Me and my computer have been attending the Docs/DevX hackfest happening in Cambridge, England between Sunday the 25th january and Thursday the 29th january.

As you might see in the picture above, we are all seated in a cozy conference room at the Collabora office. I’m sitting with a whole bunch of people from the #docs team being a busy bee.

Tuesday whereabouts

• Shobha (curiousDTU) has been doing some review of the documentation for GNOME’s games.
• Ekaterina (kittykat) and Shaun (shaunm) have been discussing how new contributors could be attracted to the documentation team. Furthermore they have also discussed Mallard and how the future could look for it.
• Ekaterina has also been fixing application documentation bugs here and there in the vast collection of GNOME’s.
• Peter (pmkovar) successfully converted the translated release video subtitles from *.po and back to *.srt. This means that the GNOME 3.14 release video is now available in 14 different languages! A big thanks goes to the translation team for translating them.
• Jana (jsvarova) got a public GNOME blog and carried on fixing bugs from the cue that were in scope for this hackfest.

I myself have been focusing on rewriting the Getting started with GTK+ tutorial and learning how to make applications with GTK 3 along the way. My patch is currently undergoing review. Furthermore the GNOME Platform demos has gotten an overhaul – which also is something that currently is going under review. Once the patches land, new developers should hopefully have a better experience which is more up-to-date with how we currently recommend making applications with GTK 3.

Hackfest overall

I am writing this blogpost while I’m on my way back to Denmark. The hackfest has been a great experience in many ways. First, it is great to meet with fellow GNOME contributors face-to-face. This hackfest has also been a big learning experience for me in terms of Git, Mallard, GTK3 and C. I have gained knowledge much more rapidly because I have had great people right next to me, ready to answer any questions of mine (+whisky) and review my (initially poorly written) patches. Thanks everyone!

Once I get home I will probably have a few more patches to submit. Afterwards, it is time to work on planning the GNOME 3.16 release video again. I would definitely love to work further with the developer experience again in the future. And I would definitely attend another GNOME hackfest.

Long time no see. While the rest of the internet too has been buzzing, I have been hiding offline in my computer, creating things. The last three months I feel I have produced more media than I have even consumed. It’s been half tiring but double up amazing. Wait no longer, I shall now take you onto a flashback journey of my last three months.

LEGACY

This semester of my studies in Medialogy introduced a course in A/V Production. I and together with six others created a short film with sci-fi theme. It’s been a fantastic learning experience: motion tracking, color grading, compositing – All the VFX I did were done using Blender.

Builder Video

With help from Jakub Steiner, I have worked on a fundraising video for Builder. This is the first video I have made of the fundraising sort, and the first time I have done a video in remote collaboration. An interesting experience! I also encourage everyone to support Christian Hergert in his adventure.

Hack That!

From 2015, programming will be part of the curriculum for pupils in elementary school in Denmark. My study group’s main semesterproject has been the creation of Hack That! – A puzzle game, taking the entertaining approach of teaching programming. The main theme for the semester was image processing. To meet this theme, we constructed a table with a screen. Using OpenCV and C++ we implemented object detection and touch recognition.

In the near future I’ll be attending the Developer Experience Hackfest in Cambridge. I would like to try getting started contributing to GNOME Apps. I want to try using Builder and I want try GNOME Developer Center. In the process I’ll take note of my experience and make observations. If there are other ways you think I can contribute at this hackfest, do come with suggestions.

Secondly the planning phase of the 3.16 release video is approaching and I’m already looking forward to it. So far I feel that each video I create has improved my skills, not just within Blender but also in terms of graphics and design. For that reason I decided to spend my christmas vacation making myself a little commercial home: http://bastianilso.com/. I am now opening up for video commissions as a sidejob to my studies.

I wish everyone a creative 2015.