Archive for the 'Ideas' Category

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I’m considering the different php solutions for building a Christian article database.

1. Solutions out there?
2. Blog
3. From scratch

PDF

Platform running on is: XAMPP

1. Existing solutions
My impression tells me they are usually either too general or specialized for my needs.
General in a CMS-typed like Mambo and Specialised stuff are dull university projects which do not usually have too nice an interface.

Next option please.

2. Blog-based solution
As usual, our friend WORDPRESS is recalled. 2.1.2 the latest release for now.

Its seems a good solution as it has already some of the features needed - Writing posts easily, Categories, Search.

Others need some research, customisation and building. * means recommended links

a) Keywords tagging + search
http://vapourtrails.ca/wp-keywords

b) Providing Word and PDF formats for download.
i) HTML to Word
* http://conort.googlepages.com/generate-word-from-php

ii) HTML to PDF
* http://www.rustyparts.com/pdf.php
http://www.digitaljunkies.ca/dompdf/about.php
http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/pdf-o-matic.php?source

iii) Plugins
* http://www.zirona.com/software/wp-to-pdf/
* http://wp2pdf.sourceforge.net/
http://www.pdf24.org/blog/two-wordpress-pdf-plugins/

3. From scratch.
Why hurt myself when I have better alternatives like above?

**Lost in thoughts as usual**

LilyPondTool updates

I’ve distracted long enough to be lost from the lilypond and lilytool world.

Was surfing round the lilypond mailing list web archives I found several updates interesting enough to share.

Bert, the creator of LilyPondTool, created a new webbie for LilypondTool at http://lilypondtool.organum.hu/

Bert now has his own blog over at http://briffid.blogspot.com/

LilyPond 2.10.19 and 2.11.19 are available for download. From what I can see, the installation is much simple on linux than before with its installer script, and I see ample windows builds (Wait till I buy vista before windows again). As usual new features keep coming in.

LilyPondTool 2.10.4 released Seems it has many new features including

LilyPondTool 2.10 demo is released demonstrating some of the most exciting features -instant errorchecking, instant help, instant point-and-click). See more cool demos

There’s this new webpage called A-Play was first seen here then mentioned as a shell for lilypond and discussed more over here Now, I don’t really get the entire idea of how to use it, but I already had the idea of how it should be used before I ever seen of this.

(This paragraph contain random thoughts)
In no way to suggest bad for lilytool in anyway, but I feel the web platform would be the way really for lilypond to reach out to the masses. I mean, what can be harder than opening a web browser compared to installing >10mb of stuff. Normal users would most likely seen a web browser 10x more than file editor, which cuts down lots more learning curve for interface alone. Graphical interface could be easily implemented in html too. Expert users can use a textarea with autosave feature enabled, providing a portability around the world. Syntax highlighting, indentation can be done with a iframe. Shortcuts can be added to keyevents. Snippets can be drag and drop or provided via menu or toolbars. Combined with good server side support to store, render and process, and server/browser communication using AJAX to provide seamless integration between user and machine, it seems only good can come out from this. Well of course this is another of my wild imaginations, although I think its not fairly difficult to implement, not many people who can implement will do it, but perhaps an employee or someone in his 20% time might do it for fun.

Lastly I glad that even LilyPond’s “boss” Hans-Wen has openly supported LilyTool as a “official recommended tool”. Kudos to Bert! Well, as this point of time I can’t wait to open my development tools like Eclipse and start coding goodies for LilyPondTool, but not yet. Got to install a running copy of jEdit with its plugin first. Then settle lots of other stuff I needa do, followed by keep a cool head to not to rush, keep the ideas and program well.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Distractions

Some long time since I even visit my own blog, but I’m really happy and grateful to all those who visit, esp. those who check here regularly. I’m not faithful on my site, not to mention other blogs, and thank you to those who link over here even I dont border link to you. Thank you all for all the comments, sometimes I don’t even look, a greater sin than ignoring to reply. Those who are interested in my plugins, thank you again, although I dont have the interest, time, endurance and consistency to carry on any of them at the moment. And yes, I updated the new SK2 (Spam Karma not shop name nor the facial product) to get more accurate spam assination.

A little update on my camp life, I still find guard duties causing me restlessness and dis-orientated-ness. Sometimes I dont even know my dates or days, but I need to get use to things. Understanding and getting along well with people is not simple especially for me with low E.Q. You can please everyone, and for some reasons someone make dislike to for maybe no reason. My campmates education levels range from O’levels (Secondary), ITE, Diploma(Poly), A’Levels (JC). And with my promotion to Coporal, responsibilities and work loads increase.

On my geeky (IT/computers) side of life, I have upgraded to Singnet 1500 after a renewing of contract. Its $58/month, but with 4 months free in this 1 year contract, it averages up to $39/month, not that bad after all. It comes with other free services too, but the catch is if you dont explicitly terminate after the free period, charges come in. On the browser side, I using Opera to surf the net because I still find it the quickest and now opera is free and ad-less. I have too much extensions and scripts in firefox that its slightly slower and consume much memory.

Back to the Title topic of Distractions.

Discussion on how on-board screen distracts attention from driving.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/02/21/2330239.shtml

mynotes:
Gearing towards a centralized processing means a centralised controls and screen.
Engine, Aircon, Seats, Radio, GPS, Computer, TV, Locking System, Sensor, Alert system all comes together on the computer in the car. Might actually means system can be broken easily (single point of failure), or even harder to use, unless good UI is done.

Some projects that I’m been distracted with recently, and sadly never got to do much :(

1) Blogs and plugin. The content, the template, the plugins..

2) LilyTool.. I’m supposed to work on the NoteVisualiser aspect, allowing user to have a graphical display and input frontend to Lilypond’s syntactical code. But since I have been able to compile Bert’s new parser engine, it sort of hung there.

3) Mobile App I: Since I already started creating a Sudoku application for my nokia phone, I should have touch and finish up with it. However, with the lost of some of my project files and last of patience and time its on hold again.

App II: Pitch producing midlet. I managed to create one, but its UI: display and input needs brushing up.

App III: I’m not very satisfied with the current TODO list. I wanted to create one, but so far its only implemented in brainwaves or in-fact more dreamwaves.

4) 2 ideas I got for mobile phones which I really like.

a) motion detection. sort of turning ur phone left and right to navigate in a game.. sort like the new concept nintendo “remote control” joystick. I thought processing images on the camera can sort of “motion detect” like how a optical mouse works. It turns up that image recognition/process and motion detection issnt that simple. Idea passed.

b) Using the mobile phone as a instrument tuner. now this is a cool idea, although there are alreay pc applications which can do that, i have not found any for mobile devices. dealing with this subject means diving into a deep topic: DSP.

The last time I found myself swimming (or drowning) in foreign waters in the idea of implementing a network 3d badminton shockwave game. I soon found out there I needed the knoweledge of the toics of networking, human anatomy, 3d modeling, texturing and animation, game programming, director/lingo scripting languages.. all requiring indept knowledge and experience in order to do so.

Anyway the topic of DSP(Digital Signal Processing) is “cheem” or complex. Application areas range from speech, audio, music, telephony radio, signal analysis, instrumentation, image processing, multimedia, radar. sonar, control, biomedical, transport to navigation. I thought what I needed to know was just DFT (Discrete Fourier Transformation) but I see engineering mathematics, signals, electronics and a whole bunch of stuff.

5) I had an idea of creating some excel macros for some scheduling forecast.
After some weeks I needed to find out if the yields can justify the effort to create one. Sometimes humans can just do things much efficiently if they put in a little of work. Technology cant solve everything.. sometimes the root of the problem lies with laziness. Anyway this is diving into yet another topic: timetable algorithms. It seems that the best way is using Genetic algorithm which uses some genetic biology ideas. In my rough understanding of it, it means getting a random sequence, then manipulate/evolve it until solutions are present.

In closing, you might understand my plight of “trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none”, I’m a mediocre, but maybe with much discipline, I will change.

Here’s an addictive weblink somewhere if you want to get yourself distracted too.

ajax links / bookmarks

I have this idea for over some time, that the links in wordpress be displayed in a “ajax” manner, in a way like super archives. It may help esp. if there are huge list of links and grouped in many categories. In a way this links can be your online bookmarks. Anyway I wont have the time to create any plugin now, but I found many links which might (or not) be useful.

ajax examples
http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com/resources/programming/xmlhttprequest/examples

Onjava article on handling ajax bookmarks
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/10/26/ajax-handling-bookmarks-and-back-button.html?page=4
http://codinginparadise.org/weblog/2005/09/ajax-how-to-handle-bookmarks-and-back.html

Google Page Creator - AjAX html WYSIWYG builder
http://pages.google.com/
yourname.googlepages.com

Draggable lists
http://www.gregphoto.net/sortable/index.php

Ajax bookmarking
http://swik.net/

Another online/social bookmarking
http://www.digglicious.com/
http://www.spurl.net/
http://www.netvouz.com/
http://del.icio.us/

Social bookmarking reviews
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html
http://www.irox.de/roxomatic/1050

which reminds me of TADA lists and other todo lists.