wjsullivan.net

Overloading the Machine

Code

I've only had a very small amount of formal education in computer programming, but over the years I've been teaching myself more, using the wonderful knowledge pool provided by free and open source software. And some books.

I'm primarily interested in Lisp (mainly of the Emacs variety) and Python.

As of 2010, I'm a Debian Developer, maintaining the xword and planner-el packages.

Here are some of the projects I'm involved in:

F-Droid: This is a project to provide repositories of exclusively free software for Android. I contribute via my gitorious.org branch, suggesting metadata updates to import more applications to the main repository. (F-Droid is also an AGPL server for hosting your own repository, and a free client for accessing such repositories.)
xword: I maintain the Debian package for xword, the GNU/Linux crossword puzzle program written by Bill McCloskey. You can do crossword puzzles in the format distributed by the New York Times and others with it.
Maemo: I do a lot of tinkering with free software on mobile devices, include the Nokia N900. I maintain the nethack game package for Maemo.
Replicant: I help with testing and bug reporting for the Replicant project, which takes Google's Android and removes the proprietary software to create a fully free mobile OS.
delicious-el : I wrote an Emacs client for the del.icio.us social bookmark server. Features include posting, searching posts (by tag and regexp), offline/batched posting, tab completion for tags, offline storage of posts (good for backing up your account), w3m export, and HTML feed fetching.
PlannerMode: An Emacs planning mode. I'm the current maintainer. Keep track of your to-do lists, appointments and notes inside Emacs. It includes nifty features like the ability to publish your planner pages to HTML and create wiki-style hyperlinks in Emacs buffers for fluid organization.

Many smaller hacks and ideas will just be posted on the Journal.

We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant. [...] I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...] "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget. "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway belle's for thee." The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.

-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway Competition