I've recently set up a redhat 8.0 server for a blind friend (Verne Pavreal, 8564853) and planned to do lots of other stuff for him too, but it all takes a lot of time and I always seem to be too busy doing other things, so I was wondering if someone in WLUG would like to pick up some of this. Also it's only a basic install so far, feel free to replace it with Debian if you think that would work out better in the long run. Wish list; Set up serial ports and getty so the box can be controlled via a speaking 'companion' laptop. The box has two soundcards and a BT878-based TV card. The soundcards are configured properly (both bidirectional as /dev/dsp and /dev/dsp1) using the ALSA drivers, Verne wants some scripts so he can record and playback reliably through either card. Set up a script using sox and lame, so that verne can convert a talking book tape (4 mono tracks, 2x speed, some of them reversed) into a bunch of mp3's split by indexing tones or silence-detection. The BT878 tuner doesn't seem to be working properly. Also, an X server and xawtv are set up, but need to be controllable via scripts / terminal / cron job. Verne also wants to be able to set up new cron jobs that record program segments (audio only :) and identify overlapping recordings via a speech-friendly menu system. Read barcodes (from /dev/console), if corresponding audio file is available play it, otherwise look up barcode in textfile, read it using festival (already installed) and present a menu so that a customised audio recording can be added for this barcode. Configure lynx or links to be able to play mp3 or m3u links. Finding a way to play wma and ra/ram would be even better. Write a script to recognise callerID and normal/faxability ring from the modem. (It's already caller-ID capable, you might need to time the RI signal or even hack hardware to recognise ring timing)