Quozl's Open Source

Human Interrupt Request Lines

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:00:00 -0500

As a software engineer, Quozl often sees himself as part of one great big system, in which he is a component subsystem, along with whatever computer he is using.

But in a reactive role, where most of the time is spent responding to one interrupt after another, one needs a way to service these human interrupts. Most people seem to do it with telephone ringers, text message alert tones, pagers, or popup windows. Focus stealing is annoying. Lose of concentration more so.

Hence the TCP/IP Distributed LED Mimic Panel, consisting of an array of eight LEDs driven from a parallel port that sits on the desk, and a set of spare computers around the house with displays that show a graphical version of the same panel.

more details

Telstra ZTE F165 HSDPA Mobile Phone on Linux

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:00:00 -0600

Quozl upgraded from a CDMA mobile phone to an HSDPA one, and plays with it on Linux. It has a USB interface, and bluetooth.

more information,

Netrek - Vanilla 2.14.0 released

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:00:00 -0600

New version of the Netrek Vanilla Server, with many changes.

more information, sources, packages

Newspaper

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:00:00 -0600

Quozl was in the Sydney Morning Herald on page 3 on 2008-02-12, and the article was fairly accurate, but some editorial practices may have changed the story ... the corrections are:

certainly not a farmer, though living on a farm,
it is not currently dusty, though it was during the tests last year,
it is not currently locust-plagued, though it was during one test,
the 45 degree charging limitation was inherent in the NiMH chemistry, what was really discovered were 45 degree environmental conditions.

DVB-T on Linux in Australia

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 07:00:00 -0600

Quozl began watching television in the past few years, mainly because Doctor Who had returned ... the first "television" was a junk box VHS VCR attached to an LCD monitor via composite video, ... the second was a borrowed DVD+RW DVR to replace the VHS VCR, ... and the third just completed is a $AUD45 DVB-T PCI card in a Linux system acting as a video streaming server and digital recorder.

more details

Delta

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:00:00 -0600

Quozl is directing a programming camp in Brisbane, Australia. If you are in year 11 or year 12 at school, and want to learn how to program computers and join the open source community, please think about joining us. The camp is in January 2008, and has strictly limited places.

camp web site

Order Queue Display

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:00:00 -0500

A shop or event display node with multicast capability, for use at a village barbeque or bistro, written in Python and Pygame.

Think of a node with a keyboard, and any number of nodes without keyboard, connected via network. The operator types a message, which appears on their node during composition, then when the commit key (TAB) is pressed the message appears on all other nodes.

Additional features:

messages are automatically sized to fit the available screen dimensions,
multi-line messages are possible, type Enter between lines,
editable history of previous messages, using the up and down arrow keys, in the style of a shell,
any node can be a master, all it takes is a keyboard,
nodes that are alive are listed on a master node, and if a node goes missing, it will fail to appear,
displays can be mounted upside down, inversion is by command line option or by keyboard control on the display node,
special control keys for reboot, poweroff, runlevel change, re-executing.

Resources:

One Laptop Per Child

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:00:00 -0500

Quozl has done some rural radio range and other testing for the One Laptop Per Child project.

TaskJuggler

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:00:00 -0500

Project management software for those who think best in a text editor, rather than a point and click interface. TaskJuggler seems to do quite nicely. One defines a set of tasks, even a hierarchy of them, and then hit the schedule button and you get a nice Gantt chart or as much XML or HTML as you want.

Because the project is expressed as text, it is easy to integrate it with project source control systems. TaskJuggler can run in a script to update a project web page. It will even generate its own Makefile if you want.

Keep it in mind for next time you need to plan something.

Netrek Client Pygame 0.2 released

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:00:00 -0500

A reimplementation of the Netrek game client using Python and Pygame. Several features are missing, but it is playable now. Patches welcome.

more information, sources, packages