It’s done, there is no way back. Yesterday I submitted keySharky for review in Add-ons for Firefox, and after less then hour it was approved! Whoot?! That was fastest approval yet and it warmed my heart.

So why I’m telling these news to you now? Well, I could find place where put Prism version on. But luckily my fast hands build landing page for keySharky that’s hosted on same VPS as this blog and everything is back to normal.

So, you might ask what has been changed?

• New icon - bling, bling!
• Now you can disable unwanted keyboard shortcuts that keySharky creates
• More methods inside gsAPI, so more fun
• And like always, some minor bug fixes

Ok, time to rewind what happened. First of all, needed to move to another VPS provider, because previous was so good that it just went down without a sound. Luckily had backups laying around.

Second. My previous “work machine” Aspire One 150 (yes, three years I worked on that with external monitor plugged in) was slowly dying, to fix that I bought new one - Acer eMachine E527. And with this upgrade Linux Mint 9 is just flying! Old Aspire One now has a new life with Hackintosh on board, thanks to tools from NetbookInstaller.

Third. keySharky is getting support for Firefox 4, but it’s not yet stable. Without it, I’m trying to add something new to keySharky, but don’t know what will make into this release:

• Option to fully disable unneeded keyboard shortcuts?
• More info from gsAPI?
• Something else?

When I finished my last Arduino based project, I found hard to show-off it to my friends (without using a YouTube). Even after trying to pack it up, it still was way to big for pocket and carrying around was pain in ass. So I sad to myself “Idiot, next time build something more pocket friendly and portable!”. And it looks like future me was listening to that.

So what do you think? I definitely like it :) For casing I used nice and shiny (maybe not so much) iPod selling case (or how it’s called), that fits in pockets less or more. Shield is attached to Arduino using pins found on FDD. It’s powered by two 3V CR2032 batteries that are housed in holders for motherboards BIOS batteries. Lastly it has SHARLIGHT CMF-0502200 F seven-segment display (again, taken from old computers ”Turbo display”) who is controlled by two 74HC595 shift registers.

On software side, it’s running reaction game where you need to press button when light comes up on display, as fast as you can. And pretty neat menu system controllable with two buttons.

I have made set of pictures on Flickr too :)

Well, after buying 74HC595 shift register, you are left with only one option - build a LED matrix. And that’s what I have done in these hot days. To spice things up I added push button with whom you can control integrated LED matrix animations (algorithms? sprites?).

What can I say - it already was blast to solder my first stripboard, but 4x4 LED grid made it even more fun and frustrating (stuffs doesn’t work always :)

Thanks to ppannuto, new version of GSDesktop Helper for linux comes with feature that allows you to disable unwanted keyboard shortcuts. Its great for those you doesn’t like to clutter their keyboard shortcuts with unwanted stuff.

If you want to install GSDesktop Helper in Ubuntu/Debian, you can use already packed package:

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cd ~
wget http://github.com/downloads/intarstudents/GSDesktop-Helper/gsd-helper-0.4.2_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i gsd-helper-0.4.2_all.deb

Or if your distributive doesn’t support Debian packages, you can always run it directly from command line (but before this you may be needed mess with dependencies):

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cd ~
git clone http://github.com/intarstudents/GSDesktop-Helper.git
cd GSDesktop-Helper/
./helper.py

That’s it for this shark week, keep swimming with Grooveshark and everything will be alright :)

Tim Andrew has wrote neat blog post about ”How to connect Apple Remote with Grooveshark”. For that you will need Remote Buddy and keySharky. It’s pretty neat, I would say. Sadly, can’t test it out, but go check it out :)

P.S. If you too have build something with keySharky, definitely ping me.

Last day or so, I have been playing with Ethernet shield and IR receiver for my Arduino. And what else could come to mind when I hear theses two together? Of course - controlling Grooveshark with old TV’ish remote.

So, how its working, you might ask? Well, will try to answer that briefly. TV remote sends signal to IR receiver, who then passes it to Arduino for decoding. Arduino builds up binary code from signal and then converts it to integer (key code). Knowing what button was pressed, it then opens socket to keySharky API server and sends method who needs execution.

It might not be perfect, but that’s how it rolls :)