markey

I'm very happy to break this news to you, as I think it's an incredibly cool feature: Amarok now has full support for last.fm streams. This includes advanced features known from the last.fm player, like skip/love/ban, cover images and metadata. Have a look:



In true Amarok fashion, we have developed this feature with intense teamwork. The planning and first code was started at our K3M multimedia meeting. Seb Ruiz did the initial port of Muesli's original last.fm player code (Qt4) to Amarok. Then Ian Monroe improved the framework and added a proxy server, which was needed to make our engines understand the lastfm:// protocol. Soon we realized that an in-process server would not work; here my previous experience with server programming and Ruby kicked in: I ported the proxy to a tiny external Ruby script, with very low overhead. Now we were able to listen to a last.fm stream with Amarok for the first time, which rocked.

Soon we noticed that the server script was bit too simplistic; it would not work with the Helix engine. To the rescue came our Helix expert Paul Cifarelli, who had never before programmed in Ruby. In a matter of hours he managed to improve the script, so that it now works with all engines. Then we added support for cover images from last.fm - they are shown automatically for each track the stream is playing. And our graphics artist Vadim Petrunin made some funky icons for the skip/love/ban buttons.

Sounds complicated? It was But it was a damn good hack, and we've enjoyed it immensely. You guys can lean back and enjoy your favourite music from last.fm in Amarok 1.4.1.


Have fun

So this blog entry is a bit like "Ask Slashdot", but instead I'm turning to our community

The thing is, I'm a light sleeper. Always have been, for some reason. When I'm at home in my known territory and daily routine, I usually have no problems sleeping well at night. I get my good 7 hours sleep at night like everyone else does, pretty much. But when I'm abroad, like at a conference or on vacation, getting good sleep really is much more difficult for me, and it takes its toll.

Usually it works like this: First day I'm all fresh and in my usual good mood; then in the night I will probably sleep for four hours, and spend the rest of the night staring at the wall in my hotel room. One night without good sleep isn't much of a problem, so I'm still in pretty good shape on the next day. In the evening we have a few drinks (who doesn't enjoy that), and now the alcohol additionally messes with my sleep, I get maybe three hours sleep and the rest is again spent in bed awake. By the third day I finally look like a complete zombie. All energy and creatitivity is drained, and I'm not much fun to be around.

Reasons? I don't know for sure. For one, I'm simply excited when at a conference, it clearly raises adrenaline levels. Then I can't really "switch off" in the night. Additionally there's the unfamiliarity of the surroundings, and such. I do sometimes envy people who can just sleep whenever and wherever they want. Like my stepsister, who can sleep soundly for 10 hours, and then some, and still enjoy it.


Any of you suffering from the same issues? Got some good advice?

As one of the results of our K3M multimedia meeting in the Netherlands, your favourite media player is now called "Amarok". Say goodbye to "amaroK" and its various misspellings "AmaroK", "aMar0k", and friends. However, you may still call it Anorak, this is officially acceptable

For those of you not following the mailing list, here's a copy of my arguments pro name change as discussed on the list, to help you understand our motivations behind the change:

1) Misspelling of the name is inevitable. In many languages (e.g. French) it's downright an error and unacceptable to start a sentence without a capital letter. So in official media it is always going to be spelt "AmaroK" at the start of a sentence, and possibly also in mid sentence. We're provoking this misspelling.

Here are some excerpts from the Helix engine desktop file:

Comment[et]=AmaroKi plugin
Comment[fr]=Module pour AmaroK

2) It was a funny idea when Amarok was young, but nowadays it just seems quirky.

3) The name is unusual enough not to require additional attention from special capitalization.

4) Amarok is intended to be a software for all desktops, not just KDE. The capital K suggests that it's a KDE only application.

5) Changing the name earlier is easier than later, assuming that our popularity is still growing.

6) The Amarok logo does in no way reflect the current spelling. If anything, it looks like "amarOk".

7) The various misspellings hurt name branding. There should be one brand "Amarok", and misspelling weakens our brand.