Setting Up a Logitech Mouse for Firefox

I’ve recently purchased a Logitech G7 mouse, and I’ve been trying to configure it for easy Firefox browsing. After some tweaking, I came up with a decent setup, and since I’ve failed to find a useful guide online, I figured I’d write one.

Basically, what we we’ll be doing here is configure the scroll wheel’s side-moving ability to switch tabs, and the DPI buttons to open/close tabs.

First, load up SetPoint, the Logitech mouse and keyboard software suite. Simply double click the system tray icon, or load it up through the start menu (Start->Programs->Logitech->Mouse and Keyboard->Mouse and Keyboard Settings.)

Now, once inside the Set Point mouse button settings tab (first one up), hit the [Manage Programs...] button.

We need to add Firefox to our programs list, so hit the [Add...] button, and locate the Firefox executable on your system (default install directory is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe.)

Since there’s no default keyboard shortcut in firefox for moving one tab right or left, you’ll need to download this plugin (don’t worry, it’s not in Chinese) and configure custom keyboard shortcuts. I personally use Ctrl+Alt+[ and Ctrl+Alt+], but you can set whatever shortcut you want (just make sure not to collide with an existing Firefox/Windows shorcut.)

Back to SetPoint. Make sure Firefox is the selected program, and change the key configuration for numbers 5 through 8 (Left scroll, right scroll, DPI+, DPI- accordingly.) Choose the Keystroke Assingment option, and set these values

• Left scroll (5) -   Ctrl + Alt + [ (or whatever shortcut you've set in the Firefox plugin)
• Right scroll (6) -   Ctrl + Alt + ] (or whatever shortcut you’ve set in the Firefox plugin)
• DPI+ (7) -   Ctrl + T
• DPI- (8) -   Ctrl + W

And we’re done! I’m using Firefox 3 and a G7, but this trick will probably work with other Logitech mice that utilize the SetPoint software, and I’m pretty sure there’s similar keyboard shortcut plugins for Firefox 2. Hope you found this guide useful. If you have any suggestions for similar Logitech mice programming, make sure to leave a comment.

Addendum: Another neat little trick is assigning the scroll wheel sideways movement as the Left and Right keyboard buttons for Picasa Image Viewer.

Killer Plants, Swedes, and the Worst Video Clip of All Times

It’s been a while. Right, let’s do this thing.

Nirvana: The Band: The Show is an (awesomely-named) independent web series following two guys and their upcoming band. Not only is the show great, but so is everything else on their website (which features an impressive design.) Piano sessions, (fake?) auditions, outtakes. This is a prime example of a quality indie web-based series.

If you own a Source game, you might want to check out the recently released Suicide Survival. It’s a mod where men wearing squeaky shoes throw gardening books at insidious suicidal plants bent on their destruction. The catch lies in one simple fact: not all plants are alive, and unless you see one moving towards you, you can’t know which is which.

I’ve been experimenting with 2D level design these past few weeks, and it brought me back to Knytt Stories. Released back in August 2007 by Swedish independent developer Nicklas “Nifflas” Nygren, Knytt Stories is a cute little platformer featuring a Knytt (roughly translates as ‘tiny creature’ in Swedish) named Juni. However, Knytt Stories is far more than simply that. Nygren created an intuitive tool for users to create their own levels, free to use either the extansive libraries of music and tilesets packed with the game, or their own assessts, easily importable. This has led to some impressive community levels, which can be found either on the Knytt Stories forums, or the Knytt Stories level archive. If you decide to give it a try, you should check out Gaia and The Life Ruby.

Auditorium is Flash puzzle game where you use flow mechanics to feed musical receptors in order to proceed to the next level. Well, That’s a very scientific way of describing it. You really should just check it out and see for yourself.

I don’t own a DS, and I don’t even know anyone who does, but the footage from the upcoming Scribblenauts really makes me wish I had one. You’re a boy. You really like stars. How do you get them? You draw something. What do you draw? Whatever you want.

As promised in the title, here’s the worst video clip of all times.

“This is a story of girl…”

I picked this RSS feed on Digg. Apparently one girl sent an SMS to her dad about her first time *on beach* accidentally, well, it’s hard to believe the picture, first because there’s no difference in time stamps, second – who on his right mind will make a screenshot of this and then post it? but, then again, you can never know! As expected with these things, you don’t have to wait too much before someone comes up with a parody. Another internet phenomena emerge…? I think it just lacks the initial momentum. but it’s cute.

If we’re already on geeky interpretations check out this StarTrek ala Dr. Suess, it’s hilarious, and I don’t even watch StarTrek…

I get really nostalgic with this song. It reminds me of LAN parties.

Social is the new Black, well, sort of…

A few years ago, the verb to Google, was used by some nerdy hyped internet users, it probably seemed odd then, until it took over, that even now your grandma knows what it means. Back to the future (I mean today), new verbs are growing rapidly, Youtubing, Twittering, Flickring, WordPressing, Facebooking, and the list would never end. It’s a new world of social networking, and today we’re only experiencing a quick peek at what would become the social-web revolution. Some brave new ideas and philosophies emerge as a result, all seeking for a more reliable and open web. OpenID (Explained by Dave) and OpenSocial (Explained by Programmers) are two exciting pioneers, and many more are on their way, but we are still at the beginning. We can already see some exploration in social web browsing (or maybe Flocking?) as it actually alters the user’s experience, today it might seem like a simple UI Changes, but in the future it will be complete new way of addressing the web. Right now I’m actually using Flock to write this blog post. Flock is a mix bag of products and solutions. it just hit 2.0 release and from the few hours I spent using it – I don’t think it delivers the right answer. Mozilla are also getting prepared, you know, just in case. Yep, that’s it, I can imagine it – 50 years from now I’ll be Cooping with my grand kids, just wonderful!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Link Time 01/12/08

It’s link time boys and girls!

• Sporcle is a fun little waste of time.
• Left 4 Dead again? Why yes. This time, Francis hates everything.
• עתודה. זהירות: הומור היטלר
• And lastly, Black Mesa just released a spiffy new trailer. These guys have amazing talent.

Indie (n’ a Jones)

Aquaria

The two-men (and major awesome) team of Bit-Blot have recently released version 1.1.0 of their brilliant underwater metroidish platformer, Aquaria, for the Mac. This is the game’s first Mac release, and so far, the new version (which now offers sexy widescreen) is Mac only. A PC release is said to follow soon.

A Cephalopod!

And here’s an interesting experiment in in-game narrative by Spooky Squid Games. It’s a preview of an upcoming freeware game, titled Night of the Cephalopods. It’s nothing special, and the preview is only about five minutes long, but every action you make is narrated by a surprisingly-decent voice actor, all in a Lovecraftian style of horror.

Also, how about a Flash remake of Jones in the Fast Lane?

A Free MobileMe Alternative

My intents of getting an iPhone began in 2007 when it was introduced – at the time I wasn’t sure it met my cost/value needs. Only after breaking the applications barrier and proving its commitment with the 2.0 overhaul, Apple made the decision much easier. I finally got the first 2G generation iPhone at 320$ on eBay. With the launch of MobileMe – Apple changed the rules for personal email/contacts/calendar syncing, bringing the experience of Exchange push technology “to the rest of us”. Apple’s one step forward to this uncharted scene was predictively followed by a step backward, a yearly 99$ price tag. Yes, you do get an additional few gigs of net storage and beautifully designed set of web apps, but these just don’t measure up to the tax. In this post I will describe a free alternative for MobileMe – for an iPhone, Mac OS X and Gmail setup, using Apple’s native applications – As I find the best solution around. It took me a few days to get it going, as expected – it has its ups and downs, and I will try to guide you through everything. Credit goes to Beau Giles for his detailed post on the matter.

First to understand what we’re trying to achieve, here’s a picture of how our email/contacts/calendar scheme works. For a true push experience, imagine the “cloud” as being one service (Just the MobileMe) and all three arrows working in all directions.

So let’s jump right in, first we’re going to set up Contacts and Calendar syncing, on part two i’ll describe the best way to sync Mail.

PART 1 – SYNCING CALENDAR AND CONTACTS

1. Set up your NuevaSync account
   After verifying your account, login to NuevaSync. Here we need to configure it for our Gmail account. Click the change link next to Calendar, it should direct you back to Gmail site for approval – just fill in your Gmail details. then do the same for Contacts, and we’re done!
   
2. IMPORTANT STEP
   Backup all your contacts/calendars from your iPhone because after the next step they will be erased and replaced. If you regularly use iTunes for syncing (you should!) – Launch Address Book on your mac, on the menu bar go to File > Export > Address Book Archive and save it somewhere. Then launch iCal, choose File > Back up iCal from the menu bar, and save it there also.
   
3. Set up your iPhone for NuevaSync
   Now that we are safe, back on your iPhone, go to Settings, and then choose Mail, Contacts, Calendars. On the next screen press Add Account. Choose Microsoft Exchange from the top. Put in your Gmail address, but for Username and Password put your NuevaSync details. Tap Next. After verification, enter www.nuevasync.com for the Server field. Make sure you turn ON contacts and calendar, and turn OFF mail. Tap Save.
   Now all your contacts and calendar are being erased and replaced by the ones from your gmail account. On the next steps we will add your Mac to the syncing loop.
   ONE MORE THING your calendar is synced as a whole, without color coding, each time you add an event it’s added to your main calendar. More of that later.
   
4. Set up your Mac for Contacts syncing
   Open Address Book on your Mac, go to Preferences from the menu bar, under the first tab you should see Synchronize with Google, hit the checkbox and write your account information (Same details as you log in to Gmail on the web).
   Problem is now, you have to enable iSync menu bar icon and hit “Sync Now” manually each time anything changes on either your iPhone or on your Mac. This is just the way Apple chose to implement contact syncing, and it’s a bit uncomfortable so we will make it automatically.
   Download and install iSyncIt (I heartily recommend making a donation to these folks). When you’re done, from the menu bar press the iSyncIt icon, choose Preferences, disable bluetooth control because we don’t need it, then under Scheduling make it sync every, let’s say, 60 minutes. then proceed to Login Item and make sure it starts on login.
   The next step might look unnecessary, but believe me, it is. Find someone who has a phone with Bluetooth that can talk with iSync (you might want to check this on how to install other phones) Go to iSync, and set up the new Bluetooth device for it, after it’s done, just make sure the device is turned ON for synchronization in iSync’s main window. also, check either Contacts or Calendars for the device.
   Now, we don’t want to see the iSync application pops out on our Dock every hour, so let’s get rid of it. Go and download Dock Dodger (Donate please!), install it and drag iSync from the applications folder to Dock Dodger’s main window. This way the iSync application will activate sync with Google, and you won’t even notice it.
   
   • iSync does popup for a second and then disappears, I just use the Spaces feature to make it always open under my least used space (far down-right). you can do it also under Settings on your Mac. believe me it won’t bother you. If you do find another solution for this feel free to post your suggestions.
     
5. Set up your Mac for Calendar syncing
   There are some other ways to sync your iCal with Google, they just cost money or just less cool – and we’re here for free cool alternatives right? We are going to create a separate calendar in Gmail for each calendar in iCal. Or – the other way around, depends on where you previously kept your calendar.
   Go to your Gmail Calendar, and create your desired calendars with their respective names, just hit Create button under My calendars on the left side. For each calendar click the arrow next to it and choose Calendar settings from the list. You will see a Calendar Address section down the page, and just right to it the Calendar ID inside brackets. For the first main calendar this will be just your email address, but for other calendars there will be a code followed by “@group.calendar.google.com“. Now open iCal application on your Mac and go to Preferences. Under Accounts tab you will see the + button on the down-left corner. Click it, and you will be presented with a drop box. On the Description write the name of the first calendar which Calendar ID you just copied. Put your entire email address for Username (including @gmail.com) and your Gmail password. Hit the small arrow next to Server Options, on Account URL you should write like that:
   
   https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[Your Calendar ID]/user
   so if my calendar’s ID is xyz@group.calendar.google.com, what I should write is:

   https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/xyz@group.calendar.google.com/user

   leave the authentication option unchecked, we don’t need it. Press Add. Do the same for each calendar in your Gmail account. I remind you that you should make this process in the future if you plan to add more calendars, so go ahead and make some.
   You can change the interval in which calendars are refreshing. Just select each one in Preferences and look for Refresh calendars in the Account Information section. You have 1/5/15/30 Minutes intervals. I really manage with 15. Notice that it will update the first time you launch iCal, and for every new meeting you make it will also make a refresh.
   That’s it, you now have mirrored always-in-sync calendars with google.

   • If you had your calendars already in iCal and you want to copy them to the new ones, I recommend you check out CaliBrate ($8 Shareware), it will do the job just fine.
   • Each new meeting you make in your iPhone is created under the first (main) calendar. I just named the first one “iPhone”, so I won’t confuse, and from time to time sort it out in iCal to the different calendars.
   • Kind of a downfall for this method, the different calendars in iCal are placed in separated groups, meaning that you can’t just click on a meeting and change the calendar it resides in. You will have to either drag the meeting to the desired calendar on the left pane, or make sure you select the right calendar and only then create a new meeting.
   • One more thing I’d like to note here, If you are used to Apple’s birthdays feature straight from Address Book contacts to iCal – you will have to keep another “online” birthdays for google (So strange Google hasn’t thought this feature yet…) I recommend checking iCalBirthdays, this Automator action takes your contacts birthdays and put it on iCal, and lets you control a whole bunch of other stuff on the way, you can just create and application from it using Automator, and make it run automatically every now and then.

CONCLUSION

It take sometime to get this going, but if you follow this work-around as I described, you will have a nice solution, that actually works! I guess there’s always more than one way of doing these stuff so feel free to post your own suggestions. In the next part I’ll describe a way to manage your emails with Gmail, iPhone and the Apple’s Mail.app on your Mac.

iPhone tales

So I wake up one day, and my iPhone 3G is stuck on my pretty custom boot logo, I reboot it, and it’s dead.

after finaly restoring, it wouldn’t read its own IMEI, again, dead.

I tryed all sorts of things and finaly faced the fact that the baseband is fucked up

If this was a 2G iPhone, I’d just overwrite the baseband with a new one, but until the good old dev-team manage to crack the bootloader and release a soft-unlock for the 3G, I’m lost. (Don’t get me wrong, the dev-team are doing an excelent work, and are actualy showing great progress)

So this last friday, iPhoneOS 2.2 came out, which included a baseband update (yey!), and that restored my baseband (updated actualy) and my iPhone is back to life.

Some resolutions from this new 2.2:

• apparently it blocks the usage of sim adapters, which means for now, the iPhone 3G is not actualy a phone (in israel atleast)
• in addition, every time you connect it to iTunes, it tries to activate itself again, meaning if you’re not using an AT&T sim you can’t really do anything with iTunes and the iPhone
• new features allows you to go back to the first page in the springboard, which is really nice if you have lots of pages. but on the other hand, why not use QuickGold and Categories and manage all your apps ?
• streetview (useless in Israel), better HTML, less call drops, and safari is ALOT more stable (runs ikariam smoothly )

I’ve been trying to help out some members of the dev-team, coming up with problems and solutions for the 2.2 pwn, also the Israeli HebDev have some promising ideas, stay tuned !

oh yea, I also found a really cool app for the iPhone, it combines failblog.org, icanhascheezburger.com and all of the related sites in to one great app that feeds you the latests from each site, also lets you save pics straight to the iPhone, so you can use as wallpapers or show your friends

Daniel Floyd

Insightful analysis of key issues in the the video game industry, presented in an interesting format, you say?

I Deliver! Actually, Daniel Floyd delivers. I just link.

In order of appearance, we’ve got:

• Video games and storytelling
• Video games and sex
• Video games and learning
• Video games and the uncanny valley

Link Time 11/11/08

It’s link time boys and girls!

• The PA Wallpaper Dump is something you might want to check out, if you’re one of those fellas who like pretty pretty desktops.
• Left 4 Dead is rated M for mature. Here’s one of many reasons why.
• Scientists have proven that RA3 can make you almost half as popular as David Hasselhoff!

And here’s a couple of interesting experiments in game design.

• I Wish I Were the Moon is a cute little flash game that should take about five minutes of your time.
• Aisle is an interesting take on the genre of interactive fiction. Specifically, you only get to input one command before the “game” is over.

O, an I can haz cheezburger naow?