Open Source Mechanic blog

Story Spectrum prototype

Here is a story spectrum application I’ve been working on. It highlights “purple” prose as well as prose which appears in Shakespeare or Canterbury tales http://opensourcemechanic.com/stories/submit/ Here is the facebook application I’ve tied to it: http://apps.facebook.com/textrum/

Fixing a Casio SK-200 Music Keyboard

Sometime in the late 1980s or early 90s I bought a Casio SK-200 sampling music keyboard. It has been a lot of fun over the years. I’ve sampled everything from radio static to hulusi’s and harps. The sound quality isn’t brilliant, it’s only 8-bit sampling at 10 kHz, but slightly higher quality [...]

SourceJuicer at Beijing OpenSolaris User’s Group

While I was in China working with the desktop QA team,

An engine crosses Malahide rail viaduct testing in progress!

I was pleasantly surprised at the quick progress in plugging the breach in the weir and repairing the broken viaduct. Today marked a milestone, it was the first time since the rail problem that I saw a rail car traverse the broken section of track!

O’Reilly’s Beautiful Testing book coming soon!

Emily Chen and I coauthored a chapter in an O’Reilly book entitled “Beautiful Testing” which was edited by Adam Goucher and Tim Riley. Successful software depends as much on scrupulous testing as it does on solid architecture or elegant code. Beautiful Testing offers 23 essays from 27 leading testers and developers that illustrate the qualities and [...]

Use it or lose it patent legislation proposed in Minnesota

My friend Ron at inventorsagarage.com found this proposed Minnesota legislation which would grant an employee the right to use a patent if his/her employer sits on the patent for too long: (b) An employer who has a right to develop or utilize an invention or proposal 1.11must make a substantial investment in the invention or proposal within [...]

A carpenter’s explanation of OpenSource

Imagine that you are a shop teacher intending to teach children how to build a wooden footstool:

The shop teacher and the prefab 'lumber'yard You go to the lumberyard and ask for some lumber and nails. The guy at the lumber store shakes his head and says, "Sorry, we don't got that, we only carry EasyDone or NanoHouse products. How about this beautiful prefab bathroom?" You tell him you don't need a bathroom.
"Perhaps I can interest you in a EasyDone kitchen?" he says.
"Just wood and nails," you say. Frustration is beginning to show in your voice.
"O.K. then you must choose between an EasyDone or NanoHouse prefab livingroom."
"I only need wood and nails! Ten penny nails, 2X4s, plywood!"
"We don't sell that."
"O.K. then how much is an EasyDone bedroom, I can take it apart and use the wood and nails."
"$40,000"
"What? That is far too expensive for my budget!"
"It's fully integrated, painted, the carpet is in place and the bed is even included, it's ready to go!"
"But it doesn't do what I need. I'm only going to take it apart and we are going to use the wood in shop class."

ZFS in Apple’s OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard

Storagemojo’s blog has some interesting comments about Apple’s decision to leave the next generation ZFS volume-manager/filesystem out of OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. I have no idea why they did this. Command line read-only ZFS existed in OSX 10.5 Leopard and an opensource plug-in gave it read write capability. ZFS has proven itself [...]

28 August Broadmeadows low evening tide

I don’t remember the broadmeadows estuary water level ever being quite so low so close to a high tide. Notice the entire length of the pier is out of the water. Today is partway between a spring tide and neap tide so I wouldn’t expect extremes. The wind was strong out of the west but [...]

Malahide rail viaduct before and after photos

Here is a clearer before and after photo. Both were taken from exactly the same spot (with in a couple of feet), with exactly the same kid’s telescope/lens adapter.