Hard Drive Spindown
To reduce the noise generated by my NAS device (a LinkStation hacked to run Debian) I'm using hdparm -S 120 (spindown after 10 minutes). This seems to work, but now I'm getting this when (I think) it spins back up:
Jan 31 10:29:22 localhost kernel: hda: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Jan 31 10:29:22 localhost kernel: hda: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
Anybody know why this is, and if I can stop it? I'd ignore it but smartd mails me every time it happens...
Sound Juicer "J'd Up To The Boom" 2.13.4
Sound Juicer "J'd Up To The Boom" 2.13.4 is out. Tarballs are available on burtonini.com, or from the GNOME FTP servers. Bug fixes:
- Rebuild the pipeline after every track to fix a crash in GStreamer
- Unlock the drive door before ejecting
- Add GTK category to the desktop file
- Update bacon-message-connection
Translators: Adam Weinberger (en_CA), Ales Nyakhaychyk (be), Ankit Patel (gu), Clytie Siddall (vi), Evandro Fernandes Giovanini (pt_BR), Francisco Javier F. Serrador (es), Funda Wang (zh_CN), Gabor Kelemen (hu), Ignacio Casal Quinteiro (gl), Ilkka Tuohela (fi), Jean-Michel Ardantz (fr), Kjartan Maraas (nb, no), Lasse Bang Mikkelsen (da), Theppitak Karoonboonyanan (th), Tino Meinen (nl).
NP: Gorillaz, Gorillaz
Blog Comments
This morning before work I hacked up a few Pyblosxom plugins to do word blacklisting and a basic Turing test on comment posters. The blacklist currently only contains 'phentermine', 'poker', 'xanax', and 'viagra', but that should filter out 90% of the comment spam. For the rest, the Turing test asks the poster to add together two small numbers. The lazy bit is that these numbers are hard-coded at the moment, I'll add that later...
Hopefully I haven't broken something and if people pass these tests then comments actually work, if not the please email me.
I'll release the plugins later this week when I've added documentation and ensured they work.
NP: In Between Dreams, Jack Johnson
Devil's Pie Bugzilla
There is now a Devil's Pie product in the GNOME Bugzilla, so any bugs can be filed there instead of sending me a mail (which I'll then forget about). Thanks to the super-rad Bugzilla upgrade, the summary page is pretty useful.
NP: Dial 'M' For Monkey, Bonobo
Devil's Pie Tutorial
On Xlife there is a brief tutorial on Devil's Pie. I should merge it into the README and add a reference for the actions at some point, but it's a good start.
NP: A Rush Of Blood The The Head, Coldplay
Sound Juicer "Look In The Stars And Search For The Answer" 2.13.3
Sound Juicer "Look In The Stars And Search For The Answer" 2.13.3 is out. Tarballs are available on burtonini.com, or from the GNOME FTP servers. Only one change here:
- Port to GStreamer 0.10
Thanks to Tim-Philipp Mueller and James Livingston for helping me here. This needs lots of testing, there are bound to be many regressions that need hunting and fixing. Everyone grab it now!
Sound Juicer 2.13.3 (pre-release)
I've completed an initial port of Sound Juicer to GStreamer 0.10, and have made a tarball which can be downloaded here. There is one small problem with it... playback doesn't work. There is probably a simple mistake in the code somewhere, but I'm tired and thought I'd open this up to the Many Eyes of the Internet.
The first person to fix CD playback will get a huge thank you. The first person who fixes seeking and time display (which I hear will be broken) will get a really large thank you. Download my pretties, and find my bugs!
Leftie?
Thomas wonders if I'm really a leftie, or a capitalist swine. Well, 99% of my music collection is only on CDs, but I must admit to having 5G of MPEG4 music on my iPod... Maybe when the Linux on iPod project has working power management I'll re-encode it all to Ogg Vorbis.
NP: Groove Salad, Soma FM
Weakness
On the whole I'm an organic, fresh, free-range, no-MSG, tree-hugging leftie kind of guy. I prefer Marks and Spencer's Red Leicester and Spring Onion crisps as they contain potato, oil, cheese and onion. When I buy chicken it's free-range. Eggs are always free-range, and the fact that the supermarkets still sell "value" eggs upsets me. This weekend in a "top 10" conversation, I discovered that I have several weaknesses:
- Nik-Naks (Rib 'n' Saucy)
- Super Noodles (Mild Curry)
- Jelly Babies
More MSG, artificial flavourings and additives than you can shake a stick at. Please say I'm not alone... or am I just weak-willed?
In other news, Henry is three months old today. He is all jabbed up now so can finally leave the house, walks are fun (for certain definitions of fun that is) as he continually pulls on the lead and is obsessed with cars driving past. So far we're averaging two random people talking to us about Henry on every walk...
Sound Juicer "If Not Now" 2.13.2
Sound Juicer "If Not Now" 2.13.2 is out. Tarballs are available on burtonini.com, or from the GNOME FTP servers. Lots of changes here:
- Fix handling of multiple albums (David Mandelberg)
- Handle G_FILENAME_ENCODING (Colin Leroy)
- Add Generic Name to the desktop file (Matthias Clasen)
- Correct multiple-artist data imported from FreeDB (Bastien Nocera)
- Remove leading periods when generating filenames
- Add a Submit menu item to open the MusicBrainz web page (James Hensbridge)
- Set the MusicBrainz proxy from gnome-vfs
- Cache MusicBrainz metadata
- Add support for the MusicBrainz "sortable name" attribute (Peter Oliver)
- Make the Preferences dialog non-resizable, and fix layout
- Save the main window size (using the rocking libgconf-bridge)
- Change keybinding for Next/Previous, to avoid stomping Paste
- Remove CDIO version check
- Set default window icon
- Protect against NULL drives (Marco Barisione)
- Fix warnings with new libglade (BN)
Go testers go!
NP: Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman
Sound Juicer with GStreamer 0.10
I just committed to CVS (on the SJ_GSTREAMER_10 branch) an initial port to GStreamer 0.10. There is no playback functionality yet (patches welcome!) but ripping should work, and should be faster too. Everyone running GNOME 2.13, please switch to this branch and give it a go!
Webcam
This week I gave in and bought a cheap webcam (a Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks Deluxe or something), primarily for the upcoming OpenedHand VOIP service (update: this is not a public service, just SIP addresses for OH employees!), but also to record what Henry is up to when we leave (we want to know how long he cries for when we go out). Happily it worked straight out of the box with Ubuntu Dapper (using the spca5xx module):
It works well in GnomeMeeting too, so all I need now is a good simple tool to record from the webcam to disk, ideally in Ogg Theora. Any suggestions? A GStreamer pipeline would probably do the job for now, as I can wrap that up in a nice Python UI if I need to.
NP: Storm, Heather Nova
VCS Killer App
I've been wanting something like bzr shelve for CVS and Subversion for a long time. Now that it exists for bzr I am very tempted to join Colin in trying to make a generic version...
Toshok's vCard Parser
Toshok: as you are obviously proud of your vCard parser in evolution-data-server, how about going back into e-d-s for a minute and reviewing a patch which makes it twice as fast. Thanks!
Additions
New year, new colleagues: Iain Holmes and Tomas Frydrych joined Opened Hand this week. It's been great to watch Opened Hand expand over the months as when I joined I was the second employee. I think we're a pretty great team now, Matthew has done well!
