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

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-&#62;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!

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

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>

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.

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.

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

Someone who doesn't give up. +1