AUR4

The AUR4 became accessible to developers today so I have just finished the porting of all of my currently mainated pacages over to it. These packages are as follows:

pstate-frequency
pstate-frequency-git
steam-wrapper
steam-wrapper-git

Any other packages that may have once been mine should now be considered orphaned as I have either no time to maintain them, or no will to do so.

I am also hoping to release QuickSwitch soon to the Market, but some theming complications and a conflict over the direction of the application, have so far prevented me. I will update again when I have deliberated on the proper application for QuickSwitch.

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pstate-frequency updates

pstate-frequency work today. Updated it to handle some new arguments as well as handle errors better. The options "turbo", "max", "min", and "governor" can now handle string arguments as well as int arguments. This means that to set, for example, the powersave governor, you can do

  #   pstate-frequency --set --governor powersave

OR

  #   pstate-frequency --set --governor 0

* This assumes that the powersave governor is first on your system list of governors.

Entering an invalid governor name will print out the list of available governors along with their associated number values. The same print out will also work for the power plans.

The --turbo / -t option can now handle the words "on" and "off" as well as the values for no_turbo directly. It will change handling based on the pstate availability of the system.

The --max and --min option can now handle the  arguments "max" and "min" to set the CPU frequencies to the highest and lowest possible respectively.

More error checking has been implemented, and now non-numeric strings will not be evaluated to 0. So now, for example, one is unable to enter

  #   pstate-frequency --set --turbo asdajhsdadjasdk

and enable the turbo boost. This pstate-frequency program will instead catch the error and exit gracefully, cleaning up any used memory.

Currently all of these additions are only available on the "dev" branch, but once I test them further I will look towards pushing them onto the master branch.

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Open Source Applications

<rant>

It's a topic that has been bugging me in the past as its something that I have always wanted to do. But I can't for the reason that if I allow my source to be viewed and copied, it will inevitably end up on the web on some shady spam serving mirror. It will be patched to include malicious code. It will violate my users rights and privacy, and I cannot have that.

I have wanted to Open Source my Android Applications for a long, long time now. But what prevents me is the fact that if I create an project and host it at some Git*.com, I can be sure that there will be some kind of service which my rip my APK and charge users for it elsewhere, perhaps even on the Google Play Store. That doesn't sit well with me, as a random Joe could install this bootlegged application and not know what runs behind the scenes as long as it sort of works.

The problem will perhaps, never be solved. The current Google Play distribution model relies on trust. You as the user must trust the developer to not be a malicious, bad meaning person. You need to hope that the developer is competent, and able to design secure interfaces for your data. You place your full trust in the developer.

One can argue that 99.9% of people who use Android applications do not care, or know, or understand the importance of open sourcing code for programs. They don't know how to read, or understand code. Some struggle just to understand their own device for that matter. They don't care that they downloaded a questionable closed source rip-off because it works for them well enough. They don't know about the moral and ethical struggles behind development. They don't have the time to read over the entire source tree of systemd to see if it will work as a replacement init system. And frankly, they couldn't care less.

The sad truth of my (and many other developers') current situation is that the Android Market is the only reliable medium of application distribution. And the Android Market in its current state is not suitable for open source application distribution.

</rant>

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Doing the things

QuickSwitch, the new button replacement application, is almost ready for release. The first release will be rather small, bringing basic features like Home Button, locking the device, changing the audio levels and ringer volume, changing the screen brightness, and toggling the device radios like WiFi and Mobile Data (for Android versions that support it). The application is small and will hopefully run on devices as new as Lollipop 5.1 and as old as Gingerbread 2.3.

Looking to get some screenshots or an interactive video up later in the week, stay tuned!

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=========================

QuickSwitch

So after no activity last month I am updating again just to let you all know about a new application I am working on. QuickSwitch expands on the ideas behind Home Button and offers a full software replacement for almost all phyiscal device buttons, including the audio, and device lock buttons. The app is already working on a test device of mine and is lightweight and simple to use. I'll update more when more progress has been made.

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Updates

So SoftGlow is "pretty much done" (unless I decide otherwise), and I'm looking to put in into final bugfix testing in a couple of days, but time is tight and my energy currently is limited.

Power Manager is undergoing a large change with its next version, expect to see Material features, animations, shading, quicker interaction, and an all around easier experience.

Home Button is looking to receive a small bugfix update as well in the near future.

A fourth project I have been thinking of expands on Home Button's idea of a software button replacement, only it changes a couple of things. For one, the scope of the project will be larger. Instead of just the Home Button, expect to see other functions, like volume control, brightness, lock screen actions, and of course, the home button all emulated in software. Also instead of being a static notification, the interface to the application will be floating, like the overlay currently in Power Manager.

Maybe, maybe.

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Supporting Old Versions

First off, Old versions (API 10 Gingerbread) will still be supported by newer applications. But with the changes that Material brings there are many features, most importantly animation, that cannot be supported below API 15. While this sounds like an issue, as there are 5 API levels that are unsupported, there is only an estimated 6 percent of all Android users still running on an API below 15, and that 6 percent primarily consists of users on Gingerbread API 10. If you are one of those users I am sorry that you will not be able to take full advantage of the newer improvements, but I digress that I must continue to push for the adoption of new and improved Android versions, and creating applications which tether towards those versions over older one is one way to accelerate the push for Android versioning standardization.

tl;dr No animations for 15 and below, sorry!

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i3-wm and Tiling Window Managers

So over the weekend I switched one of my systems from OpenBox to i3-wm and so far have been enjoying the experience. I have used tiling managers in the past, starting with DWM and then AwesomeWM, but went over to OpenBox because I wanted to try out a floating manager. But as it turns out, for most use cases in OpenBox I would simply maximize the windows or part them to both sides of the screen, kind of like what a Tiling manager does automatically.

So why continue to use OpenBox then if all I am doing is manually tiling windows myself in a stacking manager. So I made the switch, and right now its a very minimal system I've got going on. But I'm enjoying my time and especially enjoy the fact that i3-wm has operating "modes" ala Vim. More on that maybe later.

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Power Manager released!

An update to Power Manager has been released onto the store, and you should be receiving notifications on your device(s) soon. The update brings stability improvements, fixes a nasty crash with a bad vesion of Google Play Services, and introduces the first implementation of power triggers into the application. The fixes introduced are of large importance, and the update is recommended for all users to please download and install as soon as possible. With the release of 4.4.0, Power Manager will go into a stability period, where efforts will be focused on other projects, and Power Manager itself will shift it's focus to the next version, which looks to implement a cleaner UI, the themes and idea behind Material Design, and a smoother and more reliable operation all around.

========================
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=========================

Home Button

Home Button bugfix finally dropped as it took me a while to figure out what the problem exactly was. Initially, it appeared that the crash was happening in Android native code, so there was nothing I could do to fix it. Turns out it was a tiny bug in the Google Play Services package that caused a NoClassDefFound error. A simple fix and now we're rolling.

Power Manager is planned for the next week or so, although schedules will serve to decide when exactly I get around to finalizing it.

SoftGlow is going through a very long update process which I apologize for. There was a lot of cruft in the original release and I feel like this update merits a lot of work hours that are being put into it. Seeing as the last version was released about five months ago, I want this next version to really shine with its polish.

========================
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=========================