Distracting hacking, BBC development, Palm stuff Distracting Hacking
Tags: sync
2:14:53AM PST
Distracting Hacking
Tonight I managed to get a quick and dirty hack out to get the JPilot Backup Plugin working with the latest JPilot version. I’ll work on a much cleaner version later on this week if I get some spare cycles. There’s still some minor GUI tweaks I’d like to do to it. I’m not sure I like the little status window at the bottom. I’ll monkey with a status bar hack or some progress bar stuff later.
You can find the small hacky patch here.
I managed to get my external serial modem working over the Keyspan Serial->USB adapter, so now I can use my Palm on the serial port. Just some more testing. I need to figure out why the kernel module for it is locked at 9600. Perhaps some mods to modprobe a new speed into it would be in order. hugh, any ideas?
So far, I’ve been able to get three consecutive mouses working under X (at the *SAME* time, USB, PS/2, Trackstick), my modem or any other device on the Keyspan adapter reliably, sound, IrDA, USB, and some other small goodies consectutively on this laptop. Now it’s time to get some of this Thinkpad Hackery documented, so others can take advantage of it and play with devfs, reiser, and some of the kernel level crypto stuff.
ianmacd has this all down pat now, apparently, so I’ll trade him some CVS knowledge for his FreeS/WAN tricks.
Pain Comes In Many Forms
..and I hope this is the end of mine…
BBC Development
I’ve now taken a stand and stepped up to the plate to lead the Linuxcare Bootable Business Card project. Now that Duncan Mackinnon can no longer help us from the inside, I hope he will continue to help us in the community. It will continue onward, no matter what we are called, or who we are maintained by. Between schoen, ianmacd and myself, we will ensure the success of this.
Believe in that.
Seminar’ige (CVS, Group Calendaring, Windows Migration)
Well, it seems that I’m going to have to persue some SGML expertise to get my presentation done up for people to follow on my CVS talk internally. Once again, a wrench in the works, since Ancilla was one of the unfortunate ones to go on Friday. She was the one who tirelessly set up these internal talks, gathered the respondees, and tended to the projector, keys, and all of the organization. I’m trying to find someone to help me with this before my talk. I’m going to have to split the talk into two separate days, four hours each, instead of one grueling day on a weekend of 8 hours. Maybe I’ll have some ‘homework’ for the people who attend on Day One.
Two more seminars have come to mind recently, which I’ll have to begin working on soon:
- Migrating From Windows (replete with full conversion examples, multiple options for Word docs, Excel, mail, etc like the migration from Word to Abiword or StarOffice/OpenOffice, Excel to Gnumeric, yadda yadda.)
- How To Use Your Equipment (hardware hackery, centering on our “Standard Builds” and Thinkpads for the moment)
- I’ve scheduled a BOF this week which I’ll be chairing on “The State of Group Calendaring”. I’d like to get some other outside people to dial in to help us with this. Maybe I can do a LUG on it at FourSeas.
Advogato Wishlist #247
- Why is there no search option on Advogato?
- Why do we not have <project>foo</project> tags?
- Why does the Login page not give me a ‘Post Diary’ option on the success page? I have to strike the success portion of the URI and reload. Ugly.
- No <code> #include <foo.h> </code> tags? <pre> </pre> isn’t good enough.
- Can someone say <a name=#foo> tags to reference a specific day’s entry?
- Why does this happen?
Palm Stuff
Lots of goodies coming around the horizon. Anyone who can lend some cycles, either in coding expertise, documentation, or anything (even pointers to some HOWTO documents) would be greatly appreciated. Here’s what I’ve got planned:
- pilot-link 0.9.5 release
- Various other conduits
- XML outputs for pilot-link, pxd (pilot-xfer daemon)
- New conduit to sync your Palm to a cvs server (local or networked)
- Malsync updates (should help fix the Vindigo problems).
- gnome-pilot updates for Calendar, Categories, and some other goodies. jpr and ettore are working on this one. Teaming up on this is crucial to it’s success.
- Plucker Portal…
- Work on the perl spider for Plucker
- Plucker Desktop Buddy
- Palmvogato. Yes, a way for you to enter your daily diary in your Palm, sync, and have it posted to the server. Makes sense if you’re on the road and want to still keep a record of your daily activities.
- gnutrition conduit for the Palm. merge with on-Palm shopping lists.
- Finish my Palm PPP HOWTO.
- Strip gnome-pilot conduit fixed. It exists, just in a broken state.
- Finish my Sony Clie USB kernel module.
The Writing Was On The….Web?
I’ve decided to begin putting my writings online for people to enjoy. Maybe I’ll do some sort of “page-a-day” story site or something, and let people jump onboard and read what I have. I’ll be fun, I promise. I still have lots of ideas in this space.. Celiac Times, some sort of Linux/Palm column, maybe some short fiction stories, and of course, the much-sought-for autobiography. I’ve got so much crazy things that have happened in my life, more than a dozen people have asked me to put them to paper, they’re so insanely unbelievable. Anyone who has spent more than a day with me knows that they’re all valid. Time to start penning my memoirs.
EEK! I’m turning 30 in less than 5 months!!
Miscellaneous
Lots more new stuff on the horizon. I hope I can devote some spare cycles to getting it all done in time. At some point, I have to deal with moving my whole life again to another location closer to San Francisco, moving Erika here with me (yes?), and putting myself through school, fixing my health and my teeth, blah blah… it’s all boring and I’ll spare you this time. This year is going to be a huge, productive year of reinvention, and churning out so much code it’ll be coming out of my ears.
If I have time…