News

Issues 49 and 50 added to 8BS Online Conversion

I’ve finally made another update to the 8-Bit Software Magazine Online Conversion, after a gap of nearly 5 years! Oops, where does the time go?

This time around, I’ve added Issue 49 (disc 1, disc 2) and Issue 50 (disc 1, disc 2), as well as taking advantage of browser improvements in recent years to make all of the Mode 7 pages quicker and less buggy and add the option of running each issue in a BBC Emulator (if you have a recent enough browser).

New Article: Cross-compiling Dropbear and rsync for Android

I’ve just added a about how to cross-compile Dropbear and rsync for Android which was prompted by Android 5.0 refusing to run my existing binaries as they weren’t position independent executables. Read it here.

New Release: Radio Downloader 0.30

This release adds three main new features:

• Sorting in the Subscriptions list (contributed by Jon Egerton).
• Sorting in the Favourites list (contributed by Isabelle Riverain)
• An RSS server so that other applications or devices can consume downloaded content (proof of concept by Nick Sharples).

There are also a number of bug fixes and internal improvements - notably, there is a now a check at start-up to see if the application database has become corrupt and complex HTML in podcast descriptions is converted into more readable text.

For full details and to download this release, see the Radio Downloader page.

Dolby Digital over HDMI for OpenELEC on Nvidia ION

I’ve been using OpenELEC on my living room PC recently as it is very fast booting and lightweight compared to XBMCBuntu and easy to configure and use.  However, a small fix is still required to get Dolby Digital audio to work over HDMI, so I have updated my article to include this.

Now Powered by Jekyll

I’ve just switched this site from running on my own PHP scripts to being generated by the excellent Jekyll. I’ve previously tried WordPress and Drupal but found them to be quite ‘heavy’ and involve a lot of setting up to fit this site but Jekyll is lightweight and suits me very well.

As a consequence of the update, I may have inadvertently broken a few things - please let me know if you notice anything…

The Return of Radio Downloader

I’ve just released version 0.28 of Radio Downloader. Unfortunately, the main change in this release is the removal of the BBC Provider but there are also a couple of small bug fixes.

I have also taken the opportunity to move the source code from a Subversion repository on my desktop to a git repository on GitHub to make it easier to contribute. My plan is to also move the bugs from Bugzilla to use the GitHub issue tracker (if feasable), so please bear with me while I make these changes.

Radio Downloader and BBC Radio

Following a request from the BBC, I have removed the Radio Downloader source and installers. They will return shortly minus the BBC Radio Provider plugin (e.g. the ability to download BBC Radio programmes).

My apologies for the disappointment that this will cause but I hope that you will understand. I believe that the BBC is planning to offer downloads of radio programmes from 2014.

On a personal note, I would like to thank everyone for their words of encouragement and support over the years and for putting up with my sporadic updates. I had hoped to do more to Radio Downloader over the last six months but unfortunately I have not been well and life seems to have been rather hectic…

Radio Downloader 0.26.2

I have just released version 0.26.2 of Radio Downloader. This minor update fixes the layout of the BBC Radio Find Programme A-Z pages as well as a small number of other common crashes and reported issues with the previous version.

For full details of the changes in this release, please see the changelog.

Radio Downloader and Norton Antivirus

I’ve had a few reports since releasing version 0.26 of Radio Downloader of it being removed from people’s machines by Norton Antivirus due to it having a ‘low reputation score’. I’d like to take the opportunity to reassure you that Radio Downloader is still perfectly safe. The installer and binaries are signed with my personal code signing certificate to prove that they haven’t been tampered with, and the full source code is of course also available to download to prove that it doesn’t contain any nasties!

Unfortunately the way to get Radio Downloader whitelisted by Symantec (the author of Norton Antivirus) appears to be for me to fill out rather a large form on their website and then wait several weeks for it to be approved. As I’d rather spend my limited free time improving and supporting Radio Downloader instead of doing Symantec’s job for them, I’ve decided not to do this for the moment.

If you are being affected by this issue, I’d recommend uninstalling Norton Antivirus from your machine and replacing it with the free and excellent Microsoft Security Essentials, which I have been using for years and would recommend most highly.

Radio Downloader 0.26

I am pleased to announce the release of version 0.26 of Radio Downloader. This includes a fix for the minor layout issues with the Find Programme pages for BBC Radio programmes, as well as other bug fixes and new features.

This release includes the following major enhancements: </p><ul>