… the WRT54G. I’m starting work on a Rails site for the WRT54G admin web-interface. It’ll be fun, AJAX-y and Web 2.0 it all it’s goodness. Why not?

It turns out the hardest part is getting rails and all it’s dependancies on the box!

I started with: http://handhelds.org/feeds/ruby/

After loading the ruby-large package, I’ll try to get GEM going.

[Hmm.. do people use CPAN when working with perl compiled for ARM? Should I screw GEMs and package up the rails code itself? Find out on the next episode!]

Instead of MySQL, I’ll throw in SQLite for the backend, thought it looks like I’ll have to compile the ruby-sqlite bindings for ARM myself if they are written in C (and I don’t have GEMs available.)

I’m a fan of great tech ideas and startups. This week’s great idea comes from FON.

It’s idea is this: You share free WiFi with others at home/office and they share it with you when you’re on the road.

That idea is cool - in and of itself - but there more “cool” to be found. All the technology is built into a Linksys WRT54G-type router.

Ah yes, the great WRT54G. One of the best examples of the rising importance of the “Make” culture. As soon as FON reaches the tipping point hardware hacking will really lead some to the $.

Sad, but so very true …

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/05/we_are_all_danes_now/

Things that really excite me this year so far:

• Ubuntu
• KnoppMyth (Sweet action MythTV!)
• Ruby On Rails
• Asterisk (just bought a Sipura 3000)
• RAGI
• SwitchTower
• Ruby

I had the great opportunity to meet with Jared Smith, Asterisk Guru and author. He was up doing some VOIP consulting for my company. What a cool guy! I had him up to talk to the LUG a few months ago and was impressed with his knowledge and it was good to see him again. He recently switched to ful-time consulting and gets to have all kinds of fun going to uber-geek conventions and the like. I truly am jealous. The good thing is he gave me a copy of his book and even signed it for me.

He spoke of his fun at The O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference. He hob-nobbed with some alpha geeks. We spoke about scripting language integration and I mentioned my Ruby affection. He told me about a talk given at the conference about some sweet ruby Asterisk intergration (ala RAGI) and some real cool news about Rails / Asterisk intergration. Dang fine!

After some Googling it turns out my hero for this week is Joe Heitzeburg. His talks is entitled “Ruby on Rails with Asterisk.”

Sweet article here.