Robert W. Rose

I just got a NS-K330 NAS off Deal Extreme, it’s a super cheap-o 3W network attached storage device.  Just add a USB powered HD and you’re ready to go.

The operating system that it comes installed with doesn’t do very much, so the good hackers over at SnakeOS have made a simple BusyBox-based distribution that you can use to replace it.  In 3 minutes you’ve got an embedded Linux server running ssh/sftp, ftp, samba, http.  Did I mention it only draws 3W?

Once I got SnakeOS installed I was disappointed to discover the embedded web server doesn’t support directory listings.  It does however support CGI scripting.  It took me a few minutes to put this together, but here are two scripts you can install in your web server /cgi-bin directory to enable directory browsing and automatic generation of m3u files for your mp3 collection:

#!/bin/sh
# Generates a directory listing, links directory to m3u generator
echo "Content-type: text/html"
echo ""
QUERY=`echo ${QUERY_STRING} \
  | sed -r 's/%20/ /g' \
| sed -r "s/%27/'/" \
  | sed -r 's/^\///'`
echo "<h2><a href=\"/cgi-bin/m3u?$QUERY\">/$QUERY</a></h2>"
ls -l "../$QUERY" | grep ^d \
  | awk '{$1=$2=$3=$4=$5=$6=$7=$8=""; print $0}' \
| sed -r 's/^[ ]+//' \
| sed -r "s/^(.*)$/<a href=\"?$QUERY\/\1\">\1<\/a><br>/"
ls -l "../$QUERY" | grep -v ^d \
  | awk '{$1=$2=$3=$4=$5=$6=$7=$8=""; print $0}' \
| sed -r 's/^[ ]+//' \
| awk "{printf(\"<a href=\\\"/$QUERY/%s\\\">%s<br>\", \$0, \$0);}"

#!/bin/sh
# Generates m3u from query parameter
echo "Content-type: audio/mpegurl"
echo ""
QUERY=`echo ${QUERY_STRING} \
  | sed -r 's/%20/ /g' \
| sed -r "s/%27/'/g" \
  | sed -r 's/^\///'`
find "../$QUERY" -name *.mp3 \
  | sed -r 's/\.\./http:\/\/192.168.0.11:8080/' \
| sed -r 's/ /%20/g'

Not the cleanest of scripts, but it gets it done.  BusyBox doesn’t have a complete “find” implementation so this kinda limited what I could do.

As I’m writing this it does not appear this system is the most robust of web servers… Both WinAMP and Windows Media Player are seizing up part way through songs and reporting network errors. Hmm. I guess for $40 I can’t complain.

FusionGarage is trying to make a comeback after their JooJoo debacle, it’s called GridOS.  They have a few videos of it in use on their website.

When I used to work in games people would say to me, “hey I have this great idea for a game…” and then I’d have to gently explain that either the idea had already been tried or probably wouldn’t be fun for xyz reasons.  Or I would just smile and nod.  Watching the GridOS videos they have on their website brought that feeling back.  I cringed watching them.  I imagined this dude telling some poor programmer, “hey I have this great idea for a user interface…”

“The desktop should never end! It should just go on and on…” Great idea, genius.  So you want people to get lost finding their apps?  Or worse, lose their apps?

“Oh well then we’ll have this map in the top corner so you don’t get lost!”  How about you just don’t let people get lost in the first place.  Confine the apps to as small an area as possible.

“Grids are cool! Everything should be in a grid with massive blocks of dead space between groups.”  So, you want people to get tired of scrolling?  You want to not use the available screen real estate to convey useful information?

“There should be this gadget for your left thumb that acts like a jog dial, and have scroll momentum and do this neat little shaking of the items attached to the wheel!”  So you want to violate your grid design and rigid fade-in/fade-out visual semantics for this one different UI element. O.. K.. And you also want things to not actually be visible until they stop shaking / stabilize?  And you want this under the user’s thumb, so they can’t actually see what they’re controlling? Right.

“But the right thumb should be like a context menu, and have this grid pop-out with context sensitive options, (and all the options should be on the same background with single-color icons).”  Is there any rhyme or reason to how these icons are arranged?  “Sure! Arrange them based on the distance your thumb has to travel, so commonly used items are closed to the edge.. you know, like Dvorák and stuff.”  Alright, I guess people will have a hard time finding where things are the first time, but maybe they’ll develop a muscle memory for where things are.  Oh wait. This is a tablet.  There is no physical feedback mechanism.  They’ll have to use visual feedback and get lost every time.

“We’ll have the coolest UI for playing music!”  Uhh, yea, isn’t that kind-of a solved problem?  Plus, you don’t really need much of a UI for listening to music on a portable device.  Unless you’re developing a great UI for managing music–and sync’ing that management with wherever your music library is stored–then you might be onto something.  But I suspect you’re not.

Too harsh?

I find it frustrating that there is no requirement to inform the customer of the country of origin of a product when it is purchased online. I often times have no idea what country something was made in until it arrives at my doorstep and I open the box.

According to the Customs and Border Protection document “Marking of Country of Origin on U.S. Imports” the purpose of this marking is:

To inform the ultimate purchaser in the United States of the country in which the imported article was made… The ultimate purchaser is generally the last person in the United States who will receive the article in the form in which it was imported.

When you buy something from an online retailer you don’t get to see this marking until you’ve already made the purchase.

The intent of this law is not being met.