World Wide Sandbox » Beta

DupliFinder Alpha Release

Dean Pearce — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:51:27 +0000

As promised, here is a compiled installer as well as the Visual C# 2008 source code for your enjoyment. A few things to note: I can’t guarantee that it will work on your system, I can’t guarantee that it will work as advertised, and that all crashes have a reason. For developers I can’t guarantee that the source code is readable . Hopefully you’ll see through my poor commenting and naming conventions and see the potential for this code . Anyways, this is by no means a finished product, but I am releasing it to one keep myself on schedule, and two make a duplicate file finding program available for free (finally!). The installer may only be 64-bit (the publish options in Visual Studio are so confusing!) so if that’s the case you will need to compile it yourself. Mature releases will have a 64 and 32-bit build available (with probably a real and better install system).

As usual, please leave feedback relating to functionality or utter destruction in the comments below, and remember it’s alpha software so use at your own risk! It won’t delete random files, but don’t think it won’t actually delete all the files when you select them with the checkbox and choose Erase!

In Development Land Again: DupliFinder, Duplicate Image Removal

Dean Pearce — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 05:13:28 +0000

Interesting enough, the more stressed I become the more I desire to program. And not just random programming, but programming to solve a problem (namely one of me ). What I’ve been working on over the past couple days is a nice Windows utility to work with and manage duplicate files. Right now it works on the head of the file (64KB) or entire file for comparison, but future versions (such as the one I’m working on now) are going to include audio stream matching (to compare audio regardless of the format or compression) and video frame matching along with a host of other options. Here’s a screen shot of it in action:

DupliFinder Duplicate File Finder

As you can see the UI is almost complete, allowing you to select a root folder and you can scan current and sub directories optionally. The only problem with it at the moment is it’s single-threaded, so when it is given a large folder to process it feels as if the program has frozen, but don’t worry it’s crunching away in the background.

The feature I’m adding right now is a preview/compare pane for easy verification that the file is the same, as well as giving the user to option to delete the “duplicate” or “original” in case of file confusion. This will be ready to go for the v1.0 release of the utility.

If anyone is interested, I can package up a preview version that has some quirks and the single-threaded problem. I had looked all over for a program that would allow you to delete duplicate images and other files and it’s ridiculous the amount of money those scam-like software companies try and charge for such simple (but effective) software! Anyways I’m contributing back to the community by releasing this under GPLv2. On top of handling photos (for which I’ve seen some software cost $30US!) it will handle all sorts of stream and data related information.

For any programmers out there reading this, it was programmed using Visual C# 2008 on a Windows 7 development box, so all sorts of shiny Windows 7 features may start peeking through soon .

If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them below, and if you would like to play with the source or the compiled version of this app, just let me know in the comments and I will fire off some more information and a package. That’s all for now!

Solution to Root Locked Rogers HTC Dream!

Dean Pearce — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:46:23 +0000

Huge Update!

Since writing this, the DroidX team has come up with an awesome rooting method sans JTAG. The bonus is it seems to work on all Android phones, not just the DroidX.

You’ll need:

The DroidX Exploit: http://droidx.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1&d=1279820222
A Signed SPL: http://sapphire-port-dream.googlecode.com/files/spl-signed.zip
A Recovery Image: http://rapidshare.com/files/387561074/recovery-RA-dream-v1.7.0R-cyan.img
CyanogenMod (5.0.8 for Android 2.1): http://n0rp.chemlab.org/android/update-cm-5.0.8-DS-signed.zip
An EBI1 Signed Radiohttp://briancrook.ca/android/cm-ports/bc-5.0.8-ebi1-signed.zip
The Google Applications: http://www.mediafire.com/?marqwt53ii0
Finally, the Android SDK: http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r06-windows.zip

A great guide can be found at http://androidheadlines.com/2010/07/guide-on-how-to-root-you-htc-dream-to-2-1.html for the steps to follow, or hop on over to the XDA Developers thread for up to the minute information and help.

My personal choice is the Android 2.1 ROM as it runs pretty smooth and you get all the goodies that most other phones still crave If you’re adventurous the 6.0.0RC1 ROM is out for Android 2.2 but when I installed the image it had quite a few issues still with performance. You can install any custom ROM once you’ve rooted the phone and a guide on how to do that is found at The CyanogenMod Wiki. Happy hacking!

Kept here for those who are curious enough
There is finally hope at last for all those people that were hurt by Rogers Wireless a month ago. Rogers released a new firmware for the HTC Dream for “911 emergency services” problems. It wasn’t a major problem with the phone and more a reason to stop people from rooting their phones on their network. We won’t get into that and their shady tactics for locking customers in and their horrible customer service, but we will mention that there is hope for all those locked phones!

A new possible workaround has come out that involves connecting to the phone via JTAG to access the debugger of the ARM firmware loader to load a different ROM than what has been deemed the “Perfect SPL” by modders. This new workaround will allow for a change in the memory address used for loading code so that the user can flash in their own Radio, SPL and ultimately Android image. Since this is a hardware hack, it will be nearly impossible for Rogers to make a software fix for this, and will allow people with bricked HTC Dreams and Magics to be able to revive their phones better than ever. A great job to everyone who was working on the team to find a software or hardware hole, and I’m glad that someone did at least (while decompiling I had found nothing software wise, I was getting quite worried).

For those who are looking for a link, check out:

for more info on how the JTAG is constructed and what software is needed. Please be careful though! This is still very early in the review and development stage and there are many thing that are left to be uncovered. Proceed at your own risk, but if you’re phone is already bricked, you have nothing to lose! So enjoy your now FREE Android phone, as was the original spirit of the device before Rogers got their hands on it! If you find anything new out or any mistakes please let me know, and if you have a success story please share it with everyone!

Windows 7 (A Quick Look)

Dean Pearce — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:32:14 +0000

So early last week I managed to get into the Windows 7 public beta (unfortunately, they didn’t open it for my level of MSDN/TechNet subscription) and I decided to give it a shot. And thus far, it is like every other beta product I have tried from Microsoft: love at first run. Right from the start, the operating system felt smooth and responsive, managed to take care of all my driver requirements (except for my webcam, cheap Chinese brand, low driver support). Apart from the hundreds of technical improvements (no more Windows 3.0 fonts dialog, yay!) they really brought some powerful new software design concepts to the table, their biggest being the “superbar” (their name, not mine) that replaced the aging legacy taskbar. It truely feels like what Windows should have been for years.

Anyways, I will be doing a more in depth review of Windows 7 when I get to finish playing with all the features, and start to push through the pile of assignments growing on my desk. So, hopefully sometime next week I will have my full website back in the swing of things, and be back open for business in all areas. I did re-add some of the links to the repository and forum for those of you who are just itching to get your hands on the build of the game that I did a month and a half ago (haha, I kid but I will release a newer build soon, this one including audio, fast rendering and a new tileset. Exciting!). And as usual, I encourage people to talk in the comments or on the forum!