Olivier! Ca va pas! (la tête)

Yesterday, Olivier Fourdan, of XFCE fame, was busy "compressing" pistachio shells into one metal can, and smoothing the aluminium covers, instead of porting XFCE to libwnck.

Compression in progress

Olivier, all happy with himself

Also, I've been told that Harry says Abracadabra! followed by Expelliadontcare! and that Voldemort is then kaput. But then again, that's just the Catalan speaking. Oh, spoiler. You're too old to read that anyway...

I's got some links

A bunch of post-GUADEC random linking.

Dieguito got me a new hackergotchi photo. He also sent a proper hackergotchi, which I won't post until I can get some vendetta photos of him being carried off the pitch by 4 people after getting real bad cramps. 4 people! Have you seen the size of the guy? Clearly a geek footie game.

Plenty of floods all around the south of the country meant I had to get the train through Euston instead of direct through Reading/Oxford. It was pretty fun seeing all those groups of GUADEC people in different locations: Birmingham New Street platform - "Hey kids", Euston tube station - "Hey kids", Tube to Waterloo.. well, you get the point. That also means I got to see Kate Silverton in wellies.

I kind of fell asleep, that really horrible kind of sleep when you're just feeling as tired and punch-drunk after waking up, and dreamt that I had to organise GUADEC again. I'm sure Paul and Thomas' similar nightmares will be much more vivid than mine.

The online desktop talks also meant I got to put into action (bug filing action for now) my ideas from last summer's "GNOME and Freud" talk. Feel free to comment on the ideas, in bugs 459505 and 458133.

Thanks to Vicky for:

• mentioning that I look like some Big Brother contestant. I don't. Isn't that rubbish finished already anyway? Hopefully they'll get flooded in.
• proof that some people live under a rock. Mmmh, pagan-ilicious.
• providing Daniel with some much needed literature.

I should mention that it was pretty fun picking on Xavier with vuntz, filing dozens of bugs against Empathy: Xavier! Ca va pas!

Still drunk?

Or is there another reason, Danilo?

My 3 GUADEC tasks

I had 3 main tasks when I came to GUADEC.

1. The USB keys
Mandriva provided us with 500 USB keys with a live distro, the usually-printed booklet, and loads of data provided by the sponsors (I quite liked that AMD chose to have compilers on there). If you didn't attend GUADEC, the booklet and data are available in the SVN repo. Shame they only arrived on Tuesday.

2. The football game
Apart from loads of bruises (and a huge nosebleed for me, thanks Glynn for ducking) and a map reading snafu to get there, it was great. For posterity, if you were there, please add the scores from your team and amend the teams if you got moved to another team. (My team finished second again, just one goal in it...). I should add that 3 hours of football is a bit too much.

3. Bluetooth and GNOME talk
Here's my slide, and the intro sound.

Slide 1

It was great not having any slides, but the video should be available very soon. As promised, here's a link to the use cases we have for Fedora.

More GUADEC-y stuff soon.

Tune In, Check This

Bad idea of the week. I went to jump up and down in a field park, in Guildford, to watch the Freestylers (of Raw As Fuck-fame, nothing to do with the Bomfunk MC's that sang Freestylers) at Guilfest.

I enjoyed myself, and talked a load of shite, but I'm knackered, and need to pack to head off in 3 hours for GUADEC. Bleh.

Ed the Duck, I've got your light.

FreeFA tournament 2007: teams sent out

The teams for this year's FreeFA tournament have been sent out by e-mail. You can check them out on the Wiki.

I've tried to balance the teams out, and the worst team in last year's tournament got nearly completely wiped out, which spells good things for the survivors (yeah, it was the whites, 20 to 1 isn't such a good result for your first game).

Be ready at 1 at the Conservatoire, or 1:30 at the ground
(It's on Monday by the way)

If you haven't received a mail, it's probably because you haven't entered your e-mail properly, or have a shite spam filter, so you found it fancy to omit characters in your e-mail address in the Wiki.

If you can't make it, please send me an e-mail, and I'll readjust the teams.

Bemused support in Totem

Should have been a one-day quick hack, ended up taking 2 or 3 if I include the research into the (poor) alternatives.

Behold! Totem now includes a plugin allowing it to run as a Bemused server. This means you can connect your phone/PDA/Palm to Totem, and use it to control playback.

First you'll need Totem SVN trunk, and compile with the Bluetooth library headers installed. More importantly, you'll need a client:

• J2ME phones: JamSE (and not bemused.java, see below)
  
• Palm: BTAmp
• Series 60 and UIQ versions available on the Bemused home page

Install the application (left as an exercise to the reader), connect to Totem, and voila! Ready to control.

Now, a comment on the protocol and the code of the different implementations:

• The protocol disagrees with the native Linux implementation (INFOACK, or INF2ACK for INF2 requests? Null-terminated strings, where?)
  
• Doesn't handle Unicode properly, all over the place, the protocol uses NULL characters strings as end of strings, which breaks UTF-8
• More protocol problems, what happens with empty playlists is a mystery
• bemused.java has problems handling empty playlists, and truncates movie titles when not.
• JAMSE isn't open source, and seems hell-bent on using skins, and different clients for different mobile phones ("skin" size)
• The Totem code is horrible, doesn't handle directory listings (the protocol for directory listings is utter shite, and unworkable), leaks all over the place, and is a security risk (seriously).

That said, the competition isn't that great either, as it doesn't even run (although I just notice that my e-mail was actually answered, but didn't get to my inbox). I guess I'll be looking into Remuco soon.

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.

Paul Smith isn't that stripey

A couple of weeks ago I went to a leaving-do. It was Paul's do. I play football with the guy, and I didn't realise the event it was until I saw his name on an e-mail. He's Paul Smith!

And he isn't that stripey.



We also have a running contest. We need to lob him when he's in goal. I'll have another go tonight at the old-timers' footie match.

More stripes from everywhere.

The Italian fridge by excellence.

And the stripes generator. Fabulous.

Bluetooth++

Bluetooth (and Bluez especially) is such a pleasure to work with compared to old crummy non-standard protocols. With this little patch, the printers show up directly in system-config-printer, and in the CUPS web interface. Whoohoo!

Je devrais avoir su mieux

Thanks John for providing me my pickup lines (via Google's translate feature).

I did watch some half-decent, and some crummy films:

• The Aristocrats, some pompous unknowns, but also some very good actors/stand-up comedians. For the late nights in front on the sofa, with the laptop where it should be (that's on your lap).
  
• White Chicks, I'm afraid to say I laughed, it's funnier than anything Eddy Murphy wish he'd done in the past ten years (minus Shreks). Actually, I looked at the filmography and it's 19 years since Coming to America.
• Babel, I remember being torn between this film and Blood Diamonds when both came out at the same time at the cinema. The latter was a better film to watch at the cinema, but Babel stands up on its own as a character movie. I think I set my expectations too high, still good though.
• Idiocracy, I can see why it went direct to video here, it's not worth showing in the cinema. This is no Office Space. Time for Starbucks!
  
• Spider-man 3, oh the expected disappointment. I was pressured into watching it by a super-hero lover that didn't read the reviews. Read the reviews, kids! It's for your own good!
• L'Empire des Loups, a horrid pile of crud. Looks like a Luc Besson-produced film, and certainly smells like it (but isn't one, despite how the saying goes). Ewww!
• The Krays, just a film to polish my accent, a half-decent cock-e-ney gangster film. You're no Italian Job, mai love.
• My Super Ex-Girlfriend, a film for the evening, with a few good belly laughs. At least, unlike Eddie Murphy, Ivan Reitman made something half-decent after the eighties with this one.
  
• And the best for last, Flushed Away, during which I felt just a little bit of wee come out. Especially when the frogs are called into "Action". I just love it. Rent it, buy it. I think I'll watch it again now. No I shouldn't. But I COULD! It's that good...
  

Yay, less code

GTK+ now contains the old BaconVolume widget, called GtkVolumeButton. I hope we get GTK+ 2.12 for GNOME 2.20, so that Rhythmbox, Sound-juicer, Totem, Banshee, etc. can use the widget without cut'n'pasting bacon-volume.[ch].

Useless screenshot (you have to try it to believe it)

Many thanks to Ronald for writing the widget in the first place, and Matthias and Christian for the code reviews.

Licences and copyrights

A couple of problems have recently cropped up in the latest development of Totem, and we've tried our hardest to solve them.

One problem was that some files contained the exception to allow the linking of proprietary GStreamer plugins, but the addition of that exception wasn't agreed upon by the copyright holders.

This was the case of the plugins system (fixed), and the sidebar widget (fixed as well). The nautilus properties page was a draw. If we make it GPL with an exception, it wouldn't work anyway, as nautilus is GPL, and the properties page is linked directly in nautilus. The plan is to write a D-Bus helper, which would allow us to avoid hangs when checking the properties of some file.

Those relicencing was what kept me from making a release for 2.19.x, but it's sorted now. Many thanks to the copyright holders that allowed this to happen.

Ooh, free games

Totem bug reports had mentions of free games that look of good quality. There's Tremulous, and Battle of Wesnoth. Look neat, and both are in the Fedora repo.