Monday 2 weeks ago, I started in my new job at WapTheWeb (WTW). WTW is a relatively small company, working mainly with mobile solutions. For example they created a system for ordering doctor appointments and prescriptions through SMS, which has become very popular. The work is interesting and diverse, which suits me very well! Also the people working there are very nice, and I already know some of them quite well, as I worked as a consultant for them a year ago.
Since I’m in a bragging mood (see previous post), I want to tell about the computer I bought a few months ago. For many years I’ve been sceptical to buying computers from Dell, HP, Compaq, etc…, and have chosen to assemble all my computers from scratch. But in this case I was talked into buying a Dell Studio XPS, and so far have not regretted it even a little bit!
First of all, the computer is very quiet, which is a big plus when you spend a lot of time on it. Second, with the new Intel i7-core processor and 6 Gb RAM it really has all the power I need for my work. It’s not the best gaming-computer, as the graphics card is very cheap, but I don’t really do a lot of gaming anymore. For heavy multi-tasking it’s great!
Also, the 23″ widescreen LCD is great!
I have been working on a photo-application in J2ME. The main challenge turned out to be thumbnail generation. This isn’t really hard to do in the first place, the problem is the limited memory available. Trying to load photos captured with your mobile’s camera will most likely give you memory problems.
There is however one solution, which is to extract the thumbnail stored in the photo’s EXIF. Both Sony Ericsson and Nokia generate and put the thumbnail in the JPEG when you take a photo, but there is of course no guarantee that all photos have one.
The algorithm for extracting the thumbnail should be something like this: (where rByte is the byte you read)
1. Read through byte stream until you get rByte & 0xFF == 0xD8
2. Read thumbnail data until you find rByte & 0xFF == 0xD9
I found the necessary code as part of a slideshow tutorial (look for ImageFunctions.java in the downloadable source code)
Today I tested Java Service Wrapper by Tanuki Software. Basically it’s software for running your Java application as a service or daemon, and really eases the task of starting, stopping, logging and monitoring your application.
It worked like a dream, and was fairly easy to set up!
I’ve now started working at WapTheWeb’s office at Tiller, not too far from where I live. I’m doing some work for them, and they’ve been kind to lend me some space where I can do Microways work too.
The only downside is that the bus takes around 40 minutes, so getting a car might be a good idea…
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