I'll take that on, it sounds pretty straightforward.  I'm sending you a private message to discuss details.

Hi Exposed,

This sounds like a fun project!  I've sent you a message that describes my experience and goes over some of the technical challenges that should be considered for this.

Had a successful transaction.  Topazan communicated well, understood my explanations, and paid promptly.  Thanks!

Just now notes timestamp.

D'oh.

I'll be happy to help you learn how to install and configure ejabberd (IMO the best XMPP offering that I've tried so far).  I only have experience installing it on Debian, which Ubuntu is based off of, so if you went the route of an Ubuntu VPS we should be good to go.  Because ejabberd is written in Erlang, installation from scratch might be a bit tricky, so I would first need to bring myself up to speed if you did go a different route.

As for Electrum, as far as I know it's all GUI.  It's unusual to want to run GUI programs on a VPS, since VPSes are usually used just as servers.  This leads to the question, are you planning to run a remote desktop environment on the VPS?  If so, then by all means, you shouldn't have any trouble setting up Electrum (it's actually simple enough with the provided executable bundle that I'll walk you through for free as a trial).  And if you need help getting the GUI stuff working on a remote Ubuntu system, I'll teach you about vncserver, which dishes up a virtual desktop environment with no local display hardware needed at all.

I've been a Linux programmer, sysadmin, and tinkerer for over 10 years.  My experience with ejabberd isn't in a professional capacity; I simply run a personal XMPP server for my own domain.  I've got it operating with IPv4 and IPv6.  Through my ejabberd instance, I have access to chat with users on AIM, Yahoo, and IRC via XMPP transports, which are adapters to other chat networks--other XMPP transports for other networks are also available.  Therefore, I'd love to communicate over XMPP (my ejabberd server hardly gets any use!), and I'm also available to chat via IRC or telephone--whichever works best at the moment.

I'll be sending you a private message shortly about my rates and scheduling.

I'd be happy to put together a form to do this.  How about what amounts to a wizard, but laid out all on one page?  The page will be organized by areas of interest, and help text can be expanded for each option.

The form will be implemented in Javascript.  This will a single HTML file, about 1-5 JS files, and possibly some CSS or other resources.  (Optionally, it should be possible to bundle everything together into one HTML file, for extra convenience.)  I'm choosing Javascript because this will make it easy for anyone to run the form locally and won't require a web server.

After filling out the form, two bits of text are put together and shown in output text boxes at the end, ready for copy-and-paste: one is the list of flags to pass onto cgminer, and another is the list of options that were selected, in a format readable by this form script.  It's the same information in both cases, just presented in two different formats.  The idea is that you'll edit your script which starts cgminer and paste in the new list of options, and you'll also keep a copy of the script-readable version (maybe right alongside as a comment).  If you need to make a change, copy the script-readable version back into an input textbox at the top of the form and all the options will be repopulated with your previous selections.  (This also opens the door to let users throw the HTML on a web server and then generate "permalinks" with the current page URL, and all the configuration as the query portion of the URL, e.g. "http://example.com/cgminer.html?temp-hysteresis=3&etc&etc".  That aspect won't work out of the box just yet because it's not a primary goal, but it won't take much work to go in that direction.)

I'm not a cgminer user myself, but it looks like the options are documented on the GitHub project page, which is really all I need.  If there's a more appropriate resource I should take a look at to view available options and what they mean, please point me in that direction.

Reply or send me a private message with how much you would like to pitch in to make it happen.

Please let me know how much anyone would like to chip in to make this work.  I feel like this is about 15 BTC worth of work, but I might be willing to entertain lower offers.  This will be an open-source project with terms under the ISC license (it's like the BSD license, and is GPL-compatible), unless a private bidder outbids the public bid (the sum of what the public bidders would pay), in which case copyright will be assigned as a work for hire to that winning private bidder.  I think think this is fair and makes sense, but let me know if you'd rather see different terms.  If it looks like there will be interest in making this happen, I'll move this to another thread (since this is off topic to OP's thread--sorry!).

Its low power consumption, lack of noise, tiny size, and GPIO capabilities also set it apart from desktop PCs.

Relisted on eBay, auction-style starting at 89.99 USD, with a Buy It Now option, and with free shipping.  5% discount for paying with Bitcoin.

Don't forget shipping, my total came to $43.02 and a lot of waiting.  It is still a big premium, but this is about the price the market has set for these (counting the accessories).  Take a look on eBay; you'll be lucky to nab one for less than $100.

I know, usually people give a bit of a discount when selling for Bitcoin.  If the Bitmit listing doesn't sell by the time it ends tomorrow, I'm relisting it on eBay in auction-style starting at 89.99 USD, and giving a 5% discount for paying with Bitcoin there.

That's right.  The premium is for the accessories to get you up and going quickly, and for knowing you'll get it within a week, not just sometime this year.  (Actually RS components shipped to me in about 2-3 weeks, but I'd been on their waiting list since March 3.  That was a little bit after preordering from element14, and I've still never heard back after ordering from them.)

Bought it.  Smooth, super-fast transaction w/ no escrow.  Thanks!

Raspberry Pi, Model B, Complete Kit
Low-power, embeddable Linux computer with the accessories you need to get up and going
Sealed, new in box, in stock and ready to ship NOW

This is a Raspberry Pi Model B low-power, small-form-factor computer. This fanless computer has no moving parts and is perfect for embedded projects and applications where low power consumption and no acoustic noise is ideal. Its digital and analog GPIO pins give you an interface to sensors, motors, LEDs, and other circuits in the outside world.

Project ideas:

• Home server
• Robotics
• Media center/XBMC (the RasPi has hardware accelerated smooth decoding of MPEG-4, hi-def at 1080p)
• Router
• Home automation
• Home security
• Off-the-grid (low power ⇒ suited to solar)

This computer runs on the ARM CPU architecture. That means it WON'T run Microsoft Windows and is intended for advanced commercial, industrial, and educational users and hobbyists who are ready to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty! This kit comes with 2GB of flash storage, a network cable, video cables, and a power supply. Insert the flash card, plug in the cables, and it's ready to boot. All you'll need is a USB keyboard and a display (a TV or computer monitor with either an HDMI or a DVI connection).

Own the coveted geek toy of 2012! If you order this unit from the usual distribution channels, expect long delays as the official distributors get their production up and rolling (this one took 3 months). This RasPi is in my possession NOW, sealed in its original box. (The accessories are also mostly new; see below.) I originally ordered two RasPis, one from each distributor, because I wanted to use them for my own projects. But as I saw there was a demand created by those who want a RasPi even more than I do, I'm willing to wait until September for the next batch and supplement my income a tad by reselling this one with a bunch of accessories.

Learn more about the Raspberry Pi at the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

▶▶▶ See the full listing with all specs, terms, and photos.
▶▶▶ Buy with escrow at Bitmit (my USA ID is on file with them--edited to add)

Update 2012-06-08: Didn't sell in 72 hours, so I've relisted on eBay.  It's listed auction-style starting at 89.99 USD, with a Buy It Now option, and with free shipping.  I will accept Bitcoin for payment on this auction and am giving a 5% discount for doing so, so it could go for as low as 85.49 USD.  I'm open to escrow if you can recommend a reputable person or firm.

It's great to finally see IPv6 support!  This should be a big win.

I'm running IPv6 at 2002:c6ca:19fb:1:21f:16ff:fe29:d04c (git commit d6615a5 on Linux).  The system has a NATted 1918 IPv4 address, two 6to4 IPv6 addresses, and a Teredo address.  For the 3 days and 1 hour it's been up, bitcoind has apparently never tried contacting or been contacted by another IPv6 node.  It's started as "bitcoind -printtoconsole" and only has rpcpassword set in bitcoin.conf.  getinfo reports 8 connections (to be expected because I don't have IPv4 port forwarding set up).  I've verified it is listening on [::]:8333 with netstat.

-blocknet is now apparently -onlynet, where the meaning has changed to only allow one address family rather than exclude it.  I tried starting bitcoind with -onlynet=ipv6 and get 4 connections total.  IPv6 does work in this case.  It's been 2.3 hours, and I'll let it run like this for the time being.

IMO, the availability of IPv6 on a machine, even via transition technologies like 6to4 or Teredo, should increase the number of usable peer connections that the Bitcoin client has at its disposal; IPv6 should open up new opportunities for direct peering that couldn't happen automatically behind NAT.  From my experience with stock settings in a situation like this, the IPv6 improvements did nothing over that 3-day period.  Maybe there's a way to program the client or tweak the protocol to encourage additional IPv6 connections (without excluding IPv4 entirely)?

I don't think that's an appropriate use of URIs.  Why not use a document?

Sure there is.  One would be to simply not link to bitcointalk.org (as they don't now), but maintain redirection for old URIs.  This will stop the promotion of bitcointalk.org and distance it from the official project without breaking hundreds of links.

If that's not good enough, another less ideal solution would be to display a page explaining that the URL has changed and bitcointalk.org is no longer the official forum of Bitcoin, then redirect in 10-20 seconds.  The reason that's less ideal is that the redirection is done in HTML or Javascript rather than HTTP, so a little bit of semantic information is lost.

I know that, but not everybody does, nor is everybody going to take the two seconds to fix the URL.

The subject of this thread is a reference to the classic W3C essay, Cool URIs Don't Change.  It makes the arguments for non-broken links better than I can.

Paging .. Sirius?  Or whoever operates http://www.bitcoin.org/.

For a while old bitcoin.org forum URLs were properly redirected to the new domain name, but now they're not.

URL: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4555.0
Content: Generic GitHub 404 page.

I like this.  Richard Rahl, it doesn't have to be any harder than "after you download and install Bitcoin, open the attached Bitcoins" (Content-Type: application/bitcoin-privkey-transfer [hypothetical]).

Encryption with PGP is complementary and composes nicely into the whole MIME hierarchy.  Forget about PGP for $10 worth of Bitcoins to Mom, but for a $10000 transfer, you bet.

Some discussion on key export formats:

• Wallet import/export: bitkeys format
• [PATCH] bitcoin scratch-off cards

Pretty slick.  It's genuinely hard to tell what the hell the TTS is saying at first.  Festival is a huge PITA to install but you'll get much better results there, or just record your own prompts.  (I know, no one likes the sound of their own voice.)

All I did was deposit a tiny amount of money and listened to it announce the unconfirmed transaction.  The only problem I found was after I had chosen to hear my receiving address: after the confirmation part, the canned prompt said "press," but then no "any key" as I would have expected, and it then looped, repeating the address.  I just hit 5 to get out of that and back to the main menu.

You might want to have it express capitalization during the quick confirmation phase.  I wasn't paying attention the first time around and missed that one of the letters was capitalized.  It also seems like it might be easier if it explicitly says "lower-case," to avoid confusion, and keep a constant rhythm.

I run Bitcoin as a daemon on my laptop, and because building the GUI on stock Debian is a chore (and I guess I can't be bothered to take a look at the possible RPC-based frontends), I use bitcoin through RPC calls on the command line through a wrapper script I named bitcoin (with the actual Bitcoin binaries living outside PATH):


This of course makes a lot of assumptions about my system: that Bitcoin is restricted to the bitcoind system account, the location of the binary, and so on.  Adjust to suit your needs.

Reading the output of listtransactions is not pleasant.  More interesting to this topic and building upon the trivial bitcoin script is a Python script I wrote to print transactions in a tabular format.

• BTC amounts are converted to USD in a separate column
• Separate actual and available account balances are tracked and printed (due to transaction confirmation and generation maturity times).
• The decimal point lines up correctly.  Compare:

Example output:


(Final/available balances combined to one line since in this case they are the same.)

There are some rough edges: the table formatting code is heinous, a request to MtGox is made on each execution for the exchange rate, there's currently no paging or limitation on the number of output rows, the fiat currency shown is hard-coded for USD (get_mtgox_price()), and it assumes the presence of a bitcoin command which takes RPC arguments and prints a JSON response (bitcoin_request() could easily be adjusted to use a different command name, or to make a JSON-RPC request directly).  Python 2.6 or higher (prior to 3) required.

If anyone is interested, the code is available here: http://www.thoughtcrime.us/software/etc/bitcoin-transactions.py