GNU Ghostscript

atai, good luck with that. Compromise isn't possible; that is the whole point of the split. It's not like we didn't try there. The only thing that's acceptable to both parties is for someone to do a port, in the direction you've contributed already.

It's frustrating that they haven't accepted even your modified version for distribution yet. Maybe you should ping them again.

London

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. We've moved flats, from Bow in the east end to Kew in Richmond, half way to the ring road in the west. I really like the new place; it's better finished than the old place, with high ceilings and better, though still not up to North American standard plumbing. The landlord seems a lot more interested in keeping things up as well, which was a relief.

The location is great as well, just two blocks from the main gate of the Royal Botanical Gardens. We've had season passes for a while, and on friday I went in with my laptop and sat working as geese walked by on all sides pulling grass and the concorde flew overhead. That was pretty neat. :)

The moving part was stressful. Part of it is just not being familiar with the system, but there also seems to be some basic impedence mismatch that keeps bureaucratic adjustments from every going smoothly. Normally it's just annoying, but with basic shelter at stake it was a little more worrying. In retrospect everything went well enough, and we're just waiting for the DSL install before things are back to normal.

Xiph

I've been more inspired to work on xiph stuff lately, largely because Emmett has left (I'm sorry to say) and (I'm not sorry to say at all) jack is asserting himself again. Monty has been swamped with vorbis work since doing the initial port of the theora codec, but several of us have banded together to pick up development and have made good progress. Video is what got me involved in the first place, so it's about time!

We've also been trying to organize ourselves a little better and get everyone on the same page again. Xiph has grown quite a bit lately, accreting several other projects, and it's gotten hard to keep follow everything that's going on or figure out how to contribute. We're also trying to open the process back up again, more the way Jack and I (at least) think things should be.

To help organize things and document our collective direction, we've started a wiki. It's really an experiment, but so far I think it's going well. It's a great tool for maintaining todo lists, meeting agendas and so on. Please have a look and contribute if you've been following our efforts.

Matrix

Went to see The Matrix Reloaded on friday. It was much better than I feared after the tacky bad press it got opening week. StevenRainwater, I really like Susan's musical theory. One of the first things I noticed is that the action sequences felt stirred-in in a way that the original didn't, like they didn't really serve to advance the story; thinking of them as dance interludes is clever.

ction aside, I was really happy with the direction they took the science fiction. It's a lot more complicated than the original, enough to make it an actual trilogy rather than a pair of sequels. It's funny how the messages about control have complexified, like they're written this movie from a perspective that's sold out compared to that of the first movie: now that you know you have the power to make a big budget studio movies, things don't look so simple as maybe you assumed.