Earthquake alert now at Google code

Earthquake alert has now its own home at code.google.com. You can find there version 0.4 download and source code.

This version sports a notification area icon (if you have GTK and pyGTK), which shows you information about the last event and a list of the previous events in the RSS feed.

In the next versions I hope to add a configuration window, and screenlet support.

Keyboard shortcuts for idjc

I have used Internet DJ Console (idjc) quite a few times, for podcasts or live shows. Although it is a great piece of software, it is missing something that everybody that has used a real sound console is used to. Buttons, i.e keyboard shortcuts! There are some shortcuts implemented when you give focus to the player windows, but it is awkward and difficult when you play music live, or you try to record a podcast.
I have created a patch for the software in order to handle keyboard shortcuts. Currently you can only change the shortcuts by editing the text file, but I will soon create a GUI that enables you to change the shortcuts easily.
In order to use the patch, you have to download and compile the latest version of idjc (currently 0.7.8a). You can find compilation instructions at the download page of idjc. Here are the steps one by one:

1. Download the source code of idjc from Sourceforge.


2. Untar the source code


3. Compile and install


4. Download the keyboard shortcuts patch from my website.


5. Extract the file and run the script called patchidjc

After these steps you should be able to use keyboard shortcuts in idjc!

The code is licensed under the GNU/GPL version 3. If you have any suggestions let me know!

Earthquake alert script

I was always interested in earthquakes and weather phenomena. I guess the earthquakes because I come from Greece, a country that has earthquakes very frequently. I was constantly looking for an earthquake alert script in Linux, but I haven't found something interesting. I have tried eQuake for Firefox, but I was not impressed, mostly because I don't want to rely on the browser to get an alert.
I made a small script using Python that reads an RSS feed from the Automatic GEOFON Global Seismic Monitor. You can customize the information you want to get in your feed, by setting some parameters like longitude and latitude, as shown in the example. The values for these parameters are stored in a text file that you can change easily.
The script is released under GNU/GPL 2.0 or later, so feel free to use, change and distribute. If you have any good ideas on making the script more user friendly let me know. In my todo list I have the creation of a GUI to change the values of the configuration file, and a notification area icon to notify about new events.
You can download the script from my homepage.

Edit (22/07/08): You can now find downloads and source code for earthquakeAlert at google code.