Amarok and roll

Just installed Amarok 2 via the Neon nightly build service (for Kubuntu, but still works on Debian Unstable :D ). I have to say, it is absolutely teh awesome! It really shows what KDE 4's "pillars" can do when used in combination.

Don't get me wrong, I've used Amarok 2 before. However, the first time I tried it it kept crashing and didn't have much functionality. My attempts since have been greeted with a feature-packed player, which couldn't actually add anything to the playlist other than Internet radio streams :( With the nightlies it seems to be rocking full steam ahead, and doesn't take up too much space either :)

The only problem currently is that the Qt it uses doesn't seem to have antialiasing enabled for text, but that's a very minor issue.

Now to get Nepomuk to run without making my machine crawl. Perhaps the Java backend would make it work faster?

Installfest Success :D

Aside from some inevitable technical and organisational issues (valuable experience) it went really well. We had enough people turning up to keep us busy for 3 hours, which is the only thing I was worrying about. I don't know how many laptops we got Ubuntu installed onto, I know at least one (but we had no time to test it, so I just added a Windows entry to GRUB to make sure Vista booted properly and left it for now) and maybe a couple more. Some people have got OpenOffice and things installed on Windows, a couple of people came in after Windows help, so I gave them ClamAV and Spybot Search and Destroy (I know it's not Free Software, and explained that, but sometimes it is better to be friendly and helpful rather than arrogant and alienating) along with a copy of Ubuntu (which they were impressed with on my laptop (Compiz Fusion does it again :P ) I kept saying how I haven't dealt with viruses in years because I'm on Linux but that's what it sounds like). We got through quite a few of Arthur's Gutsy CDs (my CD writer fails :( ). Avatar had a complete mirror of Ubuntu's repositories set up, which was VERY helpful, since running it through a gigabit ethernet switch was much nicer than upgrading a system from Ubuntu Breezy to Ubuntu Gutsy via a 60Kb/s Wifi connection. We got through a load of biscuits and Guru3 and Avatar had a few networked games running whilst I rushed around between computers. Sarah and Jo popped in for a bit too and made up some signs to direct people, thanks guys :*, although Sarah you should have got your laptop out and we'd see if we could get your wireless going (I even brought along my PCMCIA wireless card with Windows drivers :P )

Anyway, yes it was good. I'm going to sort out a room for a couple of week's time when we can have another go (this time with at least one Ubuntu alternate CD ;) )

MASSIVE thanks to everyone who came

I <3 U Dell

I am in Sheffield, but I have no Internets :( (Currently using a mixture of dialup, Walkley Library (across the road :) ), the Information Commons and Access Space (the latter being where I am at the moment).

The dialup in question is made possible thanks to Dell, who have got the evil Connexant to stop their stupid policy of pay-for Linux drivers and release them for no cost. Thank you Dell, this is exactly the thing we are after :D

The Free Software Society is off to a great start, with the Freshers' Fair an amazing success. We gave out about 100 CDs (both Ubuntu (packaged 6.06 and self-written 7.04) and a disc of Windows Free Software I made myself) which is around 70GB of data :) I want to do a follow up on that, in case anybody had badly written discs and to hopefully get some more converts.

This week has been pretty amazing. I've been out loads (the only day I stayed in was Thursday, since I thought that Bleach tickets had run out, but apparently there were spares so I could've gone. Oh well). Wednesday we crashed Ranmoor bar, and got completely smashed. Yesterday we managed to get through half a bottle of Absinthe (among other things) playing drinking games and I ended up sleeping in Jo's bed :P Today I seem to have upset Harriet by letting my 'phone's battery die (dramatic, I know) so I didn't get a call from her when we were meant to go swimming, so I think I'm in bad books there. Sorry Harriet T___T. Should be going to Corporation tonight with the RockSoc, which will be cool (I'll be one of the experienced members rather than a fresher, wow I can feel the respect dripping from my brow!).

Yes, so I just thought I'd give an update about what I've been up to. My Plasma installation guide has been quite popular on ubuntuhq.com (at one point being the most popular article of the week!), which is pretty nice :D

So, farewell until I get enough bandwidth to bother updating this blog regularly again.

Some phrases should be culled

Although 'screen real estate' is up there, the top dog must be 'bling bling'. With that in mind I've been pimping my laptop in anticipation of the influx of potential new Free Software users in the form of the next academic year's worth of firstyears. I am now running Ubuntu Gutsy, which overall seems to be following the less-dramatic-upgrade tendancy I've seen in Ubuntu (Breezy>Dapper was very pervasive, Dapper>Edgy seemed nice, Edgy>Feisty didn't really seem worth it, Feisty>Gutsy? Dunno yet), but it means that along with working out how to get ATI's crapware to 'work' I can run Compiz Fusion (using XGL, eww) which seems nice, although I really don't like the 'CompizConfig' tool, it is in serious need of some UI lovin' (who in their right mind would provide users an integer system for animations without telling them what animation each number corresponds to? Plus, the amount of conflicting stuff is annoying, like 'minimise effect' not being disabled when minimise/maximise animations are enabled).

I've installed E17 as well, which has changed a bit since I last played around with it. Although it has gained features on the whole the process of configuring the thing is a real mess. The 'shelves' idea is OK I guess, but as far as I can tell I can no longer use the modules as desktop widgets (strange, considering how other desktop systems are moving in the opposite direction) which would be a shame. Still, I have set up a new non-admin user called fss-test and set up a nice enlightenment configuration to use (although Amarok, Rhythmbox, MPD and Exaile all crash for that user :( Banshee seems to be OK so far (Banshee has become very nice recently too I have noticed!), but that's what you get for using pre-release software). I wanted to have KDE4 running too, but the packages are pretty bare at the moment (Plasma is the main area I'm interested in but they only have 2 plasmoids in the vanilla setup, the rest of them living in the 'playground' directory in subversion, which I have tried unsuccessfully to compile).

Now that I know my own laptop will stand up well in the first-impression-critical world of the Freshers' Fair I want to get other machines on board. I have asked my friend Heminder if I can borrow his laptop to demo stuff on and I think he agreed, I'm not sure. I'll try and hunt down some more (perhaps James could pop along, since he is supposed to be a member and has Fedora installed on his laptop, making no live CD needed).

Oh well, time to get back to the real world and make sure my monetary hurdles are overcome.

PS: Must test Wii controller with my laptop, since demoing that would be awesome :)

GNOME Blog Works!

Yes, I know. I am a genius. Anyway, just tried Ubuntu Feisty's package of gnome-blog and found that it can use Blogger's new API (it changed when Google bought them, thus making the older versions not work for accounts using the new API, like mine). This is a welcome relief since I no longer have to deal with the nightmare of writing blind (white-on-white == bad usability), and if a dodgy website (or browser) loses the Blogger page then I'd lost it all (as happened to me just :( ). Anyway, now that we have established that GNOME Blog works onto the main issues of the day:

The Free Software Society has now got a forum, located here. Thanks go to our secretary Harriet for that :) Of course there is still the Mugshot group as well (although their software could do with a little improvement, I'll download the source and see what I can do to add proper last.fm, jamendo.com and other integration).

Check out this video: Whilst being a slightly exaggerated parody it is still very insightful and funny too. Still has nothing on the master though, Prof. Eben Moglen, who recently gave a talk in Edinburgh. If you haven't seen any of his talks then you're missing out, he really is a powerful and passionate speaker who makes beautiful use of the English language.

Also, check out Frets on Fire, which has now had its non-Free songs and fonts removed and has been packaged for Debian (and therefore Ubuntu). It's made with Pygame BTW :)

Finally....... I'm going LUGRadio Live! Woooo!!!! I'll meet Jono Bacon and other people I have admired via HTTP for all these years (well, 2 or 3). Whilst some people I would like to chat with won't be there (namely Mirco), it could help me become more known throughout the community which would be good news networking-wise as president of the Free Software Society (hopefully my social networking will beat my ethernet networking, the height of which was getting ping to work and kicking my little brother's ass on Crack Attack).

I am pondering GUADEC as well, but accommodation would make it impossible for a week-long event :( (unless I am an extremely cheeky bastard to Jo, which I honestly try not to be)

Application naming

Yes, it is a sad day when the Free Software community is divided by issues such as application naming. Well, just to stir up a little crap I thought I'd give my (therefore, THE) answer to this "issue".
The problem of naming arises when names are made to be silly (like LINA, which stands for LINA Is Not an Acronym), or based upon previous names (like the name of the C++ language is based on the name of the C language (where C++ in the C language means "add one to C"), and the name C itself is one more than the name of its predecessor the B language, so called because it was developed at Bell Labs, or X.org, which is an implementation of the X windowing system, which is one more than the W windowing system which stands for Window) and thus describe their function in the world about as well as a grapefruit (WHY DO THEY EXIST?! Seriously, they tast SOOOO bad!).
The easy way of naming applications on a system is to use their names. However, with the names described above this creates a less than obvious setup for the uninitiated. The other camp seems to think that forgetting an application's actual name in favour of a description is more appropriate, often citing Microsoft products referred to as "Messenger", "Media Player", etc. However, I think this is wrong too.

I think applications should be allowed their own names, which should try to hold some relevance to the way they work if possible (but not doing so is forgivable if it is funny) like Inkscape draws as if with ink, GNUPaint draws as if with paint, etc. This should then be followed by the catagory of application they are, so GIMP Image Editor and Inkscape Image Editor. This way the purpose of the application is obvious, yet there is no kind of favouritism when competing applications are involved, eg. Microsoft can include "Media Player" in Windows because they only make one media playing application, whereas Free Software offers choice, so having Totem Movie Player and Gxine Movie Player is more preferable to any being called just Movie Player, since then users attempting to get support, for example, would be asking "The movie player won't play my video" which would start suggestions involving gstreamer, asking the user to click certain menu options, etc. After some frustration it could become apparent that by "the movie player" the user was actually using Gxine, which had arbitrarily been named Movie Player, and thus gstreamer plugins would not be of any help, and she would be asked to select menu entries which aren't there.

This system, already used by distros like Ubuntu (I can't be arsed to check any others), works because questions like "the image editor crashed" can be followed by "which image editor?" and the user can look and say "the GIMP image editor", or somebody recommending Free Software to a friend can say "I think the Inkscape Image Editor is the best one, because it lets you move lines around if they're not quite right".

OK, cleared that one up. NEXT!

Some interesting interface ideas

I have recently started musing about possible new ways of interacting with a computer. Of course, I do this a lot, but here are some ideas I have been pondering (when my programming improves I might be able to prototype these ideas for use in Warbuntu):

1) Tabbed interface.

Individual applications have tabs in them, the taskbar-style widgets usually running along the bottom of the screen are like tabs, so why not set the whole computer interface into a tabbed environment?

Every application would be fullscreen. There would be no floating windows so programs with such awful interfaces as recursive windowing systems (I mean YOU Photoshop!) would be avoided at all costs. Viewing multiple areas on the screen (like the GIMP's various dialogues) could be done via panes.

At the top of the screen there would be, right in the centre, the name of the current tab. The name would be editable, so files can be opened (using search), URLs can be visited (names would not be "Firefox - website name" they would be "http://www............" like in Sugar), programs can be launched, etc. Basically it would be like the GNOME deskbar.

Beside this there would be options for controlling the computer, like logout/shut down/restart/lock screen/etc.

Fork 1) Underneath this would be a universal toolbar. Like AmigasOS (sans MagicMenu) has one menu at the top (and this is used in OpenStep too so GNUStep uses it and apparently Apple MacOSX does too) but it would extend down to new, open, save, cut, copy, paste, etc. buttons. There would be a few catagories of these, each in named tabs (Office, Web, Graphics, Multimedia, etc.), so that graphics applications would work in the same way with the same toolbars, textual applications would work in the same way with the same toolbars, etc. These toplevel tabs would be the parents of the rest of the tabs.

Inside these, underneath their toolbar, would be the application tabs. These would be named after the application, so "Writer Word Processor", "Calc Spreadsheet", "Impress Presentation", "GIMP Image Editor", "Inkscape Image Editor", etc. this would follow a sane naming scheme which I will put in a seperate entry, since it has become too long here and deserves to stand alone incase later citation is desirable. Inside each of these would be the individal open files, the currently active file having its name in the top deskbar-type box (with metadata aligned to the right (or left in right-to-left languages of course) to allow files to have the same name and avoid messy hierarchical filesystems).

Fork 2) Use an arbitrary tabbing system, like current virtual desktops, where tabs can be arranged on a per-project type basis (ie. Having multiple webpage tabs available with click which contain information for a document being word processed. This would be possible in scenario 1 only for single tabs of each type, ie. switching to "Web" could show the previously looked-at webpage, but other pages would need 2 clicks, Web then the desired page). This would lose the universal toolbar idea, and could either use a toolbar in each application, or switch between standard toolbars.

The starting tab could be a list of common applications, and maybe even include little applets like the Mezzo desktop of SymphonyOS.

Various keyboard shortcuts could navigate the tabs (Ctrl+cursor keys and such), making this system very keyboard friendly, and thus very fast for those who know their way around a keyboard and who know the shortcuts.

2) Thumbnail file browser

After watching Macslow's little video demo I began to think how easy to use such an interface would be with a remote control. Direction buttons, along with perhaps some secondary up and down buttons (channel, volume, whatever) being used for page up/page down.

Images can obviously be given thumbnails in such a way, and therefore be easy to browse. Videos could be represented by thumbnails, and TV series or movies with a disturbing number of sequels could use a standard image, or if one is not available an arbitrary thumbnail from a video inside (which could be fast-forwarded or rewound by the user to get a recognisable image) to act like directories (with an Up or Back arrow image available inside any non-top-level directory). Music could be stored per album, with album covers for directories obviously, then the same inside with overlayed track numbers.

Of course, the idea of directories should be gotten rid of, so in a full computer environment, not limited by the limited input of a media centre style setup, this could be expanded. With gestures available via mouse, or better yet some kind of finger/physical pointing object (touchscreen, "Surface", whatever), the grid structure of elements can be disposed of. A BumpTop/Lowfat kind of file manager would be left, and I think the Lowfat way of pulling different objects together would be a good way of handling the "directory" issue, getting rid of any kind of hierarchy by making everything available on the same level, but capable of being organised or grouped. (Although I am not sure how objects in this single level would be grouped due to metadata, since a song can exist in catagories based on artist, genre, etc., but only when going through a multiple-level system (basically, narrowing down the current selection) so staying in one level there would have to be multiple instances of objects on display, which wouldn't be good news for confusion levels (unless some kind of overlay like translucent lines were used connecting the multiple instances of the same object)

I say "objects" rather than images, music, etc. as I think the idea of KDE4's Plasma and its "Plasmoids" is a good one, which is essentially that of making small, arbitrarily created applications movable around the workspace (I am on about the way it handles icons here, where icons representing files essentially become miniature representations of application instances (ever used an interface which Iconifies instead of Minimises, like RISCOS? Imagine every file icon actually being an iconified viewer application with that file open) To clarify what I mean, imagine dragging around an icon for a piece of audio (let's not use the term "file" here, as we are not bothered about the hardware implementation). Instead of having an audio playing application, which is fed pieces of audio, why not have play buttons embedded onto the icon? In that way the icon is no longer representing the audio so much as an instance of an audio player playing that audio. Using the grouping of Lowfat these could be made into playlists of audio and video, slideshows of images (although this is slightly less drastic, since images are represented by themselves, and thus a "slideshow" would just involve shuffling through the image objects), etc. Since applications aren't constrained to specific sizes or coordinates thanks to Metisse and more recently Compiz-Fusion, there is nothing stopping application "windows" becoming movable, rotatable, resizable (as in, proper resize, where it zooms in and out) icons.

Every piece of data would also have an Edit mode, which would just be a slightly more complicated version of the play instance, and thus the UI should be similar.

Ah, the tangents my mind is going off on tonight! The tabbed idea might be a solid base to work from to produce a consistent (and therefore slightly limited, but vastly easier) variation of what we already have, and that idea has been bouncing around for a while in the cavernous space behind my eyes. The second, however, is pretty newly formed, although has obviously been quietly swelling somewhere in my mind as the various links I gave added to it. Now the pan is boiling over and I am enjoying the sweet sweet flow of scalding milk that follows. What's more, it should appeal to the computer users that think a spinning OpenGL carousel of faces instantly makes a 2D list of users more "user friendly" (as in, bombard them with so much eyecandy they are too busy masturbating over it to notice how much their computers are costing). I'll try to make a Moho animation to visualise the crazy forks I am taking with this one. Ooo it's edgy!

PS: The service pack maker is coming along nicely, I'm learning Python pretty quickly. A few troubles with circular dependancy inclusion at the mo', but easily solvable if I use a global dependancy list, rather than a per-package one.

Tatty bye!

Service Pack Maker

I seem to be improving my programming skills quite quickly now. I started to make a Java version of the "service pack" creator idea I had a while ago (see my comment on this Ubuntu Wiki page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OfflineUpdateSpec) and it is coming on quite well. I have given it an Ubuntu spec page here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TransparentServicePackMaker if you are interested.

Currently there is a nice simple GUI (although the "Advanced" button should really be a tab, but it isn't implemented yet anyway), the text entered into the Name box is turned into lowercase and spaces are replaced with hyphens (so entering "Graphics Applications 1" will turn into "graphics-applications-1"), the value for the tick box about including the system's non-default packages is read, and the "include" field is parsed.

What I am quite proud of is teaching myself file input and output, so that the contents of /var/lib/apt/lists (the lists of packages available from your repositories) are read when the application starts up and dumped into a temporary file called /tmp/service-pack-temp-XXXX (where XXXX is a random number to make the file unique). Upon clicking "Create" the given "include" line is parsed as a space-separated list of packages. If any of the package names given are not found in the available repositories then a message comes up warning the user of this. If all of the packages are found then the list is given to the service pack for inclusion, where all of the duplicates are removed. This means that putting "gimp gimp gimp inkscape gimp inkscape Warbo" will give a message saying that Warbo cannot be found. removing Warbo from the line will include "gimp" and "inkscape" in the pack once, which I think is quite nice.

The tool doesn't yet output anything, which I am working on, but it looks like a working tool is near. When it is done I will probably ask in the forums for someone to redo it in Python and GTK.

Nuclear Bovines

There is a game I have on Amiga called "Atoms". It is a simple little game, based around a board, where each player takes turns to add atoms to the squares on the board until they explode and claim other squares for that player. I tried to make this game in Python before I came to University, to at least have attempted some coding before I started any computer science course modules, and whilst I managed to make the game itself pretty much work in about a day (quite good for zero Python knowledge and a PDF of DiveIntoPython) I spent weeks fruitlessly trying to get a GUI around it before giving up.

Now that I can code in an object oriented way in Java I thought I'd try again. Starting with the GUI builder AbeilleForms I made a quick starting place for the interface, then after about an hour I had come up with what I have dubbed Gnucleon 0.1 (because the name Gnucleus is already taken by a Gnutella client, and Googling for Gnucleon doesn't bring up any software, so I took it).

I have stored it on my free webspace here: http://www.freewebs.com/chriswarbo/Temporary/Gnucleon.tar.bz2 if you want to have a play with it. Unless you change the "players" variable in the source file and add some more switch cases for changing the square colour then it is 2 player only. Also the grid size can't be changed without editing the source. Yes, it sucks but it didn't take long to make. I'll work on it in the future.

Woah, a long time since I posted! I thought I'd say what I've been up to and have in the works:

* It is currently the Easter break, so I am at home in busy-busy Sandbach

* I am going a bit crazy brainstorming ideas that the FSS can act on (we will hold a meeting soon after getting back to Sheffield)

* The latest assignment from my COM162 Java course is to simulate a pinball machine.... Well, I am currently going a little crazy with my Physics knowledge to create an elaborate, general purpose physics engine which I can then shove values in to make a pinball table (I actually hope to let it read some kind of XML syntax in the future, and thus define tables (or whatever else it is used for) easily). Since it is an assignment which is testing my ability to understand object oriented programming I must do this myself, but after its use in my course is over rest assured I will make it publicly available as Free Software

Oh, and it may be a little late, but go on:

I have nothing to talk about

Just thought I'd update this since I haven't for quite a while. Well.... The Free Software Society is a go-go, we've got membership cards and everything! Harriet's making a bit of a website for it, so that should go live soon (at http://fss.union.shef.ac.uk ). I will put together a humourous little history of Free Software, then show it off at our first meeting (after publicising the site, which has contact details) along with some admin like any new committee members (currently 3, the bare minimum) and ideas for nice projects to do. Currently I am thinking:
Installfests
A Freedom Toaster
Free Wifi (maybe via Fon or something)
Storming local computer shops like a plague of locusts of biblical proportions, although armed with CDs and stands, and hopefully some kind of penguin suit (NightLine has one. Maybe we could borrow it...... [without the tshirt though]).
Helping local schools and charities by collecting and recycling older computers and getting rid of any crappy proprietary software on them to run LTSP and stuff (need some training here...)
Of course the FSS will also only officially distribute things in unencumbered formats, and communicate with unencumbered, freely documented standards (basically, MSN is a pile of crap, Jabber 4TW).

If you are reading this and you are in or near Sheffield then check the site linked above for updates and you'll be welcome to come along... Unless you are meant to be in prison at the time or something... Well.. I'm not signing you into the Student Union building......

PS: Oh yeah, also a big thank you to Loz for breaking the handle off the door in my corridor last night/this morning. What a silly dick.

PPS: It's in English!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! W00t!