Hobbies. Where would the computer industry be without them? Arguably, there wouldn’t be a computer industry had it not been for hobbyists in the first place. The ineffable need to scratch an itch does still percolate even in this closed down world of big mainstream technology from big companies opposed to the little guy innovating. OSAlert asks, what are you working on? We want to hear from you about your hobby projects (technology related or otherwise) to get a sense of what the community is cooking up for love of it, rather than because you’re paid to do so. Share and enjoy!
I am currently cutting my teeth on Rails by writing a small character creation application for the players and playtesters for my homegrown paper-and-pencil tabletop role playing game
I’ve started my own tech site at <a href=”http://http://www.geekvine.net“>GeekVine…i used to run a site years ago and just missed doing it so I figured I’d go back to it.
while all the debate goes on about linux being good on not on the desktop Im enjoying developing 3D graphics apps, with tools like valgrind, sysprof, cmake, clang etc… Im looking forward to the new tools available.
currently working on the next blender open movie.
2 months left in NL
before we finish
http://durian.blender.org/
Well, since a wile I’m busy building my own backup server. Being an rsync backup with lessfs storage for compression & deduplication.
Main focus is a backup client script (bash) that automatically detects all mounted volumes & creates LVM snapshots, if possible. Then WOL to backup server and rsync the whole lot. Resumng next time on failure.
Some small additional scripts, like hardlink “clones” and auto shutdown are also made.
After that, creating off-line delta’s of the filesystem to take to off-site storage. I.E. USB hdd.
I’m also working on a backup solution. It uses FUSE for a versioning file system that supports deduplication and binary diffs for incremental backups. So it’s extremely space-efficient. The backup itself is then a simple copy operation. It’s meant to be mainly used for backups to a USB drive. The backed up data can be browsed through nautilus similar to Apple’s Time Machine. Just not as fancy yet
Here’s the link: http://cozy.sourceforge.net
into small purpose built equipment and alternative platforms such as Efika, Soekris, Pogoplug, etc. My next venture is a Loongson based unit.
Well, working on OSAlert items.
Shocker, huh?
Oh Thom. You need to get out and have some fun.
Marked you as inaccurate^aEUR| obviously!
I however, imbetween being an arse on the Internet, am working on some Android tools to be used by other developers.
I do homebrew for older consoles, like the SEGA Genesis.
I saw “homebrew” and instantly started craving beer.
Heh, cool. I used to code for the Genesis (or Megadrive as it was called here) back in the days. That was in assembly though, I guess you use c compiler these days? I recall it having 8*8 cluts and 64 hardware sprites with hardware flipping which was awesome when coming from Amiga with only 32 colors, crappy hardware sprites and those slow bitplanes. Ahh, times long gone…
Gcc 4.1 for the 68000 for most of the code. I still use straight assembly where it’s warranted.
The bitplanes were more useful at the time. It wasn’t until you hit 8 bit graphics that chunky overtook planar. The Amiga was also MUCH faster than the Genesis. You forget, (or perhaps didn’t know) that you can only access the Genesis vram when the display isn’t active (meaning primarily the vertical blank), and you are really limited to how much data you can transfer in that period. The Amiga was only equivalent to that when under FULL DMA restrictions… which was sixteen color high-res graphics. When in low-res mode, you never had more than 50% DMA restriction on access to chip memory.
That limit in data you can write to the vram is what limited Sega CD games the most. While the CD is capable of redrawing the entire screen every frame, it would still take four frames (on NTSC) to transfer the data to vram. That was the main reason most FMV on the SEGA CD was restricted to one quarter of the frame – not because the SCD couldn’t generate full-frame graphics, but because you were limited to 15 FPS for full-frame graphics.
I’m working in a small SDL-based roguelike. I’m also drafting some mockups and ideas for an experimental X window manager and a tool similar to Qicksilver/GNOME Do/Humanized Enso.
I’m also trying to suck less at bass guitar
Edit: Also, I’m getting better at inline skating and would like to learn some slalom.
Edited 2010-06-08 18:05 UTC
“I’m also trying to suck less at bass guitar”
You and me both! Unfortunately for me I don’t foresee any improvement!
Per my post below … I guess this would be a rather good thing for me to work on too. But, will my wife kill me in the process … we’ll see?
You may find help with my latest hobby project,
http://www.loopthetube.com
What it does is allow you to loop a section of YouTube video. very useful for learning a bassline.
Well, my problem is that I can’t free style. I sort of panic and freeze up.
Wow, so many geek hobbies? I’m happy when I get to spend time away from the computer screen!
Besides a lot of reading, I’m enjoying all things music and I’m getting into outdoor activities like sports and camping lately.
Agreed. I work full time in IT and also do consulting work and development on the side. When I’m not trying to make a living I play music and golf. My wife is eight months pregnant, been spending a lot of time getting ready for the new born as well. Hardly do any recreational computing these days. Usually when I sit down in front of a computer outside of work I’m reading news or paying bills but sometimes I do get a wild hair and dive off into some kind of computer hobbyist type stuff, just don’t spend nearly the time I used to though.
I’m currently in the process of learning the Erlang programming language.
I highly recommend the O’Reilly book, it’s really informative so far.
(Removed hyperlink that broke my comment)
Edited 2010-06-08 18:06 UTC
Come on people, you can do better than that.
– trying to improve a tube theremin I built last year to get more linear response.
– putting a webcam in the eye of a HAL9000 replica finished a while ago so it can stream fisheye video
– part of a team which put a 4m high black monolith in the pedestrian area of my home town
– working on a hardware/software solution so my iTunes can display the current track on the cheap LED display i got off eBay
– organizing a visit from Tesla Coil Orchestra to play on their tesla coils
…and all that wile running a museum of old computers.
I think I may be overstretching myself a bit, but it feels good.
I Like the way you think. Careful though the HAL9000 replica might get self conscious and develop feelings and make mistakes then try to kill when you try to shut him down
I prefer Arc Attack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdrqdW4Mia)
Currently trying to develop a media manager, kind of like Amarok but for movies & tv shows. (http://www.smewt.com)
Help welcome for those interested!
Also trying to do some tricks on my longboard
I currently working on a game with Allegro to be released for the I-Phone . . . At least, this is, what i want to do some weeks ago, but reading all the news about Apple here on osnews makes think about it . . .
I worked on a mos6502 emulator but I had to stop active development because I have to little time available at the moment.
Furthermore I find myself mostly playing around with microcontrollers and programming in C for GNU/Linux.
And at my university I am chief electrical engineer in a team building a boat on solarpower where we use a heavy weight industrial computer which I program with LabVIEW.
Edited 2010-06-08 18:15 UTC
A complex enterprise system that involves working with .NET, Delphi, SQL server and Firebird. The .NET part covers winforms, wpf, wcf, asp.net and some digested ajax. The delphi part involes reading info from the serial port conected to an electronic device, parsing the data and saving it to a firebird database. there is more but this is enought. I won’t tell the name or the porpose of the system, that would be to mutch info.
Is that your sideproject? Your hobby? Wow, what do you do for a living? Write software for NASA’s new satelites or something?
BTW; my hobby, trying to resurrect my iPhone after it fell on its screen a few weeks ago. http://twitpic.com/1p4cfk is a true shattered iPhone.
Have a new screen now, need a new lcd that’s bound to come soon.
Neh, my real hobby is trying to write some software that calculates the heat resistance and etc for buildings… Just no showcase yet…
Edited 2010-06-08 18:52 UTC
Reminded me of this: http://xkcd.com/730/
It^aEURTMs a software rube-goldberg!
I’m working on a simple iphone game. Just for fun.
Well, on the computer part of the world, been deciding to learn more about the Lua programming language, so I decided to make a simple game engine in C++ that the user programs only in Lua, event based. It’s good enough so far, so I think I’m going to start the first small set of games with it this week.
Other than that I recently fell in love with woodwind instruments and started playing the recorder, an alto one. Not really a complex instrument, but quite pleasing to have it on the backpack to blow some tunes while bored.
And, as always, building stuff for my pet hamster!
You should try out L~A–VE (on love2d.org). My brother, who isn’t really a computer geek already madea few games using it, while learning LUA. They call it engine, but its a framework (in the FAQ they are honest about it). It’s basically Lua+SDL+aphysiclib in one box. Haven’t really used it myself, but the in-a-box style seems to be great, if you want to create a game really fast.
I’m making a cheap ultra light and ultra long range HD streaming thing based on wifi chips but not using 802.11.
It’s fun.
Well I am being paid for that too, thanks to Google Summer of Code and SavoirFaireLinux, but here are some of my projects:
-SFL Phone, an enterprise grade softphone (GPLv3)
-Kimberlite, a WYSIWYG HTML/CSS/PHP editor (code floating around with soem GPL header)
-KliNG, as second gen terminal, more advanced than Hotwire, but like Hotwire it’s kind of dead.
-A new Javascript extension framework for KDE application, more on that in 4.6 release notes
-The DBus-Menu thing
-Various other things in KDE
-Working on AwesomeWM, a tiling window manager with some really cool features. It is not minimalistic at all, only the defaults are, the tools to extend it are -great-
Non-code:
-I am slowly building a mainframe in my basement out of recycle parts, mostly pentium 4 with some network equipment to handle diskless cluster nodes and I/O over ethernet.
-Designing + building some hardware parts, like control boards (with USB support), computer cases, control panel, things with a lot of flashing LEDs that only me understand what is represented.
You guys have freetime?
I’m somewhat active member/developer in the Leo project:
http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html
(check it out sometime – it may blow your mind if you “get it”).
Granted that this year I haven’t been able to contribute as much as I’d like to, work + family intervened.
I used to be maintainer of IPython (for a few years IIRC), but that’s just not happening anymore. It’s a cool project as well.
Occasionally I do silly smallish apps – e.g. if you have N900 you may want to check out “qtdone” that I just pushed to extras-devel.
re: “family intervened”
Yeah, but it is a good intervention.
I like to play with euphoria, groovy and python of course. I wrote some silly apps to query log data I collect for invoicing at work. I guess that is work-related but I did it for myself.
I need to update the math problem program I wrote. It generates math problems for my son to work on.
I am trying to teach my kids how to do some basic programming in python.
I need to add some features to my website. It was cool, totally written in Euphoria, but there were visibility problems running it locally, so I moved to GoDaddy and now all I can work with is PHP (because I have a base account). Not as exciting but, eh.
I played with MorphOS on my daughter’s Mac mini, Haiku and MeeGo on my netbook to play with.
Other than that I am supposed to be finishing putting up chair rails all around our house.
I’m 1/2 done.
I’m also hoping to breed a couple of my Tarantulas over the next couple of years.
Especially my A. versicolor. They make beautiful babies.
I’ve been working on a window manager written in Java/Groovy/C for the last 2 years.
The core library is written in Java with X server calls in C (xcb), while the logic (=implementation of the core lib) is written in Groovy.
It basically started as an attempt to make a window manager like e16 but with flexible tiling support. Because all I knew was Java at the time (1 year of experience, I was still in college back then), 13000 lines of code are written in Java while the rest of it is C and Groovy.
For now I have a very simple floating window manager rendered in Qt Jambi, still with a lot of bugs though. The goal is to have an architecture that is flexible enough to do… basically anything you want from a window manager.
That may sound ambitious, it certainly is. I guess I know what to do for the next 10 years.
Oh yes, and link of course:
http://code.google.com/p/ewm/
I’ve lately been questioning if I have perhaps gone too far down the rabbit hole with regards to technology. It seems as though I spend far too many hours hopping from one Linux distro to the next, getting tired of it’s perceived shortcomings and jumping ship to Windows, falling in and out of love with Apple and just generally finding myself in a state of flux. So my “hobby” now is to try to claw my way back up from Underland, take a step back away from all of it and figure out what actually matters in my life. Last night I never opened my laptop once. Instead I sat down and read a magazine…but it was Linux Journal so maybe I’m too far gone
Steampunk!
If I had the tools, that’s what I’d do anyway.
I hear ya…
For the last 6 months, I’ve been seriously re-considering my computer-addiction situation as well… and I’ve used my home machine(s) far less during that time.
These days I try to get outside a little more often
I’m a check-ride away from getting my pilot’s license. I haven’t flown in several months though so I need to get back on that.
I’m itching to do another shark dive
I ran the Great Wall of China Marathon 3 weeks ago. I’m trying to figure out the next race (I have Africa, South America, Australia, and Antarctica to do)
Well who knew there really is a marathon in Antarctica. http://www.icemarathon.com/
I used to run marathons, but blew out my knee, and had to retire. I would have loved to have done this.
I left my ex employer and opened my own shop.
I bought a couple of books on iPhone and Unity game development as well as Scala programming language.
On my free time (free from computers and clients) I am planning my next marathon in south america and bought a triathlon bike this last saturday.
Reading? 1984 (Orwell), The Art of War (Sun Tzu) and Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Robert T. Kiyosaki) … and Wired magazine (mostly bathroom reading).
It’s Uruguay outside here.
Well, I’m working on something which aims to become a modern desktop OS in many, many years, since January.
Needless to say, at the moment it’s just some code which displays sickening amounts of text, collects basic information about the hardware, and plays with flags. The bootstrap part (code which runs before the kernel) is close to be completed, if everything goes well it will be debugged and archived by the end of the month. Then I’ll be able to start work on the micro-kernel, and get some nice abstractions which will help further development.
Once I’ve got some impressive stuff (eg a resolution-independent GUI with a smarter security model than “Process X requires admin rights. Do you give those to it ?”), I’ll make some great article and THE WORLD WILL REMEMBER MY NICKNAME FOREVER MUHAHA !!!
At the moment, I’m just having fun with a computer, just like I always did since I started playing Tetris 3D on my father’s Amstrad PC1512.
Edited 2010-06-08 19:07 UTC
I’m apparently so not geeky.
– Motorcycle touring and track days
– Going out for a few beers (but not at the same time as #1)
– Playing guitar badly (I can already play bass
)
I spend all day looking at a computer, I can’t find too many reasons to look at them after work.
I take people’s old, throw-away computers and rebuild them and give to the low income kids in my area. I may also charge a small fee at times if I feel parents can afford it. This way I can help promote linux more too.
Currently my hobby is training for a 100km hike for charity over two days with a team of four, including my wife.
It takes a rather incredible amount of time to train for an event like this but I really enjoy being outside. I also spend a lot of time at our pond, reading or just sitting there while our Brittany spaniel does loops around the pond trying to catch frogs.
I save all my obsession for working with ERP systems.
Morglum
Working on Android on the iPad as a fun-just-because-I-can(or cant) type of project not because there is a need or any sense of anti-apple rebellion.
I also volunteer my time to teaching inner-city\rural kids virtualization (VMWare, Citrix, and Hyper-V), scripting (Powershell and Perl) and networking.
Sounds awesome! Let us know how it works out.
Will do
Note: This is for the WiFi iPad as I don’t have the 3G Model, nor do I need it as I am using my HTC EVO as a hotspot router.
I am taking the plunge this weekend (where I have more time to test or fail). I am working from the recent iPhone\Android dual boot hack first before doing the total replacement.
If sucessful (dual boot\full install) images + instructions will shared with all.
I’ve been working on a Google App Engine website recently. You can see it here: http://www.thecitylog.com
Playing around alot with Inkscape lately, also working on two indie games (using sdl). Blender 3d sculpting, programming an Haiku application and messing around with Haiku in general, some compiler benchmarking. And to break up my obvious geekiness I also play alot of football and drink alot of beer during the summer
Not all Hobbyist OSs are dead. I’ve been working on one for 8 years, perpetually in the design/pre-alpha/alpha stage, http://icculus.org/gold, maybe one of these days I’ll get something actually usable with it.
I am working on a new music application. I grew tired of always having some small feature that I feel is missing or incorrectly implemented, or that an application doesn’t feel well integrated with my operating system.
So I made this:
Blog: http://project-yama.blogspot.com/
Code: http://code.google.com/p/yet-another-music-application/
It’s a music player that is developed in .NET and is supposed to be very well integrated with Windows 7, light and have a clean interface.
It’s more or less just a personal itch I’d be meaning to scratch for a while, combined with a nice chance for me to learn some new features of Win7 as well as .NET
You just may be my God. Is it in a usable state yet?
Well there is an early alpha release on the Google Code site. It can play music but a lot of features are still missing.
I haven’t had time to work on it for a couple of weeks now due to some exams coming up. But I just finished for the summer so I will hopefully be able to release 1.0 before the end of the summer.
Besides my day job as a Java developer I’m building up a company that sells BBQ Oyster Sauce.
http://www.grilledoysters.com
…(or “Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder”), my list is fairly random.
– trying to find a simple/cheap way to build raised beds for a small backyard garden, as well as a way to build a simple movable greenhouse (thinking ABS pipe and clear plastic sheeting)
– gradually upgrading an old 12-speed with modern road bike components (and even riding it from time-to-time)
– very slowly picking my way through Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
– working on an “iPod/iPhone-optimized” skin for BeInYourStereo (SoundPlay plugin that adds a web UI)
– trying to clean up a WordPress hack for comment-threading & turn it into a proper plugin
– slowly picking away at reviews of the “Customizer 104” keyboard from Unicomp (the company that licensed the Model M design from IBM) & the 2nd Haiku Alpha
– trying to get a straight answer from *any* Canadian wireless telco about whether or not they’re ever going to carry the Pre Plus
Edited 2010-06-08 19:34 UTC
See topic.
More seriously, a(nother) game engine. My focus is on making it easy to mix C++ code for the heavy lifting with javascript for the higher-level stuff, using Qt for all the UI stuff.
http://gitorious.org/fail
There’s a system that generates scripting bindings and serialization code automatically using a combination of generated code and C++ templates that works very well.
Edited 2010-06-08 19:29 UTC
I am developing a Megaman-Like game, open-source and multi-platform (currently builds on Linux, Windows, Playstation 2 and Nintendo DS), it is written in C with the SDL library and have an editor, made in C++ with Qt.
More information in http://rockbot.upperland.net
Currently lacking artists and coders, any help is welcome
I started developing a 3D game for the iPhone OS (which is now calles iOS) late last year. I work 3 days per week as a software developer (paid of course) at a bank and on the game for the rest of the week on my own.
Just finished the menu system an heck I even did it resolution independent so it’s great an all kinds of displays including the new iPhone 4 and the iPad as well as Android phones in the future!
I’ll even compose my own symphonic soundtrack for it, I have some experience in that area.
Hell, it’s a lot of work for one dude, but on the other hand so much fun! Creativity unleashed!
Edited 2010-06-08 19:33 UTC
I am working on an open source OS based on the HAIKU OS source code, it uses a desktop environment coded in HTML Css3 and ExtJS all running client side, the main goal is to make it as simple as possible for users to access and developers to develop 3rd party applications, using the wide range of built in API and private API. Applications can then be distributed by the developer and accessed by the user via the build in market place application. more info can be found over at my blog or on the (soon to be released homepage)
blog: http://p-quinn.com
homepage: http://revlin.org,
A showcase release of the Mark I release will be available soon enough.
keep it classy internet (an unprofessional ending to an other wise professional Plug)
Edited 2010-06-08 19:38 UTC
I’ve been designing and play-testing unique card and board games with live (not dead, not modly dead!) people with the long-term objective of also making mobile phone versions of them to sell, as well as dead-tree versions. Last night I was play-testing a card game of my creation that scales to dozens of people, yet doesn’t take a long time to play, though that’s just one of more than 2 dozen games I’ve created, having tested at least 8 thus far.
The strategy: create new/unique games, verify the rules work, verify people find them fun to play, implement and sell both dead-tree and binary versions, prototyping and testing cheaply: no point in reproducing existing games already on the AppStore, as that’s a race for the bottom.
Inspiring to read all these different and great things everybody is up to If all this potential could be steered, the power would be enormous!
</philosophical mode>
My sideproject is a ‘Chrome experiment’ that lets people (you) build little bots that fight with each other in a 2D arena.
http://fabricasapiens.nl/projecten/Jabe/jabesim.html
Built with OOP Javascript and the Canvas element.
…unless, of course, the current beauty and power of the output is *because* it’s being done without someone “steering” it
The individual diversity and creativity is certainly due to the lack of control
However, this implies that everybody does do what he thinks is interesting. This enables competition, but hinders the development of 100% finished, really great products.
Hence, I think that projects should co-operate more and make awesome things with each other, instaed of next to each other.
This however requires a ‘strategic management’, as well as an ‘operational management’ and a good way in which people know what to do and how to do it.
In the end, that is management and ‘steering’, but enables for much better developed and finished projects than there are now
Still looking for that “perfect” Linux distro.
Time to go reformat again …
Seriously though, as a School Teacher I’m looking at doing as little as possible for the next two months. I’m fortunate enough to have been offered to take my salary for 12 months, so I’m chillin’ this summer.
However, having said that, at the end of next week, I will be bored and already taken up another project. However, as of right now, I have no idea what that will be.
Edited 2010-06-08 19:43 UTC
Currently, I’m not working on any large projects but I have:
* Created a Perl module for creating PDFs that allows arbitrary changes of style in a paragraph.
* Worked out a technique to create and boot from a LiveUSB for the old PowerMacs.
I’m building a wiki of information gathered by/for campaigns against software patents:
http://en.swpat.org/
It’s also currently my job, but anti-swpat campaigns have been my hobby since 2003.
Other than that, I’m studying law and learning (human) languages.
I wrote a 3D engine to display this:
http://www.chara.gsu.edu/~riedel/10pc2010.html
There’s also a realtime version that lets you click on the stars, written in RSI IDL.
Starting to cook something in Java and Qt, let’s see if the final result is digestible
Currently working on ITIL tools, using Delphi and MS SQL Server backend.
There are tools out there but they are really expensive, im trying to replicate these tools around how ive interacted with ITIL frameworks and hopefully release the tools as freeware/opensource.
PS excellent idea for an article, it’s really interesting seeing what other people are up to, there is some really interesting projects going on.
Edited 2010-06-08 20:08 UTC
For the SEGA game Phantasy Star Universe on PC. GPLv3 and available here: http://github.com/essen/egs
Community forums: http://psumods.co.uk
It’s a fun project, started about a month ago and already quite far, a month or two more and it should be quite playable. I do it mostly to learn Erlang, which is an awesome language.
I hope to extend this project to other games in the future, with an appropriate separation between the various common components in online games and the specific subset of features used by each of them and their protocol. Maybe even work on an improved protocol eventually.
Alternatively, my current job started as a hobby in creating a web framework in PHP5. It’s still a low profile project but we now use it professionally: http://github.com/essen/wee
Not much community around it, unfortunately. We’re not very good at marketing.
I’m also getting quite tired of PHP’s inconsistencies, especially after discovering Erlang. Might just port it (full or features of it) to Erlang and just go with that eventually.
as i still have the dream of writing my own cad-tool im currently reading the nurbs-book
I’ve been simulating tank treads.
video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhPM8IWzT8
image
http://www.stolk.org/steenriver/thelittletankthatcould/tron.png
Edited 2010-06-08 20:17 UTC
My sailing boat was going nowhere, the hull shape is totally not suited to sailing, but it probably is to rowing, so I cut out the centreboard,patched the hole this left in the bottom, studied up on how to position rowlocks and seat, and am converting it to a rowing boat. And repaired the old oars someone gave me. Next week is rowing trials. If you hear no more from me, it sank!
By the way, if you ever want to build a boat, get Greg Carlson’s software Hulls.
http://www.carlsondesign.com/#Fun_Shareware
Edited 2010-06-08 20:31 UTC
– A simple compositor running on DRM/KMS using Cairo-DRM, mainly because I got bored of trying to get Wayland to work, and thought Cairo might be a better option than a patched Mesa. Right now I have basic drawing and multi-head support, but no support for clients or display hot-plug yet. I may end up using the Wayland protocol. I must have made my screen go completely blank 50 time working one this project (requiring 50 blindly typed “sudo reboot”s)
– A pseudo file-system for Linux that supports ACID transactions and indexing of extended attributes (like BFS). It will automatically work for file systems like tmpfs, and it should be pretty easy to make it work with Btrfs (with its system-wide transactions), but any other file system (such as ext4) would need to be patched. I recently started this, and pretty much all this does right now is mirror another mounted file system.
I have many other projects, but I think these are the most interesting.
Is this a mix of a slow news day, and a geek-like “a/s/l?”
Building a clock like this one: http://www.digital-diy.com/projects/143-a-clock-for-geeks.html
I’ve been working on a new Mini ITX system running Ubuntu and WinXP: http://theguiblog.com/forum.php?function=view&TID=420
https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc/doku.php
With over a dozen people helping me. Has outgrown itself but it’s still fun, especially now that we can actually work with all HiMD Walkman. And we’re the first to use them with free software
.
Adrian
I am making a KDE frontend for rsync using C#. Right now it sucks in most ways possible. Hopefully it will suck less in the future.
Haha, I like your subject! That’s the reason to write software. Have you read the Unix Hater’s Handbook?
I’m writing some scripts to convert local online event calendars into iCalendar format, and then present them through a simple web-based iCalendar aggregator: http://arnout.engelen.eu:8082 .
I play sax in a local bigband and a recently-founded rockabilly cover band, wrote a simple arrangement for it this weekend: http://arnout.engelen.eu/files/dev/linuxmusicians/arrangements/stra…
I run 1-2 times a week, and participate in (recreational) races of 6-15km – if i keep this up I’d like to start training for longer distances, and do a fun marathon (like Berlin) at some point.
I’m fixing 200+ WSDLS & XSD’s and associated Java code to put XML Identification tags into every call.
Just because the developers(in india naturally) forgo/din’t know how to allow the use of characters outside ISO 8859-1 when it should be UTF-8.
Bloody booring job.
http://iogd.free.bg
Bodyboarding when I get a chance (and when there’s some surf), although that’s getting more difficult with each passing birthday.
Restoring some solid wood furniture.
Working on a boat motor that seized for no apparent reason.
Developing a Filemaker app that generates static SEO friendly web pages / sites from modules that are either pre-configured or can be created by the user.
Single lines, dual lines, in assorted shapes and sizes. My favorites are made by a Seattle-based company called Prism Kites, since they make kites that are very easy to store (especially the single lines). May start making some by my own hands (met the photographer of “Kites For Everyone” and “More Kites for Everyone”– great stuff for learning to make reliable kites with cheap materials) and with my children.
I am currently in the early stages of converting an older motorbike into an fully electric commuter motorbike. Planning on a LiPo4 battery pack around 72volts and a small light outrunner motor currently being developed.
http://rgelectric.wordpress.com
I’m working on BareMetal OS. It is a new take on High Performance Computing.
The OS is written in Assembly and only targets the x86-64 architecture (Kernel size is 16384 bytes). Only one application can run at a time but that application has unrestricted access to all of the CPU cores in the computer. Applications can be written in Assembly or C.
The next big step is Ethernet networking. The plan is to use raw ethernet frames to communicate between nodes (Similar to ATAoE).
I’ll submit a news article once v0.4.8 is finalized.
http://www.returninfinity.com/baremetal.html
-Ian
I’ve created a JavaFX loop-based music-composition tool that is shaping up nicely, if slowly. However I am (sadly) thinking about starting from scratch in Flex so that I can potentially get it running on Android tablets and the rest. (Damn you Sun/Oracle and your botching of JavaFX Mobile!)
The OS is called Kernel Panic.
Its a simple multi-threaded OS build to run on micro controllers with less than 4k of memory.
It was originally a college project for a robotics competition. Since then the project has really matured.
What’s really cool is I have a hal implemented on top of normal unix syscalls. This allows anyone with GCC to test/build features!
I’m Looking for developers/users. If you’re interested in using Panic shoot me an email.([email protected])
Its GPL2 so it should be accessible to the OS-News crowd.
Into here: http://panic-versions.kernelpanicblog.com/Panic_intro.pdf
Webpage here: http://www.kernelpanicblog.com
Download here: http://wiki.github.com/andrewguy9/kernelpanic/
That’s pretty amazing. I always loved the idea to write my own operating system kernel just because I can
. I actually started one myself for the C64 but I never really finished it even though I got very close I think. Writing a file system driver can be really a bitch.
I still got the website of it preserved:
http://users.physik.fu-berlin.de/~glaubitz/pos/
Don’t you laugh
. I was 18 or so when I wrote it. Loooong time ago.
Adrian
Edited 2010-06-08 22:42 UTC
Heh, awesome! Man it was sooo long ago I programmed on the C64 (my first computer), I remember practically living inside turbo assembler back then, and debugging with Action Replay
A Hangover
Best response so far.
I just finished up an incredibly frustrating system build. (The power supply with the builtin short detector was confused by the dual socket motherboard.)
Next projects:
Finish up website for my wife
College
Storage/Network server
Check out Linux Audio Bundles and Start making music again!
Convincing my family members to use Debian, Ubuntu or any Ubuntu-based distro.
In no particular order:
Currently researching / designing a softsynth for the iPad.
Should be fun, I haven’t coded in a while and the last softsynth I did was 14 years ago on the Amiga!
Learning Guitar (slowly).
Drinking Belgian beer and French wine (not at the same time).
Learning to dance Salsa.
… you people have been working on. At least half of them that were somewhat computer-related sound so great that warrant a small interview with each author to be published on OSAlert IMHO. That’s been one of the most entertaining threads I’ve seen in this website in quite a while…
I’ve spent nearly half of my life studying arts and became quite skilled with hand drawn and computer-assisted artwork (raster, vector and 3D) which happens to keep me following closely the development of GIMP, Krita, Inkscape and Blender but stopped doing anything worth mentioning years ago. Life came into the way at some point and I simply lost the passion that kept me going back then. For reference, my line art resembles some American comic books artists’ (or at least I like to think it does).
I used to maintain a small website with my artwork back at a time where DeviantArt wasn’t a blink on the eye of its creators but it’s hosting largely depended on the good will of a former employer and thus when it finally went down the drain, it took the images with it and as stupid as it sound, I can’t find the backups. Not a big deal; most of it was crap anyway and not stuff that I would have been proud to have my name associated with!
I’ve been postponing coming back to do some sketches, small vector illustrations and experiments with Blender but this article and the series of DIY articles that were being aggregated on LinuxToday some time ago might have been the kick in the curb that I needed to get back to work!
Most recently, I’m getting my use of Metasploit beyond the superficial use. Metasploitable is the pentarget of choice for the moment but DeICE 3 is on deck (the fist two DeICE are fun puzzles). I’d also like to get familiar enough with Ruby to make some changes to the #_login modules; they test username against blank and dictionary but don’t test username:username from what I can tell.
I figure, write the CEH in the short term, maybe followup with eLearning’s new cert as the next cert challenge to work towards. Should probably write a few more of the Comptia certs; Linux+, Network+.
Backup server with Backula. I have at least two places if not three where I need a good robust backup system. It’s far from a strait forward install. I have to do another “how to debian backula” search and see if anything better turns up since the last time I banged my head against this particular puzzle.
Edited 2010-06-08 23:00 UTC
Having previously written the basics of an OS from scratch, the past few weeks I’ve been re-writing it. Now that I know what kinds of things to expect along the way, I can design the code in a way that won’t end up quite as horrible looking. I’m also going with 64-bit this time rather than plain x86, and booting from devices other than floppy disks. I also intend to support multi-core and hyperthreaded CPUs, but haven’t got to that part yet.
I do .net during the day but I need to get back into c++ a bit to refresh my skills. I’m leaning towards something involving Qt and OSX, probably a network utility.
Outside of programming I recently quit the bar scene after getting a nasty strain of bacteria. No it wasn’t an STD but it did take me out for a week with all sorts of nasty results. Sure you could call it a fluke but the same thing happened to me from restaurant food a year earlier. I was sick of the bars anyways so I decided to call it quits.
Edited 2010-06-08 23:27 UTC
I’m going to build my own high powered wireless router this summer.
Every router I have bought in the last 5 years has disappointed me in some way. My girlfriend thought I was kidding when I said I’m about to throw the router in the garbage and build one my g!dd#mn self.
I’m researching kernel development, when I have any time.
A few years ago I read a few books about the subject, but never got the chance to explore the wonderland. 2 years ago I wrote a stage 1 loader (boot sector) and almost finished stage 2, without FS support, like lilo. This time after loosing, actually deleting (!!!), some of the sources I skipped the nasty real mode madness and decided to, for now, settle on grub.
This turned into an unexpected 2 days straight deathmatch, starring me, grub, and kernel.ld (my kernel linker script), which I finally won.
Now, I’m licking my wounds for a few days until next challenge
I’m working on my own own operating system called Fudge. It is basically just for fun and is only intended to be used by me but if you are interested – feel free to try it out. It doesnt do much but the feature list is growing steadily. On the upside it boots within a few milliseconds =)
http://github.com/Jezze/fudge
Not really work, but a hobby indeed. I have my Ibanez running through my Line6 Guitarport at the moment. I am in my second year of (thank you Youtube) electric guitar.
Harder than I thought when I picked it up but making great progress. And my respect for Page increases every day.
Bob
Absolutely right. When we see the likes of Maneli Jamal or Antoine Dufour, we think playing guitar (and instruments in general) is easy, but god, you have to try it for yourself to fully realize how hard it is and the amount of work/dedication/motivation that’s needed.
I’ve been working on a distributed window manager. Its main goal is for one user to be able to use more than one computer without being forced to manage applications, settings and user data *and* without relying on a 3rd party. Other fun features are also possible.
Recently I started taking Tae-kwon-do classes, if I’m a geek, at least I’m a in shape geek.
Eventually I want to write a secure replacement to Xorg to go with the window manager, like nitpicker.
On the programming side I am writing a simple multiplication game for my niece in C++. I am also learning the Haiku API, and getting my feet wet again in Cocoa and Cocoa Touch development.
Two weeks ago I got an itch to start collecting old operating systems(I think it was right after the article about Winodws 3.0’s birthday). It’s coming along nicely, I just need Windows NT 3.51, and Macintosh System 5 to complete the Windows and classic Mac OS collections.
Well, so far I have a class that I *should* be studying for, but other than that, I’m working on a tty facebook app with Perl + Curses::UI which should be on CPAN soon enough! Name suggestions welcome. It is facebook in your terminal, complete with homepage and all the posts!
Edited 2010-06-09 03:03 UTC
Let’s see. Easiest thing is to check out my project management site: http://projects.g33xnexus.com/
Though it’s been touched the least, the most interesting thing I’m working on is a Python/Qt based web browser. ( http://projects.g33xnexus.com/coconut/wiki/Overview/ ) It has a rather beautiful settings system, is designed around the idea of using the address bar as a command line, has a wicked keybinding system, and I end up using is almost as often as Chrome. It needs more work… but with two-ish developers, I’m happy with how far it’s come.
Also, I’m working on the project management that site is hosted on. Also python (django) based, I’m trying to create a viable alternative to redmine (which, while useful, is a huge resource hog. EPIC runs in a quarter the memory, and doesn’t leak, like redmine.) ( http://projects.g33xnexus.com/epic/wiki/Overview/ )
Other than that? I’m making a (gasp) python based FPS Sneaker/Shooter (Panda3D) called Damnation. ( http://projects.g33xnexus.com/rfi-damnation/wiki/ )
The rest are just little things, like a PyQt based digital roleplaying charactersheet binder, and some odds and ends. (Also doing a site for a webcomic, but that’s paid work… still a hobby though.)
Hey, any python developers looking for projects? I’ve got plenty, could use some help.
That web browser is great! I think the UI is a good start, I^aEURTMve always wanted a browser with the URL bar on the bottom (like a combined statusbar / location). If you could do tabs in the title bar like Google Chrome then that would be even better.
Thanks! We’ve been looking into tabs in the titlebar, but it looks like the best case scenario would involve some low level custom Qt Code and then wrapping it for python. At the moment, I’d rather get things like proxy support and multiple processes working.
There’s some neat features that Qt 4.7 will gain us, and we’re really hoping to transition from PyQt (with its tendency to segfault the moment you look at it sideways) to PySide as soon as it has windows support. (Though, the latest version lets us code for both, so we’re thinking of doing that.)
Glad you like it.
It was basically created because I can’t stand just about any browser these days, with the exception of chrome… and even then… lack of commands or decently configurable keyboard shortcuts bugs me.
Ok, I was wrong. I am currently playing around with a different approach; I made the tabbar dragable and have shut off the titlebar. Now all I need is min/max/close and it will be pretty equivalent to chrome. If I get somewhere with this I might just push it to trunk…
I’ve always been wanting this too. I’m writing my own desktop environment (web browser, file manager, text editor, etc.) using Qt. The web browser kind of works. All of the applications have tabs on the bottom – this allows for both menus and tabs to accessed quickly, assuming you have no panels on the top or bottom of the screen (I just use a side panel). The web browser combines the status bar, location bar, and search bar at the bottom.
At the moment I’m doing my research on Data Mining techniques and I’m using a lot of open source software. Postgresql as database, Ruby as a scripting language, Gawk as a text processing language, R for statistics and Weka to do the Data Mining stuff.
Open source rules, although I have been very upset that when I wanted to buy a notebook in the Netherlands, I had to go with a Windows 7 model.
I’m working on a yet another UNIX/Linux-like kernel called Fiwix and on a server monitoring tool called Monitorix:
http://www.fiwix.org
http://www.monitorix.org
Edited 2010-06-09 07:15 UTC
Cool you’ve come a bit further than me on your OS. Congratulations on your fine work =)
Still far to be something usable, many thanks though.
Currently I am learning .NET development. I am trying to develop a small Myst Online helper utility (btw, if you liked Myst you should check Myst Online out — it’s quite neat AND free!).
A good book to learn .NET seems to be “Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform.” I bought one a few months ago called “Beginning C# 3.0: An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming” for C#, but I never got around to finishing that
In the future I’ll probably work on a WPF Twitter client, so I can learn more about the toolkit.
Edited 2010-06-09 08:01 UTC
Sound engineering in my free time, full time dad and a car enthusiast – love them all
Is it me or is there no Mac based pet project among the posts? There is some .Net and lots of Linux but nothing in Cocoa (and nothing in legacy Windows such as MFC and Win32).
And I keep hearing that the geeks had moved on from Linux to Apple when OS X arrived.
Also, nobody on Android?
Currently collecting/writing the specifications to a food diary that’s supposed to make the identification of trigger foods easier. For those who have never heard about IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), it’s the common name for a “carryall” gastrointestinal tract disease. “Carryall” because it’s the default diagnosis when doctors can’t find out what you’re suffering from. A very frustrating and embarrassing condition that lasts for life. But it can be less handicapping if one succeeds in identifying foods that trigger symptoms (if you don’t know the symptoms, then you have one more reason to thank your god(s)). Basically, it’s a calendar in which events can be noted and affected to categories, coupled with a basic causal analyzer that will say: “this event may have caused this other event”.
Other than that, I’ve been playing guitar. Never intended to be a concert artist, but the classical guitar is a bitch and my expectations as to my performance as a player have dwindled. Also played a Casio keyboard for two years before selling it.
Which brings me to the next project to start in a few months: a music notation editor. I have been so frustrated with PowerTab not being updated for so long now, and with front ends to Lilypond. I’ll be writing a music notation editor in Java built around a plugin architecture similar to the one Eclipse uses. Some features I’ve defined so far include locking a section of the score on screen, facilities for copy/paste of sections, multiple view including older trackers-like view (ScreamTracker), very stable core (microkernel-like) so that updates will essentially consist in updating plugins. I think the plugin architecture and extensibility features built in the core will allow imagination to be the limit.
Also considering writing stuff for alternative OS like Haiku but it won’t happen before next year.
Edited 2010-06-09 08:31 UTC
I am always doing a lot of things. Software development, mostly. My biggest undertaking is my multi-platform CAD, originally born on BeOS, now on Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu as well. Hope to get something working ready for Haiku R1.
This summer I’ll have to build my house, if that can be called a hobby.
I am currently working on getting a new techview podcast done
My main projects right know are ZevenOS and ZevenOS-Neptune : http://www.zevenos.com
I updated the Encode application recently to have support for webm (vp8) : http://www.launchpad.net/encode
and I do some Lubuntu Screencasts located on : http://www.lubuntu.net
After generic Linux, VPN designing and building and mucking about with embedded devices (routers), I now built myself a Linux based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to use for Internet radio. Too bad it already works fine so there’s little challenge left there
I am developping a robotics software so that my robot will get my beers in the fridge: http://hbot.benou.fr .
It’s based on a roomba for now, but the project is mostly about C++, lua, embedded linux, and fun.
Otherwise I happen to enjoy traveling and taking pictures.
Developing a new web server that will blow Apache and others out of the water.
– Multi-threaded architecture with kernel event notification. Threads are organised into groups and assigned to load zones. Administrator sets load zone threshold and server automatically distributes incoming connection evenly across a pool of threads. This avoids situations where you have 64 parallel threads and half of them are using 100% of CPU, another half are using just 40%.
– Designed from ground up to be scalable on multi-core architectures. Concurrent algorithms and data structures to efficiently support hundreds of parallel threads (e.g. Sun Niagara 3).
– Unified web server file cache. Designed a bit like OS virtual memory subsystem. This means local files and dynamically generated content (fastcgi, http proxy, etc) can be dynamically cached in memory. File cache supports multiple hardware page sizes (e.g. 8K, 64K, 512K, 4M and so on) this should significantly lower TLB misses.
A bunch of other things, like detailed server statistics and concurrent logging subsystem (multiple threads can simultaneously log the same data to syslog, as well as files on disk). Web server clustering, one or more dispatcher forward incoming connections to a cluster of servers.
I don’t think this will be open source, sorry.
Are you on this alone? It seems massive in terms of work.
At the moment I’m working alone. It’s actually better this way, I can keep everything in my head without telling someone how something is supposed to work.
So far I’ve spent 6 months working on it, wrote about 8000 lines of C code. At the moment writing HTTP protocol parsing/handling routines, HTTP is a bit of a messy protocol, so this will take some time…
I have been working on a Software development kit for the PlayStation 1 lately. Also, I was surprised to see people here who do stuff for things such as the Megadrive (did not really expect it).
when the days get shorter.
Well actually I use my sparetime work in the garden. But this project is almost done.
Greetings,
pica
I haven’t been active at it lately because money has been tight but I collect lasers. I’ve been wanting to make a computer controlled vector graphic projector system for my lasers. I’ve got red, green, blue, and even yellow so far (not counting my IR laser). Other than that I like riding my bike (see my avatar)!
Finished with my bachelors. I’m thinking of making a torrent client in C# using Monotorrent library until my next step..
I publish moreamp audio player on sourceforge.
Lately, I have been working on making sure my Jupiter application (http://www.fewt.com/2010/02/meet-jupiter.html) for Eeebuntu and Fedora is stable and optimized.
I have also been working on getting the forum at fewt.com (http://bb.fewt.com) started.
I have been thinking about getting into iphone / ipad development but with all of the recent Apple “evil” I’m not sure it’s worth the time.
Edited 2010-06-09 14:45 UTC
I’m editing a science-fantasy book i wrote. In my spare time i work on a new Graphical Interface concept.