My Motorola DEXT (CLIQ) - and Android

I was recently able to put my hand on the Motorola DEXT smartphone and to finally play with the Android OS.

First, the phone. It is a nice piece of hardware with a solid feel. The keyboard is easy tu use, even if I don't use it a lot as I don't like the landscape display. Personnally, I would have preferred a mobile without keyboard, making it thinner in the process. Because it is one of the major physical drawback of this mobile: its thickness in the pocket. The other drawback is its screen. Its resolution is not as high as I would have liked and more important, the sensitivity and precision are mediocre at best. I often need to tap twice on the screen to trigger a reaction and the mistyping rate with the virtual keyboard is rather high.
Enough with the hardware, let's continue with the software. I am not able to comment on motoblur as I don't make use of any social site and the rest of the applications are more an Android experience rather than a Motorola one.
Thus, let's talk about Android. At least I have a phone with a linux kernel. Not that I really feel the difference with any other phone (not talking about UI here), but as a free software promoter, it finally happened !
The UI has a rather nice feeling (by the way, this is the most integrated and consistent linux experience that I had so far, certainly due to the dalvik VM). Of course, I managed to find shortcomings, such as the volume setting that is not always intuitive: when the phone is idle, it sets the ring volume, during a call, it sets the call volume... I always have to think a little bit when playing with it. But otherwise the experience is pleasant and the phone is really responsive.
Having this device in my hands, I couldn't resist the urge to play with the SDK. And it was a revelation. First, everything is done in java ! My favorite language. I am at least able to develop for a mobile device. The SDK and the emulator are easy to install and perfectly integrated with the eclipse plugins. The developpers have really done a beautiful job. The only drawback that I found is the documentation that is a little bit light on the android site. But help pages exist on the web that may be of great help. I will post a note if I finally release an application on the android market !

Otherwise, this phone is ok, even if I suggest to buy a phone with a better screen.

La Mongie, c'est fini !

Que faire de mieux en janvier que de passer un week-end dans la montagne, surtout quand il y a de la neige ? Pas grand chose. J'avais donc organisé depuis une certain moment de partir ce week-end à La Mongie en famille. De la neige nous en avons eu ! Il a neigé sans arrêt pendant 3 jours ! Mais bon on ne va pas se plaindre d'avoir de la neige pour faire du ski. Par contre je ne suis pas sûr que cela fasse plaisir aux gérants de la station. je crois fortement que ceux-ci préférerais utiliser leurs jolies canons à neige. En effet, la plupart des pistes sont restées fermées et le peu de pistes ouvertes n'était absolument pas damées. Ou alors un petit peu le matin, mais pas trop... Par contre le forfait était bien payant au prix plein. Nous avions déjà eu une expérience similaire l'an passé au même endroit où nous avions passé une semaine dont 4 jours de tempête de neige. La station avais alors mis plus d'énergie à dégager (jour et nuit) le parking qu'à ouvrir les pistes. Ajouté à cela un moniteur de ski qui m'a conseillé de ne plus revenir car je ne trouvais pas normal de devoir sortir de son espace de ski pour enfant où j'étais dans un coin avec ma fille de 3 ans et le fait que vraiment on mange très mal pour un tarif absolument pas modique, je déconseille vraiment cette station. Qui pourtant devrait être agréable du fait de son emplacement géographique et de toutes ses pistes. Dommage.

C# and Java

I am currently in charge of a little project developped in C#. First all, I am not really fond of Microsoft products... But nevertheless, I accepted to try this language with an open mind.
First the transition from Eclipse to Visual Studio is rather painful. Eclipse enables many more actions (but perhaps I don't know enough of VS...).
Next, C# is exasperating by its way of redefining Java features and changing them just enough so you don't feel at home. This is true for the syntax and a bunch of little things.
And finally, what I hate most about C# is its lack of useful methods on datastructures. You really feel that the language is developped for stupid web development without any interesting algorithm. For example I can not extract a subdictionnary from a dictionary or even add a complete dictionary dictionary to an already existing one.
But, on the other hand you can use features such as properties, that, in my opinion, are superfluous and even dangerous as they hide the encapsulation principle, that from my experience is not always weel understood by developpers...

That was my contribution to the debate of Java versus C#.

SVN and word

Hi ! I'm back.
Since the TH-55 is officially dead, I was not able to make my long serie of tips... Nevermind, I will now post links about the technical problems I encounter. The first is the problem of the documentation management in a IT project. I know that if you use a real tool such as LaTeX or Docbook you don't have any problem, even CVS works. But now that I'm an IT professional I must use the mââârvelous Microsoft word !! And of course, as the files are binaries you don't know what happens... In fact you know, for example it's a disaster with plain CVS. There might exist a solution but I don't know it.
However, the problem is different with subversion. According to the following pages it is possible and it works ok.
http://freemind.s57.xrea.com/xdocdiff/e/index.html

http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2003-03/0250.shtml

I will try and tell more on this subject. But I'm confident.

Synchronizing the TH-55

Here it is, finally I can synchronize my clié TH-55 with linux !! I just waited for the stock debian kernel 2.6.6 to arrive, set the jpilot port to /dev/ttyUSB0 and there goes the data.

Otherwise, I don't have much to say. I still spend a lot of time sleeping so my development projects aren't developped... But one day...

My TH-55

This is the first post of a long serie about my TH-55 (clie TH-55 on clieplaza). I will post here my findings about the interaction between this thing and linux (in particular Debian testing) and some links to useful software (preferably free).

As I am at the moment too occupied and too lazy to patch my kernel, I do not synchronize the TH-55 with the desktop. But it won't last.
Nevertheless I found out that I can access the memorystick very easily. In fact the transfer application pre-installed on the TH-55 make it respond as a mass-storage device. You just need to mount it thereafter.

I was very happy to found out that one, because I don't have to start windows to make my transfers anymore.

Mangeur de cigogne.

My collegue and friend Jean-Francois asked me to link to his gourmet site specialized in bird cooking "mangeurs de cigognes". At least, here comes the link:
http://mangeur-de-cigogne.is-a-geek.com. This is a link which claims that a mangeur de cigogne is eating cigognes...

Enjoy it, and most important, link it !