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2005

I love GNOME

I love GNOME. As I use Linux more and more these days (now averaging over 90%, the only exception these days seems to be some online music stuff), GNOME helps me do my stuff better.

Spent tonight catching up on GUADEC, the GNOME Users and Developers European Conference. All the hackers get together and listen to speeches, meet each other in person, and collaborate on GNOME.

Watched Miguel De Icaza’s keynote speech while reading a PDF document of the slides Glynn Foster presented on the 101 things to know about GNOME.

Miguel had some very interesting comments in his keynote about usability testing, and how users use a computer desktop. He threw out a challenge to the GNOME hackers, and it will be interesting to see over the 2.12 and 2.14 development cycles how the teams start to address usability, especially from a beginner standpoint. People who use GNOME every day, might miss some of the forest for the trees sometimes.

Glynn’s slides took me way back. It’s amazing to me now how long I’ve used GNOME on and off over the years. Going back to my first Red Hat Linux purchase (5.2) in January of 1997, where has the time gone. From the panel tiles, to Eazel, Helix, and how the look and feel has changed over the years to what I’m using today, it’s been revolutionary.

The donation is coming, it’s too bad the GNOME Foundation uses Paypal, as Paypal hates me. I have increased motivation to get my projects done around the house (music server, fixing 2 PCs, lots of cleaning and the basement) so I can dedicate some time to a GNOME project of some sort.

Alias Season 4 Finale

I’m finally caught up on my TiVo from all of my traveling, and I watched the Alias season finale last night.

With 5 minutes to go, I turned to Kelly and said last night that Alias had a strong ending to the season that started off horribly. I’ve talked about this enough already, and then they had to drop the cliff hanger to end the season.

Even with all the reboots, I thought this season had tightened up, with more attention to the characters in a smaller environment, better plot management, and tying up the Rambaldi plot line well. Even the plot throwbacks to the first two seasons, with the Helix Protocol and especially the Mueller device from Season 1 and tying that to the finale was well done for those that have stuck with the show all four years, and for those new to the show, it wasn’t overwhelming.

But taking Michael Vartan’s character, Vaughn, the one constant good guy through out all four years, who didn’t have an agenda, who was the steady rock in Sidney’s life, even when he was married in Season 3, and turning him into someone with an evil past – this is almost too much. Implying that he was a bad guy (a different branch of SD maybe?), and there was a reason he was made Sydney’s handler, and then the car crash to leave you hanging, what are we supposed to think? I’ve already suspended my disbelief that Vaughn made a transition from being a desk jockey, a handler, to field operations, and now the show is going to imply he’s a double agent, or at least an agent with a checkered past?

If it’s not one thing, it’s another with this show. With such a strong ending to the show this season and really getting the focus back, I’ll continue to watch. (Yeah, I’m a sucker).

Summer of Code

Welcome to Google’s Summer of Code.

In an effort to give back to the Open Source community, Google is sponsoring up to 200 students $4500 each to those who write code for an Open Source group.

Groups include Ubuntu Linux, the Gnome Foundation, , Python, Mono and many more.

Read the FAQ for more questions.

Students have to work with a mentoring organization, have their code approved and signed off on to qualify for the monies.

Very, very cool program Google has put together. It helps out the Open Source communities and helps teach students computer science, and how to contribute to Open Source. Props to Google and the Open Source groups involved (for listing out the specific bounty ideas and supplying a mentor).

Dr. Who

I came across this article on Dr. Who, which is a primer and brief history for those who never watched the show.

Dr. Who was was one of my first introductions to science fiction. Introduced to me by a friend in grade school in the 6th or 7th grade, I remember many a Saturday night watching it on our local PBS station. Channel 10 would broadcast the entire episode, usually 90 minutes, every Saturday night, and would start over from the first Doctor on when they reached the end of the current shows.

One of the biggest disappointments I remember was in 8th grade, and the 25th anniversary convention was being held in Milwaukee. We had tickets, and my buddy got bronchitis and was unable to go. A year or two later, our local PBS affiliate stopped showing it (if I remember correctly, it was one of the more expensive licensees for a PBS station) and I could catch in on cable on Channel 2, the PBS station out of Madison.

The 4th Doctor was by far the best. I was also a fan of the 6th Doctor, I thought he never got his fair shake, and the storylines with him on Gallifrey were well done.

I’ve Netflix’ed a few of the shows in the last couple of years (The 5 Doctors), and was taken aback at how campy it was, but it was still amusing. I still have a goal of buying The Key to Time episode arc, with the 4th Doctor and Romana, probably my favorite by far.

A Gamer's Manifesto

I couldn’t agree more:

A Gamer’s Manifesto or 20 things Developers need to do now.

  1. Don’t use the online capability as an excuse to release broken games

The first time we hear the word “patch” in relation to a PS3 or XBox 360 game, we’re taking the console back to the store. Filled with our shit.

But surely the console industry, always more business savvy than their PC counterparts, will avoid making us gamers their unpaid beta testers.

Chances of that happening…

…again depends on how many turd-filled consoles they get stuck with. In other words, the consumer always gets exactly what they’ll put up with.

Life of the Closed Mind

I saved my copy of Newsweek this week. Not for their apology for screwing up, but for Anna Quindlen’s last page article ‘Life of the Closed Mind’.

Under the cover of watching the class of 2001 graduate this year, Ms. Quindlen asks the question when did everything become black and white? Right vs. wrong? Red vs. blue? When did having a public dialogue about the issues die off?

And as Ms. Quindlen begins her closing paragraph, she sums it up well:

So the young men and women who began their college years in the shadow of September 11 graduate in its shadow as well. The intolerant, the monomaniacal, the zealots driven by religious certainty engineered the worst attack on American soil, and the result has been intolerance, monomania and zealotry driven by religious certainty.

This week's purchases

A bunch of good stuff this week:

Books:

  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. A cow-orker lent me this to read last week and it was fantastic. A must read, review coming soon.
  • Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Stranger than Fiction; all by Chuck Palahniuk. Author of Fight Club, Mr. Palahniuk’s writing style is very unique, and Stranger than Fiction are some non-fiction stories from his time on the road.
  • A Spell for Chameleon, by Piers Anthony. An author near and dear to my heart from my childhood. Last year I picked up the Incarnations series and Bio of a Space Tyrant series from my favorite used book store. A Spell For Chameleon is the first Xanth novel, published in 1977. I’m going to re-read it and see if Alex is ready for the series.

Music:

  • Gorillaz, Demon Days: Special Editon. From one half of the team formerly known as Blur, Gorillaz’ Demon Days is a fantastic alternative rock album flavored with a bit of hip-hop.
  • Audioslave, Out of Exile. The sophomore effort from Chris Cornell and the former bandmembers of Rage Against The Machine.

Movies:

  • In Good Company. Topher Grace is Dennis Quaid’s boss, and tries to date his employee’s daughter as well.
  • The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Wes Anderson’s (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) third film, with an ensemble cast. I think the Royal Tenenbaums was one of the final straws for my friends in movies I recommended and made them watch that they hated.

Lost Season Finale.

I watched the Lost finale last night, including last weeks and this week’s 2 hour finale.

The finale was well done, I especially liked the multiple flashbacks for each character. Hurley continues to crack me up, and the show did a very good job tying the characters and stories together.

This website looks to continue the finale, and starts more questions than there are answers.

HP dv1000

I received a HP dv1000 as a gift from the Company last week, and quickly threw Ubuntu 5.04 on it.

It’s a gorgeous laptop – Centrino based, with an Intel 54g built in, built in 5 in 1 card reader, firewire, USB everywhere, and widescreen 1280×768 monitor. It’s pretty sexy for a notebook too, with a silver finish on the outside, and a shiny, glossy black finish on the inside.

Ubuntu worked great on it, other than the Centrino wireless, but Intel is starting to make a push in supporting Linux with their wireless cards. Following the How-To on the Ubuntu Forums helped, but it didn’t work until I changed my kernel from 2.6.10-5-386 to 2.6.10-5-686, and bam, everything worked.

Ubuntu works great on it, the card reader is supported, installation defaulted to the correct widescreen, DVD-RW, Synaptic touchpad worked, and battery life is excellent.

Need to throw some other applications on it before the weekend, including Tomboy, Bluefish, MP3, DVD playing, and Muine, and I’ll work on the blog layout while visiting the in-laws this weekend.

If you want to read a decent review and see pictures, click here.