Update

I’ve been incredibly busy lately. But I have 2 quick updates-

tuxOstat, my thermostat project, isn’t totally finished, but is up and running. There’s still some work to do, but the code is largely complete. There’s also a web interface with temperature graphs, system status, and a (horrible) webcam view of the LCD control panel. I’ll probably be finishing up a first version this week, finishing the documentation next week, and releasing what I have soon.

I got an e-mail today about one of my older projects, PHP EMS Tools, a PHP/MySQL based application for fire/EMS agencies to handle scheduling, membership rosters, equipment checks, etc. The potential user was asking about running the software on Windows - which, of course, I have no experience with. I’m pretty sure there aren’t many, if any, Unix-specific calls hidden in the code, and advised him to try XAMPP (Apache/MySQL on Windows). But I did take a moment to comment on why I chose Linux. My pilot installation of PHP EMS Tools, at the Midland Park Volunteer Ambulance Corps, where I’ve been a member since 2005, has been handling our scheduling, roster, and equipment checks since June 2006. It’s running on a generation 1 Compaq Proliant DL380, running dual Pentium III 733MHz processors and 1GB memory - and even with a number of other programs on it, including ieilogd which is reading from the serial port 24x7 - the load average has never passed 1.2 and the memory usage is well under 50%. More importantly, the system has been up for 442 days without a hiccup!