Present Perfect

I have yet to try Second Life myself (it's for work, honest - I need to see whether we can stream out of the box to it!), but the next version of the Linux client will use GStreamer.  The fact that I can't recall seeing any linden labs email addresses asking questions on the list is probably a testament to how far GStreamer has come over the years.  They don't even need to ask questions anymore!

In unrelated news, this afternoon a single one of our customers managed to peak over 1 GBit/sec on our platform.  Kaching.  Next stop, 5 Gbit/sec.

I have yet to try Second Life myself (it's for work, honest - I need to see whether we can stream out of the box to it!), but the next...

At GUADEC, someone tripped very violently over my Belkin travel power supply for my laptop.  I don't know who, the guy was away before I had a good look at him, mumbling excuses.  This was at the spidery floor that was Etap's.

I couldn't get it to work anymore, so I quickly bought a replacement travel power adapter made by Trust.  It worked fine in Belgium.  This morning I plugged it in at work, then plugged it into my laptop, and after ten seconds it made a loud pop.  Now the blue light on the power supply won't come on anymore.  Sigh.

What's worse, since then, my laptop doesn't detect the power cable plugged in either - obviously not with the busted power supply, but it also does not work with the IBM one for this laptop.  I can still boot the laptop, since I have some charge left in the battery, so I don't think it's the motherboard as such.  I opened up the laptop completely, removing the screen, so I could tighten the power connector screw, but it didn't help.

So, intarweb, anyone else ever had this problem, and what should I do to fix it ? Is this a case of "take out the motherboard and resolder the connector ?"

At GUADEC, someone tripped very violently over my Belkin travel power supply for my laptop.  I don't know who, the guy was away before I had a good look at...

Alvaro, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. But your post makes zero sense. You saw some article on Slashdot about Linus possibly calling someone a hypocrite, and you use it to attach your OpenSolaris wagon to it.

For god's sake, do some research. It's a SlashDot post ! Did you actually see Linus call the GPLv3 authors hypocrites ? The Slashdot article links to some other article that claims Linus said something in a post. The article doesn't even link to the post it talks about, instead it links to the mirror page for the kernel.

For good reason - the actual post does not say something like "I say GPLv3 authors are hypocrites." The article author is misinforming on purpose, steering people away from what Linus actually said, to peddle his wares - in this case, his article. And it's working, because smart people like you are just parrotting him verbatim, then peddling their own wares - in this case OpenSolaris. People with their own agenda will take whatever anyone with some weight in the community says and take it out of context. You should be smarter than that.

Alvaro, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. But your post makes zero sense. You saw some article on Slashdot about Linus possibly calling someone a...

Europython is turning out to be quite interesting. It takes some effort to start talking to people given that I know relatively few here, but I'm learning lots of new stuff. But I'll save more for some other post.

Right now I want to focus on the more amusing combination of Linux and hotels. So here's the thing. The guys from Tuxdroid are here, selling their little Tux robots. For those who don't know, this is a small robot with text-to-speech that can flap its wings, make its eyes glow blue, and run around, as well as serve as speaker. I'm sure there's other stuff I'm missing. They're selling these babies for 79 euros, and the company is Belgian. They have a bunch of code available to program the thing (radio-controlled with a USB dongle), and it has a bunch of stuff in python. So far, so cool.

So here's the thing. I plug Tux into the power socket to charge him. When you start charging it, it says "Hello" and flaps its wings. In the hotel room, when I leave the room, I have to take the card out of that socket that controls whether there is power at all in the room (which is annoying in hotel rooms, because it means you can't leave your laptop charging while you are away.)

So, what happens when I come back to the room at night, get in, and put the card in the socket ?

A little bird flapping its wings and shouting "Hello" because it's getting fresh power juice. Too cute.

I'm wondering how I'm going to lug this thing around in my backpack for the next set of flights...

Europython is turning out to be quite interesting. It takes some effort to start talking to people given that I know relatively few here, but I'm learning lots of new...

is when you set your alarm for 4.40 in the morning, because you've ordered a taxi to take you to the airport for an early flight, try hard to go to sleep at a reasonable hour but lie awake for too long, then get a phone call at 3.40 because there is some problem with Telefonica that affects a bunch of customer and when you log in and check up on it it's been resolved on its own, and you have an extra hour to kill but you feel like crap.

I wish I had that amazing ability others have to sleep during the day.  Whenever I do that I feel like crap for the rest of the day...

is when you set your alarm for 4.40 in the morning, because you've ordered a taxi to take you to the airport for an early flight, try hard to go...