Quozl's Open Source - Social

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.

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Articles in Category Social

Fund Me

Social
Hello. Quozl is twiddling his fingers right now.

Do you need his help? Quozl does engineering mentoring, product management, software and firmware engineering, code reviews, quality assurance, testing, and teaching.

Or would you like to conserve native regrowth forest? Quozl helps manage a few million trees in outback Australia, and the project could do with some funding.

Contact quozl at laptop dot org. Thanks!

(17 April 2022)

Hector Spectrograph

Social
Quozl was a telescope night assistant during the recent commissioning of the new Hector multi-integral field instrument and spectrograph. A really busy team of scientists and engineers working together to make research happen. It was fun watching them work. Inputs included tea, coffee, muffins, tim-tams, pavlova, and occasional sleep. Outputs were C++, Python, electronics, and data.
(9 December 2021)

Newspaper

Social
Quozl was in the Sydney Morning Herald on page 3 on 2008-02-12, and the article was fairly accurate, but some editorial practices may have changed the story ... the corrections are:
  • certainly not a farmer, though living on a farm,

  • it is not currently dusty, though it was during the tests last year,

  • it is not currently locust-plagued, though it was during one test,

  • the 45 degree charging limitation was inherent in the NiMH chemistry, what was really discovered were 45 degree environmental conditions.

(12 February 2008)

DVB-T on Linux in Australia

Social Linux
Quozl began watching television in the past few years, mainly because Doctor Who had returned ... the first "television" was a junk box VHS VCR attached to an LCD monitor via composite video, ... the second was a borrowed DVD+RW DVR to replace the VHS VCR, ... and the third just completed is a $AUD45 DVB-T PCI card in a Linux system acting as a video streaming server and digital recorder.

(27 December 2007)

Delta

Social
Quozl is directing a programming camp in Brisbane, Australia. If you are in year 11 or year 12 at school, and want to learn how to program computers and join the open source community, please think about joining us. The camp is in January 2008, and has strictly limited places.

(5 December 2007)

TaskJuggler

Social
Project management software for those who think best in a text editor, rather than a point and click interface. TaskJuggler seems to do quite nicely. One defines a set of tasks, even a hierarchy of them, and then hit the schedule button and you get a nice Gantt chart or as much XML or HTML as you want.

Because the project is expressed as text, it is easy to integrate it with project source control systems. TaskJuggler can run in a script to update a project web page. It will even generate its own Makefile if you want.

Keep it in mind for next time you need to plan something.

(24 August 2007)

Tooraweenah Wireless

Social
Travelling in my area and need a quick net fix? Tooraweenah's Community Technology Centre has an open wireless access point, with 1500kbit/sec ADSL behind it. The essid is tooraweenah.com, and the antenna is at 1.5m elevation from floor level. There is usually adequate parking nearby.

While you are there, the pub does liquids and foods, and the best coffee is from the reasonably modern vending machine in the hardware store. One of those automatic ones that grind real beans.

Tooraweenah is roughly half way between Gilgandra and Coonabarabran, on the Newell Highway, New South Wales, Australia.

(20 July 2007)

Music Compositions

Linux Social
Quozl's been having fun with qsynth, qjackctl, and rosegarden4, so he dusted off his musical composition skills and had a go at writing some atmospheric music.
(9 June 2005)

Netrek Australia

Social
Old friends will know that Quozl has played Netrek for many years. A new Netrek server for Australian players is now set up, along with a mailing list and web page.

(26 March 2002)

Tooraweenah

Social
Quozl lives with his wife in outback eastern Australia, near a tiny village called Tooraweenah. Since people frequently ask "Where is that?", we've written a page about it.

(25 March 2002)

Emu Fat Monitor

PIC Microcontrollers Electronics Linux Social
The outback emu farm up the road had a dodgy freezer. Quozl used his temperature sensor for remote monitoring, using a pair of decrepid modems as lightning protection. Read all about it.

(3 March 2001)

Farmwide Advanced Internet

Social
Quozl was asked to present a course on web page design for a nationally funded project to increase the internet use among farmers. The presentation material is available here, in two classes.

(17 November 2000)

Remote Weather Station using Tandy 102 Laptop

Social Electronics
Quozl owns half a mountain with a weather station on it, and some of his friends who also have these old Tandy 102 laptops were interested in pictures of how it was done. A Linux system is used to graph and summarise the data. gnuplot is used within a PERL CGI script to deliver the graphs to a web browser as inline GIF images.

(18 February 1999)


quozl@us.netrek.org