Older blog entries for xf (starting at number 7)

13 Jan 2004 (updated 13 Jan 2004 at 14:08 UTC) »

Hmm, is it just me or is Advogato dog slow at times? I always thought it was my crappy home connection, but the nice aarnet connection here at LCA is just as slow - often I'll go to view a diary, or post a post, and things will just completely hang.

Server load? Anybody know the issue?

12 Jan 2004 (updated 12 Jan 2004 at 15:39 UTC) »

Woo, jeez - you wouldn't believe how much work this conference (linux.conf.au 2004) is - like the other organisers, I'm running on less than 3 hours sleep, and tonight doesn't look much better (if I'm not making sense, you know why).

That said though, we hope the conf is a huge success and everybody really enjoys it. Hopefully the video recordings which I'm undertaking turn out well and we'll have a DVD to send out to attendees after it's all finished - Apple are *really* cool, they've given us almost a terabyte of capture space to use for post-conference editing, with more if we need it :-) Kudos.

That said, it's no substutite for being at the conference - the vibe here is amazing, and it's way cool to be involved with so many active developers, and nag people about bugs in their software you want them to fix ;-) I also found it rather amusing today talking to somebody about why software Y was better then crappy old X, and found out that person was actually the author of software X. That said though, it's brilliant to talk to people like this face to face; you get a much better understanding of the mentalities behind their decisions, and everything suddenly clicks and makes sense.

If you're not here, there's still some registrations open - remember, the main conference doesn't start until Wednesday, so there's still time to come. It's really, really, really worth it.

Still have more things to organise, tapes to stripe (timecode can suck, grr), and video to dump. If you see me wandering around the place (Ryan Verner), feel free to say g'day - and there's still room for more FIXIT sessions :-)

linux.conf.au 2004 have just announced another reason to attend - enter the hackfest, and build the best tetrinet bot (client library supplied), and you could win an IBM pSeries deskside server model p615 with Dual 1.45GHz Power4+ CPUs, 4GB RAM, 2x146.8GB Ultra 3 SCSI 10,000 RPM Hard Disks, DVD ROM drive, 21" Colour Monitor, with SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.2 preinstalled - worth over AU$39,000. Registrations are filling up quickly, though.
25 Nov 2003 (updated 25 Nov 2003 at 14:08 UTC) »
mrd: Haha, that's a copy of Apple's Exposé, which wasn't an entirely new concept anyway, but the first time it was properly implemented IIRC. (Why are all my posts about Apple stuff?) It's definitely a cool feature, something that ends up becoming absolutely essential, and I was wondering how long it'd take somebody to hack something together.

It's always great to see innovative, original concepts surface first in OSS (Gnome seems to do this a lot, which is brilliant, and why it's my desktop of choice), but it doesn't hurt to bring good ideas to the masses. Let's just hope Apple didn't patent it, which is something they seem to like doing :-(

haruspex: I've found Opengroupware quite fragile, too, and I'm not really a huge fan of it; I look forward to future developments, though. Have you checked out moregroupware at all? It's a project I'm involved with (plug plug), but IMHO it's the nicest web-based groupware out there; the interface is consistent, logical, and easy to use; the backend is very, very capable (the user/group rights system rocks); and it's under /very/ heavy development; new features continually (I'm currently working on a new module right now; the company I currently work for have a few commercial modules, such as stock inventory, which I'm trying to get GPL'ed). Grab a CVS snapshot. There's currently two calendar modules; Calendar2, which is based off PHP iCalendar, and the original Calendar1 module, which is currently being rewritten to be a far more corporate calendar. Calendar2's currently the most usable, and it's quite capable for group calendaring.
10 Nov 2003 (updated 10 Nov 2003 at 13:11 UTC) »

Argh, how long do Apple want to delay these 15" G4 Powerbooks for?

I ordered one going back a month now and keep getting told all sorts of stories about them being recalled due to memory issues, LCD issues (RevA AlBook white spots, apparently due to spacers in the back of the screen?), shipping mistakes, the list goes on; I'm guessing that the people I'm speaking to don't actually really know. I've given up hope of seeing it anytime soon.

What I don't understand is why the 12" and 17" models don't appear to have the same issues; they were never recalled, and I've seen plenty get sold in the last month. Surely they'd share some of the same issues, whatever they are?

Now that I'm doing some artwork for Linux.Conf.Au 2004, currently the maps, I /really/ miss my old TiBook. I'm super keen to see some of these open source vector Desktop Publishing tools (sodipodi, scribus) properly mature on Linux; they're really very cool, but still have some way to go in terms of features IMHO. At least, though, they don't seem to be as damn buggy as most of Adobe's products on Windows (@!*&$#$).

Wonder if the delay's just an Aussie thing.

It's amazing how much your coding style can develop over the years.

I've just dug up an old streaming Quicktime project I was working on a few years ago, and my god, the code's *so* freaking messy. I quite distinctly remember thinking how well I was structuring everything at the time, too.

Guess its what happens when you leave things on the backburner too long ;-)

So, I get into work this morning, planning on a productive day, and I find my machine's rebooted into XP (I normally run Sid), and it's locked up solid.

Turn it off, turn it on again, and the damn thing won't turn on.

Took out my Linux hard drive, with all my important bits on it, and it doesn't appear to be working at all in another machine (i.e. BIOS doesn't pick it up).

Ack ;-( I hope I can recover information off it, otherwise it's the third or fourth hard drive I've lost mysterously in the past few months, losing valuable work.

And I normally keep backups by rsync'ing to my laptop before I leave, but I'm currently without one at the moment because I just sold my Powerbook G4/500, and I'm waiting for my new one (G4/1250).

Arg. Somebody up there hates me ;-(

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