Category: Other

Hey my gnomies, long time no blog !

Actually long time since I’ve been actually doing gnome stuff and for not rolling a tarball this winter I’m a bit sorry… actually I did get the impression this past year that there was really very little interest in our little Glade project, which from my point of view is a work in progress with so many really amazing opportunities on the horizon.

But on the other side of the coin, while not everyone sees the potential as I do – I do not think all that work to get our initial writeup of GtkBuilder support was a waste of time; on the contrary, it still amazes me how many people around the world are using Glade and getting stuff done, even though Glade itself… is not done !

Actually I’m also touching base with you guys because my own plans fell to the water this winter and I need some help to make my wishes come true !!!

I dont wish for a house… I dont wish for a BMW… all I wish is to get to Korea soon to visit somebody important to me (as silly as it sounds – seems to me the house and the beemer are more attainable in the world I live in).

So doesn’t anyone have some odd contract for me ? I’d love to do some serious hacking of course, as specially anything gnome development platformish (hint hint: … ), but hey I can write silly iphone apps or even script some php if I have to.

So whether this is an opportunity for you to secure my services for a long term, or just throwing me a bone cause you’re a nice guy, just send my cv along to someone who might be interested and you’ll really make my day.

and dammit why cant I build gnome-doc-utils today ?! (joke, dont have to answer that )

This year I’ve had lots of mixed feelings about Glade 3.6 … The bright side of things is that despite some regressions and even if some of the feedback we get is negative – alot of people are still using Glade 3.6 and leveraging at least some of the new features available with GtkBuilder (ofcourse only a few loose strings can make entire features unusable, like tight GtkTextBuffer/GtkTextView integration for a random example), but Im still really happy for this – its a shame we missed out on tying up GtkActionGroups so far but I think some people might already be doing some interesting stuff with GtkActivatable/GtkAction associations.

Some things do make me sad, and if you are reading this and I snapped at you in the past for some bugzilla comment that I found was not helpful to me at the time, sorry about that. The truth is I bit off more than I could chew, and for some reason I imagined that picking up the pieces after releasing 3.6 would be different.

The bugmail I received this morning was kindof disheartening, this bug was probably one of the most imporant and most annoying bugs still open since the release of 3.6, it was filed in April.

It took me 20min. to fix including the changelog entry, and it took me more time to beat up git and make a fresh checkout/commit and go comment/close the bug … and the core is like 100% documented … and I usually answer my emails …

Well I think Glade has big big potential personally, but sadly the potential is (potential * 0) if people are so scared to fix the bug in Glade, that they need to integrate a script into the build to reinterpret Glade’s xml output to fix the bug locally instead.

Anyway I wish you all luck, theres another big decade coming up for the those who will do this thing all over again, I dont know if or how much Im gonna be there but man, its important to be a crew and stick together, set your objectives together, get funding together, rock the gnome crew logo, leverage it and do something really revolutionary. I doubt the traditional competitive every man for himself attitude inherent in the free software domain is going to cut it this time.

And PEACE OUT !

In the last couple of days there has been some quick unexpected improvements in Glade, Javier Jardón wrote us up a brand new website !

So with the help of Rafael Villar Burke (Pachi), we touched up and finalized the content and translated it into python scripts so it can be easily updated with news items in the future.

I was also inspired to write down and share all my possible plans (a frustrating kung-fu process of mailing plain text attachments), and also compile them into a list of possible roadmaps that we can track on the Wiki. Hopefully, since I cant move mountains by myself other people will be interested and we can accomplish some great things together

Well, incase you’ve been wondering what the hell happened to me, I am alive and well – finally I am unemployed – hoping I wont have to use the software hobby alter-ego as a crutch again anytime soon… man I am free can you believe it ?

So, with this newfound freedom I decided to aimlessly tread the earth, I am now in the beautiful huge crazy city of Sao Paolo in Brazil, comming from montreal canada thats quite a long shot (10 hrs one the plane !), the weather is a little dreary at the moment but promises well, the people are very hospitable and the women beautiful and abundant, oh and this great hostel that I highly recommend is sporting an Ubuntu system for its guests, wow !

Glade is due for a tarball soon, I guess I’ll roll one as soon there are a couple more fixes, I guess it goes without saying that I wont be actively hacking for at least a couple of months, but thanks to hostels in south america running solid ubuntu systems I’m still reachable in the virtual tube of your desktop.

who knows maybe I’ll even run into some gnomers down here

Hey hey, long time no blog, my hacker alter-ego takes the back seat as much as possible but sometimes I have to pop out of the woodworks and say BOO !

As you all know from Johan’s recent post the infamous builder is on the rise, this means people will be desiring UI designers to produce UI description files that can be interpreted by the builder.

I dont expect to have any support for GtkBuilder files available for Glade 3.4 but that’s yet to be seen, we’re still a good month ahead of string freeze. We’ve scheduled a meeting on monday to discuss where all that is going – as usual we’ve got lots of blockers and only a few hands on deck (hint ;-D)

So on that note, I wish you all plenty of sunshine, tequila, hot babes on the beach & booming beats to dance to… if you’re not all that lucky, you can always put on your hacker alter-ego and hack away on gnome !

So, here’s a question I’d like to put to all you hackers out there that do all the great things that I think gnome is, gnome and the free software movement in general is something that has tought me alot about communicating and compromising with people and I think its important first to take into account some of the positive things about computing in general before I go and question it… I guess I only feel that way because I’ve invested a small handfull of the limited years of my life into computing and I dont believe in regrets – so there must be something or some reason for me to have spent all that time computing.

Well, back to the real question… “Why do we do it ?”, well here are my personal reasons for better or worse:

• Jukeboxes: I’ve been writing jukeboxes for over 6 years now, at first I was just an uneducated street kid with a talent for problem solving that took up computing as a hobby. Later I think I was attracted to the sheer ambition of it – in short, all the wrong reasons… I did it for money, for recognition from my familly & community around me… the one reward is after a long night of coffee & cigarettes I could get a moment of “Eurika !”
• Glade: Well free software is a different story – I got into contributing to free software just because I think its a great way for people to rebel, “we the people who refuse to feed the machine will make it on our own thankyou” – these dreams of mine are unfortunately not very well recieved, many free software groups are so tightly bound to huge evil moneymaking corporations that I get the feeling the difference between open source and free software is a line that is getting more and more blurry. That doesnt mean the battle is lost, but it also doesnt mean that free software is of any more practicle use to the world then proprietary software – its just software and thus is most probably a waste of time.
• Breakdance: I know I’m a pure bboy through and through because I do it purely for the love of the art – this gives me meaning in life because I can teach by example, I express myself and through my own expressions I can show people thier own true potential through myself – standing up for your own beliefs and not being scared to express them is of the highest personal value – this is the sole responsability that comes with being human; one man cant change the whole world but at least he can express his beliefs… even if it costs him his livelyhood or “prestigous reputations”.

So – I think we can all agree that Jukeboxes arent going to make the world a better place, I can tell you straight up that they’re not helping global warming – they also support record labels – which is just another means of massmarketing art – that means everyone gets to listen to one artist on thier CD player – and all the other artists starve – people hardly go to see local artists at shows, and as a further result – people dont meet one another at shows/plays/operas because now they can all have the luxury of drowning their brain on their own tv set

How about the desktop PC ? what is the desktop doing to stop global warming ? not to mention video games – i.e. the successor of what used to be the child’s imagination, what will become of our next generation as a result of our mindless obsession with these boxes hooked up to screens just plugging us into web ? (or plugging us “out of the real world”) ?

I’m writing this and posting it because I’m sitting here at my workplace trying to figure out what kind of moral justifications I have for being at this job, I do indeed feel guilty for sitting here and doing absolutely nothing usefull/helpfull to the world, so what will I do ? can you convince me that there is some point to computing ?

its really really windy, its 2:40am and I’m in florida.
I didnt get a bed because the guy in charge at this hostel
is sleeping, thankfully some dude in yard let me hang out
in the lounge – bumped into some fly women in the taxi on
the way over – I already like it here

So I saw the ocean for the first time in years, its roaring
right behind me as I type but I wont go and touch it for fear
of not being let back in… my my is it tempting. palm trees
everywhere !

Alone on a trip to a far away land, middle of the night,
what better time to blog ?

Ahoy mates ! I’m new here on the planet so let me just start out by
sending a high five to all you hackers out there, most of you know
me on irc already.

This weekend I went out to toronto for the canadian finals
of the B-Boy Unit competition, where a crew of up-and-comming
youngster breakers took it home (the “Fam” crew, was a combination
of a crew called floor assasins and another crew I forgot thier
name), brought my camera but didnt get any footage unfortunately.
Here’s a pic of me flipping a swift windmill:

And so I didnt get my emails until tuesday morning, where
I found that 2.18 candidate tarballs were due monday – so I
wrapped up Glade 3.1.5 in a hurry, its got a lot of bug fixes and is starting
to be as stable as the stable branch, manipulating widgets in
the workspace and drag/resize has got significantly more usable
(if you happen to know about the secret SHIFT modifier…)

Rock on gnomies !

Whoa, global warming’s got its perks, Montreal, 8 degrees celcius
outside, maybe we’ll get to see some bikinis before the end of january !

A happy new year to all the freaks !

Hope everyone had amazing hollidays, mine consisted mostly
of a last minute decision to hop on the next bus to quebec
city on xmas eve, that was an adventure… I also managed to
walk about 12km on the snowy dark highway to visit a chickita
that lives where buses don’t go – the moon was beautiful with
a lunar glare to boot – MAN is it ever great to be in the
middle of nowhere without a lift, away from routine society and
its horrid factories televisions and machines..
hehe you know alive again – anyway; it was really good to be
back home on the desolate road side again.

real life, I’ll see you again soon I hope !