OK so finally I'm back to work on gMote, having discovered that it's a lot cheaper to stay in and geekulate than to explore the tourist places in Beijing (besides I have to save money for beer, pizza and jazz).

First up is the per-application gesture stuff - look out for it soon! I just have to figure out some things and gently massage my brain back into programming mode...

I've just moved from the UK to China to start internship work at a technology company, to improve my Mandarin and experience the culture! This means for the next few weeks I'll be busy finding a place to live and settling in to my job, so the updates will be slower until then...

Thanks =).

I've had time to implement many suggestions, including gestures with the middle mouse button, disabling gesture trails, launching folders, using the Windows key for key combinations associated with gestures etc., but most of my time was spent on the Chinese translation, with help from cool8jay (thanks!). Suggestions from 中人are most welcome, but support can only be provided in English =).

Go get it!

So the next thing I guess is per-application gestures... bear with me!

It's taking a little longer than expected, but this week there will be an update to include a Chinese/中文 translation, bug-fixes (multi-monitor issues, disappearing trail sections) and some new minor features as per requests (turn trail off, launch folder). The update after that will likely include per-application gestures, though that's a little more complicated so cut me some slack...

14th April update: Delphi and Unicode are not friends! But I'm almost finished...

I've had a lot of constructive feedback on gMote, including several feature requests that have made it into version 1.10.

What's new:

You can specify certain programs during whose operation you want gMote to do nothing. Using right-click-and-drag to draw gestures but having problems with a game that uses it for something else? Add it to the list.

You can change the colour used to draw the gesture trail

You can assign key combinations to gestures. For example, maybe you want a gesture to make text Bold - simply select "Key combination" on the actions drop-down list, press the "Ctrl" button in the left-hand grid and type "B". Every time you draw that gesture the program will simulate Ctrl+B.

You can switch off those messages in the bottom-right corner if you find them distracting or are using gMote for something different (you know who you are!)

Thanks to those who spotted the issues with gMote and the XP shutdown process, it's been fixed this morning. Some other improvements have been made, so head over to the gMote page and get it while it's hot...

gMote for Windows!



Use it to control Windows by making mouse gestures. It has built-in actions to control media players, web browsers and other useful things. It's also just really cool to be able to draw a little house on the screen and be taken to my home page.



Ten years of Delphi programming and this is the first online release :).

In other news, the site's almost finished and soon I hope to make some freeware components for Delphi available for general consumption. The music's taken a bit of a back seat, but hey you never know, if a thousand people listen to my stuff on last.fm's full-play radio station thingy I might get a few pennies extra!

Two sites I've been spending a lot of time on recently are both concerned with zen.

One is 101 Zen Stories, which contains a collection of somewhat esoteric tales, many of which are expected to enighten the reader in matters of serenity, generosity and blatant apathy about everyone else's behaviour and existence. Scathing though that sounds, I do recommend it...

The Stone Mind
Hogen, a Chinese Zen teacher, lived alone in a small temple in the country. One day four traveling monks appeared and asked if they might make a fire in his yard to warm themselves.

While they were building the fire, Hogen heard them arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and said: "There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?"

One of the monks replied: "From the Buddhist viewpoint everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind."

"Your head must feel very heavy," observed Hogen, "if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind."

The other is CSS Zen Garden, which provides a different form of enlightenment: the brilliance of style sheets.



This type of seperation of content and layout is excellent practice, and something that I'm striving for...

Head on over to the music page for a bit of subwoofer exercise.