Tech incompatible

I’m starting to think that I’m totally incompatible with technology (bad thing…):

XFree 4.3

Recently, I apt-get upgraded my system (Debian Sid), which made me to upgrade my XFree version to 4.3. Everywhere I read that no changes where needed: the confile was the same. Maybe it’s true, but I didn’t managed to put it working again :_(

Solution: I installed Debian Sarge…

Proposal: make a decent XFree’s autoconfigurator…

Mobile phone

Yesterday night I left my mobile phone plugged to the electric network to refill my battery. When I woke up this morning, I could not make it turn on again. Tried a workmate’s battery and it worked. I’m unsure if the battery didn’t refilled or if this stormy night broke it or if the stormy night broke the transformer or…

Solution: Identify and isolate the problem [work in progress...]

User actions in a Mediateca

Thinking in Mediateca as the whole of multimedia files the user has, I tried to classify all the actions that the user may want to do with his/her files. Here you have my sorting, done in two different ways.

Sorted by the element pipe

• Incoming elements
  • Creating a brand new one
  • Digitalizing some input
  • Downloading from internet
  • Provided by a hotplugged portable device: [ handling hotplugged devices - project Utopia ]
    • CD?
    • MP3 player
    • Videocamera
    • Photocamera
• Manipulating elements
  • Viewing, listening or both
  • Navigating over all of them
  • Searching for any element (conventional search or Storage-like search)
  • Organizing your mediateca (mainly editing metainformation: tags and RDF info)
  • Transforming and editing
• Outgoing elements
  • Burning a CD/DVD (data, music or movie)
  • Printing (if possible) in paper
  • Broadcast (if possible) over the internet
  • Send to somebody
  • Transfer to a site

Sorted by the element used

• Application options
  • New from:
    • Scratch [ New... ]
    • Analogycal source [ Digitalize... ]
    • Digital source [ Extract... / Rip... ]
    • Net [ Download... ] / Handle galeon/epiphany download
  • Playlist / Smart playlist / Inet radio / Stream sources:
    • [ New... ]
    • [ Save... ]
    • [ Load... ]
    • [ Delete... ]
• File options
  • Out
    • View
    • Add to a CD/DVD (data, music or movie). Burn it easily.
    • Print file / Screenshot a movie
    • Send / Broadcast / Transfer
  • Manipulate / transform / edit [ Open with... ]
  • Edit properties / rename

Planning for an article

I read Nat Friedman’s blog entry on January 28th. His thoughts there make me think about a new GUI/Desktop philosophy: ‘Unixing the Desktop’, mainly distinguished by splitting up applications, generating message ports and connecting their inputs/outputs, and -in other side but extremely attached to this- generating, indexing, retrieving and encapsultaing lot of information about what user has (files) and does (applications behaviour).

Linux kernel 2.6

I’m planning to go back to 2.4 kernel, since I’m not used to about the managing of devices of 2.6. Im specially frustrated about (my lack of knowledge of) USB handling and CD burn. I also got the sensation that the apps in charge of doing this aren’t ported yet. Any pointer would be interesting.