Present Perfect

Gnome 2

I'm starting to love Gnome. I used to not care either way, but Gnome is a really good project, with lots of interesting people and a pretty good spirit overall. Fate might have tripped me over the other way but it didn't. Everyone seems to be going into bug fixing frenzy, and it's good that some people are trying to keep the big picture. One of those is gman, and I just love the way he uses his entries to spotlight some of the Gnome hackers doing great work. It's a simple way to recognize people doing hard work. So here's my turn : Glynn, you rock for motivating all these hackers into making Gnome the best it has ever been.

And I finally did a worthy contribution to it too : I added configuration options for the tasklist widget, setting a minimum and maximum size. This fixed a bug in it for me (I love sliding panels and the tasklist didn't show up because the sliding panels shrink automatically to fit) and it also implemented a feature others have requested. It took a few sends across to Alex, the panel author, but in the end got polished enough to be generally useful. Now just need to fix it up for vertical panels too. So all of you planning to use Gnome 2, be afraid : You'll end up using some of my code !

It actually feels good having done a worthwhile contribution. Have to think about doing this some more. It's also nice to read through good solid code (libwnck) - or at least from my point of view good and solid ;) - and be able to work from that. Funny though how hp uses 2-space indented code. Personally I prefer that as well - the argument that if you use 8-space indented code, it will show up a lot quicker that your code is badly structured, doesn't ring true very well to me. Especially when, in this time of using other people's libs a lot (A Good Thing), you end up having pretty long function names and a lot of code in Gnome ends up going over 80 chars wide. That's a lot more important to me in any case. Keep your code under 80 chars wide.

GStreamer

The democratic process sometimes takes its toll. We are all relatively friendly towards each other at any time. This might be holding back the events changes we all know we need to make. Events is what will allow us to do all sorts of cool and necessary stuff, like seeking, metadata, stream information, ... It seems the new hackers working on it have lost steam and interest in it because the decision process is so slow, while the older hackers probably have seen this all before and just slowly work on their implementation. At least Wim tells us that his seeking starts to work better and better for more media types. I guess we will just have to trust their good judgment ;)

Music

Well, I'm happy people certify me because of mentioning the Breeders, and that Baud remembered to get tickets for them because of me, but I'm bummed because it was sold out in Belgium before I even knew they were coming ! I want to see Kim Deal damnit !

On the plus side, saw a great concert last week by Six. By Seven ! This is one of the few bands in current music that is still able to spark my intrest. They opened up with "Another Love Song", a song proving that the reason drum'n bass tends to suck so much for me is that the instruments do not have a live feel. Just listen to this track, and how it is drummed, and you know how drum'n bass is supposed to sound to be any good. Only two drawbacks : the set was too damn short, and in spite of the list manager's promise they didn't bring any lovely I O U (heart) t-shirts ! So I harassed Chris, the singer, about it, and he felt bad and gave me his e-mail addy so I could mail him my address and he was going to send me one. I hope he follows through - anyone want to bet on it ?

Star Wars

One of Belgium's TV stations has broadcasted the Special Editions of Episodes IV to VI for the last three Sundays in preparation for the Attack of the Clones release. It was good to see them all again. Empire strikes back is still the best. And I don't care much for the added scenes - the new graphics just don't flow well with the old ones at all. It did look though like the last scene in Return of the Jedi, with the fireworks in an old city, was added to fit in with Episode II. It looks like the same city anyway. Here's hoping that the new movie will approach some of the first three's level.

My girlfriend and I had a few really big arguments over the weekend and she had hoped to talk about it during Star Wars. Hm, not a good way to get a guy to talk ;) Afterwards I was able to lighten the mood though by convincing her to do a Darth Vader imitation - I pinched her nose and cupped her mouth, asked her to breathe in and out heavily and say either "Luke ... I am your father" or "You do not know the power of the dark side." It took her at least seven minutes before she stopped giggling and was finally able to say the second sentence. I tried to convince her I was heavily turned on by it, but she didn't believe me (and rightly so, in case you were wondering). It's not because we managed to have a laugh that the arguments are settled though. I'm saying that because someone pointed out to her that I posted stuff here and she started reading it and we actually had an argument because I didn't mention her here at all ! So there you go girl. Anyone else here had arguments because of that ?

Life

jdub: my girlfriend solves the underwear conundrum pretty well by just wearing my underwear most of the time when she wakes up after sleeping over. It blends in really well with my underwear lying about for obvious reasons.

Gnome 2 I'm starting to love Gnome. I used to not care either way, but Gnome is a really good project, with lots of interesting people and a pretty good...