Ridicule
The problem for mainstream pop since the 70s is that metal has siphoned off many of the best freaks and losers.
It's not often you read an article in the Guardian about Adam and The Ants, Finnish Battle Metal bands, and being "cool", but today I did.
Galaxy Dark
I got a free bar of the new Galaxy Dark with my shopping yesterday, which is basically a dark chocolate (50%) version of a Galaxy bar. Well, I say that, but...
The smooth Galaxy way to enjoy dark chocolate... deeply smooth, intensely delicious and not at all bitter.
This should be called Galaxy Fail. It looks like dark chocolate but is pumped with sugar so it has a weird sickly sweet taste, nothing like the creamy taste of the original Galaxy. I predict this product will be binned soon.
Today's Second Geohack
I managed to wangle a Fire Eagle invitation this morning, so over lunch I grabbed the Python API Kit and threw it at the sample Gypsy client.
$ ./gypsy-fireeagle.py 00:0B:0D:88:A4:A3 got 51.861145 0.156275 Updated FireEagle
The first line is me running my script (this one is 64 lines, but it is half whitespace), telling it where my GPS is. The second line is the current position that my rather cheap and nasty GPS determined. The third line tells me that Fire Eagle has been updated with those coordinates.
Suffice to say I'm very impressed with Yahoo's geocoding software. My GPS never settles to an accurate reading and will happily jitter around a 20 metre wide circle for hours, but the location Fire Eagle is reporting me at is two doors away. I'm not exaggerating: it says number 9 on my street when it should be number 5. That is some incredibly accurate mapping they have.
Today's Geohack
Following hot on the heels of Yahoo's announcement of their Internet Location Platform, I wrote a quick 20-line Python hack to convert from latitude and longitude to a place name. Because the ILP doesn't yet expose the ability to go from a position to a WOEID we have to ask the Flickr web services to do this first (as Flickr is owned by Yahoo this is using the same backend). Once we have the WOEID, it can be then be looked up on the ILP and useful information obtained. Example speak more than words:
$ python geohack.py Using position 51.872330 0.161950 Got WOEID 12775 Got town Bishop's Stortford
Now to write a GeoClue provider which will fill in the locality information from the position. Long-term grand plans involve integrating all of this geo magic into Postr, somehow.
NP: Third, Portishead
Fire Eagle Invitation?
Does anyone out there on the Intarwebs work for Yahoo, or have a friend who works at Yahoo? I'd really like to give this Fire Eagle thing a go, specifically integrating Gypsy and GeoClue with Fire Eagle, but it's invitation only at the moment...
Update: I now have an account!
GUPnP Basics, Part 1
For the last few days I've been learning more about UPnP and testing it with the few devices I have around the house. One of these is a cheap ADSL router, which apparently has the lamest UPnP stack on in existence. It does however support the WAN IP Connection interface, so you can use UPnP to get the external IP address and manipulate the port mapping. I'll skip over the horrific security violations this involves, because it's a useful demonstration that the majority of people will be able to test.
Today we'll start simple and get our external IP address using GUPnP. The first thing to be done is to create a Control Point, which in the UPnP model handles discovery of resources, be them devices or services (a device can have multiple services). When creating a control point you can specify the URN of the resource you want to target. In this case we want all services providing WANIPConnection so we'd use urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:WANIPConnection:1. If you want to browse for all services then use ssdp:all (SSDP being the Simple Service Discovery Protocol).
static GMainLoop *main_loop;
int
main (int argc, char **argv)
{
GError *error = NULL;
GUPnPContext *context;
GUPnPControlPoint *cp;
/* libsoup requires threading, so we have to initialise it */
g_thread_init (NULL);
g_type_init ();
/* Default GLib context, default host IP, default port */
context = gupnp_context_new (NULL, NULL, 0, &error);
if (error) g_error (error->message);
/* Create a control point targeting WAN IP Connection services */
cp = gupnp_control_point_new
(context, "urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:WANIPConnection:1");
/* The service-proxy-available signal is emitted when any services which match
our target are found */
g_signal_connect (cp,
"service-proxy-available",
G_CALLBACK (service_proxy_available_cb),
NULL);
/* Tell the control point to start searching */
gssdp_resource_browser_set_active (GSSDP_RESOURCE_BROWSER (cp), TRUE);
/* Enter the main loop */
main_loop = g_main_loop_new (NULL, FALSE);
g_main_loop_run (main_loop);
/* Clean up */
g_main_loop_unref (main_loop);
g_object_unref (cp);
g_object_unref (context);
return 0;
}
static void
service_proxy_available_cb (GUPnPControlPoint *cp,
GUPnPServiceProxy *proxy)
{
/* ... */
}
Now we have an application which searches for the service we specified and calls service_proxy_available_cb for each one it found. Now, to get the external IP address we need to invoke the GetExternalIPAddress action. This action takes no in arguments, and has a single out argument called "NewExternalIPAddress". Yes, the naming scheme is stupid. GUPnP has a set of methods to invoke actions -- which will be very familiar to anyone who has used dbus-glib -- where you pass a NULL-terminated varargs list of (name, type, value) tuples for the in arguments, then a NULL-terminated varargs list of (name, value, return location) tuples for the out arguments. A simple implementation would be as follows.
static void
service_proxy_available_cb (GUPnPControlPoint *cp,
GUPnPServiceProxy *proxy)
{
GError *error = NULL;
char *ip = NULL;
gupnp_service_proxy_send_action (proxy,
/* Action name and error location */
"GetExternalIPAddress", &error,
/* IN args */
NULL,
/* OUT args */
"NewExternalIPAddress",
G_TYPE_STRING, &ip,
NULL);
if (error == NULL) {
g_print ("External IP address is %s\n", ip);
g_free (ip);
} else {
g_printerr ("Error: %s\n", error->message);
g_error_free (error);
}
g_main_loop_quit (main_loop);
}
Note that _send_action blocks until the service has replied. If you need to make non-blocking calls then use gupnp_service_proxy_begin_action which takes a callback.
So, that is searching for services and invoking actions in GUPnP. Next time I'll cover subscribing to state variables, and routers which can't count.
NP: Folk But Not Folk, Various
EphyDeli 0.3
EphyDeli is a Python extension for Epiphany that adds Post To Delicious menu and toolbar items for posting the current page to Del.icio.us. I know of several people who use it frequently and the last release was in 2006, so I've obviously mastered the Unix philosophy well here! This release was caused by those mean old Epiphany developers changing the API, many thanks to Thibauld Nion for noticing this and sending a patch.
To download it you can either grab the tarball or fetch the bzr tree.
It's Bubbling Hot
$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/*/temperature temperature: 84 C temperature: 90 C
Maybe it's time to get a dedicated build machine, my poor laptop gets quite toasty when building Poky. Then again it seems happy enough, so maybe I should just use an external keyboard to avoid boiling my hands.
NP: Oneric, Boxcutter
Postr 0.12
A quick Postr 0.12 release, mainly to fix an annoying bug but there are some neat new features here too.
- Update the status bar after uploading
- Add a Switch User menu item
- Add Add/Remove buttons to the image pane
- Install the Nautilus extension to the new extension path
- Don't select groups when the name is clicked
- Don't display errors when posting to moderated groups
- Show a warning on exit if there are images to upload (thanks Germán Póo-Caamaño)
The tarball is here, and packages for Debian have been uploaded.
Postr 0.11
I finally got around to fixing the very annoying text wrapping problem in postr.dev, I thought I best release Postr 0.11:
- Add Send To Group options
- Add Privacy and Safety options
- Use a multi-line entry for the Description field
- Show the user's name in the status bar
- Fix the resizing of the preview
The tarball is here, and packages for Debian have been uploaded.
No Iain, I Am Luis Villa
Iain, you are clearly an imposter. And this perfect-sighted intruder, whoever he is, should be hunted down, because I am Luis Villa!
We're Hiring!
Here at OpenedHand Towers we've just announced some more job openings, so if you have skills in any of the kernel, X.org, GTK+, Clutter or OpenEmbedded then please have a look. We're also after user interface/interaction designers, junior designers (print/web/UI), and have an student internship for a programmer. Pretty much something for everyone!
GNOME Mobile Moduleset
I just committed to JHBuild three new modulesets, mobile-2.24, pimlico and matchbox, so that GNOME people wanting to develop against the GNOME Mobile platform can use tools they know to build everything they need.
- mobile-2.24
This changes GConf and EDS to use the DBus ports, and provides meta-mobile-platform which builds the complete platform.
- pimlico
This builds Contacts, Dates and Tasks, providing meta-pimlico.
- matchbox
This builds Matchbox Panel, Matchbox Desktop, Matchbox Keyboard and Matchbox Window Manager, providing meta-matchbox.
Also, Poky is building images nightly with the complete platform in, which will let you build and test software in a PDA-style environment with QEMU, running on x86 or a number of ARM-based devices (such as Nokia N800, Sharp Zaurus or OpenMoko).
Last week at the Collaboration Summit in Austin (which I couldn't attend for personal reasons) there was a day-long GNOME Mobile meeting, as a result of which there is now a long list of packages which need to be considered for addition to the Platform (such as HAL, Gypsy and Geoclue), and a few changes (such as replacing gnome-vfs with gvfs). I hope to review the proposals fairly shortly, so that we can hopefully make an initial GNOME Mobile 2.24 platform release alongside the Desktop release in September.
In other news, this is exactly what the Internet is for.
NP: Blue Moon Station, Solar Fields
Brain Gym
Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning. Last week I watched, open-mouthed, a Newsnight piece on the spread of "Brain Gym" in British schools. I'd read about Brain Gym before - a few years back, in Ben Goldacre's excellent Bad Science column for this newspaper - but seeing it in action really twisted my rage dial.
Charlie Brooker in The Guardian gets deservedly angry over Brain Gym, after seeing an article about it on Newsnight (1, 2 on YouTube). The creator of Brain Gym was destroyed by Paxman, rather too easily to be honest.
NP: Voices, Vangelis (via Last.fm)
Ely
Today, we went to Ely. Nice (very small) city, with a rocking cathedral.
In other news, the new Lightroom 2 beta is very nice.
Dear Interwebs: Secure SMTP Relay Wanted
I'm looking for a basic SMTP relay which supports SMTP AUTH, TLS, supports the sendmail interface, and has a local mail queue, so that I can send mail from my laptop in Evolution (to localhost, or calls sendmail) and the shell (calling sendmail) when online or offline.
I need SMTP AUTH and TLS, which means nbsmtp, masqmail, and nullmailer are out. I want a local queue for when I'm not online which means esmtp, ssmtp, msmtp, and nullmailer are out (I'm not convinced that msmtp's queue scripts are reliable enough). Surely there must be a simple SMTP relay which will reliably manage a queue if the mail cannot be sent! If not, does anyone know of a good guide to configuring Postfix or Exim to do this?
New Gypsy Release
Coding Legend Iain has just released Gypsy 0.6, the all-new GPS multiplexing daemon which focuses on being lean and easy to use, and not on, erm, putting your GPS on the Internet or something weird.
Because I'm fairly lame there are not matching Debian packages yet, but I'll get around to that tomorrow. In other news, a very nice man called Ian Lawrence wrote a buzzword-compliant tutorial where he uses Gypsy to talk to a Bluetooth GPS, tests it with my Gypsy Status 10-minute hack, and then uses Django to redirect the user to the relevant geohash.org page.
NP: Remembranza, Murcof
Photoshop Horrors
Thanks to Photoshop Disasters, this Photoshop horror cheered me right up.
Original
source, although the image was just pulled from the site.
EDS and Memory
I was going to reply to Philip's post, but Federico did a wonderful job before I could start.
That said, I still haven't forgiven you for some of the finer details of libecal Federico. :)
Dear Intertron: Emacs Help Please?
I recently switched to Emacs from XEmacs, and have pretty much got it working how I like. There are just two problems remaining.
- I'm using emacsclient, and when I close the last frame Emacs quits. With XEmacs when in server mode the process continues when the last frame is closed, anyone know how I can get Emacs to do this too?
- Emacs appears to be moving the mouse pointer when I open a new frame. This is totally frustrating not only because I use sloppy focus, but also because its moving the point to the wrong frame. How can I turn this off?
Help greatly appreciated!
Traits of the Common and Generally Mythical Evolution Data Server Replacement
When not writing media centres or GL toolkits, it appears that the latest trend in open source is to write Evolution Data Server replacements. There is a fairly common pattern forming.
First, implementation details will be announced as a major, if not the main, feature. The shining example is "based on DBus". Yes, DBus is great. Yes, ORBit is a dying technology for something as simple as transfering a few strings between two processes. But this is an implementation detail. I'd prefer a project using DBus instead of another incredibly complicated IPC, but implementation details are typically not something to get excited about.
Often this first point gets out of control and suddenly the point of the project is to design a DBus interface, not to write real working code. Of course, an interface without any code behind it, without any reference implementation, without several applications and different users, is bound to be broken somewhere. But you'll never know until it is too late and you've labelled the interface as STABLE. Learn from DBus itself, anyone who followed the project before 1.0 knows that the core concepts were rewritten several times before it was finally marked as stable.
Spreading basic FUD is fairly common too. "EDS is not efficient concerning network bandwidth" doesn't make sense, because EDS is a local daemon. When it does talk over the network, it's fairly sensible. The LDAP (and Groupwise/Exchange I believe) backend maps EDS searches to native searches so that only the requested items are fetched. Backends such as WebCal have no option but to fetch the entire file, because that is how they work. "EDS is not efficient concerning memory usage" is rather vague, and if you interpret it as "private dirty memory usage is unreasonably high when in use" then in my opinion that is untrue and I have Massif logs to back me up.
If these points were true, they'll generally be fixable within EDS. The default local calendar backend is implemented as an iCalendar file on disk, which is parsed into memory in its entirety on startup. This certainly works well for a basic implementation but should be replaced with a database of some sort, a simple one which stores a hash of UID to event would reduce memory usage for large calendars. Add to that a cache of start and end times to optimise that common case and the end result is probably both faster and uses less memory, for a few days work.
Occasionally complaints are spot-on, but EDS isn't immutable and whilst starting a new project from scatch may be more fun, please think of everyone else. EVCard is over-complicated and yet tragically crippled, whilst EContact tries to be clever but generally gets in the way. Luckily we can write a new contact object which is easier to use. The query language is limited, but Milan Crha of Red Hat fame has been chipping away and now it's more flexible without breaking existing applications. Maybe someone can come up with a good replacement language, and the old language deprecated.
I'll summarise what I'm trying to say.
- EDS isn't perfect, we all know that.
- However, EDS also isn't immutable. It can be fixed.
- If you find bugs or bad design in EDS, please file a bug report.
- If you have spare time to start a replacement project, please briefly consider the possibility of working on EDS first. The code isn't that scary, honest (especially the DBus port when I get around to merging it).
- If you still want to start a replacement project, at least be polite and inform the evolution-hackers mailing list that you are starting a project to replace it. You never know, there might be common ground that we can both work on.
NP: Kharah System, Hereill
Testers Wanted
Over the weekend I hacked on a clone of Marco Polo for GNOME. The idea is that you define a set of contexts, such as "work", "in meeting" or "home". The current context is determined by a set of rules, for example being on the "Burton" wireless network means I'm in the "home" context, the time being between 09:00 and 18:00 means the "daytime" context, and so on. Finally, when entering or leaving a context actions can be executed, such as muting the sound card, mounting a remote drive, or changing the default printer. So far I have sources for the time of day and wireless network name, and actions to run a command and set a GConf key.
Now that the basics are in place, I'm looking for other alpha-testers. Experience with Python is a requirement at the moment as there is no UI or configuration file yet. That said, if this application sounds like it could be useful to you then please email me.
NP: !K7, Various
Devil's Pie Graphical Editor
Thanks to Chris for pointing out gdevilspie to me, a graphical interface to writing Devil's Pie rule files. I've never used it so I can't comment on how well it works, but I'm very glad that someone finally wrote it!
Freecycle
In the last fortnight I have managed to Freecycle the following objects:
- Bathroom scales
- A safe
- An Orange Pay As You Go SIM
- A wooden chopping board
- A Bluetooth headset
- Six iPod cases
- A Bodum teapot
- A radio walkman
- A Sharp portable minidisc recorder
- A Nikon APS camera
- Five belts
- Two boxes of word fridge magnets
- A 802.11g CardBus card
- An external USB sound device
It sounds a little like the Generation Game, I know. Combined with a bin bag full of junk, I can actually see the bottom of my drawers now!
More Tasks Magic
I finally got around to working on magic date parsing in Tasks, thanks to Mallum porting a JavaScript library to C last year. I rewrote it again this week, and landed it in Subversion a few days ago. I'd love any brave Tasks users to give it a go, especially people who don't use English. They'd need to translate the new strings, but I want to check that the technique I'm using is portable between languages.
Feedback on what magic strings should be detected would be great too. Currently it detects "today", "tomorrow", "yesterday", "this [weekday]" and "next [weekday]". Next up is "by|due|on [local date representation]", but what else would be useful?
Sound Juicer "Died To Make This Sound" 2.22.0
Sound Juicer "Died To Make This Sound" 2.22.0 is available now. Tarballs are available on burtonini.com, or from the GNOME FTP servers. Last minute fixes, cleanups, and translations abound!
- Fix various crashes in the preferences dialogs (thanks Matthew Martin)
- Translate the genres (thanks Brian Geppert)
- Add a paused track state (thanks Brian Geppert)
- Use the system icons for play/record (thanks Micharl Monreal)
- Many many translations!
Thanks to everyone who helped with Sound Juicer 2.22, there has been a huge influx of new contributors thanks to the GHOP and gnome-love projects.
For Sale: IBM ThinkPad X22
In an effort to clear up the utter mess which is my home office, I'm selling my old laptop. It's an IBM ThinkPad X22 (ultra-portable), with (and this is from memory) a Pentium 3 Mobility at 733MHz, 640MB RAM, and a 20GB HDD. I think. (update: 40GB HDD). It has built-in wired ethernet but no built-in wireless, though I can throw in the Orinoco-based wi-fi card I've been using. There is also the UltraSlice micro-docking station with a hotpluggable CD drive/HDD bay. It will come booting Debian, but it has a Windows 2000 license and I'm sure I have the CD somewhere in the attic. The main caveat is that the screen hinges have lost their grip so it is best used either closed as a router or network music box, or against something to keep the screen from falling open. :)
So, anyone want to make an offer? I'll put it on eBay if nobody wants it, but I thought I'd offer it out to the Planets first. If anyone is interested ping me and I'll go and turn it on to double-check the specifications.
Dear Mark Prisk
It's been over three months since my last letter to Mark Prisk MP, and I've yet to receive a reply. Is he ignoring my letter, or is he just useless?
NP: Sounds Like Murcof, Last.fm
Google Contacts Data API
Those nice people at Google have finally opened their Contacts API. Now, Evolution already has a Google Calendar backend, so does anyone fancy writing a Google Contacts addressbook backend? If someone with C/GObject knowledge is interested, I'll happily provide assistance on the Evolution side.
Poky "Pinky" 3.1 Released
From: Richard Purdie <richard@openedhand.com> Subject: [poky] Poky Version 3.1 (Pinky) Released It gives me great pleasure to announce a new release of Poky, version 3.1 (Pinky).
Poky 3.1 is released! We've been hard at work for this one, mainly deep in the guts to make it more portable and powerful. Of interest to GNOME developers is that Pinky is shipping a complete GMAE 2.20 platform, and a plugin for Anjuta to make building and deploying software for your target device trivial.
We've also got a sweet new web site and possibly the cutest mascot ever. I, for one, can't wait to stroke a plush Beaver.
Repulsive
From the most excellent Flat Earth News, a rip-roaring (I've always said that phrase should be used more) tale of corruption, falsehood and propaganda in journalism:
The readers are never wrong. Repulsive, maybe, but never wrong.- Piers Morgan, as editor of the Daily Mirror, referring to how he lost circulation due to the paper's stance against the Iraq invastion.
Flat Earth News is a great book, and I can recommend it to everyone who is disappointed with the state of global journalism, and even more to anyone who thinks journalism is in general doing a good job.
Sound Juicer "Drop The Empty Pursuit Of Props" 2.21.92
Sound Juicer "Drop The Empty Pursuit Of Props" 2.21.92 is available now. Tarballs are available on burtonini.com, or from the GNOME FTP servers. Just small fixes now:
- Don't loop if the selected music directory doesn't exist (Matthew Martin)
- When editing the album artist, unset the sortable artist name
- Remove deprecated calls in BaconVolume (Michael Terry)
Sometimes I Worry
mallum: its mental mental chicken oriental
NP: Untrue, Burial
Bad Idea (#4211)
Just seen on Freecycle:
OFFERED: 7 Blank Dual Layer DVD+R
was using them for xbox 360 games however found they failed alot. ideal for home movies or backing up data.
Can I Get A Replicator?
There is a Sound Juicer bug which has been reported in 2.20 and 2.21, where changing the album artist name doesn't change the name that is used when creating directories (link to bug). Thinking about the code this is very strange, and I can't replicate it myself, so I have to ask the Planets. Has anyone else seen this, or can they replicate this?
NP: Workmen digging up my road the bastards, Thames Water (photo)
Dear InterWeb...
Mock The Week is about to start, so I'll be quick. Can I ellipsize a GtkMenuItem? It's easy to make Tasks have very long menu items, which end up being too big for the screen. I'd like to get the menu items truncated so that the menu will fit on the screen, or something. I guess I'll have to truncate the string manually if there is no magic way of doing it directly in the menu, but that really is a fallback plan.
Cheapo MP3 Player
Today I ordered what is almost the cheapest MP3 player I could find, and is certainly the cheapest I could find which wouldn't fall off when jogging (as much as I love my black iPod Classic, it's not really suitable for jogging). I really hope that it reads MP3 files from a FAT partition and uses USB Storage...
NP: Mishaps Happening, Quantic
