Ideas

Starwarscuckooclock

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 09:17:52 +0000

Star wars cuckoo clock

Every hour Leia pops out and says "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi you are my only hope"

Could also be a weather variant with Darth coming out for bad weather and Luke for good.

It could be in the shape of the Death Star and Obi Wan and Darth could come out and fight ever hour.

It's going to be great...

GnomeOnline

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:26:33 +0100

Create a sync system so that changes on the desktop can be published / stored online

I could setup a sync4j server on ferrit and offer it as a service with a simple python script to sync the data to it.
Some people may be worried about security of their data
Build a simple web interface so that they can get to there data and setup sync relationships
Sell an outlook plugin for loooosers or look for a ready made one to sell on.
Then start to extend so that more things like bookmakrs and tomboy notes are synced could use Conduit to help here.
Using conduit with a python based nice fronted so that you can just pick what to sync and off it goes remote desktop.
Can then extend with things like photo sharing
Would need to change the premissions description a bit
Could use openid to give everybody a single login, they can either sign up or use existing id.
Automated syncing
Man this should go in my ideas page on my blog
Little status icon showing if things are waiting to sync
Little app to check what has been synced

EventResponder

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 10:27:36 +0000

Event Responder.

Idea

A small desktop daemon that responds to events in the system.

Reasoning

We have a selection of daemons that respond to various events. It would be good to have one daemon that manages all these events from a central place and is controlled by a set of control scripts.

Examples

Fred plugs in his ipod, the dbus sends an event, the daemon notices this and runs all the scripts that are relevent for that event, the device is mounted, and gtkpod is launched.

Fred just wants to have the ipod only mounted at plug in and he will run gtkpod if he wants so he goes to event_manger properties and look through recent events to find the ipod plugin and turns off that event.

Wilma decides that she wants to run rhythmbox when her ipod is plugged in and so goes to event_manager and finds the ipod settings where she enteres in her own script to be run on plug in.

Gorgena unplugs her ac power and the screen is dimmed to save on power.

Harry has a blinder of an idea for launching a monitoring daemon for his usb powered coffee mat so he writes the relevent scripts and a config and installs that in the correct dir to make it work. Once he is happy with these settings he sends the config upstream.

Overview of Design

There will be a single daemon that listens on the dbus for events, for each event it checks through it's own list and decides if it needs to take an action. if it does then it runs the relevant scripts. There will be a single config file for the events that will have the following format

<xml>
<events>
  <event><dbus>dbus.power.ac.unplugged</dbus>
     <action>
                <description>Dim the Screen</description>
                <optional/>
                <script priority=10>/usr/share/event_manager/dim_screen</script>
              </action>
  </event>
</event>
</xml>

This will be compiled from a selection of other config files to create a large file #XXX This could be a python pickle that is remade whenever it notices that the config files have been changed. Either system wide or stored locally, keep disk reads down.

Parts

Config
Monitor
App runner.

1. Config

Each service to be monitored will have a config file that gives the following infomation:

dbus_id - The dbus id to listen on
dbus_events - The envents on the above id to react to
reaction - Each of the events above should have a reaction
test - This can be a test for various paramaters given from the dbus signal, also should detect flappyness and repeats.
action - This can either be another dbus response, a popup, a notification, or run a script.

For version 1.0 should just be a simple python config file as follows

[global]

[monitor_name]
dbus=dbus.freedesktop.org.wibble
dbus_event=WibbleOn
reactions=reaction_wibble_on,reaction_std_notify

[reaction_wibble_on]
test=test_ison
action=script
script_name="/usr/local/bin/asdf"

Note: This should be extendable to setup other things to be monitrored, temps, diskspace etc, although this should be done via dbus to keep this small and neat. You want disk monitoring then create a cron job or daemon that creates the correct dbus output then create a monitor config as above to trigger actions. Note: There may also be a need to track some dependenceys so that if the network goes down don't bother me with all the offline messages. Could just be some sort of dbus checks. Not needed for version 1.0!

2. Monitor

This is the main body of the beast this sits listening on the dbus for signals that it knows about from the config above and responds in the correct way.

3. App runner

This is a seperate thread/program that runs the various responses, this should not block the monitor and allow various things to be reported at once.

PatchManagement

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 10:27:36 +0000

Idea for patch management:

Looking into patch management for a group of Unix Servers I am trying to gather my thoughts here.

My current thinking is to gather all the patch requirements into a central database. So things like Security patches can be placed as a critial against a server.

Fetchmail script down loads the mail from a mailbox.
procmail sorts that mail and takes the relevent info
Script loads the relevent info in Trac as a critical bug.
User looks a bug and decides what real priority to give it.
If it's of no use then ditch it.
If it's real important then mark it as so and run a script to make sub bugs for affected systems ( Pkg list from all systems should be checked to find which systems are affected and a sub bug raised for each)

Steps to do it for the Linux Boxes.

All systems to do a dpkg --get-packagelist and upload to central repo (email/syslog/scp?)
Security email to be forwarded bugdb. - write script to forward.
Bugdb to be looked at - any critical bugs still open - check against package lists and create/close bugs that are affected by the systems.

UberAlarmClock

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:06:13 +0000

Uber Alarm Clock

Some requirements for the replacement for my 20 year old bedside alarm clock.

Required

Accurate and automated time sync
Digital Radio
Wake up light that slowly comes on.
Low or now power
Lit display of time
Alarms based on day of week
One day alarm override

Nice to have

Media streaming from pc
Internet Radio
Remote programeable - PC or web!

Tracker and Rhythmbox

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:49:20 +0000

A tracker plugin for Rhythmbox

There is currently a ?MagnaTune ?Tracker to just find all the music on your HDD then use the tracker backend for searches etc.

At first it could be simply just offer up a source of files, but later use it to do active searches mapping the rb stuff to the tracker db