Sat 14 May 2005

  • introspection: Matthias has been doing fantastic work on the GObject introspection front. It’s currently in the gobject-introspection module in CVS if anyone wants to play with it. It is already mostly functional, if a bit untested. He added libffi support this week, meaning that g_function_info_invoke() now works.

    For those who haven’t been following this project, this is really exciting news. The introspection framework will give us the ability to find out what objects, functions and methods are available in a given library. Theoretically, a significant chunk of the work in a language binding can disappear when this lands. Additionally, libraries can be bindable without writing explicit bindings. It can also be used by glade-style applications to handle new libraries.

    To test it further, jdahlin started doing bindings for python, and I added the metadata to libpoppler. We’ve been able load in much of the poppler’s API into python, shaking out quite a few bugs along the way. The next step is to put together some working python bindings. We should be able to get something functional pretty soon.

  • evince: The latest version is pretty darned nice. We hit a lot of the initial features that we want, and it’s looking really sexy. We’ve gotten some great external patches, and there are a couple more good ones in the works.

    I started writing the presentation mode a couple weeks ago, and it turned out to be a lot less fun than I thought it was going to be. It wasn’t really clear how many pdfs in the wild are actually used as presentations, and it seemed an awkward fit with the rest of the interface. It also is going to require a pretty big restructuring of some of the code.

    Just when I was putting it down and moving on, a powerpoint renderer appeared! This makes it much easier to justify spending time on this code. I haven’t seen a patch yet, but I can’t wait.

  • weather: Inexplicably, for five weekends in a row, we’ve had rain on both Saturday and Sunday. My grass is growing out of control, and I haven’t been able to cut it yet. There have been nice days during the week in April, just not on the weekends. I want a refund!

  • sports: I watched Jeff Weaver take a no-hitter into the seventh inning tonight. Regretfully, as with all other games I’ve seen, it was broken up when Horacio Ramirez hit a double. One of my life-goals is to catch no-hitter from start to finish, and I seem no closer today to that goal. I really enjoy watching a pitching dual, and keep hoping that I’ll catch that most magical of games.

    In the eighth, it fell apart for both pitchers as the Braves hit a grand slam and the Dodgers responded in kind. The Dodgers win, 7-4.

Sat 24 Jul 2004

  • mime: Dave Camp, Ray Strode and I spent last week struggling with the MIME system. We made some headway (or at least managed to get a release out). Next week, we tackle monitoring. And fixing bugs. And ABI problems.

  • shadows: After chatting with Matthias last week, I decided to try to put together a visual index for the GTK+ docs. The current index is quite overwhelming, and not that useful. This would simply be an image of widgets linking to their location in the docs. I wrote a quick little program based on the hig-shooter/screenshooter to take these screenshots on Friday and put up some shots at http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/viogw/

    I haven’t written the index yet, and indeed, I should do a few more widgets before putting it up. We might want to also include a screenshot in the header of each widget page.

    Anders also contributed a drop shadow routine giving a nice appearance to the images. I took the shadow code, and added it to gnome-panel-screenshot (bug #148367). I need to update the hig-shooter next.

  • sports: What a Wild Red Sox game on TV today.

  • drinks: Zana made a gallon of sweet tea earlier this week. It was great to drink while working on the MIME code. She rocks!!

Fri 06 Jul 2001

  • kite: I got to fly my kite!!!! It wasn’t very windy, so I got to practice low speed flying. It was very tough to keep in the air, as it continually stalled and fluttered down. I managed to get Edward to fly it for a while, too. He thought it was pretty cool. Tomorrow we’re going to Ocracoke Island — with some luck I can fly it again then.

  • sports (windsurfing): My dad and I tried windsurfing today. I hadn’t been in many years, when I did it in Mission Bay with the Readheads. We were pretty incompetent, but managed to get the hang of it eventually.

  • definitions (hang of it): In this case “hang of it” means we were able to go forward pretty well, with a minimum of time spent in the very warm water. We were unable to tack very well, though, as we kept getting further and further away from the beach chairs.

  • tennis (wimbledon): All of the people I was cheering for lost today (though I think I have a mild preference for Henman, and he’s winning.) Suck.

  • book: While not windsurfing, I read the Tailor of Panama. I’m having trouble associating with such a congenital liar, though.

Sat 26 May 2001

  • doggy: Stinks. Managed to get into something outside recently. I’ve shampooed him four times too…

  • sports: Watched the Lakers destroy the Spurs with Zana tonight. It was pretty fun. I thought Tim Duncan was cooler then that, though…

  • hacking: Wrote a small screenshooter for GNOME inspired by Havoc’s post. I found what I think is a bug in gnome-print along the way.