Blog entries from June, 2004

On Wednesday night I posted a message to the ClassicCmp list saying that I had two SGI Personal Iris systems available for free. These systems were part of a bulk lot I obtained late last year, but since I hadn’t done anything with them and didn’t forsee any progress in the near (or even distant) future I decided that I no longer had a reason to keep them. Plus they took up a lot of space…

Anyway, a scant fourteen minutes after I posted my message I had a response from a guy who wanted to know when he could pick them up. He came by this morning and the systems will now be part of his collection of SGI systems that until now had not included even one Personal Iris, and now he has two.

Although I gave the systems away for free he brought along his Irix 6.5 installation cd’s and I grabbed a copy of them after we loaded up his car. So after lunch I extracted my Indy from the computer pile, set it up, and began installing Irix…

As I type it is almost complete…

Today after lunch I pickup up a Linksys Wireless Access Point Router and right now I am sitting downstairs watching TV…

Even though I got a router I’m only going to use it as an access point as my linux box Gromit does that duty. And since I’m planning to put it out at my mum’s computer (it’s in the centre of the house) the four port hub will mean I can retire the old hub that is currently allowing her computer and the print server to be on the network. Also the router was $10 cheaper than the access point…

…and despite the numbers being way down (because of no cars) it as an ok weekend away.

It was also a short weekend as I didn’t end up getting there until the Saturday night as both Trev and Stu (my two transport options) were delayed by family stuff and work respectively…

A while back I discovered a way to control multiple computers (not necessarily the same OS) via one keyboard/mouse over the network.

The other day I discovered Synergy. Unlike the VNC based solution this is purpose built solution which means that only one instance needs to run on the ‘server’, the screens can be arranged in a variety of ways, and things such as clipboard contents are copied around.

The biggest advantage is that it knows how to deal with multiple displays on a single system which allows me to run it at work so I can use my PowerBook as a third display on my work system (which has a nice pair of 17″ LCD’s)…

This morning I picked up my lovely new 12-inch Powerbook and it is so nice…

I will have to get used to all the quirks but I have a terminal and Mozilla and that is really all that matters…

Unfortunately I have hit a snag regarding my plan to run the powerbook through my KVM switch to my 19″ CRT when at my desk at home. The cheap PS/2 to USB adapter I picked up works fine when connecting straight to a mouse and keyboard but not when attached to the KVM. Time for an email to support…

Syncing iCal and the address book to my phone (a Sony Ericsson T610) via bluetooth is working nicely and I believe that I might have a solution to not being able to sync to the calendar server at work. One of the things I have written for the portal (well actually rewritten) is some code to produce a summary of a person’s calendar for the week by screen scraping the web interface. Last night (while waiting impatiently for today) I hacked away and made it output the events for the week in iCal (the standard not the program) format.

What this means is that I could set it up to reguarily stick the iCal formatted events on a web server and the subscribe to it in iCal (the program this time). iSync will then get the events onto my phone. It is a read-only solution but the main reason I still bother with my Palm Vx is to be able to carry around a copy of my calendar. If this pans out I’ll have an immaculate Palm Vx with a bunch of accessories for sale…

My next step is to get a wireless access point so I can wander around with my precious at home…

Last night I placed the order and on Saturday I will go pickup my nice 12-inch PowerBook with an additional 512MB of RAM…