chuma.org

Who wants a file archive?

I started this thing, which I called UNNA, back in September of 2000. At the time, there had been a great collection of Newton software called NewtonMAD – however, some of it was warez and so it needed to be ‘cleaned up’. Some Newties, including myself, started doing this, and out of it came UNNA, the goal of which was to compile, amass, and categorize as much Newton software and as many file archives as we possibly could, in one place.

Back in 2000 I was still living in a dorm in University, and I was only a few weeks away from meeting my future wife. I was using an old DEC Alpha workstation ($50 surplus from the U of G CompSci department) running NetBSD as the server, and my residence internet connection for bandwidth.

UNNA grew and grew and I kept on finding and mirroring files, tirelessly moving them around, extracting them, whatever whatever. I realized it would be a good think to store file information in a database. Paul and I came up with a database schema, and JB Hemlock wrote a PHP based management system for it, for free (which was frickin awesome). I kept adding files. I added the ability for people to submit files. I started a network of mirror sites. Redesigned the website a few times.

Where the hell am I going with this? Basicially out of all of the things I’ve done, UNNA is the longest-running and probably the most successful. That said, I still have a love/hate relationship with it. Since about 2002 my time for all things Newton-related has been in decline. The past few months it has been quite close to zero. I feel like shit because of this, I feel like I’ve been letting the community down by not updating and not adding new files.

I’ve false-started, dropped, or quit so many ideas and projects in the last 5 years I probably couldn’t remember them all. Now I’m going to be 25 and I’m finally starting to feel focused: I’m finally going to be working in my field, software development, I have a wife who loves me and a house to work on. I didn’t have any of these things when I was just a geek in my dorm room. Now I do and they’re more important than my geeky exploits.

I’ve had tons of cool site ideas, code ideas, but I don’t have time to put them down on paper or in code. Little things I sometimes finish, like the time I figured out how to find a PICT image in a Newton package and convert it to a GIF, but by and large my Newton and my hard drive is full of half-finished code and stuff.

I want to get rid of UNNA, but there’s no place to put it. I’ve let it stagnate and people have called me on it numerous times, but no one has offered to take it over. The maintainer would have to have an intimate knowledge of PHP, MySQL, Apache, and Linux, not to mention the Newton. I still love using my Newton and do so every day, but as far as accomplishing things in code, I have a feeling I’m going to be able to fulfill those aspirations at my job. I am really starting to like my company, warts and all, and since I walked in the door I knew that it was full of great code and smart people. I’m finally going to be developing code instead of support, and I am looking forward to working hard and focusing on it.