vaporware

learning
futile effort
when the word ‘standard’ means
nothing more than a suggestion
vapor

[3:40 PM]
Sorry for being so quiet for two weeks – I’ve been distracted with a personal project.

I’m working on a scouting application for the robotics team we’re mentoring – ideally, you’d be able to use it on a PDA or cellphone as I’m writing it in Java Micro Edition. The going theory was the ability to install it in multiple locations, using Bluetooth to share information in the spirit of gracious professionalism…

Yeah. So, first, I had to find an installable version of the KVM that I could use on my HP iPAQ 5455 (Keiichi), which was easier in the end than it looked, as I found one from IBM. Fine. And it barely installs – I can’t use the descriptor, but it’s working if I use the archive file to load it… okay.

However – J9, IBM’s KVM, doesn’t support Bluetooth (JSR-82). Java has standards, but they seem to be haphazardly implemented across devices and environments.

So, basically, I spent all this time coding an app that might not be able to communicate with the Bluetooth stack on my device. *sigh* I’m looking for work-arounds still without terribly much hope of finding one, and certainly not in time for the competition next week. Not that this was urgent, since realy few are going to use it, but I had hoped to simply modify it for next year….

BUT, the bigger problem is that I am going to be writing a wine inventory program later this year. I’d wanted to do it in Java for the same reason that I’d used Java ME for the scouting app – so it would be universally useable – but it’s starting to look like I might have to use C# to get the Bluetooth capability I want….

So much for standards.