LGE VX8000 and ICamera (Brew)

Have been trying to get my app working on LGE VX8000 and was facing all sorts of issues starting with finding the drivers for the USB cable. For some reason the drivers for LG VX6000 dont work too well with the VX 8000. Got hold of the drivers for VX 7000 from LG(Click on the link for USB Modem Driver) website and it works like a charm now.

But another issue was that I couldn't get ICamera to work on the phone. The device kept throwing out the error code EPRIVLEVEL when I tried to create an instance of ICamera in my code. Finally found out how to avoid that. In the MIF a dependency has to be added to the class Id AEECLSID_CAMERA. All I had to do was create a bid file camera.bid and add that to the MIF file in the dependencies tab. I have included the text of camera.bid below:

-------------Camera.bid--------

#ifndef CAMERA_BID#define CAMERA_BID
#define AEECLSID_CAMERA 0x01002013
#endif //CAMERA_BID

--------------------------------------

Feels good to finally be able to play around with the phone. The device has a lot of promise and the screen size is as big as the series 60 devices. Will post more about the phone in the days to come.

IHtmlViewer - Input Mode for Data (Brew)

My frustration continues with IHtmlViewer in my BREW application. I have a HTML Form that I want the user to fill out. Some of the fields can be only numeric and it becomes a pain if the user has to use the Multi- tap input mode for this.

The viewer operates in 2 modes - the Inline edit mode and the normal mode (Each field opens up in another window). In the second mode it does allow the user to change the input mode but I would prefer using the inline edit mode.

Have searched through the API and I cannot seem to find a single method that would set the Input mode. Offcourse I can do that for a ITextCtl that I create but not for IHTMLViewer. I can see why it was designed in such a way but that doesnt help me :-(.

The power of a Weekend

I was analysing my time management and just realised how important a weekend is to my existence. Just woke up about an hour back and have been lazying around watchin TV. My room is in a mess and the only reason for this is that I have skipped the last couple of weekends.

So what are the most important tasks that a person like me performs during the weekend.
- Laundry
- Collect all the small stuff lying around in the room and dump it in a big box ( well hidden from the view)
- Go out and blow a lot of money.
- Check the mail (snail mail)
- Get the grocery shoppin done so that I do not have to rely on chineese delivery every night.
- Check the bank and credit card accounts.
- Read other peoples blogs.
etc etc

My room is in a mess right now .. theres stuff all around the room and most of it is trash ... I was supposed to go to work today but I guess thanks to the expected snow storm in the evening I will just tanker down at home today. This should give me some time to get my lazy bones into action and get some stuff done. But right now ..its time to hit the bed again and lazy around a bit more :-).... weeekeend ... I just love it.

Books added to the collection

Over the last month I have been adding some good books to my collection. I usually depend on articles on the web and when I started out programming for mobile devices most of these books werent available...



1) J2ME :
This one has just come out - Developing Scalable Series 40 Applications -- A Guide for Java Developers. I have the earlier book by Micheal and read only a couple of chapters... rest of the stuff was not relavant for me. This book however is a charm. I know it deals with only nokia specific issues but it does provide a lot of handy code examples that will work on all phones. I think this could be labled as a complete j2me book. I havent read any j2me books and am sure there might be better ones out there but this book does it for me.

2) BREW : Wireless Game Development in C C++ with BREW
This book is really good and I mean it. I have been through a 4- 5 chapters and loved the writing style. Some people may argue that its a bit old but compared to what is out there these days this book still rocks.

3) Symbian series 60
Well Its been a long time since I worked in this platform but will have to start soon. So I got these 2 books.
- Developing Series 60 Applications
- Professional Symbian Programming.
The first book i believe is the best to start off coding with. It explains everything and gets u started. Very easy to get through the symbian learning curve with this one. The second book ..i just got a very good deal on it and i figure it will be a good reference book as time goes on. Havent even opened the book yet.

Will be adding more books as I look towards more time reading stuff ... havent done that for a while.

On the way back - Seoul Airport

on the way back right now. The sleep cycle that I had planned for this trip worked out. Now I have to see whether I still have a Jet lag. I am feeling tired though , would love to lie down in my own bed.
Have been doing some thinking on the plane (when I was awake) and have come to the conclusion that there are a few things that I want to do in the coming years. Offcourse I havent set any date for when to accomplish these tasks...yet...
- visit amsterdam for 3 days.
- go sky diving
- drive from New Jersey to Seattle in a week. This should be fun.
- Be regular in the gym for atleast a month.
- get up everyday at 6:00 am (work days) and go to sleep on 11:30 pm.
- Would love to go Bungie JUmping some time

well thats a part of the list .. cant wait for the plane to land. This is torture - sitting in one seat for over 12 hours. Will close down my Laptop now and try to get another hours sleep.