.~Javier Plumey~.|Fatih, Technology, Politics, Whatever.

Like many parents now days, my son has been clinically diagnosed with ADHD. We’re working with the doctors and the behavioral specialists to keep him focused and to help him be his best, and to that end we have implemented a variation of a token system to help our son stay positive and to reward him for good behaviors.

Our token system is comprised of little pebbles that our son can collect when he was good days at school and when he exhibits behavior we are working on at home. He can then use these pebbles to buy certain privileges such as watching tv, playing video games, staying up past his bedtime, etc.

At home it’s easy to give him that instant feedback when he does well. He simply goes to the kitchen and gets his pebble. On the road and around town we have a hard time because we will either forget to bring his pebbles or his pebble bag. Enter Tally Counter for iPhone.

This is a free, dead simple app that lets you hit a big button to increase a counter. Whenever our son gets a pebble when we’re around town, I let him hit the button. The application also shows the counter value on the Home Screen by way of a badge. It’s easy to use and gives our son instant feedback when he does well, and when we get home, we have an easy way to tell how many pebbles he’s earned.

So the folks behind the famous Olive Tree Bible Reading software for iPhone and other platforms released an update (version 4.08) that features a sweet integration with Evernote.

Now you can take notes within the software and have them sync to a “Bible Notes” notebook within Evernote. It works VERY well. Not only is this a good way to keep your notes backed up, but now you can use your notes on any device Evernote supports. Plus, you can share your Bible Notes notebook and use it to publish notes for a Bible Study.

Here are some lovely screen shots.

Set up your Evernote account. Free version works just fine.

Bible Reader is really beautiful. If you haven’t forked over the cash to get it, please do it. It’s a great Bible.

Create a note.

Go to the Notes section under ‘Bookmarks and Notes’ and pull down the band.

It will go ahead and sync up to Evernote.

Your note(s) will show up in Evernote. Make an edit and re-sync.

At this point, you have your updated note.

You’ll see your updated note in the Bible upon clicking the snazzy note icon.

That’s all there is to it. I haven’t found a way to have it synchronize the notes automatically, but maybe that will come in the future.

My five year old son is participating in the Advanced Reader program at school and in the Your Baby Can Read program. We bought the program for our pre-born child but we figured we would try it out with Lucas first. Plus, we have him learn and read from Dolch word lists so that he can increase his vocabulary and reading skills.

Well to manage all of these words I had planned on using one of the many flash cards app for the iPhone. Unfortunately most of the apps are not very good and the better ones are quite expensive, especially when you throw in the cost of the desktop editions. I looked at them all and actually started to use one called Study Aid. It’s good but it doesn’t support landscape mode and there’s no way to change the font size for the card.

Just when I had given up hope of having flash cards for my son’s words lists, I realized that the iPhone’s Photo library would work just fine if I could make images of all the words. Well, that would have been a pain in Photoshop or iPhoto so I came up with a little something to speed things up.

I wrote an AppleScript bundle that implements the ‘convert’ command from ImageMagick that creates iPhone-and-kid friendly images from a comma delimited list of words.

I created over two hundred images in about a minute and half. They’re easy to read and my son has a great time flicking through them on the iPhone.

Here are some examples:

Here are the links to download the Word lists:

Dolch 2.zip

Dolch 3.zip

YBCAN-Starter.zip

YBCAN-Volume 1.zip

YBCAN-Volume 2.zip

YBCAN-Volume 3.zip

You can also take a look at the words on my gallery at:

http://catholicplumey.smugmug.com/School

Finally, here is the app bundle. I don’t have the time just yet to post instructions on how to use it, but if you have a Mac and have ImageMagick installed, you can use it to create your own word images.

Create Word Cards.app.zip

Here’s the code:

–By Javier Plumey for www.javierplumey.com

property folder : “/Users/family/Documents/flash/”
property IM_BIN_FOLDER : “/opt/local/bin/”

–Change your options for the conversion command here.

property CONVERT_COMMAND : “convert -size 480X320 -gravity Center -background black -fill white”

–I found this replaceText script on the web somewhere but can’t remember where. If this is yours, let me know and I’ll give you credit.

on replaceText(find, replace, subject)
set prevTIDs to text item delimiters of AppleScript
set text item delimiters of AppleScript to find
set subject to text items of subject

set text item delimiters of AppleScript to replace
set subject to “” & subject
set text item delimiters of AppleScript to prevTIDs

return subject
end replaceText

set theWords to {}
set savedTextItemDelimiters to AppleScript’s text item delimiters
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to {“,”}

–Here’s your dialog where you enter in the comma delimited strings.

display dialog “Enter the words you want, separated by commas: ” & return default answer (theWords as string)

set theWords to text items of the (text returned of the result)
set theCount to length of theWords
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to savedTextItemDelimiters

if theCount is 0 then return

set theFolder to POSIX path of ((choose folder) as string)

repeat with theWord in theWords

–Yes Mac OS X supports spaces in file names but I was having a hard time getting the spaces to work with the shell script execute.
set theFilename to (get replaceText(” “, “_”, theWord)) & “.png”

do shell script “printf ” & quoted form of (theWord) & ” | ” & IM_BIN_FOLDER & CONVERT_COMMAND & ” label:@- ” & quoted form of (theFolder & theFilename)

end repeat

Testing 123…

Well I got the iPhone 3G. It’s pretty nice though I m am still getting used to the keyboard.

I’ll be posting some tips soon. In the meantime, Happy New Year!

Ok I will admit that I am sweating the new iPhone 3G. It comes out today and even though I have the cash to get it, it would mean spending more cash to cancel my T-Mobile contract. I want it. Badly.

And that’s exactly why I am going to wait to buy it. It would be very easy for me to give in to temptation and just go get it. I would be quite happy playing with the new features, uploading pictures, downloading apps, using the GPS…ok I’m getting carried away here and starting to lose my nerve!

But seriously, aren’t we as Christians supposed to be able to control our desires (whether for flesh or tech)? Shouldn’t I have enough will power to simply say, “I’ll wait until my contract is up”? Shouldn’t I be fiscally responsible for what God has given me? The answers to all of these questions is a resounding “YES”, which is exactly while I will say “NO” to the iPhone. Or at least a “later”.

Update 7-11-2008 12:01 PM EST: It now appears that the process of in-store activation has gone completely belly up! Long lines and frustrated consumers greet anyone going to by a phone today. Plus, many of them were sent home to activate because AT&T lost connectivity to the activation servers. I am glad I listened to my conscience…and my wife!

Update 7-11-20008 3:50 PM EST: So if use the iExam application on the iPhone, should I feel better? Check it out at the Curt Jester. Thanks!