The Wanting Comes in Waves

so, we’re finally free to show what we’ve been doing for the past six months:

it’s been a great ride — and it’s just getting started. we’ve been pushing Clutter forward and center of an entire platform user experience, and it was up to to the task to a degree that excited me, and made me incredibly proud.

the Moblin 2.0 UI is also one of the reasons we delayed the 1.0 release — the other being that we wanted to be confident in the API, since we’re going to be committing to it for the next two to three years. the wait is almost over: we’re planning a 1.0 release of Clutter by the end of May ((hopefully, it’ll all be fixed by that time :-) )). prepare yourself to have muchy more fun with Clutter!

The Hazards of Love

while I’m rebuilding my jhbuild setup in order to roll out gnome-utils 2.27.1 ((hopefully before the cut-off time for the 2.27.1 release)) I started pondering on a couple of questions:

  1. why are we still shipping the dictionary applet?
  2. and, more importantly: why are we still shipping a DICT protocol client?

okay, I wrote them both — and I was just trying to save them from the horrid death-by-code-rotting fate they were condemned to — but at the time I did not stop and consider why ((the software engineering and programming challenge were, foolishly, all I was interested in; I was young and eager to prove myself)).

who in their right mind would still use a DICT client — when it’s not perfectly clear ((go on, look at the two dictionary providers we install with gnome-dictionary, and consider that those two have been the same since 2.12, that is seven development cycles ago)) that only a few DICT servers are alive enough to be useful, and mostly for the english-speaking only world?

so, I ask the interwebs: what kind of electronic dictionary do you commonly use when you need one? do you use Wiktionary and Wikipedia? do you use another web service ((with a public API, hopefully))? or do you use something local, with files you update semi-regularly? what do you use when you need to translate something?

I’d like to address this issue during the 2.27 cycle because I don’t want to let gnome-dictionary end up like gfloppy — a survivor of a different era that only recently we were able to just remove for something far more powerful and useful.

Good for the Soul

today was Free Comic Book Day and Marta and I decided to go to a comic book store and get some new additions to the ever-growing collection we have at home. we opted for Gosh as we read a week ago that none others than Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill would be there to sign the first chapter of the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen installment.

Lego Action Comics #1, by levork — licensed under CC BY-SA

we arrived, admittedly late, but we were absolutely unprepared for the insane queue that was already in place: it went around the entire building. we tried to stay in the queue for some time, but it was clear that we would have had to wait for at least two or three hours in order to get in. albeit very sadly, we decided to get in the store and abandon the quest — drowning the disappointment in sane consumerism.

we got:

  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, volume III: 1910
  • Batman: The Long Halloween, by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale — recommended to all who liked The Dark Knight movie and in general to all the Caped Crusader’s fans
  • 1602, by Neil Gaiman — I only had this in italian but Gaiman’s writing should not be translated
  • Embroideries, by Marjane Satrapi
  • Blankets, by Craig Thompson

all in all, not much of a free but a great comic books day.