MXIT – Linux (Update) New project

I have checked various options for connecting to the MXIT network on Linux since this last post.

After reading blogs, wikis and forums I couldn’t find a solution I liked. It is for this reason that I decided to create my own client.

I will start first with a generic library that implements the MXIT protocol and can be used by other MXIT clients. The reasons for starting with a library first is:

1. There is no library that targets the MXIT protocol.

2. The library can be used in different clients making the process of creating a client a little less difficult.

3. The library can provide a stable API and still accommodate protocol changes.

4. You get my drift.

I will probably do the library in Java and base the design on Smack since I have worked with smack before and like their way of doing things.

More updates to follow once I have something to show…

Insert Date Time in NetBeans – Module (Update)

In this post I talked about the Insert Date Time NetBeans Module.

Since then I updated the module to not only insert the Date Time at the cursor but also to replace any selected (highlighted) text with the current date time.

Just a small update but the module is now version 0.2

Read more about the module or DOWNLOAD here

No MXIT for Linux users

Most of the people using Windows must be happy with the new official MXIT pc client released by the same people responsible for the mobile client of the same name. The mobile client is created using Java but no such luck for the PC client it seems.

The first indication that the PC client is meant to be run on Linux is the .msi installer file that is meant to install the chat client on your PC. There is other options available when the need to connect consumes you.

Before this official PC client for MXIT people mostly used the mobile version and phone emulator but that proved to be difficult to use because of obvious reasons. Others made their own unofficial client by analyzing the MXIT protocol.

I also mostly out of experimentation created a PC client that sort of worked in Java but soon moved on to greater things partly because the rumor of a official client being created and that I didn’t use MXIT much. The current lack of Linux support made me rethink this.

Maybe I should pick up the old Java code a slap on a GTK UI and create a Linux only version. Before that I might try wine if I can find a binary of the application but my hopes is not high. Another option is to create some kind of pidgin plug in to handle the MXIT protocol.

At the end of the day official Linux support would be nice but if that does not happen I will provide some way to chat on MXIT from Linux without having to use an emulator.

That is a promise.

Banshee Media Player 1.0 and Gstreamer resource error

I installed the new Banshee 1.0 on my laptop today.

The one new feature I was interested was the video integration that allows you to import your movies into the Video Library just like you do with your music and allows you to watch your movies inside Banshee.

This new feature makes Banshee a true media player not just a music player like Rhythmbox for example. The only reason actually that I used Rhythmbox over Banshee was because I have just always used Rhythmbox since switching to Ubuntu.

After installing Banshee 1.0 from the Banshee developers PPA I started the media player and begun importing my media files.

At first my music videos played nicely but then I must have done something and no video would play. I got a error in the terminal saying:

[Error 14:41:42.036] GStreamer resource error: NotFound
[Error 14:41:45.423] GStreamer resource error: NotFound
[Error 14:41:45.942] GStreamer resource error: NotFound
…

I knew there was nothing wrong with video files because they opened just fine with Totem. I tried almost every thing but no video playback. The I opened Banshee as root and everything worked as before.

Suspecting that this had something to do with my Banshee configuration files I created a new user named koos. Banshee video work as expected with this user.

Being the lazy person I am I logged back in as myself and deleted the ~/.config/banshee-1/ folder and then copied the banshee-1 folder from my koos user I created (/home/koos/.config/banshee-1) that solved the problem and I was back to watching videos and listening to music from one program. I still don’t know what caused the problem in the first place.

I don’t think I will go back to Rrythmbox anytime soon since I only listen to music and now watch movies from my media player and don’t use any other features where Rhythmbox might or might not have the edge. Now I only have to learn the new keyboard shortcuts and I am set.

Below is 2 screen shots of Banshee 1.0 in action.

Insert Date Time in NetBeans – Module

I was working in NetBeans and wanted to insert the current date time in the source file I was working on.

I could not find any menu item to this and searching the web didn’t provide any useful information. There was pages describing how to insert the date time in templates but I wanted to do this in my source file.

After giving up on my search I created a module that will insert the current date time at the cursor in NetBeans. The module is by no means perfect and only allows for one date time format but it works for me.

Maybe the module can be useful to somebody else.

Read more and DOWNLOAD here…