tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-194306642026-01-30T00:37:59.104+00:00Home to Silent Software. Exclusive free software, code, advice and reviews.Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.comBlogger143125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-49099770020781202432019-01-01T16:57:00.002+00:002019-01-04T23:12:39.411+00:00

Release Overview: This maintenance release fixes video frame dropping (thanks to David at arbitraryfiles.com for finding it) and corrects source code copyrights. UPDATE 4/1/2019: Recent 2.0.2 builds did not have the build version correctly displayed in the UI - this has been fixed but otherwise functionality remains identical. What is Image to ZX Spectrum? Image to ZX Spec(trum) is a

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-81524260822961295882017-04-17T18:02:00.000+00:002017-04-17T18:02:46.526+00:00

What's new? As mentioned in my last post this project is in maintenance stage for me (or as little work as I can get away with) so I can concentrate on other things. However... it's having a rebirth as a new project on Github! I'm a bit tentative about Github as previously I had exclusive distribution of the source via my blog but now it's easy for anybody to fork and improve. This is a double

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-8007871752614716522017-01-28T16:49:00.000+00:002017-01-29T19:58:56.855+00:00

I recently needed to open my Reebok i-Run treadmill thanks to my toddler son "posting" a DVD into the mechanism, so whilst I was inside it I also decided to give it a quick check and clean. Information on opening this treadmill is almost non existent so I've documented it here - hope you find it useful. If it saves you time and money please consider buying me a coffee. DISCLAIMER I accept no

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-3021844950805551872017-01-05T12:24:00.000+00:002017-01-30T09:53:40.344+00:00

As an OO programmer one of the things you're meant to practise is good OO design, and the SOLID principles embody that. If you've read the SOLID wikipedia article it's a little long winded, so here's the SOLID principles simplified and written as negative reinforcement to help curb bad practices! S - Single Responsibility Principle Don't have classes do many things - a class should have a

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-37906173125591635052016-12-24T17:18:00.001+00:002016-12-30T15:35:44.171+00:00

Santa comes early with an Image To ZX Spec 2.0.0 release! This will be the last major revision of Image To ZX Spec as I'm moving on to other projects. The two major features of this release are high speed native video decoding (requiring separate platform builds) and some critical bug fixes for MacOS, the full changelog is below. Downloads: MacOS:imagetozxspec-macos-2.0.0.zip (sha1:

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-53711839036160195352016-12-15T12:43:00.000+00:002016-12-15T15:27:40.359+00:00

Over the last few years my professional and home life has meant this blog dropped off to a mere trickle, as did the audience. Today this changes - the site has a new design, the downloads, most of which are out of date have gone and the site will be getting back to it's roots of random new tech product rants, tech hacks and custom free software and code. Image to ZX Spec, an old app, will

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-91967154235272198842014-06-01T13:49:00.000+00:002015-01-17T01:58:51.073+00:00

Image To ZX Spec 1.4 has now been released. For a full description read more here Version 1.4: Huge improvements to GigaScreen (102 colour) image quality. SCR Gigascreen export image order by Hue/Saturation/Brightness. Added new GigaScreen BASIC ZX Spectrum image loader. Usability improvements and toolbar added to UI. Image quality improvements for prefer detail setting. Accuracy and speed

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-54998175290902385162013-08-04T18:03:00.001+00:002013-08-04T18:04:11.916+00:00

Image To ZX Spec 1.3.4 has now been released. For a full description read more here Changes (since 1.3.4): Version 1.3.4 Updated for Java 7. Added VLC compatible video importing option. Added simultaneous video decode/spectrum encode. Added new prefer detail setting improving output. Added new Sierra error diffusion option. Added automatic preference saving. Added dynamic memory allocation

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-83970600468282892472012-10-30T21:55:00.000+00:002012-11-22T13:42:46.326+00:00

Image To ZX Spec 1.3.3_02 has now been released. For a full description read more here Changes (since 1.3.3_01): Version 1.3.3_02 Fixed an image resize bug which was forcing output to 256x192. Fixed preview image flicker and preview image input-output synchronisation. Removed two video queue bottlenecks (improves video conversion speed). Removed all video pre-buffering (real time loading

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-15853438693844875542012-08-09T22:51:00.001+00:002012-11-22T13:38:31.235+00:00

Version 1.3.3_01 of Image To ZX Spec is now freely available! Image to ZX Spec is written in Java and will work on Windows, Linux (tested on Ubuntu) or any Java 6 capable operating system. Full colour conversion Image To ZX Spec is an image and video converter that can produce "Spectrumized" retro art images of any size and convert real work to use on the ZX Spectrum, an emulator as a

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-33369663535418721252012-07-29T16:10:00.003+00:002012-07-29T16:10:37.077+00:00

The site hosting is back, all downloads should be working.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-66074308345642913002012-07-28T16:47:00.005+00:002012-07-28T16:47:59.044+00:00

It seems like my hosting is offline, I don't know how long this will be but if it doesn't come back up sadly my most recent backup doesn't contain some of the most recent builds or source of software and this may be permanently lost. Apologies for the inconvenience - if you were after apps like Aerofoil please check the Softpedia mirror which are mentioned on the blog posts.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-42876336904036067002012-01-17T22:06:00.001+00:002012-01-17T22:36:46.842+00:00

Version 1.3.1 of Image To ZX Spec (more details) has now been released and is freely available. Image to ZX Spec is written in Java and will work on Windows, Linux (tested on Ubuntu) or any Java 6 capable operating system. Version 1.3.1- Added Anim Gif export feature. - Updated licence/about information.Downloads:Image to ZX Spec 1.3.1 Standalone (direct download, just unzip and double click

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-22988384634274732142011-08-14T21:16:00.010+00:002011-08-15T08:24:01.129+00:00

The Reebok i-Run treadmill manual is poor and doesn't explain how to change the distance metric (from KPH to MPH or vice versa) and I know it's really annoying when you accidentally switch the modes during usage but can't work out how it was done (or if it was a software bug in the console). There appears to be many versions of this treadmill (and I think it's now named the Reebok Pure), at

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-67216823035483970922011-07-19T22:40:00.009+00:002011-07-20T00:17:31.709+00:00

I had a small amount of free time recently and rather than program I decided to hook up my old Speccy to an Amstrad CPC monitor to get an improved picture of scart quality. The old Amstrad CPC CTM 644 monitors are very cheap at car boot sales these days (if you can find them) but brilliant for retro gaming as Amigas and other computers can be connected to them. Here's a short how to on how I made

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-59250696587897642862011-06-18T21:57:00.008+00:002012-04-24T18:33:33.457+00:00

Update: Version 1.3.1 is now available. Version 1.3.0_01 of Image To ZX Spec (more details) has now been released and is freely available. Image to ZX Spec is written in Java and will work on Windows, Linux (tested on Ubuntu) or any Java 6 capable operating system.Changes:Version 1.3.0_01- Added support for drag and drop on Ubuntu.- Minor Ubuntu window size issue fixed. - Fixed bad line

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-59558015033319660592011-03-17T12:22:00.004+00:002011-06-18T21:41:05.529+00:00

Brightened my day to know I'm not the only one who suffers public transport.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-36655658521696200012011-03-03T22:12:00.036+00:002012-04-24T18:35:57.778+00:00

Update: Version 1.3.1 is now available here. Version 1.3.0(_01) of this application has now been released and is freely available.Image To ZX Spec 1.3.0 is a multi core capable image and video converter that can produce vintage computer art images (jpeg/png) of any size and can even convert work to a real ZX Spectrum (or an emulator) as a slideshow or video. This is useful to create retro 8bit

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-63444986577181477362010-12-05T00:14:00.006+00:002011-01-09T23:15:11.011+00:00

I was hitting a wall of bugs with my original version of the Baps app due to having to break requests in Bluetooth messages so I decided to re-write using streams (which is how data travels over regular network connections), which seemed like a really good idea but thanks to this 512 byte Nokia limitation/bug in JavaME it's going to take a bit longer to work around.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-37683042503778829092010-11-29T08:18:00.007+00:002010-11-29T14:37:38.641+00:00

Following on from this post I'm now adding new longer status updates as new posts.The design of Baps has meant that the current implementation is mostly transparent and does not know about any of the underlying data being sent, contrasted with Hiisi which re-interpreted each http request. The benefit to my approach this is that there is less likely to be an error on my part in resending any type

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-18406878740553065172010-11-12T12:55:00.022+00:002011-03-17T09:09:13.997+00:00

PROGRESS UPDATE 4 17/03/11:Work has stopped until I have some significantly free time. HTTP errors and traffic timeouts are causing the main problems and will require a lot more than a few hours of an evening which my other projects take, especially to make it easy for Joe User to install and configure. This is the next project on my todo list but I have a lot of other pressing things I need to

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-13302380040856731252010-10-10T09:02:00.002+00:002010-10-10T09:22:57.435+00:00

The blog has been a bit stagnant in recent weeks (I've added a new Mozilla Firefox Persona however!) simply because I've not had the time to do much programming or reviewing. Yeah I know the secret to a successful blog is to update update update but sometimes we all need a holiday.So what's the plan? Well my work for the Christmas run is still to complete Vampire Castle (it's a cursed project

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-89289740781114292832010-09-14T10:31:00.014+00:002010-09-14T23:33:52.973+00:00

PalPal's new Novermber 1st policy updates includes marketing policy changes that are very difficult to opt out of.The full back plot is below but in summary to opt out of Paypal marketing you need to visit the link below and use your Ebay account. Note this probably only works if you are in the UK and I've found no way of doing it with my Paypal account - please comment below if you do. For why

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-43481524035068590762010-07-31T12:37:00.006+00:002010-07-31T12:49:30.160+00:00

I've been working this weekend on Vampire Castle so I've updated the preview version available to download.Changes:- Money now needed before play starts (press R button to add cash).- Money is deducted.- Fruit machines can now be completely wiped from memory to load another (but still only one machine available) - I love my fruit machine model component propagation :).- A couple of wild pointers

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19430664.post-3039399412540099502010-07-10T18:29:00.012+00:002010-09-06T08:09:31.595+00:00

UPDATE: I wrote this application as a workaround. Three it seems are changing Skype on other phones on the Three network.This is part 3, part 2 and part 1Edited to remove account specific info.I followed their instructions and it downloaded the "minimise background" version and lo and behold it still doesn't work. I'll now going to follow their official complaints procedure and if that doesn't

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10064894451633576098noreply@blogger.com3