it occurred to me today whilst reading over various presentation slides that kde people are using around the world that the general quality of our slides sucks. well, it's occurred to me before but never with such force ;)
it would be nice if they were both more consistent with each other and looked better. granted we have the kde 3 template that ships with kpresenter so now at least most presentations use the same slide template, but fonts change pretty wildly as do the visual quality of the text layouts.
it would be nice if we could send talk outlines to an email address and get back a completed set of slides that look really nice. dreams are nice things, aren't they? ;)
so far i've been spending the day wasting time at the canada post office, fixing random annoyances like the autogenerated access keys in khtml always popping up and waiting for kde4 to rebuild on the laptop given this weekend's changes which are, as usual, huge.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Friday, February 24, 2006
damn the snow, fix the bugs!
a friend went in for an interview at a software devel company hq'd here in calgary. she was put through a pretty rigorous 3 hour test which involved solving a variety of issues on both windows and linux. the test itself was done on a linux machine (windows access was done through terminal services or vmware, i forget which) and that machine was running what they run internally for their linux desktops (which apparently are fairly numerous): kde.
seems everywhere i go, even when it's just to my own living room to entertain a friend, i keep bumping into deployments of kde happily doing its job in the SME market. seems there's a quiet revolution going on in that space for the open source desktop.
in less interesting news, it snowed again today. for like the third day straight. and when i say "straight" i mean it essentially hasn't really stopped snowing during that period for any appreciable amount of time. and today, between getting up at an ungodly hour to see t. off to work and the changing weather, i felt kind of "out of it".
so i just puterred on some kicker and kmail bugs, did some email communication ... no heavy lifting, really. made a nice pasta dish with braised tofu for lunch, though =)
it's been a nice week, though. my first in several months where i'm not either travelling, dealing with dying pets or looking after the p-man. i have to say getting a little "me time" is rather nice.
seems everywhere i go, even when it's just to my own living room to entertain a friend, i keep bumping into deployments of kde happily doing its job in the SME market. seems there's a quiet revolution going on in that space for the open source desktop.
in less interesting news, it snowed again today. for like the third day straight. and when i say "straight" i mean it essentially hasn't really stopped snowing during that period for any appreciable amount of time. and today, between getting up at an ungodly hour to see t. off to work and the changing weather, i felt kind of "out of it".
so i just puterred on some kicker and kmail bugs, did some email communication ... no heavy lifting, really. made a nice pasta dish with braised tofu for lunch, though =)
it's been a nice week, though. my first in several months where i'm not either travelling, dealing with dying pets or looking after the p-man. i have to say getting a little "me time" is rather nice.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
support kde4 ... by using kde3!
i get asked fairly regularly how one can starting using kde4 right now. well, you certainly can grab what's in svn trunk/ and have at it, but you may be disappointed by the constant compiling (the libs are still in massive flux, and there's more where that came from) and how the big visual changes are not there yet.
so what's a kde fan to use? kde 3.5, of course. it needs love too, after all, and it is continuing to be improved if at a more calm pace. today i committed a change that removes one more annoying bevel from konqueror (the one around the view but inside the tabwidget; such small changes can make such a big difference IMHO) and i'm hoping to get the thumbs up from the usability pros to change the default for lines between toolbars in plastik to off. new translations, documentation and lots of bug fixes continue to make their way into 3.5. and of course the 3.5 apps continue to roll out of the various projects.
but someone on a mailing list pointed out in passing that many of those in the "bleeding edge" crew of people will likely move on to other options during the kde4 devel cycle just because it's going to take a while. we're not talking about an e17 or duke nukem forever type schedule, but it will be longer than our usual "what, it's 9 months already? new release!" standard operating procedure.
i wish this weren't so, but in my gut i can't help but think, "yep, people will move on in search of the latest and greatest something." this has a really negative effect on open source projects, as this fickle attention span can make it rather difficult for us to do longer development cycles (and therefore larger changes). why?
well, user base is everything for large projects. it's what keeps the q/a going, where we get new contributors from, where user support comes from, the pool for regional support at things like tech shows, what packagers use to gauge what packages to give more love to and more ...
in the proprietary world they just lock their users into their platform with file formats, hardware platforms and other nasties so they can take their time if they need to: their users ain't goin' anywhere. we don't do that (because we respect Freedom), and so our users are free to roam.
but when they do roam in larger numbers, that can impact the project. when the project does release that spiffy new version that took a year and a half to complete, it often has to start building the user base back up to where it once was. and no, most projects don't usually have the resource to simultaneously develop two trees indefinitely.
the impact of migration-due-to-boredom can be so bad that some projects actually consider not doing anything that might take too long, such as making larger architectural changes that would bring the project a quantum leap forward. so the fickle nature of our user base can, and sometimes does, have the unhappy effect of retarding important developmental jumps. some things just take longer that 6 months to do.
ok, i'm sure you get the point by now. =) so if you're a kde user today that really enjoys the platform, stick with us during the upcoming longer-than-usual release cycle. sure, check out what everyone else is doing too (don't do that already anyways? ;), but ditching kde 3.5 just because there hasn't been a major release for 9 months (as will happen sometime in the second half of this year) will only make kde4 a more difficult release for the project.
there will still be lots of exciting app development for kde3 apps this year to track, and 3.5 itself is still improving (such as the aforementioned visual improvements). by keeping with us during this slightly-longer-than-usual cycle you'll help support us on the way to kde4.
of course, you could also get your hands dirty and start contributing as well. i find that helps pass the time quite nicely ;)
so what's a kde fan to use? kde 3.5, of course. it needs love too, after all, and it is continuing to be improved if at a more calm pace. today i committed a change that removes one more annoying bevel from konqueror (the one around the view but inside the tabwidget; such small changes can make such a big difference IMHO) and i'm hoping to get the thumbs up from the usability pros to change the default for lines between toolbars in plastik to off. new translations, documentation and lots of bug fixes continue to make their way into 3.5. and of course the 3.5 apps continue to roll out of the various projects.
but someone on a mailing list pointed out in passing that many of those in the "bleeding edge" crew of people will likely move on to other options during the kde4 devel cycle just because it's going to take a while. we're not talking about an e17 or duke nukem forever type schedule, but it will be longer than our usual "what, it's 9 months already? new release!" standard operating procedure.
i wish this weren't so, but in my gut i can't help but think, "yep, people will move on in search of the latest and greatest something." this has a really negative effect on open source projects, as this fickle attention span can make it rather difficult for us to do longer development cycles (and therefore larger changes). why?
well, user base is everything for large projects. it's what keeps the q/a going, where we get new contributors from, where user support comes from, the pool for regional support at things like tech shows, what packagers use to gauge what packages to give more love to and more ...
in the proprietary world they just lock their users into their platform with file formats, hardware platforms and other nasties so they can take their time if they need to: their users ain't goin' anywhere. we don't do that (because we respect Freedom), and so our users are free to roam.
but when they do roam in larger numbers, that can impact the project. when the project does release that spiffy new version that took a year and a half to complete, it often has to start building the user base back up to where it once was. and no, most projects don't usually have the resource to simultaneously develop two trees indefinitely.
the impact of migration-due-to-boredom can be so bad that some projects actually consider not doing anything that might take too long, such as making larger architectural changes that would bring the project a quantum leap forward. so the fickle nature of our user base can, and sometimes does, have the unhappy effect of retarding important developmental jumps. some things just take longer that 6 months to do.
ok, i'm sure you get the point by now. =) so if you're a kde user today that really enjoys the platform, stick with us during the upcoming longer-than-usual release cycle. sure, check out what everyone else is doing too (don't do that already anyways? ;), but ditching kde 3.5 just because there hasn't been a major release for 9 months (as will happen sometime in the second half of this year) will only make kde4 a more difficult release for the project.
there will still be lots of exciting app development for kde3 apps this year to track, and 3.5 itself is still improving (such as the aforementioned visual improvements). by keeping with us during this slightly-longer-than-usual cycle you'll help support us on the way to kde4.
of course, you could also get your hands dirty and start contributing as well. i find that helps pass the time quite nicely ;)
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
i am like a bird...
doug invited me to go flying with him on saturday. he picked me and a local morning radio show personality up in his vehicle and we drove out to the calgary springbank airport and jumped in a small little four seater plane and took off into the sky along with 2 other planes.
we were supposed to head for montana with a total of 8 planes in convoy, but a weather front was threatening and most of the pilots got cold feet. as it turned out, the weather was pretty great all day (if a little hazy at times and certainly on the cool side). instead we tripped around alberta, going down to vulcan (where their street signs are star trek themed, i kid you not) where we had lunch then to drumheller and back to calgary.
the views along the way were rather nice, if not particularly stellar material for photos given that we were flying over the praries and visibility wasn't high enough to see the mountains in the distance.
we did some fly-by's to get some video and pictures of each other's planes:
and if that wasn't exciting enough out of nowhere came this jet with star wars like laser cannons! OMFG! ;)
(no, i did not "photoshop" that one myself, it was kindly contributed by someone at doug's office. put down the photoshop tools and get back to coding boys! ;)
turns out that doug is quite a great pilot. the flights were smooth and the take offs and landings were excellent. can't wait to do it again! =)
we were supposed to head for montana with a total of 8 planes in convoy, but a weather front was threatening and most of the pilots got cold feet. as it turned out, the weather was pretty great all day (if a little hazy at times and certainly on the cool side). instead we tripped around alberta, going down to vulcan (where their street signs are star trek themed, i kid you not) where we had lunch then to drumheller and back to calgary.
the views along the way were rather nice, if not particularly stellar material for photos given that we were flying over the praries and visibility wasn't high enough to see the mountains in the distance.
we did some fly-by's to get some video and pictures of each other's planes:
and if that wasn't exciting enough out of nowhere came this jet with star wars like laser cannons! OMFG! ;)
(no, i did not "photoshop" that one myself, it was kindly contributed by someone at doug's office. put down the photoshop tools and get back to coding boys! ;)
turns out that doug is quite a great pilot. the flights were smooth and the take offs and landings were excellent. can't wait to do it again! =)
Thursday, February 16, 2006
el ten letters and an en: localization
congrats to the translation team for getting the new KDE localization (aka "translations and related regionalization efforts") website up. there's even neat graphs for the translation progress; i don't know if they are new or not but i never noticed them before today.
also kudos to mandriva for donating a shwack of polish language documentation for kde.
the people doing the work of documentating and translating kde deserve a lot more attention in my opinion. a more visible and active community around those projects could do wonders for participation and recognition.
also kudos to mandriva for donating a shwack of polish language documentation for kde.
the people doing the work of documentating and translating kde deserve a lot more attention in my opinion. a more visible and active community around those projects could do wonders for participation and recognition.
proud to be a part of kde
every so often something happens that makes me remember just how lucky i am to be involved with such an amazing project such as kde. this week saw a bunch of such somethings occur.
jono bacon and i discussed at length the issues of open source desktop sanity and managed to explain the strategy behind pojects like solid and phonon: to solve "simple" problems for the vast majority of applications in a platform independent way without inventing new low-level solutions (such as HAL/DBUS, gstreamer, NMM, etc). this allows more apps to take advantage of these features, future proofs us better and prevents duplication of effort (i counted 5 cross-platform hardware abstraction code bases in kde last time i did a survey of that). yesterday jono tracked me down on irc to ask more about solid and so i did an `svn up` and saw that kevin's done a bunch more work since i last looked at it. i was able to answer all his questions really nicely just by reading the code. wonderful work!
over on the promo mailing list there was some really great conversations with everyone challenging each other's assumptions and ideas in a very collegiate manner. the result has been a clearer understanding of our goals and some very good insights such as charles de miramon's missive on communicating solutions to people's problems rather than specifications and random capabilities (aka "feature checklists") and sebastian kugler's insight onto marketing to segments we can effectively serve properly. when wade olsen posted a link to a channel 9 video, in response to me belly-aching about not having time right now to look at it danil dotsenko wrote a transcript of it (paraphrase style) for the rest of us. there were several other really great contributions in those threads as well, but for brevity of this blog entry's sake, i'll just suggest that if you want to see this promo machine in action, get involved and sub to the kde-promo list.
and then there is the osdl desktop architect's group. in december a plan was formulated to create a library for software groups (ISV's) to use in targetting the platform that would provide simple access points to things like mimetype activation and application installation without requiring them to learn all of our frameworks or even adopt them fully right away. great idea (and one that was formulated and championed by our own martin konold) but where was the code? well, the other day one my personal heros in the project lubos lunak stepped up with the start of that and posted a tarball that has kicked things off.
and these are just three examples of half a dozen that happened in the last week. in a nutshell, those happenings are the source of my hope and excitement for kde: we have amazing people who are doing hard work. not always glamorous, not always with a big shiny logo and a huge marketing push. just getting shit done.
more and more over time it's becoming apparent that if you want to get something done on the open source desktop, the kde project is a great place to start.
jono bacon and i discussed at length the issues of open source desktop sanity and managed to explain the strategy behind pojects like solid and phonon: to solve "simple" problems for the vast majority of applications in a platform independent way without inventing new low-level solutions (such as HAL/DBUS, gstreamer, NMM, etc). this allows more apps to take advantage of these features, future proofs us better and prevents duplication of effort (i counted 5 cross-platform hardware abstraction code bases in kde last time i did a survey of that). yesterday jono tracked me down on irc to ask more about solid and so i did an `svn up` and saw that kevin's done a bunch more work since i last looked at it. i was able to answer all his questions really nicely just by reading the code. wonderful work!
over on the promo mailing list there was some really great conversations with everyone challenging each other's assumptions and ideas in a very collegiate manner. the result has been a clearer understanding of our goals and some very good insights such as charles de miramon's missive on communicating solutions to people's problems rather than specifications and random capabilities (aka "feature checklists") and sebastian kugler's insight onto marketing to segments we can effectively serve properly. when wade olsen posted a link to a channel 9 video, in response to me belly-aching about not having time right now to look at it danil dotsenko wrote a transcript of it (paraphrase style) for the rest of us. there were several other really great contributions in those threads as well, but for brevity of this blog entry's sake, i'll just suggest that if you want to see this promo machine in action, get involved and sub to the kde-promo list.
and then there is the osdl desktop architect's group. in december a plan was formulated to create a library for software groups (ISV's) to use in targetting the platform that would provide simple access points to things like mimetype activation and application installation without requiring them to learn all of our frameworks or even adopt them fully right away. great idea (and one that was formulated and championed by our own martin konold) but where was the code? well, the other day one my personal heros in the project lubos lunak stepped up with the start of that and posted a tarball that has kicked things off.
and these are just three examples of half a dozen that happened in the last week. in a nutshell, those happenings are the source of my hope and excitement for kde: we have amazing people who are doing hard work. not always glamorous, not always with a big shiny logo and a huge marketing push. just getting shit done.
more and more over time it's becoming apparent that if you want to get something done on the open source desktop, the kde project is a great place to start.
quietude
i'm back home now, just in time for a cold snap. it's currently -25C, -40C with the wind chill. there is frost on the inside of my windows in places. good freaking goddess. i felt really bad for t. as she left the house this morning to walk to the train sometime before 07:00. i made her breakfast and tea, and offered to drive her but she said she doesn't like to drive in this weather because the other people on the road tend to drive like maniacs and so prefers the train. heh. she's got some very well thought out perspectives on things.
the p-man is home today (and playing zoo tycoon at the moment) as school is out for a few days. while helping him with a mouse related config issue, i realized that i haven't had a day off for myself in quite some time, so i'm taking the afternoon off for myself and will be spending it with the p-man. it'll be an inside day, however, given the weather. but i probably won't be doing much email or any coding (and certainly no irc) for the rest of the day...
the p-man is home today (and playing zoo tycoon at the moment) as school is out for a few days. while helping him with a mouse related config issue, i realized that i haven't had a day off for myself in quite some time, so i'm taking the afternoon off for myself and will be spending it with the p-man. it'll be an inside day, however, given the weather. but i probably won't be doing much email or any coding (and certainly no irc) for the rest of the day...
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
home again, home again, jiggedy scale
SCALE was a great show and the response to my presentation was all i could hope for. the presentation tracks in general were high quality and interesting.
i finally met jono bacon in person after knowing him for ~5 years online. in fact, during our first evening visiting i ended up breaking into a short little kde-themed song in a moment of overt sillyness and jono dared me (with a promise of free beer on the upside) to open my presentation the next day with a simlair performance. so the next morning after being introduced and informing the audience what i was about to present on i shared jono's challenge with them and then followed through with crazy little sing'n'jig that was met with laughter and applause. it was a nice way to wake everyone up and set a fun and energetic tone to the event. however i did not do any encores over the next two days despite several attempts to "inspire" me with promises of beer, pictures and/or appreciation.
over at the booth, daniel and aaron (another one, i'm not speaking of myself in the third person here ;) did an awesome job talking with people and answering all manner of questions. they also brought along a number of systems to show kde of on:
so thank-you to both those guys: i couldn't've done it without you! interestingly, our booth was right in between novell and google; i think they just wanted to emphasize how gheto our set up was compared to their slick corporate presentations ;)
we showed kde 3.5 on 2 desktops and 2 laptops ranging from a meager 550Mhz/64MB system (to show that kde does run very nicely on such kit) to a multi-Ghz laptop w/512MB of ram. composite, superkaramba, scribus and kpdf, koffice sporting the open document format, kontact and more were on display.
lots of kde was to be seen around the other booths, from IT training companies to LUGs. the open document booth was showing an open office writer window with an odt document open on one side and a kword window with the same document open on the other side to show the level of interoperability and, therefore, the reality of the promise of the format. linspire's booth was also quite popular, and the kubuntu cd's i brought (some 300 of them) went in the first two hours of the show.
most of the people who came by reported that they use kde at home and a few use it at work as well. one fellow who works for a certain mexican fast food chain with 5000+ stores noted that they are currently moving from sco unix to linux on the backend (aw, poor sco! not! ;P ) and are currently developing their client solution as well with web, mail and basic desktop. when he informed me they were doing this on kde i showed him how to take advantage of kiosk for certain things and he left very happy.
but it was more than dog'n'pony shows. i managed to get some serious sit down time with the open document people (who are more than appreciative of koffice's support), x.org (who was very impressed with our level of project organization), novell (who were eager to get feedback about community projects) and wikipedia (to de-languish the webservice offerings we want from them for kde4) among others. so it was a very useful event for inter-project networking. brian proffit and i also caught a few meals together, as did jono bacon and i. much thought provoking and positive conversation was had.
during one of the (rare) slow moments at the booths, one of the googlers noted that desktop linux is used extensively internally and that people love it. he reported that the default desktop on the internal google distro (which they made due to various custom internal network services they have to support) is ...... kde =) of course, people use all kinds of interfaces on their open source desktops at google, but it's cool that kde is the default =)
a lot of those who visited the kde booth complimented all of us in the project for our work on kde and were universally impressed about where we are today and where we are going. so kudos to everyone who writes code, documentation, translations, creates art and does promo. we're rockin' in the Free world!
and now i'm back for 6 weeks of coding and enjoying sleeping in my own bed. woooohooo!
i finally met jono bacon in person after knowing him for ~5 years online. in fact, during our first evening visiting i ended up breaking into a short little kde-themed song in a moment of overt sillyness and jono dared me (with a promise of free beer on the upside) to open my presentation the next day with a simlair performance. so the next morning after being introduced and informing the audience what i was about to present on i shared jono's challenge with them and then followed through with crazy little sing'n'jig that was met with laughter and applause. it was a nice way to wake everyone up and set a fun and energetic tone to the event. however i did not do any encores over the next two days despite several attempts to "inspire" me with promises of beer, pictures and/or appreciation.
over at the booth, daniel and aaron (another one, i'm not speaking of myself in the third person here ;) did an awesome job talking with people and answering all manner of questions. they also brought along a number of systems to show kde of on:
so thank-you to both those guys: i couldn't've done it without you! interestingly, our booth was right in between novell and google; i think they just wanted to emphasize how gheto our set up was compared to their slick corporate presentations ;)
we showed kde 3.5 on 2 desktops and 2 laptops ranging from a meager 550Mhz/64MB system (to show that kde does run very nicely on such kit) to a multi-Ghz laptop w/512MB of ram. composite, superkaramba, scribus and kpdf, koffice sporting the open document format, kontact and more were on display.
lots of kde was to be seen around the other booths, from IT training companies to LUGs. the open document booth was showing an open office writer window with an odt document open on one side and a kword window with the same document open on the other side to show the level of interoperability and, therefore, the reality of the promise of the format. linspire's booth was also quite popular, and the kubuntu cd's i brought (some 300 of them) went in the first two hours of the show.
most of the people who came by reported that they use kde at home and a few use it at work as well. one fellow who works for a certain mexican fast food chain with 5000+ stores noted that they are currently moving from sco unix to linux on the backend (aw, poor sco! not! ;P ) and are currently developing their client solution as well with web, mail and basic desktop. when he informed me they were doing this on kde i showed him how to take advantage of kiosk for certain things and he left very happy.
but it was more than dog'n'pony shows. i managed to get some serious sit down time with the open document people (who are more than appreciative of koffice's support), x.org (who was very impressed with our level of project organization), novell (who were eager to get feedback about community projects) and wikipedia (to de-languish the webservice offerings we want from them for kde4) among others. so it was a very useful event for inter-project networking. brian proffit and i also caught a few meals together, as did jono bacon and i. much thought provoking and positive conversation was had.
during one of the (rare) slow moments at the booths, one of the googlers noted that desktop linux is used extensively internally and that people love it. he reported that the default desktop on the internal google distro (which they made due to various custom internal network services they have to support) is ...... kde =) of course, people use all kinds of interfaces on their open source desktops at google, but it's cool that kde is the default =)
a lot of those who visited the kde booth complimented all of us in the project for our work on kde and were universally impressed about where we are today and where we are going. so kudos to everyone who writes code, documentation, translations, creates art and does promo. we're rockin' in the Free world!
and now i'm back for 6 weeks of coding and enjoying sleeping in my own bed. woooohooo!
Saturday, February 11, 2006
good bye mexico, hello l.a.
i flew into monterey, mexico on wednesday evening and was gone by friday morning. the event was amazing, however. some 1,200 university students from all over mexico congregated to listen to maddog, asa dotzler and myself talk about open source. many of them do not use open source regularly, especially on the desktop side. they received us enthusiastically (maddog and i spent 45 minutes or so posing for photographs with the students after the session).
the 300 kubuntu cd's i brought for the show disappeared almost instantly and i collected several email addresses from people to hopefully arrange some cd drops into mexico directly.
and speaking of which ... i had a wonderful time trying to get through customs in mexico with those cd's. wasn't sure i was going to make it through with them for a bit. and on thursday i was exposed to the wonders of mexican police, who stopped us on the street and tried to extract a bribe in exchange for not ticketing the driver. neat.
we talked at great length about open source and mexico, supporting and growing the local industry, the social imperatives of free software and more. we also ended up going out and exploring the nightlife. it was great and our hosts were wonderful.
it will be interesting to see where it goes from here =)
today i'm at SCALE in l.a. and the show is absolutely pumping. i'll blog about it tonight when it's not quite so busy.
the 300 kubuntu cd's i brought for the show disappeared almost instantly and i collected several email addresses from people to hopefully arrange some cd drops into mexico directly.
and speaking of which ... i had a wonderful time trying to get through customs in mexico with those cd's. wasn't sure i was going to make it through with them for a bit. and on thursday i was exposed to the wonders of mexican police, who stopped us on the street and tried to extract a bribe in exchange for not ticketing the driver. neat.
we talked at great length about open source and mexico, supporting and growing the local industry, the social imperatives of free software and more. we also ended up going out and exploring the nightlife. it was great and our hosts were wonderful.
it will be interesting to see where it goes from here =)
today i'm at SCALE in l.a. and the show is absolutely pumping. i'll blog about it tonight when it's not quite so busy.
Monday, February 06, 2006
rest in peace my friend
test results came in this morning showing that my friend Toes the Cat had cancer. it was present on several of his organs and certainly terminal. instead of trying to extend his life and bring more pain, suffering and humiliating treatments into his life, we had him humanely euthanized. he fell gently asleep for the last time about half an hour ago. he was a good friend and the most cuddly cat i've ever known. he would tuck himself under your arm and sleep pressed up next to you on his side all night if you let him (which we often did). he was full of attitude and energy when he was healthy and a light in all our lives.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
catborg
toes the cat now has a feeding tube implanted in the back of his neck/head and i'm injecting his food, water and medicines through it every 4 hours until he starts eating and drinking on his own again. while i'm away next week for a few days, t. and toes' previous caretaker (who passed toes on to me 2 years ago) will pick up the duties. i just want him to be better by this point. it's really quite draining to go through this illness with him.
and my new clothes washer still hasn't arrived. they have 3 more hours to make it otherwise there will be hell to pay at the appliance store.
but there is light at the end of this tunnel. i have a spa appointment on tuesday where i'll get an aromatherapy steam and a massage. 2 hours of bliss. thanks go to t. for buying me the spa certificate for christmas. she's a life saver.
then i'm off to monterey to keynote an university IT event (supposedly 1200 students from around mexico will be at the event) and then to l.a. the next day for scale and then back home on monday. hopefully we'll have the kconfig backend and ldb stuff sorted out by then (it's going decently so far) and i can spend the week ensconced in wrapping that up.
and my new clothes washer still hasn't arrived. they have 3 more hours to make it otherwise there will be hell to pay at the appliance store.
but there is light at the end of this tunnel. i have a spa appointment on tuesday where i'll get an aromatherapy steam and a massage. 2 hours of bliss. thanks go to t. for buying me the spa certificate for christmas. she's a life saver.
then i'm off to monterey to keynote an university IT event (supposedly 1200 students from around mexico will be at the event) and then to l.a. the next day for scale and then back home on monday. hopefully we'll have the kconfig backend and ldb stuff sorted out by then (it's going decently so far) and i can spend the week ensconced in wrapping that up.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
kde 3.5.1 and ldb mark 3
huzzah! kde 3.5.1 was released. congrats to all involved!
after a bit of hacking with tridge this evening, popping kde configs into ldb/tdb is down to comparable speeds with kconfig and even beating it by a slight margin at times if one turns off fsync and does per-file transactions. with fsync and per-file transactions (a.k.a. safe mode) it's hovering around the same speed, usually a tad slower though. this is a marked improvement over yesterday, to say the least.
tridge is looking at a few cases of inefficiency stemming from link list usage in the transaction code.
this is all on write. read is the next beast to tackle. and that requires revisiting kconfig itself quite a bit. i got an email from thomas braxton tonight who apparently has also been working on that particular area so we're going to combine efforts to bring the promise of multiple-backends for kconfig into reality.
i realized the other day that to do it Right, we'll have to provide for different backends based on resource type (which kconfig thankfully is already aware of) so that, for instance, application .desktop files always use the INI backend; we'll also have to provide a way to configure individual config prefixes, so that system configs can be rolled out over the network as single files using replication but users can continue to use INI files. i haven't really thought much about how to accomplish the latter; maybe thomas has ... or maybe i'll have to take a few extra showers in the coming days.
(i do my best thinking in the shower. warmth, water, white noise, gentle masssaging of the skin, nakedness. what could be more hospitable to deep thought?)
after a bit of hacking with tridge this evening, popping kde configs into ldb/tdb is down to comparable speeds with kconfig and even beating it by a slight margin at times if one turns off fsync and does per-file transactions. with fsync and per-file transactions (a.k.a. safe mode) it's hovering around the same speed, usually a tad slower though. this is a marked improvement over yesterday, to say the least.
tridge is looking at a few cases of inefficiency stemming from link list usage in the transaction code.
this is all on write. read is the next beast to tackle. and that requires revisiting kconfig itself quite a bit. i got an email from thomas braxton tonight who apparently has also been working on that particular area so we're going to combine efforts to bring the promise of multiple-backends for kconfig into reality.
i realized the other day that to do it Right, we'll have to provide for different backends based on resource type (which kconfig thankfully is already aware of) so that, for instance, application .desktop files always use the INI backend; we'll also have to provide a way to configure individual config prefixes, so that system configs can be rolled out over the network as single files using replication but users can continue to use INI files. i haven't really thought much about how to accomplish the latter; maybe thomas has ... or maybe i'll have to take a few extra showers in the coming days.
(i do my best thinking in the shower. warmth, water, white noise, gentle masssaging of the skin, nakedness. what could be more hospitable to deep thought?)
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