I’ve been slowing down work on DSharingu. There is a bug by which it just doesn’t send the screen contents from my father’s PC, but it’s hard to debug it remotely.
There are so many things I could add: whiteboard, video stream (video-chat), file sharing, etc etc. But there is no point in adding something I don’t think it’s going to be that useful.
I suppose video chat would be nice, but the infrastructure is missing.
If I want to create some sort of videophone to my parents’ home in Rome, then I need to put in place actual hardware. Place an LCD monitor in the living room and a camera in a position and with a field of view and resolution that allow to perceive the remote environment.. not just the talking head.

What I really need is to sneak some sort of home server over there. Now that DSharingu works, I have a Trojan Horse (not in the bad/virus sense 8P) by which I can remotely fiddle with a PC at will.
I actually thought I did that on my mother’s PC at her pub, but something is not working.
The last version I upgraded to, had a bug by which the application didn’t start minimized at log-in. This probably prompts whoever logs to quickly close it.
It also doesn’t minimize to the systray, so people may see it in the taskbar and decide to remove it.
However that’s not such a big deal. For the time being I really need to have a small PC running in the living room in Rome. But I can’t delegate that job to any member of the family because they don’t really know how to buy and setup a PC.
Specifically, I’m thinking of a PC which is very small like I can buy here in Japan, but probably not in Italy.

Almost 2 months have past since I quit my job. I will start working again in November, I did quite a bit of coding and more errands, all mostly meant to install a virtual presence of mine in my home in Rome, but now I’m starting to worry about that last step, the physical one.

I may be getting a credit card soon, if that works overseas, I could be buying what I need from an Italian on-line shop and ship it home. But even then, I would still need to set things up.

For the time being I guess I could try buy what I need and set it up here in my home. I’m thinking:

• One of those very small PC’s only a bit larger than a CD Drive.
• A compact and wireless keyboard and mouse set, like this one I bought recently.
• An LCD monitor (that probably would be better bought in Italy).
• A powerful (thick walls in Rome !) wireless adapter, probably USB.

I would then need to set everything up and ship the parts somehow, hoping nothing gets broken and that it doesn’t get stuck at the customs.
I bet that then the wireless wouldn’t work.. ehhh !!

mumble

Posted by Davide Pasca in Diary