Previously I had two sets of org notes. My personal set where sitting on my server which I could access via the terminal. I generally accessed this at home on the odd occasion when I was doing things like the annual round of insurance quote gathering. The second set was a fairly simple time sheet type affair that I was using at work to keep a vague track of where all my time was spent. The big missing part of this is when I’m on the move.

I’ve just recently upgraded my phone to the latest Galaxy Nexus which is a fine Google enabled device. I make no apologies for using Google’s calendering and shared document services. They work very well and importantly allow me to share things with my wife who doesn’t quite share my desire to run everything from a text editor. However for my personal task lists on the move and remembering what’s coming up at work it doesn’t quite cut it. Besides I like org-mode and I’d heard about MobileOrg so I endeavoured to set it up.

MobileOrg has been around some time for the iPhone but the mechanisms it uses for integrating with org-mode are fairly well documented. As a result there is a couple of Android implementations for it. Matthew Jone’s mobileorg-android was the first version I tried.

The original sync method for MobileOrg was to use a service like Dropbox to sync files. Given the history of Dropbox’s security I wasn’t about to move my files into the proprietary cloud. The alternative is to enable WebDAV on my web-server and therefor enable two way communication via HTTP. It was a little concerning to see self-signed SSL wasn’t supported as this does open up a potential attack vector on my machine. I’ve mitigated it a little by using digest authentication instead of basic-auth but I’d still prefer to be conducting these read-write operations over something more secure.

Initial results were a little underwhelming. After some messing around with the format of org-links I eventually got a basic outline summary up. Unfortunately I can’t seem to sync notes created on my phone to the server. This seems to be a Apache problem which I shall have to dig into later.

After perusing the market some more I noticed there is a new project in town. Konstantin’s MobileOrgNG was forked some time ago from Matthew’s code and on installing I found it looked an awful lot better. I’ve still be unable to post any locally added notes (due to previously mentioned Apache config issues). However it’s presentation is a lot slicker and it shows a lot of potential for being a good MobileOrg client.

I’m now stuck with a classic open source fork dilemma. The code bases look to have diverged enough that these two projects are essential going their own way. Looking at the two impact graphs it looks like they diverged around August 2011 and since then MobileOrgNG looks pretty much like a solo effort albeit with an impressive commit rate of new features.

So the questions for my readers. Which code base should I jump on? Has anyone got experience with the two different code bases and the reason they split? Are there any other Android clients for org-mode I should be looking at?

It was nice to catch up with a bunch of people at Adam and Lou’s wedding last weekend. It more or less qualified as our last venture away from home for the foreseeable future. This weekend I spent a good deal of the time laying the excess turf from Project: Veg Patch over what used to pass for our front lawn. This of course means the main landscaping of the new “Vegetable” patch at the back of our property is now complete:

I have to admit most of the work at the back was contracted out including a my brother and his partner who did most of the work levelling, laying and building what will hopefully be a productive growing area. Still we are both very pleased with the outcome and hopefully the grass will take and we can concentrate on planting what will provide us with fresh food for the future family!

It’s hard to explain the impact of seeing a few grainy pixels waving at you on a medical monitor stand. While it’s a sign of our modern magical times that I can provide people with a picture of my yet-to-be borne child it loses some impact due to it’s static nature. While we watched this recognisable form bouncing around in natures playpen my thoughts underwent a moment of crystallisation from the abstract to the actuality. Obviously I’ve known we* were pregnant for some time however this was the first irrefutable primary data that it is really all happening.

Obviously I’m not the first person to feel these sort of things. Evolution has been doing it’s thing for some time providing the unbroken thread of life to something that is now our responsibility. I’m left thinking that questions about my suitability as a parent are rather academic now. I’m slightly mollified by the fact that a number of my friends have already walked this road. Friends that joined me in youthful excesses and moderately irresponsible behaviour back in the day seem to have taken on the mantle of parenthood with relative ease. It gives me hope that the mantle will fit me as well.

* I hesitated to use the pronoun as Fliss is very much taking the brunt of the pregnancy downsides. However it is a shared experience even if my input at the moment is restricted to platitudes and earnest requests if there is anything she would like that I can fetch her.

It wasn’t a very busy weekend which is just as well as the week at work was fairly harrowing. I did spend some time pottering in the garden doing my assigned tasks and finalising plans for the back garden. About the only other achievement of public note was preparing a full Lamb Sunday Roast for our neighbours.

Apologies for the rather banal quality of this post. I do have a number of things I want to write about including the up-coming AV referendum, some back of the envelope calculations with respect to student financing, and the irony of Microsoft referring Google to the EU competition authorities. However despite having a number of things I want to talk about/spark discussion I’m finding it hard to actually get around to writing about them so for now you’ll have to contend with these snapshots of my domestic life

I spent a chunk of Sunday attending to tasks as directed by the head gardener while she continued attempting the Saturday Times crossword. We seem to have become Saturday Times readers purely on the basis of the quality of their puzzles. Marcus assures me that the Gruniad provides a more brain twisting Cryptic Crossword which Fliss aspires to graduate to one day. Personally I’m happy to manage one clue per crossword but I think I’m getting better at them over time.

We spent a large chunk of the weekend watching through C4′s alternative take on teen super heroes Misfits. It’s been a fun show to watch and I suspect we’ll get to the end of the season 2 box set in short order. We’ll have to be careful because there seems to be a lull in any decent TV until Easter when we’ll be spoilt for choice. Recommendations for other box sets welcome

* I bought a new PC, pimped out with 16GB of RAM and an SSD it makes a fine development box.
* I switched my phone from VillianRom to compiled from source CyanogenMod.
* I now own real actual shares (as opposed to maybe-someday-options)
* Married life continues to be wonderful

Fliss has also been very busy doing some long hours in London so a lot of our post-work slobbing has been mutual. However we are both looking forward to a long weekend walking in Wales to blow away the post-Christmas cobwebs.

While I delivered my main project more or less on time at the beginning of January it’s having more teething problems than most releases. This is in part due to it being a rather major upgrade, including the base OS being upgraded. However I have also just been given extra responsibilities for a part of the embedded product which has rather aggressive deadlines of it’s own. We were hoping to go skiing at the end of February/Early March with the rest of the family but until I get a handle on things it’s hard to predict if we can.

I suppose with everything else that’s going on it’s good that we are so busy because we can’t hire engineers fast enough as the company is growing quite strongly. There are worse problems to have I’m sure.

Professionally I’ve been doing really well. The company I work for has had yet another record breaking year which has triggered my bonus again (although I don’t find out how much until I get back). It continues to grow in both revenue and size. I finally feel comfortable with the code base I’m working with. At the same time the ever growing feature list means I’ve still got plenty of interesting things to do with it. Although the internal code is proprietary to the company I’ve got a fairly wide latitude to work with FLOSS code and it makes a significant portion of the NMS product. Pretty much anything that I hack on that is useful to the wider community outside the application specific task is fed upstream which is good for both the company and the wider world.

Aside from my work based hacking 2010 was also the year I became a real open source project maintainer. I’ve been publishing code I write and use for a long time and have done maintenance work on some niche projects as well as contributing to other projects as normal. However at the start of 2010 I released Edit with Emacs to an unsuspecting world. It started as a simple exercise in learning some Chrome Javascript and kicking me to delve deeper into elisp coding. However since then it has grown to something that gets regular contributions and is used by over a thousand people. To quote Blur it gives me an enormous sense of well being

This year has also been an interesting year politically. While there is plenty of debate about the economics of some of the choices made by the coalition I’m personally fairly happy with the approach being taken given the fairly dire conditions they inherited. From my geek point of view it’s heartening to see the pre-election commitment that was made to open data seems to be being lived up to. I’m hoping the changes to openness will get embedded into the way government does business permanently.

The big thing that dwarfed all other things this year of course was getting married to the wonderful Fliss. Saving up all my holidays for the honeymoon meant we didn’t have many extended breaks and of course as the logistical tasks approached there was much running around and controlled panics. In the end everything went like a dream and the wedding itself was a blur of happy memories. It was a fantastic day and made all the better for all the friends and family that came along to share in the celebration. Getting married to Fliss is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever done.

I do occasionally have pangs of guilt considering how lucky we have been especially when so many are struggling with the uncertainty of the economic situation and the stress that causes. All I can do is wish the best of lucky to everyone for the next year. I hope it exceeds the positive expectations and under-performs on the negative ones!

The weekend was lovely and relaxed. We attended to some wedding preparation on the Saturday including measuring me up for my suit and picking up the wedding rings. As I very rarely wear the things it still feels a little odd making my left hand hang a little oddly, I’m sure I’ll get used to it soon enough though

As I was due to be leaving home at 3.30 in the morning on Monday we time shifted Sunday to try and make the morning less painful. Fliss cooked me a wonderful roast Chicken dinner and we enjoyed a quite evening together. I was fairly relieved when the flight cancellation notification finally came through. It was much nicer waking up at a civilised time in the morning with my soon to be wife.