Code Libre #2
Code Libre
Welcome on this 2nd edition of my monthly blogging challenge, Code Libre! You can check the previous post if you think you missed anything or just want a recap of what this serie of blog posts. Here’s a quick recap: Code Libre is a short list of cool open-source projects I’ve found while browsing the Internet. Sometimes I do test them, sometimes I don’t.
Electron-wallpaper
I’ve always been a fan of conky and rainmeter but when I used them, they required specific scripting tools and language to use them and build with them. In fact, the most advanced setup I had with conky years ago was showing the date with a custom font. Now with this node module, you can use an Electron window instead. That means that instead of using lua code or xml config files to customize your fancy dynamic wallpaper, you now only need to know HTML, JS and CSS. It also means that the code you write for your animated dashboard could potentially be cross-platform. I did not however find or look into any equivalent for Linux node modules, so this is Windows only.
Phalcon
Since PHP is a scripting language that can take extensions made in C, we can imagine that maybe some day, someone will actually use this ability to write quicker PHP applications. And this is just what this framework does. It leverages the speed of C and allows PHP developers to keep using a language they already know while taking advantage of a much faster framework. I still think I would stick to Symfony for PHP applications, but this is still a very interesting technology!
Mastodon
A decentralized social media platform. Anyone can setup a Mastodon instance and monitor it as they please but the best part is that each Mastodon instances can communicate to each other. In a way, this could be social medias going back to mail servers where everything was decentralized and mail servers used to send mails back and forth each others. This is not only great because with this solution, one can speak freely without fear of censorship and because the network of instances should be able to standup and still work if another instance is taken down.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen open-source social media alternatives however this one seems to have a significant community and this is very good! When comparing to a similar open-source project that I’ve discovered years before: pump.io, Mastodon have almost 10 times the number of Forks and Stars on Github. I love this idea of social media platform where each instance of the platform can pull and push data from another instance. I wish more people would turn to open-source alternative as this would - I think - free us from issues we have with the giants.
I’ve also heard of a blogging system named Plume that could potentially plug into Mastodon as well as work in a similar fashion. Yet another interesting decentralized media!
Open-source Rover
Last but not least, the JPL Open Source Rover project! NASA recently open-sourced a 6-wheel rover based on the one that is on Mars. This version of the rover is also designed to be accessible to everyone and “inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers and roboticists”. They give most of the details required to build the robot, going from the parts to the steps to actually build it!
That’s it
I hope you enjoyed this post! I decided to not use any kind of analytic software to track the readers so having feedback means a lot! So how about you, do you explore Github too sometimes? Have you found any interesting stuff? I would love to hear your opinion and/or your feedback! I’ll see you next time :).
-Tym