Using Babylon-based dictionaries on your Kindle

UPDATE! A Follow-Up Post on this Project Since this post got wide attention, I've decided to follow-up on this project. See my new Babylon-based dictionaries on Kindle - Round 2 post. Now the project is shared as open-source and pre-built dictionaries are organized and shared.

Lost in translation

The problem

Addressing this issue started by by trying to purchase an Italian-English dictionary for my 2nd generation Kindle, running Kindle software v2.5.3.

One dictionary was offered for sale  (as an ebook) on Amazon's website. The problem was that the dictionary was not actually available for the device for another whole year..

Good translations

Babylon, on the other hand, offers high-quality dictionaries, spanning over pretty much every language. Babylon Translator is a paid software for Windows. Its dictionary files (.BGL) are offered as free downloads.

In a perfect universe
If I only had a way to import Babylon's free content dictionary into my Kindle and use it as the built-in dictionary, it would have been perfect..

The solution presented here was tested on my Kindle 2. I'm pretty sure it should work on newer versions of Kindle as well.

The same Babylon dictionary, used on my PC (Left) and on my Kindle (Right)
(Click for full size)

Article Level:

Reasonably moderate

Setting Up Subversion Source-Control with Assembla and TortoiseSVN

Why Source-Control?

When working on sufficiently-large projects, it's good to be able to keep track of changes with a source-control system (sometimes referred to as "revision control system" or "version-control system" or VCS. Personally I prefer the old term "source-control"). The advantages of using such a system:

• Keeping track of changes:
  Know who made the changes and when.
  Record changes with appropriate comments ("..hmmm.. why did I make this change..?").
• Reverting and obtaining previous versions.
• Managing versions and labels of your code in various history points.
• Potentially sharing the project with other developers ,working together making tracked changes.
• Some source-control systems allow tracking bugs and tasks, while associating them to changes made in files.

Many enterprises use commercial source-control systems. Since the majority of my enterprise projects have been on Microsoft environments, in the early days I was using Visual Source Safe (VSS), in later years it's been Team Foundation Server (TFS). Both consist of a source server and client applications which integrate with the Windows domain users and with Visual Studio IDE.

On home projects I prefer to use a more modest source control system, preferably one which I can store online for backups and doesn't require a server running all the time.

Article Level:

Reasonably moderate

The TeleTris Console Demo Project

One of the projects provided as demos for my class at the Telerik Academy was a console implementation of the classic Snake game (they named it JustSnake). You can see it and some of its code on the screen recording of my lecture "Console Input and Output", which I will share here very soon.
It inspired me to build my own little demo console game. I chose yet another classic game - the originally Russian Tetris, which I named TeleTris. It took one evening of coding and debugging and I must say I am quite satisfied with the result

Article Level:

Reasonably moderate

TeleTris In Action
Of course I'm attaching the full source code solution (and pre-built executable) here for anyone who wishes to download and play.  Note that in order to run the executable, you will need to have the Microsoft .NET Framework (4.0) installed on your machine.
Everyone is free to suggest improvements and bug fixes. I am aware of some minor graphic bugs and of the fact that the game's responsiveness could be improved, but for a single evening of work I think it's ok.
Here's a small screen capture of TeleTris in action. Click to open the animated version: