Well, I’m feeling better and ready to start work tomorrow. I’m still not sure how effective I can be but the new work schedule is helping a lot. Once I’ll get used to it, I’m sure these type of blocks can be avoided. Last week I was working with CubicViewer but didn’t get much done. Although, I was able to design the base structure of it’s plug-in engine, so it wasn’t complete waste of time. There’s still a lot to do and because CV is not on top of the priority list, it’s going to be some time before there’s anything to show.

Buffalo LinkStation Live (HS-DH500GL v2)

I bought Buffalo’s NAS device last week. I’ve been meaning to build a file server from my old 800Mhz machine but never got around on building the case for it. Also regular computer use quite a lot of power, so running it 24/7 shows on the electric bill. This NAS device is like a mini computer. It has 400Mhz Arm processor and 128Mb of RAM. The operating system is Linux. It’s power consumption is about 21 watts so it’s not going to be as big of an issue.

By default it only supports the basic NAS functionality of being a simple file storage. However I have some more advanced features in mind like SVN server and BitTorrent client. To make those features available you have to do a bit of hacking. I installed FreeLink which is a custom firmware containing the latest stable Debian build. After that you can install pretty much anything on the box.

SSH connection to the box after FreeLink upgrade:

Here’s a very good site that is dedicated on hacking Buffalo’s NAS devices. You can find FreeLink and many step by step instructions there.

NAS-Central
http://nas-central.org/

Well, I’m stuck with the CE development. I’ve been suffering from a writers block about 2 weeks. It’s probably caused by the 16 hour work days that I’ve done 7 days a week for few months now. I’m going to lessen the work load and add more structure in the days. Also I’ll try to not work on weekends. Hopefully those actions will bring us back to the track.

Anyway, I’m now starting a side project that will also be part of CubicExplorer. It’s called CubicViewer and it’s main function is to display files, mainly images and video. It will replace the QuickView in CE but also it will be available as a separate application. Working with this new project should give me some distance on CE and hopefully will help in breaking the block.

Well I finally updated this site. I’m fairly happy with the graphics. The original plan was to have the sidebar menu visible also in the forum (that’s why I made this site wider), however it was too confusing for the eyes so I ended up hiding it. I’ll have to play around some more with the forum layout but for now it’s going to stay like it is, only some polishing will be done.

I updated the forum (SMF) to version 1.1.4 and switched the main site engine from Drupal to WordPress. I only need a simple engine that can handle blog posts and pages, WordPress does that very nicely. The biggest reason why I switched to WP was it’s ease of use. It’s very easy and comfortable to create new themes and plug-ins to it. Also WP is supported by Windows Live Writer which makes updating the content a lot easier.

If you have any thoughts or ideas for this site, let me know

Well, the site update is still not done. I wasn’t happy with the graphics I had done so it’s back to the drawing board. I was on a vacation pretty much the whole August. In this month I’ll be doing some fundamental changes to my life. Those changes will hopefully have a positive effect on the development speed of CE and other planned projects.

Anyway, the goal of this fall is to have CE at version 0.90. That version should have multi-language support and options dialog. After that it’s time to prepare for version 1.0 with plug-in support and such

Currently I’m working with 0.81 beta 1. I decided to add the built-in translation editor into the version 0.81.

Just some notes on what’s going on. I’m going to update this site pretty soon, maybe on this weekend. I decided to use WordPress as the engine because it’s really easy and pleasurable to customize and hack, at least compared to Drupal. This time the theme will be a bit darker and more wider. It’s about 900 pixels width which might be a problem for some. I’m thinking of adding an option to switch it into a narrower mode though.

Progress notes are going to move from the forum to the main site, maybe into the blog. I’m still not quite sure how everything will going to be but it should be better than the current solution. Also the todo list is going to change. I’m currently writing a project management program that will take over the todo list. The new solution will integrate into the forum so it’s easier for me to add new todo items, and also it gives us the opportunity to create personal progress pages. That way one could easily keep track and monitor the issues he/she reported.

Anyway, I’m having few week break of CE and then start to do plans for the next move.