Amarok Blog

Entries from Thursday, November 2. 2006

Thursday, November 2. 2006

Timeoutlogger Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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Timeoutlogger

Some people might know that since about a month I'm suffering from no, or actually very low, motivation to do anything. As result of this I decided to take a timeout from Amarok, KDE and FOSS development/management, for a not yet known period of time.

This will most likely start after release of Amarok 1.4.4

I will unsubscribe from every mailing list, not aggregate planets or blogs or IT related news, not join any IRC channel, not log into my jabber account @ kdetalk, not answer any mail about Amarok, KDE or FOSS (as long as it's not really important to do so) and probably some more I didn't think of as I also stopped drinking coffee (doctor's advice).

Now, why do I do this?
Mainly because I have far too much responsibilities right now (not only in FOSS), and this is putting a lot of pressure on me, but also because I want to get an all new view at the whole open source movement, and last but not least, because I want to spend more time on learning French

So, watch out for Amarok 1.4.4

Thursday, November 2. 2006

aKademy - Hoooray! Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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aKademy - Hoooray!

Arrr.....

aKademy is starting in some days, and I'm kinda busy with doing last organization for the trip (even forgot to learn for the french test tomorrow

- it's not that easy to go to Vienna (Duesseldorf was easier at least

I will arrive on Firday 13:55 @ Dublin Airport (check the wiki) and will le ave on 7:30 the following M onday - and currently have no clue how to go to hostel or college or anywhere

Anyway, to make it easy for everyone to recognize and lead me to the right direction, here's a short description: tux cap on my head, big Kay on my black t-shirt, black trouser, black shoes, laptop bag on the righten side, (sliver colored) backpack on the back, a Kay pin on my jacket and no clue of anything but location of next coffee shop...

If you still have no idea how I look like:

<-- the Kayed one. So, I hope someone will guide me to aKademy location and ensures that I don't tumble in a big hole (->O<-) gotta pray a bit now (getting the plane is already quite difficult). Anyway, finally I just want to thank my school for making it possible to travel on Firday and Monday, so that I can at least enjoy the weekend of this year's KDE Conference.

(BTW: there will be no Amarok release, live from aKademy - 1.4.3 was just too ASAP and .4 is not finished - maybe a special aKademy snapshot, though I wonder about the sense...)

Thursday, November 2. 2006

Re: the kay, the dee, the ee on the ... Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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Re: the kay, the dee, the ee on the tee vee

So, Aaron asked in first of his latest tripple-blog-post-mode-action (?) for visitor bump on march 15, 2005.

As we didn't use Urchin analytics back then (as we usually only use Google services if KDE doesn't offer them

- and only Google services in that case) I can't show lovely graphics and big load of background information, but I guess Webalizer also does a good job

In particular:

Thursday, November 2. 2006

Dublin - something to look fwd... Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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Dublin - something to look fwd...

A friend recently went to Dublin for some days, and he brought interessting information with him.

As we can see here, MS Windows wants to welcome everybody with a well known look, which just reminds on home. In fact, this is a research done by the government, to find out whether it is possible to control the amount of visitors with such welcome messages. I can tell you, since they started to welcome visitors like this, the amount of visitors got unhalved.

Now, I, as an free desktop enthusiast, think we should prepare for the worst when entering the plain/train to Dublin. So, don't forget your Kubuntu CD's, your Kay-Shirts and last but not least the Kay's. Also make sure you know every single detail about KDE, people usually take you more serious, if they notice you know what you're talking about

Thursday, November 2. 2006

In 80 Days Around the Kay Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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In 80 Days Around the Kay

It somehow looks like next 2 months are going to be great fun...

In early september I'll join the KDE booth at the Linuxtage in Essen (Germany). Actually I still have to find cheapest way to get there, as the way from $HOME to /essen isn't quite short, but no way would be too long for my Special Kay

.

In mid-end setember I'll be at aKademy 06, for the weekend. Also not shortest distance that is, will be about 170 from Vienna to Dublin and back. But aKademy is really a must this year, as I couldn't participate last year as I had to work - so it could be even 500 bucks to go there!

Last but not least it's also highly possible that we (roKymotion team, the currently 2 members

) do a talk at Practical Linux in Gießen (Germany). Although I will first have to check how to finance that funky trip.

So, maybe see ya at one of those events

Thursday, November 2. 2006

Freedom? Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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Freedom?

Belive it or not, but I'm really free.

Google is taking care of that - and therefore: thank you Google!

I can read latest news selection everywhere, check mails everywhere, can stay in contact with friends everywhere, I can do wordprocessing every time, I can do spreadsheeting every time, I even can manage my calendar everywhere, and all this I can do from one site in the web.

Yeah, I know, I probably post too much about the never ending go(o)dness of Google, but I just noticed again that I don't depend on any OS for the stuff that really matters in all day life.

Thursday, November 2. 2006

KDE Everywhere - Malta Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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KDE Everywhere - Malta

So finally I came round to blog about my Malta travel, more specific, the krusade.

After having some troubles preparing the monsterious big Kay for the journey, I was quite surprised how well it worked. Although - I of course forgot the adhesion to make the 5 pieces one big Kay, I first had to find something sticky, which wasn't as easy as I thought, anyway I got the adhesion and was able to start clogging.

So as I get very hyperactive when I have to do such a precise and important work (I had exactly one try), it took me about 3 hours to get the Kay finished (most time was probably used for shouting, crying and freaking).
Hopefully understandable that I didn't want to leave it, but it was evening and the class crew was preparing for going out - what does a nerd do? - right! - he takes the Kay with him (awful idea though). Of course the Kay was suffering from all the Heineken and smoke, so that it wasn't very good looking when we came home, that's when I got the intuition that I might should have protected it with a transparent plastic shild thing.

But it survived the night and was able to go with use to Valetta (capital city of Malta). Wasn't easy to find a good backround for the Kay as whole Malta doesn't look so good in summer (as it is so hot- everything is quite dusty). So I took some pictures which look quite good imo (athough the Kay doesn't do so on high res

KDE-Look

PicasaWeb Posted by Picasa

Thursday, November 2. 2006

Thank you ATI Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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Thank you ATI

I just wanted to say thank you ATI. Without you and your awesome driver for Linux, my life would be just totally boring. No one would like a rock stable Kubuntu, much better it is to repair demage done by silly drivers - wooohoo I love it when I have to stop boring packaging and boring promoting to play with my wonderful looking fglrx.

Really ATI - I LOVE YOU

without you my system would be just too stable.

Thursday, November 2. 2006

Genesis - 1.4.1 beta1 Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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Genesis - 1.4.1 beta1

As I was busy reading the da vinci code, which I had to write an disquisition about, I recently got notified that there will be a beta release of amaroK 1.4.1, reason -> K4M3 (K3M). A view into my mailbox showed me about 100 unread mails in the commits folder...usually the amount doesn't get > 45

So, on Sunday+2weeks (06-06-18) we will probably pull out amaroK 1.4.1 beta1 - advanced amaroK users might know that we don't do betas for x.x.y releases, reason for this beta are enormous changes in the GUI as well as the core.
Those are mostly results of K4M3 (kde 4 mutlimedia meeting) which had lead to really great improvements and ideas.
We plan 1.4.1 for 2 weeks after the beta (if there are no big problems) and probably apply a string freeze 1 week before release.

As of now trunk includes:

changed GUI - context tab got removed and fights with the playlist for user's attention
startup improvements - currently about 50%
bugs bugs bugs
bugfixes for other bugs

I'm still trying to sort out the bugs in the amaroK nightly script, which moved together with my server from SUSE to Kubuntu (woooohoooo!). Not only that this is the first somewhat, trying to be professional, work in Ruby (using 4 times an external app - on 200 lines!) also getting the debian dir to work properly with SVN snapshots is really nifty stuff ... I really hope to get it done within the next few weeks. Maybe before 1.4.1 final

Thursday, November 2. 2006

All About Eye-Candy Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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All About Eye-Candy

today kapilzad publish his KDE Spectra proposal series for KDE...

Most important thing for me is KDE Spectra Player - meant as "KDE should have a powerful multimedia player, with cool graphics and should be like a file-browser"

powerful media player: just wondered why his mockup uses stuff named suroor.mp3 - dunno tags? dunno vorbis?
cool graphics: which actually means as big that your eyes start bleeding because you have to move them 3 cm to see another button (big + shiny != cool)
should be like a file-browser: aye, since one doesn't have tags...

So, there is a reason why this proposal got quite some negative votes, and it's not only amaroK.

Anyway, the whole KDE Spectra propal series is missing a good point, the whole idea lacks usability (thought of a non-usability expert), functionality and is actually only about eye-candy (allthough I wonder whether hundreds awful BIG buttons are still eye-candy)

This is not how I'd like to see KDE!!!

Thursday, November 2. 2006

Notice the nerdification Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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Notice the nerdification

So, how does one notice that he becomes more than a usual geek? Well, if he starts replacing mathematical variables with initialism....

Like for example K (for german Kapital = capital) with KDE. This way K0 (which is base value) becomes KDE0

So happened to me :S
apachelogger <--- nerd!!! Here is an excerpt of latest mathematics test:

Actually this appearance was quite funny, since my maths teacher used to use GNOME

So maybe it was just my unbelivable cynicism? Dunno! Maybe this post is even part of that cynicism? ;-D

Thursday, November 2. 2006

wahoo bug in amaroK Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 14:32

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wahoo bug in amaroK

So the kubuntu.de users discovered a real strange bug in amaroK described at http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125210.

It basically says, that amaroK doesn't honor the Show Splashscreen setting from a kiosk config.
Kubuntu uses such kiosk configs to provde the simplified system with lot of preconfigured stuff, so a Kubuntu user (probably only dapper ones) is not able to deactivate the splash screen. Doesn't sound important, it isn't - but some dislike our 1.4.0 splash screeny ..... so give the user what he demands

Plus: bugs suck anyway, imporant or not.