Tech & Geekery

Today I did something interesting. Well, interesting for a geek like me. I have an old toshiba laptop that my brother gave me a few years ago. I love it dearly, but it is nearly obsolete. It runs Windows 2000, which I've been really happy with but hits end-of-life this July. I've tried to get various Linux distros running, and with some success -- but a recent problem with overheating seems to be plaguing some laptop models in Linux. It's also had Open Solaris ( can't get the wifi working...), Windows XP ( too sluggish ), and FreeBSD ( you say what, now? ). I'm back to Windows 2000... I decided to use Windows Updates Downloader to get all the W2K updates and used groovy to script up a nice automated updater. Not knowing what will happen when EOL happens this summer, now I have all the installation packages that I need to bring the system back up to speed in less than an hour. I realize that it will no longer be receiving security patches, but since I use it...

Well, for the past couple of weeks I've been working on a ridiculous side-track that has actually sort of been panning out into something cool. Before the winter holidays, I hacked up a simple app for my mother to keep track of her recipes. I used python and a simple web server that runs on localhost and coughs up the pages very reliably. While the source for the app is pretty messy, the project gave me an idea for a nice framework to build web apps specifically for the client machine. Introducing... Goose. Goose is a simple web browser and server that run on the local machine and serves up html or php pages. It's a very slim setup, with only basic php-cgi functionality + sqlite3 module. I think it's perfect for people who want an easy environment to get started with php, or to create desktop applications that are built using web technologies. Anyway, Goose is not quite ready for the public, but I should have an initial release... soon? Runs on .net 2.0 or higher. A...