The Gist

This is (finally) the final installment of my blog entries about our honeymoon. Go read parts Uno and Dois about our time in Buenos Aires and at the Iguaçu falls. For the last leg of our honeymoon, we spent four nights in Rio de Janeiro. We stayed at a hotel in Leme along the Copacabana. If we were to go again, I’d stay a bit farther down the Copacabana. There wasn’t much going on near our hotel, and the area was a bit seedy.

Silke’s friend Clô lives in Rio. She scheduled a private Samba de Gafieira (Wikipedia, YouTube) lesson for us at Carlinhos de Jesus. Thanks to everybody who gave recommendations when I asked last May. Samba de Gafieira is a terrific dance, and we still dance the bits we can back at home. I wish there were some place to learn more here.

We did the regular tourist stuff: walked along the Copacabana, went shopping in Ipanema, went up the Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain). As usual, we didn’t do any tours. We just like walking around the town together.

Clô took us out to a club where the locals were dancing Samba and Forró. It was a really friendly atmosphere, and even though we were probably the only tourists there, we felt welcome. We got on the floor and danced our few Samba moves we’d learned earlier. They would occasionally play a Salsa or a song we could dance West Coast Swing to, which allowed us to get a couple of dances in where we don’t look like complete n00bs. One of the guys there gave Silke a crash course in Forró.

All in all, it was a terrific end to a wonderful honeymoon. View the entire gallery for more pictures.

I’m determined to actually finish blogging about our wedding and honeymoon. Last time, I blogged about the first leg of our honeymoon in Buenos Aires. After Buenos Aires, we flew to Puerto Iguazú, the city on the Argentinian side of the Iguaçu falls. We took a shuttle over to the Brazilian side and stayed in the magnificant Hotel Das Cataratas inside the Iguaçu National Park. Here’s a shot of the hotel and the falls from the plane:

We stayed two nights at the falls, enjoying the breathtaking scenery. Silke got pretty sick the first night, but after that, we were able to get some relaxation between the more active legs of our trip. I swear, every picture you take there is a postcard. It’s just so beautiful.

On the second day, we took the Macuco tour. They take you in a trailer behind an electric jeep through the forest, stopping to give informational tidbits along the way. Then you get out of the trailer and walk for a bit on some trails down to the river past the base of the falls. The hike takes you through some marvelous scenery.

Then the fun begins. They put you in a small boat and head upstream toward the falls. They don’t avoid the rapids. In fact, I’m pretty sure they try their best to hit them. As you approach the falls, they stop and let you take some pictures from the bottom. Then they run you under the falls.

Seriously, under the falls. I had cold water pouring over my head. I was completely soaked. And after thoroughly drenching us, they slammed into the rapids on the way back downstream in a way that made a wall of water come over the boat. It was a blast. (We didn’t take our camera for the tour, opting to just live in the moment. So I have no pics. Sorry.)

This is where we had breakfast in the morning:

You can see the falls from the terrace of the hotel. The Iguaçu falls are just magnificent. Surely the most beautiful place on Earth I’ve ever seen. And the hotel is right up against them, surrounded by nature. I highly recommend staying there to anybody who’s planning a visit.

As always, check out the entire gallery for more pictures.

My dear first-generation Neuros is just not cutting it anymore for me, and I can’t wait any longer for the mythical N3.  So I’m turning to the lazy web for suggestions for a new portable music player.  Here’s what I want:

• Not a massive brick like the old Neuros.
• Plays Ogg Vorbis.
• Works today with Banshee (trunk is fine).
• Holds at least 40GB.  This, unfortunately, rules out flash-based players.

Notable non-requirements include video, pictures, PIM, and cell phone capabilities.  Suggestions?

A wedding and honeymoon have kept me away from this conversation so far. My apologies if I’m beating a dead horse here, but I’ve got to weigh in.

Three point zero without compelling new features is suicide.

If we release a 2.x Gnome as 3.0, we will get close to zero positive press coverage. Forum dwellers will declare Gnome a dead-end, even those that normally defend our small evolutionary releases. Users won’t bother trying it, if they stick with Gnome at all. Potential new developers will become disillusioned with what they perceive to be a boring project. Sulfur will rain from tke sky. Demons will possess our household pets. Disco will make a comeback. Tragedy of tragedies.

If I were some sort of release manager, I would solicit ideas and set a plan. This requires leadership. Somebody has to be willing to say “the buck stops here”. And the community has to be willing to listen to that somebody. Here’s a rough outline of how to set this into motion:

Brainstorming:
Ask the community for ideas. We’re not looking for solid plans here. We want people to toss about all those crazy ideas they’ve had brewing in their heads. Don’t worry about feasibility at this stage. Just write what you’re thinking. Maybe include some ASCII-art mockups.

While we’re at it, get those incredible designers of ours to GIMP together some mockups of how future Gnome should look. Use your imagination. Stir things up. Go wild.

Discussion:
We all come back down to Earth and start discussing these ideas. The whole community is involved in this. We discuss what we like and what we dislike. We talk about feasibility. Developers start talking about plans for how to implement the ideas we like. Yes, we’ll get some bike-shedding. That’s inevitable in a community as big and diverse as ours. But since we have a heroic somebody (or somebodies) to make real decisions, it’s OK. Let people get their thoughts in.

Evaluation:
The release managers make decisions on the ideas. Put everything into one of three categories: Yes, Maybe, and No. The Yes projects are those we write our schedule around. The Maybe projects would be nice, but we’re not going to wait for them. Collect concrete plans from maintainers and developers about how they’re going to do the things they do. Get time estimates. Set a schedule based on those time estimates. Make a decision. This is the part where the community needs to suck it up and recognize that, without somebody making decisions, we won’t get anywhere.

Hacking:
We all make branches and hack away. If you’ve got big things to do for 3.0, leave trunk for continued 2.x development, make a gnome-3-0 branch, and go wild. Hey, this is the part we do best. Enjoy the thrill of hacking on exciting new features. Feel young again.

Brainstorming needs to last at least a month.  Discussion should last another two or three months after that.  And the hacking phase needs at least a year.  If we time it right, we could have a little over a year and take advantage of two Summers of Code.  When we set the schedule, we should set a firm cutoff for new features, but set a slushy 3.0 release timeframe.  Once we’ve hit the freeze, we can re-evaluate things to see how long it will take to get a solid 3.0.  The last thing we want is a 3.0 that’s not really ready.  After all the alphas and betas, make a “developer preview” release that’s almost a 3.0.  Then give everybody a bit more time to polish, document, and translate.

Then, of course, there’s the question of what kind of ideas we’re looking for.  The question is not “Can we technically do this in 2.x?”  The question should be “Does this kick enough ass to justify calling it 3.0?”  Here are some examples:

Platform Enhancements:
Things that offer our developers cool new ways to develop applications.  Havoc talked before about basing GTK+ on a scene-graph system.  Even if that could be done in 2.x, it’s so wicked cool that it deserves the point-oh buzz.  How about an embedded scripting framework?  Or a powerful declarative interface language?  Combine those last two and you could have a really awesome rapid development framework.

Cool New Features:
We’re looking for features that provide a real and obvious enhancement to the user experience.  One possibility I’ve heard lately is a blingy unified desklet/applet system.  If I sat and thought long enough, I’m sure I could come up with others.  Fortunately, the community will gladly provide ideas if you ask them.  We’re a creative bunch.

 Pervasive Ideas:
There’s no shortage of new paradigm ideas in our community.  How about web services integration?  For any given application, it’s just some neat new feature.  But if we do it to 90% of our applications, it’s serious buzz material.  Then you have various projects that are working on people-oriented interfaces.  Lots of buzz, but it needs drive to push it throughout the desktop.  Semantic desktop.  Task-oriented interfaces.  Natural language interfaces.  Whatever.  Have a grand vision?  Sell us on it.

We have some extremely talented hackers in our communities.  We have some incredible designers.  We have the world’s best translation teams.  And we have a lively community of users and enthusiasts with some really great ideas.  What we need is direction, and direction requires leadership.

Silke and I finally got married on July 19. I’ve been waiting for the pictures to blog about it, but I’ve got some of or honeymoon pictures up, so I’ll go ahead and blog about that instead.

The first leg of our honeymoon took us to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I have a tendency to get sick from long flights. There’s something my body doesn’t like about spending ten hours in a dry, airtight container full of whatever germs two hundred other people are exhaling. But it was just a head cold, and it didn’t really stop us from enjoying the city.

We stayed at the Claridge hotel, which was right in the middle of everywhere we wanted to be. All in all a very nice hotel. They also employ at least one very good masseuse. I seem to have failed to take a picture from the outside, but this is me sitting in the lounge after we arrived:

Because of our flight times, we ended up getting there in the morning before there were any rooms ready. But they let us have some breakfast, and then we sat in the lounge for a bit.

This is the two of us down by the river, where there are some really nice restaurants.

We did all the typical exploring-the-city stuff. We didn’t do any tours; we just enjoy walking around and seeing stuff together. We walked over to Recoleta and saw the old cemetary, saw the big shiny flower, and walked to San Telmo. The walk to San Telmo was a bit scary, because it ended up taking us through some not-so-nice neighborhoods. Check out the entire gallery for more pictures.

The best part (and really, the whole reason we went) was the tango. Our tango instructors, Ron and Susana, happened to be arriving just days after we arrived for their own vacation in Buenos Airies. They’ve been there before, and they know some of the local tango dancers and places to dance. This was, of course, wonderful. We got to go to milongas that aren’t on any tourist maps and that we never would have found on our own. And when we went, we got to meet some absolutely delightful people.

This picture was taken pretty early in the night, before it got crowded. And I mean really crowded. Milongas in Champaign can only dream of being as crowded.

There is just something about the atmosphere there. I’ve always enjoyed tango, but I’ve never gotten obsessed with it. But if milongas here had the same feeling, the same charm, the same beauty; well, I could see myself doing it all the time. Of course, I’m sure the excitement of being just married helped make everything feel more romantic.

Flooded basement be damned, I went out for dinner and dancing with some friends.  Then the tornado sirens started, and we were all herded into the underground parking garage.

Dear Mother Nature: It’s June already.  Do try to keep up.

Eight years ago, I spent my 22nd birthday helping my brother and his family move into their new house.  It really drove home the point that, after 21, birthdays just don’t matter anymore.  (Note to non-US readers: In the US, you can drink at 21.)

This morning, I woke up to my 30th birthday and was greeted by a basement full of water.  Yay for adulthood!

Pulse shows Christian‘s mad Terminal hacking spree quite nicely.

Silke and I will be visiting Rio de Janeiro on our honeymoon in late July and early August.  I know there’s quite a few Brazilians who read this, and I’m hoping somebody has suggestions for dance lessons while we’re there.  What we’d like is a quick crash course in an authentic Brazilian dance (i.e. not Samba as it’s danced in ballrooms in the US).  A little Wikipedia browsing has turned up Samba, Maxixe, Lambada, and Forró as possibilities.

We’d like to set up something like a two hour private lesson with a dance instructor in Rio some evening.  We’re not expecting to become experts.  We just want to get some exposure to dancing that we can’t get back home.  It’s critical that the instructor speaks English, because we’ll never make it through on my few words of Portugese.

If anybody has any suggestions, please leave a comment.

Ice cream is nice and all.  But it just can’t beat frozen custard, especially frozen custard made fresh by your local neighborhood custard stand.