Test blog

I am currently testing email -to  blog functionality.

 

 

 

 

Blogger Tool for Word

This is the test for Word for Blooger. May be I will use this for future Posts

Netbean J2ME

Currently working on my List project in Netbean 4.1. This is awsome. I could finish about 70% of use cases without writing a single line of code. This so VB like experience. You just drag and drop some screens and add commands to those screens. Link those screens together. And a add some behaviour to those commands. No code required. The problem is the code generated is not much of OO in nature. Its like procedural code. May be I need to relooked at the code once I finish the program.

New Project

I am thinking about this new idea for a project. I am not sure I should use J2ME or Python for this. But currently python looks better and faster option for this. The idea is this, we have these smart phones. These smart phones have more computing power than early PCs and these small PCs are just running into loop and doing nothing. Imagine whatwe can achieve if we can get these processors to do something useful. I am thinking of developing a cron utility in python which will look into crontab file and do the things at specific time. Once I get this utility working then I can come up with many small command line utilities to be executed by this cron server to do usefull things. Following things come to mind for these utilities

• Send a reminder sms to some one (need a small command sms tool which will read the file and send a sms to that person.
• Upload all the photos from a directory to the server (Flicker)
• Download some of the podcast
• sync the contacts

Later I can come up with GUI utility to create the crontab file.

Apche Mysql and PSP

After getting working the PHP and MySQL working, I worked on to get mod_python to work just to see the difference. After reading through the documentation. It was pretty simple installation And I could get the PSP working in about 30 minutes. The code for both was about the same size.

Apache, PHP and MySQL

Last 2 days I spent on installing Apache, PHP and MySQL. I wanted to see the server side of development. I used my windows laptop I got it from work. Windows has its own advantages (easy installers) and disadvantage (not enough help). So I started with installing Apache. I downloaded the Apache server. It comes as a installer file . And installed in laptop. Installation went fine just the way installation goes in windows. But when I tried to start the server. It could not start the server. It seems some of the software on my machine already using port 80. I could not figure it out which one. So I just changed the port of Apache to 8080 and wholla.....it started the server and I could see the Aapche test page. The nest step was to install PHP. There is no installer for PHP. What we need to do is download the file and unzipped it at any directory....so simple. After unzipping the next step is rename a file to php.ini. And create some lines in httpd.conf file. But after following the steps....I still could not get the php running....So went back to google (long live google....i just don't know how was the life before google). I found that we need to copy the dlls from sapi directory to main php directory. After doing that it started working. So the last piece of puzzle is Mysql. It is again direct installation. After installation it failed to create service. It seems that my pc already has a mysql service. But I could not find the software installed anywhere. So I guess the person using this laptop might have installed this and uninstalled it later. But uninstallation must have removed the software keeping services there. How do we delete the service. The services window does not allow you to delete the service. Back to google. It seems you need to use a command line tool 'sc -delete service' to delete the service. A command line tool on windows XP in 2005 !!!! After deleting the service I could create a new service and could start the server. I could also connect to server and create some tables and insert rows. Now connect the PHP to Mysql....No setups nothing..Supposed to work out of box. Nope.....when i run test page it gives me error 'Client does not support sever authentication upgrade the server' What the hell... It seems Mysql 4.1 used 16 bit password but PHP mysql client uses 8 bit....so solution? change the password with old_password('oldpwd') function. After doing all these I could see php page spitting mysql data on apache server.... Hope fully when I do the same excersise on my home PC, it should not have so many issue, Also may be I will just use easy php...

w.blogger

Just came across this tool. I am writing this blog from this tool. So this is sort of testing. Let me see how it looks....

Change the blog name and purpose

I just change my blog title and also decided to change the purpose. Initially I started this blog to capture my jurney to learn Java (J2ME) and Python. This blog was supposed to keep track of my work on these projects. Even though I will continue to do this I had lots of thoughts which I want to put down which has nothing to with me learning experience. I also decided to post my thoughts during the lunch time hence the name. Hope fully I will be more productive this time.

Netbean 4.1 Book

Some Sun employees are writing a book about Netbean 4.1 version. Its is schedule to release by June 05. "Netbean IDE Field Guide" should some what satisfy the need for a book in Netbean space. I have seen lots of books covering Eclips but till now saw only one Netbean Definative Guide in netbean space. I will post my comments about this book next week(I am planning to read this 300+ page book in this weekend.

New Project

Netbean 4.1 has made me going again on my journey which was not moving bacause of lots of other things. As my shopping list project has finished I am trying a new project which will also be in List. It will be list management system. It will help users to mange different lists. This can be used as a shopping list like my earlier project but this will be more general. With this users can create and maintain lists. I am planning to create this in two phases Phase I - In this version users can create new lists, delete lists, update lists and also mark/unmark list items and delete list items and delete all. Phase II - This will help users to copy the items from another lists. So that users can make one master lists and then create smaller lists for occasion.

Netbean 4.1 Beta

Just downloaded the Netbean 4.1 beta. Its has lots of improvements. I was using Sun mobility Studio which was based on Netbean 3.6. Which was good but this one has lots of improvements specially if you are doing development in J2EE or J2ME area.

Python for series 60 Released

Python for series 60 released last week. I downloaded the files and installed on 7610. Installation went fine. I also tried couple of programs that came with installations. I have toyed with the idea of porting my J2ME shopping list to Python but realised that Python listbox does not support the multi selection. So I need to wait for that. My J2ME shopping list is working fine. I will be doing some enhancements for these during these couple of days.

Shopping list project completed

My shopping list project is completed in J2ME. Its working fine in my Nokia 6610. But its failing in my wife's 7610. I thouht since 7610 is newer and supports MIDP 2.0. it should work fine. But I guess I am wrong. I need to fix it fast as she is the one who is user of this MIDlet.

Projects

One of the problem I saw in my earlier attempt in learning Java is I did not have any other objective from Java. As my day job does not required me to know Java. So when I tried to learn Java using books, I tried to follow excersise at end of chaptor. Since being new in Java I found myself just typing the code written in the books. So when ever I wanted to solve some problem using Java I found myself referring to book more than thinking about problem also this has some thing to with Java's complicated File management structure and GUI structure. The 2 main ways showing the results. As now I am going to start with J2ME (Simple GUI and RMS) and Python (Easy File handling and comparitively easy GUI) I should not have those issue. So here I am planning to do...I will be having projects to judge my knowledge. For J2ME I have decided on following projects. 1> J2ME apps for creating shopping list - This will be usefull application for me. This will help me create the shopping list with check boxes and I can check the things. The first version will allow me to add some thing into list, delete from list or delete all entries from list. But it will only have one list. As it would be difficult to add new entries in small phone, in second version I will create another list which will act like a master list, user can add into master list as well current shopping list. It will help user to select from master list and copy to current list. This way users can avoide adding entries into shopping list. I am planning to use higher level GUI APIs for this like Forms and Lists and Alerts. 2> J2ME apps for stop watch - This will be a simple Midlet which will allow users to use their phones as stop watch. This will be using low level GUIs like Canvas. 3> Python utility to show Calendar - This will be some thing like cal utility in Unix. 4> Python clone for WINZIP - This will make me confortable in GUI in python. I am not yet decided whether to use Tinker or WXPython. But will go with the one which gives me maximum productivity. The final project would be expense tracking application with sync feature with Python application. Use can track their expenses using this Python application and I am planning to use Mysql as my database. It will also have a J2ME client which will allow users to enter expenses from mobile phone and leter sync with main Python applications. Hope fully this should give me enough work.

Why now?

Even though i told in my last post that, I am passionate about all those things but till then I don't know much about all these technologies. I will be using this blog to capture my journey to learn all these things. Actually my day job demands me to work on Database technologies like Oracle or SQL server. But I want to develop more generalise softwares which will help lot of people and not just the people in company I worked in. Actually I started learning working on Java in 1996 . Hmmm I know its 8 years now. I know my intention were correct. So what went wrong?? One thing the people like me who worked on RAD tools like Developer 2000 or Visual Basic is we can see what we are doing almost instant. So I will just develope something in Visual basic in lets say 7 - 8 days. I am talking about a complete application which works and has some useful functionality. When I tried to learn Java, I did not reach to GUI section till in I finish almost 200+ pages of the book. Then I realised I should not have compare Java with Visual Basic, instead I should have compare Java with my experience with C. So I started one more time to learn Java with C style. Now when I learned C, what I used to do is writing some Unix utilities on my own like wc , grep etc. There I got my other surprise. When I tried to do that in Java I found Java's file handling is again very complex. Its very powerfull but complex. That makes you thing about file handling as a problem instead of problems in hand. These were my 2 attempts to learn Java in last 8 years !!! So now why do I think I will learn something ? There are 2 things which are changed. One I will be using this blog to capture my progress and I have correct expectations from Java. So I choose J2ME to learn Java instead J2SE. There are 2 reasons for that, as GUI for J2ME is far more simpler than normal Java and file handling (persistance storage - RMS) has far simpler syntax than file handling in J2SE. I guess once I learn all basic concepts in J2ME and then move to normal Java when I am ready. So what about Python and MySQL ? As I said I am more intersted in writing softwares for PCs than Cellphones. I guess even we will be using our cell phone more in future, our PCs still be the centre of our digital experience. So I want my cell phone applications should always be talking to atleast my PC if not any server. So Python fits perfect for this, as its reputation of fast development and robust functionality, since it also allows me to write some kind of system software to talk to my phone and J2me apps. I will be using Mysql as a repository for all kind of data. As all kind of applications would need to store data in some form. So lets see how this journey goes

New Journey

Just want to start a new life. Lets see how its goes. Current passion is Python , Mysql , Java and J2ME and Nokia 7610.