bkil vs. programming

Psion 5 sighted in movie Taxi Taxi ! It's just after the delegation scene pictured first. I provide the following reduced quality screenshots as proof under fair use assumptions. I retain no copyright to the images, see the movie's page for copyright information .

I have input more than 1 million characters of notes, coursework, ideas, plans and doodling on the device. I've programmed some simple calculations on it to aid my purchases. Sadly, I never got around to develop in Java for the device. I've finished all 50 Sokoban levels on it for the delight of my good old mathematician roommate many years ago. :-) All in all, it was worth it. However, I've retired it in favour of my netbook last year. Though, I still carry it around in my backback as a backup solution to this day. I also accompany it with an extra set of rechargeable batteries.

The backlight is out, what am I going to do now?! Nah, actually I would only be in trouble if it wasn't a sunlight readable, electroluminescent transflective FSTN LCD! :-) You see, my current usage pattern involved less than 1% of backlight use, and in almost all cases it was more of a convenience than a necessity. It is, however, a sign of deterioration of the flexible cable, so I am getting a bit worried. I am prepared for all possibilities.

I write almost all articles and text on my Ericsson MC218 when I'm traveling and have nothing better to do. Note that I can touch type almost as fast on my mini-Dvorak as on my full-sized one, so this is by no means a limitation (>55WPM)! :-) When I get home, I upload them to my PC, covert them with a simple script of mine, proof-read them and run a second pass of spell checking. I then put them in a waiting queue based on completion ratio and importance, sometimes doing a bit splitting at the same time. Once in a while, I take one from the top of the stack and publish it. Hence for me, there's no such thing as lack of time or inspiration! :-D

I have finally uploaded my nice OPL program that I used with the fridge mentioned. It can be found at my scripts , in the repo! Direct link: >> fridge.opl << It might happen that some more small programs of mine will follow.

I did some experimenting with my handheld computer, the Psion 5MX clone. I wrote a pretty neatly structured program in OPL, that would assist me at shopping. You see I was in a need for some containers that could efficiently fit in our fridge. I made measurements as a hole, and on a shelf basis, and input that as (factored out) constants. The structure of this console application is as follows, almost literally. The program runs in a loop until interrupted (by nonsense input). The loop first asks for the dimensions of the container in question, then outputs the computed efficiencies for each shelf. The efficiency for a shelf is the maximum of possible packing efficiencies for the shelf. Possible packing methods include a simple fixed set of orientations and some combinations. This is an almost trivial solution that gives a practically perfect approximation to the three dimensional packing problem with real world constrains (all container boxes facing up, etc.). The most difficult p...