MORE TOYS#

Thu, 18 May 2006 15:29:33 +0000

MORE TOYS.

I bought a Palm TX the other day. This may actually be more connected with skating than with Lisp: basically, I was looking for something that I could use to quell uprisings on web servers and suchlike even when I was away at a race or in an airport or something, and didn't want to lug my laptop around with me. It's quite a small laptop, but it's still space that I could be using for another change of clothes.

So far I mostly like it, but I'm still learning my way around. Builtin Wi-Fi worked out of the box on my home network: builtin bluetooth was eventually persuaded to talk to my work computer using a disgustingly Heath Robinson combination of dund and pppd, and to my mobile phone (though I had to mess around for a while there as there's not a configuration for my phone and mobile network). There's a workable ssh client (pssh) which in combination with the Universal Wireless Keyboard ought to fulfill the stated purpose of emergency access to servers - at least, will when I can persuade pssh to recognise the Control key on the keyboard, which isn't yet happening. It does at least now recognise the majority of the other keys, whch was not the case until I found the updated v1.10 keyboard driver

Other things I would like to be able to do with it now I've got it: (1) organise my race calendar and remind me to do things like book flights; (2) email, sensibly (VersaMail seems to be a bit crap); (3) control the xine on my desktop, preferably over the xine TCP interface. (Yes, I know about OmniRemote, but my desktop doesn't have IR, so that's a bit of a non-starter). The screenshot on the right is the result of my first tentative step towards learning how to program the thing, and comes to you from my mobile phone via bluetooth to the palm, where I attached it to a VersaMail message, then sent it to my work address which cause it to go by smtp-over-(ppp-over-bluetooth to my desktop) to gmail, smtp back to the office mailserver, pop3 to my desktop again, then scp to the machine that hosts this blog. Marvellous.

I was going to tell you I found a German dictionary for it too, but I suppose my use for that is more about the skating than the Lisp as well. Oh well. More about LispMe to follow as I get to grips with it ...