.4 (2005).

Again, we saw the power of open-source. With 10.4Fox, I can use location base feature on my OS X 10.4 Tiger on iBook G3.

You can get the latest version here.

Arduino, the open source hardware

Arduino is an open source hardware micro-controller board. The open source idea is from open source software. I know of this Arduino board first introduced by a friend from open source group.

The Arduino (website arduino.cc) board came with a 8 bit RISC micro-controller chips with build in flash memory, an usb socket to transfer program and supply the power.

You will be surprised what you can do with Arduino. There is a youtube video here showing how to use a Wii Nunchuck to control a robot.

The Arduino came with a free software kit available on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platform. You can program the Arduino with C/C++ like language using this Arduino software kit.

The Arduino is popular because is simple, cheap, open, and yet expandable. A pre-build Arduino board cost about 20-25 Euro (about RM100 to RM150, depends on exchange rate). You can program it easily with code similar with C/C++. There are some ready made expandable module available, which turn the Arduino into a robot controller, mini game console, LED display board and many other applications.

For the software part, to program the Arduino is easy, it has 2 functions:

1. setup()
2. loop()

The setup use to initialize setting, the loop function will repeat the job or action.

There is a good hardware and software introduction at youtube here.