Older blog entries for AlanHorkan (starting at number 61)

Saturday Saw Shrek 2 again. Classic.

Sunday, Monday

Spent some awkward time with my ex-girlfriend who paid me a surprise visit. Learnt about James Joyce and saw Spider-man 2 again.

Tuesday

Gone Me. I was very skeptical of this at first, I still am skeptical but in theory it would be great to have web browser so well engineered that different backends could easily be swapped in. There is always a trade off though. Best case scenario the trade off is just developer time and energy but in the worst case the backend could not be cleanly seperated out and there would performance penalties and massive maintainance overheads.
It took some getting used to but I like the button order in Gnome 2 and it makes a lot of sense to me. Again I'd like if we could have it both ways, but quickly patching the source is a long way from have a clean maintainable solution.
Sometimes it helps to state the obvious. The Gnome desktop is not GTK. GTK is at the core of Gnome and is written in C. Gnome is not and should not be written only in C. Gnome is not a toolkit, it is a desktop platform and should be making it easier to develop applications. I am surprised that Python has not been made a part of Gnome already. If anything Gnome should be using more languages and tools that allow Rapid Application Developement (RAD) because high level languages mean more developers. Developers! Developers! Developers!. The underlying purpose of the recent discussions about Java and Mono was the need for Gnome to make use of higher level langauges and how best to go about it. New technologies and better standardisation will make the choice of tools increasingly irrelevant and Gnome and KDE will be able to concentrate on serving differernt user bases instead of different developers and toolkits.

Opinion

Gnome is not an acronym. Some say it stands for GNU Network Object Model Enviroment which is terribly contrived and was cleary retrofitted to fit the word gnome. If it ever even made sense to begin with, it does not anymore. How GNU is Gnome really? I'm sure sure Richard Stallman (another creator of abhorrant acronyms) has some interesting opinions on that one. Bonobo was to fulfill the promise of the Network Object Model but that has not happened. When source code is freely available and developers are willing to cooperate it is more practical and effective to share functionality at the library level (some KDE developers cleverly reuse these same libraries and make higher level KPart Object from them). For most cases Bobono is overkill, embedding an application inside another application does not often produce a particularly friendly user interface. In most cases what is needed is a preview and a some sort of a callback so that the embedded object can still be edited and the preview be updated automatically. (A good example of this is the all that is abigimp plugin).
Words like scuba and radar have long since dropped the convoluted explanations for their acronyms and it is time for Gnome to drop its contrived acronym too.
Acronyms are not clever, they are not cute, it does nothing but add another complication so lets keep it simple, please call it Gnome, okay?

Saturday Saw Shrek 2 again, enjoyed it just as much.

Sunday My brother had rented the Hulk and I watched it again before he returned it. Brilliant Cinematography, but there was something lacking about the action. The killer poodle was a really bad idea.

Having problems connecting to Advogato quite often - no idea why - so I've decided to write my journal entries as email and add them later so the dates may be wildly off from now on.

Tuesday

I have been writing more Scheme again, continuing the move of all the Pattern scripts to not only work on the current image but to also work with the current selection if there is one.
Some of the scripts have almost been completely rewritten. I have added, I have removed, I have restructured, I have commented extensively (hopefully it will be useful to people trying to learn Scheme), I have changed the indentation to use four spaces, I have renamed all the variable-names to look like how they should in Scheme but I have shamelessly ignored the usual scheme convention and instead of jamming all the parenthesis together ))))) I have spaced them out so I can visually check they match without needing a fancy editing program.

I cannot help wondering at what point code ceases to be covered by the GPL?
How much use is fair use? How much must you rewrite before you can reasonably call the work your own?

Projects and study to do for University, a little Flash and a lot of Database work.

Wednesday

Created a project page for OpenClipart.org on freshmeat

Started a new irregular job yesterday and today, which involves going to cinemas and checking that all the onscreen advertising, trailers, and banners posters are in order. I also have to try and take note of any audience reactions. Difficult to get that damned "loving it" jingle out of my head. Watching trailers is enjoyable, there are plenty of different trailers to see and sometimes there are subtle variations. Writing in the dark can be surprisingly difficult. After having had an odd job working a Snooker Hall it is great to have another job that I can really enjoy doing even if it will only be once every few weeks.

Shrek 2 was laugh out loud hilarious. Some of the review thought the constant movie references were a bit much but I enjoyed them and they provided a different level you could enjoy the movie on. The Mission Impossible bit, and the Gingerbread Giant were great too. Jonathan Ross, BBC movie critic and comedian was deeply disturbing as the Ugly Sister, barkeep of the Poison Apple Tavern. (Apparently it was revoiced for the UK and Americans get to hear Larry King instead).
There was a nice sequence in the middle of the closing credits where Donkey is reunited with the Dragon, so if you have not already seen Shrek 2 be sure to wait long enough at the end to see it.

Spider-man 2 opened with the painted Comic Book Art of Alex Ross, which recapped the previous film and with style. Although I had been dissapointed because of the hype and obligatory exposition of the first Spider-man film file that was quickly forgotten and I really enjoyed this film. Bruce Campbell, as the usher, the true villian of Spider-man 2, yay! It was an interesting decision to have Spider-man unmasked quite so much but I think they got away with it. I expected that Peter Parker was admitting going to admit to Aunt May that he was spider-man but I guess they are saving that for the sequels.
JK Simmons got a much bigger chance to bark as J. Jonah Jameson editor of the Daily Bugle, but is a litte disturbing having seen him for so long as Neo-Nazi Schillinger in HBO television prison drama OZ.
Kirsten Dunst is beautiful but I dont understand how Spider-man manages to make her look so awful, bad clothes, lifeless hair. Tobey Maguire seems to have a scar on his cheek that is shaped like an S turned on its side. Can you tell I watched it more than once?!
The ending sets things up for the Spider-Man 3:Return of the Green Goblin but I hope that Sam Raimi will resist the temptation to bring him back so soon. The appearance of Dr Conners as Peters lecturer suggests we might get to see the Lizard instead, although I'm hoping the franchise will last long enough for us to get to see spider-mans arch-nemeisis Venom.

Bought my ex-girlfriend a birthday present, it seemed like the thing to do. Hopefully it will arrive close to the date (June 17).

Created a project page for OpenClipart.org here on Advogato.org

Nokia has long been the number one computer manufacturer, I'm not sure when I first heard it said but more and more people are realising the same conclusion. It hardly seems like any great predicition though, the really surprising part is how much people use computers (in the form of mobile phones, video recorders and other digital appliances) yet fail to recognise it our the importance of computers. http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20040712/030883.html

Luis, sorry to hear work and Gnome is getting to you but given the kind of relentless work you put into tough thankless bug related task it is only surprising how you have managed it for so long, it not surpisning that has become too much. Your work is appreciated.

I am not a Vegetarian!.
Due to my lack of funds and a generous offer to pay for my meal I was convinced to go to a Vegetarian restaurant. I was resolved to try something different but I am a person that usually pushes the vegatables to the side of the plate, rather than loading it to the brim with all manner of vegatables and salads. To be fair I have had very similar pasta dishes that did not have any meat in them and quite enjoyed them but the mix of the differnt flavours was all a little bit overwhelming, a mini-culture shock. My friend was thoroughly entertained by my over-reactions and daft remarks as I slowly munched my way through the rabbit food. Crazy Hippies!

Nathalie, a very French film. I can hardly believe Emmanuelle Béart is 39, I cannot barely believe they described Gerard Depardieu as handsome but what do I know? I had a feeling all along where the story was going but I always enjoy movies more when I have a free ticket (courtesy of the Irish Times. Free tickets are great, I doubt I would have ever chosen to sit through the ass-numbingly long Nixon (Oliver Stone), or Amistad otherwise). I tried to listen to the words rather than reading the subtitles but the room was packed and I was very close to the screen, right in the second row which meant I had to move my head up and down to switch focus. The translator got a bit carried away, rephrasing when a more direct translation would have been equally if not more effective, in one case he even went so far as to translate fiancée to girlfriend.

Been watching lots of movies over the past few weeks.
Just saw The Cooler starring William H Macy, Maria Bello, and Alec Baldwin (and apparently he was nominated for the Best supported Actor Acedemy Award for his performance).
Nice interesting little yarn, surprisingly funny in places particularly even though I dont usually enjoy the humour of a really awkward situation.

In sharp contrast I watched DareDevil this weekend which wasn't even as good as I remembered it. The first time I watched it I enjoyed it substantially more than Spider-Man, I still wouldn't have claimed it was a better movie than Spider-man though. As often happens my expectations of the movie and seeing too much hype spoiled my enjoyment of Spider-man.
The annoying trailers that I couldn't skip past at the start of the DVD I'd gone and paid for annoyed me plenty to start with, hopefully I'll be less annoyed at having bought it when I have watched the extras on the second disk. I dont mind Ben Affleck and he plays Matt Murdock well but I must have blanked out the narration (usually a sign of terrible (under)writing and this is no exception), the origin back story felt overly long, wheras the scenes with the lovely Jennifer Garner felt too short :). I could hardly bear the horrifically stupid performance by Colin Farrell. Which moron thought it would be a good idea to have him play it Irish? They made a clown out of what should have been a ruthless borderline pyschopathic assassin, putting him in a really awful "non-costume", he would have been less silly in superhero spandex (or a black jumpsuit). I'm still surprised how well Michael Clarke Duncan works as the Kingpin, even though the original character was a huge white man (a mountain of muscle not fat), but I think more could have been done to make him seem larger than life and a much more menacing villian.
DareDevil doesn't live in Gotham city, he lives in the same New York city as Spider-man and although the technicolour parade in Spider-Man was a bit much, the attempt at dark and gloomy does not seem quite right in DareDevil. The movie seems to take span maybe a few weeks but I think it would have been more interesting if they had tried to make it span months and tried to imply more happening and build more tension. I would probably still go and see a sequel if they make it although I'd much rather see if they can make a decent movie out of Elektra.

I finally saw Pirates of the Carribean and despite assurances that it wasn't as crap as I might expect a Disney movie based on theme park ride to be I was still sceptical. I watched it anyway because Keira Knightely is in it, oh and Johnny Depp too, doing his best impression of Keith Richards. In spite of myself I really enjoyed it and even watched most of the DVD extras.

"Dances with Samuri", better known as The Last Samuri starring Tom Cruise, which I could have done without and Ken Watanabe who was great. Japanese culture is very interesting but I couldn't help wondering how authentic the movie. The movie was long but worthwhile.

American Pie 3 was better than the second one but the first movie had the element of surprise and the lovely Shannon Elizabeth.
American Pie 3 was to balance out the other movie I rented, 28 Days Later (was very careful not to rent 28 days. It worked pretty well, interesting story Cillian Murphy was cool and good o' Brendan Gleeson is there too. I enjoyed it and it provided me with another Zombies which should keep me going until Resident Evil 2 comes out but I'm not likely to watch it again.

Ben Stiller still isn't funny but I still sat through Zoolander and Starsky and Hutch. Better than watching TV.

Tomorrow I'm going to see a preview of Nathalie a French Film starring Emmanuelle Beart.

I was wondering how after deleting several CD ISO images I was still taking up so much diskspace. I had forgotten to check my virusmail folder, between May and June I had accumulated over 35000 messages resulting in close to 1.2 Gigabytes of Virus email. That does not inlcude the other spam and junkmail that I have been filtering for ages or the messages that regularly make it through to my inbox.

Dia 0.94 prerelease 1 works beautifully.

To echo the words of Luis: Thank goodness Advogato is back. I was seriously considering setting up my own journal but Advogato gives a sense of community, an excuse to write and at least the vague feeling that someone else might be reading. Pybloxsom is sounds tempting (crap name) though.

Fejj, skip to Fast Quick Sort already! ;)

I missed out on this years GUADEC but it makes me more determined to put aside money so that I can go next year. Things seem to have gone well for AbiWord with Mathematics support getting a significant push forward.

To compensate for not being able to be at GUADEC I tried to get some programming done. Had another play with Garnome, it was less hassle than previouse times but I couldn't get enough disk space on the network for what I wanted. Did some poking and prodding of Dia as another release is immenant (will be version 0.94) but although I have some ideas thoroughly worked out, implementation will have to wait until after the release. With so few version numbers left to Dia might actually be declare version 1.0 which with any luck will encourage more developers to join in and take Dia off in some new directions. Finally I am learning some Python. I have started by modifying some of existing Gimp Python scripts and by writing simple python scripts of my own. Although I know enough from other languages to wade in and get started, I definately need to do some proper background reading.

My father has never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth and as a result we had an excessive quantity of bananas in the house, which was an ideal excuse for culinary experimentation. The novelty did not last long so I hastily searched for recipies and decided to make Banana Jam. I had never made jam before least of all banana jam. I had not even considered the possiblity of it existing but you can make jam out of just about any fruit. Even by the standards of my sweet-tooth this stuff is sweet, not surprising considering the ingredients are banana, pineapple, lemon and sugar. Mmm!

This evening in Trinity College Dublin Richard Stallman gave a talk about Software Patents or to better avoid the propoganda maybe I should refer to them as exclusion rights. He is an accomplished speaker and even with the fairly dry material got a few laughs, and had some powerful analogies, comparing patents to land mines and describing patents as something to be feared similar to the risk of mugged on the street.
Most of the questions afterwards were answered with "I don't know you'd have to ask a lawyer". Patents are complex and incomprehensible mess, the best laws are straighforward and obvious and do not require legal training to understand.

Three candidate MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) made an appearance, two from my voting area, one of whom already had my vote and it will certainly heavily influence my vote for the other. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to bring this to the attention to some of the other candidates. [Update: Neither of the two got elected, one of them was a sitting MEP from the Green party and I was dissappointed she didn't get reelected but it was as predicted, because the main parties belatedly realised the importance of the European Parliament and got their act together.]

If you are interested in reading more The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) has plenty to say.

He Gave a similar speech on software patents the Friday before in London but from the article at the Register it seems it seems he used some more colourful analogies that time.

This mornings three hour exam turned into into a four hour exam.

I am very very tired.

Minimo looks interesting but they already seem to have made the mistake of limiting themselves to their target platform which is understandable at first but hopefully they will make it available for more platforms soon. [It seems provided test builds for Intel desktop machines are already part of the plan for Milestone 1]
What they should be doing is also providing binaries for Desktop platforms such as Linux and Windows so that users without the right hardward can more easily contribute and so that web designers can design and test their web pages without the need to emulate the handheld hardward and there are desktop users who are interested in a minimal browser (but not as minimal as a console based browser).
Surely their own developers are using Workstations or Desktop enviroments, rather than working directly off real (or emulated) handhelds?

It will be less of an issue if Mozilla gets a small screen view like Opera has had for a long time now. Another thing they could do to help content developers would be to get their Custom Stylesheet for Handhelds included with Mozilla and enhance the "Use Style" feature (in Mozilla but dropped from FireFox) to apply local stylesheets, again just like Opera has had for ages.

Having jumped through hoops and suffered the difficulties of trying to get a Microsoft Pocket PC emulator to run just so that I could run the Pocket Internet Explorer and do some testing I know it would be a significant benefit to be able to run Minimo on my desktop.

Thankfully both Minimo and Mozilla use the Gecko rendering engine so the differences should be minimal but I am certain it is a mistake not to also provide binaries for desktop platforms.