Tidbits

Some toys I've had in Ephy tabs for a while:

• Intel's Think Thin laptop
  
• Sony's 10th anniversary T-series
• Plenty of nice Bluetooth gear, for, hmm, software testing

At least the Sony Ericsson and Samsung phones would be useful for gnome-phone-manager testing.

Totem has made it on System76's list of recommended apps for their laptops. The laptops look quite nice on their own right.

After running into some problems with FC6's Firefox, I'm filling in this blog with a copy of Opera with static Qt (quick download, fast install), and noticed their new Speed Dial feature. It's neat, and if someone managed to integrate the HTML version of it in Epiphany, they'll get plenty of free beers at GUADEC.

GUADEC: No smoking

Not me, silly! (last year's diet didn't work out, and I kept my bad habit).



This is just a quick note to say that from the 1st of July this year, you won't be allowed to smoke in pubs, train station platforms, or other places of work.

So:

• Visit the official website to know more about the smoking ban
• Follow the ban (unlike the law makers)
  
• Bring me packs of cheap fags from abroad (it's about 5 quid for a 20-pack of brand cigarettes, or 25g of tobacco)

I know some of you will appreciate the heads-up.

PS: Thanks UncleGogo for the image

Browse device

A complement to the gnome-vfs-obexftp work (most of which is already in James' tree).




All that is in my git repo:
git clone git://cgit.freedesktop.org/~hadess/bluez-gnome.git
Which you can view via the web:
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=users/hadess/bluez-gnome.git;a=summary

I have no idea how git works, so don't be too surprised if it's broken.

Who wants leg surgery?

Thanks Benoît for the link to SUN's JDS patches.

If anyone ships this Totem patch, they get to fix all their bugs themselves. As if X worked that well with threads, they're making all the display locking no-ops. If it hangs, your libraries are broken, and you're just 4 years late fixing it.

Update: Damien kindly posted a link to the original bug report. And it confirmed my above assumption. They have a broken libXi. For reference, the original Totem bug report.

MacOS X can suck loads too

That's what I got when testing QuickTime's helpers when a codec isn't supported (which happens fairly often). It doesn't ooze ease-of-use.

Films

Way late on that one, so plenty of films.

• Zodiac: very good, if a bit long, closure definitely not up to par with All the President's Men, or similar journalistic investigation films.
  
• Ma petite entreprise: funny, little French film.
  
• Tenacious D: just as I would have expected it, plenty on fart and rock jokes, for the fans.
  
• The Kind Of Comedy: I was disappointed, hostage situations should have more to them, and we don't feel like De Niro and Bernhard are quite as psycho as they're supposed to be.
  
• Laputa - Castle in the Sky: funny title, way below Howl's Moving Castle in the fairy-tale business.
  
• Goal II: shite, but there's not many footie films about. Goals were ludicrous (anyone remember Olive et Tom?), and plot is more straight forward than an episode of Neighbours.
  
• Sicko: he should do television, it's a thoroughly enjoyable documentary, as usual, but very caricatural in its handling of foreign matters (like the visit of the NHS hospitals, or the discussions with bourgeois American expats in Paris, not mentioning the falling standards and rising debt of those medical systems).
  
• The Last Boy Scout: one of my all-time favourites, one-liners and broken noses.
  
• Shrek 3: I think I laughed once, not sure if it wasn't an acid reflux from the dinner.
  
• This Is England: an interesting view into what the Falklands, Thatcher, and skinheads brought to England in the '80s.
  
• Une Liaison Pornographique: intimist French film, definitely a good late evening film, if you want to question the nature of relationships.
  
• Ghost Rider: Marvel is scraping the barrel, let's hope there's no sequel.
  
• Knocked Up: feel-good comedy, they get together at the end (as if you'd expect it any other way).
  

And quite a few TV series as well:

• ATHF: I want to see the film now!
  
• House MD: went through Season 2 and 3, although the latter muddles a bit in the weird/not so interesting medicine (and probably inaccurate at times), but the dry-wit and soap hold it together.
  
• The Smoking Room and The Book Group: two great sitcoms, without the canned laughter. As per usual, short series, and only 2 seasons each.
  
• Monkey Dust: onto season 3, the Paedo-Finder-General gets on my tits though. Dobsky is still wicked.
  

And, finally, if you want to see some good films, that nth Channel 4 best stuff or other countdown show is nicely accurate: 50 films to see before you die. Time to fill your Netflix account.

Mo' Bluetooth

In Bluetooth++, I showed the cups bluetooth backend enhancements. Marcel is currenly reviewing those, and should merge the code upstream next week. In the meantime, the code is available in bluez-utils-3.11-2.f8 in rawhide.

I've also been working on James' gnome-vfs-obexftp code. While the old code needed you to make hcid launch with the -x option to enable the experimental features (in this case the now-defunct RFCOMM service). Marcel told me it should be using RFCOMM sockets directly, and we now have a version of gnome-vfs-obexftp that works without any tinkering, and is also more reliable, and quicker.


It's also available in the repos for Fedora Core 6, Fedora 7 and rawhide under the name gnome-vfs2-obexftp.