arg page 11 - Dave's Blog

ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset Review

I ordered a ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset to use at home. When I come home I plug my phone in to charge in my room, but then I can't hear it ring elsewhere in the hosue. The idea was to take this handset which wirelessly connects to cellphones via bluetooth and place it in another part of the house so that I can tell I'm getting an incoming call. The only issue I have with that setup is that it ringing isn't any louder than conversations held over the phone, that is, the ringing is a little quiet.

The handset pairs with cellphones in the same manner as any other handset over bluetooth. It has an internal rechargeable battery which is charged via a standard USB port built into the base of the handset and it comes with a USB cable. Next to the USB port is the only button on the phone which is pressed to answer a call, hang up a call, or begin voice dial, held down to turn the handset on and off, and held down longer to begin pairing with a cellphone. There's a blue LED in one of the holes in the microphone portion of the phone which blinks to indicate if its on or trying to pair. Transitioning between on, off, and pairing produces a cute sound and a change to the LED.

Overal I'm pleased with its simplicity and use of common parts although I wish there was a way to adjust the volume of the ring.

Juanita Beach Visit and Map

Two weekends ago it was actually sunny and kind of warm so Sarah and I went down to Spud Fish and Chips and Juanita Beach Park. We ate fish and chips on the dock. I took a few pictures and this time actually put some geographical information on Flickr so now I've got a map of my tiny fish and chips journey. On the map click on the floating marks to view the associated photos.

Flickr provides access to the geo data associated with your photos via GeoRSS feeds. And Google Maps displays GeoRSS feed content on their maps allowing you even to edit the data but doesn't appear to let you easily export the GeoRSS. Live Maps does the inverse, allowing you to create and export GeoRSS data but not import it. I'd like both please. Oh well.

LibraryThing Developers are Responsive

I use my recently added books feed from LibraryThing, a site I've mentioned before where you track, review, recommend, and share your books, and I put the recently added books on my page. I thought it might be nice to include the book covers so I suggested adding book covers to RSS feeds in LibraryThings 'Recommend Site Improvements' group. The next day I had a response from the founder and lead developer Tim Spalding who had started implementing the feature. I noticed a few bugs, reported them on the same thread, and he fixed them soon after. Fantastic! It makes me want to upgrade to a paying account.

Incidentally, if you notice the Ghost in the Shell book appear multiple times in my RSS feed its due to the previously mentioned iterative bug fixes. The same item appeared multiple times slightly differently with each bug fix and your RSS aggregator may have picked them up as distinct items.

Zune Software Update

Angie and Kane Went Away

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XSL Transforms in JavaScript

var createNewXMLObj = function() {
   var result = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.FreeThreadedDOMDocument");
   result.validateOnParse = false;
   result.async = false;
   return result;
}

var args = WScript.arguments;
var ofs = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");

var xslParams = [];
var xmlStyle = null;
var xmlInput = null;
var inputFile = null;
var outputFile = null;
var error = false;

for (var idx = 0; idx < args.length && !error; ++idx)
   if (args.item(idx) == "-o") {
      if (idx + 1 < args.length) {
         outputFile = ofs.GetAbsolutePathName(args.item(idx + 1));
         ++idx;
      }
      else
         error = true;
   }
   else if (args.item(idx) == "--param" || args.item(idx) == "-param") {
      if (idx + 2 < args.length) {
         xslParams[args.item(idx + 1)] = args.item(idx + 2);
         idx += 2;
      }
      else
         error = true;
   }
   else if (xmlStyle == null) {
      xmlStyle = createNewXMLObj();
      xmlStyle.load(ofs.GetAbsolutePathName(args.item(idx)));
   }
   else if (xmlInput == null) {
      inputFile = ofs.GetAbsolutePathName(args.item(idx));
      xmlInput = createNewXMLObj();
      xmlInput.load(inputFile);
   }

if (xmlStyle == null || xmlInput == null || error) {
   WScript.Echo('Usage:\n\t"xsltproc" xsl-stylesheet input-file\n\t\t["-o" output-file] *["--param" name value]');
}
else {
   var xslt = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XSLTemplate.3.0");
   xslt.stylesheet = xmlStyle;
   var xslProc = xslt.createProcessor();
   xslProc.input = xmlInput;

   for (var keyVar in xslParams)
      xslProc.addParameter(keyVar, xslParams[keyVar]);

   xslProc.transform();

   if (outputFile == null)
      WScript.Echo(xslProc.output);
   else {
      var xmlOutput = createNewXMLObj();
      xmlOutput.loadXML(xslProc.output);
      xmlOutput.save(outputFile);
   }
}

Wikipedia Tools

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