KILL THEM ALL AND LET A NORSE GOD SORT 'EM OUT

They’re now both hosted on github with the rest of Mono. Check it out! http://github.com/mono/gudev-sharp and http://github.com/mono/gkeyfile-sharp.

Yesterday it finally landed. Gabriel Burt, one of Banshee’s maintainers, merged in the GIO/udev hardware backend that Alan McGovern and I have been working on. This is awesome for everyone. Here’s why it’s awesome for you.

Are you a user?

• More reliable device detection (maybe, we hope at least!)
• More devices supported, including your iPhone or iPod touch!

Are you a distribution?

• No more HAL dependency! You can finally actually drop HAL from your iso and ship the best media player Gnome has to offer (sorry Rhythmbox- we just rule really hard).

Want to check it out? Banshee 1.7.5 will be released on September 1, or you get get it now from Banshee git master. There are a few new dependencies you’ll need- here they are.

• gio-sharp: git://gitorious.org/gio-sharp/mainline.git
• libgpod-sharp:  git://gtkpod.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/gtkpod/libgpod
• gudev-sharp: git://gitorious.org/gudev-sharp/gudev-sharp.git
• gkeyfile-sharp: git://gitorious.org/gkeyfile-sharp/gkeyfile-sharp.git

I recommend building with the –disable-hal flag, that’s how you really get the creamy goodness of our work. Now go git r done! Please test, break, hack, and caress. We’ve tested with iPods, iPhones, Mtp devices, Android phones, and maybe some other crap, but I’m sure you have something weird we’ve never tried. We want it to work- nay- we need it to work. We get off on it working.

And here’s the screenshot you read all of that bullshit just to see…

I know there are some other cyclists in the GNOME community who are probably bummed that they’re spending a week away from their bikes, so if anyone else is feeling withdraw symptoms from not riding I am planning to find a bike shop in Den Haag where I can rent a road bike and do some early morning rides before guadec starts. If you’re interested in some early morning pain and suffering grab me at guadec and let’s figure out a route.

(C) 2010 Demoncats photography

Feeling the crushing need to fit in, here are the answers to five questions from guadec.org.

Who are you and what do you do?

I am Alex Launi, I’m 22, live in South Philadelphia, PA, USA, 5’8″ (172cm) tall, and weigh 157lbs (71.2kg). I’m about to graduate from Temple University with a bachelors of science in computer science. I work on Banshee, Do, and some other random projects here and there. I’m a hardcore cyclist, and I’ll probably be spiraling into a deep depression during guadec from separation anxiety with my bike. I love modern literature, my favorite writer is either Cormac McCarthy, James Joyce, or Thomas Pynchon depending on where and when you ask me. I like philosophy, detest the “Linux is about choice” mantra, and have never successfully done a magic trick.

How did you get into GNOME?

I’ve never been inside of a gnome, I don’t think I ever will. I’ve never had a first hand gnome encounter but my impression is that they’re very short. I don’t think I could ever fit inside of one.

Why are you coming to GUADEC?

To show off my sweet summer of code work, meet people I know from the internet, meet new people who are involved with gnome, network to try and find an awesome job, travel, drink fancy beer.

In 1 sentence, describe what your most favorite recent GNOME project has been. (Doesn’t have to be yours!)

I think Telepathy is the coolest thing there is, I want to see it used everywhere, for everything (do you see this Collabora? you can hire me if you want).

Will this be your fist time visiting the Netherlands?

I’ve been to never-never land, but never the Netherlands. Unless maybe never-never land was renamed to the Netherlands in post-war partitioning.

Today is the summer of code start day, and like every other excited summer of code student, I got drunk instead of working! I had a 6 pack of Magic hat, and now I have a mockup of what the now playing source will look like af the end of my project. The biggest difference between the final product and this, is that the final product will actually work.

Notice the buttons in the top right? Clicking will change the now playing source contents to last.fm, wikipedia, or back to your regularly scheduled programming. Pretty nifty right? If you’re interested, you can follow my work in written form here, or here (literally here, because I’ll be blogging about it), or in code form over here. You can actually already check out what I have so far, which is what you see above. It’s not that cool yet so I wouldn’t bother, but it’s going to get cool- so I would bother.

That’s all for today! And happy (belated) birthday Morrissey, you’re a cool 51 this year.

Thanks to the folks on the GNOME travel committee I can now say

Thanks!! I can’t wait!

No news! Exams at my school aren’t over yet, so I’m still studying and wrapping up loose ends. It turns out I’ll be graduating in August instead of in January like I expected, but I’ll also be taking one class over the summer to finish up my degree. What class am I taking? I’m taking a class about the geology of disaster movies. Sounds awesome, right?

Tomorrow is the last day of exams so 5/13 is GSOC GO DAY. Sweet! We’re in the community bonding period now, and lucky me- I’m already pretty familiar with the Banshee community. Can’t wait to get started and be finished with finals.

Today Google made the announcement of accepted summer of code proposals! I’m one of them! Looks like I’ll be spending my summer hacking on Banshee instead of driving a forklift, serving coffee, washing dishes, or any of the other jobs I’ve been seeing on craigslist. What will I be doing? Here’s a copy of the proposal I submitted.

The Now Playing source is an underutilized component of the Banshee user interface. The goal of this proposal is to extend that interface to be a source for extended information about the currently playing media. After the completion of this project, the Now Playing source will replace (or augment) the current behavior of the Context Pane, but also be extended to account for other types of media such as podcasts, videos, audio books, and internet radio.

The current implementation of the context pane is cool, but its location is awkward. It’s in the library, but displays information related to the currently playing media, and is only be relevant for music, not video or podcasts so when you’re listening to a podcast it just says “waiting for playback to begin…” Wait what? Playback has begun!

The now playing source as is, is kind of a waste of some really great space. The album art display is beautiful looking, but it’s static. If you’re listening to an album there’s no information there that isn’t available elsewhere more conveniently. The text displayed is the same. This area is perfect for displaying extra information about the currently playing song such as lyrics, last.fm similar artist information, or information from wikipedia, as well as OpenVZ visualizations, all of which should be toggleable.

My project will be to add API to the context sources so that they can be viewed for any media type to which they are relevant, add API to the now playing source to allow context sources to display their content there, create a widget to allow changing what context source is being viewed, and tie it all together into an extremely compelling, and immersive user experience.

Special thanks to Gnome, Google, Banshee, and alexk! I’m really excited, this is going to be a great summer. Stay tuned for updates!

Am I the only one who thinks that the icon for the messaging menu in its default no messages waiting state was infinitely better looking in Karmic?

Is it just me or does that icon not match the others at all. The colors are off, the weight is different, it even looks like it’s a different size. Now the old default, no-messages icon was so much closer to perfect-

See how the icon is the same fill color as the panel? If it had the same color, but bold lines as the others with this fill style- it would look incredible!

That said, everything else in Lucid rules! Best release ever, I know we say that every time, but it’s always true!