The 2008 Bug
The NewtonOS still has one problem related to the year 2010 problem: Very early in the boot sequence, the OS adjusts the real time clock to a "reasonable" value. Unfortunately, dates past 2009 are not considered reasonable, and the OS resets the date therefore to 1996.
The 2010 patch kicks in after that, and it can then only get the date to something slightly better, which is 2008. A proper fix would require to change the function which adjusts the clock, but it is not in the patchable area. It also occurs so early in the boot sequence that there is no easy way to intercept it, backup the proper clock value, and restore it later.
There are some workarounds possible, for example storing the correct time every minute when the Newton is turned on, but they require a good place for the time value. Flash memory is not ideal, a better place would be somewhere in RAM which survives resets and reboots. I'm now on the hunt for such a buffered location...
Enjoy your retirement, JE7420LHAYL
After twelve years of service, my first MP2100 is headed for retirement. It has been working very reliably over the years, but recently, one strange problem started to occur: It stopped playing sounds. I checked the usual suspects (wiring, software patches, ...), however the very first Newton on this planet to play MP3 files is now mute.
This device is one of the first German MP2100s, and I bought it back in 1997 from a Swiss web store. I used to baby the Newton way too much, before I realized that it can only realize its full potential if I have it close by all the time. The case looks pretty battered now, even though all clips and doors are still in place. The backlight it maybe at 50% brightness, and the screen is slightly worn. This particular Newton has seen quite a bit of places from California to Australia, and went up all the way to 70° 54' 48" North.
Now it is time to retire this lovely device, and start using its successor, probably one of the last produced MP2100 I bought already quite a while ago. I'm not sure if it will also see twelve years of service, but you never know 
The case of the never ending project
One observation from using Nitch now for almost two years is that GTD is not only about projects and actions, but a higher level concept on top of projects is still needed. I added roles and goals earlier to Nitch, and while that has been helpful to bring projects and actions into focus as needed, I still ended up too opften with projects that did not have a clear outcome.
The concept of a goal looks promising in this context, and I am adding more functionality to Nitch to have goals which in turn are made of projects. That allows to use goals for more longer term planning, and restrict projects to efforts which are not longer than a month.
SourceForge improvements
SourceForge seems to be on a roll... even though things were a bit rocky due to their site redesign, I'm happy to see that the file release system now again allows direct links to packages for download, no more searching through dozens of packages! It also seems that it will soon be possible to use multiple Mercurial repositories per project, so that I can finally use a real version control system for the Newton packages.
Year 2010 problem no more ...
After more testing by brave volunteers, I'm happy to announce that all NewtonOS 2.1 devices should be ready for year 2010 and beyond. In the patch collection, we now have:
Patch 71J059: Patch for the US MessagePad 2000/2100
Patch 73J186: Patch for the eMate 300
Patch 74J185: Patch for the German MessagePad 2100
And finally, a Patch Remover which removes all user applied patches on NewtonOS 2.1 devices (you should never need this, but I supplied it just in case).
All files are as usual on SourceForge, who have been busy with the download interface, but it's still not quite there yet, the patches are under the "Patches" section on the 40Hz download page.
Updates coming
This is just a short headsup, I'll be making some changes to the Y2010 patch related web pages, and as usual, those changed pages will show up in the RSS feed.
eMate in 2010
The Y2010 patch for the eMate is now also almost ready, like the patch for the german MP2100, it still needs some testing, but things are looking good. The eMate seems to take the ROM board changes (which are necessary to erase a faulty patch) less lightly than the MessagePads. I had a couple of moments where I thought I had fried the little green machine, but it always recovered after a while. I'll hopefully be able to release the patches during next week, still in time for 2010 
Willkommen zur Zukunft, MessagePad!
I'm just putting the final touches on a fix for the Y2010 bug for german MP2100s. It seems a bit easier and more structured when doing it now for the second time So far no ROM board swapping was necessary, and some parts of the patch creation are now just copy and paste of existing code. It's still exiting to see the new OS version "74J185" shown in the splash screen! Next up would be the eMate patch. Creating a patch takes about two days, I hope to find that time soon.
On another note, SourceForge has at least now fixed the download page so that all packages are listed, but direct linking to files just for a specific package is still not possible...
Damn you, SourceForge!
It seems that the new fancy UI on SourceForge has screwed up all external download links, and what's even worse, it doesn't show the complete list of packages for the 40Hz project anymore. That makes downloading files now impossible, I'm looking into this, but it should ideally be fixed on the SourceForge end...
RDCL on Windows
I just tried out the latest one click installer for Ruby 1.9, and it seems that the RDCL works out of the box I am using a generic USB to serial converter with the common Prolific PL 2303 chip, and after correctly setting the parameters, I could connect to my Newton without problems.
It's great to see that Ruby 1.9 is slowly becoming more mainstream, and that installation is nowadays quite easy!