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 <i>with his knees using morse code</i> while dying of ALS, they all suddenly seem pretty lame.<p>My hat's so far off to this guy, its on the floor in front of me.
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:<p><pre><code> 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);</code></pre>
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 <a href="http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/" rel="nofollow">http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/</a> discussed here <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142934" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142934</a> and (ii) Emacspeak <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/emacspeak/" rel="nofollow">http://sourceforge.net/projects/emacspeak/</a> authored by T.V.Raman who himself is blind.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Edit: About Braille, I was thinking more in the lines of a small 6 button or a similarly limited device.
Link to his patch applied to the eog.git repository: <a href="http://git.gnome.org/browse/eog/commit/?id=EOG_2_91_6~42" rel="nofollow">http://git.gnome.org/browse/eog/commit/?id=EOG_2_91_6~42</a>
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!
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: <a href="http://www.westcityfilms.com/smsf.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.westcityfilms.com/smsf.html</a>).<p>The horrible thing about ALS is that your body deteriorates, while your mind stays 100% fine.<p>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.<p>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.<p>(Aside: Ben, the third brother, now runs PatientsLikeMe.com, a support community for people with diseases like ALS).
If you aren't familiar with ALS, you might have heard it under the name Lou Gehrig's disease.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis</a>
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?<p>But it takes incredible willpower to continue doing anything in situation like this. My hat's off.