Another Pointless Blog

More GUADEC zanyness, views from afar and UnLove

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:52:13 GMT

A couple of things from the last night of GUADEC, when most people had gone home. A few of us relocated to the Sultan Hostel and consumed some local beverages.

* First, a guy came up and asked us how to use the wifi. His quote:
"I'm using something slightly different. I'm using Linux.". It's just a little heartwarming to see people outside of developers actually using our stuff :)
* Second, I can't decide if Lennart was being very, very dry with this, but...
I can't believe I have to do this. "Stairway to Heaven" (the song from the rooftop) is not sung by Uriah Heap. It is by a little English band called "Led Zeppelin". I'm sure someone is owe someone a drink for making me write this on p.g.o.

Anyway, as some (most?) people probably know, my day job involves using Windows Vista, as my development machine. I thought I'd iterate a couple of things that strike me that a) we do better, b) Windows does better and c) both suck at. First, this isn't jabs at anyone (not even Microsoft), it's just me generally blowing off steam. So, on with the list:
a) Things we do better
* Notification of starting apps. On Windows I'm often left wondering whether the program I clicked is actually starting.
* The desktop is my space. Applications that put icons there should be shot. iTunes in particular is a persistent offender. Each time it updates, the icons come back.
* Widgets. I like having my doo-hickys visible on the top bar. I like having more than 4 quick launchers, and having them in different locations in the panel (6 on my home PC).
* The user knows best. Our start bar equivalent (the 3 menus one) doesn't try and be smart. Windows start bar tries to guess which are my "most popular" applications. Whenever you need to do this, think again. The one I'm looking for is *never* there.
* Shuddering to a halt. If I start to compile something in 1 window and search for something in another, my computer should not grind to a halt.
* Blue screens. I don't care if it was xyz driver that blue screened. I care that 1) it takes a good minute of me cursing everything before beginning to rebooting and 2) all my work has gone. For the record, I get around 2 blue screens a week and ~ 6 black screens (where the system recovers) a week.
* Copy-pasting from Outlook. PLEASE STOP INSERTING F*CKING SPACES IN MY CODE SNIPPETS. In fact, Outlook in general should be shot.

b) Things Windows does better (and we should learn from)
* Smoothness. When I log in, the login screen fades away and the desktop appears. Alright, it takes a long time before becoming usable, but it is nice to watch the fade-out. There are a few other examples. I'm sure they can all be imitated (or bettered) using compositing. It's just small things, but they add up to feel somewhat more ... polished.
* Integration of zip files into Explorer. It's not a huge deal, but I don't care that someone sent me a zip or a tar.gz. To me, it's just another folder. Open it in Explorer / Nautilus.
* Dual monitor. First, this is insanely easy to get working in Windows (I know it's a common complaint). Second, using dual monitors feels more natural under Windows (for me). Not entirely sure why, it just does.
* The recycle bin. Apart from the odd name. I can re-instate items. I know, it's another common complaint. The other thing: applications can use it if they're going to screw with files.
* Icons. I don't know if it's my resolutions being different, but icons seem much more manageable on Windows. They seem ... smaller? More precise? Not too sure. Plus, they're not stuck on an enormous-spaced grid, where I'm not certain which space they'll snap to.
* Right-click menu in explorer. Right-click and drag file. At the end a window will pop up with the option to move, copy or shortcut the file. For some reason, I end up using this quite a lot.

c) Things we both suck at and could improve
* Unified look-and-feel. We're working on this hard. But, searching dialogs / bars are still inconsistent. There are small differences like that in a few of places.
* API guarantees. For some things, it's great. But, supporting old, unused codepaths is a pain. Every once in a while, we should be able to remove depreciated code without being pounced on. Why, yes I am in favour of GTK 3.0 / GNOME 3.0. How did you ever guess?
* Bubbles popping up / use of my status bar. Yes, I know updates are pending. I can see the icon. Yes, I know xyz program is running. I started it. There seems to be a trend in some applications to having a constant icon in the status area of late. Unless you're telling me information, go away. Even then, don't keep telling me. Tell me once and let me deal with it when I want. If you're tempted to add a status icon, please read the HIG first!
* File navigation. I have yet to discover a file browser that would tear me away from the command line. When I have to use the file browser, I find it clunky. The closest is still Nautilus Spatial (yes, I'm the one that likes it).
* Dropped network should not bring my computer or my program to it's knees. Trying to access a resource that doesn't exist any more shouldn't mean my entire system stops. Design the programs to assume network is unavailable and be (quietly) happy when it appears. This is less of an issue for us (GNOME), but still appears sometimes (restricted to single programs admittedly).
* Documentation. I know. Snicker away. We should have awesome documentation. Not just lib.g.o for developers [1], but awesome user documentation. It's just not there yet. But soon, soon my precious, soon.
* Performance, performance, performance, performance. Anything less than instant is too long. Using enough memory to trigger swapping is insane in a 2Gb / 1Gb machine.

So there we go. It did turn into a bit of "let off steam" thing. But it's useful to do this occasionally (at least, for my sanity). I'm sure you probably disagree with most of these. Tough. It's my list. Also, the things brought up aren't necessarily the Desktop only, but all, the way down the stack (I think), and outside applications. Again, I don't care if it's the fault of ABC company. I just want to not be annoyed.

Finally, there's been a lot of UnLove on p.g.o of late. Maybe everyone is suffering post-GUADEC blues. Anyway, I thought I'd finish on a high and start a "GNOME Hero" thing. My GNOME hero is Olav. He won the "Pants of Thanks" this year [2], but he deserves more praise [3]. All hail Olav the Great!

[1] Again, Fredric Peters and Goran Rakic are two of my many GNOME heroes.
[2] Which still sounds odd to us Olde-Worlders
[3] And beer

Post GUADEC blues

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:35:28 GMT

Returned from GUADEC on Monday, to crash-land back at work on Tuesday. *sigh* back to the real world. At least, here it's a little cooler. Cool enough to handle no air conditioning. I like cold.

It was awesome [1] to see everyone again, as well as meet tons of new faces. All the talks I attended were great. Everyone had new ideas they'd love to see, and a lot of that rubbed off on me.

A few notes for those braving Istanbul:
* But water. Lots of it. All the time.
* Crossing roads means taking your life in your hands. Best avoided by not crossing. Ever.
* There doesn't seem to be any closing times for ... anything. This can prove dangerous if you're there for more than a day.
* The Turkish Coffee is a must. As is Apple Tea. As is a Nargila. Even if you don't smoke, it's great to sit around and smoke one. At least try it.

And a few requests for GUADEC organisers for next time:
* If you're organising a heavy night (see Boat Party), please don't organise keynotes for 10am. Try 11am instead.
* If you're organising a heavy night at a club (see Google Closing Party), ensure the beer is decent [2], and the DJ understands to play quiet, background music [3]

One final request. Can we move GUADEC to the middle of winter and hold it in Finland / Sweden / Norway? Did I mention I like cold?

I might post more later. But not now.

[1] Apparently the word of the year. I blame Firefox and it's awesomebar
[2] Or at least beer
[3] Or at least at a level slightly below "standing next to an atomic explosion".

More GUADEC goodness

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:50:44 GMT

* Last night's party was awesome. We had the second annual meeting of SMASHED [1] and we enjoyed some fine, fine uisge-beatha [2].
* I didn't find out who won the ice-cream DeathMatch yet. We did find a winner for the whisky, which I can't remember the name of now.
* My voice is starting to go.
* I'm sure everyone is talking about the fancy release team plan. I know I've spoken to various people and everyone seems to think it's a great idea. I'm one of them.
* All the keynotes have been amazing. In particular Matt Webb's talk yesterday was brilliant and I'm glad I managed to drag myself out of bed for it.
* There's a problem with GUADEC. I turn up, talk to lots of cool people, come up with crazy cool ideas to implement and then find I have no time to do them. I should really blog them and see if someone will do them. Or find someone to pay me to do them.

[1] For those that don't know: the Single Malt Appreciation Society for Hackers, Engineers and Developers [3]
[2] Gaelic for whisky.
[3] We changed the acronym slightly [4]
[4] Embedding footnotes should be disallowed or something [5]
[5] Actually, they're pretty awesome [6]
[6] There is no footnote 6.

Speed Blogging Live From GUADEC

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:17:33 GMT

As I wait for people to start, I shall do a drive-by blog post.
* Some people can be really different when they've had a drink. You haven't lived till you've heard <censored> [1] in a tirade of swearing. He knows who he is.
* OpenOffice is driving me insane while trying to write a presentation.
* As ever, I'm / we're looking for people to hack on my / our projects. If you're around and would like to contribute to yelp, rarian, labyrinth, documentation, FoieGras or anything else related to documentation, find me. Or come to my talk.
* Last night, I decided on having the "quiet night of GUADEC". However, after visiting 2 bars, we found random GNOMEies on the steps of the hotel and I stayed until 3am. That's going to be torture for the next few days.
* On the plus side, after a shaky start the wireless seems to be good now.
* Vuntz, as ever, is my hero. No explanation, he just is.

EDIT:
[1]: Someone, still censored, who ISN'T Karl Lattimer. He asked me to tell everyone to stop asking him. It wasn't Lefty either.

Manditory Fun Day^W^WDetails

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:19:21 GMT

Finally got through work and am off for the next week. Hurrah! As always, my flight information:
Depart Stanstead 14:35, arrive Istanbul 20:20
As ever, if anyone is flying / landing around the same time and the thought of spending a week with me isn't enough, give me a shout via email.

Don battles the monster Ubuntu

Tue, 20 May 2008 18:42:56 GMT

So, about 2 or so weeks ago, I did the obligatory upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy. This proved to be both a good and a bad thing.

The bad first. My system really really didn't like it. Everything got messed up. Evolution ground to a halt - checking email would take ~ 1/2 hour to retrieve a single email, highlighting a message would take ~ 3 minutes and max the CPU. Epiphany / firefox just hogged the CPU to the point of unusablilty. Programs would randomly crash or fail to start. Basically, the worst system I've ever seen.

So, I struggled. I tried to fix the system, to make it usable. Alas, on Sunday I gave it up. I decided enough was enough and it was time to reinstall. Reinstalling is an arduous process for me. I'm an Emacs user. Everything has to be set up just-so, or it feels wrong. So, I am currently in the process of setting things up again.

However, even now this has turned into a good thing. I've been using the same base system since Dapper and it was beginning to age a little. The fonts had been broken for a while (they were a horrendous bodge that I'd forgotten about). It's odd to see real fonts again. The fancy desktop effects finally work and are sane enough to try using (they're not annoying me yet). Everything feels faster, more responsive. There's also loads of installed packages that were obsolete and many that were missing that should have been installed.

All in all, I'm liking my new system. Even if I have to spend hours and hours rebuilding jhbuild, setting up all my apps to be perfect and teaching the panel to know how I like my system.

Explanation of absence and other stuff

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:09:07 GMT

Hello World! Long time, no communication. I feel like I'm back at school writing an excuse of why I've been missing class.

Anyway, last weekend was my brothers wedding. In Bled, Slovenia. Which was awesome. Not least as the locals enjoyed the whole Scottish kilt thing :) I'm sure a photo will follow at some point.

Alas, the wedding also meant a lot of heavy drinking (because, you know, Scottish and wedding). The flight back on Monday was just about the worst feeling I have ever had in my life.

This weekend, I had the amazing pleasure of attending "An evening with James Randi and friends". Which was brilliant. Every speaker was great and (through a few quirks of fate) I ended up sitting directly behind the great man himself. I've been a long time admirer of all these people, so to see them up close was a real thrill.

In between all that, it's not been to great though. Since I got back, I've been feeling somewhat ill (no, the hangover cleared. This is something new). Probably just a bug or something. On top of that, I've had some other stuff to deal with and am feeling a little burned (out) about various things. All this means I haven't even been reading email that wasn't directly addressed to me. So, if you sent me an email or expected a reply from me on some list, sorry. I will get back to it as soon as I can.

I will point you towards a couple of youtube links that are fantastic. Captain Disillusion is brilliant. And the Nostalgia Critic cracks me up.

Other than that, peace out y'all.

Labyrinth 0.4

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:24:10 GMT

(Posting my message to gnome-announce here, so people can rejoice)

After a long wait, the next version of labyrinth is now available.

Labyrinth is a mind-mapping tool for the GNOME desktop (and beyond!).
This version can be found at
ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/labyrinth/
(once the mirrors catch up)

The release consists currently of the source tarball. I'll leave
packaging up to others. I will be working to make the Windows version
usable again soon. Sorry for the delay.

This release is due entirely to the two new maintainers: Martin Schaff
and Matthias Vogelgesang, who's awesome work has resulted in enormous
changes and many bug fixes.

As ever, if you want to get involved, visit the mailing list at:
http://groups.google.com/group/labyrinth-devel/

New Features:
* Scaling and scrollable canvas (infinite sized maps!)
* Add support for text attributes (bold, italics, underline and font
selection )
* Arrow navigation of thoughts
* Support foreground and background colouring of nodes
* Import and export "labyrinth files" for maps in the form of tarballs
* SVG export
* PDF export
* Save browser window state across instances (UNIX build only)
* Bundle of optimisation work
* Selection using bounding box
* Add crude Windows building support
* Searching in the browser window

Bugs Fixed:
* So many bugs fixed. Only important ones listed.
* Auto-save maps every 60s (issue #64)
* Create intermediate dirs for savedir (issue #50)
* Links don't disappear any more (issue #62)
* Exception fixed when saving an empty map
* Show a thicker border if there's extended info on a thought (issue
#33)
* Check pygtk version before importing it (issue #82)
* Fix incorrect movement undos on occasion (issue #80)

translations:
* de (Matthias Vogelgesang)
* fa (Pedram Azimaie)
* it (Francesco Fullone)
* pt_BR (Leonardo Gregianin)
* ru (Alexandre Prokoudine)

What ever happened to...

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:14:05 GMT

Labyrinth? You know, that mind mapping tool I started working on, before the need to make some money took hold of me? Well, it's still going. Of late two superstars have taken control and are doing some amazingly awesome work, fixing loads of bugs and adding exciting new features.
They are Martin Schaff and Matthias Vogelgesang. As of this weekend, a new version is being prepared, with version 0.4 release candidate 3 (when I started writing this, it was RC1) being made available. In this release, there's a few new features from 0.3.

Translation and zooming of canvases

Add initial support for text attributes (bold, italics and underline). Though this isn't very good at the moment.

Add proper Win32 build stuff

Links can now have variable strength

Navigation of thoughts using the arrow keys

Menu entries are now insensitive when they're not available

Add foreground / background colouring for thoughts

Import and export maps in XML

Export as SVG

Export as PDF

Save configuration of the main window across instances

More bug fixes than you could shake a stick at

Hopefully with all this awesome work, a 0.4 release is imminent. Oh, and you can get a source tarball of 0.4 rc 3 from this link or this link (GNOME FTP). As ever, if you want to get involved, join the mailing list and jump in! Oh, and if you know Martin or Matthias, buy them beer and thank them for the work!

Edit:
1. Yes, I screwed up the ftp locations on ftp.gnome.org. Sorry.
2. This is only a release candidate. It should not be going into distributions yet. 0.4 proper is on it's way soon.

All the cool kids are doing it

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:31:04 GMT

WebCore. In Yelp.

Pluses:
* Blazing fast. Startup goes from 2.8s to 1.9s. Startup limitation is now in yelp code (which I can work on)
* API rocks. It's like a real gtk+ API. I can understand what's going on in it.

Minuses:
* People will expect the choice now.
* Frags apparently don't count as links, which means we'll have to deal with all events. Which sucks.
* WebCore apparently doesn't play nicely with libxslt. More on this in a minute.
* Scrollbars have gone AWOL.

Currently, the patch resides in bugzilla. It's ugly and disables lots of features. Once it's cleaned up a bit and more works, I'll consider (maybe!) landing it in SVN.

The problem with WebCore and libxslt. Any help most gratefully appreciated. The issue appears when trying to parse the next document after WebCore is initialised. The sequence goes something like:
Yelp starts
Initialise TOC
Initialise and pages requested
Create window as well as html
(When user requests doc): Initialise new page.

When I do all this, it works beautifully up until the final step. Then, things go a bit squiffy:
"/usr/share/gnome/help/platform-overview/C/platform-overview.xml:1: parser error : Document is empty

^
/usr/share/gnome/help/platform-overview/C/platform-overview.xml:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found

^
"
Except the XML file definitely exists and is valid (I can display it normally). Things get even more fun for man and info pages, where the first step is to load the stylesheet using
"transform->stylesheet = xsltParseStylesheetFile (BAD_CAST stylesheet);"
This fails miserably and the entire program grinds to a horrible halt. So, anyone with experience of WebCore and / or libxslt want to comment and / or explain WTF is going on? There's a drink in it if you can solve it.

Random Update

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:03:06 GMT

Because I don't have enough to do [1], I've been looking at the SoC projects, known as FoieGras. For those not bothering to click the link, FoieGras is supposed to be a WYSIWYG editor for Mallard XML files. This poses a few interesting problems. The first is that the Mallard XML format isn't completed yet.

Anyway, enough rumbling. The SoC projects for FoieGras was split into 2 parts: The textbuffer and the appshell. The textbuffer ("Tags") concentrated on parsing Mallard XML and blatting (a technical term) it into a textbuffer to display. The appshell concentrated on building the actual UI which would house the buffer and deal with interaction. Both these projects worked spectacularly and the results have been sitting in GNOME SVN for a while, in 2 separate branches. Not any more! I spent a few hours last night playing with things and produced the first mating between the 2 components:

(The first merge, scaled down)

It's pretty rough around the edges, but it's a start. The code is now merged into the trunk of foiegras for those wanting to play with it [2]. Oh, and a while ago we decided to rename the project. You know what to do...

Coincidentally, we had a visitor into #docs today looking to help out on FG, which is nice. As always, if you want to help out on this, or any other GNOME doc team project, let us know... [3]

Finally, to the person that shouted "GNOME sucks!" at me in the middle of London on Saturday (!), I forgive you ;) Though El President may wish a few words. Until next time, stay groovy maaaaannn!

[1] Plus, a full-time job
[2] build and install using "setup.py install", run from the src directory using "./start-foiegras". This will load and show the "testing.xml" doc.
[3] email the list: gnome-doc-list gnome org, IRC: irc.gimp.org - #docs

Random samples of my random life

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:07:49 GMT

1) Dear Lazyweb: I'm feel the need to listen to new music at work. Right now I've got a combination of Billy Talent, Rage Against the Machine, Smash Mouth and various others. From that random selection, can anyone suggest some music I might like to listen to? (It doesn't need to be new, just something new to me). Loud music is good to code to.

2) Some days I look at things that don't make sense and I say "There must be a reason for that". Other days I look at things that don't make sense and say "What the heck? What were they thinking?". Other days still I look at things that don't make sense and I say "What was I thinking?". Today is the first type.

3) Reducing yelp bugs by 100-odd is fun.

4) I've pulled a muscle in my neck, so currently I'm walking around with my head slanted to the left. It's not nice.

5) I wish all the doors in the world were ~ 10 cm taller. That way I wouldn't have to duck so much. On top of that (excuse the pun) I wish all beds were ~ 30 cm longer. I don't like cold feet.

6) My job has taught me to love 2 tools. The first is a visual debugger. The second is a visual differ.
a) Visual debugger: GNOME has Nemiver, which rocks. Except it's painfully slow to step through. And sometimes symbols go missing (compiled out, but not mentioned).
b) Visual differ: GNOME has Meld. Again, it's pretty cool, but it's missing 1 very important feature (for me) - loading a patch and showing how it would apply to something. If it had this, it would make patch review rock so much more.
[EDIT] I've spent some time discussing my problems with nemiver with the developers (who are exeedingly helpful and friendly) and the slowness comes from missing libc symbols. Installing these makes nemiver so much faster, faster than my previous visual debugging experience. Now, I am ready to take over the world with my visual debugging expertise. Just a note for future generations.

I'm done. Stay tuned for more random samples of my thoughts.

My system

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:54:47 GMT

My hackergotchi:

put here for everyone to see.

Anyway. My system currently has been running for 43 days. On the desktop, there are 88 items including 1 folder of what used to be there containing 44 more items. Of these, 65 are patches and 7 are pdfs. It has 4 copies of emacs open, 3 gnome-terminals with a total of 7 tabs. In addition, it has 7 epiphany windows with a total of 37 tabs, an xchat-gnome window and an Evolution window.

With all this, the memory usage is at 55% programs (~ 560Mb), 38% cached and 33% swap in use. Epiphany has been restarted 3 times to reclaim memory from Mozilla and Nautilus has been restarted once. Random bug time for nautilus: restarting it kills all hope of getting video thumbnails (they all fail) and spatial nautilus can't open more than 1 window at a time. There are 99 updates sitting in my notification area and a "restart required".

So, what's using all the memory? Top ten memory chewing apps:
1. Epiphany - 135Mb (no flash sites)
2. Evolution - 86Mb
3. Nautilus - 62Mb
4. gnome-panel - 40Mb
5. xchat-gnome - 35Mb
6. drivel (which I'm using to write this) - 25Mb
7. gnome-terminal - 22Mb
8. emacs (1) - 20Mb
9. gnome-system-monitor - 20Mb
10. emacs (2) - 20Mb

After a nice reboot, the same (long running) apps have memory of:
Evolution: 58Mb (67% of previous memory)
Nautilus: 24Mb (39% of previous memory)
gnome-panel: 21Mb (52% of previous memory)
xchat-gnome: 20Mb (57% of previous memory)
Plus, nautilus can now thumbnail all my videos and use spatial windows properly again.

What's the point in all this? Absolutely nothing. I just thought I'd document a reboot for posterity. Plus, I'm waiting for something to happen.

The Book of Don

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 15:33:56 GMT

"and so it was, that on the 2nd day of December of the year 2007, the magnificent and wonderful Don did commence his 27th year on the Earth. There was much rejoicing and revelry, as the kind and benevolent Don was not afraid of some fun. And he did look around and witness that things were good."
- The Book of Don, chapter 19.

Oh man, when I get around to writing my memoirs, they are going to rock so much.

Not getting involved

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:30:13 GMT

Nope. No words on the hot topic of the day. Instead, I'll comment on something else.Chris you reckon "anyone who codes in anything higher level than C is clearly a sissy". I'll go you one better. Anyone who programs in anything higher than assembly is clearly a sissy.

In other news, tomorrow I shall rejoice. The greatest show in the universe is returning from the grave. Hurrah! I declare that from now on, 27th November shall be renamed "Futurama Day" in tribute. Of course, I'll still have to wait for ... whoever is in charge of these things ... to get their act together and offer it for sale over here (in Blighty).

*This post brought to you from a day spent wrestling with a bug that may or may not lay deep in asm code which is uber-cool but can send someone slightly mad.

Little help

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:59:32 GMT

Dear lazyweb,

I long (-ish) time ago, someone pointed me towards a website that compared various help browsers for different {applications|systems}. Does anyone know where that website went? I've spent the last 2 hours on Google trying to find it again, but I can't. Yes, I'm am foolish for not bookmarking it.

On a related note, it's almost that time again. That time when we start looking at the design of everyones favourite help browser's table of content. If you have ideas (no matter how outlandish - we have the power now) for what the yelp TOC should look like, let us know [1]. Bonus marks for anyone coming up with html, instead of my crappy gimp-ised drawings. For those that are interested, the TOC is the "front page" you get when you start yelp without any arguments.

[1] gnome-doc-devel-list gnome org or via a reply to this or via Don-pgo Scorgie org

Hackergotchi

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:31:48 GMT

(2 blog posts in 1 day? I think I need a lie down).

Just perusing p.g.o, I realised I still don't have one of those new-fangled hackergotchis. Therefore, if someone wants to make one for me, there are a couple of photos available: Source 1 and Source 2. I'll start earning my keep now.

Long time, no blog

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:08:06 GMT

Wow. Long, long time since I've written anything. Been busy at work. This work thing - it still surprises me how much it takes out of me every day. Spending all day every day hacking is really cool, but it really does drain you. Other than that, myself, my brother and a mate visited Poland (Krakow), which was ... heavy and resulted in a spectacular injury (not me, my brother). Other than that, it was pretty rocking. I like Poland.

I shall also introduce a couple of small laws (?):
1. Anyone that's ever written anything for Windows is an idiot.
(Note: This isn't flamebait, it's an observation. That wasn't even made by me. I just like the wording and the misanthropy of it. If you think I'm flaming, try writing Windows drivers and see what people do, then argue with me.)
2. Any and all software will lie to users. No, really. Unless you wrote it yourself, assume the software is lying to you.

And on those notes, I'll depart and try and get back into hacking again.

Reading '07

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:32:53 GMT

Back from a weekend at The Reading Festival, which was pretty awesome. Short summary follows...

Good stuff:

Ash. Absolutely rocked. Forgot how great they are.

Nine Inch Nails. Monster.

Billy Talent. Never heard of him before, but my mate insisted. Glad he did.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Always nice to hear. And for other reasons I'll not go into.

Kings of Leon. Not a huge fan, but fun.

Random people. They were getting free beer. They gave me free beer. Yay!

The fact I didn't break any bones this time (not even my nose), despite mosh pits abound

Bad Stuff:

One of my mates losing his wallet. I assume this was bad. I found it quite funny despite him mentioned his identification for his flight was in it.

The wonderful "Lets put all cars on one side of a river and everyone on the other". Net result: 4 hours of queues to get out. Combined with mad dash to deliver friends to airport meant Monday was fun in a "I want to a shower and then die for many hours" type way.

Generic unknown bruising. AKA UDI or unidentified drinking injuries.

People making me feel old and Irish. Everyone seemed to be there to celebrate their GCSEs and thought I was Irish. Way to make me feel old and strange [1].

I can no longer speak. My voice has been going all day and is now at the ragged whisper level.

I would provide photos if a) I had a camera and b) I had a time travel device to go back in time and utilise said camera over the weekend. I'm off to recover somewhat. Peace out y'all.

[1] I'm not saying Irish is bad. In fact, it can be (and often is) very good. It's just that I'm not Irish.

Dear Lazyweb...

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:35:30 GMT

Edit: This is now fixed. See below.

Some help please:

yelp distcheck results in:

Making check in po
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/don/Work/gnome/yelp/yelp-2.19.1/_build/po'
INTLTOOL_EXTRACT=../intltool-extract srcdir=../../po ../intltool-update --gettext-package yelp --pot
rm -f missing notexist
srcdir=../../po ../intltool-update -m
The following files contain translations and are currently not in use. Please
consider adding these to the POTFILES.in file, located in the po/ directory.

_build/yelp.desktop.in
yelp.desktop.in
yelp.desktop.in

If some of these files are left out on purpose then please add them to
POTFILES.skip instead of POTFILES.in. A file 'missing' containing this list
of left out files has been written in the current directory.
if [ -r missing -o -r notexist ]; then \
exit 1; \
fi
make[2]: *** [check] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/don/Work/gnome/yelp/yelp-2.19.1/_build/po'
make[1]: *** [check-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/don/Work/gnome/yelp/yelp-2.19.1/_build'
make: *** [distcheck] Error 2

yelp.desktop.in doesn't exist in SVN. Adding it to POTFILES.{in,skip} results in exactly the same thing. Someone want to enlighten me? I think I can fix the other warnings, but this one flummoxes me.

Edit: With dobey working miracles on IRC, this is now fixed. Thanks dobey :)

Fine, I give up

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:51:42 GMT

Me:

Jabber: DonScorgie ... gmail ... com (you know what to do)

facebook: I have no idea how to link to it from here. Search for me. If you can't find me, complain to facebook or tell me how to do it. I swear I did snap and set it up though.

Bebo: clicky

LastFM: clicky

Amazon Wishlist: clicky

IRC: DonS on irc.gimp.org

email: Don ... Scorgie ... org (again, you know what to do)

Phone number: No. If you want it, email me.

Address: See phone number.

Note, I don't regularly check or update some of these (*cough*facebook, bebo*cough*). Now, will people stop asking me for any / all of these? Thank you.
(and the first person that replies with a smart-arse comment along the lines of "you forgot X" ...).

Everyone (or maybe just me) owes Patryk Zawadzki a few beers. It was he that came up with the name Rarian. How's that for eternal glory (and beer when I meet you)?

Finally, to get it out the way:
don@Madaline:~/Work $ history | awk '{print $2}' | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"} {print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10
94 make
82 yelp
64 svn
44 less
32 /tmp/rarian-4/bin/rarian-example
27 ls
16 emacs
15 grep
12 echo
10 rm

There, am I done?

Random Assortment of Updates

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:06:32 GMT

Since I'm not really in a hacking mood ATM, I figured I'd do some pimping / recruiting here...

First: Say hello to the new yelp. Its been a year in the making, but finally it arrived. Awww, it's shy. Come on...

There are still a few things to work out, but it's getting there. Now, I figure most people are sitting there thinking "that took a year? It doesn't look that different." but most of the changes are under the hood, which makes it easier for us to do cool new stuff in the future and makes it somewhat faster to load (the manuals are parsed in the background so the first page is available quickly). The above is more to show off our pretty new docbook output, thanks to the wonders of gnome-doc-utils.

Oh, and I'm starting to work through our bugs again (down from 210 yesterday to 180 today). I'll keep ploughing through.

Wanted

Are you looking for a way into GNOME, but don't know what to do? Well, the doc team is here to offer you options...

Writers: No experience or programming knowledge needed. There are loads of manuals that need updating. Unfortunately, since our current writers are overwhelmed, they don't have time to review patches (and reviewing doc patches sucks), so it might be a bit of a struggle. However, now we're in feature freeze, it's time for doc work to warm up. If you've got patches, annoy us in #docs [1] and we will get around to reviewing it. If you want to get into this, annoy us in #docs [1] and we'll try and help you get started.

Programmers: Yelp has lots of work needed (doesn't everything always?). Two big ones are:

Man pages - Someone to start making man page parsing more correct / beautiful would be amazing

DBus activation - We would like to provide dbus activation and allow apps to signal us to open a page / manual

Of course, there's loads more bugs to fix and improvements to do as well.

Rarian also has lots of stuff I'd like to see done (which I won't list here).

If you're interested in the above, ping us on the GNOME doc devel mailing list or come into #docs [1] and we'll try and help you out.

Third and finally...

I put my slides up from GUADEC (better late than never). Available here.

[1] on IRC - irc.gnome.org join #docs . Don't be afraid that we don't seem active. I (at least) do read logs and will answer eventually (if you can't hang around that long, leave an email address)

Hidden things in GNOME

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:35:37 GMT

Just thought I'd share 2 small things in GNOME that made me really happy when I found them:

1. "less" scrolling in gnome-terminal. When you less something, the mouse wheel actually scrolls the less output. I can't tell you how insanely useful this is when debugging.

2. The up button for epiphany. Seriously. For months, I've been cursing web browsers, wishing they had an up button. Then shaunm told me epiphany did. Immediately, my browsing life has become so much better. Every program should have an up button (it's in the customise toolbar if you're interested).

Anyone else got other hidden cool features in GNOME that would make my life rock even more?

(This post brought to you by the power of waiting for jhbuild to compile something ... anything)

Short note

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:18:01 GMT

marnanel, how could you miss William Shatner's version of Common People? It's the best version by far.
Other than that, about Labyrinth... I'm swamped with yelp / rarian at the moment. Hopefully, by the end of this week that will be over (well, sort-of - the big work will be done) and I should be able to get back to working on it, finishing integrating the changes I have and fixing the bugs in time for a new release. It is in my mind, promise.

That was short, wasn't it?

Back from GUADEC

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:14:03 GMT

Figured I should join the flood of "back from GUADEC" posts appearing on p.g.o. GUADEC did indeed rock. I returned yesterday around 4pm (stupid train connections). I managed to watch the Grand Prix (which I had the foresight to record) before flaking out for 13 hours. Then, this morning, back to the real world. Still tired though. Figure it'll take me a few days to get back on form.

Some random notes on happenings:

Met some fantastic people. Was quite impressed a few even recognised my name and knew what I do :)

I did my talk, which I thought went pretty badly. Teach me to write it the day before. Teach me to actually listen to The Fearless Leader when he speaks of what he knows. [0]

Managed (hopefully) to convince Joe Shaw to rewrite Beagle to use Rarian. The entire way through, not just the documentation back-end, joining Tracker (hopefully). [0.5]

Also nice to see a (solitary?) KDE developer wandering and seeming interested in getting Rarian into KDE (please? Pretty please?)

Like most others, I managed to pick up a cold which, thankfully, seems to be abating a bit. My cough has nothing to do with the cigarettes, obviously.

Contrary to popular belief, I am a Doctor, I just don't play one on TV [1]

Got back to discover my second monitor has died. I'm now back to single-monitor mode. I don't know how people survive. A new monitor is now high on my list of priorities. [2]

Watching the Grand Prix, I was glad to see we weren't the only ones to be hit by the freakishly heavy rain.

[0] Footnotes rock
[0.5] For the people pestering me about why it's on evil proprietary Google Code, it'll be moved over to freedesktop soon, promise.
[1] No, I don't get it either, but 3 people told me this. It might also explain why people seem to photograph me everywhere I go. Or maybe that's just 'cause I'm great.
[2] Possibly right up there with "laptop"