Life is so good, it gets better every day

The GUADEC Effect, Part Three

News hot off the press – Nokia are donating the proceeds of sales for their new device to the GNOME Foundation. Rock and roll!

The GUADEC Effect, Part Two

We even silenced Luis!

Developing GNOME Applications with Java

This article about developing applications in Java is pretty cool. Interesting to see the progression in the GUI toolkits.

The GUADEC Effect

Last nights drinking was Richard’s fault. It’s been a rocking conference though – really great fun, and I think has motivated a whole heap of people. Hopefully I’ll have some photos up when I’m a little less hungover.

I’d like to be the first to congratulate Havoc – really awesome news dude. I guess it’s just another ‘GNOME grows up’ moment.

Travelling Again

Goodbye New Zealand. Hello Germany and Ireland!

Nokia and GNOME

Some Sun guys who don’t read Planet GNOME might be interested in hearing about Nokia’s new Internet Tablet, and creation of a new Maemo community for the development platform.

This is really exciting news – since it uses some of my favorite technology – GNOME, GStreamer, D-BUS, and Debian. I’ll look forward to seeing these guys at GUADEC, although deeply pissed off that I’m supposed to be giving a talk at the same time as them.

Meeting Up

Tim and the GUADEC dudes have worked out a room for us on Saturday 28th at the conference center. We’ll mostly be hanging out, helping with setting up, and talking shop. Drop by if you’re in town and say hi, and maybe we can go on from there to the nearest beer garden!

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away…

Went to see Star Wars tonight at their special midnight showing down in Hoyts, Riccarton – supposedly the biggest screen in New Zealand. In short, it was good. Dark, very dark, and very better than the previous 2 films. But in the end, none of it was Star Wars, except for the last few scenes where you could spot the moons on Tatooine and get a warm fuzzy of memories. It’ll never compare to those times I sat over Christmas and watched the films while they replayed on TV, those times where I ripped open the package of the Kenner figures and played with them all day. A generation gap that I only just experienced. I’ll be happy if I never see another Star Wars film in the cinema – it’s done.

Into the Sardine Can Again

In just over a week, I’m back on the sardine can again flying over to GUADEC in Stuttgart, Germany. After a short 6 days there, I’ll be back on the plane over to Dublin for a short while. Originally I intended to spend just over a week there, catch up with family, friends and work colleagues.

But then Carolyn found out that she has to attend a conference over in Brussels, and then fly direct to another one in Sydney after that. She arrives over in Europe, just as I was about to leave! So I figured I might as well stay over there a little longer, and now over there for 2 and a half weeks. I’ll think about popping over to London for a weekend while she catches up with some friends and family there, to see her just before she hops over to Brussels. So it’ll mean missing more Winter over here, which is probably a good thing!

Just back in time for the first All Blacks vs Lions test match. Priorities, priorities.

TODO: Make GNOME on Solaris Rock aka Where Are You Kernel Developers?

Since I know there’s heaps of people out there reading blogs using GNOME, and the fact that Sun’s a fricken huge company to communicate across, I figure I might as well send a blog request instead.

As I blogged previously I’ve started writing a list of things that we need to make GNOME as featureful on Solaris as it is on Linux. I think it’s important to have a desktop roadmap for Solaris, specifically with kernel enhancements, and more just as importantly to have that available when the OpenSolaris goes live, sometime in the near future. People are going to need ideas for their pet project, right? [grin]

However, I’m a kernel weenie, and I need help since I’ll see things from one angle only. If you have any suggestions or comments, direct them to glynn [dot] foster [at] sun [dot] com. Thanks!