Palm

Chinese database for Palm OS flashcard program

Laurent Bugnion — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 07:55:00 GMT

At long last, I released a new version of my chinese database for the flashcard program for Palm OS Lexi. The new DB has a lot of new entries, and has also been cleaned up (double entries mostly removed, error corrections, etc...)

Extract from the "readme" file:

"This database is for the excellent "flash cards" application Lexi. It contains over 4200 chinese words and expressions, and can be used to learn Pin Yin as well as Han Zi (chinese signs)."

One week later...

Laurent Bugnion — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 07:47:00 GMT

This week has been quite unusual for me. I was supposed to start work again on wednesday after my holidays, but I caught a fever, so I had to stay home until friday. As additionally my kids were spending one week holidays with my parents, and my wife started her new job, I found myself alone home. Well, after a while it got a bit boring, though I did some work on various private projects I have.

One thing I did is order a Piel Frama leather case for my Palm LifeDrive (tan color), and I am really happy with it. First of all, the service is excellent (I ordered on monday and I got the case on tuesday with UPS). The price is really reasonable, and the case is really the best I ever owned for a PDA. The tan color is a bit unusual for me, but I really felt like having something special, and I am really happy with it. The case's finition is simply perfect. I couldn't be happier with the case.

I also worked on my chinese database for Lexi for Palm OS. I should be able to make a release soon, with lots of new words and a much cleaner version.

Sticking to my wish to read more, I read a lot during holidays and also this past week. It's really great to read again, and I hope I will be able to keep that going. We'll see. More about the last books I read here.

Because yes, I also started a new blog. I will write there more personal, less technical things about what's going on in my life. It'll be interesting to see if I can keep posting as I want, since all my previous attempts to keep a journal failed...

QuickNews and AvantGo

Laurent Bugnion — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 08:43:00 GMT

I spent yesterday's evening working on the other project occupying me in the moment, which will link QuickNews to AvantGo (two Palm OS programs which one can use to read RSS feeds). How to link them? Well, QuickNews is very good because it's fast, efficient and to the point. However, it doesn't render HTML, it cannot follow links, so sometimes it's just too short. AvantGo, on the other hand, is a HTML compliant reader, can follow links, can be used to browser online or offline (you have to synchronize web pages to the Palm's memory first).

So when I find an article in QuickNews that I like, I export it to a memo. The memo generated bears the entry title, the description, and the link to the full article. Using another program called VSFTP, I can export the memos to the SD-Card and save them as files. Using the same program, I can then save all these files to my web server using FTP.

The rest is easy: Create a web application converting these memos to a single webpage, and then synchronize this page to AvantGo, setting the link depth to 1 (in order to reach the original articles) or even to 2 (in order to reach pages referenced from the original article).

The basics work already, so now I still need to add a few functionalities (archiving files after conversion, deleting single files or all files in archive, etc...) and then I'll be able to use it on a daily basis. I'll post a demo when it's ready.

Because I am always eager to learn, I use the Visual Studio 2005 Website approach (as opposed to the Web Application Model) to create that application, and I am not convinced... I didn't precompile the site, because I wanted to try this by myself, so I really upload the C# files to the server... it's not very usual for me *S* Well, it's true that it's fast and flexible, but a few things bug me... OK more about that another time. Now it's late ;-)