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What's new in my computers pages?
Mon. dec. 6th 2004: home page weblogged
Changed the "computers" home page to the weblog format, discovered it was worth continuing my javascript game dev project. No big deal!
Monday, june 30th : the new version is online
I've re-arranged this part while porting it to the new design. Got rid of the old navigation that made no sense, everything is not gathered in a single menu.
The pocket computing section has not changed yet.
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This feature will soon be available
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Welcome to my Computers pages
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> > Friday, Junuary 1st, 2010 - Happy new year everyone!
Also published in : Robots Pocket computers and in the main page
2009 has passed without a post from me in my site. I didn't actually pay attention to that, but discovering this feels a little sad.
So what was i up to, one might wonder? Well, a lot, actually.
First off, i've been into digital photography a lot. Graphic design has always been one of my major interest, and i had left it apart for several years, so eventually the backfire hit me really strong and i'm actually putting all of my free time into developping this "not so new" activity of mine.
"Not so new" i say... back in the late 80's and early 90's, i used to work on this kind of pictures. Today, i'm putting these new tools that are digital photography and digital editing to the same kind of use. And i find myself spending dozens of hours working on each pictures, just like i used to back then.
I would like to create new sites dedicated to these images, but i also miss time to do so.
Along with developping this activity, i've also left apart many of my other hobbies. Also, when moving away from Paris, most of my collections were packed into boxes and never left them since then.
I have not been completely idle on the collecting side, tho... I only didn't take the time to take pictures and update my site (although i'm aware of many things that ought to be, not even mentionning news updates).
In 2009, several purchases came enhance my robots toys collection. I've also passed on some other planned purchases for it, like "real" robots (motorized toys for instance) mostly because i knew i would have missed time to use/test them and they would have ended up sleeping in boxes or on shelves.
So instead of buying functionnal items just for display, i've bought no more than simple toys to display on my shelves.
As for pocket computers, no acquisition at all in 2009 for my collection... There are still a few items that i'm after, but they're either rare, or expensive. Some of these items would be a first generation iPod and a first generation iPhone, both of which are absolutely impossible to find nowadays.
Other interesting items would be an original Psion Netbook, or in my wildest dreams a Palm Foleo.
Speaking of the iPhone, i've not fallen for it yet. For several reasons, i've long kept my now 6 years old phone and was perfectly happy with it. I thought i had lost my geek mojo...
But 2009 brought interesting new products to the smartphone market, and at the end of the year, i knew which one i'd go for!
Since yesterday, i'm the proud owner of a Linux smartphone from Nokia!
It will be my primary phone for the years to come, just like some older nokia models in my collection were before, and it has all it takes to also actually be a part of my collection. This will be official when i update my pages...
Anyway, I won't make any new year resolution. I only wish i will be able to share more news and information on this site than last year. We'll see that!
And I wish you a very good year, thank you for reading this, for visiting the site, and i'm looking forward to the contacts and exchanges my site will bring this new year.
All best everyone!
> > Friday, January 18th, 2008 - Happy new year *m ^_^ m*
Also published in : Robots Pocket computers Arcade games Video games and in the main page
Happy new year everyone!
The year 2008 will see will be many important events all around the world : elections in many countries, olympics in China, crucial economic evolution all over the planet, increasing technological progress reinforced with newcoming companies from emerging countries... But if i may, for today i'll just focus on two events at my own personal scale :)
First of all, i should leave Paris and move to the south of France. This is a significant change...
i still allow me a few days before i switch to "project management" mode and start getting involved in the moving. There will be a lot to do.
I also think this should not mean much of a change regarding my site. Maybe (i said *maybe*!) the change of life will leave me with enough free time to update the site more often, but i doubt it for now. Time will tell!
Now, second event : my site will "officially" turn 10 year old this year!!
It is actually a little older (since 1996 i would say), but i can't find any trace of it prior to 1998, that's why i consider it "officially" open in 1998. I may change my mind some day, tho :)
Since it was created, the site has been hosted at 3 different places, starting as a sub-section of a friend's personal site.
It had 4 different graphic designs, including a few years when every section had a completely different design each, while the current design and unified layout dates back 2003.
Wanna see what it was like since 2001? check this link Only the versions hosted at the current address are available there, and i can't find the ealier designs on any of my computers, so i think it is still somewhere on one of my old computers; i'll try and find it whenever i can.
The contents also evolved : while the first version was already a mix between my graphic work and other topics i was interested in, my collections only appeared in version 2, at first as pure HTML pages, next as PHP, yet i still don't use a database.
PHP allowed my to make the site management a little simpler, as i've also developped a few very simple tools for that purposer (like the very basic weblog function i'm using right now to type this update!).
Now there are still a lot of things i'd love to add/change/update. I have already begun working on new contents, mostly in french but i also have ideas for new contents or sections in english.
There has already been a lot of work involved since 1998 : contents management, web design, php development...
From the site, i also for a few commissionned works, as well as some new friends all around the world!
I cannot say right now what i will actually be able to work on this year...
Anyway, for this 10 year anniversary, my thanks go to everyone that visited the site, found information there, contacted me to discuss the topics i present. These are the very reason why this site exists! Thank you everyone, and a happy new year 2008!
> >Thursday, october 6th 2005 : Wireless gaming (and more?)
I've just read two announces from Nintendo (yesterday) and Sony (today) that they were both going to open free wireless accesspoint in Japan for their respective handheld game consoles. Nintendo's philosophy will be to distribute USB dongles that will turn any PC into a wireless router for the DS, and they will of course promote this technology among game resellers and related businesses in order to rapidly build a large community of public access points. What Sony will do is yet unclear to me, but the goal is the same : provide PSP owners with a grid of free access points to enhance the PSP gaming experience.
As things should go, those access points should be just regular internet access points, only dedicated to specific machines. It's already known that the PSP comes with a built-in internet browser (with it's latest firmware version), so, on top of free network gaming, we're actually talking free mobile internet access here.
The PSP is also known for hosting a quite decent homebrew dev community. Is it just me, or would it be expectable to see Skype-like software appear someday? Skype is already available to a number of PDA users, yet the handheld gaming market targets a wider audience. It would be very interesting if wireless handheld gaming functions turned out to be actually usable (and used!) as a free mobile phone network. Not only would it bring free VoIP to a large audience, but, breaking the rules of regular national cellphone network carriers, it would actually benefit the "global village".
Sorry no link to the news yet, but i'll edit this entry to add some soon.
> > Tuesday, August 30th 2005 : weblog app ready!
It's been a long time since i've updated my site. One of the reasons was that i was building a small PHP tool to handle all HTML updating. There are many tools out there that i could have used to enable instant weblog features in my site, but i did want something very specific. Mostly, i didn't want to use a database, and i also wanted to keep my HTML pages and not spend time adapting my pages to a templating tool needs.
The first version of this small app is now ready, so hopefully i should be able to update my site more often. Using this application, i'll also gather all the updates from my different sections in my home page.
There's still lots to do on the PHP application, though. As of today, the main application is able to create new entries and edit existing entries. I've also developped basis for an online links manager, aiming both at gathering my bookmarks all in a single, online space, and at generating links pages automatically.
Then again, i'll have to improve HTML handling in the editing tool, add image management functions, work on an unified user interface...
Anyway, should this entry publish alright on the different topics i'll send it to, then it would be a great first step!
It will also be a good thing done before taking a week off on holiday! :)
[Edit] Well, turned out that there was some fixing needed. Work is done, beta testing is done, so now i think i have something stable enough! I'll focus on updating AND continue improving this application when i'm back from holidays.
>> Tuesday, december 11th 2005 : Happy New Year!!
So that's my first site update this year! That's no huge update actually, however the very fact that i do write this update right now is good news. I've met a Hard Disk problem on my new iBook, so i had to get it repaired. Got it back after 3 weeks, and now i'm finally able to use it just the wanted from the beginning!
So i've reinstalled Eclipse and all it takes to work on my site. Eclipse sounds quite interesting. I must confess that i've left IDEs apart for those last years, so i'm quite ignorant of them. I'm a bit afraid to, since the few experience i've had with them gave me a feeling of exagerated complexity. However, the discovery of Eclipse was rather smooth, i feel secure with it, and now i'm confident i should manage to get interesting things out of it.
So well, that's pretty much it on the computer side for now. Anyway, I'm also confident i should actually be able to update many other sections in my site soon.
>> Monday, december 6th 2004 : no news is good news!
The computers section in my website has long remained a non-weblogged section. I'll change that starting today!
As a matter of fact, when i've created this computer subsection a few years ago, i had a number of ideas in mind that i have not been able to actually implement since then.
Let's hope i will take more time for this section in the future. I still have lots of ideas for it, as a matter of fact. As several of those ideas would represent a huge amount of work to develop, i'm hesitating whether i should open those new parts in french or in english. Openning in french would allow for easier creation, but an english version would certainly draw more visitors to the pages. Still hesitating, though, and i must confess it's also a clever procrastination method! ;)
Among the ideas i have for this computer part : i'd like to build a minisite dedicated to my humble views on artificial intelligence; i'd like to build a section dedicated to user interface principles, and i would like to add a versatile part where i would put information that have helped me once and could help others.
Anyway, i have recently bought a new laptop, and i expect my productivity to increase thanks to it! My previous PC was a huge laptop PC i've bought early this year. I've chosen a wide-screen, powerful (and heavy!) model that could replace a desktop, and that what it actually achieves. Anyway, as it claims it's a laptop, it eventually becomes obvious that it is not quite : it's too large, does not run long enough on one battery charge, and the processor emits tremendeous heat. It's more of a transportable, actually, but i like it that way. Anyway the thing is, i've eventually been thinking that a *real* laptop would conveniently complement the not-so-laptop computer! That's how i've ended up buying a new generation Apple iBook! I'm in the process of discovering OS-X, so i have not actually used the machine for more yet, but still, it feels like it has everything i expected it to have.
So, maybe it will be just what i needed to be able to work on my site on the go and keep it updated on a regular basis.
There's another good news : the Safari web-browser that comes with the macintosh will run my newer javascript game project perfectly!!
About 6 years ago, i've developped a few javascript games for Netscape Navigator 4, but as Internet Explorer became the reference platform, the Netscape 4 specific features i used in my games became obsolete and were eventually abandonned in later version; making my dev obsolete as well. Years later, i've began a newer dev focusing on IE, with "possible ECMA compatibility". It appears that this project is much more compatible that i had expected! It runs perfectly on the mac in Safari!! As i've also noticed it will also run on some versions of Mozilla, i think it's worth continuing working on the project. As of now, it is still in a very early development stage, so it's not actually playable yet, but the main sprite is there, the arrow keys will make it move and the space key will fire bullets.
There are still a few compatibility issues that i'll try and fix some day, but still, i'm very excited to realize that it runs quite ok on IE, on Safari as well as on some Mozilla versions.
Moreover, i've just heard of a fix that would enable PNG alpha channel transparency under IE, which should allow for much better graphics... Anyway, here's a link to the development page, which i hope will significantly evolve within the coming months! Click here to access the development page
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