Here’s the magic to get this to run.


cd /tmp
wget http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/i/ia32-libs/ia32-libs_2.7ubuntu6.1_amd64.deb
dpkg-deb -x ia32-libs_2.7ubuntu6.1_amd64.deb ia32-libs
sudo cp ia32-libs/usr/lib32/libstdc++.so.5.0.7 /usr/lib/
cd /usr/lib
sudo ln -s libstdc++.so.5.0.7 libstdc++.so.5


I’ve made a slight adjustment to the commands above to make reference to the Ubuntu 10.04 directory structure of /usr/lib instead of the /usr/lib32

Good luck geeky people!

The major enhancement is the addition of warning sounds. This was based on a suggestion where a conference presenter wanted to be warned close to the ending of his session so he could give a good wrap-up. See. The timer is used in unexpected ways! I love that.

The settings are also now saved in a SQLite database named ctEggTimer.rsd. You can access it via any SQLite Database manager and see what is inside of it. Basically, it is used to save your settings and reload them when the Egg Timer is restarted.

I’m next going to be working on major enhancements for version 2.0. I’m hoping to have better notification of the end of the timer, sound selection, and more. If you have an enhancement request, just email me and I’ll do my best to include it in version 2.0.

I also may make version 2.0 “for sale”. I’ve always been curious on whether this will work out, so this is a social experiment as well. I will probably sell version 2.0 for $3US or something like that. We’ll see whether people will pay a “micro” payment for a small utility program.

Downloads here:

• ctEggTimer for Winders [1.7M]
• ctEggTimer for Linux [1.6M]
• ctEggTimer for Mac [13M]

The ctEggTimer application is written in REAL Studio 2010r1!

Thanks!
-Kevin

The first utility is “ESPEAK” and should be installed by default on your system. From the command line, give this a try:

espeak “Hello there. It is a beautiful day outside!”

To try out espeak with a female voice, try out:

espeak -v en+f1 “You rock.”

There is another utility installed on Ubuntu systems called “Festival”. On my hardware, the speech is of much higher quality. From the command prompt, start up festival by typing “festival”. Here’s an example:

festival {ENTER}
festival> (SayText “Hello Doctor Floyd. I am fully operational and all of my circuits are functioning perfectly.”)

Very nice. More information on Festival can be found here:
The Festival Speech Synthesis System

Now get out there and get your computer talking to you!

• ctEggTimer for Winders [1.5M]
• ctEggTimer for Linux [4.1M]
• ctEggTimer for Mac [10.5M] untested

INSTALLATION NOTES:

[For Windows]
Unzip it into your local work area or other safe location.

[For Linux]
Place application to where you want to run the program. Make sure to set the executable attribute!

[For Mac]
I don’t have a Mac so this is untested. You’ll need to decompress the file. Perhaps set the executable attribute? Let me know how it runs on the Mac! I’m always looking to improve.

Keep the suggestions coming and I’ll make adjustments as they come along. So turn off the email and browser and don’t answer that phone for the next 25 minutes and be productive!

• ctEggTimer for Winders [3.9M]
• ctEggTimer for Linux [3.6M]
• ctEggTimer for Mac [9.8M] untested

Keep the suggestions coming and I’ll make adjustments as they come along. So turn off the email and browser and don’t answer that phone for the next 25 minutes and be productive!

Read more about the Pomodoro Technique here.

It was simple and it seemed to make sense to me. I need to increase my productivity, especially lately. I took this as a challenge and created a Pomodoro like software timer in REALbasic as an exercise. You can download it here for free. I hope this helps other people with their productivity too.

• ctEggTimer for Winders [3.6M]
• ctEggTimer for Linux [3.5M]
• ctEggTimer for Mac [9.5M] untested

When I’m in a 25 minute block, I turn off my browser (unless I’m developing a web application!), turn off my email, and don’t answer the phone. So far, so good! Let me know if it works out for you!

What if it didn’t need to be that way? What if it could be truly useful to me? What would it take and what would it cost? To be honest, the price can stay the same if they give me these tools:

1. Web site administration – In the 21st century, I want a simple web site that I can log into and administer all of my phone functions. Vonage has had this *for-ev-er*! Need this or the deal is off and my home land line goes bye-bye.

2. Caller ID/Phone book – Yes, everyone has this, but I want to be able to administer the caller ID through a web interface. Because phone companies allow Caller ID spoofing, I want to be able to override the Caller ID. Instead of the caller ID showing “Merchant SVC” as an example, I should be able to set the caller ID to be “Dont Answer” or “FONEBOT” or “Jerkoid” or “POLITICIAN” or whatever I set. At the same time, “Cell Phone GA” becomes “Kevin Cully” when I call home from my cell phone. Right now I’m thinking “Boy, that phone number looks familiar. Should I take a chance and answer it?” Please help me manage the incoming calls.

3. Dump Calls – Google voice has this. Again this isn’t rocket science. I want to dump phonebots into the trash. Dump “PRIVATE” callers automatically into Voice Mail. Shouldn’t I be able to administer this myself?

4. Call routing/Simultaneous Ring – This should be included with any package above the basic package. This would have kept land lines in place with just this feature. Allow me to ring other phones (cell phones? Hmmm?) at the same time. This way my home phone would have kept being my main phone line with cell phones being supplemental.

5. Voicemail delivery options – Again Vonage, Skype, and Google Voice all have this. Give me the option to transcribe the voicemail and email it to me, or attach it as an WAV or MP3 file. So basic.

6. Video phones – I know this might have required DSL upgrades, but with a small subsidy of a hardware manufacturer, a video phone should be able to have a graphics chip that does massive compression on a video stream to allow it to happen over land lines. Grandma would *love* this feature. Once we have this on cell phones, land lines are even more dead than they are now.

Only #6 is difficult and/or expensive. These land line phone companies deserve to die because they failed to innovate and spent all of their time and energy on maintaining their monopoly and working with the government to keep it so. In the end, the land line will die but it didn’t need to be so.

Goodbye land lines. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to know you.

I’ve been thinking of developing this product for about 10 years now and I think the timing is right. I’ve just finished up the major development for one of my clients and it seems to be humming along very well. My other clients are in more of a maintenance mode right now. I should have some time to spend focusing on this product.

I plan on developing this product as a system to be run on Linux, Mac and Windows and be sold to small to medium sized business. My plan is to price it so competitively that it should almost be a no-brainer for businesses to pull the trigger on. I’m also planning on having an “open” feel to the program. I’m not trying to lock a business into my product architecture but I’m going to try to earn their loyalty by having low prices, open data systems, and allowing them to extend the system to fit their business.

My obstacles are many. First, I know how to be a consultant and a programmer for hire. I’m not sure I know how to be a business owner that knows how to sell and market a product. As I am writing this, I wonder how much spam this is going to trigger into my inbox.

In addition to my central product, I also have a road map for ancillary products for sale that will compliment the main product and extend the capabilities that I can see businesses needing. These will be sold separately as many (most) businesses won’t need these capabilities, but the businesses that do need them will really need them.

I stated before that I will be developing this product for multiple platforms. This eliminates my main programming language choice of Visual Foxpro, which I dearly love. I’m choosing a language called REALbasic to develop my product in. It is cross-platform, object oriented, high quality, fast with a good development environment. The database I’ll be using is PostgreSQL. Free as in beer and free as in freedom, PostgreSQL is a mature, fast, stable database that should not limit me in any way. Some future rewrite of my product may make it database agnostic but that’s too ambitious for my first several versions of my application.

I know any choice of technology in language or database will cost me some sales. Someone out there will say to me “We love your product but we can’t buy it because we only use Oracle databases.” “Your product could really help us out but we require applications to be developed in .NET.” Crazy but that’s happened to me in past jobs. Ah well. Choices must be made at some point, and I think REALbasic and PostgreSQL is a winning combination.

The Foxpro world where I’m coming from is very “consulting” oriented in that most all developers now developing in Foxpro are consultants. In years past many of them were employees with very few being programmers selling products. In contrast, it appears to me that many REALbasic developers are business owners that sell products, with a good mix of consultants and some employees. This was very eye opening to me to see the different “mentality” in this community.

Many Foxpro developers would like to develop and sell a product but it almost seems as if we’ve developed our own version of OCD that creates a society of fear and prevents us from developing and selling products. Foxpro developers look at the mountain of hurdles we’ve foreseen and placed in our way. How are we going to handle licensing? How are we going to prevent product piracy? How would we handle application updates? How are we going to handle database upgrades? How are we going to limit the number of concurrent users. How are we going to handle support? How are we going to handle error reports? How are we going to handle taking credit cards? How are we going to handle refunds? Will we be taken advantage of in some way? Ugh. Do you see the mountain that I’ve built up to stand in my way? Why would I ever start climbing that mountain when it looks so tall? So dauntng? I feel defeated before I ever take the first step. I’ve felt this way for decades of my career which is part of the reason that I’ve never developed a product for sale before.

The REALbasic community thinks differently from this. First let me say that many of the developers in REALbasic are coming from the Mac world. The Mac world (in the past) hasn’t had the huge number of choices of applications to choose from that the Windows world has to choose from, both as home users and as business users. I believe this has given a rise to “if I can’t find it, I might as well build it myself” type of mentality. This is a very refreshing attitude. Very empowering. These people that build these tools for their business often think “if I needed this thing that I find so useful, then other people probably need it too, and they might be willing to buy it from me.” And sometimes they do buy. And sometimes the REALbasic developer makes some good money selling a small but useful tool. They didn’t see the mountain as being that tall. It didn’t stop them before they even started.

In a way, I’m trying to see my mountain more as a hill. I’m not going to require myself to conquer the entire mountain on my first attempt. I might opt for taking the mountain pass, build experience, gather equipment, learn from my mistakes, rely on the advice from guides, fall, slide down the hill, try again. Someday I hope to reach the absolute pinnacle of the mountain, but that shouldn’t stop me from even venturing out my door and taking the first step.

I invite you along on my journey. I’m giving myself a set period of time to accomplish a good portion of the ultimate product functionality. I’ll stop development and start finishing up the testing and quality control process and prepare the application for sale. During development I’ll be lining up the advertising, marketing, and sales channels that I’ll be pursuing. Boy will I make lots of mistakes! I am really excited to have the opportunity to make those mistakes.

I’m off to write out the modules and features that I’d like to get into the first release, and create a map for future capabilities of the product. I invite you a long for a portion of the journey up this mountain pass. I hope a boulder doesn’t fall on my head. My first step out the door is … now.

Haiku is an operating system that is a complete rewrite of the BeOS using the MIT license.  Do we really need another operating system?  Yes.  Choice is not just good, choice is great.  And this choice in Haiku is an important one in that it is fundamentally different in that each process in Haiku is it’s own thread.  If any thread hangs up, it can be terminated and it does not destabilize the operating system.  Because of the thread architechture, it can insanely take advantage of the modern architecture we have with multi core processors.

I started to try to download Haiku when the Alpha became available.  Silly me.  The download speed was horrendously slow.  I then noticed the Torrent download link.  Facepalm!  That did the trick.  I downloaded the ISO in about two minutes.  I left my KTorrent client running but no one took advantage of my seeding.  I wonder if Comcast is blocking Torrent uploads?

I burned the ISO onto a CD and tried it as a LiveCD on an old PIII computer.  Original price for this computer was over $3,000 and now it’s probably worth about $5.  No kidding.  Haiku rocked the thing.  Demo apps worked great and even the “Spinning Tea Cup” 3D application was working at over 60fps.
I wanted to see how it would work on my netbook.  Currently I have Jolicloud installed on the 30G flash drive.  I had to download the RAW Image of the OS again via the Torrent in about 4 minutes.  I created a bootable USB key with

./linux-image-writer.py haiku-r1alpha1.image

My netbook booted Haiku nicely. I took this for a bit more complete spin. I was able to browse the Internet with a wired connection. Evidently wireless drivers are on their way. I didn’t even try that. The spinning teacup application was registering over 100fps on the netbook! I tried the webcam application CodyCam but it wasn’t able to see the netbook built in webcam. Bummer.

I tried to run a REALbasic application that I had built but it didn’t run because the GTK libraries aren’t installed. I might get Haiku to run in a VM and see if I can resolve the dependencies. That’d be really cool to be able to run REALbasic developed applications in Haiku. I’m not even sure if it’s possible.

Bottom line is that Haiku is worthy of a look. It’s still an Alpha with lots of rough edges. The lack of wireless drivers is a killer in today’s world, but I figure that is something that will be resolved to a satisfactorily level in the next several months. For older machines, this is definitely the way to go in that it runs in a rediculously small amount of RAM. I’ll be watching Haiku’s progress because I’m now a fan.

When checking out, they offer a return of address labels for about $3.99. I normally just write mine in and I’m thinking about ordering the address labels as well. But then I spot something that’s not right. If I was to add the address labels, the shipping would have gone up an additional $3! No way, no how!!!

So now I’m wondering if I was taken for a ride on all of the previous options I was gladly going to sign off on. I review my order and decide to go with my original choices. It added up to more than I originally wanted to spend but I’m thinking this will last me for 5 years or so.

Moral of the story: watch out for extra “gotcha” expenses and keep your wits about you. (And by the word “you”, I mean “me”.)