Inspirated

 
 

April 9, 2011

Live to hack, hack to live

Filed under: Blog — krkhan @ 6:06 am

Just spotted this comment on Gnome Bugzilla:

I would like to extend my thanks to the gnome team/community for a great last
moment with my dad.

Adrian Hands (my father) wrote the patch above to improve the usability of
gnome for himself and others. You see my dad was suffering from ALS and his
hands were so crippled he could no longer use a keyboard. Thus we used a Darci
usb morse code keyboard emulator to help him type. Even the morse code device
was a struggle as the sensitivity adjustment and positioning of the nice two
paddled key would fall out of whack. I rigged up a pvc cage that wrapped around
his knee and fixed remote switches to the cage so that he could use the
remaining strength in his legs to operate the Darci morse code device. He used
this last bit of body movement to write this patch.

My father passed away yesterday. I went back through my email to find our last
correspondence (he was in India for treatment, and I live in Raleigh). I would
like to share the email with you.

On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Adrian Hands <handsadrian@gmail.com> wrote:

> ACCEPTed
> COMMITed
> RESOLVEd
> BOO-YAH!
>
> commit 0b209b1ff16e863e60a1d86413aa57c5fbde76b0
> Author: Adrian Hands <handsadrian@gmail.com>
> Date:   Fri Dec 31 14:34:58 2010 +0100
>
>    Add Copy Image and Copy Path to clipboard functionality
>
>    Fixes bug 78514.
>
>  data/eog-ui.xml  |    9 +++++++
>  src/eog-window.c |   63 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  2 files changed, 72 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

I have the coolest Dad in the world!

I am so glad that my last comment to my Dad was something like this.

Adrian Hands loved free software / open source. I do as well.

Thanks so much for the great software, and a new great memory.

Adrian Hands
(Click on the thumbnail for larger version.)

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.” — Albert Einstein

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6 Comments

  1. Look, he had an IBM ThinkPad :)

    Comment by Abdullah — April 11, 2011 @ 10:46 pm

  2. great and inspiring post . thank you.

    Comment by shawn faison — May 9, 2011 @ 10:30 am

  3. Hats off.. to the great man. RIP

    Comment by graphicmist — May 9, 2011 @ 11:54 am

  4. I salute this great man. People like him drive open source community. May his soul RIP.

    Comment by Syed Yusuf — May 9, 2011 @ 10:48 pm

  5. He is my goal, I love open source and wouldn’t mind it being my last act

    Comment by MicroVolts Hacks — August 16, 2011 @ 11:58 am

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