MindlessCode.net

What’s up…

taj — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 03:20:58 +0000

I’m writing this from Dropline Gnome 2.10.2. I thought I’d try Gnome one more time before I gave up on it completely. While I do have to say that the Dropline folks have done a great job of packaging software and making Gnome easy to install, Gnome just isn’t for me. I just can’t get it to act the way I want it.

For example, I regularly have at least 2 programs running the background (IM program and a music player). Under KDE I have these programs “iconized” to the system tray where they won’t take up valuable real estate on my 1024×768 screen. However, for some reason I can’t get Rhythmbox and GAIM to iconize–they just sit there using space on my task bar. Throw a Rhythmbox plugin for Audioscrabber in there, and you’ve got 3 items always on my task bar–what a mess.

A few other annoyances include the fact that Naultilus is pretty poorly configured. If click on an image and it opens in Firefox or The Gimp. If you click on KWord document you get a message saying “There is no application to open this file.” If you try to open a document across a SMB share or on a FTP server, you simply get an error message (even if you are using a “Gnome” application). Right clicking on an image and choosing “Open in Image Viewer” brings up a Gnome image viewer with a directory view instead of the image you right-clicked on. Typing “google >” into the Firefox search bar does a “I’m feeling lucky” search instead of the standard search. Opening a HTML document gives me some error about Epiphany and Bonobo. Oh, and did I mention the file-chooser sucks?

I’ve been using GMail for the past week, and have to admit I like it a lot. I might even switch to it from Thunderbird… It’s pretty sick. If you want an invite (I’ve got 50), leave a comment, you’re email won’t be shown.

Here’s two pictures of Laurie and me on Tuesday (click to enlarge):


One minute	And the next (snore)

It’s raining, dammit!

taj — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 02:41:21 +0000

NOAA was prediciting that it would rain on Sunday night and Monday. We went out to the lettuce field on Sunday and picked up at much lettuce as we could. What we didn’t pick up we covered with tarps. Of course, it didn’t rain Sunday or Sunday night. It waited until we were having our coffee break to start “bucketing down”. We had these awful 10 minute rain showers where it would pour down on us…oh well. At least we were more prepared that last year (if I had pictures of last year around me right now, I would certainly upload them–they’re pretty sad :P).

Here’s two crew pictures from yesterday: http://www.wildgardenseed.com/Taj/crew-pics/

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

taj — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 02:48:40 +0000

The seed crops are here, and don’t show any sign of letting up anytime soon. We’ve been working at GTF 3 days a week 8-5. It’s kind of crazy, but we’ve got a nice big crew of 7 people which is really sweet! Rock on!

I’ve been finishing up mime-type support in Autopackage. We’re using a XSL template to transform from the FDO mime-type spec to the legacy KDE .desktop file format. It’s pretty cool, and I have to admit it’s working pretty well. We’re automatically doing the transform and then installing the KDE files transparently, too.

Also, for the EULA displayer, we’re looking for a good way to show HTML in a GTK+ 1/2 app. Documentation would be nice, too. Suggestions?

Use of words restricted for 2012 Olympics

taj — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 02:09:28 +0000

According to the BBC, businesses who don’t pony up money cannot use the words Olympic, 2012, summer, and others together in one phrase. Slashdot example: “Pubs could not advertise that they have they’re TV tuned to the Olympics on chalkboards.”

Why? Because “It’s worth a lot of money, hehehehe!” –Douglas Adams. But seriously, this is insane. Anybody remember when the BBC was forced to block its internet streaming to the US of coverage of the 2004 Olympics because NBC “owned” the right to broadcast Olympic coverage to the US? Same thing here.

Unable to spell…

taj — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 03:55:07 +0000

Was visiting the local libraries website today when I noticed this:

I thought that was pretty funny, and bizzare as well…although I admit it would be even funnier if I gimped the photo to say “Want to search but unable to spel?”.

The lettuce harvest is NOW!

taj — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 02:31:37 +0000

We had the first lettuce thwacking today…highs around 32C (or 90F, for all ye imperial folks ;)). That means that my summer fun is over (all those fiddle camps), and the work is starting NOW!. Therefore I probably won’t doing as much interesting stuff (like re-re-re-re-recompiling libtalkfilters for an Autopackage of tmsnc), and instead thwacking and winnowing dusty seed.

Some very interesting stuff has been going on with the Autopackage project, like all sorts of ugly hacks for dealing with the libstdc++ problems…a lot of fun… :S

Back from Booher Camp

taj — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 03:21:54 +0000

I just got back from Sisters, Oregon at The Booher Family Music Camp…an entire week of fiddle instruction, jamming, making friends, and good food.

I had a great time there doing everything from learning neat songs from great teachers, to playing Set, to jamming until 1AM, and meeting lots of great people!

And, here’s the question from camp (from our band scramble):

If every person in the United States had a large body of water in their living room, what would they be doing?

And a hint:

What Broadway musical features a violinist generating tonal frequencies while perched atop the outer protective surface area of an abode?

Know the answer? Leave a comment!

Also, if you were at camp, please leave a comment or email me, and say hi! I’d love to stay in touch.