A while ago I gave a summary of the huge number of projects I have going on. I've been struggling to figure out what my primary focus should be.

Well, over the last several days I've been going on a lot of walks. Walking is one of my favorite activities, and this weather is the most perfect time of the year for me to take a stroll. I find that I do my best thinking on walks, and over the last few days I've been walking until I accumulate enough thoughts, then I sit down, pull out my laptop and type them all up.

Well, one of the things on my list of projects in progress was my old comic Lingo, which never really got that far in the first place, but which I've always felt very attached to anyway. But I really couldn't continue developing the comic. First of all, I want to take the comic in a different direction than I was originally planning. Second, I really regretted attaching myself and my friend Jay to the two main characters; it felt both egotistical and limiting. I recently had a nice talk about this with one of my friends, and she gave me her assessment that it's alright for the characters to be based off of real life people but to develop in their own directions.

Well with that in mind I went on another walk today; this time the focus of my thoughts was how to bring Lingo back to life. I sat down on a bench and typed up an outline of the story, and I think what I wrote should keep me going for at least another thirty comics. Afterwards I sketched out some new character designs for some of the forthcoming characters and drew out some layout drafts.

I'm glad to say that not only do I now know where I want to bring the comic, I wrote the script in a way that allows me to continue where I left off (even though I didn't get too far) without having to start from scratch. This is a huge relief, and the decision of what to do here was one of the major roadblocks I was facing.

So, I've decided that for off-work hours projects, Lingo will take number one priority. I'm going to try to turn this into a weekly comic.

By next Friday there will be a new comic up. I hope you look forward to it as much as I do.

This will be my final post regarding the Eee PC for some time to come, I promise. I got Ubuntu installed on the Eee, and I thought I'd give my impressions about that.

First of all, the results from a number of Google queries on how to do the installation pointed me to some interesting and well written articles, but I was having a lot of trouble until I actually visited the Ubuntu wiki. The steps you want to take are definitely these:

• Make a bootable Ubuntu Live/Install USB key. This is worth doing even if you aren't using the Eee, especially if you follow the instructions on how to create a persistent USB installation. However, its critical for the Eee, since the Eee lacks any sort of optical drive.
• Then follow the instructions for actually installing Ubuntu on the Eee . I found the install to be pretty normal, but its definitely worth following the instructions on this page to optimize the life of your flash disk, for installing the wireless drivers, etc.

But yeah, it was all very, very easy once I found the right resources. And now I've got a real operating system on here! It's way, way better than running the default Xandros install.

The only problem I'm having is how apparent it is that many applications just aren't developed to run at a resolution less than 800x600, and since the model of the Eee that I have has a maximum resolution of 800x480, I sometimes have to to hold down alt to drag windows around.

Here's a list of applications I've tested which work really nicely on the small resolution:

• Firefox
• Blender
• zsnes
• Emacs
• GNOME Terminal
• GIMP (had to modify the docks a bit, but once I did so all fit very nicely)
• Pidgin
• OpenOffice
• Aisleriot Solitaire
• Mines (minesweeper clone)
• Chess
• Ekiga

Applications that were unusable:

• Gnome Blackjack: Required an unnecessarily large window
• Wesnoth: While I could start this up in windowed mode (fullscreen would not work) it was totally unusable as I could not access the buttons from the main menu. Constantly moving around the window to play this game is just far too obnoxious of an idea to even seriously contemplate.

Other than that, a number of applications had preferences menus or graphical wizards which required a lot of manual positioning to navigate, but nothing too frustrating, and since these are things that one needs to access very rarely, I don't really find myself bothered at all. Now, the next generation of the Eee is both more expensive and more powerful: for 400 bucks (50 dollars more than what I paid) you can get a savvy 1024×600 resolution screen. My suspicion is that this will be good enough for most people, though I think the current system I have is still Good Enough For Me (tm).

Conclusions: Asus has definitely done the right thing here. Sure, they could have shipped with a better distribution, but the fact that this machine actually ships with and was designed for Linux means that I knew I could buy it already knowing all the hardware would work with my operating system and distribution of choice. Since the resolution is good enough and not too unusual, and since it ships with a keyboard and a touchpad, this means that finally Linux users have access to an ultraportable device that isn't trying to reinvent the browser, email clients and feed readers because of limitations or peculiarity of the screen or input. For the most part, you know you can run the distribution and applications that you already know and love. And not reinventing the wheel is a great thing. And despite how great these devices have done for the proliferation of free and open source software, this just can't be said for the Nokia handhelds, the Zaurus, or even a project I'm still a huge fan of, the OpenMoko phone.

So, first post written from the Eee. As usual, I'm using ViewSourceWith with emacsclient to type it up.

There hasn't been a person whom I've shown it to today who hasn't been both impressed with (and jealous of) the device. I must say that it manages to fit expectations totally and completely... hardware-wise anyway.

Yes, the keyoard is still really small and feels pretty cramped. But I'm typing with both hands pretty well and with a fairly low margin of error. There actually are two problems I've been having with the keyboard, but they aren't the ones you'd expect. I end up pressing the enter key a lot when I actually intend to press the apostrophe key. Also, and this is what actually irritates me more than anything, the keyboard doesn't feel totally fastened on the right side very well. It sounds fairly springy when I type on that side in a way that it doesn't on the left. Does anyone else have this problem, I wonder? It's annoying me a lot, especially when I press the arrow keys. Maybe I'd feel less annoyed with it if someone confirmed that this was normal.

The resolution's pretty low, and the screen's pretty tiny. The next version of the device looks like it's going to improve on that greatly, though actually... it's still a lot nicer than I expected even in its present incarnation. You forget just how much of the web is still pretty doable at a tiny width of 800 pixels. Yes, Penny Arcade fits nice and snugly within the browser window, framed so close and perfectly that you'd almost think that maybe they designed their comics with this resolution in mind. And maybe they did. But probably not.

I'm actually rather surprised at how nice the speakers are, as I'm fairly certain they are quite better than my thinkpad's.

So, as for the hardware, its all pretty good excepting that keyboard springy noise, which is getting to me a little. Funny thing is that I had this same issue with another laptop I owned, and it irritated the hell out of me then, too. I'm not sure if this justifies a replacement. I'm thinking about it.

As for software, the version of Linux that's installed on here, some Xandros derivative (which is in turn a derivative of Debian), is pretty lame. Some people have actually complimented the desktop, but I think it's an irritation. Ubuntu, from all I've read, runs just fine on here, and I plan to install that shortly. But why install a stripped-down Linux in the first place? I've found that Ubuntu is really easy to use already, even for people who have had no prior experience with Linux.

That being said, its not terrible, and once you know that the terminal can be started with Ctrl-Alt-T, it's survivable. It comes with OpenOffice, FireFox, and Pidgin, and really for most people that's all they really need. However, I'm not most people, and I'll be installing Ubuntu on this thing shortly.

One last note, which is really a curiosity more than anything. I was a bit surprised to see that the system came with some games, but all of them (with the exception of Sudoku, which is such a lame game it almost doesn't count) are games that have been around since I first started running Linux. I'm not sure if that's a commentary on the state of Open Source gaming or not, but it was kind of disappointing to realize.

Speaking of which, I tried installing Wesnoth on here out of the Xandros repositories and it segfaulted. And that's almost reason enough to switch this thing over to Ubuntu. When I get around to doing that, I'll have more details here.

I'm bubbling with excitement. It just arrived. Oh man oh boy oh man oh boy!

Morgan and I drove by the office and saw two UPS trucks passing to the next house. I parked and bolted out of the car, bubbling with questions about whether any packages for me arrived. The man calmly explained that, yes, he left a few packages inside, as someone (Ric Lee, the company founder) had let him in.

Sure enough, there it was. I've opened it and haven't played with it that much, but let me say that even having seen it before, I didn't realize how small it is until I actually held it in my hands. The keyboard is indeed tiny, but manageable. My WPM was hindered a bit by the size as I tested it out, but its definitely doable. Overall, the design feels totally solid. My only regret is that I got a white one. (White? I always prefer black technology, or at least something cool like deep blue.) That's OK, I have a bunch of python stickers from PyCon that I'll plaster it with. The Linux distribution it ships with has a very Palm OS-like desktop by default, which is pretty lame, but since I can install Ubuntu, I'm happy.

Now I'm off to meet Doug Napoleone to talk about next year's PyCon site. I might be volunteering more this time around. We'll see how things go.

More impressions later as I continue to play with this thing.

I stayed late at work today. No, I mean really late. I guess I felt bad about how many times I pressed refresh on the UPS tracking page today waiting for that damn laptop.

And what the hell did I do at work staying so late? Oh, watching goddamn anime intarwebs memes. What the hell is wrong with me?

Well, at least tomorrow should be interesting. The Eee will arrive, and I'll be meeting a couple of people from PyCon.

A friend and former coworker pointed out that my blog's RSS feed is still pointing to http://example.com.

I'm going to fix it as soon as I get off of work today. Like, the moment I get off.

I decided after all to give that lightning talk on PyStage at PyCon. I planned on using the same talk I did at ChiPy, just significantly shorter. I did not plan on a key getting stuck on my keyboard halfway through the talk, essentially grinding it to a halt.

Well, a number of people told me that I recovered really well by turning it into a humorous situation. I ended up smacking the heck out of my old T23 Thinkpad trying to find which key was stuck. Heck, it might have been for the best, for at least it ended up forcing me to finish my talk in a reasonable amount of time. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the video of it go up on YouTube: that way I'll have one video where I did really well and where the concept was well received, and another where I'm literally pounding the keyboard with my fist to humorous effect. Too bad the former was in front of the 60 or so people at ChiPy and the latter was in front of the 1000 or so people at PyCon.

Even so, the whole situation was embarrassing, and built upon a number of other frustrations I've had with that laptop: broken wireless and a video card for which I haven't been able to figure out how to get direct rendering with OpenGL. These things have made a number of frustrations for me, particularly at nerd events like ChiPy, PyCon, or even while sprinting at PyWeek, and in an impulsive moment I made a significant financial decision (without consulting my fiance): I bought an Eee PC.

There were a lot of people with these things at PyCon, and I found them appealing to me on a number of different levels:

• Cost: Pre tax and shipping, it was only $350
• Portability: It's incredibly tiny and cute, and easy to carry around.
• Functionality: Despite being so small, it still has a fully functional (albeit tiny) keyboard.
• Power: It's strong enough to be able to play some reasonably impressive games. I won't be using it for that, but if it's powerful enough for that, it should be able to handle PyGame, Pyglet and SuperTux development.
• Freedom: It ships with GNU/Linux off the bat, albeit with a shitty distribution. That's okay, it's able to run the distros I like.

I've been interested in a super small computer with working wireless for a long time. I don't really need or want a laptop that can replace my desktop, as I enjoy doing most of my work on a machine that's persistently on. This is why I've invested money into the old Zaurus I bought several years ago. Unfortunately, I never got the networking on it working well (that might have been partly due to my inexperience with networking at the time) and thus was never able to get the environment to the state that I wanted it in. Also, the keyboard on it was fairly decent for what it was, but it wasn't a real keyboard. This thing has a real keyboard.

The only thing I feel bad about with purchasing this device is that I feel like it distracts from the One Laptop Per Child project. Unfortunately, neither the Give One Get One nor the developer programs are running right now, so I don't think its possible for me to get ahold of one before Flourish.

There's also a possibility that I won't end up achieving what I want with it, but I'm quite optimistic. If nothing else, at least I'll be able to finally have a machine with working wireless access, which seems pretty critical for a geek in modern society.

In the meanwhile I'm refreshing the UPS shipping page constantly. It's scheduled to arrive tomorrow, which is almost a shame because we're off of work tomorrow and I had it ship to the office. Well, maybe I can drive to the UPS store myself to pick it up, because honestly tomorrow can't come soon enough.

Pycon, day one! (Or that is, day one if you didn't attend tutorials yesterday.) Best day of my life? Well, no. One of the best days of my life? Oh yes, certainly.

Anyway, summary is:

• Lots of cool swag
• Looks like Python 3.0 and 2.6 are going to be developed nicely so that the transition will be really easy.
• Django 1.0 coming soon, possibly after this upcoming sprint
• Met a lot of interesting folks. Was surprised to meet some people whose writings and work I've followed in my spare time. Kevin Kubasik, whose blog I've seen a bit on Planet GNOME stopped by our booth.
• That whole stalking Phil Hassey thing was a joke, and I didn't expect to actually spot him in the crowd, but I did and I somewhat rudely and awkwardly interrupted a conversation of his, and didn't recover. So the whole joke of me looking like a stalker probably actually did make me look like a stalker. Oh well.
• Brian Fitzpatrick, an acquaintance and head of the Open Source department in Google's downtown engineering office, gave me a sticker that said "My other computer is a data center". The irony induced by the context of my previous employment didn't strike me until several hours later.
• Massimo Di Pierro, professor at DePaul's CTI department, physicist, web framework author, and all around cool guy, gave me a Web2Py hat. I didn't see him give anyone else one of these hats, so I'm pretending it's just because I'm awesome.

Also, as to whether or not I'm giving a talk tomorrow, I'm not really sure. I signed up, but I signed up in the special first-grabs sponsor talk sheet, and I think I might have done so too late. So not sure if I'm going to get to speak, but I'm preparing anyway.

Oh hey, and if you are there, stop by Imaginary Landscape's booth in the break sessions! I'll probably be around.

So I said I was going to have the gallery done by the end of the weekend, and that didn't happen, because smash brothers was released for the Wii![1] But I did say I'd have pystage released by the end of this coming weekend, and that might happen, because I might give a lightning talk about it at PyCon! But that will only happen if I finish things tonight!

By the way, have I mentioned how excited I am about PyCon? This year is extra cool because:

• It's in Chicago
• I'm going
• We did work for PyCon at my job, and even released our first open source application, which is running on the pycon site right now (the company has open sourced other software before, but it's all been developer-oriented, whereas this is an actual application).

I'm extremely stoked. There are a lot of really great looking talks to look forward to. Also, cool people like are going to be there, including Phil Hassey. I've already informed that guy that I plan on stalking him. (Does it count as stalking if you inform the person in advance that you are planning on doing so?)

[1] (To be fair, Jeff and I did bet together and do some concept work for the game, but we also played a lot of smash brothers)

And now for a post that isn't me whining about politics.

It's recently become apparent to me just how many projects I have floating around. Some of them are right on the brink of completion, some of them in the earliest stages. Since I'm trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to be working on at the moment, I figure I'll list them out here, along with priorities and completion levels, as I see them.

+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| Project    | Comp   | Prio | Status & Description                    |
|            | letion | rity |                                         |
+============+========+======+=========================================+
| Blog       | 80%    | me   | For the most part, the blog is in a     |
|            |        | dium | good spot. It works, obviously, but it  |
|            |        |      | still lacks a drafts and                |
|            |        |      | save-preview-publish workflow.          |
|            |        |      | Currently I'm posting posts in my test  |
|            |        |      | environment to make sure they're        |
|            |        |      | working before I take them live.        |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | There are a couple of other features    |
|            |        |      | I'd like to add, such as tagging and    |
|            |        |      | "edit logging", but those can wait.     |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| Image      | 0%     | high | I haven't even started on this, but     |
| gallery    |        |      | it's definitely critical for the        |
|            |        |      | success of my site. I do a lot of       |
|            |        |      | artwork, and one of the main reasons I  |
|            |        |      | wanted to even start this website was   |
|            |        |      | so that I could have a place to show    |
|            |        |      | off all the things I'm working on.      |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | In fact, I've had a few projects that   |
|            |        |      | I've been wanting to show off on here,  |
|            |        |      | but its not really possible until I get |
|            |        |      | the gallery up and running.             |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| Web based  | 2%     | me   | A while ago I wrote a frustrated email  |
| media      |        | dium | at my work complaining about the awful, |
| player     |        |      | repetitive music we play on the radio   |
|            |        |      | there. I proposed that I would build a  |
|            |        |      | web-based music player where we could   |
|            |        |      | all upload music and collaboratively    |
|            |        |      | set playlists, vote for what songs we   |
|            |        |      | like, et cetera.                        |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | It sounds like an overly ambitious      |
|            |        |      | project, but I think it *will* happen,  |
|            |        |      | since I'm being told that, while I      |
|            |        |      | can't work on it on-hours at work,      |
|            |        |      | they'd be willing to fund for           |
|            |        |      | late-night hacking pizza, etc. One of   |
|            |        |      | my coworkers, Tamas, is down for        |
|            |        |      | collaborating with me on this one too.  |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | I've paper-prototyped the whole thing,  |
|            |        |      | I've learned the basics of gstreamer,   |
|            |        |      | and I already know how to do web        |
|            |        |      | development, so I expect that all will  |
|            |        |      | go well with it.                        |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| Ble        | 60%    | low  | This is something I've just been doing  |
| nder-based |        |      | for fun in my relaxation time. I'm      |
| fanart     |        |      | doing a fanart for a [comic that I      |
|            |        |      | like](http://okk.keenspace.com). It's   |
|            |        |      | surprisingly coming along really well,  |
|            |        |      | but it doesn't take any sort of         |
|            |        |      | priority. Still, I don't want it to     |
|            |        |      | totally fall off the radar.             |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| Getting my | 70%    | high | I'm actually able to make calls with    |
| Openmoko   |        |      | this every now and then... or I was,    |
| phone to   |        |      | until I updated to a broken image.      |
| work       |        |      | Maybe this wouldn't take as high of     |
| nicely     |        |      | priority except that I paid a good deal |
|            |        |      | of money for this thing and I continue  |
|            |        |      | to pay for service for it. Well, I knew |
|            |        |      | it was a developer version when I       |
|            |        |      | bought it. Mostly I wanted to support   |
|            |        |      | the project. However, I hear that there |
|            |        |      | are Python bindings coming soon, which  |
|            |        |      | would make this a whole lot cooler.     |
|            |        |      | Maybe I'll blog a bit more about my     |
|            |        |      | experiences thus far later.             |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| Web-based  | 1%     | low  | This might raise in priority soon, but  |
| game       |        |      | my friend                               |
|            |        |      | [Jeff](http://blog.codexile.net) and I  |
|            |        |      | have worked on some game development in |
|            |        |      | the past, and are meeting up this       |
|            |        |      | Sunday to talk about some new           |
|            |        |      | development soon.                       |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | Currently I'm putting the priority here |
|            |        |      | as low because we haven't agreed on any |
|            |        |      | specifics, and it isn't clear how far   |
|            |        |      | this project is going to make it yet.   |
|            |        |      | Who knows? It might become              |
|            |        |      | significantly higher in priority soon.  |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| Lingo      | ???    | ???  | My long dead comic,                     |
|            |        |      | [Lingo](http://lingocomic.com)... oh    |
|            |        |      | how I miss working on you. :(           |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | Unfortunately, I just don't know where  |
|            |        |      | I should go with this comic at the      |
|            |        |      | moment. I'm not as happy with the       |
|            |        |      | original storyline I sketched out for   |
|            |        |      | it, and overtime I've come to regret    |
|            |        |      | having named the characters after me    |
|            |        |      | and my friend.. it just seems far too   |
|            |        |      | egotistical.                            |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | That being said, I've sketched up some  |
|            |        |      | new ideas that I would actually be      |
|            |        |      | fairly enthusiastic about pursuing. I   |
|            |        |      | just really don't know what to do about |
|            |        |      | the characters, and that's really       |
|            |        |      | largely why nothing has happened since  |
|            |        |      | I've graduated.                         |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| Blob       | 40%?   | low  | Jeff and I produced a [demo of          |
| bit/Gloopy |        |      | this](ht                                |
|            |        |      | tp://www.pyweek.org/e/the_sticky_bits/) |
|            |        |      | during the last                         |
|            |        |      | [PyWeek](http://pyweek.org/) sprint.    |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | I think if we revisited the collision   |
|            |        |      | code this could be a feasible project,  |
|            |        |      | but I don't feel any momentum for it at |
|            |        |      | the moment.                             |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+
| PyStage    | 95%    | high | Now here's a project which I could      |
|            |        |      | almost kick out the door this weekend   |
|            |        |      | (and maybe I should).                   |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | PyStage is, as the name might suggest,  |
|            |        |      | an animation system for python. Not     |
|            |        |      | only that, but it *already works in its |
|            |        |      | present state*. In fact, I've already   |
|            |        |      | [given a talk about                     |
|            |        |      | it](htt                                 |
|            |        |      | p://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9 |
|            |        |      | 06354546937878632&q=chipy&total=278&sta |
|            |        |      | rt=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0) |
|            |        |      | at [ChiPy](http://chipy.org). (I show   |
|            |        |      | up about 32 minutes into the video.)    |
|            |        |      |                                         |
|            |        |      | So why haven't I released it yet?       |
|            |        |      | Partly a fear that nobody else will     |
|            |        |      | find it useful, and partly because I    |
|            |        |      | haven't put up any sort of page for it. |
|            |        |      | Maybe I should just get over my fears   |
|            |        |      | and put up some page for it on Google   |
|            |        |      | Code or something.                      |
+------------+--------+------+-----------------------------------------+

Well that's about the summary of things. I guess there's a lot more that I've put on my plate than I even realized. This isn't even considering the volunteering I've been hoping to do. But this weekend, I'm going to limit myself to working on the gallery code, finishing the blog code here on dustycloud, and exploring that web game idea with Jeff a bit. And next week I'll really, honestly kick PyStage out the door.

For serious.