I thought it would be cool to find out what kind of unix-y projects
we are all involved in. What have you been hacking on lately? What
are you going to do next?
I'll start. I'm more of a programmer than a hardware tinkerer so
most of my projects reflect that.
I love "collaborative creativity". A while ago I had a mailing list
I ran that was a bunch of people working on creative writing projects
together. After a while I stopped that in favor of a website and
started programming for it while I learned new stuff. It turned into
a site where lots of authors write "choose-your-own-adventure" type
stories together. It's called StorySprawl, at
http://www.storysprawl.com/ - that version is done with perl scripts
and DBM files.
After that I was able to get another version of it launched on my
employer's equipment at http://www.talkcity.com/StorySprawl - it
uses java servlets and oracle, but unfortunately no one uses the
site since they don't market it.
I think it's pretty cool - there's a core group of people on its
mailing list that enjoy writing for it and watching the stories
grow (you can also map out how they sprawl). I mostly write new
utilities for it. The next project is something that will actually
generate a pdf document of the books to read when they are done.
The other thing I've been doing with a friend up in Portland is
audio dramatizations of the chapters at http://www.mp3.com/StorySprawl .
Kind of a cyoa audio-book, like an interactive radio drama (except
we need more sound effects and background music). I don't really
use Linux for this other than gimp to touch up some images, but it's
all part of the same project.
I've had plans to do a new version of it for a while - php scripts
with membership, cookies, mass moderation and voting to keep the
chaff out, kind of like slashdot but different... but so far I
haven't felt comfortable about hosting the site on my home
network, which keeps me from hyping the site too much, which keeps
it from being too popular, which is less reason to upgrade it...
heh.
Most of my other side projects included hacking a java applet that
can plays Zork-type text adventures so you can save and restore within
your web browser, writing a perl-based ear training course that
generates midi piano jazz chords - 7 chords and 9 chords - for chord
identification (it helped my girlfriend out with her tests at UofO
where she's getting a music composition degree), and a php-based
"to-do list" that can do nested items, meaning it knows when you
can't do certain tasks until you finish others, and keeps them out
of your way. Also graphs out a bubble chart. You can see it at
http://muse.clipper.net/todo/ for a sample (feel free to add or
remove items).
My next projects are probably to continue getting friends together
to do character voices for these audio dramatizations, and finding
a way to upgrade StorySprawl the rest of the way, I guess. If I
could find something cooler to do, though, I probably would.
anyone else?
Curt
