aflegg: I need to learn how to create patch files first. Will submit ASAP. However the whole thing (excluding cron) could end up becoming a project in its own right, after I give it a UI if necessary. A UI for cron might prove useful too. Is there some application I can port/copy that does this?

mzandrew: I am open to any suggestions, preferably those that are related to Internet and connectivity; e.g.: updating feeds, or mail, or wget'ting the google homepage every hour -- as well as other stuff that is notnecessarily scriptable. And canola has a canola-conf-rescan.sh script (just type canola-conf-rescan.sh from any directory) that performs that exact function

Hope that my stuff will come in handy to at least one other person