Java Midlet, writing your own mobile phone programs

So after 8 years of walking with the same old mobile phone (back then the life cycle of phones was longer ) it was time for a new one, the Nokia 6500.  A world of difference but I have to say its easy to get used to a color screen, camera, build in mp3 player and ofcourse the java games!

I like the idea you can write your own programs on your phone, adds an extra dimension of control! So I downloaded the Java Wireless Toolkit (2.5.1.) because of the platform you can’t write normal java applications but you have to write MIDlets (basically a stripped down / lean version of Java Virtual Machine) since you are not writing for a pc but a cellphone (although that difference is fading rapidly).

I also tried development environments like NetBeans (like the visual approach) and Eclipse for mobile applications but really all you need to begin and what I am using is notepad and JWT (Java Wirelss Toolkit).

And follow this quickstart: http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/wtoolkit/

and look then at the code of this example: http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/getstart/

I had some trouble after having packeged (Project/package/create package) my program into a jar file it would say ‘invalid application’ on my phone. This had to do with the API platform selection which was set on MIDP2.1 but my phone only had support up to MIDP2.0, so after changing that option it would run like a charm!

<This post is a work in progress>

Space Time

Our perception perceives time as a flowing river from A to B. But it also could be that time has similar properties as space. Instead of over there for space one could speak of over then for a possible space-time state. Making both A and B sequences of existing space-time state changes not necessarily linked to each other. Causality however does not fit as a primary driver in this picture, making the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of a space-time state existence/realization largely indeterministic. This opens up the possibility of ‘free will’ or in other words an indeterministic mind.

Time stops flowing when we get control over how to move around in it!

Not the first nor the last to thinker about this, some more info:
Paper: Nature of time and causality in Physics, Francisco S.N. Lobo, 2008

The universe behind the eyes

A brief encounter

locked onto her eyes

I lost myself

between new constellations

too soon I woke up

in a reality

missing that universe

LaTeX

Just started writing with LaTeX which from what I understand lets you focus on the content and automatically sets the layout, typesetting etc. correct based on templates you use.

Basically the system is as follows, LaTeX uses 3 files

• YourDocument.tex, this is where you write your content
• LetterClassic.sty, this is the stylesheet with predefined settings of font, size and position. Basically an instance of a class
• Letter.cls, the class with its definitions and functions

you mostly work in the *.tex document, if you want to tweak some settings you can either try an overwrite command directly in your *.tex document or you can make changes in the *.sty or *.cls files. But if you are bound to a specific class and style for example an article for a magazine you only have to worry about the *.tex file.

Accomplishments

I just realized why I like science over the arts. Its mostly because with science the accomplishments are direct and simple to state. Whether it is an experiment in the lab, a calculation or something you’ve build that works, you get a direct feeling of having accomplished something real and forever. Whilst with the arts like organizational or social, the accomplishments are not so easy to point out and might take a while to form and be recognized. I think there was some philosophical theory posing that a man is defined by its actions thus making a man of science more definable then a man of arts. I feel more comfortable being easy to define and thus having a clear sense of progress (an accumulation of accomplishments). Maybe my view changes over the years but for know I am still eager to accomplish something big that would echo my definition in the century’s to come. Most scientific accomplishments live forever, we unfortunately don’t.

So after reading what I wrote, I realized accomplishments sounds like an ego trip however that is not the case. The core driver behind scientific accomplishments is basic curiosity answering questions and challenges (why..?, how..?) every answer found is another step/action/accomplishment forward with the ultimate goal to have satisfied your curiosity. I can imagine life after that becomes rather dull  (just like a magic trick that loses its power once revealed how it works) or frustrating (Knowing why and how something happens but also knowing you can’t ever control it).

Installing the Linksys WRE54G Wireless Expander

I bought a repeater to get that little extra reach enabling Internet access in the garden. Since I already had a Linksys WRT54G router I thought it would be easy if I also bought a repeater of the same brand. However the easy setup steps as noted in the ‘quick’ installation booklet ‘quickly’ stranded at step 3d with an ’survey failed’ error meaning the wireless router couldn’t find the repeater. Of course I wouldn’t be the first nor the last to encounter such problems and a quick search on the internet gave me the following solution:

1) The network was up and running under WPA secure mode when I did this also I had my pc directly connected via an ethernet cable to the router.

2) Plug expander into wall socket, I did not push config button, don’t pay attention to the lights on the expander.

3) Run an ethernet cable from your router to the expander via the ethernet port below the lights on the expander. //cable included in the WRE54G box

4) Open up 2 browsers on your hardwired computer, one browser at 192.168.1.1 (router) and the second browser at 192.168.1.240 (expander) //password is ‘admin’, leave userid blank

5) Set the SSID and subnet mask on the expander, the same as the router. // <— important the same!!  using the same SSID name will show only 1 wireless network in your wireless connection options however the signal strength of your network will have increased.

6) Go to edit security settings on your expander, type in the security key that is in your router, and save settings on the expander. A couple redlight flashes and you should have two blue ones, your ready to move the expander anywhere to get a signal.

7)If you get a IP conflict when moving the expander, unplug and plug back in // happened to me, besides unplugging I also had to switch on/off the wireless on my laptop.

Thanks to the post here.

On a side note: I’ll be only powering the repeater on when I am in the garden since I already have a cellphone tower nearby emitting enough energy (mW/cm^2, power density) of which the long term effects, if existent, are not clear.

Python

I’ve just started learning Python as a programming language. What attracted me was the fact that its supposedly easy to learn and its clear syntax makes it easy too quickly build programs without getting sucked into the hardcore programming, debugging and optimizing jungle which other languages tend to do. This gives you more time to tinker about the problem to solve or functionality you want the program to have rather than wasting time wrestling with code.

I just started with it so I’ll be updating this post along the way.

So far I’ve used:

Core Python Programming by Wesley J. Chun, excellent book for beginner programmers, however there are also a lot of free good tutorials online but I like to have a hardcopy in front of me so I’ve got this from the library.

www.python.org, download python here and also lots of links to tutorials

www.py2exe.org, add-on to convert .py code into executables (.exe) , although it seems that it only works if your project file is in the same path (e.g. C:\Python25\foo.py)

Still have to check out:

http://www.pygame.org/

Mosquitoes

Stick me in a room with a dozen other people, introduce 1 mosquito, and I’ll be the first to get bitten. Somehow mosquitoes seem to like me, the feeling however is not mutual. Turns out that evolution has made these bloodsuckers very effective at finding human prey and also be picky about it.

The first one is obviously the visual sensory by which they can detect heat (infrared), contrast and movements and since most warm things that move are alive a good way to detect your meal. However it does not explain why they would pick me over other potential meals. The second tool mosquitoes have to detect prey is their sense of smell. Researchers recently (Tan Lu et al., 2007) have mapped the long range smelling detector (maxillary palp) on the mosquito in detail and found out that it is tuned to CO2, octenol and general olfactory reception. This makes it an interesting case because with purely vision no distinction can be made between meals while with smell (aside from CO2) there are differences between people. This combined with the assumption (no study found) that some people get bit more often than others makes room for finding an effective counter measure for these predators by for example blocking these smell receptors or overstimulating them. I hope they find an effective measure soon since most of the current solutions, aside from smacking them with a paper, on the market work very poorly. With 650 million people / year infected by malaria each year its a pretty big market!

Subject links:

How Stuff Works: Mosquitoes

Science Daily: Fighting Malaria By Tricking Mosquito’s Sense Of Smell

Telegraph: Why some people are prone to mosquito bites

Research Paper: Odor Coding in the Maxillary Palp of the Malaria Vector Mosquito Anopheles gambiae

Addition 28/06/08:

Researcher found that the pheromone, which affects mate recognition and sexual behavior of fruit flies, does not directly attach to nerve cells, as was previously thought.

What I like about WordPress

When I started with a blog on WordPress I first was attracted by:

• The ease of posting articles without building an own website
• Clean Layout
• Free (obviously)

Thus I started a blog, mainly for myself and friends. I wasn’t going to write much until I discovered the statistics feature of WordPress. Which showed me that there were actually quite some views. I know views can be anything, from an automated computer view to a 2 seconds ‘oh this is not it’ view. But here comes the best part, the statistic also shows what people used as search engine terms to stumble upon the article. Judging from those search terms I’m estimating that at least 10% found it useful. Encouraging me to write some more articles and improve the current ones. Adding the following pro points to the list:

• Statistics (search terms)
• Relatively high rankings on search engines <- important for views, great article with no views is like a top product without any marketing

However I should note that I don’t write ‘for’ views, its a nice side feature.

Random Stuff

- Marktplaats tracker

- HJsplit filesplitter

- WYSIWYP (what you see is what you photograph) Pictures

- Bierkratten aanbieding dragen

-Glycolysis, enteric bacteria, hydrogen, lactose