Yesterday was a bad bad linux day for me. It all started when RedCarpet reported that I didn’t have the latest
release of Evolution installed. I was sure I had and the about screen reported I had 1.0.1 installed, but I was a little
annoyed by that message so I tried upgrading. Well Evolution rpm downloaded and Red Carpet crashed. Ok, well
I
am not one to be detered by such an occurence so I tried running rpm from the command line instead to upgrade
Evolution. Well it failed due to the rpm process that redcarpet had started still hanging around, and the process
was not killable. Ok, well being the resourcefull chap I am I tried rebooting. Ok, computer rebooted and trying the
RPM of evolution once again. No, it reached 81% and rpm segfaults. Hmm, ok tried one more time this time
using
–nodeps and –force parameters. No, this time reaches 81% and then full stop, had to close the terminal window.
Ok, new reboot. Tried uninstalling old evolution and then install new one, same story segfault at 81%. New reboot.
Ok tried another Evolution rpm, this time the one from gnomehide. No 74% this time and segfault. New reboot.
Ok, tried compiling Evolution myself then.Hmm, needed db3 3.1.7. Ok, got hold of that and tried making a rpm of
it
which would install under /opt. No go, the shitty think still installed under /usr. Ok, well having it installed I tried
once again compiling evolution, but this time it complained about not finding db3 library. Argh. Gave up on that an
installed original RH rpms again. Ok, rebooted again. Linux failed to boot, hmmm, /home not valid…hmm.
Ok, now I had some problems with partitions going to hell when I first tried installing the SGI XFS 7.2 version of
linux, but the error had gone away. Now it seems to be as if the XFS setup somehow manages to corrupt
partitions
if you boot your computer many times with say 15-20 minutes intervales between each time.

Ok, so now my home partition was blown to hell and I lost all my mail for the last 2 months, my latest article and
the latest GNOME summary. Luckily I had sent Erik a copy of my article earlier same day so that I can get back
and the GNOME summary I had commited to CVS a earlier draft of. So it is just my mail that is gone with the
wind.

So now I am going to reinstall using basic RH7.2 and using ext2 as file system. Those journaling systems has
not
given my anything but grief.

Took of some steam by downloading the Return to Wolfenstein Demo and blow away some people on the
internet.
In the mood I was it was extra fun to kill those who believed themselves my allies.

One of the challenges with working with free software is
that of overextending oneself. Once you are familiar with a
project there is always 10 times as many tasks as there is
time to actually do them, especially if you want to do them
well. Last year I sometimes felt like I was doing to much,
which in the end meant I just did to little many places
instead of doing enough a few places. So my new year
resolution is to try and limit myself a little more and
instead focusing on a few things and do them well instead of
spreading myself thin on a million tasks and do none of them
in a satisfactory manner. So for this year I think I will
try to focus on doing the GNOME Summaries and helping out on
GStreamer. That means I will try not to get much involved in
GNOME website work or offer to help out with this and that
on a lot of other projects which I did last year, this also
means I will continue having a rather low output rate of new
articles.

With the GNOME elections now over I thought I should
summarize why the GNOME community elected the different
candidates and why some where not elected.

Returned from ALS a few days ago, had a lot of interesting
conversations and as usual learned a few new things.
Think we finally have a roadmap for making multimedia under
X not suck, but it will take a lot of co-ordination effort.
Me and Erik (of GStreamer fame) talked to a lot of people
about these issues including Keith Packard, Jim Gettys, Leon
Shiman (of x.org) and others. Seems that the first step
needs to be Erik doing some Linux kernel hacking after which
we probably can get a killer multimedia solution by a little
coding on XFree, MAS and GStreamer. The problem here is not
really the amount of coding needing to be done, it is more
the amount of projects needing to be interact :). Anyway I
will be doing an article outlining what needs to be done and
spotlight the different technologies involved in the near
future.

Currently I have one week of hellish working hours ahead so
there will be little time for working on Free software, but
afterwards I expect things to lighten up workwise.

I hope to get both my Multimedia article and a GNOME 2
aricle I promised O’Reilly done/drafted sometime next week.

Was planning on working more on improving my Java coding
skills, but instead ended up doing more website
maintenace/development. Mostly been working on setting up a
GNOME devtools website which will highlight the different
efforts underway and help create a more unified
developerment infrastructure for GNOME. Mailed a lot of
people and mailinglist in order to get people onto the
devtools mailing list and hopefully we will be able to kill
of all the re-inventing that is currently happing over time
and instead move fast forward with people making nifty
components which interoperates into great unified solution(s).

Finally posted my interview with the GNOME developers at Sun
today. You find it here
if you are interested.

Also got involved with helping a company who are setting up
a GNOME development house with around 50 new developers (YAY!).

I think we are now also finally making some progress on
improving the GNOME website which have not gotten the love
it has needed for some time now.

Also I am now on vacation studying for a Game Theory exam
on Thursday. So now I am freshening up on my knowledge of
the work of Bayes, Cournot, Nash and so on.

Have been rather productive lately. Updated the GStreamer website, fixed a bug
in the configure system of GStreamer (first time I
contribute something that can constitute code to a project
:). Did 2 interviews which will come up on Linuxpower.org, one
with the GNOME people at Sun and one with one of the 3dwm developers.

I have also been working on building GStreamer on
Solaris, which seems to go very well with the GNU tools
installed.
And of course a lot of smaller tasks, fixes on the GNOME and
GStreamer website.

And of course pumping out a GNOME summary every two weeks.

Think it is about time I add myself to the contributor
list in the gnome-core module, think I deserve it :)

So back from a mediocre vacation witch sucky weather to find
that as soon as I start working the weather gets fantastic.
Ugh.

Lots of Free Software stuff needing doing too, have 3
interviews planned, need to start mailing GNOME hackers
asking them to start sending in status reports, and of
course do more fixing on the GNOME website.
Hmm, lots of
stuff needing doing and time is limited. To solve the
problem of to little time, I now have a 10 week bong entered
in the lotto lottery, so I might become so rich I can quit
my dayjob :)

Today I seem to have gotten a extra day off work, so I
am going to the beach and then maybe I go out to a bar the
evening.

Productive weekend. Migrated gnome-pilot pages to gnome.org
and set up a empty Nautilus page for Ramiro to use.

The rest have been spent trying to make new RPMS of
GStreamer 0.2.1 and its pre-reqs. Have to say that while it
is fun to be on the bleeding edge, there can be a little to
much bleeding. Anyway think I finally managed to nail the
last plugin I have been working on namely Avi. So hopefully
I will upload my complete collection of RPMS and prereq.
RPMS later.

Ok, I seem to find myself in a little timecrunch :)
There are lots of things I want to do in order to improve
the content on gnome.org. But beside work, sailing,
gnome-summaries, interviews and GStreamer there is little
time to spare. Life is unfair, but I still love it….weird.