I found a plugin for LCD Smartie for people who want to show TS data on their display. Unfortunately the original plugin couldn’t show one speaker for each line – which looked the coolest in my opinion. So I started coding in the plugin and after 30 minutes I got a modified version ready to go 🙂
Download the the binary version of the dll using the download menu or grab it on the next page.
Continue to the main text for instructions, source code and downloads.
Yes, you read it coming from me – the idiot who practically worshipped Java because of its easy structures and I used to be convinced that its almost up for every task… “ALMOST”….
I found a tool called PalmOrb which allows me to use my PDA – Palm Tungsten T3 – as a matrix display for my computer while its in the cradle. Useless but cool – non?
Anyway, the guy maintining this piece of brilliance is dropping the project because he has so many real lcd’s hooked up he no longer needs to (ab)use a pda for the task.
Ofcourse this code is written in C and I have more experience with Java at this point. So I decided to try to do this in Java.
Ooohhh I just came up with yet another extension for this site: a list of my publications.
You see, I work freelance for a dutch computer magazine called PC-Active. Although the list of publications isn’t world shocking yet I thought it might be nice to record it anyway – perhaps even re-release my writings online (after a while offcourse – I can imagine my boss getting a tad pissed off when I publish in his magazine as well as online).
Ahh well – lets see if I can set this up 
So far I got an alpha version of the book search working. Instead of writing my own version of the library thats already available I decided to start out with a popup window which is run by my (external) parsing system.
So far I managed to found one more addition to Mambo: a module to keep track of all the books I own. Although this thing exists its still under heavy development but so far there seems to be no support for Dutch books (nor any intention of adding it).
So I decided to see if I couldn’t come up with a way to create my own book gallery. It seems the Mambo API is forthcoming enough to plug anything in without trouble (haven’t found db access yet but that shouldn’t be too hard).
The next big problem is the source for book information. I’m not parsing Amazon yet because the other parser had that one covered, rather I decided to parse www.bol.com. This site offers books in lotsa languages, including Dutch and English and if I’m not mistaken I can flip the parser to another language by changing 2 parameters so I instantly have at least 2 languages covered. Next on my list are www.play.com and finally www.amazon.com. That should provide enough coverage for pretty much every book I own.
I’m calling it a night after writing the english bol.com parser, after fighting with regular expressions and the overwhelming lack of documentation for the ereg function (the lads at php should learn that including some debug options would be really really nice for something more than parsing a freaking date) I threw in the towel and resorted to the down and dirty parsing by looking for HTML tags and splitting the whole result page that way. Works like a charm but its really dirty as adding one tag or moving one kills the script.
Ah well, this is work in progress anyway 🙂
For the impatient visitor: Click here – please remember that this is a draft, nothing close to a working concept…
Its official – the new lair is online and viewable by the public!
Use the guestbook to tell me what you think or use the contact form to drop me a note.
Well, time for more alcohol and some deserved R&R 🙂
After hours of fiddling with settings and some basic skin changes I’m confident enough to make the switch between Etomite and Mambo. WIthin a few minutes I’ll flip the switch and this baby will be put public.
Here goes nothing….
After 4 hours of fiddling tweaking and adding modules I’m almost done with the basic setup. Now I need to think about some skinning issues and add a bit more content.
On a side note I just realized it would be really handy to be able to add blogs from one of my internal systems – would kinda speed up the blogging so I might actually post more. Ah well, we’ll see 🙂
Welcome to my new site. Once more a switch from CMS.
The last attempt for a decent front page was Etomite. However a fine program with lots of options and easy to maintain this CMS appears to have died. The creators ran into trouble and made a final release before disbanding the project.
The site seems to have gone offline but I’ve been told this is just temporary while they switch hosts to provide at least access to forums and docs for old users.
I received a few emails from people who wandered onto this site (no clue how they got here or what they were looking for) but the question was the same: what is your site about?
To keep it simple: nothing in particular.
Now that may seem like a useless answer but its accurate, at least at the moment. I run my own web server and somehow people seem to visit the root to see whats on here. I had only an empty home page to have an index but the hits kept coming and I wondered why.
Then I discovered that some people used the url from the gallery that I was running for personal use to find out what was on here. That gave me the idea to put a page at the root so visitors would have at least something to look at.
After a first attempt to build my own CMS I gave up when I found out how complex this could be and in the light of hundreds of out-of-the-box solutions I started out with phpNuke. For some reason I got hacked twice in 3 weeks and after I found out the database was flooded with racist slogans and nazi propaganda I gave up on phpNuke (yes I followed the manual to the letter so I don’t know what went wrong but I was pissed like hell and just got rid of it all).
Next was Etomite as I explained in one of the first news postings. Although a nice CMS, its hard to skin and the project died a few months ago from this writing date.
Finally I settled for Mambo, the current CMS. It looks nice, its high customizable and although having a steep learning curve I’m giving it a go with all my good ideas in mind. I’m still planning on adding useful content and Mambo can be altered to provide support for reviews, programming examples, articles – you name it.
So far I have nothing ready yet but in time it will be added 🙂