Pocket PC Weather and Bus Arrival Time App

I recently discovered that translink had released an API to the bus arrival time information.

http://www.mweisman.com/transit.html

Initially I wanted a way to check when the bus will arrive on my phone. I did a search on the Translink website for my bus and stops and then saved the table in Excel after sanitizing all the html artifacts. It worked well until I found out that the times changed and I would have to create another one.

Anyway, I sort of deviated from my original idea and came up with a program that would pull data from Translink and update periodically on one of my PocketPCs that I don't use anymore. It is coded in C#.NET.

I also added current weather and weather forecast using the WeatherBug API as well. Here is how it looks.

The bus times are updated every minute, current weather every 10 minutes and forecast every half hour over the device's wireless connection.

The station ID's are hard-coded but it shouldn't be too difficult to find where they are and change them. The city ID also hard-coded.

Install:
http://www3.telus.net/mrchiu/blog/bustime/BusTime.cab

Source:
http://www3.telus.net/mrchiu/blog/bustime/BusTime.zip

Comments welcome.

Sony TZ battery broken clip fixed

The other day while I was running for my bus, I noticed my shoelaces became untied. As I was bending down to tie it, my bag slipped from my shoulder onto ground. I thought it should have been okay since it was in a padded sleeve. A few days later, I noticed the battery wouldn't clip and kept coming loose. The clip that holds the battery in place broke off. Glue didn't work so well.

I was about to disassemble the battery to get to the clip when I discover there is an easier way to fix it. I discovered there is a hole where it seems like a screw would fit to hold the battery. There is a sticker on the hole. If you take out the battery, you'll see a hole with a white bottom (sticker). So poke it out, take one of the screws from the bottom, attach the battery and secure it with the screw. Put the sticker over the hole where you took the screw from.


It works quite well if you only use one battery. =)

Sony Vaio touchpad with circular scroll and back/forward in Firefox

I finally got around to fixing the back/forward functionality in Firefox. I could have just modified the original Sony touchpad driver, but in the process I used Dell's driver and got circular scrolling too!

Anyway, I googled this before and couldn't get it working. The problem was that the posts did not explicitly say what to do. Here's what to do explicitly.

What to do:

Assuming the driver is already installed, download a hex editor (like xvi32). In the hex editor, open .../DellTPad/Apoint.exe and search for "Netscape". A note for Vista users, you need to right-click xvi32 and run as Administrator to edit any files in the Program Files directory.

Edit Netscape to "_Firefox" , the _ MUST be a space character, so you need to edit the HEX value of _.

If you use xvi32, in the left pane, select the position of _ and enter "20" or similarly, you could just press the space bar in the right pane as well.

When you're done it should look like this.


I also have uploaded an install with the pre-modified apoint.exe -

http://rapidshare.com/files/169566570/touchpad.zip.html

For front/back feature in Firefox using the Dell driver, a little registry modification is required. Instructions by pyr0000 taken from http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=308940.

look for "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Alps\APoint"
with in that folder look for "UseCustomGUI"
double click and change the value data to "0"
close regedit
open mouse properties and you will have all the features unlocked. circle scrolling are within the dell tab and the back/forward is under gestures tab.

Also, in Vista, I found that the when the cursor changes during scrolling, it kills the Vista cursor animations. So I just disabled the change of cursor by changing CursorChangeType to 0.

If the mouse properties don't show up properly, kill and restart ApMsgFwd.exe, ApntEx.exe and Apoint.exe.

Toshiba Cradle USB Power Mod

I took this from my old blog.

This mod is quite simple. It involves taking the cradle apart and solder the 5V power rails from the usb straight to the power jack. I am not sure why Toshiba did not do this in the first place. It saves a spot on my power bar and there is one less cable to deal with. Here it goes.

Technical Power Stuff (skip if you don't care):
USB has a power limit of 500mA. The toshiba ac adapter outputs 5V at 2A. You would think that usb would not provide enough current. I thought so too, so I measured it because it did not show up in device manager. The charging circuit for the lithium battery is a pulse charger so it didn't register any current, although for the e750 with wifi, it says 2mA. So when I measured the current, it is about 230mA. Charging through the usb is slower because of the lower current. It took around 2-3 hours to charge fully instead of 30mins but whatever. =)

1. Taking apart the cradle: Peel the little padded foots on the bottom to expose the screws; put those somewhere that no one will touch, get stuck to them and run off, I lost mine that way =(. Once those screws are out and it comes apart, unscrew everything on the inside as well to remove the circuit board.


2. You should see something like the picture above right now. Cut one or two wires to size and strip a tiny bit off the ends. Solder them like so. NOTE: I have discovered that by using the usb power, they share a common ground therefore, you really do not require the white/orange wire. Once done, if you're confident of your soldering, put everything back together. If not, test it like this in the next picture.


If you did it correctly, the charging light should come up!


Picture of a e750 testing the cradle.


Here is a picture of a e330 charging without the ac adapter. =)


For those that are wondering if you can use the ac adapter while it is plugged it, yes you can. If you are skeptical, I tried it myself. It works because both power sources are in parallel. Here are the pics.

ハロウィンパーティー

昨夜はFubarというクラブのハロウィンパーティーに１時半まで過ごした。昨日も仕事だったからもう疲れた〓けど行って見たいから、行ってしまった。仮装したかったんだぁ…ガングロかなあって思ってた。でも、私のメーキャップアーティストはいきなり行けなかった〓まぁいいやぁ〓友達達も仮装しなかったけどした人たくさんいた。一番仮装したのはスティッチとしてガングロの２人だったと思う。めっちゃ可愛かった〓クラブに踊ったり、カクテル飲んだりした。最近は酒あんまり飲まなかったから、弱くなっちゃったん。たった２杯、酔いが出た〓１時ぐらいまだclub hoppingしたかったけど、随分疲れてなった。お帰りは友達の車で家に送ってくれた。楽しかった。

english:
went to the halloween party last night at Fubar in Tenjin. it was rather a small club. i didnt get to dress up as i planned. i was bloody tired from work and violin lesson during the day. getting too old for this stuff. haha. none of of my buddies dressed up either but there were lots of people that did. one that especially caught my eye were two ganguro girls that dressed up as stitch. so cute. i was thinking of going bar hopping but i wanted to go home. so a friend drove me home around 130. need to get more often. haha.

Hmmm...

This time in English. Although I would prefer Japanese. It almost feels more natural though I still suck. I think I might start speaking Japanese spotaneously to friends back home. 〓

Anyway, had a slow long weekend and started the week with a slow day at work. very slow... Some interesting work is in planning though. I will be teaching English to real students in about a month. No experience? ok!〓 It doesnt sound too difficult though. Only once a week for 8 weeks. Not exactly sure what I will be teaching yet. Bad words? 〓 Well, for sure bribes gladly accepted.

Picture is of tonight's dinner. 美味しいそうね

日本に最後４ヶ月

今回日本語する。けど大部カナダの友達読めないから大丈夫かな。多分ほうがいいと思う。「残念ながら、日本語を勉強しなさい」ね(^_-)〜☆

さてさて、まだ４ヶ月ぐらいあるんだ。(>_<)どうしよかな。まだ帰りたくないぞぉ。帰って学校を続けなければならない。１月はけっこ寒くなって、大変だ。(T-T)

でも、現在は嬉しいだね。友達、仕事、SO...?、家のヤモリちゃん→写真。ハハ(^^;大変なことは帰った後で考えよう。

日本語難しいなぁ…