mDNS Resolver
Mike Hearn yesterday pointed me at someone who was planning on writing mDNS support for glibc, probably as a NSS provider. In hindsight that is blatantly the right thing to do, so I mailed him to see if he wanted someone to help test it. When he replied he told me that Apple had added a mDNS NSS provider to their implementation a few days ago. And what do you know, it works. The NSS library only works I run their mdnsd, so I'll have to dig around to see if this can be changed.
Screw The Tube
Today there is another tube strike, over pay or uniforms or working conditions, or something. Note to non-Londoners: the transport union call strikes fairly frequently for various reasons, so it does get difficult to remember what exactly they are protesting about this time. I get the tube from Liverpool Street (well, Moorgate) to London Bridge, and when there is a strike I normally just walk it: it's only a 20 minute walk. Today though I thought I'd see what the buses were like. Several things then shocked and amazed me.
One: Transport For London's web site has a good journey planner. I mean really good. I told it "Liverpool Street to London Bridge" and it offered me two tube routes, the quickest bus route, and how long it would take to walk. Armed with the knowledge that the quickest bus is the number 47 from bus stop K, off I went to work. At the bus stop a quick look at the very clear route maps told me that most buses here took the route I wanted (which is basically "along the big road"), and more importantly, that the bus already here was one of them. On I jumped, and stood upstairs. The joy of the new buses is that upstairs you get a fantastic view of the bicycles weaving their way down the bus lanes, and the hordes of City workers marching over London Bridge. Surprise number Two was that getting the bus (even when there is a strike so it would be busier) is quicker and easier than the tube.
Screw the tube, and kudos to Ken Livingstone for pushing the role of buses in London -- they really do kick arse.
Java 1.5 Is Dead...
...long live Java 5.0.
Why can't people who market software count? Windows 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP. Java 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 aka 2.0, 1.4 aka 2.0, 1.5 aka 5.0. It appears that the defining attribute of open source software is a predictable versioning scheme (even if it is a little odd at first, as in Havoc's experiment with the Fibonacci series as version numbers for Metacity).
NP: Simple Things, Zero 7
Hunt For A Decent Flapjack
Inspired by my recent success with coffee and flapjacks I thought I'd grab a quick bite on the way to work at London Bridge. AMT have a posh looking coffee stand over platform 2, all polished brass and dark wood, which should be rained upon by chemical hellfire.
The woman serving me nearly gave me a decaf espresso. Yes, a decaf espresso. Obviously she should be taken outside and shot for that alone, but it actually gets worse. They put foamed milk on my espresso without asking me, which turned a lovely strong coffee shot into a strange small-cappuccino-with-a-kick. I'm not entirely sure why anyone would want to put milk (frothed or not) onto an espresso in the first place, and I suppose it is good that the option is there (for the same people who ask for a diet Coke with a Big Mac, I presume), but I asked for an espresso. I think they'll find most people consider an espresso to be sans bovine juice. Finally, the flapjack looked like oats which had been left to soak in left-over cooking oil and then chopped into squares, which isn't a great surprise considering the usual ingredient of butter (or margarine if the manufacturer is being cheap) was replaced by vegetable oil and "hydrogenated" vegetable oil (whatever that is). End result: tastes like the cheap syrup you accidently make when dissolving sugar cooks too much, without a hint of oat. I now feel slightly queasy, like I'd eaten a small stick of lard.
Not Long Now
[non-GNOME/Debian posting: Planet peeps skip this if you are after linked list implementations or arguments about the Social Contract]
It's not long now until the wedding -- only 3½ weeks left! The plans are slowly coming together: hopefully no-one else has left the band, we've finally picked two readings (The Promise and The Owl and the Pussycat), the bar license if off to the magistrates and we've changed the reception colour scheme again. It does seem to us that either people are ignoring the gift list we spent weeks arranging, or are leaving it until the last minute: despite nearly 100 people coming to the reception only 10 have selected a gift. C'mon people, the good ones are going fast! And we want that new kitchenware! :-)
We also finally had most of the replies back, so we sorted through them and updated the attending numbers. Originally I thought that a 75-capacity room for the ceremony would be big enough, but obviously not. So far we're at 74 and we've still got a few unconfirmed members of family. Luckily we're not having the ceremony in the local registry office which I believe only holds 60-odd people: then we'd be forced to pick from family as well as friends...
Sometimes the arranging of the day overtakes the reason for the day, so I have to sit back and think about why we're doing this. That puts a smile on my face, and despite worrying about what could go wrong (a trait of mine I'm not particularly fond of) I'm pretty confident the party will be wonderful. How could it not be?
NP: Nothing. Damn minidisc player broke.
The Return Of A Legend
Oh lordy. The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy is back for a whole new series on BBC Radio 4 later this year. I knew there was a reason why I paid my license fee!
NP: Bebel Gilberto, Bebel Gilberto.
Sound Juicer: TNG Plans
I have grand plans for Sound Juicer which, when I find the time, will make it a replacement for gnome-cd. Basically I'm going to change the user interface quite dramatically so that the main window is a read-only view of the CD, and add playback controls. I hope this will be an easier interface for CD playing than the current GNOME CD player (with its design based on a physical CD player). Then the information editing will be taken out into a dialog, which means that more options can be available as they are only visible when required.
Of course, pictures speak a thousand words, so here are some provisional mockups.
Observant people will notice certain similarities with Totem... So, that is my aim for the future of SJ, once I've figured out how best to use the GNOME 2.6 audio profiles library of course (hi Thomas!). Comments are welcome (as long as they are positive).
NP: Tanto Tempo, Bebel Gilberto
Evil Plant Sex Goo
The Evil Plant Sex Goo has been strong recently, as many people in England probably know. So it was no surprise yesterday when I developed allergic conjunctivitis, again (forth time in three years), even after daily antihistamines and frequent eye washes. I hate hay fever, I hate plant sex goo, and I hate the antibiotic eye drops. At least I'm not alone: the man opposite me on the train is suffering from The Fever too. Maybe we should form a nose-blowing and sniffing double act...
Once I'm in Croydon I think I'll do my lunch shopping before I go to work, the local supermarket has a wonderfully air-conditioned cheese and meat section. Aaah the relief.
In totally unrelated news, this week I did a Matt and bought two albums from hearing them on the Beeb. Bebel Gilberto was on Jools last week with some funky modern bosso nova, and Murcof (minimalist classical with house influence and sound textures, apparently) were mentioned by Matt yesterday. They have a funky Flash based site and three streams to download, which are great mellow pieces. Perfect for deep-hack-mode background music.
Web Page Thumbnails
Matt Biddulph wrote a nice little hack to create a thumbnail of any URL using Mozilla and Python. In awe of the coolness this could give, I grabbed it and had a quick play. Matt and myself both spotted the deliberate error he introduced in the script he uploaded, then I replaced the usage of PIL with GDK (thus doing the rescale in memory without going to disk), and fiddle the size of the thumbnail. Et volia:
There are still issues: sadly Mozilla won't render the page to a window without the window being visible on screen. Maybe a lower-level API would allow this, but for now it does the the job rather well. Well done Matt. My hacked copy is available here.
NP: Liquid Swords, GZA.
Suspiciously Good Coffee
I was feeling in need of a drink on the way home so I stopped at Ritazza, the micro-coffee shop on platform 1 at East Croydon station. Ordered a double expresso and whilst the smiling man was making it the honey flapjacks were calling to me... so I got one of those too. Then it started to get all weird.
The flapjack is made from oats, syrup, butter, sugar and honey. You know -- like you'd do at home -- but nothing like what you get in the shops usually. This cheered me up no end (being partial to a good flapjack[1]), and indeed it was lovely, until I noticed my coffee...
It's perfect. Good temperature, a solid crema, and nicely strong. The only downside is that it comes in a whacking great paper cup, but I'm sure I'll live with that. I've a feeling this could be the end of me...
[1] Of course true "good" flapjacks don't have chocolate bits, fruit bits, sugared bits or any other bits added, nor have they been dipped in another of the above.
Great Site of the Day
Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About may be a web site many people already know about, but it is wonderfully hilarious.
Just remember folks: this is comedy.
Strange Office
I work in a very strange office. On the way in to work someone in the train in front on mine collapsed due to the heat, and today there is a leather jacket hanging on the coat rack. Yes, someone wore a leather jacket to work today, when the Met Office thinks it will hit 28° C.
NP: Worldwide Undergroud, Erykah Badu
Sound Juicer "Bust The Meter" 0.5.12
Sound Juicer "Bust The Meter" 0.5.12 is available -- download the tarball here. Debian packages available in my repository and are in the upload queue as usual.
Some people may claim to have seen me declare version 0.5.12 in the Changelog a month ago, and some may even go as far as brazenly stating that I even declared 0.5.13 in the Changelog and configure.in last week. These people are no better than child-molesting Nazi's, and are probably Commies too. If you know of these "people", alert the authorities as soon as you can. Thank you.
- Translate the example track/album strings in Preferences (Mariano Suárez-Alvarez)
- Close the Prefs dialog when the WM close button is pressed (Mariano)
- Monitor the strip and eject prefs for changes correctly
- Add %tN-%tA-%tT as a file pattern
- Use a sane drive if the one in GConf doesn't exist (Bastien Nocera)
- Better error messages when the disk is full (Bastien)
- Mark Eject for localisation (Stephane Raimbault)
- Don't crash if the files exists and the user skips every track
- Make the Help button work (Brent Fox)
- Add double quotes to the set of characters to strip when sanitising paths
- Handle the GStreamer 0.8 error callback prototype (Christophe Fergeau)
- Stop building with SJ 0.7.x
- Add colons to the Prefs dialog
- Update libbacon
NP: Tourist, St. Germain
Devil's Pie "Derren Brown Is A Witch" 0.4
Devil's Pie (everyone favourite window manipulation tool) 0.4 is out. Not bad since the last release was in September... Changes are:
- Add an action to set the window type atom (Olivier Andrieu)
- Add an action to set the decorate window hint in OpenBox (Vaclav Lorenc)
- Watch all screens for events, instead of just the default
Downloads are in the usual place, a tarball is here. Debian packages will be prepared tomorrow, I'm going to bed now. The tarball has a spec file, so rpmbuild should work.
Wedding Photography
(yes, people, my laptop disk is back and I'm blogging again. More later)
Yesterday Russel (great bloke, my boss and our wedding photographer) came up to look at the venue for the wedding ceremony and reception to see how the light falls, where to take what shots, etc. Whilst doing this obviously he took many photos and when we got home I kept a copy when we were looking at them.
These are taken in the Rose Garden behind the registry office. It's a small circle of bushes with a rose arch and little stone seats. All very nice and romantic.
Me looking remarkable happy at finding a tree.
"Hey Russel, I've magicked a door from Ross' pocket!"
After Vicky's magic trick we went to the Cloisters at the registry office, where every photographer has a field day playing with their flash guns to get good lighting on the arches.
(we were weeding, okay?)
I practise eloping and marrying the Invisible Woman:
Ross and Vicky, circa. 1850.
Ross and Vicky engaging in their little known pursuit of Shakespearian theatre.
This is Little Hallingbury Village Hall, where we are having our reception. To the right you can just see the large garden behind the hall, where we will be having a barbecue. Inside we'll have a jazz band for the evening entertainment.
