Older blog entries for alvaro (starting at number 22)

Yesterday I finally finish my development environment using a special version of Debian Sid using components (LinEx 2004 and LinEx Empresa). Then I take from GNOME CVS Planner, Evolution and Evolution Data Server (e-d-s), compile them and install. Now it is time to recover my backend for e-d-s for Planner and continue working in it so you can access Planner tasks from Evolution.

In the Debian work, my Application Manager have resent me (lost the email in the hard disk lost) the questions for Tasks and Skills Check and I hope next month (maybe 2 or 3 weeks) I finish all the work with my AM.

Next week I start working in LambdaUX another time (I have been working a little this week also). I am very happy to be working in this company.

Today I have bought a new stereo system. The old one doesn't play CDs anymore and it only worked as a radio tuner, too big for that ;-)

We have gone to Media Markt because there you have a lot of options between to choose and finally, we select a nice Panasonic system, the SA-PM9. After reading and thinking a lot about human interfaces design, I have built a filter in my brain and I can't resist fo analyze the desing of every object that takes my attention, like this new stereo.

Here you can see the front size of the stereo. No more user interaction with the stereo is in other side execept the up size with 1 button for the cassette and a plug for the phones. There are 15 buttons and a nice wheel fro the volume control.

The 4 central and bigger buttons are the mode buttons to change between CD, Tuner, Tape and a strange Stop button here, that breaks the user mental mode. When you select any mode, the button also is the Play for that mode so designers decide to put a common Stop button for all the modes here. Not very nice but effective. Also the Stop button has a hidden feature that is activated when you push the button for several seconds: a Demo mode in which the display changes between all the features of the system. By default Demo is on and when you shutdown the system, the display start to show you different features. This is the first time I discover why it is doing that. Yes, I haven't read the manual because I am in discovering mode for user.

Up from this for central buttons you can find a row of four buttons labeled "album" and "track" with back and forward labels. To the left of this row is the "MP3" label, so it is easy to think that this four buttons are for playing mp3 music. When I bought the system, I want one with MP3 and in the shop, you have all the main marks with this kind of system. With track buttons you also change between normal CD tracks, but the album bottons only work for the MP3 music.

To the right of the for main buttons you have the great wheel to change the music volume. It is so nice to change the volume with the wheel. If you rotate and reach the lower level, 84 dB (people won't understand this dB thing), you can continue lowering the level with the wheel, but it will remain in "-- dB". If you change the rotate direction, it inmediately start to upper the volume level. There isn't a fix point for max and min music levels. It is very nice.

To the left of the for main buttons you have the power on/off button, very easy to find because its red light. It is always with the red light, no matter the system is on or off. Not sure if maybe, it could have a green light when it is on and a red light when it is off, but the user has other signals that the system is on.

Down the four main buttons you have another row of 4 buttons. They are all located uniformly but there is clearly 2 groups: the two buttons to the left are for starting the surrond filter and changing the sound bass and treble (you have to push the button to find the features :( ). In the Sound button there is also a hidden feature that it is shown when you push the button for several seconds: the equalizator. In the demo I have seen that the machine has an equalizator so I play a little and found the feature, something impossible for a user without reading the manual.
The two buttons to the left are for rewind and forward (tape and CDs), and to find the channels in tuner. I think these four buttons will be better grouped together in the two pair as you have the for buttons for album and tracks.

Finally we have two buttons in strange places: in the right border of the system. One is for opening/closing the CD tray and the other is for start recording. The open and close button maybe will be better place over the CD tray, as in computers, and the record button ... I think desingers haven't found a right place for it. The same location for this two buttons could be found in other Panasonic systems.

Now it is time to take a look to the remote control. It has 34 buttons and put all together like a table with 2 entries. The for buttons central in the front side of the machine are also found in the central zone in the remote control, a good desing point, but the remote control is more complex and hard to find things in it. I will talk about it a more in the future but guys, you can desing better remote controls, I am sure.

I think the remote control is like the toolbar in a GUI application, where you can find the more used features in the system without using menus, but it is horrible that in some system, there are features only accesible from the remote control.

Yesterday with a bad installer interface and doing things without thinking a lot (my first day after holidays), I remove all the data in my hard disk.

It was great because I have a real test case of my DVDs backups. I have used them and recover all the things I backup. Also, some bits that I haven't backup in DVDs (from chroots) I normally backup them using machines in Internet.

I have only lost about 2 weeks of email from my holidays, not a great lost thinking in the worst situation like problems with the DVD with the backups. Some DVDs I have recorded have problems being reading in other DVD units different from the one that recorded it. But my DVD+RW DVDs with backup give me no problems.

It is time to recover all my working environment so I can start hacking another time.

Also, I use the full system reinstall to install Windows XP in the laptop. I have a license for it and I am starting to think that we need free software that runs in Linux and Windows if we want a real change in a few years. So I will try to probe development environments that let me create cross platforms applications for the desktop, mainly Python and Mono.

I have returned from my trip in Germany. A nice but tired try visiting several countries (France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany) around and cities (Nancy, Metz, Luxembourg, Bastogne, Akisgrand ...). I have refueled my mind and now it is time to start hacking.
In the short place, working in the Debian Developer process, in Planner<->Evolution integration and thinking a bit more about a system to control training. I need to run under 45 minutes 10 kilometer this year and next year, to run a mid-marathon. We will see ;-)

Finally, I have decided to post using the web interface and not the clients that are making me not blog :(

Last weeks have been very productive:

• New Planner 0.12 version
• Some database work in Planner so it creates the database stuff for you (looking for "just work" with databases)
• Coded a new plugin for planner so it can import resources from Evolution Data Server
• Coded a new backend for Evolution Data Server so evolution can read planner task files.

Next weeks I am on holidays and I have really a need to leave the computer for sometime and rest. These two weeks are going to be great for me and I am now disconnecting ... I feel my mind is starting to be on holidays also ... so I will return with a fresh brain and lots of energy to make Planner rocks more and hack more in Evolution because I like it a lot.

See you guys!

This week the GNOME Spanish meeting take all the GNOME programmers that speak Spanish in Extremadura has advanced a lot. My mate Carlos Garnacho, GNOME System Tool mantainer, is creating a list with people we should invite. It is sure we'll forget someone but I hope we will talk later with them. I hope this meeting will create team and also, let us talk about the GNOME present and future (languages, development tools, critical projects ...)

In my company we want to present a paper in next GUADEC about a database we are creating that could help Utopia to recognize all the hardware that exists in the world! (not all, but a great amount ;-)) Maybe it is too late ...

We are migrating all our computers to kernel 2.6. The experiencie. with some problems as normal, is being good and I think than in a month more or less. kernel 2.4 will be something we have to support but no more ;-)

I am doing DVD backups in a regular way something that makes me happy.

Not lot of hacking this week. Taking the head of gnome-developer list and also, debian lists. I need to invest more time reading email during the week.

Finally, I am filtering SPAM so I loose less time :) We will see when some important email is taken to the SPAM trash.

This last days has been very productive. In my last trip the undo system in Planner received a nice push and we have a plan to complete it. The changes are commited and now we need sometime to think about ways to simplify a little the code.

I have tested this morning Anjuta 1.2.1 and it was a surprise that I have imported Planner on it and it has worked. Maybe Anjuta has reached the time to be used seriously. I am not sure if I will change emacs/terminal for any IDE, but Anjuta is now a good IDE to play with and see if I find the point on using it. For new GNOME developers, I am sure Anjuta will help a lot.

In my debian sid (unstable) sand box I have started to play with all the new Mono developments, and Muine rocks! I think it is the best music player I have seen for now. I have now BLAM! working also and probably, I'll use it in my daily work.

Debian Mono packages now suffer from the no stability in the GTK# and GNOME# libraries, so each time a new GTK# release appears, all the GTK Mono applications need to be recompiled against it. For the momento, GTK# and applications have to be in a strict sync.

Next days I will play with Monodevelop and Eclipse, trying to define the Development platform for my company.

It is great to see how new developers in Planner have created now the first queue of patches. Richard nowdays spend more time reading patches than coding in Planner!! (no sure ;-))

Planner 0.12 will rock, new features like moving several tasks at the same time, or editing a task with doble click in the task bar in the Gantt char or ... read better the ChangeLog ;-)

About the Undo system, it is taking shape in a fast way. I am trying yo test it carefully. Reading the book "The Mythical Man-Month", people with experience in projects talk about 50% of the time testing and debugging. I am trying to test and debug in development so we can save time in the future. And you know, solving bugs of code already done several weeks or months ago is worse.

I have bought also "Python in a Nutshell". As a Perl guy, normally I have used Perl for scripting but Python is getting stronger and the syntax, ok, it is nice and also de object support and in GNOME, Python is the clear bet so ... I will invest more time in it. I will use gnome-blog as an example application. I use it and Micke pointed it to me as a possible good code to see.

So many news from my last entry. Finally, my new Dell X300 arrived to my work. My company, LambdaUX, has bought to me this laptop in order it is the only one I work with. I have also a PowerBook 12'' but, this X300 is so wonderful. Very light, 1.3 Kg and compiles nicely :) Now I have in my box our company distribution, LambdaUX (Debian + GNOME), a chroot with debian unstable and a chroot with debian testing.

I develop for GNOME in the debian unstable chroot and it is the first time I have all the GNOME CVS compiled with jhbuild, and recompile all frecuently.

I have worked a lot in Planner, and we have done great steps in the undo system. Planner 0.12 will rock! More hackers are coming to the project and giving new ideas and more important, more code ;-)

This morning I have bought a USB 2.0 box for IDE devices and a DVD recorder so I can finally backup all my data. Some data looses in my work and the steal of a laptop from a mate has motivated me to have a good backup solution for all my data. And a DVD recorder seems to be a very good choice.

Last discussions in GNOME about developmente technologies has also motivated my to buy some Python book. Also some books about people management, something I have to do in my work more and more.

Next weeks seems to be very interesting, with travels to talk about the future of Debian distributions, about the GNOME world in Spain and finally, the travel to Norway to the GUADEC.

Last 11 March in Madrid we have lived one of the worst day of our lives: more that 200 civils was killed when they tried to arrive to their works using the train. It has been horrible and the authors have been the Al Qaeda group becuase the Spanish support to the ilegal war using lies against Iraq. Spanish government has tried to give the credit to ETA, the vasque terrorist group, but this time, the international terrorism has killed us.

But the "show must go on", our hearts are broken and our eyes fill with tears everytime we see the deep hurt this attack has mark so many people ...

In my way to become a debian developer, I am starting to read several debian lists, one of the is the developer list. It is very interesting and one thing I love to read are the ITPs: Intent To Package, new software debian developers announce they are going to package. Today I have read the ITP for kursh, a personal financial manager written for GNOME using Mono. I think that Mono will be a killer platform for developing end users applications. And it is nice to see that it uses the Novell Forge kurush, Novell open source center, and that another IDE for Mono is borning: Monoant.

The end user applications era is more and more near to the free software world and I will love to work on it :)