My main enemies - office and the road: way from home to office and the way back. The road steal my time - 3 hours per day, 5 days per week. Office ties me to the concrete geographical point. I have my own software ideas and projects, but when I returns back home after 11 hours of job+road - first of all I must do homeworks. After all of that - computer?? NO!! bed, sleeping. So, my current life is builded the way I have no time for my own projects.
Wearable Computer is the weapon that helps me defeat my enemy #2. I call it "garbage time". Garbage time - it's the time you spent in the road, in the turn in the supermarket, on the bus stop waiting the bus... All that are pieces of YOUR PRECIOUS LIFE. Pieces of life that you could use to earn money, do something interesting - but you are compelled to wait. With wearable computer I can use this garbage time for work on my own projects. With this magic device I can working on my ideas - whenever I need, everywhere I want.
Let's calculate what I win. 3 working hours 5 days per week - it's 780 hours per year. To be measured in 40-hours working weeks that is 4 months. 4 months "from nowhere" - the time I can use to earn money or working on things I am just interesting on. And on augmented reality too ;)
All the said is the reason why I have spent some money, time and efforts to build my own version of wearable computer. I call it "TeleComp". This is the first version, I build it February 12th 2008, so it is looking not so fantastic yet - but it helps me to live my life in 130% mode.
The kernel of Telecomp is the notebook MSI MegaBook S260. I don't plan to use it as the ordinary notebook - so I bought fully functional device without screen LCD matrix (it costs me 50% off!). When I use it home, I just connect it to my home monitor. In the road I use my Nokia E61 as terminal, connected by WiFi to notebook (which is stealthy working in my bag). I use Linux (Fedora 7) as notebook OS. So, I can do everything I need with my computer using PuTTY and FTP-client running on my smartphone. By the way, command line is universal, powerful - but not very comfortable style of work. And I start developing of TeleDesk - smartphone application that
helps me to do all things I need by several clicks.
TeleComp - blind-eyed monster. Oh my, let's close it!
In closed state TeleComp looks like ordinary used 12" notebook. Oh guy, hide it in the bag!
TeleDesk running on my E61. Player design is temporary borrowed at WinAmp.
What can I do in the road on my Telecomp now? Not many - yet. I use it to develop J2ME and PHP/MySQL applications, for listening music. But I have a long (30 items for now) list of features I plan to implement in the nearest future or sometime later. And this list is permanently increased.
Now I have earphones and microphone connected to TeleComp. This summer I plan to buy videocamera and HMD - to open the door into augmented reality.
In the one of next postings I will describe the way I connect Fedora 7 and Nokia E61 by WiFi Ad-Hoc - full instruction.
