Quozl's Open Source - Networking Quozl works in outback Australia as a firmware and test engineer for a non-profit in Miami that makes laptops for children, and for a telescope as a telescope operator, operations technician, and software specialist. Quozl worked on Open Firmware (IEEE 1275-1994), which uses the Forth programming language. For many years Quozl maintained the version that is used on the One Laptop per Child computers, the most complete and extensive version ever.

Gytha 0.9 released X-Windows Programming Network Programming The game of Netrek, a multi-player real-time 2D strategy game, with a full-screen display, sounds, and achievements. Here's where it gets complicated. Your team starts with ten planets. Each player flies a starship. You shoot at enemy ships with torpedos and phasers. You fly to, scan and bomb enemy planets to deny their use by the enemy team. You protect your own planets by preventing the enemy from reaching them. more information, downloads (23 October 2012)

Netrek Client COW 3.3.1 released C Programming X-Windows Programming Network Programming Quozl has just released another version of the Linux Netrek Client, with many changes. Never played Netrek? Now's the time to learn. Pick your flavour. If you've never played, try: a high resolution client for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, But if you are a regular, try: netrek-client-cow-3.3.1.tar.gz darcs source repository (18 October 2011)

Netrek - Vanilla 2.18.0 released C Programming X-Windows Programming Network Programming New version of the Netrek Vanilla Server, with many changes. more information, sources, packages (18 June 2011)

Netrek - Vanilla 2.17.0 released C Programming X-Windows Programming Network Programming New version of the Netrek Vanilla Server, with many changes. more information, sources, packages (2 September 2010)

Netrek - Vanilla 2.16.0 released C Programming X-Windows Programming Network Programming New version of the Netrek Vanilla Server, with many changes. more information, sources, packages (1 September 2009)

Signal Strength Meter Network Programming Quozl was testing a set of One Laptop Per Child units for wireless performance and needed a quick tool that would show the signal strength rapidly rather than the usual method of averaging over several seconds. more details (12 August 2009)

Usage Monitoring of a UHF CB Repeater Network Programming Electronics Question was, if the ham radio club had to put solar panels in to run the repeater on the mountain, how much power would be needed? Without climbing the mountain to measure it. Here Quozl hacks up a repeater usage monitor, consisting of a spare handheld radio connected to a laptop audio input. more information, (31 October 2008)

Starting APRS on Linux X-Windows Programming Network Programming Electronics Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) is an amateur radio system for real-time tactical digital information. How do you get started with APRS on Linux in Australia? Install xastir, configure it to grab data, watch the event stream build on a map. more information, (15 October 2008)

Netrek Client COW 3.2.4 released C Programming X-Windows Programming Network Programming A new version of the Linux Netrek Client, with many changes. Never played Netrek? Now's the time to learn, given the active development team. netrek-client-cow-3.2.4.tar.gz debian style package repository darcs source repository an alternate higher resolution client built with Python, Pygame, and SDL Some of the changes are: play, fixed inability to fire a stream of eight torps when in TCP mode, play, fixed a delay in responding to keyboard and mouse events, clue play, display mid-galactic messages relating to INL mode games, including pregame, pause, and time left in game. metaserver list window, changed default metaserver mode to UDP, graphics, menu styles adjusted to remove thick white lines, graphics, finished full screen and camera support, login, fixed delay, (16 July 2008)

Order Queue Display Network Programming A shop or event display node with multicast capability, for use at a village barbeque or bistro, written in Python and Pygame. Think of a node with a keyboard, and any number of nodes without keyboard, connected via network. The operator types a message, which appears on their node during composition, then when the commit key (TAB) is pressed the message appears on all other nodes. Additional features: messages are automatically sized to fit the available screen dimensions, multi-line messages are possible, type Enter between lines, editable history of previous messages, using the up and down arrow keys, in the style of a shell, any node can be a master, all it takes is a keyboard, nodes that are alive are listed on a master node, and if a node goes missing, it will fail to appear, displays can be mounted upside down, inversion is by command line option or by keyboard control on the display node, special control keys for reboot, poweroff, runlevel change, re-executing. Resources: highlighted source darcs repository (19 October 2007)

af-ping, an audio frequency ping Linux Network Programming For the radio range testing on the One Laptop Per Child project, Quozl added sound to Lars Strand's Python ping program Now it makes a sound where the pitch is related to the time it takes for an ICMP Echo Request packet (ping) to be returned as an Echo Reply. By default, the pings are at about 20 times per second, set by the length of the sound samples. Such rapid feedback makes it easier to learn where wireless coverage is good, or bad. It can also be used for reporting the health of an internet connection, using the --noflood option, but the output may be irregular because the PCM device is not being fed at the speed it desires. af-ping the python script, af-table-create a shell script that creates the sound files, (26 July 2007)

PPTP Client GUI Linux Network Programming Update: new version released. Quozl has written a graphical user interface for the PPTP Client project for which he is release engineer. Built using Glade and PHP-GTK, the program allows the configuration and management of PPTP tunnels. sources, screen shots, (22 February 2006)

tcpxd - Another TCP/IP Generic Relay Linux C Programming Network Programming Update: now available as a darcs repository Security update for tcpxd, version 1.4 fixes a vulnerability to crafted reverse DNS names. Quozl had checked out netcat and numerous other TCP/IP relays, but none had all the features he needed, so he rolled his own. This one is optimised for minimal process count and maximum performance for X connections. version 1.4 released 13 September 2005 darcs repository (20 February 2006)

Tandy 102 TCP/IP Draft Implementation Network Programming Quozl once made mention on a Tandy 102 mailing list that he had written the start of a TCP/IP protocol stack for this ancient machine. It is now released under the GNU Public License. It was based on fth100, a Forth implementation for Tandy 100 laptop computers. tandy-102-udp-ip-1995-01-29.tar.gz unpacked source (13 April 2004)

Script-Friendly TCP/IP Server Tester Linux C Programming Network Programming Quozl wrote a tiny program that tests a TCP/IP service by attempting a connection and then reporting to standard output. No data transfer is done. It is intended for use in scripts for testing availability of critical services, as it generates an easily parsable output along with meaningful status codes. more information, sources ... (12 October 2003)

Netrek Vanilla Server 2.9pl8 Released Linux C Programming Network Programming Quozl released version 2.9pl8 of the Netrek Vanilla Server. This release pulls together changes made by the team during the previous league seasons, and is the first release since April 2001. Quozl leads the Netrek Vanilla Project, an open source game server for the game of Netrek. http://vanilla.netrek.org (6 December 2002)

Netrek Vanilla Server 2.9pl7 Released Linux C Programming Network Programming Quozl released version 2.9pl7 of the Netrek Vanilla Server. This release pulls together changes made by the team during the previous league seasons, and is the first release since June 2000. Quozl leads the Netrek Vanilla Project, an open source game server for the game of Netrek. http://vanilla.netrek.org (23 April 2001)

Avoiding Microsoft Systems Linux Network Programming Quozl went to the DECUS Symposium in Sydney during March 2001. Dan Shearer was on the schedule to present a provocatively titled paper "Avoiding Microsoft Systems with Enterprise-Scale Free Software". However, Dan was unwell and could not attend. There were a few people who turned up anyway, so Quozl decided to write and present a paper of the same title for the next day of the conference. the paper (3 April 2001)

Videopad Base Station Protocol Daemon Electronics Linux C Programming Network Programming Quozl is releasing under the GNU Public License code that he wrote to interface a Linux system to a Granite Communications Base Station BS5, an exotic device that talks over radio to a Videopad VP5 hand-held LCD keypad terminal. more information, sources, history ... (11 July 1999)

Netrek Vanilla Server Administration GUI Linux C Programming X-Windows Programming Network Programming Quozl leads the Netrek Vanilla Project, an open source game server for the game of Netrek. One of his contributions to this project is gum, a GUI front end to the server configuration files. It was implemented using GLADE on GTK. screen snapshots of gum (1 February 1999)