Kyle Smith

In mid-September I put together a short demonstration and tutorial on using Subversion for source code management that I presented one Tuesday night after the COSI meeting.

I also began developing a workshop to demonstrate creating graphical applications with C#/Mono and Glade.  I'm thinking of expanding it to include other GNOME language bindings such as Python (using the same Glade project file) to demonstrate how easy it is to use the language bindings.

Early in September I was busy working on the "next-generation" lab build based on GNOME 2.6.  After spending a few weeks of fiddling with it I finally turned it over to Rouslan, as he seemed much more interested in maintaining it than I was.

Over the past month or so I've been working on updating COSI lab and administrative documentation, repairing and updating the image gallery (which required rebuilding a good chunk of software on statler, since the COSI web site was originally on waldorf).

Several weeks ago I spent the better part of a day cleaning up the COSI lab and geting things ready, and then talking to students and parents about the school, the computer science program, and the co-op program.

I've also been showing visitors around the lab.  When Mike Kahn and Anne MacFarland of The Clipper Group visited we took them on a half hour tour of the lab and again later after the Paul Horn talk I spent an hour or two showing a reporter from the Watertown Daily Times around the lab and chatting about Linux, open source, and other emerging technologies (he was interested enough that he said he would return in a few weeks for us to possibly help him install Linux on his new laptop).

This past week I ran the COSI meeting and managed to convince one of the new freshmen, Jeff, to pick up James Kraetz's campus Linux conversion project.  Later in the week I was also in charge of the (rather lackluster) COSI work day.

My current plans for the rest of the semester are to help plan and execute the Linux conversion project with Jeff.  We would like to pick a Saturday in November to have people come into the lab and ask questions and perhaps assist them directly with migrating from Windows to Linux.  This would involve preparing thorough documentation on the process and burning Linux CDs for people.  Ideally this would be announced to the campus at large, or perhaps a small test run would be best to try first.

I would also like to finish cleaning up the C code for John Holland's Echo model, and possibly rewrite it in C# or to use glib/GTK instead of the X widgets (which currently don't work).  I've already fixed the makefile and some of the source so it now compiles under Linux (although it's not entirely usable yet).

Yesterday I came up with the idea of implementing a utility to limit access to programs in Linux.  For example, the user specifies that they would like to cap their AIM usage to 10 minutes per hour, or to only let them run <program X> after business hours.  While I continue the best way to implement this (whether it be a panel applet, a modification of the existing GNOME panel, a kernel module, or a standalone application) I plan on implementing a graphical policy editor using C# and Glade to allow the user to configure the utility.

Not mentioned in this summary were most of the COSI meetings that have happened since the beginning of the semester and several weeks worth of COSI work days, which were a blur of random activity.  A goodly amount of time has also been spent helping people in the lab with Linux problems and with their COSI projects. :-)