Brainripples

I have finally posted the MP3 of the piano reduction of movement 17. (Updated status page is here, from which you can select the MP3 files)

( Why did it take several days? )

Since I'm likely to be visiting Israel next month, I've moved "create a Hebrew flashcards program for my PocketPC" from my "someday" list to my "done" list. I wrote it on Wednesday and populated it with an initial list of about forty words, which I have now learned. I just added a second forty-word list.

I have always sucked at learning vocabulary in a foreign language. (English vocabulary, no problem!) But I've tuned this program to the way I learn, and I can drill myself in short intervals throughout the day, so I think this may actually work.

Announcing a bugfix release of my program to print out crossword puzzles. This version assumes more conservative printer margins; it also lines up the clue numbers better, handles unbreakable clues a little better, and tidies up a few other formatting glitches. It's still not happy with the NYSun puzzle of Friday 9 Feb, though.

Thanks to toonhead_npl's mention of a related project on his blog, I finally whipped together a program to print out .puz files the way I want.

Sometimes it's nice to solve on paper, but AcrossLite maximizes the grid size, which means that the squares change size from one day to the next. Here is a Windows program (NOT Windows Mobile) that lets you pick a directory containing one or more .puz files, select all the ones you want to print at once, and then it prints them two to a page at a constant size. ( details )

Note to lucretia_borgia -- if you have mono installed on your Linux box, this may be an answer to your question "How can I print AcrossLite puzzles in Linux?"

I've just released minor updates to two of my programs for Windows Mobile:

• My crossword program now highlights squares that are supposed to be highlighted (because today's NYSun puzzle uses them).
• My PIM (personal information manager) now supports rudimentary contact info editing and condenses Notes and Tasks into a single view.

Another piece of software for Windows Mobile:

I miss the Palm's PIM (Personal Information Manager). It was so much easier to use than the one that comes with Windows Mobile. So I'm writing my own. It's called GRIM (Greene's Information Manager). Feel free to download it and ask for more features.

So far it doesn't do address-book stuff but it will handle appointments, tasks, and notes. It can be made to back up to a website -- if you want details let me know and I'll explain. (Or wait another week or two for that feature to be more fully productized.)

I like to solve crossword puzzles (anyone here surprsied by this news?) and I like to write software (ditto) so when I switched from a PalmOS PDA to a Windows Mobile PDA, I wrote a program that reads .puz files and lets me solve them. (If this means nothing to you, don't worry about it.) You can download it for free at http://www.greenehouse.com/windowsmobile/.