The world at my hip
May. 19th, 2008 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guppiecatThis little project might be of interest to others out there, so I thought I'd let folks know what I did over the weekend.
Inspired by this instructable but lacking a Psion 5MX (which seems to be only available in Britain), I decided to see what I could do with what I had. Do not expect deep technological wizardry. There's nothing new here.
The Goal: To become even more of an info-geek than I currently am, and carry wikipedia around with me everywhere I go -- accessible independently of signal.
The Equipment: Naught but a Treo and an SD card. (Should work with other Palm devices that take SD cards.)
How:
First of all, check out the Wikipedia for Schools project. In a nutshell, they have taken a portion of wikipedia (the useful part) and produced a "santized" snapshot that is suitable for use in schools. In theory, the information here is generally believed to be accurate and inoffensive. I dislike abridgment, but I think that the usefulness outweighs the censorship concerns.
Second, you download the zip file. While there is a DVD image you can get that has big pretty pictures, you'll be viewing this thing on an itty bitty Palm screen, so why waste the space?
Third, expand the zip file on your hard drive.
Fourth, optionally, you can remove all of the images. Since my Palm has a teensy weensy resolution, AND I run my web browser without images, AND I only have 1Gb SD cards at my disposal, I chose to remove the images. This got the entire project down to 646 Mb (small enough to fit on a card).
Fifth, format a card (name it "wiki") on the Treo and copy the entire wikipedia folder into a "wiki" directory in the "Palm" directory on the card.
Sixth, manually create a bookmark in blazer that links to "file://wiki/Palm/wiki/index.htm"
Lastly, when you need info, slap the special wikipedia SD card into your Treo, fire up blazer and hit the bookmark. It'll be faster than the Internet (via cell) for simple things. Note that you can't search, so everything has to be based on the indexed keywords. If you need complex information, Google is still your best bet, but for quick info this is awfully nice.
Now I just need someone to opensource the Oxford English Dictionary so I can carry that with me too. (No, I'm not talking about this one. If it's been abridged, it defeats the entire purpose of having the OED.)
Inspired by this instructable but lacking a Psion 5MX (which seems to be only available in Britain), I decided to see what I could do with what I had. Do not expect deep technological wizardry. There's nothing new here.
The Goal: To become even more of an info-geek than I currently am, and carry wikipedia around with me everywhere I go -- accessible independently of signal.
The Equipment: Naught but a Treo and an SD card. (Should work with other Palm devices that take SD cards.)
How:
First of all, check out the Wikipedia for Schools project. In a nutshell, they have taken a portion of wikipedia (the useful part) and produced a "santized" snapshot that is suitable for use in schools. In theory, the information here is generally believed to be accurate and inoffensive. I dislike abridgment, but I think that the usefulness outweighs the censorship concerns.
Second, you download the zip file. While there is a DVD image you can get that has big pretty pictures, you'll be viewing this thing on an itty bitty Palm screen, so why waste the space?
Third, expand the zip file on your hard drive.
Fourth, optionally, you can remove all of the images. Since my Palm has a teensy weensy resolution, AND I run my web browser without images, AND I only have 1Gb SD cards at my disposal, I chose to remove the images. This got the entire project down to 646 Mb (small enough to fit on a card).
Fifth, format a card (name it "wiki") on the Treo and copy the entire wikipedia folder into a "wiki" directory in the "Palm" directory on the card.
Sixth, manually create a bookmark in blazer that links to "file://wiki/Palm/wiki/index.htm"
Lastly, when you need info, slap the special wikipedia SD card into your Treo, fire up blazer and hit the bookmark. It'll be faster than the Internet (via cell) for simple things. Note that you can't search, so everything has to be based on the indexed keywords. If you need complex information, Google is still your best bet, but for quick info this is awfully nice.
Now I just need someone to opensource the Oxford English Dictionary so I can carry that with me too. (No, I'm not talking about this one. If it's been abridged, it defeats the entire purpose of having the OED.)
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 05:09 pm (UTC)"Sanitized" isn't something I much approve of either, except in a medical setting.
Are there less-edited collections, and if so how big are they? I'd give up images for a less-edited collection.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 06:10 pm (UTC)So far as I know, this is the only collection thus far. There are rumors that another one is coming, but I have no idea when.
It seems likely, though, that future wikipedia articles will eventually be tagged with "export defines", so that they can run monthly dumps for offline viewing. We're just not there yet.