Rob's Blog - May 2005
Contents
Here are Rob's Blog entries for May 2005.
Blog entries for other months can be found in the main blog index.
I've been playing with Jarkko Hietaniemi's port of Perl for Series 60 Symbian devices on my Nokia 7610.
There is a lot of work to be done on it still, but it works, and I can run simple Perl scripts.
The screenshot above show's me running a simple script to list the contents of the Lifeblog directory on my series 7610 phone. Here's the code that was run on the phone to generate the listing.
my $directory = "C:\\system\\Data\\lifeblog\\";
print "$directory\n";
opendir(DIR,$directory);
foreach my $file (readdir(DIR)) {
print "$file\n";
}
closedir(DIR);
sleep(5);
As you can see it's simple stuff. I added the sleep(5) at the end just to allow me to take a screenshot as when the script has been run it prompts you to press any key to exit. In this case, the screenshot key, caused an exit. :-)
It may not look much, but it's bloody exciting stuff for me. The possibility of running decent Perl applications on my phone has me salivating in anticipation of the next release. At present the version out there (0.1.0) doesn't offer any interface into the native Symbian libraries from Perl, but I'm sure that will be changing soon.
It's easy to write simple scripts, as all I had to do for this one was to just drop it into the Perl directory on my memory card (via Nokai PC Suite) and use the PerlApp application supplied in the Symbian distribution.
The Python guys are luckier to have a fuller featured release of their favourite scripting language, but watch out, the Perl Mongers are coming!
Entered: 2005-05-19 00:19:49
Oxford Circus underground station is closed again.
Normally this time of day it's overcrowding, but they had announcements asking everyone to leave by the nearest exit which is unusual.
No emergency services there however.
I wonder what's going on.
Lifeblog Entry - Posted via Lifeblog from a Nokia smart phone
Entered: 2005-05-17 18:33:22
I'm currently at the Emap Performance Awards in Sheffield.
We've had live shows from Tony Christie and Freefaller, with Richard Park introducing the evening.
We managed to win an award for Aloud.com.
Lifeblog Entry - Posted via Lifeblog from a Nokia smart phone
Entered: 2005-05-14 00:51:22
I had a junk call from a company called Upgrade Now who claimed they bought my number from Orange.
They constantly badgered me for contact details both for upgrading my phone and when i asked to be removed from their list.
When i asked to just be removed they just hung up. I can safely say to anyone never ever by from a bunch of cowboys called Upgrade Now who may call you if you are on the Orange Network.
I am signed up to the telephone preference service so Upgrade Now or Orange have no right to contact me like this.
This is just another symptom of the rapidly declining customer service Orange are giving. They disregard both TPS and SMS STOP. I doubt i'll renew my contract with them at this rate.
Lifeblog Entry - Posted via Lifeblog from a Nokia smart phone
Entered: 2005-05-13 14:48:52
I've just received a Star Wars Episode 3 spam SMS message from Orange.
I've previously opted out of marketing messages, so I shouldn't be getting them. However, now all mobile operators should honour the STOP protocol, I decided to send back a STOP message to Orange.
Here's the really annoying thing...
They have sent false message headers in the SMS message so it's impossible to reply to. My Nokia 7610 complains of invalid contactdetails: from_orange
.
It's behaviour like this that gives the mobile industry a bad name. It's worse that it's from a network operator!
Entered: 2005-05-13 10:36:05
Nokia have released a new product called Sensor.
It's a social networking tool that scans the local area via Bluetooth and reports back on other users in the area with Sensor enabled on their phones.
It's very similar to Mobiluck in the way it works, but seems to have taken the concept to the next stage.
I had a similar idea a while back, and even got as far as coding the Bluetooth detection in Java. My idea was to tie into a FOAF file so you could look for friends or see who knew who in the area. The stumbling point was the difficulty in parsing RDF in J2ME. Ideally the parsing would have to be done on a seperate server somewhere, but like I said, it was just an idea that never got taken further.
When you load up Sensor you have a basic menu of options.
I've added a simple profile that can be exchanged with other Sensor users. Here I've taken a photo of Larry the Perl camel to use as the photo other Sensor users see when they check my profile out.
When you have a profile, you can look for other Sensor users.
Of course, there aren't any other Sensor users here at present so I can't see what happens when there is someone else in the area.
It'll be interesting to see the Bluetooth messages passed and if some bright spark will code up a desktop version. It defeats the object of course, but it's still interesting to know how it works exactly.
It's great to see Nokia supporting their handsets with great pieces of software like this and of course Lifeblog. Shame it's just for Series 60 smart phones at present as this is the sort of thing that I can see the kids loving, and unfortunately not all of them can afford the best handsets.
I wonder when the first Sensor wedding will be... :-)
Entered: 2005-05-10 00:17:43
As I haven't got round to writing an interface to Technorati's XML RPC Ping for my blog yet, I've knocked up a quick Javascript bookmarklet that does the job direct from the web browser.
Drag the link "Ping Technorati" below into your webbrowser. To use it visit a page you want to ping Technorati with and then select Ping Technorati from your bookmarks. It should then redirect to Techorati's ping page with the URL of the page you have just visited.
Ping Technorati
So how does it work?
Well it's basically using embedded javascript in the URL of an href. The code is below.
<a href='javascript:void(str=location.href);if(str){location.href="http://www.technorati.com/ping.html?url="+escape(str).split("%20").join("+");}'>Ping Technorati</a>
We take the current URL and store it in the variable str. We check we have a value there, escape it and ping Technorati with it.
It's as simple as that.
Entered: 2005-05-08 21:38:10
I've been getting into Su Doku quizzes lately.
It's a 9x9 grid, made up of 3 3x3 grids. The idea behind the game is each 3x3 has to have the numbers 1 to 9 in it once only. The twist is the lines in the 9x9 must also have 1 to 9 in once only.
It's lots of fun and it's also a good mental workout.
Lifeblog Entry - Posted via Lifeblog from a Nokia smart phone
Entered: 2005-05-05 23:58:24
