Been busy as all hell since school stated in the Fall. Working with automata theory right now and I’m really digging it but it’s certainly not a subject I can just blow off and crack the book open a week before the final. That plus working in the scientific database lab has kept me cooking.
My FOSS work has slowed down somewhat from the fairly feverish pace that I kept up getting Gnome-Mud 0.11 out the door in the summer but it still continues nicely. I’m working on getting MCCP support working fully in gnome-mud at the moment which involves a fairly comprehensive rewrite of gmud’s network code. I’m happy though because the protocol has exposed alot of weaknesses in gmud’s telnet handling and once this is set up it’s well on the way of becoming one of the best mud clients out there.
Our users will be happy to hear also that I’ve been working on getting a Mapper up and running in gmud. It will be an ‘auto’-mapper at some point but there’s not too much ‘auto’ about it at the moment. This has been great fun and a nice change of pace from dealing with TELNET rfcs. Also, this has been a good excuse to started playing with GooCanvas more. After an abortive attempt at rolling my own canvas I have a better sense of the issues involved in creating one and I think the GooCanvas folks are doing a fantastic job at solving them.
I’ve also begun contributing to GnomeShell which is the project attempting to implement the great ideas to come out of the User Interface Hackfest. Vincent’s report of the results of that meeting have really formed the target that the project is currently shooting for. If you want to learn more about some of the thinking and design that has currently gone into the project, Owen has written an overview.
It’s a really exciting project that could potentially change the way our users interact with Gnome. If you have any desire to get into the ‘ground floor’ of a gnome project before it’s all built up then I highly, highly encourage you to check it out and join us on #gnome-shell at irc.gimp.net.