Right now there’s very few details about Google Glass. If you’re like me this is mega frustrating if you’re thinking about coding stuff for it.

A few people have already done unboxings, some social celebrities on Google+ are actively raving about it, but really not giving much away!

So what are our hopes for Google Glass? How do we want it to work?

Here are some of my Google Glass hopes and musings:

1. I really hope the ‘audio trigger’ can be changed from “Ok Glass,”.
2. I hope it will be accessible to most people, this means it needs to be around £200 or cheaper.
3. Is it viewable in low light conditions?
4. Can I hook into its ‘sensors’ or shall I continue with my own Wearable API.

The post How can Google Glass be better? appeared first on northmore.net.

The other night I started making the initial app (android) which will work with the Wearable API.

Initial input & output methods were explored and implemented in a basic application.

The idea was to start with finding out what ways we can communicated with the Wearable API.

So Far:

Inputs: GPS, Mic, Accelerometer, Temperature, Compass, Message, JSON, Camera

Outputs: Dialogue, Talk, Vibrate, Notification, Audio, Toast

Even with these simple methods added we can start building the API to do stuff for us.

Right now my preferred method of receiving output is by audio. So right now It ‘speaks’ a lot, but but voice/audio notifications work so well.

“Louis, you have received an email”, “New calendar appointment received” “Warning: You are doing over 70MPH” Of course; these are all configurable in the API.

The post First starts on the Wearable App & API appeared first on northmore.net.

Whilst working on some Shoutcast scripts, I thought it would be cool to grab the album art of the current playing song to display. I googled for services, but none seemed suitable. (If you know of one, please leave a comment below.)

We can grab an image using PHP & curl:

function get_album_art($title) {
    $cleantitle = $title;
    $title = urlencode($title);
    $url = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/images?v=1.0&q=$title";
    $curl = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    $data = curl_exec($curl);
    curl_close($curl);
    //decoding request
    $result = json_decode($data, true);

    $img = $result['responseData']['results'][0]['tbUrl'];

    $data = "<a href=\"$img\" target=\"_BLANK\"><img alt=\"$cleantitle\" title=\"$cleantitle\" height=\"100px\" src=\"$img\" /></a>";
    return $data;
}

Simply pass through the song title eg: Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees and it will return an image for you.

Now remember, this isn;’t an exact science, the image returned might not be related at all, but in my tests I found 90% of results perfectly acceptable.

Here’s how it looks:

The post Grab album art from Google image search appeared first on northmore.net.

Found a bargain yesterday in our local CEX store. Why haven’t I bought one earlier?

The post New keyboard appeared first on northmore.net.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: a new WordPress release is available and chock-full of goodies to delight bloggers and developers alike. We’re calling this one “Elvin” in honor of drummer Elvin Jones, who played with John Coltrane in addition to many others.

For details in full click here. I’ll be posting any new bits that I find useful shortly!

The post WordPress 3.5 (Elvin) Released appeared first on northmore.net.

Check out the following great competition from Heart Internet:

http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/blog/2012/12/win-a-new-home-office-worth-over-1700-for-christmas

The Prize Bundle
Starting today, our Christmas competition will give you the chance to win over £1700 of kit to help you start the New Year with a fantastic new home office set up!
One lucky winner will receive:

• A 21.5 inch iMac
• A set of Bose speakers
• A 2TB Time Capsule
• A desktop gadget from Firebox.com
• A free VPS for the entire year!

How to Enter
To enter the competition, all you have to do is complete any or all of the tasks below. Each task is worth a different number of entries, and some can be completed once per day, so keep checking back throughout December to add more entries into the pot and increase your chances of winning.

The post Great competition from Heart Internet appeared first on northmore.net.

Last weekend I attended WordCamp UK Edinburgh 2012 which is a conference for WordPress users & developers alike. The past 2 I have attended have been in great venues and this years was no exception; in the historic and lively city of Edinburgh.

The weekend boasted a great selection of talks aimed at beginners & developers and was a great mix provided on a split track setup.

The attendance was great with seemingly more people arriving throughout the weekend.

Social events were well planned, well attended and all in all a great success! As an added bonus the weather held up too, so no walking back to the hotel in the rain!

Again, I got a great amount out of this years WordCamp UK Edinburgh, and judging by the last session of the weekend, lots of other people did too!

It was great to catch up with people that I’d met on previous WordCamps and also meet some talented new people to hopefully work on some up-and-coming projects with!

Id like to thank all the people who helped organise yet another great WordCamp UK!

See you next year!

The post WordCamp UK Edinburgh 2012 appeared first on northmore.net.

The DIY rack cabinet (v.2) has finally been moved into its home. Permission was granted for space next to the fridge and it fits perfectly! Its amazing how quiet the bedroom is now!

If you want to make a 19″ rackmount cabinet, all you need are IKEA ‘Lack’ tables, optionally some casters and you have a very cheap and expandable system!

The post DIY Rack Cabinet V2 appeared first on northmore.net.

This is a quick write up on my Hackintosh experiences. [SUCCESS]

My computing choices and views have started to change recently. Since having the Macbook pro, I’ve become increasingly dis-satisfied with my Windows & Linux desktop operating systems. (Don’t get me wrong, Debian still is my main server choice!)

I was fed up with slowness, poor hardware support & broken updates. What I needed was  desktop OS that is tested with specific hardware to make sure that everything is compatible, fast and works with minimum fuss.

Apple computers fit that bracket, but they have one major downfall – the cost! I simply cannot afford an Apple system (preferably an Apple Pro – they start at £2041 without a monitor!!)

There is another option to gain an Apple system for lower cost – a Hackintosh. This is the method of installing Apples operating system on standard PC hardware.

I chose to go the hackintosh route, to see if my hardware would work and I could get OSX (Lion) booted and working.

I followed an excellent guide here to create a bootable USB Lion install disk. In fact that www.tonymacx86.com site has a wealth of resources that any hackintosh fan should digest!

So after a lot of learning I have created an OSX Lion hackintosh system on the following hardware:

• Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L motherboard (Socket 775) Link
• Intel Core 2 Duo (2.0 Ghz)
• Gigabyte GT220 1GB NVIDIA graphics card. Link

The motherboard and chip are not that new, and need to be upgraded, but it works fine.

Things you need to have:

BUY OSX Lion from the App Store (on another MAC) or get the retail USB key. 
Tonymac Uniboot USB bootable drive/disk.
Multibeast – Tonymac post install utility. 

TIP: It would be really handy for this process if you know what chipsets your hardware has. If you’re a Linux geek, use lspci to get a nice hardware capture.

TIP: As soon as you have a working OSX system, back it up!! (Use Apples built-in Time Machine to another partition or harddisk) You WILL break you system trying to  get everything working!

The first working install (There were many more after this! Remember to backup!)

Upgrades coming soon:

i7 chip & board, 16GB RAM

This is a video of the actual system below:

The post Hackintosh appeared first on northmore.net.

As a continuing project I always love playing with virtulisation. This is some notes for installing and configuring KVM on Debian. Its mainly for my own reference, but if you find it useful please leave a comment!

1. Create a Debian ‘base system’ and fully update it. I use Debian stable, and a minimal install.

Hardware Requirements for KVM

KVM works best if your processor supports virtulisation extensions. It WILL still work if you dont, but dont expect any decent performance! Installations of virtual hosts are sometimes painfully slow without this!

I like my virtualmachines to get their own proper IP address from my LAN or be configured with a static. For this to work and get past the default NAT setup, you will need to setup a network bridge. Follow the link here: http://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections#Setting_up_your_Bridge on how to set that up.

2. Now you should have a fully patched and updated Debian system, we’re now going to install KVM:
apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-bin

The post Building a KVM host on Debian appeared first on northmore.net.