Later I realized I actually had a need for a simple CMS that didn’t require a database, had a web editing interface and gave complete control over raw HTML/CSS/JS code. I plugged some holes in the original code and added some extra abilities to it.

I’m releasing it under the MIT license so people can do whatever with it.

cheatsheetheap.com

Another exciting development from the basement at PivotLabs! Cheatsheets, cheatsheets, cheatsheets. Boy I love cheatsheets. Now I can finally free up my brain and flush out all my rote learning!

One thing that has bugged me are that cheatsheets are commonly created with no easy way to update them and redistribute them. Most authors keep the source files and release only a fixed bitmap or postscript file along with a restrictive license. I wanted to change this.

Cheatsheetheap.com is a project I started to provide a central place to share and encourage user edits to cheatsheets. It’s a repository of cheatsheets built using open source tools such as Gimp, Inkscape and Open Office.

KitcheNET 0.1 Beta 2 with Software Keyboard

Over the past week since my KitcheNET project got posted on LifeHacker, I’ve been busy tweaking the software adding new features and fixing bugs I’ve found in the process of testing it out.

Once I get it packaged up I’ll post the new version to download on our PivotLabs Open Source section.

Some new features include:

• Software keyboard for VERY simple textual input
• Added page buffering so dialing through configured web sites seems quicker
• Added right-click reset to automatically go back to home page when navigating away
• Added snazzy splash screen
• Switched from <browser> to <iframe> elements.
• Fixed links that would otherwise open in a new browser to open in current one
• Fixed up styles

The online response from readers has been very supportive and inspiring.

One reader, James Tandy, sent me a picture of an inspired setup sporting Windows Media Center and a wireless mouse.

Another reader pointed out another similar project on TechRepublic and others had great ideas for other methods of input such as the Wiimote.

I also learned about the Linux From Scratch project which might be my ticket to finally diving head first into the barebones mechanics of Linux instead of letting Ubuntu take care of everything for me.

Either way i definitely have a list of new ideas to take from this whole experience and plan to keep going with it.

A laptop mounted to my cupboards, spiderman style.

Over the weekend I started working on a new project I dubbed KitcheNET (named after the browser software) aimed at reusing an old laptop and turning it into a kind of kitchen kiosk or Internet Appliance.

For the longest time I was trying to think of a neat way to at least listen to music while I cooked or did the dishes. The radio was out, however, since all of the music stations in my area are terrible. Wearing an MP3 player seemed cumbersome. Hooking up a whole networked desktop was overkill.

It wasn’t until i read this article on LifeHacker I even considered my laptop as a viable option.

This solved my music issue perfectly since I’ve spent countless hours teaching Pandora what i liked. And this gave me a good reason to develop a minimalistic linux distro and XUL-based internet browser (KitcheNET) to power the whole thing.

So far it’s running pretty well considering it’s a very hacked together prototype. I have it setup so i can see the local weather, local news, recipes tagged in my Delicious account, weekly Google calendar and a Picasa photo album that’s connected to my G1 phone.

I’m hoping to bag a couple more old cheap laptops to see how low processing-wise I can go with these.

Xootools 0.1

After I installed all the apt-get upgrades, I did some additional updates as recommended by "10 Things To Do Just After Installing Ubuntu". This installed a bunch of other stuff IMHO that should have been on the Desktop flavor of Ubuntu in the first place.

This explains why in past installations I couldn’t play simple mp3 files. It doesn’t support it out of the box.

After all those updates were done I did a little testing with some music and movie files from my NAS and everything checked out. Amazement #1.

Next I tweaked the UI to make for a smooth transition for my family. First, I moved all the top panel components to the bottom bar and removed the top bar.

Next I disabled and removed the multiple desktop functionality. That would just confuse my family since they’re coming from the world where "There can be only one desktop".

After that, I started to go through my requirements list and perform the make-or-break tests that would decide if this box makes it to the family room.

• Internet browser for web mail, surfing, social sites, etc.

  Since we already use Firefox exclusively for all our internet, webmail, myspace needs this was a no-brainer.
   

• Photo Management

  I had my doubts about this one. We use Picassa for our photo management and even though Google has a version for linux, it uses a customized version of WINE to do this. However, it installed and worked like a charm. Amazement #2.
   

• Scanning and printing (hp 1210 All-in-one) photos and documents.
  
  This was another doubtful one since we have trouble getting this POS working on Windows. When I plugged in the USB, Ubuntu found it, installed it and was done. I printed a test page with no problems. In-fact, this printer now works faster than windows when sending print jobs to it. Amazement #3.

  In addition, the scanner worked beautifully with Ubuntu’s XSane scanning software.

• Transfer data between digital cameras and flash-based mp3 player via usb.

  This worked absolutely perfect! As soon as I plugged in our Nikon Coolpix it mounted it on the Desktop as a drive. I could browse it just like a file system. The next test was if it would work with Picassa’s Import function.

  I fired Picassa up, went to Import and there it was. Although one quirky thing, it listed two different devices for the same camera. One works as it should, but when selecting the other, it disconnects and unmounts the camera. Weird, but by no means a show stopper.

  Our Sansa MP3 player worked even better. As soon as I plugged it in, a cool MP3 Player icon popped up on the desktop letting me know it was successfully mounted.

  Just with the camera, I could browse the MP3 player just like a file system. In addition, the built in Music manager RhythmBox displayed it under its device’s tab. I could then drag my music from the browser to the device and it all worked seamlessly. Amazement #4.

  Although I haven’t seen a spot to create custom play-lists on the player I’m sure someone has created either a script or program to do this already. If not, I can simply make one since the play-list is just a text file.

• Yahoo Messenger

  This was removed from the list due to lack of use on the Windows.

   

• Word processing and spreadsheet work

  Since OpenOffice is a default install, and it can pretty much open anything, this is all set. Plus we already use OpenOffice exclusively so switching isn’t a problem.
   

• Basic graphic editing

  Aside the manually installed Picassa, Ubuntu comes with a crap-load of other graphic editing tools. And since I switched from PhotoShop to GIMP a long time-ago, this was an easy one.
   

• Easy enough for a 5 year old

  The first day I had this up and running, my 5 year old had got on to http://pbskids.org and played flash games with Caillou and the Super Readers with no problems.
   

• Minimal learning curve to switch

  So far so good. The wife has been using it with her iGoogle page, MySpace stuff and Gmail with no problems.

I torrent’d Ubuntu 7.10, burned it, and installed it with no problems. The install process asked me a paltry 7 questions and went about blazing the drive and installing Ubuntu.

Pretty painless. So far it’s as easy, if not easier than Windoze.

At the moment I’m downloading a host of updates to it to get it up-to-snuff.

This was of course what I could throw together after doing inventory on all my past client’s discarded computers, and a few I plucked from the garbage.