Sun Vendor Patches
Glynn says:
I think I may have created the first vendor patch against the new file chooser. Fear me.
Hmm, I wonder what it does. Maybe it fades the dialog to black and back again using their secret patented algorithm when the user changes location.
Also Hubert has ZeroConf name lookup working. I think I'll poke him for information and use it at home, my ADSL router will give out IPs via DHCP but won't let me assign names to the mac addresses, and I don't really have a server, just a laptop and a desktop. Multi-cast DNS appears to be the solution to my naming problem and has been on my To Do list for a long time.
NP: From The Choirgirl Hotel, Tori Amos. This is my Tori Amos mega-minidisc. :)
Give Me Myself Again
The last few weeks have been totally mad: wedding planning is getting more intense with only 11 calendar weeks left. We've been spending every evening this week planning the gift list as we should send it off this weekend, and last week I even managed to have an opinion on flowers — a decisive one no less. Wedding list planning started out as a fun task (essentially, picking your own presents) and started turning into a task when we had to make sure there is a good range of gifts available for everyone and we've covered everything. Didn't add a DVD recorder for the TV, but we did add a cute Sony Hi-Fi for the bedroom.
Add in the stress from work and I'm 100% knackered. In a typical twist of reality, the espresso coffee I bought yesterday wasn't ground fine enough and makes an espresso which appear to be the mutant love-child between a weak espresso and a small cappuccino: it takes like a small strong coffee with a crema which is more like foam. I would say "what next", but that feels like tempting fate.
NP: Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos. Though anyone who has the album and was reading chronologically probably knew that already...
Give Me Pain
Work has been... interesting of late (as in "may you live in interesting times"). We have the usual vital deadline in 3 weeks time, a crack-ridden compiler suite from a new embedded processor (a 16/32-bit smart card processor by Infineon), software which used to work and is now for some reason broken, and the office tension is slowly creeping up.
Before this damn chip turned up I was assigned to personally interesting work: document our Java smartcard code, critique and write use cases for an Eclipse plugin we've written, and fix the documentation system. This last one is so interesting to me that I've been hacking on it every day this week so far on the commute, and it is starting to really kick arse.
Our tools parse the code and produce simple XML documents for each file with the (Javadoc-inspired) documentation comments in, which we used to process into HTML with XSLT. This was fine, but now I'm transforming the XML into a DocBook <refentry> and XIncluding it into a master DocBook <book>. A couple of Python scripts parse the includes, generate the intermediate <chapter> files and Make dependencies do their magic and glue it all together. Hopefully when I've battled with Make to my satisfaction, instead of having an API Reference in HTML, the programming guides in LaTeX, and all out of date, we'll have everything in DocBook. I'm using the gtk-doc DocBook customisation layer as it looks far nicer and also generates a DevHelp file for me, so I must file patches with my changes (so far tooltips on the navigation buttons).
Of course, in 45-minutes time I'll be sitting in front of brian, one of the Windows boxes, wondering why the Tasking post-locator says that the ELF file generated by the Tasking linker is corrupt...
Give Me Life
Congratulations Jeff and Pipka on your engagement!
It sounds like your proposal was a lot smoother than my own. We were in Rome over Easter, and our hotel (in the old part of the city) had a wonderful view over the city from the roof terrace. I was forming grand plans of proposing up on the terrace, with the city lights and fine wine... Then it turns a bit to cold to sit outside at 11pm and our hotel didn't sell wine, only small cans of beer. Not quite the vision I had, but a million things could have ruined the vision (someone else on the terrace for example). However, everything from that point went to plan and I still find myself grinning uncontrollably when I realise that in under 3 months we'll be Mr and Mrs!
Go Fluendo!
Sure, Fluendo may sound like a company which makes pipes and toilets, but today's announcement that they are sponsoring xiph.org to finish Ogg Theora is totally cool.
End-to-end open video streaming is an admirable goal, and something which would be great to see. Thomas has even said that they aim to be able to stream GUADEC this July over the net, which would be very impressive if they get that far so quickly.
Go Fluendo!
NP: Dummy, by Portishead. Still got the bass problem, looking at these.
LDAP
I finally bluffed and fiddled enough to get OpenLDAP working as an office-wide address book for Evolution -- which is very cool indeed. Maybe I should buy the O'Reilly LDAP book before turning on pam_ldap though...
NP: Hot Shots II, The Beta Band. They're good / Yes, I know.
Ha!
For some strange reason, Epiphany thought my printer was filled with A4 paper. I'm not even sure where I would [find] A4 paper around here.
Ha! Now you know what it's like to live in Europe, where computers and printers continually revert back to Letter paper, and the sight of PC LOAD LETTER is enough to bring someone's blood to the boil. Continually seeing Unites States at the top of a list and having to scroll to the bottom to find United Kingdom. Pressing United Kingdom in an install routine (*cough* Red Hat *cough*) and then wondering why British is not the default keyboard layout. Argh!
I'm sorry, Rosanna appears to have hit a nerve...
Back Breaking
The last few days have been quite fun. On Thursday I worked from home as we had to go to the Registar Office and plan the wedding ceremony, deciding what we are going to say, picking music and so on.
Saturday Vicky was away having a hair consultation so I went down to London to pick up my suit, freshly fitted (I wish my school trousers were as comfortable as these ones are!) and met Caroline for lunch. Had a good afternoon with her, walking around London and stuffing ourselves with toasted ciabattas. On the way back home I started to watch Bubba Ho-Tep, which is hilarious. That night with a Chinese we watched Identity which was good, better than I expected. Shame we had to take it back really, I'd like to watch it again.
On Sunday our new TV finally turned up -- which is very cool. I won't bore everyone with pictures of it, it's a Sony widescreen and looks exactly the same as all other Sony widescreens. After a minor panic -- our old stand is a great size and holds the VCR, DVD, CD and amplifier but the new one is "trendy" so only old two items so argh where to put everything -- we're getting there. Amusingly the box it came in has cartoons showing how to hold it (it's not light and very front-heavy), but the staples had left marks which look just like perspiration, accurately portraying us trying to get the damn thing on the stand... We "tested" it by watching High Fidelity, which is still a great film. Possibly one of my Top 5 All Time Music Related Films...
NP: Lamb, by Lamb. Still need better headphones with more bass.
Kick Arse
For all the corporate whores (mentioning no names) who claim that the GPL is unenforceable, the German's seem to think it is. Hopefully this case gets resolved quickly.
Spending Spree!
I think I'm starting to mentally associate Easter with massive spending... I took last Thursday off to relax and we finally bought our wedding rings (platinum bands, mine looks like this), which obviously are not cheap. Then we popped into Virgin and discovered a DVD sale: bought K-PAX, High Fidelity and Starship Troopers.
Of course, two rings does not make a spending spree. On Saturday we went down to London so I'd have something nice to wear to the wedding (as the groom I thought I'd best make an effort) and picked up a lovely black suit from Austin Reed, found HMV also had a DVD sale (massive restraint here, only bought Léon) and went to Zizzi's for dinner. Finally on Sunday, as a break from the all the travelling to get to the shops, we bought a new TV online. Now all I need is for the GNOME Foundation to send me the Bounty money...
NP: Liquid Swords, GZA.
Eww
Glynn, dude, you are no longer qualified to comment on my colour scheme when you think the purple barf you ship is actually “sweet”. I can feel my photoreceptors burning away as I look at that screenshot.
Contact Lookup Applet 0.6
Version 0.6 of the Contact Lookup Applet is available from here, and a Debian package for experimental is currently uploading.
I never did finish the new and improved IM field display, but this release at least builds with the current evolution-data-server API.
Sound Juicer "One More Victim" 0.5.11
Sound Juicer "One More Victim" 0.5.11 is available -- download the tarball here. Debian packages available in my repository and are in the upload queue. This release works with GStreamer 0.8!
- Supports GStreamer 0.8
- Eject When Finished works
- Change the shortcut for Extract to Control-Return
- Updated the README
- Fix the logic in the "missing encoder" dialogue.
One Railway
This week the rail operator where I live, WAGN, was taken over by One Railway. WAGN was an amusing name in a way, and One is going for the "unity" they are bringing by merging several different train operators in the area (maybe it wasn't a good idea to sell the train network, Maggie) but I am waiting for the jokes about what exactly there is "one" of. One train? Just the One driver? One safety inspector? Only One wrench for the engineers? All seem possible at times...
NP: Mustang Sally, Wilson Pickett
