A moment of inspiration hit just after I finished up with Mylio and had some time to act on it. I’ve had this idea brewing in the back of my head for three or four years now, and the whole thing came flying out in a nearly non-stop rush. I’m sure I’ll be tweaking it for months to come but it feels pretty good to have built a usable tool in just a couple of weeks.

I’ve posted the code on github:
Lindi, an editor shell for software development

I smashed a directory browser, a pico-inspired text editor, and a simple shell console together inside a terminal-mode window manager to create a kind of lightweight IDE where the current working directory plays the role of the project file.

The immediate problem was that I want to work on a project which has to be compiled on a Mac using Xcode, but I don’t want to be stuck at my desk all the time, and my laptop is a Thinkpad running Ubuntu. I considered VNC, but it’s hilariously insecure, tunneling it over SSL looks like a nuisance, and anyway Xcode feels cramped on the Thinkpad’s 1024×768 screen. In a classic fit of programmer laziness I decided that spending a couple of weeks building a new tool was the easiest solution.

Result: I can ssh into my Mac, run Lindi, and drive everything from a single xterm. Yay!

Lindi is unapologetically idiosyncratic and not at all configurable. Tabs are 4 columns wide, text files are 80, and control-C means “copy”, not “cancel”. The world is awash in editors, and everyone has their favorite; I just thought it’d be nice to build my own, tailored to the way I like to work.

It’s up on github now, though, and I’ll probably post a link on reddit or hackernews once I’ve knocked some more of the rough edges off; I’m curious whether anyone else happens to share my particular taste.

I’d call it maybe 75% baked, but it has enough that I’ve been using it to edit its own code. Long term plans: make the directory browser git/svn aware, beef up the console until it can run lldb/gdb, add syntax highlighting, use syntax highlighting to do project-wide identifier lookup.

The software product I spent the last two years on has just shipped:

Mylio is Here.
The next generation photo management system is now available.
All of your photos. All of your devices. Always protected.

The press release has this fun little remark:

“We recognized a growing need for photographers and consumers to protect, access and share all their photos everywhere they go and on every device they own,” explains David Vaskevitch, CEO of MyLO, creators of Mylio. “We formed a unique team of world-class software developers, designers and photographers to build a solution that satisfies this need and allows people to enjoy their photos again.”

People seem to like it.

idea: connect a Beaglebone Black single-board Linux computer to a SM5100B GSM radio module mounted on an evaluation board.

This device runs a VPN relay (using your home internet connection as uplink) and a server which relays GSM audio and SMS messages.

Next, delete the SMS and voice-call apps on your phone, replacing them with some yet-to-be-determined app designed to work through the relay server above.

Configure your phone’s internet connection to use a VPN, routing all data traffic – which now includes all voice and SMS traffic – through the relay box at home.

This allows you to run a firewall on the relay box which can whitelist or blacklist anything you want. Worried that your apps are phoning home behind your back? Block ’em. You could have different firewall rule sets, like “allow nothing”, “allow email only”, “allow email and these web sites”, “allow everything but block known malware sites”, etc.

Further idea: take the SIM out of your phone, put it in the relay box, and cancel your data plan. Buy a prepaid SIM with cash and put it in your phone. Now people who know your phone number and have the ability to track phones can see that your phone is sitting at your house, 24/7, but unless they know about your prepaid SIM, they can’t track your physical location. Bonus: travelling internationally? All your web sites continue to think you’re logging in from home, and you don’t have to worry about geo-restrictions.