Q&D Message-A-Minute

[aldreis]

My father is very fond of his collection of inspirational and thought-provoking phrases. So, when I gave him an LCD kit, I figured out that would be nice to have Smartie to present him a different phrase each minute. Hoping that it could be of use for someone, that?s what I did:

I made a text file with 60 of those phrases and placed it in the plugin folder. And created a screen with the following code:

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$File(phrases.txt,$dll(demo.dll,1,1,$Time(n))) 

He loved it.

[limbo]

Smart thought by a Smartie user
Keep On

[aldreis]

Smart thought by a Smartie user
Keep On

Thank you, limbo.

As it turns out, my father become a little bored with the same 60 phrases repeated sequentially, and hinted that he?ll love to have something more random -- but with his 9000+ collection.

So I needed a plugin that outputs a random number within such range. I didn?t find one, and realized that could be a great opportunity to discover what Delphi is.

I downloaded Delphi 7 Personal ( still free, thanks Borland ) yesterday, read the help files, used the demo.dll source as a guide, wrote a very simple dll, compiled the thing and it amazingly worked.

Maybe it could be of use for someone else. It?s here:
http://www.aldreis.com/recursos/smartie/rando.zip ( 24KB )

Syntax:

$dll(rando,1,X,Y)

It returns a random integer from the range that extends between X ( inclusive ) and Y (inclusive).

Examples:

$dll(rando,1,0,3) > a random number between 0 and 3.
$dll(rando,1,100,200) > an one between 100 and 200.

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And that ?One Minute Wisdom? screen became this:

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$File(phrases.txt,$dll(rando,1,1,9000))

NOW he?s happy.