Houston is #1 on the Kiplinger 2008 Best Cities list!

When clicking on the link to the Kiplinger 2008 Best Cities list, I was thinking, “OK, where do I need to move?”

But it looks like I’m already there! 🙂

www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2008/05/2008-best-city-houston.html

Looking for a way to create PDFs programmatically that have Hindi

Trying to automate the creation of PDFs with the Hindi flashcards for www.ISpeakHindi.com.  I am open to anything that can run on Windows or Linux.    I prefer something that would run on Linux so I can put it on the webserver.  So I am focused on looking at solution in PHP or Ruby.

I found a wonderful PDF creation library for PHP, but it does not support unicode:

www.fpdf.org/

I found a “not quite ready for PRO” version that has been internationalized

acko.net/blog/ufpdf

I could not get it to work with the Hindi characters, i.e. क ख ग घ etc.

I found PDF::Writer for Ruby, but still no luck..

In the process of looking for this, I found this Ruby on Rails screen cast in Hindi:

www.fromjaipur.com/?p=4

About ISpeakSindhi.com

Have you heard of Sindhi?  Or about a place called Sindh?  Well, that is actually where Meena and Nariandas are from.  And Sindhi is their first language.  Almost a year ago when I had registered ISpeakHindi.com and ISpeakSindhi.com, my plans were to develop ISpeakHindi.com, this site, as far as possible.  It would have very sophisticated podcasts, with exercises and quizzes.  There would be a very good Hindi/English dictionary.  There would even be a “language course configurator” that would determine what your purpose for learning Hindi is, how you learn best, how much time you have to learn, etc. And it would recommend a course to learn Hindi and track your progress.  After this, I would then take what we did for Hindi and apply it to Sindhi.

Well, almost a year has passed.  ISpeakHindi.com is not near as far a long as I thought it would be.  But we are still making progress.  And it is serving its main purpose of making sure that I learn Hindi, and that I meet other Hindi speakers.  But it is still far, far, far off from the dreams I have.. Don’t worry, we will get there!

But the domain for ISpeakSindhi.com is up for renewal.  And I have a deal with my wife…use them or loose them.  So, I must start making progress with ISpeakSindhi.com.  If any of you are interested in learning some Sindhi, or know somebody that would, then please visit: www.ISpeakSindhi.com It will be much slower.  We plan to only do one very short, basic podcast a week.  Maybe just introduce a word or a phrase.