I’ve moved to New York City this week; I’m now living on Cornell medschool campus. Next week, university introduction starts, including a Mets - Philies game and a cafe Wha? visit. And lots of academically relevant stuff, of course *ahem*. I’m looking forward to it. My class looks like a nice bunch of people so far, we get along well.

My bedroom

The past few days were spent buying stuff. A phone, a pillow (auch, no, you cannot sleep without - and it didn’t fit my suitcase), opening a bank account, and lots of mostly similar stuff. I’m pretty much set for the start of the semester now.

Central Park

Coding away

I’ll probably do no coding for a while. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, I’d like to spent all attention on my studies; parts will be hard, and I’d better get good grades. Secondly, I think I need a change of focus. Not only from coding to studying, but also from my many-years GStreamer effort into something else. GStreamer has progressed hugely in the past few years, we can encode in tons of formats, playback pretty much anything, and the latest releases have been very stable. I’ve done what I could to make it all “just work”, and have had very positive feedback on those efforts. I think my goal has been reached.

Lots of applications around still require work, though. I think the GNOME platform is ready for some really kick-ass applications that make it shine. I’d like to see how I can help to make that happen. How about iPod export in Rhythmbox (or Totem)? Media embedding in OO.org (Impress) is still high on my list. There’s probably more. Once I have more free time, I’d like to work on those things.

Jono Bacon, from LUG-radio fame, has published an article on Video Production on the Linux platform, featuring PiTiVi and GStreamer. Go read it!

So, Jeffrey and Ross showed their best sides in a funny misunderstanding, but Jeffrey had some good questions either way. Distributions will do their thing anyway, leacing the question: do the default applications really matter?

• GNOME has no photo-acquiring applications.
• With GNOME’s no-patent clause, can we really argue that we support DVD playback in Totem?
• We have a dozen of audio-CD players, and the only thing we all agree on is that the one considered default has to die. :-).

It probably doesn’t matter. Fedora will turn off the DVD support button either way, and regardless of the default photo app, either Novell will change it to F-spot or Fedora will change it to some non-mono app. So what honour is left for GNOME here? I think the very least we can do is promote our desktop for the few that do use our desktop with defaults (Debian? Gentoo? Arch? Probably some more… Also, let’s not forget jhbuild).
That means to promote one of the CD players that we like (Ross mentioned Sound Juicer and Totem; I’d default to Sound-Juicer since some users will want to rip rather than play, and Sound Juicer allows both), and well, if we think we can validly claim that we support DVD playback, even with all patents involved, we should default to Totem for that, too.

In the end, g-v-m isn’t all that large really, but for those happy few that use our defaults, it is very user-visible. We shouldn’t take it too lightly.

So last week, I went off to Barcelona to visit the other Fluendo guys and do some final meeting before I leave off for New York in two weeks. Can’t deny, it has its charm; going to one of the most beautiful cities of Europe (only seconded by Rome, in my opinion) for work, having a cocktail on the beach, and doing actual useful stuff in between, also. I left my laptop behind (so sorry all, no more DVD work as of this point; I no longer own a DVD drive). I will probably have some less time to spend on GNOME for a short while as my new studies start, so Fluendo has asked Tim to do some of this work, also. Prepare to be stunned by one of GStreamer’s best bugfixers! I’m sure Tim will do an amazing job for GNOME.

Since I’ll be off in a couple of days, I’m currently selling all my household stuff. Basically like the cleaning that you’re supposed to do every spring, but you never get to actually do it. Right now, it goes like this:

“look, there’s my harddisk. It contained my first GNOME checkout ever. I can’t do away with that. No, really, that is special for me.”

(Ok, so there’s also non-geek memories attached to stuff, but you get the idea.) It has to go, all of it. My bed, my stereo, dishes, books, CDs, everything. It’s weird to throw it all away, but you have to. On the positive side, I have a bigger-than-expected appartment in Manhattan waiting for me, and will hopefully have a small amount of money left to furnish it properly when I get there.

Although the change of environment will be huge, I can’t wait. New York is the single most exciting city in the world if you ask me.