Quadriplegic controls PC by mind power alone
You know, this story in The Register really sums it up for me. This is what IT should be doing, empowering people to take back at least a portion of their lives and make them able to express themselves again. If I ever get a chance to do work like this, I’ll love it and would do it for free. Well, maybe not for free, but I wouldn’t want to earn a Porsche for it, just living off it would be nice too.
How cool would it feel to help someone in this way? Implement some electronics and have them use a computer. So many disciplines are needed to have it actually work, it’s mind boggling. But the work would be so very rewarding. Since the guy can actually move and use a mouse, almost all things are available again (well, on a computer that is). What interface would he use? Looking at the site, I can see an IE sign, but they wouldn’t use IE, right? The drawn monitor on the desk is a Mac, which would be a far better choice, since it much more mouse-orientated.
How would the guy in question experience the change? The psychological impact could be really large. I mean, bam! you loose the use of every single body-part except your brain and than all of a sudden, technology comes around to help you actually do something again. I imagine it would be euforic.
I hope noone around me every has to face such a challange, but if they do, I’ll try as much as I can to help them implement these electronics. Have them do something again, even if it is just a game of Go. Cyberkinetics Inc., you guys rock.
The Scorpion King
Just watched The Scorpion King on SBS6. It sucks. It really does.
Hitch
Monique and I went to see Hitch yesterday evening. It’s a nice movie with some forms of humour that tends to keep with the normal things in life, not very obnoxious. I like Will Smith as a actor, he does good. In this movie he does good, too. Also, the roles played by Eva Mendez and Kevin James are fun, although they seem quite stereotypical. It’s a feel good movie and it made us at least feel good. No blockbuster, but if you’ve got the time to spare, go see it, you’ll have a nice evening.
EU rejects Microsoft’s licence offer
Slashdot just pointed me to an article on ZDNet titled “EU rejects Microsoft’s licence offer“. The article talks about the way Microsoft tries to dodge the sanctions the EU put on it because they were abusing their monopoly. This time, it seems the EU holds on to their sanctions and will really demand of Microsoft to comply. I’m wondering for how long this will be… If Microsoft can exclude Open Source development from making use of those sanctions, the whole procedure is pointless, since Open Source is the single largest competitor of Microsoft server products. I hope the EU will hold on to their principles.
Feeling better
I’m feeling better again, today. Tonight I’ll be with Monique again, which will make me feel a *lot* better ;-) Monday I’ll be working again like normal. Looking forward to it, even. I just hope I’ll be able to keep dancing this weekend. The fever has dropped to 37 degrees C, which is normal.
Ear-thermometer
Yesterday evening I asked my father to buy us a new themometer. We had a bit of a discussion about that, since we technically have a thermometer. But that one has been used in Anouk’s ass. You know, Anouk the dog… Dad said he decontaminated the thermometer each and every time he used it with Anouk. Just the idea that it has been used with a dog is just gross for me. So this morning, he got an ear thermometer. I love my dad. And I have a small fever (38 degrees C).
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Drupal on Sarge (addendum)
I told you all earlier that I was unable to get Drupal to work on Debian Sarge. Well, Bart solved the problem. And it was an easy one, too, should’ve known it myself. Since we don’t use mod_php but php cgi with suexec, all files need to be in the home-dir of the user who is executing the script, plus, the user who is executing the script needs to be the owner of the files. I should’ve known that…
Virus infection
Man, I’ve been ill since last Friday. I first thought it was the flu, but after a few days and things not getting better, I was forced to visit the GP (yeah, forced, by my father, his girlfriend and of course my own girlfriend). He says it’s just a virus infection and I’ll have to ride it through. Ah man, I feel horrible. Although better than yesterday, so I am getting better. But back to bed it is, now. Laterz!
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Adam Gifford: Gates up to old tricks over intellectual property rights
Mr. Gifford strikes exactly the right arguments in an article he wrote about the way Microsoft does business. They try to get the upper hand by bending laws and legislation in a way that will disrupt the Open Source community eventually. The patent mr. Gifford describes is just foul play. The use an Open Protocol and try to patent it, so they can say “hey, see, we’re doing better now, we’re even using an Open Protocol!”, while they still keep their customers in the same lock-in as they always have.
Don’t take it, folks. Use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. And if you really want a commercial product, use StarOffice. And people think it’s evangelism when other people tend to disagree with that large monopolist *sigh*
Sleep-over
Hanneke’s children are staying over here for the weekend. Marina is 7 years old and Detlef is 16 and autistic. They’re here because Hanneke has her birthday on Sunday. It’s quite a change in the house, from a relativily silent house (well, not counting the dogs, of course) to quite a hectic household. They’re both nice kids. I haven’t really spoken to them, since I figured Hanneke would want to spent some time with them on her own, since she hasn’t seen them in two weeks.
Monique was a bit less enthusiastic about it, though. Since she works with children (especially difficult ones) during the week, she prefers some peace and quiet in her weekends. Can’t say I blame her. Even the dogs weren’t in their normal behaviour. It’s strange, really, having kid running around. Not bad, though. And no, I’m not thinking about keeping them ;-)
Project finished
Well, almost. Our customer wanted a programme to look for job for employees who are unable to perform like a ‘normal, healthy’ person. So we made a programme to match jobs with ‘disabilities’, following the FML-method. Peter, our intern, worked on it for a bit over 5 months. Especially since last Christmas it was a bit of a problem to get the programme finished, both Bart and I had to do some serious labour to get it finished in time. Which isn’t to blame on Peter, he did a marvelous job and even decided to work through some weekends, which I really appreciated.
But finally, the programme is finished. It’s called B3 and will be show-cased next week for the first time. Today was the last meeting about the programme. We still need a little bit of work to polish the product, but at least it’s done. And the customer is satisfied, for as far as I know. They seemed satisfied and pleased by the result.
I’m glad it’s done. Finally on with the next project.
(All links in this text point to Dutch pages, sorry.)
Drupal on Sarge
It might be me (it most probably is), but I can’t get Drupal going on Debian Sarge. We’ve got Apache 2 running on Amstel, our machine in Amsterdam, and I simply installed the package Drupal with apt-get, the standard package tool from Debian. It tweaked all sorts of things, but I cannot get the site to work. I keep getting messages like these:
[Thu Mar 10 20:42:18 2005] [debug] /home/adconrad/apache2/apache2-2.0.53/build-tree/apache2/server/core.c(2749): [client xx.xx.xx.xx] redirected from r->uri = /cgi-bin/php/index.php
[Thu Mar 10 20:42:18 2005] [debug] /home/adconrad/apache2/apache2-2.0.53/build-tree/apache2/server/core.c(2749): [client xx.xx.xx.xx] redirected from r->uri = /index.php
[Thu Mar 10 20:42:18 2005] [debug] /home/adconrad/apache2/apache2-2.0.53/build-tree/apache2/server/core.c(2749): [client xx.xx.xx.xx] redirected from r->uri = /drupal/index.php
Maybe it’s because we’ve got PHP4 running as CGI, but I really think it should work. The error message is too cryptic for me to actually deduce anything out off, except that it seems to redirect itself in circles. The three lines above are repeated several times and result in a 500. I’m at a loss. I seem unable to solve this in a correct way. Any help is appreciated.
Boffin honoured for necrophile gay duck paper
I just came back from a night in Venlo (I stayed with Monique) and was prowling my usual news-sites for some interesting news. I came across this article in The Register. Of course, the guy is Dutch. I heard about this story last year, but it still baffles me. Why in the world would that duck be showing that sort of behaviour. On another note, I’m kinda proud that the guy in question is actually going with the Ig Nobel tour. That shows guts in the guy, I can appreciate that.
My night with Monique was exactly what I needed. I’m ready to finish some stuff today.
Software patents make a mockery of European ideals
Read it and weep. I know I did. Software patents make a mockery of European ideals
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Quote from Linus Torvalds
On Linux: Kernel Release Number, Part II you can read Linus say this:
(Of course, the rules _do_ matter in the sense that there has to be some
point to the consistency. You can have a consistent rule that “the
ChangeLog entries must rhyme”, and I think it’s a great rule, and I
encourage anybody who wants to to set up such a “rhyming kernel tree”, but
that doesn’t mean that it makes a lot of difference to people ;).
Changelog in rhyme… ROFL.
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Looking Glass 3D torrent
Since the Looking Glass 3D Live CD site didn’t have a working torrent displayed, I made my own. I’m hoping they will link to it. I did announce it, though.
You can find the torrent here: Looking Glas 3D Live CD torrent
I haven’t tried the CD myself, yet, but I will. I’m very interested in seeing what those guys are working on. Too bad it’s Java, that makes things slow, usually. Still, let’s wait and see.
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blender3d.org :: Images
I wish I could make things like these.
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Conventionbabes in Genève
What’s the deal with babes and cars anyway? Beursbabes in Genève
Influenza
I caught it Monday evening. Too late to postpone the meeting that was planned on Tuesday. So I went to bed early and took a lot of Paracetamol, took another double dose the next morning, put a dose in my briefcase and went to the customer. It went splendid, actually, like I already told you yesterday. But yesterday evening, the flu caught up with me. I went to bed around 10.30pm and got up around 10am. But I’m feeling a lot better now, even though I decided to take things easy, today.
Progress on work
Well now, I’m glad to report we’ve set a serious end-date on the project we’ve been working on these last few weeks. I’ll never like programming again ;-) It wasn’t so bad, they start using the programme tomorrow and we have two weeks to finish those last tidbits of work. I’m glad when it’s finally done, it’ll give me some breathing space.
Peter did a good job on the programming. We’ve already decided that he’ll be the first guy we actually hire into CIDEV and he told us he would like that. Of course, since I can’t live off of it today, it’ll take a while until we can really offer him a job, but we figure it would be somewhere in the next two years. That’s good.
