The GNOME Developer’s Kit is still alive, thanks to Zhang Sen. My free time has been getting tight, and I am very pleased to have been getting some great help from Zhang. In fact, he is doing the daily maintenance now. I am still wrangling isos and virtual images, and Zhang is doing the daily triage of build failures (the hard work :).
Not only has he picked up the daily maintenance, but he has also converted the recipes to use git. He has also packaged gnome-shell, very cool stuff.
The NC Loco has planned a Jaunty release party at the Flying Saucer in Raleigh next week. If you live close enough to Raleigh, please join us. Let celebrate, Jaunty is going to be a great release.
What: Jaunty Jackalope Release Party
Where: Flying Saucer
328 West Morgan Street@Harrington
Raleigh, NC 27601
919-821-PINT (7468)
When: Thursday, April 23, 2009
Time: 6-9pm (or until we just can’t party anymore)
Please RSVP to akgraner [at] gmail [dot] com so we can let the Saucer know if they need rope off more space or not.
And don’t forget… bring your friends!
I am very excited to see GNOME Journal getting some traction again, come join us and make GNOME Journal great again! Check out Paul Cutler’s post for details.
Tomorrow (April 2, 2009) is the next Ubuntu Hug Day, focusing on xorg-server and xserver-xorg-video-intel bugs. Jaunty is really shaping up to be a great Ubuntu release, but there are still some intel driver related bugs we really want to squash.
If you have a little time to help out, your hug can help improve Jaunty. Here are some stats going into this week’s hug day:
* 49 New bugs need a hug.
* 103 Incomplete bugs need a status check.
* 81 Confirmed bugs need a review.
* 16 Bugs with patches that need to be reviewed.
Remember, every hug counts!
GNOME 2.26 is out, including live demos. We have an assortment of virtual machine formats as well as installable DVD isos. Come and get em’!
Now that we have the message indicator applet in Jaunty, I decided to give pidgin another try as an IRC client. A little background for those that have not had the pleasure of hearing my constant complaining about how pidgin just isn’t an IRC client, I love xchat-gnome for IRC. I have tried pidgin on many occasions, mostly because I would really prefer use a single app for IM and IRC. Pidgin just never felt right to me, mostly because I felt like it was impossible to follow as many channels as I am generally in.
This has changed now, not because pidgin has gotten better at IRC, but because of the message indicator applet. The message indicator grabs notifications from notify-osd that are based on human to human interaction, and stores them in a little applet in the panel that indicates what might need your attention. Currently only evolution and pidgin support it, but hopefully many more soon (gwibber, please gwibber!). Now when people highlight me in a chat, IM or private message me I see the nice little indicator with a star showing it needs attention.
I am very happy to say I can use Pidgin for my daily IRC use… Yay for a single client finally!
I am sure nobody will be surprised to hear that the indicator-applet is included in Foresight as well, just add it to your panel.
No, not Journey the hit band from the 80s… wow that takes me back to damn near (or not that near) the beginning of my journey!
I have spent a wonderful 3 years working at rPath, which ended in January. Having made some great friends at rPath, of which I am thankful, and having had some great experiences too. I will miss my rPath family, but will surely stay in touch. Tomorrow I start the next leg of my journey, with Canonical. I will be a Desktop Integration Engineer, working on the desktop team to integrate the fine work being done by the Desktop Experience team into Ubuntu. This is a very exciting opportunity for me, I have really been doing this for the past 4 years working on Foresight Linux. Taking cool stuff people have been working on and integrating it into a distro for broader consumption.
Over the years working on Foresight I have formed some great relationships with our Ubuntu brothers which has lead me to join their team. Joining the Ubuntu Desktop team will change my day job yes, but it won’t change my role or participation in the other work I do outside of that day job. I will still be maintaining Foresight Linux, the GNOME Developers Kit, PackageKit, and whatever other upstream projects I can cause trouble with.
I am very excited to hear about the new book Jono is working on, The Art of Community. Not only is the topic cool, building a community is hard, but they are licensing it under a Creative Commons license. I have a great deal of respect for O’Reilly for taking the leap and making the content available under CC. Lets all go support them and buy this book when it hits the shelves.
Wishing everyone a Happy New Year, and lots of Foresight for all!
I am trying to resist the urge to make predictions for 2009. Let’s just say we’ll kick ass in 2009, and leave it at that.
