you know you don't have a chance when ...

the p-man and i dashed out for some indian food on the way over to his mom's place to pick up his halloween costume (obi wan kenobi). we were sat next to a man and a woman having dinner. they were co-workers or something similar. certainly not a couple; she was there for the food and industry talk but he was obviously there for a bit more than that.

so when she leans over and starts talking to the p-man and commenting how she's surprised to see a young person who has such adventurous tastebuds (though we've always eaten a variety of food, so i'm not sure p. sees it quite that way ;). she asked if we had tried one of the meat dishes there and when i said we hadn't as we don't eat meat that sparked a whole conversation about that.

her dinner partner did not look impressed.

i politely steered the conversation back to our own table, not wanting to block another guy's mojo-in-action (though i don't think the force was strong with him to begin with). this didn't stop p. and the woman from chatting every 10 minutes or so about something else.

i wonder if it occurred to him at any point: you know you don't have a chance when the six year old at the next table is having better conversation with your date than you are. =P

cold weather, hot keyboard

it's -5C out right now, preserving the snow that sits on the ground. but as chill as it may be outside it's been a long and hot day inside. it's half past one in the afternoon and i'm still a bit away from being able to sit down and write some code.

today was lsb phone call day and i had a mountain of tasks to work through, ranging from trying out our new travel agent to get a flight to the e.v. board meeting and foss.in to working on arrangements for a community driven spanish translation of qt documentation to working on a list of recommended developer meetings for sponsorship. i've been working with 07:30 which is totally aberrant for me, as any of my friends can attest to, as i knew it was going to be like this.

there was a rash of good news to offset the work load, though. first was a note from a new friend in india (hi aarti!) to let me know that the cybermohalla labs, associated with the sarai group in some way, is working on a kubuntu derivative that is optimized for the hindi locale along with various bits of common add-on software. they will be installing it in their labs and sharing it with other groups in the area. cool...

then there was the public launch of the ca/browser forum which is working on modernizing digital signature support in internet software. kde is a charter member in the group with george staikos doing us proud there.

i also found out about another local deployment of kde at a rather large energy company. they contacted me to see if i could come in for a visit. i'll hopefully be taking them up on that offer shortly. will be interesting to see how things are going for them and what sorts of challenges they've run into.

so another good day =) and now, off to work on this week's obsession: dolphin.

how easy?

"I am not a computer geek, but I must admit that it was easy to switch to the new software." - Christine Strobel, mayor of munich, germany on the switch to kde on linux.

it's moments like these in which everyone in the project has earned the right to a great big smile.

just imagine where we'll be in a few years from now. =)

winter comes in earnest

last night we carved the pumpkins and put them on the deck alit from within by half a dozen candles each. and then the snow began to fall. and fall. and fall. it snowed straight through to the afternoon today.

thankfully it was a fairly light snow and so there was still less than a foot of the white stuff outside by the time it subsided. winter is certainly here, however.

another e.v. quarterly report is around the corner; props to allen winter for once again heading up the conspiracy of authors.

plunked away some more with dolphin the file manager. i'm really getting to like the breadcrumb widget. it addresses quite nicely various issues such as navigation without a visible tree and hiding "messy details" like "your home is actually /home/$USER". it grants quick access to a fully editable url bar as well as jumping to common points / bookmarks in the system. it needs some work when dealing with loooong paths and network drives (it loses the breadcrumb and goes back to the traditional line edit only). clicking and holding on an entry drops down a menu showing the sub-folders; dropping a url on a crumb does the expected... rather promising little widget that i'm sure could see usage in a number of places.

the upgrade to kubuntu edgy went pretty well. i went the apt-get dist-upgrade route and nothing went awry with that process, but on reboot i'd lost the scrollbars on the laptop's trackpad and audio didn't sync properly with video in kaffeine. the issues seem to be mostly worked out now, though i'm not too happy about konversation now having the channel list on the left which forces my eyes to travel to the top left corner and then back to the center bottom of the window whenever i want to check on channel status. =( and g++ has got tits up a couple times now. erg.

this release was announced on theDot, as was the release of fedora in a me-too! me-too! story. a few opensuse guys blogged about the inappropriateness of this, and i have to say i agree. i understand the editors of theDot really do their best to accommodate people and that's not an easy balance to strike. but it ain't about kde, it don't belong there; it just gets too messy otherwise. oh well ... no animals were harmed in the making of those stories =)

third time's the charm

free software continues to march forward in turkey as the national linux project pardus starts seeing its first draft deployments. pardus uses kde for the desktop, as do many regional distributions around the world. congrats to the pardus team, looks like your hard work is about to start paying off!

there was also some news about oracle and their linux support play where they are taking red hat enterprise and turning it into their own little thing. not much different from whitebox or centos, really, except that this time there's a 500lb gorilla behind it. it is an interesting example of what is possible with free software. how it sorts out in the end is anyone's best guess in my opinion. will oracle benefit? will red hat suffer? *shrug* it's yet another open source experiment and nature (of the digital variety) will select the winners.

played around with the dolphin file manager a bit today ... some interesting ideas and code in there. nothing revolutionary (yet?), just some really nice beginnings to things. but then i don't think that a file manager needs to be revolutionary any more than a hammer does.

oh, and congrats to both the fedora and [k]ubuntu boys 'n girls for getting out rocking new releases =) i'm upgrading as i type.

measuring value

in a recent blog entry, andrew cowie states paraphrases someone else and says:

"[Anthony Towns] notes that the key economic driver is that once code is released, its value effectively drops to zero" (emphasis his)

it's a bit of an unfortunate turn of phrase because it implies that there is no value to open source code. well, it doesn't so much imply that, it comes right out and says it. =)

the background bias is that value is tied primarily or even solely to the amount you can sell an item for. this mindset springs from the form of capitalism made famous in the modern industrial world.

interestingly, according to this metric the air in our atmosphere is worthless. i'm sure you'd disagree with that. you probably think the air we breath is absolutely and fundamentally valuable given that it's one of the supporting pillars of life on this planet. to play the farce: if the air were to get poluted enough that we were forced to purchase clean air then suddenly it has value, right? i mean, now money is passing hands! of course, if this also causes the plants and other animals on our planet to die in the meantime that would sort of suck, and that new "value" derived from the clean air market comes at the price of economic growth elsewhere. (e.g. the fallacy of the broken window; but i'm starting to drift wildly.)

even more contrary to this "value == money" concept is that people spend lots of time, effort and money ensuring that the atmosphere remains "valueless" (as in "unmonetizable") by working to keep it clean and in the common worth.

(interesting side note: farmers in the usa tried to sue airplane companies for use of the air above their farms back when airlines first got started. the farmers lost since it was deemed they do not own the air above their land in this manner. the question of airspace ownership had not, in fact, been asked in a court of law until that point.)

preserving whales from being hunted is also similarly valueless in this "value by my personal monetization" scheme; and yes, i've actually heard policy makers suggest that the whales should all be owned by private interest so that there's an incentive, due to them now having value as property, to preserve them from hunting.

this may seem sensible enough at the start, but the flaw is that many things in life that have demonstrable value have little to no corresponding monetary value on the free market. in fact, there are some things in life that when purchased (and therefore monetized) actually decrease in actual value. this is particularly true of ephemerals and items of the common good.

in the particular case of source code, when it's released the value jumps dramatically for the consumer of that software. one might even say "infinitely" since a blob of binary goop is only good for use in the form it is delivered in at that point in time while the source code grants the opportunity to study and modify it and grants a guarantee to its future availability.

of course, i don't think this is what andrew cowie meant. what i think andrew cowie was actually saying (though i'm sure he'll correct me if i'm wrong ;) is that the price the market will bear for a body of software approaches zero when the code is released. this is completely different than it's "value". and it's important we get this stuff right or else face getting it thrown right back in our face by our competition who love the idea of proprietary software and hate the concept of sharing code, particularly since it de-values their offerings. it makes it very hard to show people the intrinsic value in free software when we ourselves say "its value is effectively zero".

other 'n that little niggle, andrew's blog entry was quite interesting and thought provoking. worth a read =)

(disclaimer: i'm not an economist or much of any other sort of -ist. i don't even play one on t.v. and yet, for better or worse, they let me have a blogger account. ;)

(the picture is of a few things t. brought me back from japan, including a shirt full of largely nonsensical english which apparently is all the rage over there.)

fall dreams

last night i had a dream in which i was debating various desktop design issues with some other people. (and yes, i do have more normal dreams from time to time as well.) an interesting point (at least it seemed interesting in the dream) was raised during the discussion: computers are made and sold more like cars than like houses.

unless you're really forking over the big bucks, when you buy a car you get to choose from a small number of options: the colour of the paint (and even then it's usually a limited palette unless you spring for a custom job), what kind of seats, sound system options, etc ... but generally one type car is like another of the same type. to enjoy true variety (for aesthetic or practical reasons) you need to switch model or even manufacturer.

when you purchase a house you usually have a lot more say in things. one can choose right down to the smallest details like hardware on the cupboards in the kitchen or what sort of window coverings (if any) ... even when you rent you usually get quite a bit of leeway. personally i've pulled all but one of the interior doors down in my house. the last door will be going once i get to that room as well. instead of doors, i use drapes. granted, this isn't a configuration for everyone but it works just great for me.

desktop software today tends to come much like cars: pretty much set with a certain feature set. want other features? got get a different application, or even a whole different operating system. sure, there are options to change colours and styling ... but when it comes to the feature set and how things are arranged it's pretty limited.

today when a desktop comes along that offers more configurability it's disparaged for that by certain "i prefer cars over houses" minded people. (hint: you want to live in a car, go ahead; the rest of us prefer houses and like the flexibility they afford) but perhaps that's because most of the configurability is of the "would you like a cd player, satellite radio or the basic radio with that car?" type rather than impactful feature modulation or addition.

in the dream the question was raised whether our desktops were indeed more like cars or more like houses: do we drive them or do we live in them? is it really possible to design the one feature set for everyone? cab drivers certainly spend a lot of time in the car, but most people spend their time in houses, offices and out-doors. (more of the latter if you're fortunate =)

the dream debaters came to consensus that it was economically infeasible to make computers like houses for proprietary shops. it was also noted that such economics don't apply directly to the open source methodology; yes, there are resources in scarcity but they align and can be invested differently.

we started talking about home goods stores: kitchen stores, bathroom stores, flooring and drapes stores, book stores, lingerie shops ... different stores cater to different types of people based on lifestyle, economic resources and culture / self-identity. one voice asked: why couldn't it be possible to have different stores for desktop computer feature sets that people could browse through and select from? (remember: this is a dream, analogies don't always remain well focused or sensible)

another noted that all/most houses do have things in common: main entry portals, bathrooms, places to prepare and eat food ... perhaps we could deliver a base model (call it the "car of the desktop") which does what's needed. then allow people to decorate their car into a house (again, it's a dream; don't ask for too much logic)

i asked how this was different from today and we agreed that today we let people adjust the colours and select the sound system but that feature sets are much more hard wired. that going forward we should perhaps concentrate more on delivering applications that allow for fundamental features to be added and removed by "shopping" through a catalog, and that these catalogs would, if allowed, naturally self-organize into catalogs for gamers versus catalogs for office work. which implies that it should be easy to make such add-ons (just as it's "easy" to make knobs for cupboards) and that the applications should be robust against such additions (the cupboards should stop opening just because you changed the knobs)

some of our applications are somewhat like this. kicker, amarok and to some extent konqueror. firefox is another interesting example.

what would our desktop look and function like if more of our apps were more frameworks that provided the essentials with easily browsable (ala "get hot new stuff") accoutrements that allowed the addition of specific functions from the general to the specific.

would we end up with "interior designers" that would provide highly tailored looks specific to an individual or use case for a fee? would we have an ikea for the desktop? what would an email or calendaring app built like this look like? a file manager?

since waking up (and getting over the annoyance of realizing i'd been dreaming about software) i've been thinking about it. not sure if it means anything particular (not atypical for a dream) or if there's something useful in it. *shrug* if nothing else it was an interesting way to spend sleep time.

(wow. this blog entry feels very ... random)

use #73 for trolltech pens

i keep finding new uses for those light-up trolltech pens. we went on a tour of a cave and its natural beauty a few days ago. on the way out i and a few others ended up getting ahead of the tour group and the rather bright (to say the least) lamp the guide used.

the path was well outlined and easy to traverse so i decided to opt for a more "indiana jones" atmosphere: less light, more cave. to solve the problem of impenetrable darkness, i combined the pen with some shiny foil off an energy bar i had with me. the foil served as a reflector to focus the light forward, creating a nice ambient glow that allowed one to see the floor ahead and immediately surroundings quite adequately.

wonder what use the pen will see next.

and yes, we've already discovered they can be submerged in beer to produce nice visual effects that complement the drinking experience.

public policy and free software

some read my last blog entry and read it as granting a "passing grade" to what is happening in venezuela with regard to free software in the public sector. it's not hard to find those who will praise unequivocally and those who condemn equally broadly the situation there. so when someone takes a "shade of grey" position, as i personally do, it's unsurprising that it can be difficult to internalize for some. it thought i'd take a few minutes to clarify the greyness of my thoughts on this particular situation.

the event in maturin went very well and much of the value for me was in the international attendees, the public who arrived and the information that was shared amongst both local and global attendees. the showiness of the event was impressive, and the contrast between that and the conditions in the countryside was also quite evident. in other words, very few surprises.

i had been told before arriving that while there was an official mandate to move to free software in venezuela, there was a long ways to go yet in terms of actually realizing that. upon arrival and before the event started i talked with a few different people to gain a better understanding as to the dynamics of the situation and the players involved.

the push back from both external and internal forces against a move towards free software is not only unsurprising but completely expected. there are many who feel they stand to lose substantially from such a change and it can be difficult to find the political will to implement the changes when there are other seemingly more immediate concerns to attend to than the choice of software one uses.

at the same time, when it's politically safe (or better: politically advantageous) to speak about free software there is a great opportunity presented. when public officials are aware of the benefits and positive implications of free software the job of those who would like to further the adoption of open technology is made much easier.

the question is whether such opportunity is realized or wasted.

i know people who believe in governmental approaches and others who believe in grass roots movement and other who believe that private organizations are the fulcrum point for success ... personally i feel that the best answer is all approaches in concert as each segment has abilities that the others lack. this is similar to the system of checks and balances that the founders of the united states envisioned: a multiplicity of organs that differ dramatically in form and function but which engage separately and together to accomplish specific tasks as well as regulate each other.

social movements are robust: they are hard to corrupt externally, can be grown with few resources and provide an audible voice to a politically valuable commodity that both public and private interests listen to: the voting and spending public.

private organizations can provide valuable tenacity and an agility: they are incetivated strongly, they can move quickly and can bring to bear organizational and material resources that can be hard to coalesce in more distributed and vaguely arranged groups of people.

government can provide clear direction, particularly when it comes to altering the status quo: they can mandate changes that may not make "sense" to private enterprise without such mandate (see for instance the increase in accessibility in software that accompanied government requirements), they can enter into agreements of the sort not possible by non-governmental groups and they do represent large blocks of capital.

there are also weaknesses seen in each group: social movements can get bogged down and may have a hard time applying consistent and coherent pressure; private organizations don't always remain on the path due to changes in incentive; government will often default to words, which are far easier than actions, when they are not supported or pushed otherwise.

i personally believe that all of the above approaches have value and should happen in concert with each other to be most effective. unfortunately too often those in ngo's look to government with derision and instead of looking for ways to change the deficiencies just write off the entire system; those in government too often feel that the public is satisfied with words and that those who want real change don't "understand the complexities"; those in social movements often fail to appreciate the value in allies outside their own worlds. divided thusly each group is often highly non-effective, granting fulfillment to their own prophecies.

let me suggest instead that one shouldn't condemn a government for "only" saying that they should use free software (particularly when we simultaneously condemn other governments for saying the opposite, creating a "no-win" situation) but instead realize that this is a correction in alignment that requires support and additional energies put into it. such support and energy may come in the form of "co-aligned opposition": productive, non-negative struggle with those who are (or purport to be) on the same side to produce movement towards that shared goal.

in other words: usually we need each other. recognition of positives while highlighting and aiding the necessary additional changes and efforts leads to success.

and yes, i'd love the opportunity work with a government in my country who said "we need to move to free software" even if they had a hard time fulfilling that decree. at that point we could help them fulfill their words rather than running into walls of political dissonance.

aKademy '06 konqcasts now up!

KonqCasts #9-14 are up over at KDE://radio for your listening pleasure. Wade Olsen spelunked about aKademy 2006 in Dublin talking with various KDE people on a variety of topics ranging from KDE in Asia to artwork in KDE4 to event organization and multimedia. Joseph Gaffney then did a bit of post-production touch up to the audio and now they are on the 'net for your listening pleasure.

be sure to head over and grab the new tracks!

p.s.: yes, i know the rss still doesn't work in ituns. bleh. if someone could recommend some nice open source software that can generate these things that'd be cool.

libre no se va

(apologies for the probably grammatically horrible title. i don't speak the language, i only play one on t.v., and it is intended to be a reference to a local political slogan. </disclaimer>)

the fourth world forum on free knowledge was amazing. it was rather well organized with transportation and meals taken care of daily. the organizational team worked their butts off to make it happen and they deserved every bit of thanks they got and then some.

the first day of the event was pretty intense. technically it was the first night of the event since it was an evening presentation to kick it all off. on the way to this opening event i made a number of new friends, including jeffrey sanabria from columbia who was to become my self-appointed personal guide for the week. he introduced me to local tastes (maltin is quite nice =), helped translate and generally kept me company with great conversation. he also brought some columbian coffee for me and did an interview for a columbian free software magazine he helps put out. an all around great guy, the sort that makes being in the free software community worth it.

we arrived with many others at the local university in maturin, ubv, where there were row upon row of chairs covered in white cloths beneath large tents in front of a stage. a panel of several (8, i believe? perhaps more?) government and industry officials sat in front of the stage and one by one got up and gave a short speech about the importance of the event and what they hoped to see occur. one of the translators for the event, a wonderful woman from italy with a beautiful young family, made sure that those of us who don't speak spanish could understand every word of what was being said.

it was fascinating to hear public officials and industry movers talk openly in the language of freedom and free software. their command of the rhetoric and concepts was deeply impressive. there is still a long ways to go to realize the dream (and mandate!) to move 100% to free software within the venezuelan public sector, but i believe they have a much better chance of achieving it than many other countries might due to their deep internalization of the ideas and reasons behind making such a move.

with the speeches out of the way a traditional band took the stage and dancers came out to entertain with a series of local dances. it was fantastic and i thought i had seen the climax of the night as they left the stage until fireworks started going off overhead.

all i have to say is this: i have seen the promised land of free software conference opening galas and it was at this conference. i plan to be thoroughly disappointed by future opening events now that i've been so thoroughly spoiled.

the days that followed are a blur of presentations and discussion. the weather was warm and humid (to say the least) but the meeting of the minds was even hotter. the presentations ranged from the practical such as demonstrations of kde, voip and perl programming to the political such as Arun Madhavan's presentation on the use of free software in karala, india to the philosophical such as Jef Zucker's talk on international development and Aarti Sethi's presentation on open source concepts applied to other forms of social development.

in between there were great opportunities for involved discussions with people from around the world and the free software community. there were government officials and hackers alike milling about; students and professionals; a variety of ethnicities and projects represented.

my presentation on how free software contributes to society was well received and i think added to the ongoing conversations. but most exciting for me was the half day hands-on kde development work shop. despite some minor bumps (such as the tech team installing kdevelop and the necessary support bits in the wrong lab) and the trickiness of teach via translators (i had two of them that day, so was blessed in that regard) it went very well. people started their first kde application and we stepped through the code line by line together while making changes and customizations. we covered the basics of qobject, xmlgui, kconfig, qt designer, kfiledialog, kstandarddirs and more. it was fairly fast paced but the two dozen or so students kept up well.

at the end we discussed what we could do so as not to lose the momentum and knowledge we had spent the day accruing. it was decided that a spanish language development mailing list would help tremendously. since many of those in attendance either spoke very little english and everyone was much more comfortable conversing in spanish, this is a natural move. we collected email addresses and jeffrey will be putting out an announcement to them all about how to sign up to kde-devel-es this week. hopefully we end up with a decent flood of new development blood in the area!

the end of the event was marked with a social event, more live music and more fireworks. gifts were exchanged and impressive amounts of shwag doled out. the next day those who didn't have to leave in the morning went to a cavern a few hours drive outside the city where we walked amongst cave dwelling birds, their droppings and other critters for 1.2 kilometers while gaping in awe at the cave formations. after a nice lunch at a local restaurant (which featured karaoke! huzzah!) it was off to the airport and back home. driving at 120k/h through a rural highway, dodging in between cars and around street vendors at slightly slower speeds, was an interesting start to that journey.

i don't have any pictures yet, though many are on their way via email and the web in the coming days. that's because my camera was in japan with t., who i pick up in a few hours at the airport. will be nice to have everyone back in one place and sleeping in my own bed, though my experience in venezuela will never be forgotten.

constructing criticisms

i'm back home now and while i miss venezuela and the new friends i made while there, i am happy to have access to a low-latency, high-bandwidth internet connection again. i really didn't keep up with email or online news much due to the availability (and lack thereof) of internet to me this last week. it did let me concentrate on what was going on around me last week, though, and i'll be blogging about the event a bit later today.

while i was away a little flame war erupted in the blogosphere between people who like kde and other people who like gnome. when i first read some of the more stupid entries this past week i just shook my head. sadly this is not particularly new since we've seen this for years. fortunately it's not nearly as common an occurrence, and to keep it that way we need to nip it in the bud.

all projects, software or not, have strengths and weaknesses. everything can be improved. i often hear reasonable criticisms and concerns about kde; this is inevitable since i speak with a fair number of people. i also hear unreasonable criticisms and concerns. i try and listen to the reasonable ones and ask questions to understand more about them. i try and correct those that aren't so reasonable with direct and clear explanation. usually that's all it takes.

from time to time i will also reflect upon other projects that aren't kde, usually directly to those involved in those projects, and offer my thoughts on their strengths and challenges. it is often received with reasonable reply, though sometimes not. but this sort of constructive and honest back-and-forth reflection between people in the open source world is an important dialogue that must be supported.

sadly it's not always a constructive conversation. for instance, every so often someone will come up and apologize to me for using gnome before starting to talk to me, as if it would offend or annoy me that they wouldn't use kde. my stock answer is: "don't apologize for using gnome. if you were using proprietary software then you can apologize. but i'd much rather hear you are using gnome than a non-free operating system like windows. you have nothing to apologize for." and then we get on with the conversation. we need to let each other know that our own decisions are not reason for derision or alienation. and then we need to actually listen to each other when we speak from these different places. all of our software has a bright future if we let it; we are not engaged in a zero sum game of scarcity here and we should act accordingly.

unfortunately some people haven't realized this and sometimes the conversation is downright nasty and dishonest, which is what happened last week. in response to a blog that was positive about kde, some blogs written in response masqueraded as pro-gnome but were really anti-kde. this is unacceptable behaviour for membership in the open source community. responding to positivity with negativity (regardless of who it is pointed at) is hurtful, divisive and does not lead to anything except wasted energy and a loss in cohesiveness. i didn't keep up with the conversation after that, in part due to my internet connection last week but mostly because i couldn't be bothered to waste time on it; sadly i keep seeing headlines that suggest the conversation continues.

knowing the difference between constructive criticism and community damaging negative campaigning is not obvious for everyone, it seems. the community must therefore help guide each other, and i applaud those who have attempted to do so. this doesn't mean responding to the negativity with more argument to show them why they're wrong; it means exiting the conversation completely while condemning the behaviour.

the validity of the negative blog posts about one free software desktop project or another is at this point not interesting to me. what is interesting to me is that those who wrote them get this message really, really clear: that sort of interaction is not welcome on my screen, in my community (we each share the ownership of that community) and in my life. that sort of citizenship is reprehensible and shameful. give me constructive thoughts, even if they challenge my beliefs, to work with; deliver then in a thoughtful manner with honesty; but don't waste our lives with the sort of dreck that made it onto the internet this last week. find something else to do with your time.

hello .ve

i'm in maturin, venezuella now. beautiful countryside. catching up with my email, 500+ since i last checked (yesterday morning). the people are great and the organization of the event seems pretty flawless to this point.

i'm opening the event tomorrow morning with my philosophical jaunt into the societal benefits of open source. right now i'm just slowly perspiring in the heat as 11 of us sit around tables on the covered deck in the hotel catching up with the rest of the world thanks to wifi.

world forum on free knowledge

tomorrow (early) morning i start my journey to the 4th world forum on free knowledge. while there is a strong free software aspect to it, the event also covers legal and cultural issues related to freedom. i'm quite interested to see who all attends and what topics are covered. finding the cross-over points between the software world and other technical, art and governance fields is ever interesting.

i'll be keynoting on how open source software improves society and the holding a 4 hour hands-on introduction to developing applications with kde. the goal of the former is to bring to light the benefits of open source, as seen in kde and elsewhere, to society at large and the goal of the latter is to start new kde developers off on the right foot. by the end of the 4 hours they will have created their first simple gui app.

i'll be travelling for most of tomorrow, staying overnight in caracas before travelling on in the morning to maturin for the start of the conference. hopefully the travel is uneventful and i can get some work done on the way. that and watch the latest episode of battlestar galactica. =)

if they record the proceedings i'll be sure to post a link here. next post will be from .ve. hopefully, anyways. =)

linux action show

the boys from the linux action show phoned me up this past week and we chatted about a number of kde and open source desktop related things. apparently we talked for a bit too long and they ended up cutting it into two shows. you can catch the first half of our discussion in this weeks' episode and the rest of it next week.

i wish i had time to listen to it myself (it's often interesting to hear your own conversations in the third person; none of this stuff is rehearsed so it's all more real than i remember ;) but i have to turn in. why? next blog entry.

Xephyr > Xnest

as dfaure demo'd at akademy, it can be nice doing kde4 devel in a nested x session. it keeps it from interfering with your main desktop (very nice when kde4 decides to be flaky) and avoids having to switch between full sessions ...

i've used xnest for this in the past but have heard nice things about Xephyr (what's with all the capital X's? ;) and decided to try it out.

i used xhost to allow connections by my testing user to the local display, su'd to my kde4 user, fired up xephyr and it all worked very fast and very nice. bonus is that, as the docu for Xephyr notes, it supports modern x.org extensions, has good performance and even has some debug modes that can be useful.

always fun to try out new tools, particularly when they work flawlessly out of the box and deliver an immediate improvement =)

i only obey the moon

tonight i went out and did what i do. i found an amazing band, "jay burns", or they found me. since such operations are mathematically symmetrical it hardly matters.

they had the most amazing energy. "most amazing" is something i come into contact regularly in the open source community. it was nice to see it in the flesh playing music. the leads are boyfriend/girlfriend, both gorgeous and talented, and we hung out and talked for a while after sets. i eventually found a dance partner in a studious young woman who was concerned about being hit on; i let her know my girlfriend was in japan and all i wanted was someone who could move as well as i saw her move on the sidelines. she said she had two left feet; i told i had three. she smiled and we danced. she was beautiful moving on the floor.

when left to their own device people are beautiful. they just need to know what that means: left to their own device.

i bought their cd.

and so i was reminded what it is i do. and why i do it. beauty. wonder. people trying to express the most intimate movements in the only way they know how: publicly, intricate, mesmerizing.

so i looked to the moon and said to her: "find me on a dark night. come lay upon my breast and i will let you sleep upon my bed." and she said, "silly boy. i've been around forever compared to you. i will come and i will go as i wish. wait for me."

i only obey the moon.

the rest of you can only hope to have so much pull so as to move the oceans. i will undulate, i will write, i will see.

tired. very tired. but happy. very happy.

today was seriously one of the best days i've had in months. practically zero administration harassment, nothing huge looming over my head besides kde4 development and i've got the evening off to myself. the first one in several weeks.

i'm completely mentally exhausted at this point in the evening having been working on this and that for the past 12 hours. sprinkle in some fathering and a quick jab at a level in star wars lego ii and i'm ready to put the computer down for a bit and pick up a book in its stead.

did an interview with the linux action show tonight. should be up on the weekend. and if all goes according to plan (he says rubbing his hands in a slightly maniacal fashion) i'll be on my way to venezuela by that point for the fourth world forum on free knowledge. quite an ambitious sounding title, but it looks to be very interesting. i'll be both presenting as well as holding a development workshop. perhaps we'll come out of it with some new kde developers =)

that said, i'm still waiting for my flight arrangements to be sent to me. apparently all is well, it's just taking some time. sort of reminds me of my trip to brazil in that way. in a way it reminds me of my time in hawaii where there was a definite pace and rhythm to things that worked well, but worked quite differently than the on mainland.

in any case, if tomorrow is like anything like today, good things must happen.

harmony

i've been rearranging my house rather aggressively with an emphasis on energy flow and natural materials. got a new bed (locally made simple wood frame, locally made futon style mattress (springs suck, i've decided)), got rid of a desk in my living room / work area (which was an insane mess, just ask james otts about that ;), got a new love seat thingy so guests actually have a comfortable place to sit, removed more doors (it's not just for the bathroom anymore!) ... and walking through the house feels completely different. the energy is much better. harmonious even.

which reminds me of one of my favourite evening moments from dublin: we were standing outside the mongolian grill restaurant we were all going to eat at and i started getting groups of 4-6 random kde people to sing "hello" in harmony with each other. the kde people have a rather good sense of pitch it turns out. or maybe having 5 equally off-tone people makes for a good sound? ;) either way it was interesting as a social exercise. (and i wonder why people look at me weird at times ;)

and speaking of stuff that happened in dublin, if you haven't seen it already in seli's blog, kwin can now composite not only with xrender but directly via opengl. and that's without the need for xgl et al. nice =)



also on the coolness meter is the "marble" widget:



i'm also happy to see usability progress being made in kde4 with discussions such as "how to refer in user visible strings to desktop service applications like the character selector". it may sound like a small thing, but it all adds up. and seeing as these things will be making their way into the new user interface guidelines (which celeste has been asking for feedback on, btw on kde-*-devel; help her out with your feedback devs!) we'll actually be capturing these conclusions so we can implement them.

i figure that the new guidelines will result in a bevy of interesting but introductory-level jobs for those who wish to get their feet wet in kde development.

the one who does the work decides

there's a principle in kde development that gets often quoted:

the one does the work decides

there are variations on the theme such as "he who codes decides" but they all mean the same thing. the question is, what do they mean exactly? i'm writing this to disambiguate the meaning of that phrase, at least for me.

i've seen this principle used in the past as justification for committing changes to the codebase that are really not great. but hey, they did the work (sometimes first, before others) so they get to decide! this behaviour has been tolerated and because of that i get a bit queasy when someone invokes the above phrase as justification.

the "worker decides" principle does have "good" meanings though (and which i believe were its origins): that without applied effort nothing else matters. words are only words, code is what makes things happen. while someone may theorize until the cows come home, it's the person who writes code that actually is able to demonstrate the viability of the concept. without code there is no software, and so it is what comes first.

how are decisions actually made in kde? (as opposed to theoretically made or "should be" made.) well, obviously there needs to be code. but traditionally our best decisions have happened through a combination of communication (to set common goals and note areas of strength and weakness) and natural selection between competing experiments. when those processes are circumvented, rarely are we well served.

it's friday, i think.

so the flu is pretty much gone. just in time for me to wake up at 02:30 to get t. and her travel companions off to the airport in time for their flight to japan. she'll be there for the next 3 weeks taking in the sights and sounds of Chiba province. i'm very excited for her and think it'll be a tremendous life experience.

i'll miss her dearly, but then again it'll give me three weeks of concentration with minimal distractions.

i'm nearly through my email for the day, and once that's done i'm going to take a nap to catch up on my sleep and then go from here. i think i'll be arranging a plasma irc meeting on either monday or tuesday as well.

the plasmagic plasmoid packager is coming along very nicely (it's essentially functional at this point, just needs some prettyification) and the raptor project which aims to bring us our kmenu replacement is gathering a good head of steam. a fellow on irc has stepped up to help tend the neglected plasma website to keep that up with our progress ... and so i've got a backlog of communication requests for direction and ponderings which i'm hoping an hour or two on irc can see us through. i'll email panel-devel with more information on the meeting once i'm awake again =)

open source project of the year; undulations

got a nice email this morning noting that kde has won "free software project of the year" in linux format's reader's choice awards. it's always a great feeling when our users step up and say "thank you" in these ways.

congratulations to everyone who has helped make kde the project and software it is!

when i got back home from dublin there was a package waiting for me. in it was a shirt that was intended to have arrived pre-dublin but which didn't quite make it. here it is:

would've been awesome to have worn that to the first day of akademy. oh well. and who, you ask, is to blame/praise for this concoction of evilitude? none other than our own wade olsen. (thanks wade =)

oh, and if you've ever wondered what i look like in the morning, here it is in all its horror from the last morning in dublin. well, the last morning i actually slept. there was one more morning but.. yeah.. not much sleep gotten that night. late night out with everyone saying goodbye only to return to discover the hostel had kicked our stuff out of the room a day early. this led to sebas and i searching the hostel for our luggage and goods (i'm still missing one or two inconsequential items). after that early morning ordeal sebas got some sleep in another bed while i just got a shower (aaah... hour long hot showers can cure almost anything) before popping off to the airport sometime before 05:00.

well, how showers don't quite cure anything. they make me feel better, but i'm trying to shake this very annoying and crappy flu i brought home with me. bah!

t. leaves for japan early friday morning and peyton has half days of school this week (parent teacher interviews). so i'm trying to nurse myself back to health whilst keeping up with the daily tasks. wish me luck =)