Code after the break; Kudos to the MonoTouch team!

UPDATE: Added iPhoneSimulator, iPhone4Simulator and iPadSimulator.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Fixed some identifiers. Sorry about that.

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using MonoTouch.Foundation;
using MonoTouch.UIKit;

namespace YourNamespace {
	public class DeviceHardware {
		public const string HardwareProperty = "hw.machine";

		public enum HardwareVersion {
			iPhone,
			iPhone3G,
			iPhone3GS,
			iPhone4,
			iPod1G,
			iPod2G,
			iPod3G,
			iPad,
			iPhoneSimulator,
			iPhone4Simulator,
			iPadSimulator,
			Unknown
		}

		[DllImport(MonoTouch.Constants.SystemLibrary)]
		static internal extern int sysctlbyname([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)] string property, IntPtr output, IntPtr oldLen, IntPtr newp, uint newlen);

		public static HardwareVersion Version {
			get {
				var pLen = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(sizeof(int));
				sysctlbyname(DeviceHardware.HardwareProperty, IntPtr.Zero, pLen, IntPtr.Zero, 0);

				var length = Marshal.ReadInt32(pLen);

				if (length == 0) {
					Marshal.FreeHGlobal(pLen);

					return HardwareVersion.Unknown;
				}

				var pStr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(length);
				sysctlbyname(DeviceHardware.HardwareProperty, pStr, pLen, IntPtr.Zero, 0);

				var hardwareStr = Marshal.PtrToStringAnsi(pStr);
				var ret = HardwareVersion.Unknown;

				if (hardwareStr == "iPhone1,1")
					ret = HardwareVersion.iPhone;
				else if (hardwareStr == "iPhone1,2")
					ret = HardwareVersion.iPhone3G;
				else if (hardwareStr == "iPhone2,1")
					ret = HardwareVersion.iPhone3GS;
				else if (hardwareStr == "iPhone3,1")
					ret = HardwareVersion.iPhone4;
				else if (hardwareStr == "iPad1,1")
					ret = HardwareVersion.iPad;
				else if (hardwareStr == "iPod1,1")
					ret = HardwareVersion.iPod1G;
				else if (hardwareStr == "iPod2,1")
					ret = HardwareVersion.iPod2G;
				else if (hardwareStr == "iPod3,1")
					ret = HardwareVersion.iPod3G;
				else if (hardwareStr == "i386") {
					if (UIDevice.CurrentDevice.Model.Contains("iPhone"))
						ret = UIScreen.MainScreen.Bounds.Height * UIScreen.MainScreen.Scale == 960 || UIScreen.MainScreen.Bounds.Width * UIScreen.MainScreen.Scale == 960 ? HardwareVersion.iPhone4Simulator : HardwareVersion.iPhoneSimulator;
					else
						ret = HardwareVersion.iPadSimulator;
				}

				Marshal.FreeHGlobal(pLen);
				Marshal.FreeHGlobal(pStr);

				return ret;
			}
		}
	}
}

Ahora regreso con una aplicacion nativa para el iPhone cuyo nombre es muy creativo y original: “Trafico.” Esta aplicacion te permite ver el trafico en varias zonas del D.F. y en otras ciudades de la republica. El link del AppStore es el siguiente: http://www.tinyurl.com/traficomex. Si quieres ver screenshots, entra al AppStore.

#!/bin/bash

TOPDIR=$(pwd)
BUILDDIR=$TOPDIR/build
DLDDIR=$TOPDIR/downloads

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

echo "installing prerequisites"
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential bison gawk
sudo apt-get install -y libglib2.0-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libpng12-dev libx11-dev libfontconfig1-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libfreetype6-dev libjpeg62-dev libtiff4-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libungif4-dev libexif-dev libcairo2-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libpango1.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libglade2-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libgnome2-dev libgnomecanvas2-dev libgnomeui-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libgnomeprint2.4-dev libgnomeprintui2.4-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libpanel-applet2-dev libgtksourceview-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libgtkhtml3.14-dev
sudo apt-get install -y intltool
sudo apt-get install -y desktop-file-utils apache2-threaded-dev subversion libtool

echo "uninstalling platform mono packages"
sudo apt-get remove 'mono-*' libgdiplus

mkdir -p $BUILDDIR
cd $BUILDDIR

rm -rf libgdiplus
rm -rf mono
rm -rf mono-tools
rm -rf mono-debugger
rm -rf xsp
rm -rf mod_mono

echo
echo "downloading mono packages"
echo

cd $BUILDDIR

svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/libgdiplus
svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mono
svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mcs
svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mono-tools
svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mono-debugger
svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/xsp
svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mod_mono

cd $BUILDDIR

echo
echo "building and installing mono packages"
echo
cd $BUILDDIR

cd libgdiplus
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd $BUILDDIR

cd mono
cd mono
cd mini
perl -i -pe 'last if eof' mini-amd64.h
perl -i -pe 'last if eof' mini-amd64.h
echo "#define MONO_ARCH_NOMAP32BIT" >> mini-amd64.h
echo "#endif" >> mini-amd64.h
cd ..
cd ..
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --with-large-heap=yes --with-xen_opt=yes
sudo make uninstall
make get-monolite-latest
make EXTERNAL_MCS=false
sudo make install
cd $BUILDDIR

cd mono-tools
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local
sudo make uninstall
make
sudo make install
cd $BUILDDIR

cd mono-debugger
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local
sudo make uninstall
make
sudo make install
cd $BUILDDIR

cd xsp
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local
sudo make uninstall
make
sudo make install
cd $BUILDDIR

cd mod_mono
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local
sudo make uninstall
make
sudo make install
cd $BUILDDIR

echo
echo "done"

After spawning a huge thread, I’m left to wonder: why didn’t I continue learning ML after my functional languages class? Blargh!

Benchmarks after the break…

C#:

Max deviation is 0.001663983
10^7 iterations using Sigmoid1() took 1646.613 ms
10^7 iterations using Sigmoid2() took 237.352 ms

C:

Max deviation is 0.001664
10^7 iterations using sigmoid1: 628 ms
10^7 iterations using sigmoid2: 157 ms

F#:

Max deviation is 0.001664
10^7 iterations using sigmoid1: 588.843700 ms
10^7 iterations using sigmoid2: 156.626700 ms

Unfortunately, most of the laptops are Dell C610s – in other words, 1GHz, 256MB RAM and they’re running Windows XP. You can probably tell that it’s very fun to optimize each system. (I’m proud of myself, they run pretty nicely for the low specs they’re sporting…)

With this in mind, I decided to code a .NET 3.5 application (free, of course) that does the job for me and also manages to be fully extensible through the use of a text-based hack database.

If you’re interested in downloading it, give it a go here. Read more if you’re interested in some of the example hacks, as well as the database specification.

The app itself has many, many hacks, but here are some of them just to get your attention:

• StartUpDelay (Speeds up startup)
• MenuShowDelay (Faster start menu)
• WaitToKillAppTimeout, HungAppTimeout (Speeds up shutdown)
• SuperFetch
• UDMA66 Mode
• Large system cache
• …and many more

The format, per se, is the following:

Name
Description
Root value (Depends on type of hack: Registry, Command or Profile)
Argument
Value
; (End of entry)

Here’s an example of 3 different entries in the regs.dat file, with comments in square brackets:

Registry entry:

Registry: Modify StartUpDelay [Name]
It just removes the unnecessary wait time after a system startup before Indexing Service. (40000ms) [Description]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlContentIndex [In the case of a registry entry, the full tree]
StartupDelay [Registry key]
40000 [Registry value. If it's numerical, it's a DWORD - else, it'll get written as a String]
;

Command entry:

Services: Disable alerter service [Name]
‘Nuff said. [Description]
Command [Root value, leave as "Command" for command]
sc.exe [Actual command]
config “alerter” start= disabled [Parameters]
;

Profile entry: (aka, .ini files)

Profile: Set LocalLoadHigh [Name]
Speeds up Windows XP boot times. Load all info needed for your programs into upper memory by default, and it will free up the maximum amount of conventional memory possible. (the first 640K) [Description]
Profilesystem.ini386Enh [In the case of a Profile, it has to be like this: Profile<.ini file [in Windows dir]><section>]
LocalLoadHigh [Argument]
1 [Value]
;

If you add anything to the regs.dat file, please post it as a comment so everyone can benefit. Thanks, and enjoy!

iBrainer is now ready for public use. Feel free to give it a try, either on download.com or iBrainer.net

In a nutshell: fix your MP3 collection in a snap. No more Unknown Artist or fixing tags yourself.

I might be biased, but I use it all the time — and I’m loving it!

After several hours of smashing my head against the wall and venting on GTalk w/ scottp, I finally got it to work:

Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ProcessObj.StandardOutput.CurrentEncoding.GetBytes(“yadda yadda”));

And now it all works. Yay! iBrainz is almost finished…

I stumbled upon Scott Peterson’s awesome MusicBrainz-Sharp library and I’ve been talking to him re: some issues it has, but so far it’s been great help. Kudos to you, Scott!

Suggestions,  comments, etc? Feel free to leave a comment!

(And here I thought MBTagger/Picard were slow… and it’s MusicBrainz.Org forcing you to do 1 query per second. Is it time to implement a separate server cache? Hrm… Maybe.)

So far I’ve already coded the NMEA/GPS integration. Took me about 30m to write it up; should be fun. IMO the hardest part will be getting the maps to work. Any takers on reverse engineering Destinator/TomTom/etc formats?

Once it’s finished, it should work on all .NET enabled platforms – standard and/or Mono-based. I’ll be supporting Windows Mobile as the standard mobile platform for development.

Drop me a line.

Anyway… this code snippet should help. I know this is available through Google, but I wanted to have it here for the hell of it.

Once you have added a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll (Solution Explorer -> Add Reference -> .NET -> Microsoft.VisualBasic), you can just call it this way:

String result = Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction.InputBox(Prompt, Title, Default, XPos, YPos);

It sure comes in handy when you don’t want to create a whole new form just for user interaction…