David Pratten

Stay on top of your Todo.txt from any (non-IE) browser anywhere!

I am pleased to announce the release of http://todotxttdi.com, a HTML5 Todo.txt app for Dropbox.

Let the content of your Todo.txt drive the user interface,’ and sort and filter anyway you wish, easily enter dates, and manage task dependencies.

Check it out!

Also, Gina Trapani has been kind enough to add a link to the todotxttdi app  from the Todo.txt front page.

HTML5 Todo.txt app for Dropbox with novel user-centric text-driven user interface.

Here are a couple of short examples of ambi functions. These may be copied and pasted into the Ambi Calculator. The first is a recursive implementation of Euclid’s algorithm for finding the Greatest Common Divisor:

function; gcd;
  // A B gcd ;
  // Euclid's algorithm ;
  ifelse ;
    import $b = import $a = $b 0 == ;
    $a export;
    $b $a $b % gcd export ;
  pass;

The second is an iterative function to check if a number is prime.

function ; isprime ;
  // N isprime ;
  // returns boolean;
  for ;
    import  $n = true  $isprime = 2 $i =;
    $isprime $i $n sqrt <=  and  ;
    $i ++ ;
    $n $i %  0 !=  $isprime =  ;
  $isprime export;

I have updated and released a new version of the Ambi RPN Calculator and programming language. Version 0.6.0 includes the following improvements …

• Complete redesign of UI using browser local storage to preserve state across invocations.
• Added ‘My Ambi Functions’ which are persistent. UI now auto recalculates as the expression is edited.
• drop, pow, exp, and inv operators
• Added extensive error reporting.
• Added a Virtual Keyboard
• 9 short lessons on how to use ambi

It has been almost eighteen months since posting to this blog and two years since I returned to Australia with my family in late December 2009. I joined Wesley Mission as a Project Manager and Business Analyst in May 2010.  Project managing an upgrade of  core business systems in Wesley Mission’s hospitals at Ashfield and Kogarah continues to stimulate and challenge with many opportunities to learn and develop new skills.

I have just started using the Chrome Radio Player and search as I may, I was unable to find a single source for the streaming urls of Australian radio stations. I have found them and here is the result of my research. You can plug these URLs into your streaming player. — Enjoy

See this in the news:

• Probono Austrlalia Apr-24
• Non-profit Forum May-02

Announcing the availability of the first implementation of the Knowledge Ferret open source project.

The knowledgeferret.com adds a compelling visual metaphor to the document reader to help busy readers to make sense of large and complicated documents. The Productivity Commissions recent report into the Not-For-Profit sector in Australia is being used as a test of this technology.

The “Knowledge Ferret” is David’s third exploration of adding visual metaphor to large documents. The first was the Visual PMBOK(r) Guide – jospar.com and the second earlier work was for NSW Health’s Protocols and Procedures for Aged Care Assessment

In the “Knowledge Ferret” the visual metaphor is formed by the index on the left hand side of the document. It shows the topic that is currently in focus and the context of this topic. While the user can’t ever see all the topics in a document at one time, if ever a topic is visible, it is always in the same place in relation to all other topics. This means that as the user interacts and explores the document they are simultaneously building a mental map of the whole document.

While a user is reading a topic, the most similar topics in the rest of the document are highlighted in blue. These blue sections are like a ‘radar’ view into the rest of the document and makes connections between the current topic and other topics, possibly many chapters apart.

The search box returns its results using the same dynamic index using green highlighting. The search function is not designed to be exhaustive, but rather to guide the user to the top seven topics that most closely relate to the search term.

The “Most Read” link just under the search box highlights the most frequently read topics in a dark orange colour.

Using the “Share / Save” link, users may comment on via twitter, facebook and a dozen other social media sites about any topic in the document.