The Gig that was Too Big?

Like much of the world, I was glued to the Live 8 proceedings over the weekend, mostly the London concert. FWIW, I think the Murrayfield gig on Wednesday will probably be much better, partly because it’s in a stadium (sprawling park gigs never really sustain much of an atmosphere), and partly because the line-up looks a bit more to my taste– there are certainly a lot fewer people on the bill that I’d just like to slap.

Politics really isn’t my thing, so I’ll stick to my impressions of the music that was on offer at Hyde Park.

Acts who were better than I expected: Stereophonics (surprisingly good vocals), Madonna (nice choir– shame about the face), Mariah Carey (actually sounded like she could sing, even if she’s as mad as a box of frogs), Keane (generally a pale imitation of Travis, but performed better than Fran and Co on the day), and The Who (could all still have been 21 if you’d shut your eyes).

Acts who disappointed: Paul McCartney & U2 (for the opening song– Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Dirge hardly got the crowd going รก la Rocking All Over the World), Elton John (didn’t play any of his good ones from his pre-American-accent days), and Pink Floyd (more of a kiss-and-make-up stunt than the anticipated psych rock treat).

Acts who were even worse than I feared: R.E.M. (plumbed yet more depths of stripey blue pretentiousness), UB40 (the reggae equivalent of the Black and White Minstrel Show), Snoop Dogg (reading out some sweary words to a backing track still ain’t music, whatever anyone says) and U2 again (as skin-crawlingly self-important as ever, sound about as authentically northside Dublin as I do, and even David Copperfield would have turned down that dove stunt for being too cheesy).

Everyone else performed much as expected, really. It certainly didn’t have the momentous feel of Live Aid about it (which I have to confess never really caught my attention as a 14-year old at the time anyway– I seem to be one of the few who can’t remember what he was doing that day, other than watching the last hour or two). But it goes without saying that I’d love it to have the desired effect.

Linux cool, Solaris hot

By now you’ve probably read the stories that Sun are ‘cooling down’ their efforts on JDS/Linux. It’s unclear exactly what that means for future Linux releases yet, at least to us lowly engineers. But what does it mean for our involvement with the GNOME community?

If anything, I actually think it’ll increase our involvement. By focusing so hard on Linux for the past couple of years, we’ve probably spent the majority of our time on things like branding and other Sun-specific features, because on the whole, the Linux versions of GNOME and the other products we ship with JDS just work. On the other hand, our approach with the Solaris version has often just been to pull out those bits that don’t work very well on Solaris– sometimes substituting them with existing Java apps, which don’t necessarily integrate as well as they could with the rest of GNOME; other times just losing the feature altogether.

By concentrating more on the Solaris version, we’ll have everyone focused on making those things work properly, not to mention letting loose our cool Solaris 10 tools (like dtrace) on improving performance. We need to make JDS work well on SunRays after all, and that can only benefit everyone.

The engineering team here really seem to be looking forward to this renewed focus… it’s almost a throwback to the days when we first got involved with GNOME, and (with the help of Ximian and Wipro) were knocking our socks off to release 2.0 on Solaris 8. Personally I think those days represent the most productive our interactions with the GNOME community over the past five years, and it culminated in one of the most stable releases of GNOME that I’ve used. Here’s hoping we can do the same again.

Post weekend post


Back in the office today after a long weekend back home in Scotland. Highlight of the trip was the surprisingly-impressive Falkirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift that joins the Union Canal with the Forth & Clyde Canal. It can shift up to eight boats at a time (four in each direction) weighing a combined total of six hundred tonnes, using the same trifling amount of electricity it would take to boil two kettles. The rest is all done with the weight of the water. Clever stuff.


Was nice to get up close and personal with the Forth Bridges again on the way home too… they’re not looking their best at the moment thanks to a few running repairs, but the Forth Bridge itself (that’s the one that carries the railway) is just a stunning piece of engineering, especially given that it’s nearly 120 years old. The Forth Road Bridge is no slouch either– it was the longest suspension bridge in Europe when it opened– but it just doesn’t have the visual impact of its neighbour’s unique cantilever design.

A veritable Christmas-like array of parcels awaited me at my desk when I got back in today, mostly stuff I’d ordered with my birthday money before I left… almost made up for the paltry three cards I got on the day :/ Among the highlights, a decent pair of headphones for my iPod Mini (another birthday acquisition), a PS2 controller with a built-in keyboard that I got cheap off eBay, the Uncle Devil Show CD, and The High Life and Press Gang Series 4 on DVD. (It’s a crying shame that Series 2 is still the only one to feature any commentary from writer Steven Moffat, or anyone else for that matter, given how keen he’s always been to contribute. Hopefully Network will redeem themselves with the fifth and final series, but I’m not hopeful…)

As PLAIN as the nose on your face

NotZed, it’s a fact of usability life that some users will always see what they want (or are conditioned) to see, however hard you try to make them see something else. If it’s only 1 in 10 then let them go and use something they think is better for their job… free software is all about choice, right? If it’s 5 in 10, then try to figure out why they’re not seeing what’s obvious to you because you’ve been working on it every day for the past six months.

FWIW, I actually looked at this dialog a good few times before I saw the Username field too– and I knew it must be there or you wouldn’t be annoyed about it :) My guess is that it’s sometimes being overlooked because the “Server requires authentication” checkbox and the authentication section itself aren’t beside each other. (Paper prototyping is a great way to find out this sort of thing before anything ever hits the screen…)

Accessibility Ra Ra Ra

Just been chatting to Brian about how we can re-invigorate some interest in GNOME accessibility. There seem to be a couple of misconceptions floating around:

  • We don’t hear much about accessibility on the mailing lists any more, and the Accessibility Project webpage hasn’t been updated in a year, so it must be ‘finished’
  • We don’t have to worry about it, because it’s all in billh’s head, and Sun are doing all the work anyway

None of these are true :) While the bulk of the work in making gtk+ accessible is complete, that doesn’t automatically make every application accessible, and especially not if you use custom widgets. And nobody ever bothers to submit high and low contrast versions of their application icons to gnome-themes, for example. The list of currently open accessibility bugs speaks for itself.

We’d be interested to hear what you guys think you need to help you write more accessible GNOME applications. More information on how to test for accessibility? Better API docs? A better understanding of 508 legislation? GOK and Gnoperncius FAQs? More community involvement from the assistive technology hackers? Fire away and we’ll see what we can do.

And you smell like one too

It’s a popular day for birthdays1 among your friendly JDS team today… Laca, our globetrotting release engineer, Robert, our engineering director, and yours truly. Have a good one everybody!

1Although of course most days are, in any modestly-sized group of people… statistics always freaked me out at school.

2That isn’t my my birthday cake, it’s Jorge‘s from a while back– just seemed like an appropriate picture…

Safari? Sa goody! [1]

We took a spin round Ireland’s Eye from Malahide marina with the Sea Safari folks on Saturday. To be honest, there wasn’t nearly as much safari as advertised, just a cursory shufti into a cave on the off-chance that there might be some seals dozing there. But other than that, the hour-long trip was a blast, and the weather was glorious.

Today we were at Croker for our first hurling games of the season… Wexford v Laois and Kilkenny v Offaly. Possibly two of the most one-sided games we’ll see for a while.

1(c) Christoper Biggins Enterprises, 1982