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Planet GNOME

Filed under: GNOME — Thomas @ 15:28

2008-07-02
15:28

I really feel bad for Karl and Zeeshan. These guys obviously want to be censored but can't get get their ass censored out of a brown paper bag. They've called foul twice in a week now and after long and painstaking investigation it turns out it's likely there was no malice at all involved. None!

So, Jan Schmidt - I call on you to seriously censor these guys somewhere. Be a pal!

By the way, if anyone is seriously forming a committee at GUADEC to handle p.g.o moderation, I'm turning in my Foundation Membership badge. You know what to do if you want me out.

GUADEC fights

Filed under: Conference,GNOME — Thomas @ 15:22

15:22

People have wondered if there will be more fighting at GUADEC.

I can happily announce that all parties involved have done their utmost to make sure it won't happen again. I've decided to go to Europython in Vilnius instead, and Johan has gone back to being a professional vagabond and will only arrive in Europe after GUADEC finishes.

We can't make any promises not to kick each other's ass (especially since we're again working on the same project), but at least none of you will be forced to watch it, or see a beautiful sand logo get destroyed.

Random updates

Filed under: Belgium,Conference,GNOME,GStreamer,Life,Spain — Thomas @ 11:59

2008-06-24
11:59

Looks like I caught part of the flu my Barcelonan flat mate was having. It started - as these things usually do - on Friday evening. My psyche knows when it's the weekend and when I want to relax, and schedules diseases breaking out accordingly. I'd feel guilty about getting ill on working days, I'm sure.

We had a BBQ planned on Sunday with our old sport club - our yearly meeting. A simple flu wouldn't stop me from having it, even though we took over organizing it from the original instigator (and used Doodle to do so - do yourself a favor and use it every time you're planning something with friends to avoid fifteen thousand mails going "I can't on that date, how about that date" - I wish I had thought of that site)

BBQ was excellent, save for the fact that the ten-year-old-but-still-in-a-box-deluxe-barbecook was missing a whole bag of nuts and bolts. Peter to the rescue by going to the hardware store and getting some basics to at least allow us to have the BBQ itself working. And affected as I was by the flu apparently I didn't bring home charcoal but vineyard branches - not a good fit for the barbecook.

But all was well after a short wait and the meat was excellent, as was the company. And we even got some sports done.

Today being San Joan in Barcelona - my least favourite holiday, 6 year old kids running around at night shooting off fireworks without regards for their own or my life - I decided to stay home this week. I'm happy I decided to stay here because it's no fun travelling while ill. This also allows me to focus on setting up our new virtualized development platform at work, because we're working on a near-seamless migration from our old platform code to the new version. Flipping the big red switch just isn't a responsible way of migrating customers anymore.

Kristien took advantage of me staying to work from home this week and went out yesterday to get a new kitten. His name's Tonie (staying with the cat meme we started with Lunya), he's mostly black but with white paws, a white jaw, and a bit of white across his face. As far as kittens go, this is one of the more active I've seen - up and about and trying to break free from his temporary "get-used-to-a-new-place" area in two hours. Usually a kitten takes about a day hiding behind some couch in a corner to adjust. Also, this kitten hardly made a peep while Kristien drove him home - an hour car ride and only six meows. Lunya would wail like a baby the whole drive.

Anyway, I'm sure you all know kittens are cute and heartbreaking. This one's up and about and alternating between discovering this new place and resting on my lap.

In the end I've decided not to go to GUADEC this year, and go to Europython instead. It's not really a very calculated or well-thought out decision - I was hung up on deciding ever since I realized they were on at the same time. I probably would have booked for both months ago if they had been separate.

It's not that I don't want to go to Istanbul - I do, but holy shit, is it expensive - and it's not that I don't want to see all my GNOME friends again. I'm interested in the debate our dear rabble rouser has started, though I doubt people will get anywhere on that.

Maybe it's simply fatigue - I have to agree with some people that there isn't that much variety compared to other years looking at the schedule. Possibly it's also the fact that I haven't contributed much of anything at all to GNOME over the last year. I'm sure that's largely due to my focus having changed a lot. My involvement in GStreamer as well has waned over the last year, for various reasons I'll save for a possible other post.

Europython was fun last year, it's nice to see a different community interact once in a while. Breaks the entrenchment one gets into. It's also more work-related - we're looking for people with Python skills, so it makes more sense to go to Europython.

In the end, it wasn't a single thing that made me decide, it's really just a flip of a coin decision, and I'm sure I'll regret it somewhere down the line. Chosing is losing.

So, with my birthday coming up (and now having decided to have it in Vilnius) I've cleaned up my Amazon wish lists and ordered myself some goodies off of it already. Which leads me to wonder two things related to Amazon.

First of all, why does Amazon even *have* different frontend sites for different regions ? And why do these sites not interact in any way at all ? Every link on the web to an amazon item are always to the US version, so I always end up having a US wish list, though it is weird to order stuff from the US if it's also available on any of their regional sites.

Which leads me to point two - how is it still possible that ordering the same stuff from the US just comes out huge chunks cheaper than ordering it from the .uk or .fr sites ? And that's even when I choose priority air shipping. Shouldn't it be a hell of a lot cheaper to ship from their European warehouses ? Is this just the weak dollar ? Should I delete my UK wish list entirely anyway (which I only started for DVD's because of region coding and PAL vs NTSC) ?

Anyway, enough influenced posting for today. Time to do some non-work work.

GNOME HIG question

Filed under: GNOME,Question — Thomas @ 08:20

2008-06-18
08:20

I don't ask enough programming questions, so here goes one.

I have a glade file with a vtable with 3 rows, and each row contains another table, with 2 columns and a bunch of rows. It shows key-value pairs. I've put them in a table so that I can hide table #2 or table #3 in certain conditions.

Now, the second column of each of these tables is not aligned with the other second columns of these tables. Instead, I would like to follow the HIG and "Minimize the number of alignment points in your window" the way is done in this example with "General" and "Action" lining up, or the top 4 dropdown/entry boxes and the icon entry box.

Anyone know how to do this while still allowing me to have 3 separate tables to group my key/values ?

Update: somehow I forgot about GtkSizeGroup (shows me right for hacking at 7 in the morning) and people put me in my place. So, it doesn't look like glade-2 supports this. Anyone know why ? Do I need to write code to read my glade file and put each label in the size group ?

GNOME’s fast user switching

Filed under: GNOME — Thomas @ 11:52

2008-06-05
11:52

is a great feature for my home computer, where Kristien uses it when I'm not there.

But the applet insists on taking up 20% of my top bar just because there is no way to have it not display my full name. I'm pretty sure this used to be configurable somewhere and I could ask to only show the pictures - really, that's quite enough for the two of us, Kristien can tell the difference between me and her from the picture.

But even besides that, who the hell needs their name in the panel ??? If it were to change as often as the time did, I could see the logic. But. It's. My. Name. If I ever get to forgetting it, I'm sure I' ll be more busy wondering why I am holding an oval object with buttons in my right hand, and banging my head against the rectangle with knobs because I've forgotten how to type.

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