A team of young software engineers (most of them students, I think) have came out with Burglish Converter project which is currently in prototype 2.2 and public testing stage.

This is an on-going research activity to develop a computer system that can translate Burglish(Burmese- English) words into pure Burmese words in Burmese font. The system is currently being developed by a few Burmese software engineers who are motivated in Language Technology.

A few years back, my brother and I thought of doing the same project but as lazy arses as we are, we couldn’t motivate enough to start at all and finally forgotten about it.

We are glad that someone actually doing this and though the project is very basic with lots of limitations, I’m proud to see something happening after all.

I don’t know much of actual back-end processes they doing but seems like they are collectiong Buglish words inputs, retype them in Burmese and log them back to the database. Not an efficient way but it does work.
There is no standard in Buglish writing yet, but I’m sure we will have some standards soon as rite now I can see a few word structures like putting “Wai Sar Nha Lone Pout(:)”, eg. for normal word “kar” will create no “:” but once you type “karr”, it will add (:). Same thing for other words like “Min” – “Minn” etc.

You can tell there is going to be lots of spelling errors while converting specific Buglish word to Burmese word cos’ there are lots of different ways we use one character/word. Nevertheless it’s quite fun typing up and checking the conversion.
Oh yah, it does spell my name correctly so I LIKE it!!

So here I am just spreading the word so that you can go test it out and in turn help those developers collect the inputs.

Visit Burglish Converter Project page.

Technorati Tags: Burglish, Burmese-English, Language Convertor, Myanmar

I’ve been using this widget for a while and haven’t write about it. All thanks to Jason who used it in one of his project and forwarded me the link.

mapsurface is a web page activity widget that helps you quickly see how people find, navigate and value the pages of your web site. Press Alt X

Its purpose is to provide an understanding of how users find, navigate and value web pages. It displays this information in a compact widget which sits above the web page. Andy Budd has written anexcellent review which is worth reading.

It’s very easy to implement and interesting to test out, you just need to add a line of JS script in your header section. You have to request for the trial invitation cos’ it’s still in a test drive.

It’s good for a site with lots of hits/visitors so that you can see the activities properly. My site stats won’t be that interesting.
Still I like it, pretty cool stuffs.

Just press Alt X keys and you’ll see the widget pop up. More interesting this is, once you click on “map”, it shows the click through links across the page.

Well I’m loving it and you guys can test it out too so better request invite from mapsurface.com.

I was fighting with asp dropdownlist for not being able to combine two columns directly. Say I got the same scenario as the following:

Suppose you want a drop-down list to display both the first name and the last name of each employee in the company.

I should be able to use DataTextField to combine two columns like:

ddlemployeename.DataTextField = "firstname" + ', " + "lastname";

But noooo…it gives me this error:

DataBinder.Eval: ‘System.Data.DataRowView’ does not contain a property with the name firstname, lastname.

You have to go mingle with your storeprocedure or Sqlcommand statement to change the string. Then only you can set that new string to DataTextField. Something like below. Very inefficient!

There is another efficient way of adding multiple fields in Dropdownlist using DataSet and DataTable by adding a new column on fly in DataTable object.
I did tried that method, but didn’t work for me, I’ll have to try again later. Anyway that code is in page 4 of the referenced article, so you can check that out as well.

SQL Statement
SELECT lastname + ‘, ‘ + firstname AS ‘EmployeeName’
FROM Employees

Binding Code
ddlemployeename.DataTextField = “EmployeeName”;

You can use a data-binding expression to set the DataSource property. The expression you use must evaluate to a .Net object that exposes the ICollection interface. You cannot use expressions to set the other properties. The values for DataTextField and DataValueField each must match the name of one field in the data source, so you cannot assign DataTextField by combining two or more fields in the datasource.

What the hell that bold part suppose to mean? For the moment I’ll just change my storeproc for that and play around with DataTable column later.

Any of you have any better way of solving this problem please let me know.
Thanks.

Ref: Data Bound Controls (.PDF)

I was reading, “Are You Following the Instructions on the Paint Can” article on Codeing Horror, which directed me to The Jole Test: 12 Steps to Better Code and thought I might as well check out his checklist.

1. Do you use source control?
   Yes, we do. We use Visual Source Safe, VSS, as our source control.
2. Can you make a build in one step?
   This is a tough one. We did have a batch file which do all those check outs and build all projects at once but the file itself screwed up a few times and we gave up using it (lazy to fix). So answer to this step, no, we can’t make a build in one step (for the moment).
3. Do you make daily builds?
   I think we do daily builds 90% of the time, well atleast I do final build before I go home everyday. We got a small team so never really happen a serious source breaking. Yes good idea about babysitting punishment.
4. Do you have a bug database?
   My first impression on this, What’s bug database?, but then he was just talking about Bug Tracking. So yes, we have bug tracking list where we usually update after every build.
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
   I think half of the time, Yes, the other half, No.”zero defects methodology”, good point.
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
   Definitely No. We do have some schedule in the beginning but then it keeps falling apart after a few week. All of us really slack at keeping up-to-date schedule.
7. Do you have a spec?
   Yes, we do but pretty bad spec cos it’s some what incomplete. I hate writing and I don’t like the idea of sending programmers to “an intensive course in writing”. So I propose for “hiring smart program managers” to do all the write up.
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
   Ah…I guess so, most of the time. Well that doesn’t really affect me since my eyes and ears are pretty well trained. Once I’m into something, I won’t see or hear a thing around me. You can yell right at my ear and I won’t hear you. But if I got stuck or frustrated and lost my concentration, tiny bit of noise would annoy me like hell and there follow my bad mood.
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
   We do have a few grumpy programmers over the tools we got to use. But understanding for the company as it’s a small one and I guess what they provide is not the best but pretty much efficient.
10. Do you have testers?
    Testers? Ah…does PM count as a tester? No, we don’t have dedicated testers.
11. Do new candidates write code during their interview?
    Not at all. I did have to explain a functionality of written piece of code during my interview. I guess the main reason I got job was cos’ I was a GIRL which they lack and need to add some feminine in their team. Pretty bias I know, but what the heck, I turn out ok.(I think)
12. Do you do hallway usability testing?
    Usability test is one thing we don’t do often. So yah we need to improve on this.

To summ up, I guess we do ok considering we have a small team. Ofcos some good points to note and need improvement.

So how did you do with the checklist over your team?

Technorati Tags: Programming, Programmers, Checklist, Coding, Project Management

I’m working with Japanese website these days and having a hard time viewing Japanese characters.

For some reason, I can view Japanese character sets on my firefox and not on my IE.
Probably I might have installed asian language pack on my Firefox or not sure…
Anyway I was having a difficulty viewing characters in my MS Word as I can’t see a thing.
I was doing site updates only by copying blank page selection and paste it on my html page then view it on my Firefox which is not at all efficient.

Then Zatlite came in and did something as 1,2,3 to my setup and there it is, I now can view all characters in MS word as well as in dreamweaver.
Hmm how come I didn’t know about it?
Sayar khaw par tal A Ba yal.

Here are the steps to enable asian language pack on your system.

# Select Control Panel > Regional and Language Options
# Choose “Language” tab > Check “Install files for East Asian languages”
# Restart your computer and done.

Now that I got google page, I don’t know how to make use of it. It’s very simple to create web pages and there are ready made templates to choose from.
And also can change upto 4 different layouts.

Will check it out properly later, just posting some screen shots here. And thinking how to use it.

Technorati Tags: Google Pages, Screen Shots, Web Design, Site Reviews

I just discovered the change in Bloglines feed management functions. They all Ajax now. Very smooth. Alot easier than before. Some of the functions you can do are as followed:

• single/multiple drag-n-drop folders and files,
• delete items by selecting single/multiple items and press “Delete” button.
• Ordering (A-Z), (Z-A) or manually
• Single-click to select.
• Click again to rename.
• Double-click to edit details.
• Ctrl-click to select multiple.
• Shift-click to select range.
• To reorder, drag and drop into place.

I also notice these days Bloglines feed updates are very fast and Rojo gone too slow for some feeds especially blogspot feeds. So I guess I’ll be switching back to blogline and see how things go.

PS. Oh you guys see my little logo at the right or my feed?
No icon yet, I think icons are only for those feeds with lots of subscriptions cos’ those are stored on Blogline server so they must have add them manually and not from favicon link…well me don’t know.
But I’m glad to see my logo(or whatever that is) image showing up there.

Hmmm for some reason my feed got error [!] message. I don’t know why or may be I must have done something wrong or… well just have to check this post got picked up there. If not then definitely something wrong with my feed.

Links: Subscribe to my Feed
Check out my subscriptions

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, feedreaders, rojo, updates, ajax