Windows Phone Update - Mango ISV Beta Bundle: Cleanup

My HTC HD2 is a trusty phone. It's been around for about 2 years now. Upon release, it was a monster and was one of the first - and even to this day one of only a dozen or so handsets - to support such a massive screen.

One of the reasons it's still popular in certain circles (the hackers/tinkerers/hobbyists) is how well it has supported modification over the years. I have seen it personally run Windows Mobile 6.5 (and many variants therein), Android (again, many versions) and Windows Phone 7 and Mango. I have also seen the interwebs do amazing(ly geeky) things with it too, like putting Meego and Windows 95 on it!

I run WP7 on it though, a Mango RTM version specifically. How excited I still am though to get the 'proper Mango' version, and hopefully before the more legitimate handsets receive it. The smugness one can have, honestly, you'd think I'd just bought an Apple product and was keen to argue about how amazing it is even though no one really cares only to find that I'd really just been trying to convince myself of its worth... woah, where'd that come from? Moving on....

Today I received the indication that a software update was due... oooh, could this be it? Certainly about the right time, no? Zune indicates the update is for "Mango ISV Beta Bundle: Cleanup" which made my heart sink a little. Probably not the release I'm waiting on then, but almost certainly a precursor to the update.

BlackBerry Development - JVM Error 104

During BlackBerry development, there are literally hundreds of hurdles that will get in your way.

One of which I noticed recently was the seemingly random error, which causes the "White Screen of Death" you can see below. This is caused by the dreaded JVM Error 104, which is a sort of catch-all something-went-wrong-and-you-didn't-handle-it kind of problem.

Playstation 1 Emulator on Android Tablet

Recently I got my tablet (Motorola Xoom) playing old Playstation 1 games, using my PS3 controller as an input device. Please do not underestimate how happy I was to see Final Fantasy VII up and running!

In this post, I'll detail the steps needed to get an emulator installed, how to download the games and how to convert the games into a suitable format and what you'll need to use your PS3 controller as input device should you desire such a thing. The emulator has a small cost (currently it is £2.61 or $4.10)

Be warned, it isn't all that straight forward so a certain amount of geekery is recommended! If you have any problems, just ask in the comments section.

Also, be warned, emulators and the games you play on emulators (called ROMs) can be a bit of a grey area, legally speaking. My best understanding is that you have the best shot at staying legal if you own the console you are emulating and own the games that are being emulated. I'm no lawyer by any means, so seek your own legal advice and conscience before diving straight in.

BlackBerry - Eclipse Error - Invalid Regex in BlackBerry_App_Descriptor.xml

If you ever see this error from Eclipse whilst doing BlackBerry development,

InvalidRegex: Pattern value '([a-zA-Z_]{1,63}[\s-a-zA-Z_0-9.]{0,63}[;]?)*' is not a valid regular expression


you should of course follow the hint in the error and check that none of your values in your BlackBerry_App_Descriptor.xml will fail the regex.

However, there is a very strange case whereby you will see this error regardless of your values. In fact, creating a new project straight from Eclipse will still show the error.

Turns out this could be caused by having Java JRE 7 installed on your machine. The BlackBerry plugin doesn't support this yet, Eclipse might be trying to use that.

The fix? You simply have to edit the eclipse.ini that will live in the same directory as your eclipse.exe that you use to start the IDE. Closing Eclipse and making a backup of eclipse.ini before you do this would be a good idea.

Find the line "openFile" and immediately after, add the following:

-vm
C:/Program Files/Java/jre6/bin/javaw.exe [or wherever your jre6 directory might be]

Cross your fingers and restart Eclipse.
Rebuild your projects.

Wow I hate programming for BlackBerry. Is it not dead yet? Seriously any platform that needs a site like this (http://isthesigningserverdown.com/) needs to get itself sorted.