qptech blog

I come up with great ideas all the time - at least they seem pretty good at the time. But later, when I'm trying to do something with the idea, I can't recall it. I've seen virtual sticky note programs before - you probably have - there are hundreds of them. It's a pretty simple concept and programming such a utility is not at all technically challenging.

But never before have I found such a thing to be very useful. All they serve to do is clutter up the desktop, so I'd hide them. Then forget to show them again until long after the notes have become irrelevant. So I never really used them.

But one of the desktop managers that I'm using, Xfce, includes a notepad utility (at least in the default gentoo install). So I played with it a bit, but it was mostly the same as before.

Then one night, I had finished reading/writing email for the day, closed out my chat sessions, and written my blog posts. Then I got another Idea for a blog post. Knowing that I would completely forget it the next time I would sit down to write a post, and not wanting to log back into blogger and take the time to draw the idea out into a full post, I opened a sticky note and jotted down the idea. Then I forgot about it and went to bed. A few days later, I was surprised to find the note again. It persisted through multiple log-ins and reboots. I still have not composed that post, but that is because data related to the post has become unusable - new data must be gathered before that post can be written.

But now I have 4 notes related to blog posts and other endeavours. Will I get them done? Who knows, but at least with the notes, I won't completely forget what I had been thinking.

I wanted to be able to sync files on my desktop with my laptop. The files are accessable on the laptop over the network, but I want to have a local copy on the laptop for when I am away from my LAN and stuff.

I'm sure there's software out there to do this - probably even open source stuff with nice graphical interfaces and all. But I just wrote a simple shell script¹ to do it.

The script looks for a file named .sourcedir in the current directory and reads it to figure out the source directory. The current directory is the destination. The script then copies the subdirectories from the source to the destination skipping existing files that haven't changed - so there is no wasted traffic. And it only copies directories that already exist in the destination directory. So if I have 3 directories in the source: movies, reading, and camera; and I want to sync reading and camera, but not movies because it's too freaking huge, I'd make the empty directories camera and reading - all sub directories of these would be created and filled. But movies would be skipped over entirely.

It's simple and it's not perfect, but it works.

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_{1. I like the command prompt and writing shell scripts - it's actually faster when you get used to it and if you can type decently fast - more flexible too}

Why use a keyboard layout other than good, old QWERTY?

Because, QWERTY sucks.

the Colemak layout is designed to reduce repetitive strain and fatigue and to allow faster typing speeds by making the most used keys the most accessible. It's supposed to be a bit better than the Dvorak layout - follow the link to read more. It also remaps the capslock key to backspace so you don't have to reach so far for it (the backspace key is backspace too).

I've started learning it (I'm typing this with Colemak), but I'm still pretty slow with it. I've set up my laptop to use it by default, so I expect to learn it pretty fast.

No, you don't need to get a new keyboard, just install the keymap - available for all the popular operating systems. I'm going to switch the keys around on my laptop to match the keymap.


Colemak is in the running for the CAPSoff Million Dollar Keyboard competition - they basically want to do away with the capslock key. Most of the submissions are just variations of the standard QWERTY keyboard with the capslock key replaced by some other commonly used key (like cntrl).

And here's a cool keyboard that uses little LCD's inside the keys for custom layouts and games and stuff. I don't think it's available yet, but it looks pretty cool.

I've been into the open source software scene for several years now. The degree of documentation for open source projects ranges from almost none to very thorough. The best documented ones have well designed and helpful web pages with complete descriptions, screen shots, and clear documentation. Some have good web pages and pretty good documentation, but some features aren't covered well. Some have almost no documentation available.

I've installed, configured, and played with many open source projects. And one thing that's missing from the web pages, even of the very well documented ones, is a clear paragraph telling why I should choose their software over some other open source option. They have a paragraph describing what it is and does - if rather vaguely, but almost never do I see a comparison to a similar project. I think this could be quite helpful because there are a lot of open source projects which provide the same or similar functionality. And the only method that I've found to decide which to use is to try them all and see which one works best in my situation.

A big example is GNOME or KDE - both provide a Graphical Desktop Environment as well as common applications, but how is a newcomer to decide between them unless he tries them both.

I have found that GNOME has pretty vague documentation about the various applications that are associated with it.

I guess I like KDE a little better than GNOME, but I don't use either. I use Xfce on my desktop and fvwm-crystal on my laptop - I might switch to fvwm-crystal for the desktop too. I like it, but it's not like most Desktop Environments - it takes some getting used to. xfce is more "normal".

Ok, I've wandered a bit from the intended topic:
Open Source Developers - Tell me why I should choose your software over some other open source project with the same or similar functionality.