Tak3Tik® Version 1.3

A new version of my iPad/iPhone app Tak3Tik® is available in the app store. I added a new "sky" design which looks quite pretty.

Get it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tak3tik/id395502265?mt=8

See the app in action:

How to export Rhythmbox radio stations?

Rhythmbox is currently my favorite audio player. I often listen to internet radio stations.



Now I wanted to export the stations which I added to Rhythmbox. Unfortunately you can't do this with Rhythmbox itself. It's possible to export normal playlists, but it's not possible to export your radio stations.

Rhythmbox stores meta information of your media library in an XML file which is located at
~/.local/share/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml

You will probably see that most of the elements starts with <entry type="ignore"> or <entry type="song">

The type of internet radio stations is "iradio". E.g.:

<entry type="iradio">
    <title>Radio Swiss Jazz</title>
    <genre>Jazz Music</genre>
    <artist></artist>
    <album></album>
    <location>http://www.radioswissjazz.ch/live/mp3.m3u</location>
    <rating>5</rating>
    <play-count>14</play-count>
    <last-played>1304359817</last-played>
    <bitrate>128</bitrate>
    <date>0</date>
    <mimetype>application/octet-stream</mimetype>
  </entry>

What we need is a way to extract all titles and locations of xml entries of type iradio. This can easily done with a XPath query. I use XMLStarlet for this purpose (I like to work in the command line). You can install it with

sudo apt-get install xmlstarlet

Now we have the tool to work with and we know what we are looking for. Here comes the magic:

xmlstarlet sel -t -m "/rhythmdb/entry[@type='iradio']" -v title -n -v location -n ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml


This will give you a list of you stations with their names and addresses. In my case it looks like this:

Rockland
http://www.rockland.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Streams/rockland.m3u
Rock Antenne
http://www.rockantenne.de/webradio/rockantenne.m3u
WDR2
http://www.wdr.de/wdrlive/media/wdr2.m3u
Bremen 1
http://gffstream.ic.llnwd.net/stream/gffstream_mp3_w48a
DRS3
http://stream.srg-ssr.ch/drs3/mp3_128.m3u
Radio Swiss Jazz
http://www.radioswissjazz.ch/live/mp3.m3u
SWR3
http://swr.ic.llnwd.net/stream/swr_mp3_m_swr3a
hr1
http://metafiles.gl-systemhaus.de/hr/hr1_2.m3u
hr3
http://metafiles.gl-systemhaus.de/hr/hr3_2.m3u
hr2
http://metafiles.gl-systemhaus.de/hr/hr2_2.m3u
WDR3
http://www.wdr.de/wdrlive/media/wdr3_hq.m3u
Radio Stephansdom
http://srvhost24.serverhosting.apa.net:8000/rsdstream128.m3u
OE1 ORF.at
http://mp3stream3.apasf.apa.at:8000/
hr-iNfo
http://metafiles.gl-systemhaus.de/hr/hrinfo_2.m3u

Enjoy!

Ogg Dateien mit VLC nach mp3 konvertieren

Der VLC Media Player ist hauptsächlich als hervorragendes Freeware Tool zum Abspielen der verschiedensten Medien bekannt. Man kann ihn aber auch zum Konvertieren von Audio Dateien verwenden.

Nachfolgend wird erklärt wie man mit dem VLC eine Ogg Audiodatei in eine mp3 Datei umwandeln kann.

1. VLC starten



2. In dem Menü "Medien" den Punkt "Konvertieren/Speichern" auswählen.



3. Den Reiter "Datei" auswählen und auf "Hinzufügen" clicken. Dann die Ogg Datei, die konvertiert werden soll, auswählen.



4. Auf "Konvertieren/Speichern" clicken.



5. Nun muss der Name der Zieldatei angegeben werden. Da wir nach mp3 konvertieren wollen, muss diese mit ".mp3" enden. Danach aus der Liste der Profile "Audio - MP3" auswählen.



6. Weitere Einstellungen für die Konvertierung können vorgenommen werden, in dem man auf das Werkzeug Icon neben der Profil Liste clickt und danach den Reiter "Audiocodec" auswählt.



7. Die Konvertierung wird nun mit "Start" gestartet.



8. Im Hauptfenster des VLCs sieht man nun den Fortschritt der Konvertierung.



Fertig!

Tak3Tik®

My iPhone app Tak3Tik® is now available in the iTunes App store. There is a Lite version which supports the "Human vs. Human" mode and a full version which provides a computer opponent. Check it out!

Lite: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tak3tik-lite/id395252350?mt=8
Full: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tak3tik/id395502265?mt=8

Future plans for the full version are iPad HD support and game center support.

Breakpoints are not working in Xcode

You defined breakpoints in your code, your active configuration is "Debug" but still Xcode refuses to stop when it reaches a breakpoint.

Most likely this will help:

Go to "Xcode -> Preferences" and click on "Debugging". Now make sure that "Load symbols lazily" is not checked. Voilà!

Chess Puzzle #1

FEN: 1r2r1k1/n1q2Npp/3pPbb1/1p1B4/pP6/2N3P1/3QP1KP/3R1R2 w - -

A position from an analysis. White to move. How can he win quickly?

Generalized Dudeney Numbers

I wrote a page about Generalized Dudeney Numbers. I also provide a Java Applet there for searching big GDNs.