Older blog entries for AlanHorkan (starting at number 238)

Software Churn: Postponing the inevitable. Gnome CD Player is Doomed!
The Gnome CD Player is not a piece of software well loved by developers and it's demise seems inevitable. When I asked I was told the reason for this desire to kill off Gnome CD Player I was told it was the unpleasant state of the old code and I can well believe it, I managed to cause a very strange crash which occurs only if you log in from a remote machine and attempt to use Gnome CD.
Now that Sound Juicer includes CD Playback as well as Ripping the future of Gnome CD Player is not looking very bright and the Sword of Damocles is already swinging over Gnome CD Player. There have been threats to kill off Gnome CD Player for quite a while but it seemed as if the comments of Havoc Pennington had helped postpone the inevitable but I knew it would take more if I wanted to keep Gnome CD Player around for a while longer.
In an effort to put my money where my mouth was[1] I have been trying to take took a closer look at Gnome CD Player. I am tried to help improve things and find ways to discourage the developers from quietly dropping it hoping instead it might be allowed to quietly survive a while longer.
There is a certain amount of churn involved in software and the old is replaced by the new but not always better. The reason I feel strongly about Gnome CD Player in is the sense of deja vu. When Microsoft updatedthe CD Player in Windows 2000 I was unimpressed by the replacement. The plain and simple CD Player from Windows 95 made from standard had been replaced by an awkward attempt to directly imitate a real CD player. One step forward, two steps back. There are of course many alternatives and Gnome CD Player is not the greatest CD Player ever but the constant churn of software and forced change can be very annoying for users. The forced upgrade is exactly the kind of thing people hated Microsoft for. I happen to like the relative simplicty of standalone CD Player without any themes or fancy visualisations. The clutter of an all-in-one audio player is not something I particularly appreciate and so I want to keep Gnome CD around a while longer.
The popular myth of Open Source is the code is available and in theory that means one can always build and maintain their own copies. This is not entirely practical or realistic for most people and it would require a lot of effort which could be avoided if the Gnome Multimedia developers are willing to let Gnome CD Player be retired slowly and not removed immediately now that Sound Juicer has can play CDs. The Gnome Multimedia developers hold all the power in this situation. Dropping Gnome CD Player from Gnome Multimedia will effectively kill it off and cause it to dissappear from distributions everywhere. Removing software is a lot easier than justifing adding software and once it is gone it will stay gone. As someone who is not a Systems Administrator and often has to accept the default setup this is signficant.
There is room enough for a standalone CD Player as well as a CD Ripper which include CD Playback. It is certainly useful to be able to preview the tracks before ripping them but it is a seperate task from a simple standalone CD Player. I really hope Gnome CD Player can gain a stay of execution and hang on a while longer.

There have also been suggestions of using a single all in one mega media player, which does not exactly fit with the old Unix philosophy of "Do one thing well".
The future of the Gnome Picture Viewer: Eye of Gnome (EoG) doesn't look great either, although the arrival of a new maintainer brings hope. It has been suggested Gnome should follow the lead of Apple and have a single universal Viewer application. Evince is the PDF Viewer for Gnome but it can also view images. Just to be different I'm going to have to use my Video Player to view images! Done it before using the Helix player from Real Software. It may be possible to hammer out the dents and create a few core applications which are really good at what they do. In the meantime I will have to keep watching and discourage any rush to kill off the old applications prematurely.

Last night I left both Garnome and Konstruct to build and today I played around with all kinds of new and improved Free Software. The KDE applications I particularly wanted to take another look at were Krita and Karbon 14, the painting and drawing applications for KDE. Karbon 14 is still stuck at Version 0.1 unfortunately. Karbon 14 reminds me a lot of Jasc Web Draw another Vector Graphics editor which I learned to use and am most comfortable using.
Using KDE is a real culture shock sometimes and it takes some getting used to, but I try to keep an open mind and be aware of what is happening in Open Source beyond the Gnome and Gtk+ applications. KDE does seem to be improving significantly thanks to the work of the Open Usability group. Strangely I am starting to see K-isms everywhere. Both Inkscape and Webdraw refer to points on a Path as nodes but in Karbon 14 they are called knots instead.
It all serves as a timely reminder of how Less is more and how the approach advocated by Havoc Penningtion in his essay on Free Software User Interface Design has made a huge difference for Gnome. Occasionally I do find myself wishing I could tweak things here, or configure certain little things there but more than ever my belief in working for sensible defaults and in following the design philosophy of Keep it Simple Stupid (K.I.S.S.) is reaffirmed.

24 Jun 2005 (updated 15 Nov 2005 at 18:41 UTC) »

Kees Cook sent a nice message to let me know my letter to 2600 Magazine about Lotteries and probability had been printed in the Spring 2005 issue, which surprisingly I hadn't already noticed. I used to buy quite a lot of magazines and read them cover to cover, given the price of most magazines of course I read the articles! Recently though I find it difficult to make the time to sit down and finish reading all the less interesting articles and letters to the editor when I could be busy doing so many other things.

Still no word from Google about the Summer of Code. I'm not particularly optimistic about my chances either but even if I do not get the chance to take part the Summer of Code will provide a huge benefit to Open Source.
Two rejection letters arrived early Saturday morning. Oh well, nevermind.

22 Jun 2005 (updated 24 Jun 2005 at 00:52 UTC) »
Irish Film: Headrush
Monday night I saw a preview screening of a new Irish film called Headrush and afterwards there was an interview with the director Shimmy Marcus, all courtesy of the Irish Times newspaper. The story centres around a stoner called Charlie who cannot hold down a job and his dopey best friend Teabag whose unusual nickname is the running joke of the film. In an attempt to improve their fortunes and for Charlie to impress his girlfriend they get involved in a drug smuggling operation for a villian known as the Uncle who is described as having "no redeeming qualities whatsoever" and his creepy right hand man Razor Rupert. The cast is solid, with Stephen Berkoff as the Uncle and Huey Morgan from the Fun Lovin' Criminals also making an appearance, and the rest of the cast is made up of vaguely familiar Irish actors including the guy who does the advert's for Club Orange.
The film was in development for many years and the characters were all fairly well developed. There were times in the film where the two lead characters were so painfully stupid it was annoying instead of funny but I guess it goes to show how convincingly they were as best friends for two guys who hadn't never met before filming. The director said the rough cut was more than two hours long and the final eighty-five minute cut was well paced but suffered in places. There were some peices which slotted conveniently into place almost out nowhere and while it was refreshing not to have the story dumbed down and every last detail explained parts of the ending did seem a little too contrived.
The story is a fresh take on familiar genre, it isn't the greatest film ever but it is likable enough and certainly makes a nice change from the usual. Their stories are different but there are so few Irish crime capers I cannot resist drawing comparisions to I Went Down another likable Irish film which I think is a little better than Headrush but if you like one then you are likely to enjoy them both.
Unlikely to be coming to a cinema near you anytime soon, with the possible exception of a few British cities with an significant Irish influence (London, Manchester, Liverpool, etc.) but already available on DVD in Australia allegedly. Goes on general release in Ireland Thursday June 24th 2004.
Entertainment.ie review of Headrush

I am not entirely satisfied with my recent film reviews and I am not convinced pratice is bringing me any closer to perfect. Attempting to write about every film I watch makes me realise how much of my time I spend staring at a screen of one kind or another. Need to get more exercise.

History Repeating itself
Public Service Announcement: Silly gnaming konventions strike again! As if it was not wierd enough to have Mono as the name of a disease and as well as open source alternative to MS .Net now we are beginning to see a rash of program names based on the word mono. What on earth is a monopod I ask you? Is it some kind of one-footed mythical beast? Does it have anything to do with the monopoly board game? In fact Monopod describes itself as simple podcast client, which means it provides a convenient way to gather audio newsfeeds and put them onto a portable music player. I am picking on Monopod in particular and although it makes a nice change from the silly gnaming konventions we have seen in the past I fear history is repeating itself and many more silly names are to come. Another example of strange name is monotheca. Biblio means book and bibliotheka means library but monotheca is a video library not a library of mono.
A rose by any other name is ... asking for trouble and is only likely to confuse people. Developers love to try out new things and some of these programs are designed specifically as show peices for the new language so their desire to associate closely with the technology used it understandable. Program names based on how the program was written instead of a name suggesting what the program actually does become tiresome and unfunny very fast. Some at least have the decency to use some punctation and split the name into meaningful words, allowing users to simplify the names and drop the branding into a more practical name. Don't even get me started on the implications of trying to translate these esoteric names into something meaningful, it is far easier to treat the gibberish names as a meaningless brand identifier and stick a generic name translatable name after it. Most distributions will hide your branding completely and only show the generic name so if you may as well give extra thought to the name for your programs because others can and will change it for you.

An amusing slashdot comment on unfortunate names

21 Jun 2005 (updated 22 Jun 2005 at 14:13 UTC) »
Wrestling: So bad it's great
There is something terribly lame and silly about Wrestling but if you do not take it seriously it can be a bit of a laff. Saturday evening I went to the RDS (Royal Dublin Society) and watched the WWE Superstars do their thing. The event held was outdoors in an arena normally used for horse shows. We were blessed by the weather, no rain and it was dry and not too cold. If I were to give one piece of advice to anyone going to a wresling event it would be to bring binoculars. Unlike most concerts I have been to the event was fully seated (boring). When people inevitably stood up to get a better view it became impossible to see much of anything. The stage included four video screens which were used to show introductions for each character but were otherwise unused. The failure to use the screens to give the audience a closer view of what was happening was terribly disappointing and I really expected more.
Not since the days of Hulkamania have I watched wrestling on any sort of regular basis but I did still know enough of the characters to enjoy the event. Even from a distance 7 foot tall Big Show is incredible to see. No matter how much you question the authenticity Ray Mysterio flying off the top ropes is impressive to watch (and it was a whole lot less fake and tacky than the Britney Spears concert). When Torrie Wilson appeared I seriously regretted not having brought binoculars (she's not half bad for a thirty year old ;). The whole event was very silly but I was up for a laugh and managed to get into the spirit of things, booing the villians, cheering the heros, and whistling for the divas like a great big pantomime.
I had low expectations to begin with but I wasn't exactly impressed by how the show was presented, failing to make use of the video screens was a serious flaw in the production. Compared to the detail you get to see on television it is a disappointment to be able to see so little. However the athleticism and entertainment is real enough and the novelty of seeing it all live gave it an edge. It was a bit of a laugh, I'm glad I went but there are better ways to spend a Saturday night.

Lesser of two evils, is still evil.
Dom Lachowicz has made interesting comments Adobe PDF. He points out the inconsistency of rejecting the Microsoft Word Document while accepting Adobe Portable Document Format.
Dom on PDF 1. Dom on PDF 2. Dom on PDF 3.

Links
Journal of Mozilla SVG developer
Inkscape Art spotted on Planet Gnome: Penguins Ice Fishing
The Starbucks Siren, evolution of a logo.

Batman Begins
Batman Begins is certainly an appropriate title. Even though this film is intended to be about how Bruce Wayne became Batman the exposition is very long and a bit tiresome and feels like it goes on for almost two thirds of the film. When Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham it feels like another half a film (I know it doesn't add up, but the film is long).
Tim Burton gave us a Gothic and disturbing Batman, in what seemed like many shades of grey black and a splash of yellow. Joel Schumacher added more colour but almost killed the franchise with his excessively camp Batman, a throwback to the seventies TV show but what do you expect from a costume designer turned director? With Batman Begins Chris Nolan has given us a more believable Batman, rooted in reality.
The villian count is not as ridiculous as it has been in the past but the writers have played it safe again rather than giving the characters the full attention they deserve. Cillian Murphy puts in a suitabley creepy performance as Dr. Jonathan Crane a.k.a. the Scarecrow and by himself could have been villian enough for Batman. Batman as pyschological horror thriller is a lot to ask, I know but let me dream, maybe someday. I would have enjoyed a little less exposition and instead seen more of the Scarecrow messing with peoples minds. When I noticed the name of Gary Oldman on the posters and having recently rewatched his performance in Leon I wondered what villian or pyschopath he might be playing. It turns out he is not a maniac or villian at all and is in fact playing Officer Jim Gordon, long before he ever became Commisioner Gordon. Difficult as it is to think of Michael Caine as anything other than Michael Caine he brings new dimensions to Alfred. No point in my writing about Katie Holmes.
Not since Rob Roy and maybe Schindlers List have I particularly liked any of Liam Neesons solid but rather dull work and Batman Begins is no exception. His character Ducard teaches Bruce Wayne and sets him on a new path but it is his master Ra's Al Ghul played by Ken Wantanabe who steals the show. (You might recall him from The Last Samurai where he stole the show from Tom Cruise.) Ra's Al Ghul is a mythical figure in Batman lore, a warlord, a demi-god, and as mythical figure of fear. I wont say any more but Ra's Al Ghul is the character to watch, and you will understand when you have seen the film.
On seeing the Batmobile, Gordon gets one of the best lines in the film (I think echoing the words of the Joker) he says "Where I can I get me one of those!". The Batmobile, or the Tumbler is described as a cross between and Tank and Hummer and this Batmobile is like a Monster Truck where the previous Batmobiles were more like armored Formula-1 cars. I want one too. The car chase was impressive too and nicely in keeping with the reality of the rest of the film.
Batman Begins was worth waiting for, and the bad smell left by Joel Schumacher can be quietly forgotten. The film drags along a little earlier on but it thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite having one of the worst and most annoying cinema experiences I have years (possibly more on that later) the film held my attention the latter half of the film is the kind of Batman film we have been waiting far too long to see. If I have to give an oh so arbitrary score I'd give it a strong 4/5 (and I'd have given Sin City 5/5 despite its minor flaws).

Tomorrow if I'm lucky I might have the chance to go watch Wrestling (WWE) which should be entertaining. Doctor Who has been dropping hints all season about Bad Wolf and it looks like all will be answered soon, I will have to set the video so I don't miss it.

17 Jun 2005 (updated 21 Jun 2005 at 16:11 UTC) »
Never Met a Girl like You Before
Never before have I met a girl who burps and farts so much. She can do that eye brow thing the Rock does too, she's pretty cool ... for a four month old. Yeah my neice Sienna is pretty cool. Today while my sister was at the dentist I did a little babysitting. I've never had to take care of any siblings or young relations before and there is still a certain novelty to it all. Going to need to learn at some point, better to learn it now. She dribbles a whole lot and getting her to sit still and drink her bottle is more difficult than you might think but at least she didn't pee on me this time and I got away without having to change any nappies. She is growing pretty fast, I'm sure she will be a hyperactive child running like mad in a few short years. She has a tiny little button nose, big bright blue eyes, and and has the first wisps of blonde hair on head. Her tiny little hands are magical and she has a good strong kicking feet from which her shoes and socks magically disappear if you stop paying attention even for a minute. In return for my efforts at babysitting and helping around the house I got a good dinnner of prime Beef with some kind of Szechaun sauce and big fat noodles. On the way home I saw something in the shop and I couldn't resist the novelty value so for dessert I bought myself a Spongebob Squarepants ice-pop or should I say Bob l'Eponge as the multilingual packaging informed me. It was like two Sparkles stuck together and they formed a big yellow block and the bottom was Cola flavour which looked like Bobs shorts and the sticks looked like legs.

And now for the News
One of these days I am going to write a letter of complaint to RTE our national television broadcaster. There is nothing quite as annoying as settling in to watch a film, getting into the story only to be interrupted and told and now for the news. At least West Wing was showing on the other channel.
The film I was watching was called Outside Providence it was set in the Seventies and was about a working class kid who goes to a posh prep school (passing similarities to Scent of a Women but with nothing as interesting as Al Pacino to bring it above average). It is not the most brilliant or original film and watching other people get stoned is not as entertaining as film makers seem to think it is but it was a nice enough film. When films are on television my expectations are pretty low, oh yeah and Amy Smart played the love interest (if you have watched Road Trip you might remember Amy Smart where she played another hot girlfriend). One of the Baldwins plays the gruff working class father stuggling to bring up two boys on his own after the tragic death of their mother. Norm from cheers make a brief appearance as one of his poker buddies. The most suprising thing about this film was not the film itself but the people who created it. The last people I might have expected to create this nice undemanding little story, the kings of gross out humour, the team behind Something About Mary, the Farrelly brothers. Made it more satisfing in hindsight to see something they have done that so different from their usual work. But still it was a pretty mediocre film, if anything their gross out comedys like Shallow Hal or Something About Mary are more challenging in a way and I'm glad they mostly stick to what they are good at.
Off to see Batman Begins in Blanchardstown tomorrow.

Fedora Core 4
Installed <strike>Red Hat</strike> Fedora Core 4 on my homw computer yesterday but something is terribly wrong and it is massively slower than version 3 almost unusable. My machine is old but there has to be something wrong for things to get be so much worse, the Ubuntu Live CD ran faster than this. I really hope I may some kind of inappropriate configuration choice that can be corrected.
Update: Setting SELinux to Disabled and turning off auditd, sendmail and various other services I do not use helped restore the system to a usable speed. It does still feel a little slower than previous versions.

Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted
I totally need a program to warn me if I'm still logged to other computers when I log out. Twice in the past week I have accidentally left myself logged in. The first one I realised immediately as I left the building but didn't have time to go back and so I attempted to connect in later from home and log myself out. The second time I forgot about completely and left logged in for days but thankfully no one seems to have messed with it (which may or may not have had something to do with the fact I was using Blackbox). In the meantime I've set the screensaver to lock the screen so any future absent minded behaviour will not put all my files at risk. (I hate when people try to horde computers like they horde desks in the library but if anyone needs to use the computer they can always force reset it using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace unlike Windows where pulling the plug is required.)

I ♥ Planet OpenClipart.org
I really enjoy seeing the artwork Nicu has done and shown off in his journal on Planet.OpenClipart.org and I hope more artists will join in. I am proud to be included on Planet.OpenClipart.org but it is better to see artists who draw more and write less.
I guess the only answer for me is to give in to peer pressure and draw more!
(This post was largely an excuse to see if I could get the heart symbol to work.)

14 Jun 2005 (updated 8 Aug 2005 at 12:27 UTC) »
Google Summer of Code
Submitted a second proposal to Google.
[[[Will edit this post later and include information about the two proposals I made.]]]
I fear my proposal may give the false impression of being casual or too vague. I have never written formal proposals like before and it is a lot like a written job interview but at least in a job interview there is some back and forth and a chance to make oneself clear. As it is an international competition and many of the people entering will not have English as their first language so maybe I have an advantage I had not previously considered. Hopefully the organisers and mentors can figure out a better and more insightful way to judge rather than based purely on how eloquently one expresses themselves in written English.

Sweepstakes
Based on the number of proposals Google said they had arleady recieved I'm willing to bet the total number of submissions will be in excess of eight thousand. To put a specific number on it I'd guess 8513. If anyone else is actually reading this please feel free to take a guess and post it in your journal or add a comment

Sudoku Bandwagon
Soduku was brought to my attention by rmathew and wandered the web reading about it for a while and later mentioned the game to my parents but they had never heard of it before. This morning (Tuesday) I notice the Irish Times has jumped on the bandwagon and is now featuring a Soduku Puzzle. Although it mentions yesterdays solution I didn't see it mondays paper and like far too much of the rest of the Irish Times it looks like it came straight from a syndicated source so there might not actually have been a Soduku puzzle in Mondays paper.

Scalable Vector Gnome Games
Did lots of useful little things last week, got to know both gnome-media and gnome-games a little better and submitted a few patches here and there.
Been meaning for while to create some more graphics for OpenClipart.org so I spent a lot of time the past few days creating graphics for use with Gnome Games. You can see the results and a more detailed description including pictures and at Livejournal.com. Read more...
12 Jun 2005 (updated 14 Jun 2005 at 18:49 UTC) »
Google Summer of Code

Wrote a proposal for the Google Summer of Code today. It has taken a lot of time this past week to read through as many of the suggestions from as many different groups as I could. Finally I went with a Gnome project, one of the first proposals I had read. Took all afternoon and a large chunk of the evening to write a proposal I was reasonably happy with and even then I think I could probably have done even more. With the possible exception of Inkscape all the projects I am most interested in all seem to be very popular, from the early list of proposal distribution. The odds are against me, there will be thousand of submissions and even hundereds of submissions for Gnome and there will be only 200 lucky enough to get funding. It may not be the most glamourous project but library.gnome.org is a worthy idea and even if I do not get funding I hope it will be given the chance to happen as it would be a valuable resource for the Gnome community.
Will probably try to make another submissions before the deadline.

All this talk of Gnomes sounds must sound terribly silly when taken out of context, or to anyone not already familar with the Gnome Desktop

Groklaw interview with Chris Di Bona discussing the Summer of Code

The PDF flier for the Google Summer of Code an initiative to encourage Open Source developement was created using the proprietary software Adobe In Design CS 3. (Run the strings command on the the flier, and then fgrep Adobe.)

229 older entries...

New Advogato Features

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.

Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.

If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!