Author: Ben Garney

See https://bengarney.com/ and @bengarney for details.

Debugging Tamarin

I’m getting my feet wet in Tamarin, the open-source ActionScript 3 runtime from Adobe – same code that’s in Flash 9. It’s cool tech, and I’m ecstatic that they had the cajones to bring it out into the world – where it’ll definitely make the world a better place.

This gets kind of technical so I’ve hidden most of it behind the jump.

Continue reading “Debugging Tamarin”

SuperMate

So I own this Griffin PowerMate, which is essentially a USB knob with a light under it. It’s pretty cool – solid construction, simple operation. But the software it comes with is a little limited, and it’s not been updated in a while. All I want, says I to myself, is to make iTunes pause when I push the knob.

Their software can’t do that, so I set out to fix the problem. It turns out that the PowerMate is a standard USB HID device, which are ridiculously easy to interface with (<15kb of C++ code for a nice self-contained class with comments). After maybe seven or eight hours of hacking, I now have a small tray app that I call “SuperMate.”

SuperMate v1.00

  • PowerMate light functions as a disk activity light.
  • Left/right turn advances to previous/next track in iTunes.
  • Pushing the PowerMate pauses/unpauses iTunes.
  • Takes up minimal system resources – around 5mb of RAM and almost zero CPU.
  • Minimizes to system tray.
  • Deals cleanly with plugging/unplugging the PowerMate, as well as failing gracefully if iTunes isn’t loaded.
  • This program is public domain, and source is included.
  • Supports XP/2000, and probably Vista, too.

You can download Supermate 1.00 here.

Any comments, bugfixes, enhancements are welcome. You can also donate a few bucks if you find it useful:

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