CD Library

Well this was fun to make. I picked up my favorite language (Common Lisp) interpreter (CLISP 2.40), an API to use Windows' MFC controls and widgets (Graphic-Forms, by Jack Unrue - thank you!), and started up building some abstractions to make it usable as a UI builder. The output was an initially example application to catalog a media collection. Now I can see this getting bigger, and even useful for the likes of me that own tons of misplaced discs in between home, workplace, several cases and boxes and even in friends' places.



The details and source code will be released as soon as I get some more spare time (I may rush it if get any special request, but hey - I know the outcome isn't *that* good!). For now, grab the installer here. Note the two buttons called "New" and "Remove" aren't working yet!

Emacs and portuguese spell checking

I've been using ispell for ages, now. And it's been working out pretty fine, imho. But today, as I was setting up a new work-machine, I found out that aspell had Portuguese dictionaries with a few months old, instead of 5 or 6 years old versions I had with ispell... So what have I found? not only Emacs recognizes the cygwin aspell and simply ignores any ispell it may find, but the Portuguese dictionary installed with NO complication at all. For future reference's sake, here's where I downloaded the Portuguese aspell from:

http://natura.di.uminho.pt/download/sources/Dictionaries/aspell/

If you want there's also the ispell 3.3.02 for windows, found here, and the Portuguese dictionary here. But I strongly recommend getting aspell from cygwin, it's the fastest way to have emacs spelling!



Here's my emacs incantations:

(setq

"~/words"

'((\"^To:[^\\n,]+\\\\.pt[ \\t\\n, . \"portugues\"))

t

"american"

'((nil "[A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛçÇ]" "[^A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛçÇ]" "[']" nil ("-B") nil iso-8859-15)

("american" "[A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛçÇ]" "[^A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛçÇ]" "[']" nil ("-B") "~latin9" iso-8859-15)

("british" "[A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛçÇ]" "[^A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛçÇ]" "[']" nil ("-B") nil iso-8859-15)

("english" "[A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛçÇ]" "[^A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛçÇ]" "[']" nil ("-B") nil iso-8859-15)

("portugues" "[A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêôÂÊÔçÇ]" "[^A-Za-zàèìòùÀÈÌÒÙáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚãõÃÕâêôÂÊÔçÇ]" "[-']" t ("-C" "-d" "portugues") "~latin1" iso-8859-1)

("portutex" "[A-Za-z\\\\\\\\]" "[^A-Za-z\\\\\\\\]" "[---~`'^{}]" nil nil "~tex" iso-8859-1)))

powered by performancing firefox

Free music for everyone

So you know of a specific group, artist, song name, and you never got arround to have the album in your hands. Say you'd like to show it to someone. Feel free to try out the hype machine @ http://hypem.com . This great page looks for mp3 in blogs, and presents it to us in a little playlist player, for our delight.



Since we're at free music, please don't forget the great last.fm, that keeps playing fine tunes I don't know I'm about to love :)

DIY Mousepad

I got myself a MX Revolution laser mouse. It works pretty much perfectly, but I need a decent mousepad, so as I started to look through my options, I saw this:

The Best Gaming Mouse Pad You’ll Ever Make - PaulStamatiou.com



I must give this a try, but I like the number of good comments on the page!

Untitled post on Sun Feb 04 21:18:14 2007

Posting remembered data in emacs

Here's the important piece of code:

<example>
;; Attach this feature to remember:
(defun blogspot-post-when-remember-maybe ()
(when (y-or-n-p "You might as well send this to your blog, if you're online. Go for it? ")
(let ((body (buffer-string)))
(blogspot nil nil body)
nil)))

(add-hook 'remember-handler-functions 'blogspot-post-when-remember-maybe)
</example>

Emacs sending to blogger, made easy

(defvar blogspot-post-username "yourname"
"The first part of the email address: `blogspot-post-username'.`blogspot-post-blog'@blogger.com")

(defvar blogspot-post-blog-list '("blog1" "blog2")
"List with second parts of the email address: `blogspot-post-username'.`blogspot-post-blog'@blogger.com")

(require 'cl)
(defun blogspot (title url &optional text)
"Opens a gnus msg buffer with the active region or the parameters passed in the body.
Configure `blogspot-post-username' and `blogspot-post-blog-list' to set it up."
(interactive "sPost title:
sPost link (tip - an empty string won't create the link): ")
(let* ((blogspot-post-blog (completing-read "Where to? " blogspot-post-blog-list nil nil (car blogspot-post-blog-list)))
(to (concat blogspot-post-username "." blogspot-post-blog "@blogger.com"))
(subject (cond ((and title url (not (string= url "")))
(concat "<a href= \""
url
"\">"
title
"</a>"))
(title title)
(t "")))
(body (or text "")))
(let ((gnus-posting-styles
(mapcan (lambda (x)
(list (remove-if (lambda (y) (and (listp y)
(string= (car y) "Face")))
x)))
gnus-posting-styles)))
(gnus-msg-mail to subject))
(save-excursion
(when body
(raise-frame)
(insert body)))
(message "Edit the buffer and press \\C-c \\C-c to post it to %s." blogspot-post-blog)))

(defun blogspot-region (beg end title url)
"Call `blogspot-text' and inserts the active region as the post's body."
(interactive "r
sPost title:
sPost link: ")
(blogspot title url (buffer-substring-no-properties beg end)))

--
Edgar Gonçalves - http://www.esw.inesc-id.pt/~eemg

Software Engineering Group @ INESC-ID
IST/Technical University of Lisbon

Gmail Tips

Here's a great page with tons of usage tips for Gmail:



Gmail Tips - The Complete Collection



Technorati Tags: gmail