Tuesday, May 8, 2001

Well, Scot Hacker has written an excellent article (since removed) about the current state of the BeOS, and its current situation and future. I can’t disagree with anything he says.

Personally, I’ll continue to use BeOS for the foreseeable future. I can’t imagine using Windows regularly at home; BeOS is the best OS out there for my tastes. And no matter how dire the situation, nobody can make mede-install BeOS. It will still run on my machine tomorrow.

However, I will start looking at other operating systems. I spent some time today looking at AtheOS, which is an open-source alternative that looks similar to BeOS in many ways. Saalon‘s going to send me copies of Mandrake Linux, and I’m going to try installing both of them on Lady (my “fiddling” computer).

Until recently, I had Lady set up at work, doing duty as a library computer. When people take books out of our bookcases, they are asked to check them out using the library software that I wrote, that sits on Lady nearby. I’m going to migrate that software to a web-basedsystem, because I took Lady home today. Come to think of it, I should re-arrange my computer corner so that I can get better access to all three computers.

What else. I notice that Saalon’s set up his own OpenDiary over at OpenDiary. He’s decided that he’d rather use a morecommunity-building journal like OpenDiary’s than a more impersonal journal like the one I set up for him. Which is fine by me. He’s certainly updating it pretty often thus far.

There are three lain cels for sale on eBay right now, as well as three Dual! cels. I’m keeping an eye on the Dual! cels, to see how expensive they get. None of them are particularly fantastic, but if I can get ’em cheap, I will.

I’m also seriously considering this Nene cel (from Bubblegum Crisis 2040) and this Jessie cel (from Battle Athletes Victory) selling at Anime Barn.

I got home late, and got no writing done (which are not mutually exclusive options). I’m really quite annoyed at myself. I did manage to complete my download of AtheOS version 0.3.3b, and spent an hour or two enthusing about the possibilities.

You want to know how crazy I am? I dreamed up the idea of writing a word processor, web browser, and WYSIWYG HTML editor for AtheOS. It’s not quite as far-fetched as it sounds, but to think that I’ll actually have the time is ludicrous. Maybe as an open-source project, there’s hope. Hmmmm.

I just need to figure out some sort of payment mechanism. Perhaps a dirt-cheap subscription service? $3 a month and $10 a year, or something like that?