5 ms·

Man with ALS writes patch for Gnome using morse code (with touching story)

543 points by pufuwozu 16y ago

avar 16y ago
Link to his patch applied to the eog.git repository: http://git.gnome.org/browse/eog/commit/?id=EOG_2_91_6~42 http://git.gnome.org/browse/eog/commit/?id=EOG_2_91_6~42
kprobst 16y ago
I especially liked the GNOME member's response. Classy and dignified.
olalonde 16y ago
Can't wait until I get the fix through Ubuntu's update manager so that I can tell the story behind the "Copy image" menu item to my family and friends!
mayank 16y ago
Once a hacker, always a hacker. What an amazing story! And to think he was coding raw GTK, which is a nightmare even with vim+autocomplete. Sample from his patch: image = eog_thumb_view_get_first_selected_image(EOG_THUMB_VIEW (priv->thumbview)); g_return_if_fail (EOG_IS_IMAGE (image)); file = eog_image_get_file (image); filename = g_file_get_path (file);
- unwind 16y ago
  Meh. I would disagree; It's very subjective. Sure it might look very verbose on first sight, but most of the seemingly excessive text is just there since it's C. You get used to it, and the GTK+-family API:s are generally very well-designed, very orthogonal and predictable. The verbiage "falls away" from your sight after a while, and you just do what you want done.
  - zem 16y ago
    i think he meant it in the context of the long function names really making a difference when you have to tap each character out in morse code with your knee.
    - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      >"long function names really making a difference when you have to tap each character out in morse code with your knee" I wonder if he did or if he shorthanded them and used find+replace?
    - unwind 16y ago
      Ah, good point of course. For that reason, I really hope he used some kind of completion in the IDE/editor.
noonespecial 16y ago
Kind of humbling, no? I've got plenty of excuses why I don't contribute more to OS projects, but when a guy bangs out a patch with his knees using morse code while dying of ALS, they all suddenly seem pretty lame. My hat's so far off to this guy, its on the floor in front of me.
- Groxx 16y ago
  Touching, but at the risk of being karma-annihilated: what else would be be doing? He's probably sick of being useless, can't get paid to do anything (and wouldn't want to be, it'd be pity money), and wants to do something both productive and helpful. So he found a way, has supportive family that helped make it possible, and has a huge amount of time in which to do it. If I had that much time on my hands I'd be fixing a lot more than I am now, when I'm spending time with my wife / friends / at work.
  - noonespecial 16y ago
    That's what he'd be doing. Spending time with friends/family/ or bowing to the pressure that I know I'd face at work to close all the loose ends I might leave behind. He saw a problem that needed fixing that would benefit all of us and took some of his short time to fix it for us. It was hard for him. Really hard. Hell, he could have just watched Survivor and taken it easy. If anyone in all the world deserved to, it was him. But he didn't. And so he's my hero.
    - Groxx 16y ago
      >That's what he'd be doing. Spending time with friends/family/ or bowing to the pressure that I know I'd face at work to close all the loose ends I might leave behind. Be practical. They aren't going to spend all the time he's around and awake with him. ALS isn't exactly fast. Yes, lots end up wasting their last times with TV, and yes he did something hard and helpful and that's great. But lets not kid ourselves about how oh-I-should-do-that-too, my-excuses-are-lame. Different situations, different possibilities.
  - prpon 16y ago
2mur 16y ago
Awesome. We're naming our 4th son (currently 20+5 weeks) Adrian. I loved the post and the picture. Sounds like a great man RIP.
srean 16y ago
This is so humbling. It also makes one wonder what are good input tools for people with handicaps. I can think of two projects: (i) Dasher http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/ discussed here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142934 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142934 and (ii) Emacspeak http://sourceforge.net/projects/emacspeak/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/emacspeak/ authored by T.V.Raman who himself is blind. My family has a history of retinal detachments, and I have a tear myself. But I have never given it much thought, because these are always things that happen to others, not you. Are there input devices based on Braille, wondering if it would be faster ? As an aside, there used to be code in the Linux kernel which on certain kernel panics would communicate the error message through Morse code using the integrated speaker. Edit: About Braille, I was thinking more in the lines of a small 6 button or a similarly limited device.
- JoshTriplett 16y ago
  If you mean an output device based on Braille, then yes, you can get a Braille terminal, or "refreshable Braille display" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_Braille_display http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_Braille_display), which displays a row of characters via Braille, and can indicate the cursor position as well. That would make it possible to interact with the command line. They appear to cost about $5-10k, depending on whether you want a 40-character or 80-character row of characters. You might also look at http://live.gnome.org/Orca http://live.gnome.org/Orca , which helps you interact with graphical programs via both speech and Braille (and magnification for as long as you continue to have some vision). As far as "input devices based on Braille"; you can probably get a keyboard with Braille lettering on the keys, but if you can touch-type you don't really need the labels anyway. Hope that helps.
- Groxx 16y ago
  From some of my earlier investigations, handicapped computing support is astonishingly bad and expensive. Largely because many things are near one-off limited-use solutions that can't be re-sold... but nothing is ever modular or adjustable or could be tweaked to be used in multiple situations anyway. The DIY crowd for such things, meanwhile, keeps hacking up things like this for almost no money. And it only gets worse once you come to software. Hardware interfaces have a general communication format - websites do not. Applications do not. Almost nobody makes software with hinting for assistive devices, despite tools and standards existing. I suspect it's mostly because it's extra work, and doesn't (usually) significantly help to pay the bills when added.
BasDirks 16y ago
Respect! Now there's a mantra: ACCEPTed COMMITed RESOLVEd
Hacktivist 16y ago
If you aren't familiar with ALS, you might have heard it under the name Lou Gehrig's disease. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis
mode0 16y ago
Someone who doesn't give up. +1
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
varjag 16y ago
There's a mention his father went to India for treatment. Is that because they are particularly good at treating ALS, or is it a health insurance issue? But it takes incredible willpower to continue doing anything in situation like this. My hat's off.
- prawn 16y ago
  Can't speak for that question or this case specifically but I was sick (gastro) in India a few years ago. My now-wife went off to find medication. The pharmacist had her describe the problem and put together a bag of tablets and electrolyte drinks. She asked how much. He said "30." She said "30 dollars?" He said, "No, rupees." I think that was less than 70 US cents at the time.
kareemm 16y ago
My first job out of school was writing code at ALS.net. It was started by Jamie, a mechanical engineer to find a cure for his brother Stephen, who had just been diagnosed (and was eventually turned into a movie: http://www.westcityfilms.com/smsf.html http://www.westcityfilms.com/smsf.html). The horrible thing about ALS is that your body deteriorates, while your mind stays 100% fine. Stephen was physically in pretty rough shape by the time I started. He loved playing video games with his brothers, so Jamie made a little mouse-like device for Stephen that also allowed him to mimic keypresses. Once a week, we'd all hop online and play Diablo together. It was interesting getting to know Stephen this way - he was barely able to talk when I first met him, but he could type using Jamie's device. (Aside: Ben, the third brother, now runs PatientsLikeMe.com, a support community for people with diseases like ALS).

543 points by pufuwozu 16y ago

avar 16y ago

Link to his patch applied to the eog.git repository: http://git.gnome.org/browse/eog/commit/?id=EOG_2_91_6~42 http://git.gnome.org/browse/eog/commit/?id=EOG_2_91_6~42

kprobst 16y ago

I especially liked the GNOME member's response. Classy and dignified.

olalonde 16y ago

Can't wait until I get the fix through Ubuntu's update manager so that I can tell the story behind the "Copy image" menu item to my family and friends!

mayank 16y ago

Once a hacker, always a hacker. What an amazing story! And to think he was coding raw GTK, which is a nightmare even with vim+autocomplete. Sample from his patch: image = eog_thumb_view_get_first_selected_image(EOG_THUMB_VIEW (priv->thumbview)); g_return_if_fail (EOG_IS_IMAGE (image)); file = eog_image_get_file (image); filename = g_file_get_path (file);

unwind 16y ago
Meh. I would disagree; It's very subjective. Sure it might look very verbose on first sight, but most of the seemingly excessive text is just there since it's C. You get used to it, and the GTK+-family API:s are generally very well-designed, very orthogonal and predictable. The verbiage "falls away" from your sight after a while, and you just do what you want done.
- zem 16y ago
  i think he meant it in the context of the long function names really making a difference when you have to tap each character out in morse code with your knee.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >"long function names really making a difference when you have to tap each character out in morse code with your knee" I wonder if he did or if he shorthanded them and used find+replace?
  - unwind 16y ago
    Ah, good point of course. For that reason, I really hope he used some kind of completion in the IDE/editor.

noonespecial 16y ago

Kind of humbling, no? I've got plenty of excuses why I don't contribute more to OS projects, but when a guy bangs out a patch with his knees using morse code while dying of ALS, they all suddenly seem pretty lame. My hat's so far off to this guy, its on the floor in front of me.

Groxx 16y ago
Touching, but at the risk of being karma-annihilated: what else would be be doing? He's probably sick of being useless, can't get paid to do anything (and wouldn't want to be, it'd be pity money), and wants to do something both productive and helpful. So he found a way, has supportive family that helped make it possible, and has a huge amount of time in which to do it. If I had that much time on my hands I'd be fixing a lot more than I am now, when I'm spending time with my wife / friends / at work.
- noonespecial 16y ago
  That's what he'd be doing. Spending time with friends/family/ or bowing to the pressure that I know I'd face at work to close all the loose ends I might leave behind. He saw a problem that needed fixing that would benefit all of us and took some of his short time to fix it for us. It was hard for him. Really hard. Hell, he could have just watched Survivor and taken it easy. If anyone in all the world deserved to, it was him. But he didn't. And so he's my hero.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    >That's what he'd be doing. Spending time with friends/family/ or bowing to the pressure that I know I'd face at work to close all the loose ends I might leave behind. Be practical. They aren't going to spend all the time he's around and awake with him. ALS isn't exactly fast. Yes, lots end up wasting their last times with TV, and yes he did something hard and helpful and that's great. But lets not kid ourselves about how oh-I-should-do-that-too, my-excuses-are-lame. Different situations, different possibilities.
- prpon 16y ago

2mur 16y ago

Awesome. We're naming our 4th son (currently 20+5 weeks) Adrian. I loved the post and the picture. Sounds like a great man RIP.

srean 16y ago

This is so humbling. It also makes one wonder what are good input tools for people with handicaps. I can think of two projects: (i) Dasher http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/ discussed here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142934 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142934 and (ii) Emacspeak http://sourceforge.net/projects/emacspeak/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/emacspeak/ authored by T.V.Raman who himself is blind. My family has a history of retinal detachments, and I have a tear myself. But I have never given it much thought, because these are always things that happen to others, not you. Are there input devices based on Braille, wondering if it would be faster ? As an aside, there used to be code in the Linux kernel which on certain kernel panics would communicate the error message through Morse code using the integrated speaker. Edit: About Braille, I was thinking more in the lines of a small 6 button or a similarly limited device.

JoshTriplett 16y ago
If you mean an output device based on Braille, then yes, you can get a Braille terminal, or "refreshable Braille display" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_Braille_display http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_Braille_display), which displays a row of characters via Braille, and can indicate the cursor position as well. That would make it possible to interact with the command line. They appear to cost about $5-10k, depending on whether you want a 40-character or 80-character row of characters. You might also look at http://live.gnome.org/Orca http://live.gnome.org/Orca , which helps you interact with graphical programs via both speech and Braille (and magnification for as long as you continue to have some vision). As far as "input devices based on Braille"; you can probably get a keyboard with Braille lettering on the keys, but if you can touch-type you don't really need the labels anyway. Hope that helps.
Groxx 16y ago
From some of my earlier investigations, handicapped computing support is astonishingly bad and expensive. Largely because many things are near one-off limited-use solutions that can't be re-sold... but nothing is ever modular or adjustable or could be tweaked to be used in multiple situations anyway. The DIY crowd for such things, meanwhile, keeps hacking up things like this for almost no money. And it only gets worse once you come to software. Hardware interfaces have a general communication format - websites do not. Applications do not. Almost nobody makes software with hinting for assistive devices, despite tools and standards existing. I suspect it's mostly because it's extra work, and doesn't (usually) significantly help to pay the bills when added.

BasDirks 16y ago

Respect! Now there's a mantra: ACCEPTed COMMITed RESOLVEd

Hacktivist 16y ago

If you aren't familiar with ALS, you might have heard it under the name Lou Gehrig's disease. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis

mode0 16y ago

Someone who doesn't give up. +1

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

varjag 16y ago

There's a mention his father went to India for treatment. Is that because they are particularly good at treating ALS, or is it a health insurance issue? But it takes incredible willpower to continue doing anything in situation like this. My hat's off.

prawn 16y ago
Can't speak for that question or this case specifically but I was sick (gastro) in India a few years ago. My now-wife went off to find medication. The pharmacist had her describe the problem and put together a bag of tablets and electrolyte drinks. She asked how much. He said "30." She said "30 dollars?" He said, "No, rupees." I think that was less than 70 US cents at the time.

kareemm 16y ago

My first job out of school was writing code at ALS.net. It was started by Jamie, a mechanical engineer to find a cure for his brother Stephen, who had just been diagnosed (and was eventually turned into a movie: http://www.westcityfilms.com/smsf.html http://www.westcityfilms.com/smsf.html). The horrible thing about ALS is that your body deteriorates, while your mind stays 100% fine. Stephen was physically in pretty rough shape by the time I started. He loved playing video games with his brothers, so Jamie made a little mouse-like device for Stephen that also allowed him to mimic keypresses. Once a week, we'd all hop online and play Diablo together. It was interesting getting to know Stephen this way - he was barely able to talk when I first met him, but he could type using Jamie's device. (Aside: Ben, the third brother, now runs PatientsLikeMe.com, a support community for people with diseases like ALS).