Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Where does the money go?

In the comments on the StenoKnight blog post I mentioned in the previous article, Stan asked:

"Btw, if I were to start donating money to the project, where would it go? Like does it pay programmers? For more Majestouches and Sidewinders? Epoxy? Lol."

I replied:

"As of right now, Plover's raised $4,762. I've contributed $4,000, and 15 generous donors have contributed the $762. All of that money except $100 (which we received yesterday) has so far gone to Josh Lifton, Plover's first programmer, to try to reimburse him in some small degree for the enormous number of programming hours he's donated over the past two years. Hesky made the most recent code contribution, so I offered him yesterday's $100 donation, but he said he was happy to keep contributing code for free, and told me to keep the $100. I'll be using it to buy epoxy and foam mounting squares to stenoize the Sidewinders I'll be buying (most likely out of pocket) for the PyGotham steno class. I'll probably offer the Sidewinders for sale after the class to any students who feel like pursuing steno further, and any money I make from that will go back into the general fund, either to pay for programming or to build up a starter inventory of epoxy key kits to sell, which might go some way toward making Plover somewhat self-sustaining."

I figured it was a fair question to ask, and I just wanted to put the answer out there in a more prominent place, in case other people were interested. More information on how to contribute money, code, or other resources can be found on our Donation Page.

7 comments:

antechno777 said...

HS senior here, any chance I could bypass a step and secure myself a Sidewinder in exchange for some of the more tedious coding? Truthfully, I'm willing to put in a couple dozen programmer-hours anyways, but getting a fully functional steno system three months later would certainly be nice.

Mirabai Knight said...

Totally! Fix a bug/code a feature, win a Sidewinder! Works for me. Just point me to the patch once it's written and give me your address, and I'll send one over to you. I call that a deal.

http://stenoknight.com/wiki/Status_of_current_tasks

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/plover

https://bugs.launchpad.net/plover

antechno777 said...

Well, 887775 looks like just
< if self.is_keyboard_suppressed and event.keystring is not None :
> if self.is_keyboard_suppressed and event.keycode in KEYCODE_TO_STENO_KEY :

That doesn't count though, especially since keyboardcontrol.py/sidewinder.py should be using XGrabKey(/board) for "lower-level-keyboard-control", which may fix 861085 and in general sounds like a `winder-worthy rewrite. Hopefully this'll be as straightforward as I think.

antechno777 said...

~18 hours clocked, mostly spent reading xlib documentation.

Current revision: http://pastebin.com/Rz6v5jem

Caveats:
-Randomly pauses parsing input until arbitrary KeyRelease/indefinitely, fix pending
-Captures whenever no modifiers are on, making NumLock a "grab keyboard" switch independent of plover status
-Moved steno key array to keyboardcontrol to resolve circular import.
-Hopefully irrelevant: first two attempts somehow crashed X server, "NO WARRANTY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED…"

Note to self: do not commit to coding something during AP testing week.

Mirabai Knight said...

Cool, antechno777! Thanks! Your code is under review by people who actually know Python (i.e., not me)

Occupying your mind with things besides exams is a well-tested study method. I approve. I hope you whupped 'em!

As soon as I get the laser-cut steno keys, I'll send you a set. Send your snail mail address to plover@ploversteno.org.

antechno777 said...

Note: code sent is WIP, and is not consistently working on my system. Review may be helpful, but I do intend to determine why input is not consistently recognized.
Any chance I could earn the sidewinder itself? I do not currently have any form of employment, and
obtaining parental funding for a gaming keyboard may be difficult.

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