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Jason Haslup
jason at haslup dot com

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Tue, 25 Nov 2003

No Man's Bluetooth
blog :: agenda

Ok... got my infrared dongle yesterday and spent about an hour last night trying to get it to work with my linux box... no good. It actually works, but not as I had expected. I was kind of hoping it'd magically appear as another serial device and I could just fire up pppd and specify the device. Doesn't seem to work like that.

I probably just have to do a lot more searching, and maybe even ask a question or two on an email list somewhere. Oh well... I'm hoping that bluetooth and linux progress a bit before I get the Zaurus SL-6000 that's in my future... I was looking forward to using bluetooth at work as my PDA connectivity (unless we have wifi available).

Anyhow, other than that, not much going on with Agenda. Sadly, I've already started writing an application for the Zaurus which I don't have. I should do something for the Agenda, but I just can't decide on something worth doing, although lately I've been thinking about syncing the contact info with my bbdb (emacs addressbook) data. That might be worth doing...

Fri, 21 Nov 2003

Title of Entry
blog

(You try thinking of an interesting entry title for every semi-interesting blog entry)

Well, I'm 1/7 of the way towards my goal of a new Zaurus... actually, that's just a guess because I don't know how much the Zaurus will turn out to be. I'm pretty sure I've decided on getting a new SL-6000 when it's released in Q1 of 2004. I think that's a smarter move than getting a C860 which technically is only supported in Japan. The SL-6000 will probably have integrated wi-fi (and maybe bluetoot, if I get that model), and it will have a slightly larger 640x480 screen, but it won't be a clamshell case. Now I just have to wait until "Q1", which might be too darn long. Stupid patience.

In other "all-about-jason" news... I'm thinking about trying a new keyboard... yes, one of those goofy ergonomic ones. Geez... I think all this typing is finally getting to me, so I might want to see what I can do to save the hands. I've been looking at some cool alternative keyboards, but I just don't think I'd ever get used to them. The FingerWorks touch-keyboards look kind of cool, but it probably has too steep of a learning curve, not to mention that they're $360. Kind of star-trek-ish, though, so the coolness factor is high.

This year has been a banner year for me in the games department... not only did I finish Jedi Knight 2, I just finished Call to Duty which was recently released. It was a pretty good WW2 shooter -- some of the graphics and animations were quite impressive. Overall the story was fun, and obviously not too difficult since I ran through it in less than two weeks. I did some playing online, as well, and once I got a feel for it I started handing out some kills instead of being called "easy moving target" all the time. I think I'll try some more online, but I'm not sure what I'll move on to next. I might try to finish Jedi Knight Academy... maybe get through three games in one year.

Well, it's snowing here and it doesn't look like it's gonna stop for a while... that means I'll be dragging out my brand-spankin' new sled (it's plastic and cost $10) so Rupert and I can hit the slopes. Yep... I'll be the biggest kid at the hill, but darn it, I'm going sledding. Never really got to when I was a real kid, so I've got a lot of time to make up. I'll let you know how my injuries heal up...

Tue, 18 Nov 2003

Squeezebox
blog

Well, geez... I finally decide on my new toy (the zaurus, once I get through with my ebay auctions) and something new comes up.
Slim Devices has introduced a new network MP3 player that has built-in wireless ethernet, as well as a standard ethernet port. The wi-fi is new, and so is the box enclosing the display, compared with their original product, the SliMP3 (which I always wanted to buy, just never did).

The new version also has optical output, which is kind of cool... that's in addition to normal RCA and headphone jacks. The display is only two lines of forty characters, but it has a great server that sits on your computer and lets you control what's playing through your web browser.

But it gets better! If you buy multiple units (spread 'em throughout your house), you can control them individually, or even sync them all up so they're playing the same thing. And finally, you can even have your normal computers listen to the music from the server by pointing xmms or winamp at the MP3 stream that the server creates. I'm actually using that at home right now since their software is free.

Mon, 17 Nov 2003

Desktop and Handheld Updates
blog

I hope the fall is treating all of you dedicated haslup.com readers well... the holiday season is coming up, hope you're ready for it!

I'm still cruising along with the Agenda PDA... I have it pretty nicely setup right now, thanks to some packages from all the Agenda folks out there. There's even a nice eBook reader available, so I've put to rest my plans of writing my own. I'm not sure what I'll write, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

Speaking of the Agenda... I ordered a "poor-man's Bluetooth" adapter for my linux box... it's a usb infrared receiver/transmitter that works with linux. When I get that, I can setup a ppp server to listen on the IR port so instead of using a serial cable to sync, I can use ppp over infrared. That way I don't have to worry about losing any valuable weather data, and it'll be easier to sync.

I'm also pretty sure that someday in the next few months I'm finally going to replace my old Zaurus with a new one. Sharp is releasing a new clam-shell Zaurus in japan (the SL-C860) that looks pretty darn cool... a company imports them ( Dynamism) and converts them to (mostly) english, and they seem to run pretty well after that. It looks like a great device... 640x480 screen, keyboard, can be a USB drive, etc... the bad part is that it's going to be $750 (yikes), but I've embarked on an eBay-selling odyssey to sell "junk" that I have in order to fund the Zaurus. So far I'm at 10% of my goal...

In other non-interesting news... at home I've (once-again) switched window managers... this time I've gone from Enlightenment, which is purely a window manager, to the latest XFCE version 4.01. Now, if you're a dedicated reader of the haslup.com network, you might remember that I was a big fan of XFCE version 3... it's a nice, clean, simple, lightweight environment for linux. Well... their new version 4 follows the same principles and so far I've been pretty happy with the switch.

At work, of course, I still use the best environment: ratpoison, screen, and emacs. But at home, I need a more windowy (that's a word) environment... I have a TV app running, browse the web more, have a music player, etc... which would all be kind of funky in ratpoison. XFCE 4 is more than just a window manager, it's a desktop environment, and I really like it. Check it out if you're looking for something new. Come back in a month to see if I've switched yet :)

In other news... we've ripped out the carpet in our living room and are waiting for a carpet measurement. Hopefully in a couple weeks we'll have some new carpeting in there... Then, I think, we'll actually move the TV and other toys into that room and make it our main living space. That should be pretty cozy, and I'm hoping it gives us a better home theater experience because we'll have a little more room to work with... we'll be sitting back from the TV another couple of feet, and I think I'll have some space behind the sofa for the rear speakers. Of course, that means I have to re-run all my cables and such, but I'm actually looking forward to that since it's another opporunity to clean up wiring and do it right this time. The funny thing is that this last setup, I thought I was doing it right then, too, but within a month it turned into a wiring nightmare. I've learned from that... all I need is a bigger hole in the floor for more cables!

So what will we do with that 14 x 20 extra room? Why, turn it into a pool room, of course! Mystique, being the awesome person that she is, suggested that we get a pool table and just set it up in that room. I think that will be great, so that's the plan. The room, at 14 x 20, is good for a 4' x 8' table... well, the sides might be a little tight, but length-wise we'll be just fine. Throw in the wine cellar, some seating and tables, a plasma flat-screen on the wall, and a velvet dogs-playing-poker picture on the wall, and I'll be in hog-heaven!

Here's some interesting news: NBC is putting up The World Poker Tour against the Superbowl's pre-game show. Wow... hold'em is going more and more mainstream. Prety cool... look for me at the final table in January :)

Tue, 11 Nov 2003

First App
blog :: agenda

Well, after much banging of my head on my desk, I compiled my first application and it actually ran on my Agenda. Whew! I know it's lame, but it was actually a "hello world" application that I found on an Agenda site. But heck, it works, and I'm pretty darn happy with it.

Of course the compile itself was a hack... I didn't use a makefile, and I certainly didn't drop it into the vrdeb packaging system. Instead, I trial-and-errored the source compile and link lines and dropped them in a shell script. Then I got fancy and added a strip command to reduce the size of the executable. Wow.

So now I need to figure out the inner workings of fltk and flpda, the toolkits that the Agenda uses. I've got a nice set of sample applications to learn from, plus the fltk documentation is online, so it's just a matter of sitting in front of the computer and reading. Maybe I'll get a tan from my monitor glow...

That's about it for tonight... oh yeah, I "fixed" the issue I was having with the serial port being hung up after connecting to my agenda. Turns out that I just needed to let pppd die on its own. Curious. Oh well... at least I can get my weather readings without rebooting. I knew it had to be something stupid I was doing...

Mon, 10 Nov 2003

My Agenda
blog :: agenda

I picked up my Agenda over the weekend and have been messing around with for a little while. Pretty cool little device... it's smaller than my (admittedly old) Handsping Visor, which is fairly comparable as far as processor and memory. The display is actually 160 x 240 pixels, and it's nice to have that extra 80 pixels. Certainly doesn't compare to my old Zaurus and its 320 x 240 color display, but it'll get the job done for what I wanted it for.

I haven't wrote my "Hello World" app for it yet, but I have been quite successful in downloading new kernels and new romdisks to it. The Agenda Wiki has been extremely helpful, and there's even a debian-pkg-based distribution setup for it that makes creating new romdisks a piece of cake. I think it will also help in my development efforts, so all the work that has been done by the Agenda Wiki crew is most appreciated.

One annoying thing (and this isn't really the Agenda's fault) is that in order to connect to it via PPP and a serial cable, I have to unplug my temperature sensors since I only have one serial port on my linux box. That's not too bad, but what makes it bad is that for some reason, even after I close out the PPP daemon, I can't re-connect to my temperature sensors unless I reboot. Something's being reset (or not being reset) on the serial port so my temperature monitor just hangs there or complains that it can't find its adapter. Annoying. I'm pretty sure neither device (Agenda or temperature adapter) will work with a serial -> USB adapter, so I'll have to figure something out.

Hopefully I'll get my first app up and running soon... I think I'm going to follow my Zaurus lead and write an eBook reader for the Agenda. My first app on the Zaurus actually read Palm .doc format books which was a pretty fun app given the compression used by the .doc format, but I think I'll keep it simple and just read normal text files on the Agenda for now. The Agenda base applications includes a notes application that reads text files, but when I tried opening a 500k text eBook on it nothing good happened, so I'll have to figure out a way around that. I think I'll mess around with breaking the book up into chapters before loading the fltk text widget, or maybe smaller chunks from a memory-mapped file. If I can get that working reliably, I might throw in the .doc format, or even the proprietary microsoft .lit format that is popular and annoying for non-MS readers.

Good stuff... I think it's awesome that I can walk around with a device in my pocket that's essentially running the same OS as my primary workstation. Ahh, technology...

Wed, 05 Nov 2003

Here we go again
blog :: agenda

You might have noticed a new blog category called "Agenda" has popped up... that's because I'm taking another leap into the world of linux PDAs.

My latest foray is the Agenda VR3 PDA -- one of (if not the) first PDAs to run linux as its operating system. Lately I've been debating whether or not to replace the Zaurus that was stolen almost two years ago, so in order to gauge my actual interest in PDA development, I bought an Agenda. The best part: it was $35. Not bad considering that it was $200 two years ago...

On the other hand, it is a pretty basic piece of hardware... it runs on a 66 mhz MIPS processor which doesn't sound speedy and probably isn't. It has 8mb of RAM which is a bit light compared to today's 64mb standard, but it should be plenty for what I'm looking for. Interestingly enough, it has a 16mb ROM to hold the linux kernel and apps.

Development, of course, is done in the linux world with a mips cross-compiler. When I was developing on the Zaurus I remember it was quite the pain in the ass to set all that up, but I found a few nice that help out, and one in particular that pretty much did everything for me (I think). So, while I'm waiting for fedex to deliver my pda, I'll be brushing up on the toolkit that the Agenda uses (fltk).

I'm not exactly sure what my first application will be, probably something simple at first to see how things go. I'll post some screenshots when I can.

In case you're interested, this site is a good resource for the Agenda. I bought my Agenda from Surplus Max. They only a limited number of them, so get 'em while they're hot! (To be honest, one company does sell them new, I think with 16mb of RAM... you can find a link on the AgendaWiki site.)

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