[the] Code Girl

and I just found something that looks like it will do just that: Syncal

then use PHPiCalendar to publish your calendar to the web
and/or create RSS feeds that your friends and family can use. I happen to already have PHPiCalendar installed, as it came with Tasks 2.0.

Next TODO item: sync the todo/note list from Tasks 2.0 with
the Palm ToDo list.

Thanks so much to my new Best Friend Jody who sent me a GMail invitation last night. My new email address is UnrulyGrrl at gmail dot com

So far I really like it. The lack of folders takes some getting used to (they use ‘labels’ instead and one message can have multiple labels).

It supports threading by collecting your messages together in ‘conversations’.

The Inbox shows a little blurb of the message contents, not just the Subject, which is nice.

PDA #1) Palm Pilot (the original — with only 1MB ram)
2) Agenda VR3 (Linux! but way before its time)
3) VTech Helio (never even used it once)
4) Casio EM500
5) Casio E125
6) Casio E200 (dropped $600 on this!)
7) Zaurus SL5500 (Linux! but still not much of any support for synching on Linux)
8) Visor Deluxe (see my previous entry)
9) Palm m500

Within 48 hours, I had realized the Visor had a lot of limitations:
1) OS v3.1 — most programs require a minimum version of OS v3.5. Because of the older OS, I had to use older apps. Older apps do not have VFS support, thereby making the Compact Flash adapter useless (Ex: Adobe Acrobat reader)
2) almost no peripherals available such as modems or wireless cards….just a handful of Springboard modules that are selling for $$$$ because they are hard to find

I went with the m500 because it was
+ very small and light
+ OS v4.0
+ SD / MMC port….the market is finally producing some decent SDIO-based accessories, the lack of which is why I dumped the Casio EM500 which had only an MMC slot [I already have a 128MB SD card that I bought for my Zaurus]
+ Li-Ion battery which I can recharge via USB w/o needing an AC adapter around

I’ve already “restored” everything I had installed on my Visor…and bought a USB charge/sync cable as well as 2 portable keyboards. Yes, my ADD is that bad that I bought 2 keyboards in the space of 10 minutes, completely forgetting that I had bought one when i bought the second one.

So my Visor Deluxe, with lots of accessories, will be up on eBay within a few days.

I want to write an app that will let me catalog all my cds, MP3s, DVDs, and books. It will support the CueCat scanner to make for easy entry of items (I won’t assume that all people have their CueCat hacked, as I do). It will be in perl of course because I just can’t seem to get anything written in Java in a timely manner as it is such a PITA about everything. I found a few abandoned projects on SourceForge that either never got past the planning stage, or never got much useful code written.

It started out as just something to catalog MP3s. It would read the ID3 tags (if there were any) and use that data to populate the db entry or supplement data found on FreeDB.org. A perl/tk app was going to run on any desktop/laptop with MP3s but no
internet access, which would grab as much data as possible about the mp3s and dump the output to a flatfile. A second perl/tk app would send that output file to a cgi/webapp that would get the data into the db after looking up whatever it needed on FreeDB.

It will be stored in a mysql db and have a web interface for searching and adding new data.

Recently my Linux box at work got b0rked, so Ihad to move the hd from that box to what was my Windoze box. Previously I listened to music on the Windoze box, and did everything else on the Linux box. This meant that my Linux box could make all the noises for various apps that it wanted to. No such luck when it’s the same box that you are listening to music on. Until I could figure out how to get all the apps to share the soundcard with XMMS, I came up with a neat workaround that uses xosd. xosd includes something called osd_cat which will display any text you want via OSD, in any color you want, and in any location. I have Gaim setup to run a short bash script whenever I receive an IM (you can specify the ’sound’ program that you want to use — nobody said it had to be something like ‘play’). In the bottom left corner of my screen, I see "IM!" flash for a second, pause, then again. The flashing part is reqd so it will catch my eye. That script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
# appears to blink
echo "IM"| osd_cat       -p bottom -o -30 -f lucidasans-18 -c yellow -d 1
sleep 1
sudo aplay -Dplug:ossmix /usr/share/sounds/gaim/receive.wav
echo "IM"| osd_cat       -p bottom -o -30 -f lucidasans-18 -c yellow -d 2
sleep 1
echo "IM"| osd_cat       -p bottom -o -30 -f lucidasans-18 -c yellow -d 1

I’m using the built-in email check function of GKrellm, which lets you choose a script to run when you have new mail. That script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
echo "* New mail *"|osd_cat -p bottom -o -20 -c green -d 2
sleep 1;
sudo aplay -Dplug:ossmix ~/sounds/email_hs.wav
echo "* New mail *"|osd_cat -p bottom -o -20 -c green -d 2

I should probably mention that I don’t use a sound server like Arts or ESD because they usually come along with Gnome/KDE and I dont use them. That’s why I had the problem (with ALSA to begin with; I didn’t want to add yet another unnecessary item (sound server) to my box. I finally found the solution to sharing the sound card here:
http://www.groupsrv.com/linux/viewtopic.php?t=7237
Also, I am running aplay with sudo because of some permission errors on /dev/dsp that I can’t seem to resolve…yes I’m too lazy to worry about it.

One other thing I use OSD for is a quick monthly calendar, using ‘cal’:

#!/bin/bash
cal | osd_cat -p bottom -o -10 -d 30 -l 8

The ’showcal’ script is assigned to a key combo in my $HOME/.fluxbox/keys file. Whenever I want the calendar, I just do Shift-Ctrl-C. It hangs out for a nice long 30 seconds, just long enough for me to locate what I need

According to this test, my geek level is:
18.54043% - Geek
Should I be hurt that the number isn’t higher?

I bought a Visor Deluxe off eBay recently (only $30); it arrived Saturday. It only took about 10 minutes to get it set up with my 2.6.1 kernel. This speedy setup was due mostly to this great, very-specific USB/Visor HOWTO. I setup JPilot to do my syncing with. I had to set $PILOTPORT to /dev/usb/tts/1 (which only exists when the Visor is HotSyncing) to make it work though. HINT: *during* a sync, create a symbolic link (world writable) from this port to /dev/palm and /dev/pilot as these are the most commonly-used device names that apps will try to use to connect.

Before you start in on me about how old it is and why did I waste my $$ and all that, here’s why I chose this PDA (for now anyway! haha):

1. It uses PalmOS which Linux has had support for for *years*, mostly due to this wonderful package: Pilot-Link. If you are using Gentoo, as I am, all you need to do is run “emerge pilot-link”.
2. I have owned several PocketPCs and could never get them to interact with Linux in any way, especially syncing anything. Meaning, I am well aware of much more ‘powerful’ alternatives. As soon as they have the same solid support under Linux as Palm devices do, I will gladly try again with a PocketPC, or with another Zaurus (which my BF has now)
3. I don’t need to know C to write my own programs to interact with the Visor. I found Pilot Manager, which is written with Perl/Tk and has easily extensible conduits. It even syncs on Solaris to the built-in CDE calendar. The conduit I care about most is: SyncXML. I will try to use that to sync events from “WebCal” that are stored in a mysql db because that is where I keep all my appointments now. The possibilites are endless for uses of this conduit.
4. A primary reason for purchasing it: a cheap but highly effective ebook reader. Much, much cheaper & smaller & lighter & more productive than this HIeBook (for example).
5. I have no web-accesible contacts/address book manager

More later

(PCs, PlayStation1/2, GameCube, Xbox, etc etc etc)

The web’s most comprehensive ‘cheat search engine’: http://cheatoogle.com/