The Return of Geekman!

Most of 2004 wasn't very good for my geek pride. My primary focus was my strong AI project, which saw some significant but largely invisible progress. It was all theoretical and thus amounted to many pages of notes and very little else.

Every other project was basically shelved and when I wasn't doing AI-theorizing I was half-heartedly trying to maintain my aging computers. My little file server had its primary hard drive fail. I didn't lose any data but I never quite got around to getting the server working again, although I did make an abortive attempt. I also replaced some parts in my iBook to keep it ticking for a bit longer and had to replace my wi-fi access point when my Airport AP finally burned out. My poor iMac's DVD-ROM drive is still jammed up with the pennies my son stuffed in there three months ago. A lack of focus led my cyborg project to languish; it took me all year to accomplish goals I had planned to complete by the end of February 2004.

However, I'm now back on track. In December, I finally finished the mockup of my wrist-mounted cording keyboard and I am planning on getting a functioning prototype together early this year. An early alpha build of Cyborg Search Pro should be ready by next weekend and I expect to begin coding the IOL Interpreter for my AI system within the next month or so.

I have my file server running again with Gentoo Linux configured the way I wanted it, without X. I've also been playing with DSLinux on an old Pentium II machine I acquired from one of the VPs at work for the low cost of moving his data to his new computer. In the past month my comfort level with Linux has increased considerably.

Right now, I feel better than I have in a long time. I'm starting to get stuff done and the next steps seem clear and doable. The CEMEX buy-out still shadows my '05 plans, but overall 2005 looks like it should be a really good year.

2004-01-09 22:27 C&T