writing, hacking, appeal transparency, electricity

this week is going to be filled by tons of prep and writing for tposscon and some mag articles i have upcoming. today was no escape from this.

i did manage to get some bits of hacking done on kde4, such as ensuring kurl turns ~s into home dirs more reliably. you know, exciting stuff. ;-P i did manage to discuss some plasma art related items with some of the artists. but yeah, pretty low key day in terms of coding.

it seems that some people have issue with the appeal project contending that it is "closed". appeal is a virtual or umbrella project; it isn't producing anything itself, but projects within it are. this includes plasma, oxygen and more. the mailing lists are open, the svn repositories are too. the wiki isn't, but the reason for that ought to be pretty obvious if one thinks about it for a couple of moments ;)

so why oxygen isn't releasing more of it's art right now? well, what they have released has already made its way on to people's desktops. yes, i've seen actual screenshots of actual desktops using the oxygen folders, for instance. there's nothing wrong with that, but it is if we wish this new look to be associated with kde4 and be fresh with kde4 comes out ... well, that's not going to happen if it's publicly released now for kde3. art is rather different from code in this way.

that said, oxygen isn't done yet and won't be for many months. it's a big effort. those putting in the efforts are working on it together; i see the collaboration on the public freenode irc network all the time. were i an artist with a keen desire to aid the oxygen project and were able to match the quality and concepts i'd probably just email those involved and see about getting involved. but i'm just a consumer of the artwork, and while i've had input on concepts (e.g. the "icons of different types need to be visually distinct, even if subtly/subliminally" idea) i have no pressing need to see their day-to-day pixel improvements. and i don't =)

anyways, the highlight of the day had to be peyton and a plasma ball type device i have. it's a gift from my previous neighbour (the smarter, cooler one less scream-at-your-girlfriend one) and peyton really likes it because .. well .. it's damn cool. =) today he figured out that if you put a bit of metal near the glass, then put your finger near the metal object you can cause purple bolts of electricity to arc through the air. he noted that it stings a little, but that it's really cool looking.

"that's mah boy!"