One challenge for the cowboy sys admin is on how to keep oneself engaged while making their job basically… a walk in the park.

One thing I have found helpful in creating lists is to be dogmatic about writing docs as you are doing something somewhere, anywhere and collect all of this later. (You are writing documentation as you do your job, aren’t you?)

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In general, I prefer Ruby however I’m not wedded to it since I’d prefer a language that is more

• More mature for the host OS it’s running on
• Can actually DO something besides Hello World
• Actually can access standard libraries that would come with the desktop version (I don’t just want the language core)
• Maintained to some degree
• Not a PITA to install

After looking around I dug up the following :

• Ruby WinCE
• Has Ruby 1.8.6
• Maintained to some degree
• Not much docs in English (that’s fine I read Japanese)
• The installer is basically unzip and plop into a directory somewhere
• Not much docs on what to do with it
• Looks like a “I got it compiled don’t know if it really works” project
• Seems there can be string handling issues
• Ruby CE
• Also Ruby 1.8.6 based
• Seems to be in active development
• Looks like the developer is actually trying to get real code working with it
• More documentation on how to install and bootstrap it
• Seems more promising for using it for real coding over Ruby WinCE
• No lazy installer. Zip files that need splatting on the filesystem
• Pocket Scheme
• An implementation of the Scheme programming language (Not all of it though)
• UTF-8 support (woot!)
• Rather well maintained
• The interpreter/IDE integrates better with the OS
• Supports cut and paste better
• Actually has working sockets
• Can do file manipulation
• Code samples!
• Lazy Installer
• Python CE
• A Python implementation for WinCE devices
• Looks actively maintained
• Actually has a wiki for documentation and it doesn’t seem THAT dead
• Python 2.5 support looks like its available
• Installer available
• Docs seem pretty good
• PPC Hugs
• A Haskell (Hugs-based) implementation for WinCE
• Looks like someone’s school project
• Marked as alpha quality
• No idea what actually works
• Looks like another “It Compiles” projects
• Doesn’t look like its actively maintained
• Documentation looks sparse
• No lazy installer
• Perl CE
• An implementation of Perl for Pocket PC
• First page I hit made it look like it was a dead project
• Docs seem sparse to me
• Looks like it has an installer (as long as you can find which version you need)
• WinCE Emacs
• Okay okay, not REALLY a programming language but… Emacs LISP is close enough…
• Looks like you’re stuck at Emacs 20.7
• Not sure keybindings on WinCE device will be liveable for a Emacs neophyte like me
• Not sure if there is active development to bring more recent Emacs versions
• Seems to have a lazy installer
• Emacs Wiki Page on WinCE Emacs

Also pocketpcfaq.com has a nice listing of languages you can run on your WinCE device.

Too bad I didn’t find any of the following:

• OCaml
• Erlang
• Common Lisp

So after looking at the choices, I think I’m down to Pocket Scheme, Ruby CE, and Python CE. I guess I’ll try them all and report which one seems like the easiest to just goof around with and get something useful done on a CE device.

PCs integrating more with the TV? “You will be assimilated”, anyone?

I’ve seen photos of Windows Media Center but never actually tried it. Is
anyone actually using it? The ability to integrate with a remote control sounds
quite useful. The ability to get all the viruses Windows does, doesn’t. The
ability to use many of the media Codecs for Windows sounds VERY nice. The
fact it might blow up like Windows does at weird times and probably has crappy
bootup times like a PC doesn’t.

Of course the Open Source community is pushing forward Linux. Me?
When I sit in front of the TV, I really want a remote to control the TV since
it’s been many yaers since I’ve HAD to walk to the TV/VCR to make it
change channels/play/stop/etc

Link to Story

Okay, that really ticked me off. I got some more work done on my big document and then put the laptop on standby and walk home. When I get home and hit the power button to power back up the laptop from standby mode…. the laptop congratulates me by showing a black screen, a lit power light, BUT NOTHING happening. I sit there banging the power key for a few more times, Ctrl-Alt-Del, keys at random for a few minutes telling myself, “NOOOO damnit please tell me I remembered to SAVE before this happened. And if I DID save please tell me Word won’t decide to take a nosedive on my one and only important document on this machine at this moment.”

Eventually, I resign myself to powering off the machine and rebooting and hoping that all of my changes haven’t evaporated in Word. Luckily I save my document every 5 minutes and every time I power down a laptop but I left Word running which could mean Word does something stupid like corrupt my file because it has nothing better to do.

Moral of the story. System Standby on Windoze SUCKS! Use Hibernate instead.


*sigh* I’ll wait until LongHorn shows its face before I trust that feature again.

Cnet has an interview going on with Bill Gates. As much as I’m adverse to Microsoft stuff I try my best to read what the head honchos are up to since it’s smarter to understand what they’re up to than stick your head in the sand.

I found this quote interesting. Especially if we pull it out of its context and put it in the context of offshoring and outsourcing:

The IT systems are your brain. If you take your brain and outsource it then any adaptability you want (becomes) a contract negotiation.

Some food for thought? Yep. Even if IT isn’t what your core competency is but you rely on IT to keep your business running these are words to think about. Sure outsourcing might save you a bundle now (and in some cases it’s the only way to survive certain situations) but in the future if you need changes that’s a renegotiation you’ll have to go through. (Most likely with a higher price).

Link to interview

The Harvard Business School requires that its students use an IBM ThinkPad if they wish to be enrolled at the business school. That’s REQUIREMENT not RECOMMENDATION. Seems one of the business school students decided a little differently and setup a weblog documenting his experiences walking in a Windoze universe with a Mac. So far it seems he’s been doing well and continuously questions the need for a Windoze laptop rather than a very strong recommendation. I wish you luck in turning the tide, sir!

Link to Weblog

Well here I am with a laptop with japanese Windows XP Pro on it and I’m going through piles of dialogue Windows in the MMC trying to set some policies and other settings and just getting tired of slogging through piles of menus in Japanese.

“No problem!” I say to myself and go to try to switch the language settings in the Control Panel from Japanese->English so I can look at the menu dialogues in English. A reboot later and I’m looking at…. Japanese menu dialogues still.. WTF???

Okay… let’s google for it. Seems no one has a decent quick and easy fix. The other fix is to ‘format and re-install Windows’. Oh wonderful. Too bad I would have to do that for like 4 more machines after this one. Even with Ghost that would suck. So here I am stuck trying to figure this out. At this current rate, giving up and just slogging through all the stuff in japanese might be easier but this configuration would be much more straightforward if I could look at what the dialogues say in English rather than have to guess all these words in japanese… Let’s see now. We’re in the year 2003 and localizing an environment should be a matter of just flipping a switch in the Control Panel.
Guess what… OS X does this with just a flip. Linux? Well… Linux has still got a way to go. Windows? Gee there’s a switch too bad it doesn’t work. *sigh*

Okay here’s a thought… I know that iTunes existed before OS X however there’s a possibility that iTunes could have been ported to Cocoa (or at least some parts of it).
If that was the case wouldn’t that mean Apple had quite a bit of Cocoa already ported to Windows and ready to run? That would be a really neat Cross Platform development tool.

Of course this is just a random thought. More likely the answer is no but what if….

Finally! Someone releases another Zeroconf aka Rendezvous for you Mac-heads library that works under Windows and Linux. This will get the ball rolling for more useful apps built on top of this technology. They even were cool enough to release the source under the BSD license. The source can be found here