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I often read about GTD methodology. Getting Things Done. This was developed by David Allen and I believe still trademarked by him. The idea is ridiculously simple: record all your tasks. You are stressed when your mind keeps going through all the things that must be done. There is no way to keep everything in mind, all at once. You will forget some and then remember. When the memory comes back you will then stress about forgetting again. It can be a vicious circle that just adds to stress, but doesn't actually get anything done.

I've been asked by many people how I track tasks and I thought I would write it up on my site so I could just give them a link.
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Precentral.net read through the initial TouchStone theory post I put up and asked HP about my theories. As they posted in this article on the site, HP confirmed the identification to work as I assumed.

The new TouchStones will use the 3.1 MHz frequency to pass a unique key to the new WebOS phones, which will enable them to know where it is docked. You will obviously have to tell the phone where each dock is located the first time you use it. Derek did a great job translating my geek speak into general WebOS fan digestible content.

Only a few errors with the wording in the document. He refers to a coil for each frequency. I believe that both frequencies will use the same coil. It is resonant on both the communication frequency (3.1 MHz) and the charging frequency (118.5 KHz), so there is no reason to add extra hardware to the mix. This isn't really important to the end user, but just trying to be technically correct.

Some have speculated that this 3.1 MHz frequency will allow the TouchStone to have a data USB cable. I don't think this is possible. The data rate on a 3.1 MHz carrier is very low. The best that could be emulated is an old style serial connection (think phone line modem speeds). Nothing even close to the speed of even USB 1.0. It will most likely only be a method of establishing the connection via Bluetooth for major data transfer. Otherwise, it will just be used to exchange fairly short messages, like the URL example shown during the Feb. 9th event.

When the Palm Pre was released, Palm also sold a unique inductive charger called the Touchstone. Inductive charging isn't new, by any means. Electric toothbrushes and many other devices have used them in the past. This was a first for cell phones, I believe.

When I purchased my Pre and eventually many Touchstones, I didn't have a good oscilloscope to play around with the signals. Now I do. With the announcement of HP's new phones and an expansion of the TouchStone coil functionality in the phone, I thought I would take a look.
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I studied for a month or so and re-learned quite a bit of electronics for AC circuits. Resistance, Reactance, Polar Impedance. I took the test on the morning of February 5th and missed 1 out of 50. So now I am an Extra Class Licensed Ham Radio operator. No more tests to take. This is as high as it gets.

I am still working on what type of antenna to put up. I will probably do an 80 meter dipole that I can tune to higher frequencies. I have built an 80m SSB Voice Transceiver and a 40m CW Morse Code radio. I don't have any wire in the air to hook them up to, however. It will be cool to hear my first transmissions on radios I built.

The Bencode format is an interesting design. It is byte based, which makes it safe from big-endian and little-endian translations. I started playing with a Python script to automatically download torrents after searching various sources. I found that I needed to parse the actual torrent file to refine my ranking of good vs bad torrents.

This was a good time to learn the Bencode format, which I don't believe is used on anything but torrent files. The format is pretty simple, with only 4 different data structures: Byte String, Integer, List, and Dictionary.
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Years ago, Dad and I attended meetings for Amateur Radio at the local Red Cross building in Jeffersonville. We both worked through passing the 5 words per minute Morse Code and test to get our Novice license and then studied and passed the test for Technician Class. I was licensed in 1990 and expired in 2000. Just when I was starting work in the "Real World", outside of college. I didn't bother renewing.

A thread on a board I frequent about members who were HAMs (a nickname for Amateur Radio Operators) made me think it might be fun to get my license again. A test was being given in Franklin on the 18th (after the monthly meeting of the Mid-State Amateur Radio Club). I decided to go for it.

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A Zen Teacher saw five of his students return from the market, riding their bicycles. When they had dismounted, the teacher asked the students, "Why are you riding your bicycles?"

The first student replied, "The bicycle is carrying this sack of potatoes. I am glad that I do not have to carry them on my back!" The teacher praised the student, saying, "You are a smart boy. When you grow old, you will not walk hunched over, as I do."

The second student replied, "I love to watch the trees and fields pass by as I roll down the path." The teacher commended the student, "Your eyes are open and you see the world."

The third student replied, "When I ride my bicycle, I am content to chant, nam myoho renge kyo." The teacher gave praise to the third student, "Your mind will roll with the ease of a newly trued wheel."

The fourth student answered, "Riding my bicycle, I live in harmony with all beings." The teacher was pleased and said, "You are riding on the golden path of non-harming."

The fifth student replied, "I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle." The teacher went and sat at the feet of the fifth student, and said, "I am your disciple."

I've been a developer, on many different platforms, for just under two decades. Like many code monkeys, I enjoy learning new architectures. I'm not exactly sure why, but programming for WebOS has me more excited than I've been since working with GCC on the Palm Personal. The idea of building apps with web technologies on a portable device sounded interesting. I knew that certain things would be easy and others hard. That is always the case with any platform.

With Word Whirl queued up for release in the App Catalog, I decided it might help others to describe some of the things I've learned. This is my way of giving back to all the PreCentral users that helped during the process of taking Word Whirl from a request post to a published application. Hopefully this will help some more make the leap from Homebrew to App Catalog and get more apps out there.
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That will be the big day.  Amy and I are getting married on June 6th.  It seemed to be a good date, filling in the 6 month void of birthdays and anniversaries.  March is my birthday.  June will be our Anniversary.  September was when we met.  December is Amy's birthday

It is kind of fun letting people get the joke of hyphenation vs. non-hyphenation.  Amy has picked the best option, just taking Sacher.  Although it would be fun to watch people snicker as they ask for Mrs. Cox-Sacher.  At least people will still get a kick out of it on Facebook, where you need to keep your maiden name to be recognized by really old friends.

I have my laptop going now, since my desktop has still not been setup from the move.  I will try to rekindle my postings of the Trans-Am tour.  I will need to boot up my desktop at least once to get the files off it.  We will see how that goes.

Today marks just over a month since I posted anything new.   I have tons of things I want to put up here, along with getting back to my trip reports from my Trans-Am.   Hopefully I can do that soon.

What have I been doing?

I've been shopping for a house.  I think I found one.  I'm working out the details and getting inspections and all that jazz.  Hopefully I'll have everything worked out soon.  Then I get to move a bunch of stuff into it.  Needless to say, I'll be busy for a while.  I'll try to do better, but no promises.