MaxiVista - Turn my laptop into a LCD monitor!!
MaxiVista is a very amazing application that does something I looked for for a long while: the ability to turn a laptop into a extended video screen. (
http://www.maxivista.com/download.htm) However, the old version (1.0.18 and before) was a bit buggy and didn't work on my laptop. The latest version 1.5.3 works very nice between my desktop and laptop, though. Now I am seriously thinking about shelling out US$49 to get this software.
It's been a while since the last time I saw some software technology that I would say "Wow, this is awesome!" :-D , and this was one of those moment when I saw this application in action .
More reserach on MySQL unicode issue
I am still reseraching on the MySQL unicode issue. I found these articles that I will drill on after I assisted my brother to set up a network:
- http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/175899
- http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/SHOW_WARNINGS.html
- http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Charset-asian-sets.html
An RSS Editor, free
I need to hand code some RSS feed as the site I maintain not a dynamic site and yet I want to try out RSS. After some brief search I found a free RSS Editor which exist in the form of a FireFox plug-in. I will give it a try a while later and see how good it works.
One reason to not use SQLyog
I found that there are a lot of situation which the MySQL throw back a warning after execute a SQL statement. If I do it in console, I can see the warning using "show warnings; ". But if I use SQLyog, nothing will tell me that something is not 100% right. So may be I should stop being lazy and using the console more often.
BTW, with MySQL Query Browser and Control Center, using MySQL becomes as easy as using Microsoft SQL Server. It's almost horrifying when you consider that MySQL is free.
MySQL 4.1 and Unicode : Still some puzzles to solve
I was all excited when I realized that MySQL 4.1 (http://www.mysql.com/) finally support Unicode. I always want to write an application that can store information in English, Japanese, Traditioanl Chinese and Simplied Chinese, all in a single filed. For instance, I have customers from mainland China and Japan, and I want to store the customer name in the same table field. I cannot do this without the help of Unicode.
So I installed it and try it put it in the test. I also downloaded the new SQLyog 4.0 (http://www.webyog.com), the best MySQL GUI which is now a freeware software (for all the regular features.
The first thing I recognize was that SQLyog 4.0 still doesn't support Unicode on the UI. So that pretty much rule out my plan of using it to develop my multilingual application.
That means I have to use the console (mysql.exe) instead.
I logged in using the default root user (I know. I know. I will change it later :-P ) .... and created the following table:
> mysql.exe -h localhost -u root -p
use test
CREATE TABLE `test_utf8` (
`TestLang` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
`TestText` varchar(100) ,
`remark` varchar(100),
PRIMARY KEY (`TestLang`),
UNIQUE KEY `TestLang` (`TestLang`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB CHARACTER SET utf8
;
And then I try to insert some values:
insert into test_utf8 (TestLang, TestText) values ('Trad Chinese', '香港人想看港產電影');
insert into test_utf8 (TestLang, TestText) values ('Japanese', '横須賀まりこちゃんのギャラリーです');
insert into test_utf8 (TestLang, TestText) values ('Simp Chinese', '历史最高在线纪录');
But when I try to read the data back:
select * from test_utf8
I got everything in "????" except the traditioanl Chinese characters. Well I am using a US Windows XP OS and set all non-Unicode apps to treat all double characters as Traditional Chinese. I don't if that matters.
If I use "set names 'utf8' ", even the Traditional Chinese characters will become garbage. I have to "correct" it by using "set names 'default'" .
I tried Control Center and MySQL QueryBrowser, and I still cannot get Japanese and Simplified Chinese result.
So as for now, I guess I'll fall back to the plan B solution: Microsoft Access 2003. At least on the UI I see three different lanaguage on the gridbox at the same time.
I know. Sad. I'll visit it this issue again when I have time.
Welcome to So Dev
If you are a software developer, you probably understand that there are so many new technologies coming up every day. It's hard to keep track of all of them, and among all the new stuff find items that are useful to you regarding to your career path and/or your personal interest. I know I have hard time doing so. That's why I am planning to use this blog to write down everything I learn along my journey of software development. And since you are here reading this, hello and welcome! Hope you will enjoy this blog, and learn some stuff through my struggle and searching experience.
