Penguins and Zyprexa

2006-07-31T00:56:00.000+01:00

Bye, bye, blogger...
I've decided to move my blog to a self-hosted Wordpress server. The new address is: http://paul-nolan.homelinux.org/

See you there...

The Newt Cometh...

2006-07-30T01:13:00.000+01:00

Today I took the plunge and updated my system to Edgy Eft (the Ubuntu release scheduled for October). This was probably quite silly, doing it so early in the release cycle (it's using an unstable version of Gnome, and the bootsplash is a hideous testcard thingy), but I like to keep things up to date, and I needed some core packages updating to run some software I wanted to use. The only downside I've found so far is I can't use Xgl & Compiz anymore (xorg 7.1 has problems with nvidia and disappearing fonts), but that's not that big a loss, seeing as my graphics card can't really handle it anyway (it was really slow).

Everything seems pretty stable so far, although Im just waiting for something horrible to happen (as tends to happen to me after an upgrade).

LugRadio Live

2006-07-26T18:31:00.000+01:00

Sadly, I missed this year´s LugRadio Live, due to heatstroke. Thus, instead of spending the weekend feeling sick and passing out from alcohol, I spent it erm... feeling sick and passing out.

I´ll definitely go next year, though.

Boris

2006-07-26T18:22:00.000+01:00

My cat, Boris, has made himself a nemesis: my printer. He´s taken to perching himself perilously close to the form feed button, then pouncing on the pages as they come out.

I´ve been wanting a new printer for a while, now. My current one (Deskjet 920c) is ridiculously slow, expensive to feed and not at all cat friendly (I want one where he can´t jump on the paper and ruin the printout as it´s being printed). I´m leaning towards a cheap colour laser like the Konica Minolta Magicolor 2400W, but I´m a bit worried about the lack of Mac support (I plan on buying a Macbook). Then again, it works with CUPS (with a 3rd party driver), and Macs use CUPS, so it should be a case of simply compiling the driver.

Screenshot of Glade 3

2006-07-02T02:10:00.000+01:00

In case anyone's interested (and can't be bothered to install it), here's a screenshot.

2006-07-02T00:45:00.000+01:00

Glade 3

One of the things I've always hated about GTK (and development with it) is the travesty that is Glade. No undo, unintuitive layout, generation of files that don't actually matter, C-specific stuff that's deprecated and useless. I've tried other UI builders (stetic and gazpacho) which were better, but still far from perfect.

Recently, though, I came across Glade 3. It's not quite ready yet (it's still CVS only), but it's a VAST improvement over previous incarnations, and I would recommend it to anyone who currently uses Glade 2.

2006-06-30T00:25:00.000+01:00

Was he really having that much trouble?

My sister's boyfriend has been working for weeks on building a simple subnet calculator, and yesterday I told him I'd have a go - if I managed then I could give him a few hints.

Anyway, I did it in a couple of hours (using Glade and Python). I'm not sure if I should let him see the code though (it's really terribly done, although I'm sort of wanting to see if he can decipher lines like:

widgets['netmaskentry1'].set_text(str(netmask >> 24))

widgets['netmaskentry2'].set_text(str((netmask - ((netmask >> 24) << 24)) >> 16))

widgets['netmaskentry3'].set_text(str((netmask - ((netmask >> 16) << 16)) >> 8))

widgets['netmaskentry4'].set_text(str(netmask - ((netmask >> 8) << 8)))

(there's got to be a better way to extract 4 8-bit numbers from a 32 bit one than this :)

2006-06-29T13:33:00.000+01:00

My sisters' play

I went to see my sisters' end of year performance yesterday (they are doing drama at college). It was pretty good, even if I did have to watch it twice (they were in different casts). I can't believe how good Charlotte is getting at accents. I knew she could do a passable cockney, as she'd done it for stuff before this, but in this play she had to do a West Country accent (and did it pretty well, too).

Thoughts on The GIMP

2006-06-21T22:46:00.000+01:00

The GIMP
Originally uploaded by onewingedyaoi.

Mysteriously, I couldn't connect to the GIMP CVS repo today for my weekly sync. When I finally managed, I noticed a couple of cosmetic improvements (including very pretty new Tango-compliant icons), but is this the reason why the server was jammed (surely this wasn't going to make everybody rush out and upgrade, was it?).
I've read a lot of complaints about The GIMP, which tend to boil down to one of 2 things: Lack of Colour Management/CMYK/16-bit, and the interface. Personally, I really like the interface (once I merge the toolbox into the main window it barely takes up any screen space, and I prefer separate toolbox and image windows to traditional MDI), as must many other people (or it would change). I think most of the complaints in this area are really "It's not Photoshop", and I'm not really sure cloning Photoshop is the way to go (people are more adaptable than they are generally credited).
Of course, the colour issue is a bit more valid. Both the other major painting programs for Linux (Krita & CinePaint) have some form of CMS/CMYK/16-bit colour support, and it would really be nice if this work could make it's way back to GIMP (preferably Krita's stuff - it's much more advanced and less buggy). CVS GIMP does have rudimentary CMS support, but there is no support for CMYK ouside of a 3rd party plugin providing 1-way CMYK TIFF export, and no 16 bit colour support at all (AFAIK).

2006-06-15T10:52:00.000+01:00

Idea for a project

I've been thinking about this for a while now: How about a free, linux equivalent to Adobe Bridge (the integration layer between the programs in Adobe CS2)? Basically it's a project manager for design projects, with lots of neat features, most of which could probably be done without too much effort. It would also serve as an integration layer between design apps (I'd choose The GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus)

The main things that would be needed would be:

The bridge centre (where you start new projects, manage versions etc.). (Take a look at adobe.com to see what the original is like)

An equivalent to Version Cue. I'm thinking a very simple frontend to subversion, setting up a repository per-project in the program's dotfolder. Not many of svn's options would be needed, so it should be pretty pared back and simple to use.

Colour management between apps. Ths would be the tricky one. The current state of things is: Scribus - has colour management (yay!); The GIMP - rudimentary colour management in development version; Inkscape - development version uses CMS but there's no way to set profiles (that I can see)

Let me know what you think...

2006-06-12T13:14:00.000+01:00

Just been to the doctors

and he confirmed what I've known for months: my meds are making me fat :( Quite annoying, since he's making me see a dietician, who'll probably make me live on brown toast and celery...

2006-06-10T02:17:00.000+01:00

OK, so I've finally gave in and set up a blog. I think I was one of the few remaining people on the net without one (similarly so with Flikr and del.icio.us, which I've joined as well).

I'm not sure how many people will be interested in the mindless ramblings I post here, but it's a good way for me to vent (it could get interesting when I go manic, which happens now and then).